Green Gold : Alabama's Forests and Forest Industries [1 ed.] 9780817387396, 9780817318130

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Green Gold

1. Alabama Forest Types. Courtesy of University of Alabama Cartographic Research Laboratory.

Green Gold Ala­bama’s Forests and Forest Industries

James E. Fickle

Copublished with the Ala­bama Forestry Foundation

The University of Ala­bama Press Tuscaloosa

Copyright © 2014 by Ala­bama Forestry Foundation and James E. Fickle Copublished with the Ala­bama Forestry Foundation The University of Ala­bama Press Tuscaloosa, Ala­bama 35487-­0380 All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Typeface: Minion and Letter Gothic Cover photograph: Fall colors of trees bordering the Ala­bama River; courtesy of Sam Duvall Cover design: Todd Lape/Lape Designs ∞ The paper on which this book is printed meets the minimum requirements of Ameri­can National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-­1984. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Fickle, James E. Green gold : Alabama’s forests and forest industries / James E. Fickle. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8173-1813-0 (trade cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8173-8739-6 (e book) 1. Forests and forestry—Alabama—History. 2. Forest products industry— Alabama—History. 3. Timber—Alabama—History. I. Title. SD144.A2F53 2014 333.7509761—dc23 2013030766

Dedicated to the memory of Dr. John L. Loos Dr. Archie P. McDonald

Contents

List of Illustrations

ix

Acknowledgments

xi

Introduction

1

1. Ala­bama’s Early Forests and People, Pioneer Settlers, and the Age of the Early Sawmillers and Naval Stores Producers 7 2. The Age of “Cut Out and Get Out”

41

3. Changing Patterns of Technology and Work in the Ala­bama Forest Products Industries 87 4. The Rise of Forestry

136

5. Rising from the Ashes: The Restoration of the Forests and the Early Resurgence of the Lumber Industry 172 6. The Rise of the Pulp and Paper Industry

192

7. The Golden Age of the Forest Products Industry? Into the Future 8. Recent Environmental and Forest Management Issues Conclusion Notes

295

Bibliography Index

287

351

335

260

224

Illustrations

Figures 1. Planing mill of Scotch Lumber Company 75 2. “Peckerwood” sawmill 78 3. “Boxing” of trees to yield turpentine and resin 83 4. Trees damaged by turpentining and fire 83 5. Ditch used to transport logs 94 6. Moving logs by river 95 7. Oxen hauling logs for Eufaula Lumber Company 97 8. Log train, loader, and loggers 98 9. McGiffert Log Loader used to load logs onto log trains 99 10. Shay locomotive of Kaul Lumber Company 102 11. Logging locomotive of W. T. Smith Lumber Company 105 12. Placing crude gum from tree cup into carrying bucket 116 13. Turpentine still 116 14. Bottomland loggers using axes 120 15. Loggers using crosscut saw 120 16. Loggers using power equipment 122 17. Logging camp of Scotch Lumber Company 124 18. Lumber mill of Kaul Lumber Company 126 19. Logging camp of Scotch Lumber Company, 1948 129 20. Busch combine 130 21. Cutover and burned longleaf pineland 138 22. Forestry employee, 1899 140

x Illustrations 23. Natural regeneration of longleaf pine, 1899 174 24. Fire in Ala­bama forests 176 25. Scotum Hill Tower 179 26. Lookout tower and airplane for fire detection 181 27. Rock ledge in Talladega National Forest 183 28. Machinery at a paper mill in the 1940s 202 29. Pulpwood pens, 1937 203 30. E. N. McCall 209 31. A forester examines terminal buds on grafted slash pine 32. Short logs outside an Ala­bama paper mill, 1960s 238 33. Scott Paper Company mill, 1960s 239 34. Longwood arriving at paper mill 245 35. Sipsey River in the Bankhead National Forest 285 Maps 1. Ala­bama Forest Types Frontispiece 2. Ala­bama Rivers xii 3. Ala­bama’s Nonmilitary Federal Lands

xiii

212

Acknowledgments

I wish to gratefully acknowledge and recognize the contributions and support of the following individuals and institutions to the completion of this work. Of course I alone am responsible for any weaknesses or deficiencies of the content. First I would like to recognize Valerie, Steven, Ashley, Shan, Kelsey, Terri, Billy, Matthew, April, and Jean for their support and encouragement. Also my colleagues Dr. Daniel Unowsky and Dr. Charles W. Crawford for their interest and assistance. The office staff of the University of Memphis Department of History, especially Gerry Russo, Karen Jackett, and Karen Bradley, provided tremendous assistance in the mechanical process of producing a manuscript. The university also assisted with a faculty research grant, sabbatical, and travel grant. I am deeply indebted to friends and colleagues who read and provided valuable suggestions for improving the manuscript. They include consulting forester Keville Larson of Mobile; recreational land use expert Dr. Michael G. Huffman of the University of Memphis; former colleague Dr. Donald W. Ellis; and Dr. Chadwick Dearing Oliver of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. I also received invaluable assistance from Sam Duvall of the Ala­bama Forestry Association, as well as former director Dan Ross, Elizabeth Motherwell, and Vanessa Rusch of the University of Ala­bama Press. The manuscript was improved by the editorial work of Laurel Anderton. Finally, this project was greatly facilitated by the early research and gathering of source materials by Professor Warren Flick of the University of Georgia forestry school, and by the assistance of Cheryl Oakes and Eben Lehman of the Forest History Society, Meredith McLemore of the Ala­bama Department of Archives and History, Julie Blankenburg and Sue Paulson of the US Forest Products Laboratory, and the staffs of the University of Ala­bama Cartographic Research Laboratory and the archives and libraries at Yale University, Louisiana State University, Mississippi State University, the University of Memphis, and the Memphis Public Library.

2. Alabama Rivers. Courtesy of University of Alabama Cartographic Research Laboratory.

3. Alabama’s Nonmilitary Federal Lands. Courtesy of University of Alabama Cartographic Research Laboratory.

Green Gold

Introduction

This book is not a “natural history.” It tells the story of humanity’s continuing economic interaction with the forests in one of the most heavily forested areas in the nation. Over time, Ala­bama’s forests have been used, abused, restored, and managed in vari­ous ways. The overall impression that is left from the entire picture is of the remarkable regenerative powers of the forests. Forests are dynamic. They grow, die, change, and evolve over time, even without human intervention. They have provided food, shelter, recreation, aesthetic enjoyment, income, and employment in varying degrees over the long sweep of time. In the prehistoric period, Native Ameri­can societies utilized forested areas for a variety of purposes, in­clud­ing materials for buildings, and also burned forests to clear land for farming and to drive game animals for hunting. The Native Ameri­cans had a significant impact on the forests, but due to a historic irony their influence was of­t en ignored or misunderstood by later inhabitants. When the explorers of the de Soto expedition visited the Ala­bama area in the fifteenth century they brought both European diseases, for which the Indians had no resistance, and swine, some of which escaped from the Spaniards. The pigs became the carriers that enabled disease to enter the food chain, and the native populations were devastated. During the century between the time of de Soto and the return of European explorers and settlers a century later, the forests recovered from Indian use, and what the new settlers saw was a much smaller native population and forests that appeared to them as “virgin,” unaffected by human usage. An enduring myth was born. Ameri­cans from that time on would typically view old-­growth forests as virgin. As Ala­bama became a territory and then a state, early European ­settlers and their successors utilized the forests extensively. They were mostly small farmers who regarded the wooded areas as low-­value impediments and cleared

2 Introduction

vast areas for farming. Still, they used the forests for building materials, and in the south­ern reaches near the coast the pine forests provided timbers for ship and boat building, as well as the tar, pitch, and turpentine that were needed for ship construction and maintenance. Naval stores production had a long and controversial presence in these regions because of competition between lumbermen and the naval stores operators for use of the forests. To supply the timbers, boards, shingles, and other wood products needed by local farmers, small sawmills began to appear early in Ala­bama’s ­history. Typically powered by waterwheels or turbines, they were located along streams and supplied local markets, although significant marketing centers developed in Pensacola and Mobile to ship Ala­bama forest products to outside customers. Work in the mills and woods was dangerous and labor intensive, and the labor force consisted of local rural people, both whites and, sometimes, black slaves. While forest products manufacturing became significant, Ala­bama’s economy was dominated by agriculture, particularly cotton production. In the post–Civil War period of the late nineteenth century, things began to change dramatically in Ala­bama’s forests. Before this time the nation’s lum­ ber was supplied first by the woods of the Northeast, and then by the upper Great Lakes states. While hardwoods from the upper South were sometimes shipped to north­ern markets, there was strong prejudice among some consumers against south­ern pine lumber as being too sappy and hard, too difficult to nail and paint, and tending to warp. Lumbering at this time was a migratory industry. The prevailing methodology of lumbermen was to “cut out and get out,” level the forests without replanting or providing for natural reseeding, and then move on to new forests and repeat the process. They believed the nation’s forests were inexhaustible. “Scientific” forestry and forest management had not yet arrived in this country. By the late nineteenth century the growing nation had a gargantuan appetite for forest products. The northeast­ern and Great Lakes forests were nearing exhaustion, and the industry looked to new areas for exploitation. The lumbermen jumped to the South and the west­ern states and began to repeat the process. Ala­bama in some ways was a part of the typical pattern, but in other important ways it differed. It had abundant forests consisting of hardwoods in the north and pines, especially longleaf pines, in the south, with mixed forests in the middle reaches. There was excellent transportation via rivers feeding into the Gulf of Mexico, and railroads that proliferated and crisscrossed the state by this period. There was an abundant labor force, both black and white, to work in the woods and mills, and there were a few local families

Introduction 3

with involvement in the lumber industry stretching back in some cases to the antebellum period. This would prove significant, for these people had roots in the state and would thus be interested in long-­term operations, in contrast to the cut-­out-­and-­get-­out lumbermen who dominated some other south­ ern states. Also, while there were north­ern operators who came to Ala­bama, some became industry leaders, put down roots, and stayed. During this period the technology of lumbering was revolutionized. Steam power in the mills and the woods transformed the industry, making the workers vastly more productive and enabling massive production from the mills. But the impact on the workers and the forests was troublesome. The new machinery and methodology were dangerous for the workers and devastating to the forests, which were rapidly cut over to supply the mills. There was little thought about forest preservation, limited knowledge about silviculture, and no concept of sustainable forest management. From the late nineteenth century until World War I the South led the nation in lumber production, and Ala­bama was among the most important producers. However, by the 1920s the forests were largely cut over, and many lumbermen were fearing a looming “timber famine” and looking toward the Pacific Northwest and the Intermountain West as the next places to move. However, in the early twentieth century the profession of forestry arrived in the United States, with the establishment of forestry schools at Biltmore, Cornell, and Yale. People began to learn about the growth cycles and other characteristics of trees, and about techniques of forest management that would allow for long-­term sustainable operations, in contrast to the old cut-­out-­and-­ get-out methodology. The keys to sustainable management were fire control, exclusion of root-­destroying hogs from young forests, and replanting or protection of seed trees in harvested areas. Selective cutting joined clear-­cutting as an acceptable commercial practice. Pioneering foresters like the US Forest Service’s Austin Cary and Yale’s H. H. Chapman became promoters and demonstrators of the new techniques in Ala­bama and other parts of the South. Consulting forestry firms like Ala­bama’s Pomeroy and McGowin helped to spread the word. Fire policy became more sophisticated, moving from total exclusion toward controlled burning, especially in longleaf pine areas. Ala­bama lumber firms headed by local people like the McGowins of the W. T. Smith firm, the Millers of the T. R. Miller Mill Company, and the Harri­ gans of the Scotch Lumber Company moved to incorporate the new techniques and struggled to survive the Great Depression, as did the Kauls of the Kaul Lumber Company, who came from Pennsylvania but put down roots in Ala­bama. Times were hard during the 1930s, but people survived and the forests

4 Introduction

began to recover, displaying greater resilience than most had believed possible. While casual observers today focus mostly on Ala­bama’s forest products companies and their staffs of industrial foresters, they should not forget that a large part of the state’s forested acreage is privately owned by people and organizations with a diverse set of backgrounds, financial circumstances, objectives, and values. Much of this land is managed with the guidance of consulting foresters, who have had a significant impact on Ala­bama’s privately owned forests. Some lumber companies and private landowners started to practice responsible forest management, just as another major development began to impact the south­ern forests. By the 1930s the pulp and paper industry, which had been centered in the Northeast, was rapidly depleting the forests there. South­ern pines had not been considered capable of producing commercial-­quality paper because of their high resin content. However, researchers in Europe had developed chemical processes to produce kraft paper from south­ern pines, and the research of Charles Holmes Herty of Savannah, Georgia, had perfected the methodology to produce newsprint and other grades of paper from south­ ern pine pulp. The fast-­growing pine forests of Ala­bama and the South were “green gold,” perfect raw material sources for the paper industry, whose mills were criti­cally dependent on a reliable and abundant wood supply. Although there were some earlier small paper mills in Ala­bama, the industry moved into the state in a major way in the 1920s and 1930s, led by the South­ern Kraft Division of International Paper, which established mills and administrative headquarters in Mobile. The Westervelts moved their operations from Illinois to Louisiana and then Ala­bama, finally establishing the large operations of the Gulf States Paper Company at Tuscaloosa. Numerous other companies migrated or were established, and the paper industry became a criti­cal part of the Ala­bama forest scene. The paper companies acquired vast timbered acreages and negotiated timber leases with an enormous number of private landowners. They utilized younger timber than the lumber companies and practiced intensive industrial forestry, clear-­cutting the forests, replanting with new varieties of genetically superior “super trees,” and replacing many of Ala­bama’s natural multispecies and vari­ous-­aged forests with tree “plantations,” single-­aged forests of one species, commonly loblolly pine. With occasional interruptions, the Ala­bama forest products industry boomed from the immediate post–World War II era until nearly the end of the twentieth century. By the latter part of this period Ala­bama had more trees than at the time of European discovery, and forest products had become a central part of the state’s economy and life. Both industrial and privately owned forestland managed by or for the lumber and paper producers by industrial

