Omaha daily bee., 1896-08-15
PASSING OF THE WHITE PINE
Northern Forests Being Rapidly Denuded of
the Noble Wood.
TWO STATES PRACTICALLY STRIPPED
Michigan and Wisconsin Dcnuded
and Minnesota Forests Trimmed
O~ut-Fncts and Figures that
Indicate the Fad.

uSSutd are numbered, anu, as inc sldlc 10
the last Of the great central northwestern
states in which white pine grows. the day
OF its extinction there marks the end Of white
pine as a factor in the trade of the country,
There is no other tree so valuable for general
building purposes, says a correspondent OF
the Chicago Tribune; nothing has been found
to take its place. The yellow pine OF the
south, the fir, cedar, or redwood of the far
west, the spruce of Maine, and other woods
are being gradually introduced to take the
place of white pine, but none is equal to 1t
in the ease with which it adapts itself to
the tool of the workman, to the shapes
forced on it by Woodworking machine, or in
strength, lightness and beauty. The white
pine is the king of woods, and has been and
still is the chief factor in wood building
operations all over the country. 1t has
been used as IL the lumbermen believed its
supply to he absolutely inexhaustible, and
that they could leave to their children no
dearth of this most important wood.
Estimates Just compiled by the state for
est warden of Minnesota, an Office created
by the last legislature because OF the opin-
ion that the rich forests were being too rap
idly depleted, show that there are IN Mime
sofa 10, $50, 900 acres of forest land, and that
on this there stand, in addition to other
woods, 10, 200, 900, 600 feet OF live white and
Norway pine and spruce, of which the white
pine aggregates 14,500, 000, 900 feet. This is a
vast total, but II is being cut down at the
rate of about l 200, 600, 900 feet a year, besides
feaful losses by fire, and the supply will
hardly last more than a dozen years. 1t
would not last SO long as this were 1t not
for the fact that the tire-swept pine can be
saved by cutting when 1T is so located that
1t can be reached by railroads or water In
time to save it from the attacks of worms.
There is, too, a constant growth OF the
green timber, estimated at not far from IA
per cent a year, which will have some effect
in warding off the final ak cuts. But IN
from ten to fifteen years the last white pine
forests in the United States will have dis
appeared, for pine does rot success as
second growth timber, or at least has not
done so with all the experiments carried ON
in the old pineries of Michigan and other
states.
Michigan is now nearly denuded. Its
mills have gradually been burned or torn
down, or are cutting on timber imported
from the Canadian shores of the Georgian
bay. In Wisconsin, where the destruction
of the forests began at an earlier day than
in Minnesota, the end Is approaching, and
will come long before the date set Tor the
North Star state.
OF course the figures given by the state
warden in this, his first report, are only
estimates, but they are as reliable as 1t is
possible to make them, and are the combined
ItSulI VI liz vi IN ~
timators for timber buyers, of the con-
situations Of experts wh3 have travelled
and cruised through the forests for a life
time, and of the personal knowledge of the
foremost men in the pine trade. 1t may be
that a mistake has been made, and that
the total should be larger than reported.
The pine area of Minnesota is almost
wholly in the counties of st. Louis, the
largest of them all; Lake, Cook, l%tasca,
Cass, Beltrami and Carlton, and a few
nfhnrS IN tho CntIth nf them which nut hlt
little figure in the totals. TIL forest region
is $50 miles east and west. and its greatest
breadth is about 200 miles. Its outlines
are very irregular, and in this limit are
contained all the woods found in the state.
These include, besides the pine, some $780,
900, 900 feet of the ~hardwoods common to
New England, with the exception of hem
lock and beech, no specimens of which are
to be found in the state.
The sawmills of Minneapolis and Duluth
each cut about 500, 900, 900 feet a year, run
ming during the summer and fall. The Min
neapolis cut all comes from the forest about
the head of the Mississippi river, and in a
few years will convert the headwaters of
that stream to a roaring gully or an Utmost
dried chasm. The cut of the Duluth mills
comes from the shores of Lake Superior,
and is about half supplied from Wisconsin.
The effect of the cut about the great lake is
already seen in it's constant lowering, in the
conversion of the mountain streams to tor
rents during the wet season and mere fish
ways in the dry, and in the prevalence of
fires for months in the year. Mills at other
points in the state, west of the vast Red
Lake reservation. and on the lower Missis-
sippi river, saw the remainder of the annual
cut. This cut is growing year by year, and
was never so large as in 1885. Timber that
In the old days was thought far beyond the
possibility of reach Is now being taken out
by thousands of feet daily. by the logging
steam roads that have superseded the water
courses as Indispensable adjuncts of forest
destruction. These roads now reach the
furthest points in the forests, and are built
at little more expense than was formerly
put on the hauling roads over which the logs
were pulled by horse to the landing places
on the streams which foated them to the
mills.
There are vast forests of pine whose ex-
tent is unknown and whose existence is al
most unbelieved in the faraway regions of
northern Canada. The forests of Labrador
are becoming known by reason of recent ex-
plorations there, but those to the east of
Hudson Bay are merely limited at by the
hardy explorers who have penetrated a few
leagues into that region. West of these and
running from the nOrtheasterly end of Lake
Superior to the south of Hudson Bay are as
great forests rs have ever delighted the eye
OF the woodsman. These were discovered a
few years ago by railway surveyors and ex-
plorers from this city and Duluth who were
cooking for q possible line to the bay and to
Europe. Immense stretches OF country in
western Ontario and Manitoba have been
richly timbered, but in the last two years
forest fires have run there so destructively
as to ruin millions of acres of wooded lands.
Still further to the west, in the route TO
the Mackenzie river, and on the east side of
the Northern Rockies, there are forests
stretching for 900 miles. In all of these
vast woods the sound of the AK has never
been heard, and some time after the pine
of Minnesota has been exhausted, and there
can be built such roads as will permit men
to get in and the logs to get out, these will
be the pineries of the continent. But they
are far away, and in a country which will
take millions Of money for railroads before
II can be opened up for traffic, and the pine
is not of such a quality as that now being
so ruthlessly hacked down in the forests of
the three northwestern pine states. There
will be no scarcity of timber, such as 1t is.
SO long as the present generation, at least.
remains, but the magnificent pine timber of
the woods OF Michigan and Minnesota will
soon be a thing of the past.
Don't trife away time when you have
cholera morbus or diarrhOea. Fight them in
the beginning with DeWitt's Collie and Chol-
era Cure. You don't have to wait for re-
suits, they are instantaneous, and it leaves
-