Evening star., 1920-01-04

the heart of the northeastern
Allegheny mountains, away back
in central West Virginia, the old
time lumberjack is making his
last stand in the middle east" Here,
where the northern long-leaf pine
used to clothe the mountainsides
from the little creeks in the valleys
clear up to the crests, these destroy
ers of the forests are cleaning up
the last of the marketable saw timber
and leaving behind them scenes such
as made the Grand Traverse bay
country the desolate sight it was.
And here. within less than 200 miles
of Washington in an air line, may
be found the most appalling and stu
pendous example of waste that it is
possible to imagine. Here, along the
slopes of one little range of noun
tains. may be seen whole forests of
pine. felled. trimmed. some of it
sawed into logs. and left to rot.
A fifty-mile branch of the West
Virginia Coal and Coke railroad runs
through the mountains here. between
Elkins and Durbin. Nobody ever
travels over this road except in the
course of business. though it is a
connecting link between the Western
Maryland and Chesapeake and Ohio
Elkins end. are coal miners and their
families and few farmers. The
eastern end of the road is patronized
almost altogether by lumberjacks,
though a few pioneers are trying to
farm on cutover lands in the noun
tain coves Tourists never use the
road. despite the fact that along it's
line may be found some OF the most
picturesque scenery in all of West
Virginia. while the creeks are full Of
fish. including brook trout, and the
thickets teen with game.
Pine Forests Disappear.
Along one stretch of nearly twenty
have been destroyed. The timber has
not been utilized. and there is no
hope of utilizing it now. 1t simply
lies in hideous tumble of logs and
limbs and branches, slowly rotting
away as it was left.
Take a handful of matches and
throw them or drop them on an in
clined surface that may represent the
side OF a mountain. Let them lie
just as they fall-higgledy-pig -piggledy,
helter-selter. as old-fashioned jack
straws used to arrange themselves.
The result will be a feeble imitation
in miniature form of the miles of this
West Virginia mountainside.
The history of this wastefulness is
one of the pitiable instances of mis-
applied haste and misdirected energy
of the days just prior to the entrance
of the United States into the world
war, when lumber was vitality needed
and when anybody who could get to-
gether enough money to buy portable
sawmill and some stumpage and pay a
crew of lumberjacks was potential
lumber millionaire.
Thousands of acres of Stumpage
along the slopes of this one little
mountain range were bought by op-
orators of this class. Crews were
sent into the timber with orders to
cut everything. Apparently the crew
bosses knew nothing of modern
methods of getting out saw timber.
because the trees were felred in any
fashion, just so they were felled
The result was the tangle of logs
that today lie rotting along twenty
Once the writer saw lodgepole
pine forest in Colorado that had been
swept by fire. 1t was horrible
sight; but even that was not so bad
as that twenty mile stretch of West
Virginia mountainside. Because in
one case the destruction had been
wrought by fire and was unavoid-
able. while in the other it was mans
work that made hideous the whole
stretch of country and destroyed
without utilizing the forests.
Few of the Trees Utilized.
Men who witnessed the destruction
of these forests and who knew how
the work was DONE declared that not
more than one tree out of every hun
dred felled got to the sawmills. They