Introduction 5

and consulting foresters had become ever more productive by any measure of growth rate or timber volume per acre. The companies had also developed a revenue source by leasing hunting rights in many of their forests. However, controversy was developing in the midst of their many successes. Many consider Gifford Pinchot, first chief of the US Forest Service and founder of the Yale Forestry School, to be the nation’s first professionally trained forester. Trained in forestry in Europe, Pinchot defined conservation as “wise use.” In other words, one should use natural resources, in­clud­ ing forests, responsibly, providing for their continued preservation and replenishment. This was the foundation of the professional forester’s creed of “sustainable forestry,” which was practiced by the lumber and paper company foresters. Foresters liked to think of themselves as the nation’s first conservationists, not only supplying the country’s timber needs, but also restoring and maintaining its forests at the same time. The challenge to this view came from others who viewed conservation differently and, in fact, rallied around the tenets of “environmentalism,” as opposed to “conservation.” They saw all natural entities as interconnected and were inspired by the ideas of pioneer thinkers and practitioners like John Muir and Aldo Leopold. They believed that some areas should be preserved and off limits to economic exploitation and bemoaned the replacement of natural forests by tree plantations. They viewed commercial forest operations as inimical to the maintenance of both plant and animal species diversity. They lamented the impact of woods and plant operations on water and air quality. The forest products industry nationally and in Ala­bama responded to the criticisms by adopting vari­ous certification programs that encouraged the practice of sustainable forestry in accordance with “green” standards. They protected streams from pollution and damage from logging operations, protected endangered species such as red-­cockaded woodpeckers, and implemented processes to protect air and water quality from plant operations. In some cases industry lands were donated for pub­lic use as nature preserves. In Ala­bama some areas of national forests were set aside as wilderness areas and protected from commercial use. Still, the industrial and consulting foresters and land managers on one side and the environmentalists on the other of­ten talked past one another and refused to recognize any validity in the other side’s positions. As the end of the twentieth century approached, the old fears of a “timber famine” were far in the past, and the Ala­bama forest community was rocked by another development, as the large forest products companies began to massively dispose of their forested lands, moving toward supplying their tim-

6 Introduction

ber needs through timber leases with private landowners and through the acquisition of operations in other parts of the world such as Bolivia, Siberia, and New Zealand. Investment trusts acquired much of the land and planned to manage it in a variety of ways, as did the other private, nonindustrial forest­ land owners who collectively controlled the largest percentage of the state’s forests. The immediate prospects for Ala­bama’s forests were unclear, but their demonstrated resilience gave hope for the future.

1 Ala­bama’s Early Forests and People, Pioneer Settlers, and the Age of the Early Sawmillers and Naval Stores Producers Long before European settlement in this country, Native Ameri­cans used and managed the forest to serve their own needs. European Ameri­cans, when they arrived, viewed forests as an encumbrance to agriculture or as a virtually inexhaustible resource to be mined. They first used the forest— its wildlife, wood products, and land—to meet their subsistence needs for food and energy, much as Native Ameri­cans had done. —Brad Smith, John S. Vissage, David R. Darr, and Raymond M. Sheffield, Forest Resources of the United States

I. Ala­bama’s Early Forests and People We all long to return to the idyllic worlds of our childhood, or imagination, or both. “Country” curios at flea markets and antique shops remind us of days with our parents and grandparents in a simpler and more leisurely time. Trips to Colonial Williamsburg with its meticulously maintained buildings and grounds reflect our concept of an orderly and rational colonial world where everyone and everything were in their proper places. So too do the prints of Currier & Ives represent the way we want to see agrarian America in the nineteenth century, while the painters of the Rocky Mountain School give us a suitably heroic depiction of the “natural” world of the trans-­Mississippi West. We visit national parks and marvel at “pristine” nature, the forest primeval, scarcely aware that many of the areas we explore have been logged, farmed, or mined by those who came before us. Our concepts of primeval forests and “wilderness” are intellectual constructs, amalgams of folklore and mythology, his­tori­cal manipulation, and wishful thinking. We “conquer” wildernesses that have long been occupied by other humans and gleefully accept the myth that squirrels could once travel

8

Chapter 1

for hundreds of miles through the canopies of vast unbroken forests. We also believe that forests are static and unchanging in their natural state, and that we can protect and preserve them in a steady state that mimics their condition centuries ago.1 As Stephen Spurr has noted, “There is no such thing as an origi­nal forest, or even a virgin forest.” He goes on to note that “the terms ‘virgin forest’ and Longfellow’s ‘forest primeval’ conjure up an image of great and old trees standing undisturbed and changeless for centuries. Specifically, any disturbance by man is ruled out. They must be uncut and unharmed by human-­set fires, and the understory must be ungrazed by domestic stock. In other words, we conceive of the virgin forest as being simply an unharmed old-­growth forest. Such stands simply do not exist. . . . Forests of any age are in a constant state of change. . . . It is a meaningless semanticism to try to distinguish between ‘natural’ disturbances and ‘artificial’ disturbances caused by man. To the tree it makes little difference if a fire is set by lightning or by a human incendiary.”2 The common view of Ameri­can forests was presented in 1906 by James Elliott Defebaugh, the editor of Ameri­can Lumberman, a leading trade journal, in his History of the Lumber Industry of America. Said Defebaugh, “What is now the United States presented an almost solid and continuous forest from the Atlantic to the Mississippi River and in places still farther west.”3 Mythology and romanticism are comforting, sometimes even useful. But they can also get in the way of our attempts to use and manage our lands and forests wisely and responsibly. They can also obscure the true history of the forest and of humans, which is in many ways more interesting than the fiction. So it is with the forests of Ala­bama. Their biological evolution, pre-­ Columbian changes, and modern use and management constitute a story well worth telling. The study of Ala­bama’s early forests is the domain of paleobotanists and archaeologists, who use fossil remains and other sources to reconstruct the story of a time before human habitation and written records. In the distant past the forests of the South were complex and evolved from ferns and enormous club moss trees in swamps to mixed forests of gymnosperms (the ancestors of modern conifers) and angiosperms (broadleaved deciduous species, or hardwoods).4 The ancient forests were shaped and affected by climate and geologic change and by the same kinds of natural phenomena that affect their modern counterparts: fire, climate change, windstorms, volcanic lava flows, earthquakes, and so forth. Perhaps most important in the ancient period of North America was the succession of glacial periods, as Canadian ice fields flowed and retreated and altered the range of ancient forests in Ala­ bama and the lower South.

Alabama’s Early Forests and People

9

The movement of species back and forth as the ice expanded and melted can by tracked by such archaeological sources as fossil studies, pollen analy­ sis, tree-­ring analy­sis, and carbon dating. This provides “‘irrefutable evidence’ that vegetation has been in an almost constant state of instability and adjustment due to the almost constantly changing climate over the past ten thousand years and even over the past hundred years . . . present vegetational patterns are closely related to events in recent geological history.”5 Studies of sediment from a pond in St. Clair County tell the story of the forest in central Ala­bama. Pollen and plant macrofossils from this sediment show that the forest of the early Holocene epoch (twelve thousand to ten thousand years ago) consisted primarily of broadleaved deciduous trees, in­ clud­ing beech, hornbeam, oak, hickory, elm, and ash, as well as Atlantic white cedar, east­ern white pine, hemlock, striped maple, and mountain maple. By 10,000 years ago oaks and hickories dominated, followed around 8,400 years ago by black gum, south­ern pines, red maple, sweetgum, and buttonbush. This resulted from the establishment of modern atmospheric patterns, in­ clud­ing hurricanes originating in the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic. The major lesson here is that the forest evolved; it was not static. Over time, because of changing natural conditions, the age and species mix of the forests evolved, just as they continue to do today.6 By about 10,000 BC humans began to live in and affect the forest environment. Anthropologists join paleobotanists, geologists, and archaeologists in studying this story, but they disagree about when humans appeared and dispersed through North America. They probably reached the tip of South America about ten thousand years ago, pursuing the large mammals of the Ice Age, and were undoubtedly attracted in Ala­bama by the abundant wildlife, fertile soil, and warm climate of the forested areas. Boreal birds occurred in the upper South, while mastodons and mammals that fed primarily on grasses and sedges dominated the fauna. Early hunters as well as a warming climate probably doomed these massive animals to extinction. The forests probably consisted largely of beech and maple. Early humans brought with them fire, which would be a ceremonial and management tool as they evolved from hunter-­gatherers into sedentary hunters and farmers who both used and altered the forests. The Archaic culture developed from approximately 8000 to 6000 BC as the climate became warmer and large animals disappeared. The Indians hunted deer and smaller animals; gathered nuts, berries, and plants; and began to domesticate and cultivate pumpkins, gourds, squash, and sunflowers in patches that they cleared in the forest. Their diet was supplemented with shellfish, mussels, and freshwater snails gathered from shallow areas along Ala­bama’s

10

Chapter 1

rivers. As the climate became warmer the forests came to be populated by oak-­hickory and pine-­hardwood stands and had stabilized in these patterns by about 5000 BC. From about 300 BC until 1000 AD the Native Ameri­cans had begun to construct permanent homes, of­ten of logs and with mud walls and thatched roofs, and they continued to clear land to grow sunflowers, squash, and gourds.7 Between about 700 AD and 900 AD a new culture called the Mississippian developed, probably influenced by trade with and migration from Mesoamerica. The Mississippians settled in fertile river valleys and built their society around staple crop agriculture. Corn, which was cooked in vari­ous ways, became a central part of their lives. The Mississippian culture reached its height about 1300 AD and survived until the threshold of European exploration of the Ala­bama region by the expedition of Hernando de Soto in the 1540s.8 Mississippians who occupied the Fort Walton Mound site on the bank of the Chattahoochee River raised flint corn, while Native Ameri­cans at the Seaborn Mound site, fifty-­six miles up the river, cultivated a different variety. Floodplain areas were popu­lar because the sandy loam soil was fertile and easy to till.9 The Native Ameri­cans practiced “slash and burn” agriculture, using fire to clear forest ground to plant corn, and then moving to new areas as corn cultivation depleted the fertility of the soil. They cleared large areas of forest and built cities with mounds, structures, ceremonial fields, and crops, such as at Moundville, Ala­bama.10 The late prehistoric Indians left an imprint on the land. They used fire for ceremonial purposes, for cooking, for clearing, and to construct large surrounds to herd wildlife for hunting. When burning the land for farming, the Native Ameri­cans allowed the fire to spread to adjacent woodlands and previous clearings. Trees that survived the fires were then girdled by using stone axes or by burning brush at their base. Vegetables were then planted beneath the dead trees. Fire was also used to open the surrounding forests for hunting and gathering, as well as for defensive purposes. Some have gone so far as to term the early Native Ameri­cans “pyromaniacs.”11 The condition of Ala­bama’s forests was also determined by natural phenomena, since trees do not distinguish between human and nonhuman activities. Many ecologists once believed that in the absence of human activity forests grew to maturity and remained in a “steady state” condition, changing only with the death of single trees that were replaced by others.12 By the late twentieth century scientific evidence challenged this stable, or steady state, perspective in favor of a more “dynamic” one. In 1990, at the annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America, the participants acknowledged that

Alabama’s Early Forests and People

11

“the center of mass thinking among ecologists has shifted” and described the change in their conceptual framework: “Ecologists have traditionally operated on the assumption that the normal condition of nature is a state of equilibrium, in which organisms compete and coexist in an ecological sys­tem whose workings are essentially stable. . . . A forest grows to a beautiful, mature climax stage that becomes its naturally permanent condition.” They went on to conclude that “the concept of natural equilibrium long ruled ecological research and governed the management of such natural resources as forests and fisheries. It led to the doctrine, popu­lar among conservationists, that nature knows best and that human intervention in it is bad by definition. Now an accumulation of evidence has gradually led many ecologists to abandon the concept or declare it irrelevant, and others to alter it drastically.”13 Thus, even in the absence of human intervention, forests change in structure and composition with growth and natural disturbances. One should not assume that the forests on the eve of human intervention had been unchanged over the eons, or that those “discovered” in the age of the European explorers represented some kind of steady, unchanging, “perfect” state of nature. Among the extreme natural influences on forest evolution are such phenomena as hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and drought. However, nature also operates in less dramatic fashion: “The interaction between tree species usually results in one individual’s having an advantage and dominating or killing another. This interaction is termed competition . . . competition . . . is now considered the primary pattern of interaction among holarctic tree species.”14 So, what were the forests of Ala­bama like on the eve of human disturbance? The earth is divided into six geographically distinct groups of plants, called “floristic realms.” The North­ern Hemisphere is in the Holarctic realm and contains temperate and boreal forests. In this realm pine and oak species of­ten dominate droughty, warmer sites, such as those found in Ala­bama and much of the Ameri­can South.15 So, as we have seen, Ala­bama’s forests probably originated as large club moss trees and ferns and through climate change and other natural processes evolved into stands of pines and deciduous hardwoods, in vari­ous combinations. The forests were not unbroken or characterized by single uniform age classes. Natural fire, tornadoes, hurricanes, and other disturbances created a mosaic of forested areas, open grasslands, and savannas that certainly changed over time. The forests were also affected by species migration and continental drift. By five thousand years ago, coastal plain forests, which had been dominated by oak and hickory, were succeeded by south­ern pines, possibly resulting from an increase in the frequency of fires and hurricanes and a strengthening of the tropical air mass.16

