The Ely miner. [volume] (Ely, Minn.) 1895-1986, 1926-07-30
NORTH WOODS
BUILT STATES
Years of Lumber Harvest Saw
Population Pour Into
Prairie States.

OF more than five hundred sawmills
that fiourished In Minnesota at the
height of the timber harvest, there
are only three big plants remaining
and those are near the end OF their
cut. No doubt there will be swarms
of country mills and portables for
long time to come but the industry on
a big scale, on the Old lines, is nearly
over.
The cut of more than two billion
feet year has been diminished by
ninety per cent. Shipments down the
lakes have dropped out Of sight.
There are no more logs fioated down
river to Minneapolis and the log
booms were pulled out years ago.
Ten years ago the last raft that went
down the Mississippi, escorted by
two steam boats, was broken up at
Dubuque.
What we have to show for it is the
building of state, Minnesota, the
Dakotas and Iowa, mixing Minnesota
lumber with the product OF the other
lake states az it went further east
and south. But in the northwest, 1T
was Minnesota lumber that built
Main street, with its two-story fronts
and its wooden sidewalks. Minnesota
! lumber built the elevators at the sid
ings and the big red barns. The
, years when Minnesota and the Dako-
tas were filling rapidly were covered
by the three decades when the Mime
sofa lumber harvest was being rushed
| to the mill.
The lumber harvest brought back
cash from the east and south. Prob
ably every dollar of the eight million
a year that lake shipments fetched
down east was spent two or three
times before it was cast into perma-
nent assets of one form or another.
Lake shipping began, in fact, with
/ the lumber heokers and it was the
fleet of lumber schooners in the sos
which justified the first improve
ments in the Great Lakes channels
which now furnish the outlet fol
northwestern grain and which viii
presently connect the Great Lakes
=, with the ocean.
The payroll of the lumber industry
! 1t has been reckoned, came to three
hundred million dollars spread ovel
thirty years and went to build the
prosperity of the state as we'll as it:
two-story cardboard fronts on Mair
street and it's big red barns.
Settlers in the north country go
their first cash crop-and still do fol
that matter-working in the woods il
winter and selling supplies to thu
lumber camps until their road to maj
ket was opened.
The road to market in many case
was the old right of way of the log
cling road after the rails were takel
up. But some of the logging road
have grown into full fiedged carriers
It was a ruthless business and
left it's scars on the landscape. New
/ ly cutover lands have shorn an
desolate appearance and if fires ru
through they are picture OF desols
ton until in the course of years tn
poplar and birch again cover tn
slopes and the young pines lift thei
dark plumage.
If it had to be done again, unde
the same conditions, it must be don
in much the same way. If it was t
/ be done again under present cond
lions, it would be much better haI
died. Where the new industry deve
ops on modern lines-and it Is a
ready tending that way-when ma
ture trees are taken or Trimmings G
second growth-the forest never lose
its charm.
But the old lumber business did i
record time the job set before l
. And at least this much can be sait
, The lumber harvest had much to d
!, with building up the group of Hortl
/, | western states.