Wauwatosa news. [volume] (Wauwatosa, Wis.) 1900-1948, 1909-12-24
TIMBER MIN ES.
Worked in South Jersey and Also Along
the Sabine River in the
South

The wood mines of upper Tonkin,
China. reported by the French consul
at MOngtze as a curious source of
wealth, an account of which was print
ed recently in New York in The Sum-"
said New York man with hobby for
curious things, lis not any more curious
than wood mine that has been in oper-
alton in New Jersey, within two or three
hours of New York, for more than 100
years.
'The wood mined in upper Tonkin is
pine. The New Jersey wood mine yields
cedar. This mine is at Dennisville, in
the swampy region of south New Jersey.
The fallen and submerged forest is be-
lieved to be prehistoric. No such cedar
grows anywhere on this continent to-
day. Logs have been mined from it
more than six feet in diameter.
"TheSe ancient cedars have delicate
flesh colored wood, and if it is a tree
that was alive when it fell the same
pungent flavor when cut as pervades our
common red cedar. The dead trunks
are odorless. The logs lie in heaps or
layers. and it has not been determined
yet how many layers there are below the
top stratum the miners uncover.
when these prehistoric cedars We're
first discovered and for eighty years
afterward they afforded remunerative
sons who mined the logs and today they
are source of considerable income to
those who continue to raise the logs
The cedars are cut up into shingles and
slaves and made into pals and tubs and
other wooden vessels. The great endur-
ance of the wood is noted in shingles
made from it n century ago and which
are as sound today as when they were
first put in use.
Near the Delaware river, eight miles
west of Dennsville, cedars of the same
variety have been found at depth of
twelve feet. At Cape May. on the At
lantic coast, twenty miles east, in drill
ing an artesian well an alluvial deposit
similar to the DenniSville swamp was
found at the depth of ninety feet before
its diameter was entirely pierced. This
tree was alive when it fell, no telling
how many thousands of years ago.
but there are wood mines in this
country that while not as curious are of
far more commercial importance. One
of these mines is the bottom of the
Sabine river. which divides Louisiana
and Texas. Four hundred miles of the
bed of this stream is paved with yell
low pine and cypress logs, principally
the pine.
ing has been in progress here. The prin-
cipal mills are at Orange. at the head
of Sabine lake, where more than Loo
coo feet of yellow pine is sawed daily.
Every day in the year for thirty years
logs from the lumber woods have been
floating down the Sabine to the Orange
sawmills, and every hour during that
time logs too heavy to float have sunk.
Not until two or three years ago was
any thought given by the lumber oper-
ators as to what the possible accumua-
ton of these sunken logs might amount
TO. To make a test of it the Orange
sawmill operators contracted with a New
York dredging concern to raise the logs
from a certain extent of the river bed
AZ and above Orange Within a stretch
of less than half a mile of river more
than 100000 feet of nlerchantable vel
low nine logs We're raised. These the
mills purchased for from 80 to - cents