12

Chapter 1

By the time of the de Soto expedition the lands and forests of Ala­bama had been altered by both nature and the Native Ameri­cans. The Native Ameri­ cans of the South­east were involved in floodplain farming, hunting, fishing, and gathering natural foods and materials. They burned to clear new garden sites, and the fire spread to nearby woodlands and “old fields.” Natural fire and the use of fire by early Native Ameri­cans for hunting and managing the land served to “increase the extent of longleaf (Pinus palustris) and other yellow pines, increase the amount of oak . . . reduce the amount of hardwood midstory and understory, increase the spacing of the trees, increase forage grasses used by game animals, and maintain cleared areas for hunting and farming.” Native Ameri­cans of the late prehistoric period possibly set fires in sandy upland areas, increasing the carrying capacity for such fauna as the white-­tailed deer. Areas that were largely untouched by fire, such as swamps and the wettest river floodplains, produced magnificent stands of bottomland hardwood and cypress, which were probably the only true old-­growth forests in the region at the time of the Spanish explorations.17 Fire had a beneficial impact on some bird species in the South. Fire is crucial in the ecology of longleaf pine, and successional pine warblers, which depend on pine forest habitats, probably benefited from natural and human-­ made fires in the south­ern ecosystems.18 So, too, did Bachman’s warbler, which is affected by canebrakes. Cane is found primarily in floodplains in the South, and canebrakes were common in the river floodplains while pines were dominant in the uplands, and both plants benefit from disturbance, in­ clud­ing fire.19 In fact, the line between gathering and agriculture was blurred, for Indians used fire and other techniques to modify the productivity of the land. Thus berry patches, basket material, nut-­bearing trees, and forage for game animals were more prevalent than they would have been without Native Ameri­can intervention. An early history of Ala­bama’s Coosa County brings a local perspective to the situation: At that time and for years afterward . . . there was but little undergrowth, for the Indians burned off the woods in the spring, which killed the bushes, leaving only the larger timber. The whole country was covered with grass, wild peavines, and cane, making rich pasturage for game, cattle, and horses. The cane which at first grew so profusely along the stream, and in many places on the uplands also, eventually died out, said by the old settlers to have just gone to seed. . . . The whites used to keep up the practice of burning off the woods in the spring, notice being given to interested neighbors when fire would be put out, so they

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might guard their fences. Keeping down the underbrush made it easy to ride through the woods and to see game, or cattle at a distance.20 Five Spanish expeditions entered Mobile Bay or explored the region now called Ala­bama during the sixteenth century. The most extensive of these and the first to leave recorded descriptions of the land was Hernando de Soto’s expedition through parts of Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas, Tennessee, Ala­ bama, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana. There are scholarly disagreements about the precise route the Spaniards traveled, but they left accounts of “alternating forest, savanna, fields, and burning and cultivation. . . . Everywhere the forest was open enough for this huge expedition of about 600 men and its ambulant supply of meat in the form of herds of swine to proceed without any difficulty, except for the wetness of the swamps.”21 In what may have been Talladega County, the Spaniards discovered that “in the barbacolas and fields there was a great quantity of maize and beans. The land was very populous and had many large towns and planted fields which reached from one town to the other. It was a charming and fertile land, with good cultivated fields stretching along the rivers. In the open fields were many plums, both those of Spain and those of the land, and grapes along the rivers on vines climbing up into the trees.”22 Farther on they found “many fields of maize . . . it was a land very well supplied with maize in abundance.”23 An area in the vicinity of Mobile was described as “a very populous and fertile land.” Near the Sipsee and Tombigbee Rivers were “some towns well provided with maize and beans.”24 In fact, they found fields adjacent to many of the rivers, “particularly the Coosa, Tombigbee, Ala­bama . . . and all their tributaries. . . . Along the Coosa the land was ‘thickly settled in numerous towns with fields extending from one to the other, a pleasant place with fertile soil and good meadows along the river . . . many corn fields and an abundance of grain.’”25 The explorers observed open agricultural areas of thousands of acres.26 Beyond the picture of the land and forests, two parts of these descriptions are of particular interest, and they are related. The expedition obviously encountered a large native population, which could have made a considerable impact on the forests, while over a century later European explorers in the area found that population considerably reduced. The explanation may be found in the presence of the aforementioned “herds of swine” that accompanied the Spaniards. Estimates of the pre-­Columbian Native Ameri­can population of North America have steadily risen over the years, and by the late 1980s many scholars agreed that it was between three and five million, with some estimates

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considerably higher. The de Soto expedition left descriptions of “regions of dense populations and many villages in the midst of vast cultivated fields.”27 As Michael Williams has observed, “Even if only a half of the estimated pre-­ conquest population . . . cleared and cultivated forest land, then between 19.8 and 24.50 million acres of forest would have been affected (and that would not have included abandoned clearings) which is approximately 10 percent of a total of 278.6 million acres of land in crops in the 31 east­ernmost states today. . . . [The] Indians were a potent, if not crucial, ecological factor in the distribution and composition of the forest.”28 Apparently the Native Ameri­ cans also moved frequently for a variety of reasons, thus leaving an impact on the land that produced a mosaic of forested areas with different stand types, ages, and conditions, as well as open prairies. This diversity in turn produced a variety of habitats for wildlife.29 It is commonly accepted by most writers that the members of the de Soto expedition brought to the New World European diseases for which the Amer­ indians had no immunity. There is no doubt that between the time of the expedition and those of Europeans who came later there were large population decreases. But as de Soto specialist Paul Huffman has written, “Clearly, some Old World diseases did reach epidemic levels among the southeast­ern Indians during the sixteenth century, but whether that was before or after or because of De Soto remains to be tested, as do their full effects on the po­liti­ cal and social structures that De Soto’s men recorded. . . . The proposition that De Soto’s expedition, and its presumed diseases, largely if not completely accounts for the transformation of southeast­ern Indian societies remains a thesis or theory, whose verification awaits the development of archaeological and possibly ethnographic evidence that is better than any currently available for the 1540–1700 period.”30 It may also be that the diseases were transmitted not by the Spaniards, but by the swine that accompanied them, some of which escaped to become the progenitors of the South’s wild hogs roaming the woods and forests. As Charles C. Mann points out, “Swine . . . transmit anthrax, brucellosis, leptospirosis, trichinosis, and tuberculosis. Pigs breed exuberantly and can pass diseases to deer and turkeys, which can then infect people. Only a few of De Soto’s pigs would have had to wander off to contaminate the forest.”31 Ironically, the descendants of de Soto’s pigs would again impact Ala­bama and south­ern forests significantly nearly four centuries later, when wild hogs rooting up young seedlings threatened the reforestation efforts of lumber companies and their foresters. In the years following the de Soto expedition, when the Indians suffered an imprecise but probably catastrophic population loss, they abandoned the

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large cleared agricultural areas needed to produce food and reduced their use of fire to maintain the fields. Cleared areas in the bottomlands reverted to forest, first perhaps to cane and then to other woody species that shaded out the canebrakes. Some of the old-­growth bottomland forests of today may have originated in this process.32 Over much of the South and Ala­bama, Indian-­ cleared lands probably became pure pine stands, which evolved into mixed pine and hardwood stands as hardwoods began to occupy the canopy openings that occurred as the pine stands matured. In upland areas where there were hardwoods, fires in frequently burned areas created openings that allowed the establishment of pines, again result­ ing in mixed forests. Fire scars in these stands encouraged decay that caused butt rot, which in turn created “den” trees that provided a good wildlife habitat. These forests represented a successional stage that occurred in an ever-­changing mosaic. Thus, as Edward Buckner has argued, “The notion that some ‘natural’ forest condition existed in 1492 in the sense of the broad landscape being composed of climax forest associations that formed independent of a human influence is a myth.”33 Another scholar has noted that “it is impossible to overestimate the effect of human activity on the forests . . . whether by civilized or by prehistoric, uncivilized man,” in­clud­ing “the undoubted effects of Indian burning . . . in particular the effects of this practice on the distribution and abundance of the vari­ous pines.”34 Some have speculated that the lush three-­hundred-­year-­ old forests worked by Ala­bama lumbermen in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries probably originated at the time the fire-­cleared Native Ameri­can land was abandoned and reverted to forest.35 In the years following de Soto’s expedition there was considerable movement of people, making it difficult for the Europeans who came later to determine exactly where people had been located in the earlier period. However, by the seventeenth century most of the descendants of the Archaic peoples who lived in Ala­bama were parts of four major groups: the Choctaws, Chickasaws, Creeks, and Cherokees. The Cherokees were in the northeast­ern corner of Ala­bama, while the Choctaws had major settlements in present-­day Mississippi and also had territory extending into Ala­bama north of Mobile. The Chickasaw territory covered parts of Kentucky and Tennessee and extended into north­ern Mississippi and Ala­bama in an area south of the Tennessee River. The Creeks occupied most of central and east­ern Ala­bama. Divided into upper and lower divisions, the Upper Creeks had settlements around the Tallapoosa and Coosa Rivers, while the Lower Creeks lived along the Flint and Chattahoochee Rivers.36 These native peoples, like their ancestors, utilized fire and other practices that changed the dominantly forested areas in

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which they lived. However, there were far fewer of them, and their practices could now be directly observed by people who left written records. While there were differences among the four tribes, all were sedentary and lived by varying degrees of hunting, gathering, and cultivating food. The women were responsible for raising vegetables and gathering nuts and berries, the men for clearing land and hunting. The Scottish trader James Adair observed in 1735 that the Cherokees planted hemp and grapes on small patches of land in the mountains. The Choctaws, who gave Ala­bama its name (from a Choctaw word meaning “clearers of the thicket”), lived in widely dispersed houses separated by fields in which they raised beans, squash, melons, pumpkins, and corn. By the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the Choc­taws were influenced by trade with the French and began to plant European fruits and vegetables, as well as cotton. They also raised chickens for livestock.37 Obviously, with the Native Ameri­can population greatly reduced, the forests encountered by the Spanish, French, and British during their competition for territory in southeast­ern North America were much less affected by Indian agricultural and hunting practices, and in fact natural plant succession had increased the quantity and quality of both hardwood and pine forests.38 The Europeans naturally assumed that the forests had grown to their current state without human interference. It was more than a century after de Soto before Europeans returned to the area of present-­day Ala­bama. During the next century there were struggles between the French, Spanish, and British to control the region. Shifting alliances and trade relationships between the Europeans and Native Ameri­cans were part of vari­ous equations. Conflict between England and France triggered French efforts to establish a presence on the Gulf Coast. The French Canadian Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville and his brother John-­Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville were given orders to establish a fortress at the mouth of the Mississippi River. After encountering a force of Spaniards at Pensacola Bay, they sailed on and dropped anchor at Mobile Point on Janu­ary 31, 1699. Exploring the area, d’Iberville found “all kinds of trees, oaks, elm, ash, pines, and other trees I do not know, many creepers, sweet-­smelling violets, and other yellow flowers.”39 The French eventually established a struggling settlement at Mobile, and later a trading post at Fort Toulouse at the confluence of the Coosa and Tallapoosa Rivers. They were confronted in the summer of 1717 by an English party who warned the French that they were trespassing on English territory. To contain the French, the English then established a trade mission on

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the upper Tallapoosa River. Several European visitors visited the fort and described the Indians of the region.40 Under the French in the early eighteenth century the settlements around Mobile struggled, and despite increasing agricultural production, Mobile was forced to import some of its provisions. Furs were a major export, and they were joined in the early period by other forest products in­clud­ing lumber, tar, and turpentine produced with the help of Af­ri­can slaves. During this period there was nearly continuous conflict between the French and English and their respective Indian allies, culminating in the French and Indian War. Under the Peace of Paris in 1763 the French ceded their lands east of the Mississippi, and thus Ala­bama, to Great Britain. Under the Proclamation of 1763, King George III divided Florida into two colonies, with West Florida stretching from the Apalachicola and Chattahoochee Rivers to the Mississippi. With Pensacola as the capital, West Florida moved toward self-­sufficiency with an agricultural economy featuring the export of indigo, tobacco, cotton, and rice, along with a growing volume of timber exports. However, growing frustration in the Ameri­can colonies culminated in the Ameri­can Revolution in the 1770s and 1780s. While West Florida did not join the revolution, Mobile and Pensacola were captured by Spanish from New Orleans in 1781. Spain was awarded Mobile in the Treaty of Paris of 1783, and the rest of present-­day Ala­bama was given to the United States.41 In 1786 the United States signed a treaty with the Choctaws confirming an earlier land concession by that tribe to the British, and a few white settlers began to filter into the region. In 1800 the governor of the Mississippi Territory established Wash­ing­ton County, which included all lands from east of the Pearl River to the Chattahoochee. A census of the county reported 733 white settlers, 494 slaves, and 23 free blacks. The United States laid claim to Mobile in 1803 as part of the Louisiana Purchase, but the Spanish continued to control the city until it was captured by Ameri­can forces in 1813 during the War of 1812. Ala­bama was part of the Mississippi Territory under the Ameri­cans until it was given separate territorial status in 1817, to be followed shortly by statehood in 1819. While the Native Ameri­cans of Ala­bama and the South­east altered the forest through their use of fire as a hunting technique or tool during the prehistoric period, their impact on the wildlife population was not significant. The number of animals destroyed was determined by the Indians’ subsistence needs—for “leggings, moccasins, fringe, binding, women’s garments, breechcloths or flaps, shot pouches, string for bows, game pieces, and household ar-

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ticles such as bedding.” They did, however, alter the landscape. The Creeks burned areas around oak and chestnut trees to create clearings where deer gathered “in the fall to browse on acorns, woody twigs, berries and fruits of all kinds, and evergreens such as cedar. . . . It seems logical that hunters established numerous zones of suitable habitat through­out their ranges, to which they returned year after year.” Travelers noted that in areas where the ground cover had been burned it was replaced with lush new growth.43 The Native Ameri­cans also used fire surrounds to drive deer into open areas where they could be killed with bows and arrows, or later with guns. In 1708, Thomas Nairne described the Creek use of a fire ring: “Three or 4 hours after the ring is fired, of 4 or 5 miles circumferance, the hunters post themselves within as nigh the flame and smoak as they can endure. The fire on each side burns in toward the center and thither the Dear gather from all parts to avoid it, but striving to shun a Death which they might of­ten Escape by a violent spring, they fall into a Certain one from the Bullets of the hunters who drawing nigher together, as the circle grows less, find an easy pray of the impounded dear.”44 The attitudes of white pioneers toward the Native Ameri­cans were ambivalent. On one hand, European writers and intellectuals lionized the Indians as “noble savages” living in perfect harmony with nature. The Indians in fact used nature in their own ways, and through burning, clearing, and cultivation managed the forests around them. However, as they were absorbed into European society they became more sedentary and came to rely more and more on clearing and agriculture that resembled the European model of the white settlers. They cultivated private gardens and large communal fields of corn and also planted pumpkins, beans, tobacco, cabbage, potatoes, peaches, peas, leeks, garlic, and, occasionally, sunflowers. They also practiced intercropping, planting several crops such as corn, beans, and squash together in the same field. Thus the beans would replace the nitrogen the corn had taken from the soil, while the cornstalks provided a place for the beans to climb and the squash vines covered the ground and discouraged the growth of weeds. The women did most of the farming.45 Life for Native Ameri­cans began to change with the arrival of European traders and settlers. The Indian way of life moved from a self-­reliant and subsistence base toward dependence on trade with the Europeans as an important if not central part of life. In return for European trade goods, the Native Ameri­cans killed wildlife and provided skins and furs for the European market. With the acquisition of firearms they became more efficient at harvesting the wildlife of the forest. While all of the tribes in Ala­bama were 42

