Ottumwa tri-weekly courier. [volume] (Ottumwa, Iowa) 1903-1916, 1916-06-01
Our Allegheny Forests
BY Frederic J. Haskin

quickly acquired the stolid face and
heavy carriage which are the marks OF
monotony and hard manual work.
These people lived in log cabins OF
one or two rooms which sometimes
sheltered twenty to twenty-five per
sons. They lived on corn bread, salt
pork, with a few vegetables in the
summer and occasionally game or fish
This food was almost always badly
cooked Their farms consisted In
patches Of twenty or thirty acres on
the hlllsides, reclaimed by girdling and
killing the trees, so that the corn could
grow between the dead trunks As a
summer storm frequently washed a
whole farm away, there was not much
incentive to fertilize or to cultivate in
tensively. The people had few scrub
cattle and some razor back hogs. All
OF their implements were of the crud-
est. Cut of from the world by will
derness of forest clad ridges. crossed
by neither highway nor railroad, they
lived almost exactly az had their an
cestors. who settled these lands and
fought for their freedom in the Battle
of Kings Mountain. /,
One of the regular practices of the
mountaineers was to burn the forests
In order to make the grass come up
earlier In the spring. Already the for
esters have successfully persuaded
them of the unwisdom of this practice,
which denudes the watersheds and
burns the best elements out OF the
soil. But the government men have
brought other blessings. The great
areas which have been purchased from
land companies and railroads and plac-
ed under government control are now
available to the mountain people.
Wherever there is enough timber to
allow of cutting, the forest service is
selling stumpage. Any mountaineer
may buy few thousand feet Of timber
on the stump and make few dollars
cutting ties or posts. If a larger sale
is made to a sawmill company, he may
bring his team and make four dollars
q day by hauling logs. Again, many of
the mountaineers held great tracts Of
wilderness-"heired lands" they call
ed them-which had come down from
remote ancestors and were absolutely
useless to the possessors. The govern
ment bought many Of these tracts at
an average price OF five dollars an
acre. In this way many a mountain
family came into a heritage for which
it had waited several generations.
The forest service makes practice
of recruiting its guards and rangers
from among the people in the neigh.
borhood Of the forest, and many Of the
mountaineers have in this way obtain
ed employment for which they are ad-
mirably fitted at salaries that seem
munif1cent to them. Although Hitter.
acy Is common among them and some
Of the new foresters can scarcely
make a written report they know
every inch of the country and are sue
cessful in dealing with their own
people.
Thus the forest service has been as
q hand reached out from the busy civil.
ization Of .seaboard and plain to these
isolated and almost forgotten people of
the mountains And as these Appala-
chan forests develop both as timber
producers and as summer resorts, the
mountaineer will benefit by them more
and more. He will doubtless learn in
time that 1t Is better to obey the game
law and refrain from dynamiting the
trout streams, because the game and
fish will bring him a steady patronage
OF gold laden visitors.
There are summer resorts all along
the fringes of the Appalachians and q
few of them in North Carolina and Vir-
ginia have obtained some reputation
and the favor of wealthy people. AS a
whole, however, they are little appre-
ciated. Among them are many peaks
of considerable height. Mt Mitchell
on the forest reserve of that name Ia
over six thousand feet, and the forest
ers have built fne graded trail to the
top. Toe River and Crab Apple creek
in the same region afford excellent
trout and bass fishing. There are ruff
fed grouse in the hills and some wild
turkey, while few black bear remain.
Thirty-fve elk were recently released
on the Pisgah forest in North Carolina.
On the whole, these forests constitute
a region of many attractions to tho
outer and the quaint people that inhab-
II them are not the least thereof