The Idaho scimitar. [volume] (Boise, Idaho) 1907-1908, 1908-10-03
THE IDAHO SCIMITAR.


ranges which quite without order, such as
mark the central portion of the map of the state.
Separating these great mountain regions is the
Snake river with its tributaries. In the south this
river runs through a vast treeless lava plain which
traverses the state from the east and extends along
the western border, embracing 10000 square miles in
its extent wide plain with its mountain borders
remote from the great river, which has its sources
in the forests of northwestern Wyoming.
The central mountains of Idaho, while they sup
port considerable forest cover are poor in this
regard when compared with the northern part of the
state, where the forest wealth is developed second
only to that of the Pacific states in economic value
Here we claim to have the only large amounts still
standing of magnificent white pne-a different species
to be sure, from the Michigan pine that is just fur
nishing its last logs to the mill-yet a very good
substitute. Here larch of dimensions and quality
superior to the famed European article invites the
miller and giant cedar with trunks UP to twelve feet
in diameter cast sombre gloom over the messy
floor of the deep valleys. Red frs lifting their spires
200 feet above the mountain side, suggest the yet
greater forest wealth of the Pacific coast.
The Occur dA1ene region in northern Idaho pre-
sents, perhaps best, the condition of much of our
mountain forest and its fate. Here working,
within of but little more than 5000 square
miles, the opposing forces of man and nature. Hid
den away in the mountains of the Occur dAlene is
a wealth of mineral that is even yet only partially
revealed Covering their slopes and darkening their
narrow valleys with their crowded crowns, pine
and fir and hemIock and cedar c1othe the region in
perennial green.
From the first settlement, man has delved for the
metal and considered the forest cover only as so
much additional waste to be cleared away-as SO
much debris, compelling additional labor for its
moval, and increasing by SO much the cost of min
ing
The soils of the Cour d A1ene are nowhere of the
highest fertility, and in only limited there
good farming lands. The soils are too porous and
do not retain moisture With heavy rainfall and
freedom from frosts the forest growth had deve-
oped to phenomenal degree, so that when the first
government road was opened through this region
of the largest dimensions abounded everywhere
When the road through the Occur d'A1ene was
built emigrants focked westward along the trail to
the valley of the Columbia The deep stiffness of
the Occur dA1ene valleys was depressing to the
spirits of these wanderers, who longed for the sun
they had SO hated the plains, and they set fire
to the woods if only to make hole in the dense leaf
canopy and let in the sunshine. Then the railroad
that vanguard of western civilization sought
route to Puget Sound No aid so potent to man as
fire to cleave pathway through the impenetrable
woods and with only best intentions the torch was
applied. True, the railroad owned but certain
amount of the land but nobody owned the rest-it
is so much easier to regard the government as an
entity in Washington, where great buildings and
thousands of workers give it apersonalty, than in
the west where the only evidences of its existence
are the broad spreading unoccupied acres-nobody
owned the land beyond the railways claims, and the
fires which swept away thousands of the great trees
burned into the soil and hundreds Of