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involved, the Creeks were among the most proficient and productive hunters and were also among the most dependent on the fur trade for their livelihood. The trade was also fueled by the Indian appetite for liquor, as brandy and especially rum became important goods offered by the European traders. Soon the demands of the market were such that “hunters were forced to extend their winter hunting expeditions for months on end.”46 The presence of the Native Ameri­can population was a consideration for the new European settlers almost immediately. English traders from Carolina were working the valley of the Ala­bama River by the late seventeenth century. Prior to European settlement, the Cherokees, who occupied part of north­ern Ala­bama, “engaged in a communal-­subsistence mode of production, organized around mixed hunting, fishing, gathering and agricultural functions.” Early white settlers were herders, traders, and hunters, and the Cherokees were soon trading directly with Virginia traders. By about the middle of the eighteenth century they were absorbed into “an export economy in which hunting for slaves and deerskins and gathering marketable herbs assumed primacy.”47 Indian slaves were in demand in the West Indies and the Ameri­ can colonies, while the market for deerskins was in Europe. Several coastal areas became significant export centers, in­clud­ing Virginia, Charleston, Savannah, Pensacola, New Orleans, and Mobile. Augusta was an important inland center, and there were numerous inland Ameri­can trading posts. Before guns were introduced, hunting and gathering were sec­ondary to agriculture, and communal hunts were conducted only during the winter season. By the late seventeenth century many Indians possessed flintlocks, and during the eighteenth century tribes across the South were using smoothbore muskets.48 During the late seventeenth century the Creeks became allied with English traders from Virginia and Carolina who traded manufactured goods, in­clud­ing firearms, for deerskins and slaves.49 At first the Carolina traders purchased black bear, panther or wildcat (listed as cat), fox, muskrat, woodchuck, otter, raccoon, and beaver pelts in significant numbers. In fact, the Creeks maintained “beloved bear ground,” habitat that consisted of canebrakes and hardwood forests where settlement and hunting were restricted and bears could be killed only during certain periods. But in the early eighteenth century all but the beaver disappeared as viable trade items due to market conditions in Europe and shipping problems. In the meantime the trade in deerskins boomed.50 Since the fifteenth century there had been a shortage of fur-­bearing animals in Europe, and Ameri­can deerskins were in great demand for the manufacture of shoes, gloves, jackets, workers’ aprons, book covers, box and trunk coverings, and military uniforms and equipment.51 The white-­tailed deer was

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the most important source for skins, and it is estimated that around twenty-­ five to thirty deer were necessary to meet the domestic needs of a nuclear family, with more hides required to meet the needs of the elderly and dependents. A report in 1741 estimated that each Indian hunter harvested about three hundred pounds of deerskins annually, and in 1764 John Stuart, the supervisor of British Indian policy in the South, estimated (through calculations compiled by later scholars) that each Indian hunter harvested between thirty and sixty deer per year. The Creeks, known as proficient hunters, probably averaged about fifty. The total deer kill by southeast­ern Indians was probably at least one million animals annually and represented a significant drain on the deer population.52 In 1765 a Creek leader lamented that “Deer skins are become Scarce.”53 Creek hunters now had to range farther from their homes in pursuit of game and extend the length of their hunting trips. As one scholar has noted, “The large deer herds of the early eighteenth century had been dramatically reduced, so that hunters were finding it more and more difficult to harvest adequate numbers of hides to satisfy their growing needs. Creek hunters were forced to harvest younger and younger animals.”54 Tribes invaded one another’s lands in pursuit of deer, and the Choctaws extended their expeditions to lands west of the Mississippi River.55 The naturalist William Bartram was very criti­cal of the Indians’ role in creating their own predicament, noting that they “wage eternal war against deer and bear, to procure food and clothing, and other necessaries and other conveniences; which is indeed carried to an unreasonable and perhaps criminal excess, since the white people have dazzled their senses with foreign superfluities.”56 White settlers also hunted the deer, and by the middle of the eighteenth century the herds had disappeared in many areas. The deer also competed for grazing food with the cattle and hogs of the pioneer white settlers and ended up migrating to other ranges, starving, or being finished off by the hunters. Deer were nearly extirpated in the South­east by the late eighteenth century. In addition, one scholar notes that “the buffalo were hunted out by the early decades of the eighteenth century, and the numbers of beaver, bear, bobcat, panther, and gray and red foxes declined dramatically in the years that followed.”57 Benjamin Hawkins, a visitor to the Creek territory in the late eighteenth century, “described a disturbed and deteriorated landscape showing signs of soil exhaustion and frequent burning, and lacking not only old-­ growth forests and bears but deer.”58 In 1801 Mad Dog, a Creek chief, said that “our deer and game is almost gone.”59 Native Ameri­cans had once been criti­ cal of cattle, since they competed with deer for range and ate their gardens, but now they began to raise and rustle cattle as substitutes for the depleted

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deer herds. However, while the deer herds were seriously depleted and may have disappeared in some localities, they were not hunted to extinction.60 Other wildlife may have fared better. For example, large areas of the southeast Atlantic and Gulf Coast regions, from East Texas through Ala­bama and up to the Carolinas, was within the range of longleaf pine. Because of burning and clearing, the Native Ameri­can occupants of these areas created mosaics of open lands and woodlands that were relatively clear of undergrowth. An early visitor said that along the Ala­bama River even where there were trees there was little undergrowth, and “a deer could be seen a quarter of a mile through the woods.” An 1890 study of an untouched old-­growth forest in Mobile County contained sixteen trees per acre, most of which were sixteen to eighteen inches in diameter at breast height, while today a stand of trees considered fully stocked for timber production would have fifty to sixty trees per acre. An area of open lands and relatively clear or lightly stocked woodlands is considered optimal habitat for bobwhite quail, a legendary game bird in Ala­bama. This is exactly the kind of habitat created and maintained by Native Ameri­can management practices. “There are no records of actual quail numbers occurring in these regimes . . . [but] we do know that bobwhites were widely distributed, although little utilized by aborigi­nals.”61 Still, an early description of Coosa County reports that “game was very abundant, both large and small, and the early settlers were able to keep their tables well supplied with the meat of bear, deer, and turkey. As late as in the fifties deer were still right common.”62 In the same county as late as 1851, in the Carolina neighborhood near Buyckville, “fish were plentiful in the streams, and deer, wild hogs, and turkeys, with smaller game were bountiful.”63 An 1896 writer in the Randolph Toiler of Wedowee, Ala­bama, said that in the 1830s “game was plentiful; sometimes as many as 15 or 20 deer could be seen herded together; a large drove of wild turkeys was a common thing; squirrels (gray and fox) opossums and rabbits were numerous; wild ducks, pigeons and black birds came in flocks and wintered here. Fish of all kinds, sizes and qualities filled the creeks and rivers, and could be seen 8 and 10 feet deep swimming and darting about.”64 Thus by the time of white exploration and settlement the forests—their plants, trees, and wildlife—had been altered by man and nature. As one scholar has noted, “The forests which confronted the colonizing white man . . . were in a state of constant change wrought by forest succession, climatic change, fire, wind, insects, fungi, browsing animals, and Indian activity. . . . In most cases, comparisons of the present forest with early descriptions show that the forests of the two eras do not differ substantially.”65 Still, European visitors and settlers insisted on believing that the forests

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they encountered in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were pristine, unaltered by human activity. Philip Henry Gosse, an English naturalist who spent eight months in Dallas County in 1838, described the forests of that area lyrically: “There is an inexpressible grandeur in these primeval forests. Many of the trees are of immense magnitude, and their trunks rise like pillars . . . shooting upward in columnal majesty. . . . And thus we see the origi­nal forest. The ground is commonly clear of underwood to a remarkable degree.”66 A later writer described the Black Belt area where Gosse lived as “over four thousand square miles of scrubby woods, prairie, and canebrake.”67 As Roderick Nash has argued, wilderness is a state of mind; it is found in the eye and perceptions of the beholder. Despite the fact that Native Ameri­ cans had managed, used, and changed the forests, the early pioneers of Ala­ bama and the South­east believed that they were encountering and settling a true “wilderness.” The diversity of the vegetation along the Cahaba River was described by one observer as “luxuriant,” in­clud­ing “mulberry, sugar tree, maple, white an red oak, post oak—Ash, line, an maiden [maidenhair fern].”68 The prairies seen along the Ala­bama River seemed so old to pioneer visitors that they believed them “never to have been covered with woods.”69 The botanist William Bartram traveled through central Georgia and Ala­ bama in the 1780s and described the area as “diversified with hills and dales, savannas and vast cane meadows . . . sublime forests contrasted by expansive illumined green fields, native meadows and cane brakes . . . open airy groves of the superb terebinthine pines . . . pellucid brooks meandering through an expansive green savanna . . . a delightful varied landscape, consisting of extensive grassy fields and detached groves of high forest trees.” South of the Tallapoosa and Ala­bama Rivers he reported “expansive, illumined grassy plains . . . invested by high forests . . . which project into the plains on each side, dividing them into many vast fields . . . the surface of the plains clad with tall grass, intermixed with a variety of herbage.” South Ala­bama had “one vast flat grassy savanna, intersected . . . with narrow forests and groves on the banks of creeks . . . with long leaved pines, scateringly planted amongst the grass.” As late as 1940, a US Forest Service report said that until after the Civil War the area now forming Cullman County was “a wilderness of shortleaf, loblolly, and longleaf pines, with some mixed hardwoods, both upland and bottomland.”70 Along the lower coastal plains of the south, Bartram described “grassy savannas of scattered longleaf pines, abundant cane, and narrow groves of hardwood forests on the banks of streams.” In the swamps near Mobile he described stands of bottomland hardwoods that were so tall that he was afraid of stating their size for fear of losing his credibility. In the upper coastal plains

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of Ala­bama he described mostly hardwood areas of “vast open forests without any considerable variation.” In the mountainous areas of the north, Bartram reported seeing “grand, high forests of stately trees, again mostly of hardwoods.”71 Benjamin Hawkins traveled through the Creek country in 1798 and 1799 and described the area along the Ala­bama River as “margined with cane swamps . . . with flats of good land or poor pine flats.” He described the area above the confluence of the Tombigbee and the Ala­bama as a swampy region that of­ten flooded, with a bordering area of poor clay soil with pine and underbrush, and then cypress ponds and underbrush. This area, he said, was “a fine one for cattle.” Fifty miles above the river junction were “high broken lands” that extended for sixty or seventy miles and “abound in places with large, fine, tall cedar.”72 When the United States took possession of the lands acquired through the Treaty of Paris of 1783, the Louisiana Purchase, and later territorial acquisitions, one of its major problems was the large volume of contradictory, overlapping, and poorly documented land claims inherited from the earlier governments. The French, Spanish, and British had awarded grants for all sorts of reasons, and many did not specify boundaries or acreages. The grants were of­t en for lands near waterways, and in Ala­bama they were along the Ala­bama and Tombigbee Rivers. Congress recognized claims where there was any actual proof of ownership or of residence and improvements. It also declared that family heads of at least twenty-­one years of age in several states, in­clud­ ing Ala­bama, would be awarded a maximum of 640 acres if there were actually occupied lands that they had improved, even if they did not have a title.73 Eventually there were 448 land claims in Ala­bama, with a total acreage of 251,602 acres and an average size of 561 acres. However, 100 of these claims were for town lots, and if town lots are excluded from the calculation, the average size per claim was 721 acres. Private land claims delayed the survey of pub­lic lands and their opening to settlement in the early nineteenth century because of the resulting confusion over land titles and property lines.74 Still, in the late eighteenth century settlers began to move westward from Georgia, settling on lands claimed by the Creek Indians. The Native Ameri­ cans, led by Chief Alexander McGillivray, tried to resist the growing tide, but to no avail. Later, after the Louisiana Purchase, pioneers began to move out of Mobile and New Orleans into the Mississippi Territory, which included what would become Ala­bama. Most of the early settlers went to areas near the Tennessee and Tombigbee Rivers, but some settled in the coastal plain of Ala­bama. In 1848 a man named Ira Bond, who was returning from the Mexican War, moved from Mobile to the area near Brewton, attracted by

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the area’s abundant timber. Bond established one the area’s first sawmills on Cedar Creek, floating rafts of logs and sawed timber down the Conecuh and Escambia Rivers to Pensacola. Bond was a harbinger of the area’s future.75

