The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-08-20
FANNIE B. WARD.
THE MOUNTAIN FORESTS.
Rayages of Steel and Fire in the Sier-
 ras.

Rayages of Steel and Fire in the Sier- raS.
 The people of the valleys of Califor-
 mia have had very indefinite idea of
 what numbering means in the mourn tains. Tse fires that follow the ax and saw are spoken of in the papers, but without much effect on public imagi- nation. The forests in our mountainous
 regions are surely melting away as did
 those of Michigan, Wisconsin and Min
 nesota, and everywhere outside the federal reserves moisture, stade and soil
 are disappearing The numbering ope- rations are usually carried on remote from the public highways and railways. and the forest fires are not near settle
 ments and are prmitted to burn all sum- mer, extending from numbered tracts to
 virgin timber, and restroying millions
 of dollars worth of property. The few
 who cry out against this destruction
 are looked upon as cranks, and the
 practical people go on stripping the
 country and leaving it bare and blear
 behind there. What it means to lumber
 destfuctively may be seen near much
 travelled road. In the mountains, nine
 miles west of Wawona, is Signal Peak,
 rising eight thousand feet and heavily timbered nearly to the top. From it the CoWchilla range drops away like a
 great buttress, and standing on it's sum- init. which is marble, one may view the mountains for hundreds of miles and
 look over the Coast Range to the far ocean. From that point, looking south
 eastu, may be seen the limit of lumber
 ing and just how far destruction has crept up the mountain side. Beyond
 that live scrubby chaparral and vast
 spaces bare even of brust cover land
 that once was heavily timbered. The
 sequence of ax and fire stripped it. At
 present another sight may be seen from
 Signal Peak Beginning at the farmer
 frontier of destruction is railroad that
 coils like a mighty snake around and through the forest clear tip to the lofhy peak itself. It*is lumber road built to facilitate the milling of all the timber
 on the road to the Yosemite, rom where the highway crosses the shoulder of the Chowchilla Mountain clear to Fish
 Camp and up to Signal Peak. Travel CLo uiA ltluI LtdA liN ldLliillhL "Ahti NtAcAh splendid forest. Part of it had been so
 conservatively numbered by the Miami
 mill that the fallen timber was hardly
 missed, because fires had been excluded and the young trees had rapidly filled the places left vacant In the ranks. It
 was most agreeable experience to pass from the hot and dusty plains below into the grateful shade and by the clear waters of that forest. It guarded on
 one watershed tributaries of Fresno
 river, and on. the other Big Creek, the
 largest confluence of the south fork of the Merced. --a..- j. F
 From Wawona Signal Peak is seen,
 and dropping from it skyline of for
 est, made up of yellow and sugar pine, That evergreen skyline has been one of
 the beauties of the mountains. The
 great basin in which the Hotel Wawona
 stands Is protected against numbering by the foresight of the , WasTburnes, who in constructing the finest mountain resort in the country have heightened
 rather than harmed the primitive grace of the forest. They own the forest on one side, and the Yosemite reserve pro- tects it on the other, but unfortunately neither goes to the skyline, and soon Signal Peak will be lit up by the forest fires that follow the slaughter of tim Der. Those who visit the Yosemite now have to cross eight long chutes, hear the puffing of 6 dozen donkey engines that are pulling the logs to the chutes, and pass through the smoke of the fires