II. “Ala­bama Fever” and Pioneer Settlers White settlers began to trickle into Ala­bama in the late eighteenth century. Most were herders, but as they cleared land for farming and utilized the forests, they left an impact. Some were traders called “countrymen,” who inter­ married with the Native Ameri­cans. Through “logging, land clearing for agriculture, and grazing by domestic stock,” the new pioneers changed the forests.76 There was a pattern of “extensive land clearing followed by large scale farm abandonment, revegetation with old-­field pines, and subsequent hard­wood invasion. . . . Soil deterioration resulting from erosion and lack of adequate fertilization . . . resulted from the abandonment of millions of acres of tobacco, cotton, and other cropland.” In fact, the general pattern was that lands cleared for cultivation were of­ten abandoned and needed to be cleared again if later used for agriculture. As a US Department of Agriculture bulletin of the early twentieth century stated, “It has been said that it takes three generations to make a self-­sustaining farm out of cut-­over land.”77 At the beginning of the nineteenth century the white settlers probably numbered only about twelve hundred to thirteen hundred people. Indians still occupied most of present-­day Ala­bama. A few white settlers were in north­ern Ala­bama and were encroaching on outlying Indian lands, in­clud­ ing an area north of the Tennessee River claimed by both the Cherokees and Chickasaws. The United States secured this land by a cession of the Chickasaws in 1805.78 In 1813 war broke out between white settlers and a Creek faction that was resisting white encroachment. Andrew Jackson and a force of Tennessee “volunteers” crushed the Indians at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in central Ala­bama, and Jackson forced the Creeks to sign a treaty ceding about forty thousand square miles of territory to the United States. This cession, plus additional cessions by the Cherokees, Chickasaws, and Choctaws in 1816, opened about three-­fourths of the state to white settlement. By 1838 nearly all of Ala­bama’s Native Ameri­cans had been forced to move beyond the Mississippi River to Indian Territory in the West.79 Jackson also impacted Ala­bama in the course of his 1818 invasion of Florida. To support his march on Pensacola, at the mouth of the Escambia River, he built a supply depot upriver in south­ern Ala­bama. This post was named Fort Crawford, and as part of the support system, the Ameri­cans constructed a fleet of barges to transport supplies. Naturally, the barge builders

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needed timbers, so Thomas Mendenhall built a water-­powered sawmill on the Clark’s Branch tributary of the Conecuh River.80 After the Ameri­can Revolution the US government established a sys­tem to survey and sell the lands acquired from Great Britain. Present-­day Ala­ bama was part of the Mississippi Territory, and many of the early white settlers moved in before the lands had been surveyed. They simply cleared land, built cabins, and claimed the homesteads as squatters. Later, laws were passed to give them legal title, while others claimed their land under British or Spanish land grants. In 1804 the federal government began to sell land in present-­ day Ala­bama to the highest bidders at pub­lic auctions. Much of the land was purchased by speculators, who then sold it at higher prices to actual settlers. Some was less desirable land purchased at auction for as little as two dollars an acre by the pioneers themselves, with a minimum purchase requirement of 160 acres. Much of the land was bought on credit, and when cotton prices fell there was a large default rate; by 1820 Ala­bama owed the federal government some $11 million, more than half the national land debt. A new law that year required cash purchases but lowered the minimums to eighty acres and $1.25 an acre.81 After about 1815, settlers from Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, Kentucky, and Tennessee poured into Ala­bama, fueled by what contemporaries called “Ala­bama fever.” They were propelled by worn-­out lands in the areas they left, a product of destructive agricultural practices. They were attracted particularly by the rich lands in the river valleys that were opened up to white settlement by Indian removal. Also, some of the rivers were navigable and could provide a link to outside markets. Others came from the west and settled along the Tombigbee River. An observer in north-­central North Carolina wrote that “the Ala­bama Fevear [sic] rages here with great violence and has carried off vast numbers of our Citizens.”82 Most were poor white farmers, but a few were wealthy planters who brought their slaves and livestock. The primary cash crop was cotton, which had become an important staple crop because of the invention of the cotton gin in 1793 and the discovery that short-­staple cotton could be grown profitably in Ala­bama. By far the most numerous were poor families who brought barely enough supplies to exist until they could clear land and bring in their first harvest. They survived by exploiting the resources of the forests and streams—the fish, wildlife, plants (such as wild grapes and persimmons), and timber. Some followed primitive early trails and roads, while others merely bushwhacked their way toward their new homes. Gideon Lincecum’s family relocated from the Tuscaloosa area to the “Tombecbee” River in 1818, and his father, on an earlier exploratory journey, re-

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ported that “there was not a house between Tuscalosa and the Tombecbee.” He noted that the Choctaws were near the river on the opposite side, but that there were no signs on the east­ern side that the land had ever been occupied. He said that the forests were densely timbered and the bottomlands covered with cane, in sum “a roadless wilderness” full of turkeys, deer, and ducks and “the wildest, least trodden and tomahawk-­marked country” he had ever seen.83 An early horse path entered the territory on the Chattahoochee, stretched west nearly to the Tennessee, and then south across the Tensaw River and on down to New Orleans. This route became the Federal Road that many migrants to central and south­ern Ala­bama traveled. Some early settlers came from Georgia, crossing the Chattahoochee River on a log ferry. The first frontier village in east­ern Ala­bama was established in 1814 on the site of an earlier Indian town. By 1820 Ala­bama’s population was more than 125,000, in­clud­ ing some 500 free blacks, and by 1830 there were more than 300,000, with nearly 40 percent of them slaves. (Population fig­ures for the early period are sketchy because few records were kept, and there is no complete census for Georgia prior to 1820.) The pioneer settlers of Ala­bama used the forests and land in much the same way as their Native Ameri­can predecessors. They hunted, sometimes like the Native Ameri­cans using fire; gathered nuts, berries, and herbs; and built their structures out of wood. The wood was also used for utensils, furniture, and tools, and when it was burned it became a source of potash and fertilizer. They burned off undergrowth in wooded areas to allow grass for grazing cattle and hogs, which also roamed semiwild in the woods. They cleared land for farming, either by chopping down the trees or girdling them and then burning the fallen timber. “Log rollings” in the spring brought neighbors together to gather the logs to a spot in fields were they had been felled for burning. Some pioneers cleared land so that they could sell it and move on as their area became populated and land values rose. Settlers with greater resources came to stay. Utilizing slave labor to clear and to cultivate the land, they built plantation empires around the staple crop of cotton. During his previously mentioned residence in Dallas County during 1838, Philip Henry Gosse traveled around the immediate area observing and taking notes on the natural history of the region. Nearly two decades later he published his observations in a magazine, and they appeared in 1859 as a book. The forests that Gosse explored were not without interruption. He described open lands as “not the boundless prairies of the West, resembling an ocean solidified and changed to land, but little ones varying in extent from an acre to a square mile.” Gosse said that “the woods environ them on every side like

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an abrupt wall, and one can hardly be persuaded that these prairies are not clearings made with the axe of the settler.”84 Between the late 1840s and early 1860s Hugh Davis and his slaves cleared a considerable amount of land on his Perry County plantation. Later, Davis remembered in his journal that he had “cleared 180 acres of land, built 30 houses of all kinds—made at least 50,000 rails, dug 7 miles of ditches.”85 Others used the land until the topsoil wore out or washed away and then abandoned it to move farther west and repeat the cycle. The abandoned lands became prairies or reverted to brush, weeds, and eventually forests.86 In his 1906 history of the Ameri­can lumber industry, James Elliott Defebaugh described the typical process and result. He noted that by 1906 more than a century of settlement had made “great inroads upon the continuous forests that once covered the territory embraced within the boundaries of the central hardwood belt. . . . The settlers found it covered with forests. The first necessity that confronted them was . . . besides the securing of sufficient timber for structural, domestic and industrial purposes, to clear a way for crops. Thus, an enormous quantity . . . was consigned to the burning log pile.”87 Historian Thomas D. Clark termed log rollings “a preposterous waste of virgin timber which accompanied settlement of the South. It would be impossible at this date to calculate the loss of prime timber by this ruinous practice.”88 A typical settler was Christopher Vandegrift, who left South Carolina in 1821 and traveled west to settle in St. Clair County. The first things the Vandegrift family did were to clear land for farming and construct a one-­room log house with a dirt floor.89 Another early settler was George Wash­ing­ton Srygley, who moved from Pennsylvania to what was then the Mississippi Territory in 1818. Srygley homesteaded in present-­day Lawrence County, built a cabin, and began to clear land for farming. According to a family history, Srygley burned “millions of feet of that fine virgin timber” during the first year, and “they just simply drug those large logs together with ox teams, and after they had become dry enough to burn they set fire to them.” Srygley decided there had to be a market for the logs but found no sawmill in Tuscumbia, some forty miles northwest on the Tennessee River, and he decided that the sixty-­mile trip to Huntsville would not be profitable. Thus, he made a connection in New Orleans and in 1831 began to raft logs on the Tennessee from Tuscumbia down the Ohio and Mississippi to the Crescent City.90

III. The Age of the Early Sawmillers and Naval Stores Producers Sawed lumber was scarce in the South despite the abundance of timber, and in the early nineteenth century small steam-­powered mills sprang up to serve

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local needs. According to tradition, the first steam mill was established in New Orleans in 1803, only to be destroyed shortly thereafter by a mob of men who earned their living by pit sawing.91 By the 1850s the vicinity around St. Tammany Parish in Louisiana on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain had about forty sawmills.92 The fledgling industry attracted native south­erners, north­erners, and people from other lands, and by the eve of the Civil War it was solidly established, although it served primarily local needs. If a later era could be labeled the “age of iron and steel,” the pioneer period in Ala­bama was unquestionably an age of wood. While the forests were essentially seen as obstacles to be cleared so the land could be farmed, even in a time of largely noncommercial harvesting of the trees there was a demand for timber. Cabins and houses, barns, fences, wagons, business buildings, churches, schools—all were made of timber in the early period, mostly from boards harvested and handsawed on site. Even though sawmills and lumber manufacturing operations began to proliferate, they were small operations producing largely for local use and markets. Ala­bama’s pioneer lumber producers thus had a limited impact on the state’s timber resources. George Wash­ing­ton Srygley’s trip down the west­ern rivers from ­Tuscumbia to New Orleans was a sign of the future. As Ala­bama’s pioneer settlers cleared and utilized the timber of the forests, they began to realize the value of the smoking piles of logs that had been cut as they sought their fortunes in cotton and other crops. Most of the timber used for cabins, barns, fences, and other needs on the farm was locally cut by the farmers, their families, their neighbors, and their slaves for local use. The technology was primitive, with humans, mules, or oxen providing the power for pit saws and early sash, or “up and down,” saws. However, a growing population and the transportation afforded by the rivers made it almost inevitable that some would begin to look at the forest in a different way, as “green gold,” a source of timber that could be processed, shipped, and marketed. Early sawyers used whipsaws that they pulled by hand. By the mid-­1700s sawmills began to appear along dammed streams, of­t en in concert with gristmills. The mechanical power to work these mills was supplied by waterwheels. Small communities of­ten grew up around the mills, which produced planks, clapboards, shingles, barrel staves, and shipbuilding parts and, in the case of the gristmills, processed the settlers’ grain.93 Most early sawmills were pit saws. Historian Everett Dick described the process. After the logs were split, a whipsaw was used, with the log “placed on a high scaffold,” or “if sawed on the level, a pit was dug underneath the log.” One man stood on top of the log, another below, and “the log was first hewed to a square with broadaxes and lined.” The sawyers cut along the line,

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and two of them could produce as much as two hundred feet of lumber daily. With the advent of water mills, the log was mounted on a moving frame that fed it to a circular saw that cut the boards to the desired thickness.94 In other situations the pitman literally stood in a pit. The timber was squared with a broadaxe and then placed over the pit. The sawyer stood on the upper side of the log and pulled a crosscut saw upward, and a pitman stood underneath and pulled the saw down. The saw cut only on the downward stroke, and two men could produce one hundred to two hundred board feet of planks daily. The pit saws were replaced by water-­powered whip sawmills with single-­blade saws held taut by an overhead spring pole that was worked up and down by a wooden beam attached to a crank or waterwheel. Logs were placed on a carriage propelled by a ratchet feed. Some of these mills were in operation until after World War I, and one was still operating in Ala­bama in the early 1920s.95 By the early nineteenth century whipsaws were being replaced by circular saws, which were introduced into the United States by about 1815 and into the South by 1820. By 1812 a few south­erners were using the Oliver Evans steam engine, which a few years later was being manufactured in Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and Louisville and shipped downriver into the South. Later, gang saws were developed, and the first one was in use in New Orleans in 1807.96 There was a proliferation of small mills in Ala­bama during the nineteenth century. Many of the state’s early sawmills were in south Ala­bama. Pioneering lumber producers included the operation triggered by Andrew Jackson’s previously mentioned Florida expedition in 1818. Thomas Mendenhall built a water-­powered sawmill on the Clark’s Branch of the Conecuh River. Mendenhall later moved his operation a short distance to Mendenhall Creek and produced for the local market, turning out lumber, furniture, and spinning wheels. In 1857 Mendenhall left Ala­bama and moved to Arkansas.97 By the early nineteenth century, central Ala­bama’s Elmore County had a sawmill that produced lumber for the construction of permanent homes, the first of which was built in 1818.98 East-­central Ala­bama’s Coosa County was well supplied with rivers and creeks that powered water-­driven gristmills and sawmills during the nineteenth century. Albert Crumpler moved to Coosa County in 1836. In 1845 he bought a farm three miles from Rockford and built a combination gristmill and sawmill on Swamp Creek.99 The county had a mixture of pine and hardwood forests, and an early visitor in 1833 said it “affords many beautiful millseats.” In the early days of the county there were mills on Hatchesofka Creek (which had three) and Town Creek. There were a number of mills on Hatchet Creek, in­clud­ing one near Brownville and another belonging to

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Samuel Pruett below Goodwater. Farther downstream J. C. Jones built several mills, and John Sears and George McEwen built a mill in about 1856. At the latter site a much earlier mill had washed away. William Chancellor also had a mill, and another was called the Shaffer mill. Below that mill were several others, in­clud­ing Hardy’s. There were also mills on Weogufka Creek, in­clud­ ing one near Mt. Moriah, and Swamp Creek had a number of mills in­clud­ ing Robinson’s, Parker’s, Crumpler’s, Holly’s, Horton’s, and Conoway’s. There were mills on Wewoka Creek near Brooksville, in­clud­ing O’Harra’s, Austin’s, Curleigh’s, Cox’s, and Lykes’s. On the branches of Kowaliga Creek were Johnson’s, Hardy’s, and Hagerty’s mills. Bradford’s mill and factory were on ­Socapatoy Creek, and Toomey had a “good mill” on Peckerwood Creek. On the Coosa River at Wetumpka, John Horton built a combination sawmill and gristmill in 1833. In the early 1850s John T. Brooks had a considerable mercantile complex at Brooksville, in­clud­ing a combination sawmill and gristmill. On Salonby Creek mills were erected by George Johnson, Haggerty, Eli Harrell, Dr. Parker, and Dr. Robinson.100 In 1850 the Commissioners Court of Coosa County authorized construction of a plank road from Montgomery to Talladega, which was built from 1850 to 1854. In the course of construction, sawmills were built along the route to cut lumber for the road.101 The town of Goodwater had several mills, probably both gristmills and sawmills. Near Hatchet Creek, Elijah Smith had an early mill and Calvin Jones had several mills, and there were several sawmills at Hollis that “cut an immense amount of lumber.” One of the first settlers on Peckerwood Creek was John Looney, who had a farm and a mill. Below Weogufka, Simon P. Shaffer constructed a mill on Hatchet Creek. A Mr. Wadsworth of Chilton cut and floated logs across the Coosa River to his sawmills and also transported logs by tram road. In the same area, millwright John Sears constructed the Lykes mill and several other similar facilities. A part of Coosa County that later became part of Elmore County had “fine timber,” and a man named Gholson had a mill. Near Buyckville there was a small mill possibly owned by the Curleighs. Near Buyckville in the Carolina neighborhood, Robert Rogers owned a “good mill” on Hatchesofka Creek, and there was another mill in the same area owned by Malcolm Smith.102 Near Rockford, in Coosa County, John Horton owned a mill, among other businesses, and there was a mill west of town owned by Judge Pond. John Sears and George McEwen also built a mill before the Civil War. Later a sawmill was started by T. S. McDonald, and under the later ownership of the McAlisters it evolved in to a combination sawmill-­gristmill-­cotton gin. Also, William Connaway owned a mill near Poplar Springs.103 The Ft. Crawford area became a popu­lar site for mills, and Thomas Men-

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denhall was followed in 1848 by Ira Bond, a veteran of the Mexican War. Bond established a mill on Cedar Creek, a few miles from Ft. Crawford, and later sold his operation to Andrew Jay, who presided over the operation until it was destroyed during the Civil War. After the war Jay sold his property to Elisha Downing, who formed a partnership with Daniel W. Goodwin to produce rough-­hewn timber that they rafted down to the Gulf Coast. In 1876 Downing built a new mill on Cedar Creek that had a sixty-­horsepower, water-­driven circular saw and was described in the local Brewton newspaper as “the best of its kind in the country.”104 It is interesting that a number of people who were born and raised in the Ft. Crawford area were later involved in the lumber business at Brewton when that area became a major center during the golden age of Ala­bama lumbering. The Fort Crawford settlement later became the town of Brewton, home of the T. R. Miller Mill Company and of the Millers and the McGowins.105 In fact, T. R. Miller is mentioned by James Boyd, along with Downing, as being among local lumbermen “engaged in getting out hewn longleaf yellow pine timbers for export,” which they rafted “down Conecuh River into Escambia River and then into Pensacola Bay to Pensacola,” where they sold the timbers to export merchants.106 Boyd says “they operated sawmills, with upright saws, similar to the upright gang saws that are used in these days, cutting choice longleaf trees into square timbers, and continuing the process of floating them down to market.” He also says that no section of the country “was blessed with a greater supply of longleaf timber” than the area within a hundred-­mile radius of Brewton.107 One of the early Ala­bama sawmillers was W. W. Wadsworth, who served in the Confederacy and returned from the war and went to work in a lumberyard. Wadsworth went on to own several mills and became president of the Ala­bama Yellow Pine Lumber Association. Similarly, A. C. Danner returned to Mobile after the war and began cutting and selling cordwood, selling lumber, and operating a sawmill. He went on to become president of a Mobile bank and was termed “the leading lumberman of the South.” He acquired more than 50,000 acres of timberland and was contracted by the Mobile & Ohio Railroad to cut the timber from some 750,000 acres of land it owned in Ala­bama and Mississippi. In 1884 he furnished two million board feet of lumber and timbers that were used to build the Antwerp Exposition in Belgium.108 Other early Ala­bama sawmillers included the Seaboard Lumber Company of Calvert, which in 1870 operated a large mill manufacturing square timber and deals (boards over 2¼ inches thick and less than 10 inches wide) that were shipped to Mobile for export. At Choctaw Corner (now Thomas-

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ville), Smith & Haul had a sawmill in 1870 that was said to be the first mill to cut deals. In 1870 the E. E. Jackson Lumber Company of Baltimore, Maryland, built a mill at Riderville, Ala­bama, to produce export lumber, boards, flooring, and vari­ous other types of lumber. At Chilton, the Chilton Lumber Company, owned by J. M. Baker and W. Welch, operated a sawmill from 1870 until 1890, as well as a mill at Glendon, which was built in 1885. In 1875 at Wash­ing­ton Mills, Ala­bama (now Wagar), T. G. Bush, president of the Mobile & Birmingham Railroad, built a mill to cut lumber for use by the railroad as it was constructed. The mill was later sold to the Wagar Lumber Company. The L. M. Davis Lumber Company built a mill in Oak Grove that produced export lumber for many years.109 In 1879 the Blacksher brothers built a small mill near Brewton and began acquiring timberlands through barter. For forty acres of virgin longleaf timberland they offered three sacks of corn, three sides of bacon, one barrel of flour, forty pounds of coffee, and a ten-­pound caddy of tobacco, with additional corn and coffee thrown in for especially good timber. Richard Massey says the value of the commodities traded for forty acres of land was between twenty-­seven and twenty-­eight dollars.110 In the 1840s William Brooks built a sawmill and planing mill on the Chattahoochee River at Columbus, and John C. Winter built the Rock Island Paper Mills to produce printing and wrapping paper. These mills were burned during the Civil War. Just north of Columbus in Troup County there were eleven sawmills along the Chattahoochee River in 1850.111 In Clay County there was a mill powered by a waterwheel turned by Little Hillabee Creek near Pinckneyville. The mill ground cornmeal and sawed lumber and stood until approximately the early 1940s.112 Dale County (origi­nally part of Henry County) in southeast­ern Ala­bama is described at the time of white settlement as “open, the only growth being large trees.” The county had at least one sawmill in the antebellum period, near Andrews.113 The lumber industry in Ala­bama and the South was primarily local until the middle of the nineteenth century, when two factors began to bring about an increase in the size of sawmill operations. First was the extension of railroads, which began to penetrate the interior of the region. The railroads were themselves consumers of timber, as they bought ties to construct their lines. They also provided the means to transport timber and lumber to port cities like Mobile. Commission houses then shipped these products to the West Indies and Cuba, where the expansion of plantation agriculture stimulated consumption. The growth of timber also benefited the owners of agricultural lands that were becoming less productive for cotton cultivation.114 In the early period of white settlement, goods were moved on the rivers by means of crudely constructed log barges or flatboats. Even the most tech-

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nologically advanced means of travel at the time—the steamboat—depended on wood to fire its engines. Farmers and planters were excited by the ability of the steamboat to link the Ala­bama interior with supplies and markets. Timber would obviously be one of the products shipped out, but more important in its impact on the forests in the early days was the steamboats’ ravenous appetite for fuel. Not surprisingly, areas close to navigable rivers were the first to be stripped of their timber, as “woodhawks” felled trees that they cut into fuel for passing steamboats. The US Census of Manufactures in 1880, before the onset of large-­scale lumbering in Ala­bama, reported that most of the state’s forest cover remained intact, but that “the best pine has been gathered from . . . the banks of streams heading in the south­ern part of the state and flowing to the Gulf through west­ern Florida.”115 By the middle of the nineteenth century the rivers of south Ala­bama that flowed from the interior to the coast facilitated the rise of a logging industry in port cities. For example, the Conecuh and Escambia Rivers connected Pensacola with the longleaf pine forests of south Ala­bama and the Florida panhandle. Naturally, the leading markets were for naval stores and lumber and timbers suitable for ship construction.116 Also, by the sec­ond decade of the nineteenth century the South had begun to export unfinished sawed lumber in considerable volume from a number of ports, in­clud­ing Mobile. Mobile’s exports rose from 3,597,253 board feet in 1846–1847 to 6,816,054 in 1850– 1851. The lumber went to Cuba, Europe, and South America, and even to California’s goldfields.117 The first steamboat built in Ala­bama was the Ala­bama, which was constructed at St. Stephens in 1818. It did not have enough power to fight the currents for a trip upriver, so it traveled downstream to Mobile. The first steamboat up the Cahaba River was the Tensas, which unloaded freight at the town of Cahaba in 1820. However, in 1821 the arrival of the Harriet, which traveled upstream from Mobile, attracted crowds, for its arrival was a portent of regularly scheduled steam travel on the rivers of the state. Later it was the first steamboat to reach Montgomery.118 People along the Ala­bama flocked to see the boat as it journeyed upstream, triggering celebrations along the way. Previously, goods had traveled downstream by flatboat to Mobile but had come upriver in much smaller quantities by keelboat.119 In 1819 steamboats traveled as far as Demopolis on the Tombigbee River, and steamboat traffic between St. Stephens and Mobile was common by 1820. Because of the powerful current, more powerful engines were required to travel on the Ala­bama than on some of the other rivers in the state.120 The first steamboat on the Coosa River was appropriately named the Coosa.

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The side-­wheeler was built in Cincinnati, traveled down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers to New Orleans, went along the Gulf Coast to Mobile, and then made its way upriver to the Devil’s Staircase, where it was dismantled, loaded on ox wagons, and carried overland to the upper Coosa River. It was launched at the head of the rapids on the Coosa River in 1845 and embarked on a trip downriver to Rome, Georgia, which would be a popu­lar route.121 The water was shallower on the upper Coosa than on the Ala­bama, thus limiting travel during low water, and the boats were smaller. However, a brisk trade soon developed along the river between settlers in Ala­bama and those in Georgia. The 105 miles between Greensport and the Georgia state line had twelve landings, and one of these, Double Springs (Gadsden), became the most important Coosa River town. Timber and lumber were important components of the upper Coosa’s commerce. Sawmills appeared along the river, and “many of the boats were specially rigged so they could tow large log rafts . . . some were redesigned with square bows so that they could push barges loaded with lumber, an alteration that of­ten doubled their carrying capacity.” Logging and lumbering continued to use the steamboats into the twentieth century. Unlike the Coosa, the Tallapoosa was too small, shallow, and narrow to support steamboat navigation above its rapids. On the Tallapoosa goods moved on flatboats and were then transported overland by wagon and later by railroads to the Coosa.122 The arrival of steamboats stimulated settlement along Ala­bama’s navigable rivers, and at the peak of the steamboat era, there were more than two hundred steamboat landings between Wetumpka and the Ala­bama-­Tombigbee cutoff. Beyond serving as loading points for freight and passengers, these plantation landings “were wood yards, where boats bought their fat pine fuel.”123 It had probably been done earlier, but in 1818 pioneers in east Tennessee began to build flatboats and use them to travel down the Tennessee River to the Hiwassee. They then went up the Hiwassee to a point that was twelve miles from the headwaters of the Coosa. They would portage to the Coosa and then float down to the fall line. Then during high water they would pass the ledges, shoals, and falls and travel downriver to the junction with the Tallapoosa, and then down the Ala­bama and its successors to Mobile.124 By the 1850s Ala­bama also had a rudimentary sys­tem of roads with some turnpikes and plank roads. There were regular stagecoach routes, and cities and county seats were linked with other communities and the backcountry. Ferries were available to cross most major rivers, and steamboats plied some of these. However, most of the state did not have navigable rivers, and economic growth was impeded by the absence of adequate transportation.125

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As historian Thomas D. Clark has written, in the crescent of pine forests that stretched across the lower South, “The woods remained untouched by lumbermen,” and “settlers had largely bypassed the heavily pine-­studded lands because of the arduous labor required to clear them,” and “because their thin siliceous soil was too poor to sustain even a meager subsistence agriculture.”126 Thus, except for the river bottoms, the land of the pine barrens was not particularly attractive to farmers. However, stockmen grazed their cattle in areas kept open by burning.127 In the river valleys pioneer farmers cleared the forests for farming, and one historian writes that every new farmer who moved into the land along the Chattahoochee River cleared “tens of acres” of timberland to grow cotton.128 However, as one recent historian notes, “Clearing for agricultural reasons had also begun to make significant inroads into the southeast­ern bottomland hardwood forests of Ala­bama, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana. In comparison with tobacco, cotton, and sugarcane, the other crops cultivated in the South did not deplete the soil as extensively. Their cultivation, therefore, did not increase the need for land clearing along the rivers so expansively as did the farming of these three crops.”129 By 1840 Ala­bama had 524 sawmills that had a total capital investment of $1,413,107 and employed 1,386 men. The annual value of Ala­bama’s lumber production was $169,008, and the state produced 197 barrels of tar, pitch, rosin, and turpentine; plus furs and skins worth $3,585. Some of these mills were probably gristmills that also sawed some lumber.130 By 1850 the census reported 173 sawing and planing mills, capitalized at $952,473, employing 884 men and 53 women, and turning out products valued at $1,103,481.131 The 1850 fig­ures must have reflected a change in survey methods, because in 1860 the numbers were back in the range of the 1840 statistics. In 1860 the census reported that Ala­bama had 336 sawmills capitalized at $1,756,572. They employed 1,640 men and 42 women and turned out products worth $1,873,484. There were also three planing mills, capitalized at $54,000. They employed 34 men and 1 woman and manufactured products valued at $72,749. The census also reported 11 timber-­cutting operations employing 37 males, and 37 turpentine producers that had a total of 537 male workers and 77 women and produced $642,114 worth of turpentine. By 1860 lumbering was far and away the largest industry in Ala­bama in terms of establishments, and, when combined with turpentine production, forest products led in production value as well.132 Logging and lumbering were not the only economic activities in the south­ ern forests. The pine trees of the South were also the source of another form of “green gold”: naval stores—tar, pitch, resin, and turpentine. The naval stores

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industry’s practices were considered among the most harmful in their impact both on the forests and on the people who worked in the woods and refineries. Among the earliest written accounts of turpentining was that of the naturalist William Bartram, who noted that during his travels in present-­ day Bartram County he saw “three vast pots or kettles, each with a capacity of many hundred gallons contents—near the remains of an old fort or settlement . . . used for the purpose of boiling down the tar or pitch, there being vast forests of pine in the vicinity of this place.”133 The production of naval stores in Ala­bama was restricted to the pine forests in the south­ern part of the state. The first turpentine distilleries were constructed just after the middle of the nineteenth century along Fish River on the east­ern shore of Mobile Bay and bordering Dog River on the west­ ern shore. Charles S. Sargent’s 1884 report on North Ameri­can forests said these activities had “led to the destruction of the forests covering hundreds of square miles, particularly in Baldwin County.” He said naval stores production had virtually come to an end in Baldwin County and in the lower part of Mobile County “on account of the exhaustion of the forest.” On the other hand, he noted that there were thirty or more stills in operation along the Mobile & Ohio Railroad between Mobile and Quitman, Mississippi, and “not less than thirty three stills” along the Louisville and Nashville Railroad in Ala­bama and Mississippi. Sargent estimated that some 250 square miles of forest had been boxed for naval stores production prior to 1875. He described the prevailing practices in the manufacture of naval stores as “reckless.”134 The gum from which turpentine was distilled was derived from longleaf or slash pine by tapping the tree. A shallow, V-­shaped “streak” was hacked into the trunk of the tree near its base and from this streak gum slowly oozed into a metal or ceramic cup attached to the tree below the gash. The gum was produced by resin ducts just inside the bark, which are particularly large in longleaf and slash pines. When the streak was cut it stimulated the formation of other ducts immediately above it in the tree. Gum would normally flow from the open wound for about a week, although about two-­thirds of the total flow came during the first twenty-­four hours. In a week or so a new streak was cut just above the old one to induce new flow. Periodically the gum was gathered and taken to nearby stills. The turpentine season ran from March to No­vem­ber and peaked during the summer. There was practically no production during cold weather. A typical turpentine camp was located in the midst of eight to ten “crops.” A crop was an arbitrary unit consisting of ten thousand cups, or faces. A tract of timber being turpentined was of­ ten called an “orchard.” The chipping of trees usually began in late February or early March. A

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streak was usually not more than a half inch high and about three-­fourths of an inch deep. This varied with the skill of the chipper and the size of the tree. The exposed side of the tree was called a “face,” and when a face had grown too high to be reached with the customary hack and maul, it was extended with a long-­handled, sharp-­edged “puller.” As the face extended up the tree the cups were raised to keep them as close as possible to the fresh streak and gum flow. The cup on an average face filled in two or three weeks, and the gum was gathered by a “dipper” who carried a bucket from tree to tree and emptied the cups into it. When the bucket was filled with gum, or “dip,” it was emptied into barrels that were hauled by wagon or truck to the still when they were full. An average still had a capacity of eight to ten barrels of dip and consisted of a copper kettle over a brick firebox, with a copper “worm” or condensing coil attached. The dip, mixed with water, was dumped into the kettle, the fire was started, and the mixture was heated to a temperature of 212 degrees, at which point distillation started. Turpentine vapors were carried off into the worm, where they condensed into the liquid distillate, which was drained off into barrels. The distillate was composed of about half water and half spirits of turpentine. Since the water was heavier it sank to the bottom of the barrel and was drained off, while the turpentine was dipped into other barrels. The entire process required the labor of anywhere from five to thirty-­ five men. Some were chippers, who cut the streaks in the tree. Others were dippers, who emptied the pots on trucks. Hauling the resin to the still was done by mules or oxen, which were later replaced by trucks. There were usually two or three workers at the distillery, in­clud­ing a cooper, who made the wooden barrels.135 Another important product of the early naval stores producers was tar. Philip Henry Gosse described large longleaf and pitch pine trees with turpentine running down the trunks and congealing. According to his description of the common methodology for producing tar, a local planter gathered boughs and knots of longleaf and pitch pine and placed them in a stack in his yard. Grooves were made in the ground under the stack, which ran into a channel connecting through a spout with a tub placed in a hole. The pile was covered with earth, leaving a few holes for air, and the stack was then ignited. Then, said Gosse, “the tar, which is nothing but resin smoked and partly burned, soon began to trickle, and increased to a stream, which lasted until the whole wood was consumed.”136 The naval stores industry was active during the period of Spanish control in Ala­bama, with Mobile serving as a center for marketing. In the middle of the nineteenth century, R. D. James of Clarke County began producing gum

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naval stores, and within a decade he was producing several thousand barrels of rosin, probably with numerous fire-­charred stills. In 1854 a convention was held at Mobile to promote the development of the industry. Four years later James R. Grist of North Carolina sent a cousin, Benjamin Grist, to Ala­ bama to establish a turpentine operation on the Fish River near Mobile Bay. In 1859–1860 this operation produced 26,337 barrels of gum, which were distilled into 3,020 barrels of turpentine and 15,118 barrels of rosin. Grist utilized about one hundred slaves, in­clud­ing thirty-­four who worked with the initial turpentine operations. The last gum producer in Ala­bama was Mike Prine, who sold his product to a still in Georgia.137 The naval stores of the south­ern coastal plain forests in the early 1800s were used to waterproof wooden ships. The 125-­mile-­wide longleaf–slash pine belt ran from Chesapeake Bay in Virginia, down the Atlantic Coast, and across Ala­bama and the rest of the Gulf Coast to the Trinity River in Texas. The industry evolved from simply collecting raw pine sap, to processing in plants using iron kettles, then to processing the turpentine in copper stills in plants that sprang up along the coastal areas. Woods workers cut deep boxes into young trees to collect the raw pitch, leaving the trees vulnerable to insects, disease, wind, and fire—and of­ten unusable for lumber. Not until 1901 was the less destructive “cup and gutter” method, which permitted longer gum production and the use of the trees for lumber, implemented. Production peaked in 1875 but began to decline in the early twentieth century. Also in the early nineteenth century the use of south­ern lumber for shipbuilding increased and shifted from the Atlantic to the Gulf Coast. In 1818 the US Navy sent John Landreth to survey timber along the major Ala­bama river systems to supply red cedar, white and live oaks, and longleaf pine to construct vessels at the new shipyards at Mobile.138 As technology changed naval stores production, rosin and turpentine came to be derived from the distillation of gum taken from living trees, from the distillation of longleaf pine stumps, or as a by-­product in the manufacture of kraft pulp.139 As one might expect, the number of sawmills declined during the Civil War. Even so in 1870 Ala­bama had 284 sawmills, and interestingly enough, they utilized 110 steam engines. There were 5 planing mills, and all were steam powered. The sawmills employed 1,411 males and 8 females above sixteen years of age, as well as 9 children. The planing mills had 67 males and 2 females above sixteen, and 1 child. The sawmills and planing mills were capitalized at a total of $785,405 and turned out products worth $1,504,683. Sawmilling and planing trailed only blacksmithing (narrowly) and flouring and gristmilling among the largest industries in Ala­bama in number of establishments; and cotton, flouring, and gristmilling in capital investment and value

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of products. In addition there were 12 tar and turpentine operations, capitalized at $86,200, employing 540 men and 55 women above sixteen years of age, as well as 7 children. They produced $280,203 worth of tar and turpentine annually. Mobile was by far the leading manufacturing county in terms of number of establishments, employment, and product value.140 Although important by the standards of the time, lumber production had scarcely touched Ala­bama’s vast forests. In 1859, Ala­bama produced lumber worth $1,373,434. Still, an agent of the South­ern Railway System, located in Mobile, described the longleaf forest between Mobile and Birmingham and Meridian, Mississippi, as constituting some 4.5 million acres of “primeval forest” in 1865, “although some logs have been cut and rafted down-­stream to mills located at the port of Mobile” via some two thousand miles of navigable streams that emptied into Mobile Bay. By the end of the 1870s, the decade in which po­liti­cal Reconstruction ended, Ala­bama was producing 251,851,000 board feet of lumber.141 On the eve of the Civil War the five south­ern public-­land states—Ala­bama, Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi—had forty-­seven million federally owned acres. This was about one-­third of their land area, and most of it was heavily forested and unfit for agricultural settlement. This forest cover was regarded primarily as an obstacle to settlement and development, except by mill owners along the waterways, and part of it had been open to entry for many years at $1.25 an acre. Following the adoption of the Graduation Act in 1854, it could be purchased for as little as 12.25 cents an acre, depending on how long it had been on the market.142 During the postbellum period, administration of the South’s vast pub­ lic lands became an intricate part of the social and po­liti­cal turmoil of Reconstruction. Radical Republicans hoped to reserve the lands for people of undoubted loyalty and for the freedmen. The South­ern Homestead Act was passed in 1866 by an almost exclusively Republican vote. This measure ended cash sales in the south­ern states, reserved pub­lic lands for homesteaders, limited grants to eighty acres, and excluded ex-­Confederates from homesteading privileges.143 Public land policies for the south­ern states were designed to prevent large land acquisitions by single owners. Public lands could be acquired by homesteading, but not by cash sale. The end of Reconstruction brought a growing demand to open south­ern timber for exploitation by both north­erners and south­erners. South­erners claimed that most pub­lic lands in the South were unfit for agricultural purposes and of little use to the freedmen. The timberlands had not contributed to either the federal government’s coffers or the development of the south­ern economy, and they were being illegally

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stripped by lumber interests that developed after the Civil War. According to Paul W. Gates, “By 1876 the south­ern land question had ceased to be confused with reconstruction issues and had become a problem in land economics and business policy.”145 On the eve of the great lumbering boom in late-­nineteenth-­century Ala­ bama, the industry was already a pillar of the state’s economy, and it was essentially a homegrown and locally run industry of moderate size. 144

2 The Age of “Cut Out and Get Out” The Supply of Timber [in the South] is inexhaustible . . . and is being bought in large tracts by lumbermen. —A. H. Harrison Jr., How to Get Rich in the South The abundant wealth of the forests was harvested to build the homes, cities, and industrial infrastructure of a growing nation. In addition, the lands previously occupied by forests were used to feed a rapidly growing population. —Brad Smith, John S. Vissage, David R. Darr, and Raymond M. Sheffield, Forest Resources of the United States When the loggers left a site for the last time, it resembled a battlefield, torn up and blasted. People who had cut down trees all their lives acknowledged the desolation, even convinced as they were that there were too many trees in the first place. Despite the fact that it would all grow back eventually, those who cared knew that what was gone could never return. What had been taken was nature’s best—the survivors of hundreds of years of quiet evolution. —Archer H. Mayor, South­ern Timberman: The Legacy of William Buchanan

I. The Setting During the last quarter of the nineteenth century, industrialization and urbanization drastically altered the economy, population, and appearance of the United States. The so-­called new immigration brought millions of new settlers to America, primarily from Europe, many of whom labored in the mines and factories that propelled the country toward world economic leadership. Others moved west and helped “conquer” the last frontier. Both raw materials and manufactured products poured in torrents from US workplaces, and new economic leaders, the “robber barons” or “captains of industry,” dominated the economic, po­liti­cal, and social life of the country. Symbolizing the

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economic developments in the minds of many people were leaders like John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie, and such industries as coal mining, petroleum, and iron and steel manufacture. In fact, some call this period the “age of iron and steel.” In the antebellum period, manufacturing had been centered in small factory towns, but expanding transportation and communications systems that facilitated shipping and distribution stimulated the emergence of large cities and industrial centers. In 1860 only sixteen cities had a population of more than fifty thousand, although the percentage of the Ameri­can population living in cities grew from 7 percent in 1820 to almost 20 percent in 1860. By 1890 more than one-­third of the Ameri­can population lived in cities, and eleven cities exceeded a population of 250,000, with Chicago and Philadelphia having more than 1 million and New York City almost 3.5 million. Regional cities such as Minneapolis, Kansas City, and Denver were thriving, and some 40 percent of California’s population lived in San Francisco–­Oakland and Los Angeles.1 With the development of powered elevators and steel frames, taller and taller buildings, “skyscrapers,” appeared in increasing numbers in the cities. But while iron and steel were the glamour materials, in many ways wood was the basic building material for much of Ameri­can society. Most dwellings and commercial buildings were constructed of wood. The growing popu­ larity of precut softwood lumber cut to standard dimensions, instead of heavy custom-­made hardwood timbers, opened an enormous market for south­ern pine. Wood paving blocks covered many of America’s streets. Barns, fences, and windmill towers constructed of wood proliferated as Ameri­cans settled the largely treeless prairies. Water tanks, railroad ties and cars, wagons, and countless other artifacts of Ameri­can life were constructed partially or wholly of wood. And with the explosion of the Ameri­can population and economy, there was vast pressure on the nation’s forests to meet the demand. Frederick Starr noted that the things most important to national growth were cheap bread, cheap houses, cheap fuel, and cheap transportation, and that wood was intimately involved in each.2 The small, locally oriented sawmills of the mid-­nineteenth century could not fill the need, and lumbermen began to construct larger and larger plants and amass vast acreages of timber to feed them. During this period the prevailing philosophy of lumber manufacturers was what they called “cut out and get out.” In other words, move into a forested area, strip the land bare of trees to supply the lumber mills, and then move on to another forest to repeat the process, with little or no provision for replanting or leaving seed trees.

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The forests of New England were cut over in this period, and the manufacturers moved on to the Great Lakes states, where they repeated the process. The manufacturers then jumped to two new areas for exploitation— the West and the South. In the South they moved in two separate directions. Some bought timberland west of the Mississippi River, in Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas, aiming for the markets of the prairie states. Others concentrated on the forests east of the Mississippi River, in Ala­bama and Mississippi, planning to cater to the markets of the central states.3 In 1882 the South­ ern Lumberman said that “almost every train going South brings machinery for the erection and enlargement of saw mills. Never before, has the lumber business been so active.”4 A lumber industry journalist said of the north­ern lumbermen who came south, “A few . . . came between 1870 and 1880, more between 1880 and 1890, a larger number between 1890 and 1900.”5 For a time Dixie became the nation’s leading lumber manufacturing area, with vari­ous states, in­clud­ing Ala­bama, leading the United States in production at one time or another. In fact, from the end of the nineteenth century through the middle of the twentieth, south­ern pine constituted a larger proportion of the nation’s lumber production than any other species in all but one year (1931).6 Ala­bama’s lumber industry, which had been largely locally owned and focused on state or regional markets, now grew tremendously, funded and organized in part by outside leaders. It helped supply the building materials that constructed the cities and farm facilities of the North. In the process the physical landscape of Ala­bama was significantly altered. At the end of the 1870s and on the eve of the real boom period of south­ ern lumbering, Ala­bama had 359 lumber and planing mills, capitalized at $1,575,655. They employed 1,640 workers above the age of sixteen and 38 children. Their annual production was valued at $2,712,434. This trailed only flouring and gristmill products and was nearly double the production of iron and steel. However, Jefferson County (Birmingham) led the state in capital investment, reflecting the rise of iron and steel in the “Pittsburgh of the South.”7 Charles S. Sargent’s Report on the Forests of North America, prepared for the Tenth Census and published in 1884, showed that Ala­bama lumbering had not changed appreciably by 1880. The average size of Ala­bama mills was fifth in the South but a little more than one-­fourth of the average size in Florida and much, much smaller than mills in Wash­ing­ton, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Minnesota. Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota at the time constituted the greatest lumber-­producing area in the country. However, Sargent warned that “the area of the forest . . . remaining in the great pine-­producing states of Michigan,

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Wisconsin, and Minnesota is dangerously small in proportion to the country’s consumption of white pine lumber, and the entire exhaustion of these forests in a comparatively short time is certain.” Obviously this situation was one of the keys to the advent of the great south­ern lumber boom from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries. Sargent noted that “the south­ern pine forests . . . are practically untouched in the Gulf states, especially in those bordering the Mississippi River. These forests contain sufficient material to long supply all possible demands which can be made upon them.” He also said that “the hardwood forests of the Mississippi basin are still, in certain regions at least, important, although the best walnut, ash, cherry, and yellow poplar have been largely culled.” He went on to say that one of the two great bodies of remaining hardwoods was in the south­ern Allegheny Mountain area, and while specifically mentioning south­ west­ern Virginia, West Virginia, North and South Carolina, Kentucky, and Tennessee, he might also have included the extreme north­ern area of Ala­ bama, bordering the Tennessee River.8 It is interesting that in his report Sargent said that “the judicious cutting of a forest in a climate like that of the Atlantic or Pacific Coast regions entails no serious or permanent loss. A crop ready for harvest is gathered for the benefit of the community; trees which have reached their prime are cut instead of being allowed to perish naturally, and others take their place. The permanence of the forest in regions better suited for the growth of trees than for general agriculture may thus be insured.” Sargent argued that the two great threats to this situation were “fire and browsing animals,” which “inflict greater permanent injury upon the forests of the country than the ax, recklessly and wastefully as it is generally used against them.” Clearly, Sargent was anticipating the later age of selective cutting and sustained yield management, and the control of fire and animals, especially feral hogs, as keys to forest maintenance and restoration.9 As noted earlier, one of the stubborn myths of Ameri­can history is the idea that European settlers and pioneers encountered in America forests that were ancient and essentially untouched by humans. On the eve of the great south­ ern lumber boom, informed experts knew better. In the US census of 1890, Dr. Charles Mohr of Mobile addressed the myth: “Most people have thought that the trees that made lumber for the present generation were growing at the time of the discovery of America by Columbus, but that is not so. It is rare that a virgin tree is found that is older than 200 years. The predecessor of the forest of the present day has passed on like the human beings that lived in that period. Some of them were blown down, some succumbed to the ravages of disease and fire. The pines that have been so useful to the present genera-

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tions started as seedlings in early colonial days. They, too, would have died, if the lumber-­man had not saved them to a more useful career.”10 Mohr prepared a report on Ala­bama forests for the US census in 1880, just as the large-­scale development of lumbering in the state was in its infancy. The report was extensively quoted in Charles S. Sargent’s Report on the For­ ests of North America. It provides an overview of the state’s forests based on firsthand observation.11 While noting that the state’s timber supply had already been affected by lumbering and naval stores production, Mohr estimated that in 1880 there were 18,885,000,000 board feed of “long-­leaved” pine standing, and 2,307,000,000 of “short-­leaved” pine. He did not distinguish between such other types as loblolly, slash, and so forth. The census report said that while Mobile was still the principal location for the manufacture of pine and cypress lumber, there was also considerable pine production along the railroad lines of the pine belt. The north­ern counties bordering the Tennessee River also had significant hardwood output, which was both consumed locally and shipped to north­ern markets.12 Mohr’s report indicated that the “long-­leaved” pine forests were contained principally in what he termed (1) the great maritime region, (2) the central pine belt, and (3) the pine region of the Coosa. The timber of the central pine belt was described as “unsurpassed by that growing on the best sections of the lower pine region” in both quality and quantity.13 However, despite the abundant remaining resources, Ala­bama’s forests had already been significantly affected by lumbering, naval stores production, and the demands of iron mines.14 Ala­bama’s forests are part of what is known as the Atlantic forest, which at one time covered most of east­ern North America. A central hardwood belt extends from the region of Chesapeake Bay through North Carolina to northwest­ern South Carolina and then west across north­ern Ala­bama, Mississippi, and Arkansas. From the fall line north, Ala­bama forests are part of the central hardwood belt.15 This area has abundant water power. South of the fall line the forests are predominantly coniferous.16 From the confluence of the Ala­bama and Tombigbee Rivers to the head of Mobile Bay is a small swampy area of about three hundred square miles called the Mobile Delta. The most important trees in this area were cypress, willow, and black gum, with the cypress once constituting about 30 percent of the total trees. Charles S. Sargent reported that as late as the early 1830s the cypress swamps of south­ern Ala­bama had been virtually untouched by lumbering, but by the mid-­1880s the consensus was that given the current rate of cutting, rising demand, and lack of regeneration the cypress forests would be gone within ten years. In fact, by the time of World War I most of

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these trees had been cut, and there was little commercial timber in the area during most of the twentieth century.17 Dr. Charles Mohr estimated that by 1880 some 1,282,000 acres of timberland had been cut over, with the merchantable pine practically removed, and that another 600,000 acres had been damaged by turpentine manufacture.18 The 1880 Census of Manufactures said that “the north­ern and northeast­ern portions of Ala­bama . . . are covered with a rich and varied forest growth of broad-­leaved trees, in which oaks, hickories, ashes, walnuts, and cherries abound.” On the other hand, Sargent’s 1884 report noted that the iron industry had “already stripped of their tree covering many of the low hills.”19 Describing the region of extreme northeast­ern Ala­bama to just west of the Mississippi state line, a region forty to fifty miles wide south of the Tennessee River, Sargent said, “Its most prominent feature is the total absence of pine and the scarcity of other evergreen trees.” While noting that the “fertile portions” of the area had been almost totally denuded of trees, he observed that in Lauderdale and Colbert Counties, as well as the mountainous portions of Madison and Jackson Counties, there was still “a considerable portion with almost virgin forest,” consisting of oak, ash, walnut, and poplar.20 In his 1906 history of the Ameri­can lumber industry, James Elliott Defebaugh said that the primeval hardwood forests were by then confined to parts of Kentucky and Tennessee and to the “south­ern Appalachians from Pennsylvania to and into Georgia and Ala­bama.”21 The 1880 census said that “south of the Tennessee river the rolling country is covered with oaks, through which belts of short-­leaved pine occur. In Chero­kee and Saint Clair counties isolated bodies of long-­leaved pine appear, while a narrow strip of the same species stretches nearly across the state between the thirty-­third and thirty-­sec­ond degrees of north latitude.” The report also said that moving southward, “the country is again covered with forests of hard woods, which farther south, in the rolling pine-­hill region, are mixed with a heavy growth of long-­leaved pine.” This “long-­leaved pine” dominated the land for nearly one hundred miles inland from the Gulf, except for the river bottoms; the report noted that “great regions of swamp covered with heavy forests of cypress occur in the south­ern part of the state, especially in the region watered by the lower Tombigbee and Ala­bama rivers.” The cypress swamps around Mobile Bay furnished timber to manufacture hand-­split shingles, which were produced mostly by Af­ri­can Ameri­cans. Sargent was particularly impressed by the cypress region of south­ern Ala­bama, which he termed “one of the great resources of its forest wealth.”22 In 1887 a writer in the Tuscaloosa Gazette noted, “There is . . . a large amount of fine timber in the county, and that too will soon be in demand.”23

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II. Selling the Land South­ern lumbering’s growth after the Civil War was fueled by cheap land, Reconstruction, and the rise of the “New South.” The industry’s development was shaped by exploitation, idealism, foresight, and extremely short-­sighted greed in vari­ous combinations. The vast amounts of available pub­lic land in the South and the cutting out of the timber in the Great Lakes states on the properties of large companies that had theretofore scorned yellow pine spurred this development.24 C. Vann Woodward said that changes in federal land policies in the South illustrate the transition in north­ern policy from “the missionary and po­liti­cal to the economic and exploitative phase.”25 While the war temporarily disrupted south­ern lumbering, the attention it focused on the region, plus the cutting out of timber in the Great Lakes states and the development of Dixie’s railroads, provided a springboard for exploitation of south­ern forests on a much larger scale than most contemporaries could imagine.26 However, there were those who recognized their potential. North­ern lumbermen who were witnessing and participating in the devastation of the forests in the North­east and the Great Lakes states believed the south­ern timberlands were inexhaustible. For example, Henry J. Lutcher of Pennsylvania told a US Senate hearing in Wash­ing­ton that “if you will refer to Professor R. L. Sargent’s forestry report for the year 1880 it will show that the amount of longleaf standing timber in those states bordering on the Gulf of Mexico was one hundred and seven billion feet. If you were to take ships at 500 tons each, load them with this one hundred and seven billion feet, place them in a direct line, stern to stern, beginning at the mouth of ­Sabine Pass, they would reach around the globe, and there would still be 1,600 miles of ships to come out of Sabine Pass.”27 Ala­bama was a pub­lic land state, and the Gulf coastal lands were open to sales in 1810. By 1870 the results of pub­lic land sales had been disappointing, and in most forested areas speculators and mill owners found it relatively easy to manipulate the land laws and acquire large tracts of pine and hardwood forests for extremely low minimal cash outlays. In 1866 Congress reserved the pub­lic lands of Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida, and Ala­bama from pub­lic sale for homesteading purposes. However, the act was repealed in 1876 and the lands were put on the market for sale. The repeal removed all limitations on pub­lic land transactions in the south­ern states and legalized private sales. It placed no limit on the size of purchases and directed that the lands be offered at pub­lic sale as soon as practicable. Land was offered to the highest bidder at pub­lic auction and, if not sold, could be purchased later at a minimum price of $1.25 an acre. The minimum price became standard

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for virgin timberland, and the law proved unusually favorable to large-­scale land speculators. In fact, not much of the land was sold at the government price of $1.25 an acre until the 1880s, when large acreages were purchased by lumbermen.28 Exploitation of south­ern pub­lic lands during the late 1870s and 1880s was carried out largely by timber speculators who preceded actual lumbermen, although some lumber operators were involved. Homesteading was no longer so much the work of claimants employed by lumber companies, as it had been from 1866 to 1876 when the amount of land that could be entered was restricted, but the practice undoubtedly continued, with smaller operators now the primary culprits. Vast tracts of valuable forestland were sold at bargain prices. Also, a great deal of timberland in Ala­bama was purchased from railroads that had been built with the economic encouragement of federal land grants. By 1904 Ala­bama had received 3,348,125 acres of railroad land patents.29 During the early years there was no need for sawmill operators to purchase timberlands. Most bought their logs from independent contractors who cut the trees and transported the logs to the mill. Sometimes the contractors were paid cash; in other cases they took part of the lumber manufactured from the logs as payment. The loggers of­t en cut the logs from conveniently located land regardless of ownership. Since the supply was seemingly inexhaustible and the total number of trees taken was relatively small, the practice was commonly accepted. However, as the demand for south­ern pine increased, timber stealing became more organized and a greater problem. One common technique was for the culprits to purchase a forty-­acre square of pub­lic land, build a camp and mill on the land, and then log beyond the legal forty acres, or on what they called a “round forty.” In fact, many south­erners considered the timber on pub­lic lands to be the people’s property, like game in the forests or fish in the streams. Often juries would not convict people for taking timber from pub­lic land. However, as the lumber industry and private forest holdings became more important, pub­lic attitudes changed. Lumber operators who needed a guaranteed log supply were not interested in the vagaries of stealing. They wanted to own their land, and forestland in the South was cheap. The Great Lakes states remained the most important lumber producers, but as the supplies of white pine began to dwindle Michigan and Wisconsin lumbermen began to consider south­ern pine as a substitute for north­ern white pine. North­ern lumbermen sent cruisers into the South to learn about the forests and operating conditions, and they returned with glowing reports of abundant forests that could be purchased for practically nothing; of generally level land that facilitated logging; and

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of plentiful, cheap, and docile labor. Timber speculation was significant in all south­ern states. While both north­erners and south­erners were involved, domination fell into Yankee hands in many areas.30 One early timber cruiser was James D. Lacey of Grand Rapids, Michigan, who has been described as the greatest speculator in timberlands in the history of south­ern lumbering. He acquired more than five million acres, mostly in the South, and believed there was more money to be made in speculation than in actual lumber manufacturing. Lacey reported that “in 1880, when I first went South . . . we estimated what the value of Government land was. It was nearly all vacant then, and it was timberland. In 1889 it was offered at $1.25 per acre. We located several million acres for north­ern lumber companies. We estimated those lands would cut about 6,000 feet per acre, as they were then cutting timber. They were not going above the first limbs; the balance was left in the woods or burned up.”31 Another large purchaser was Daniel Sullivan, who acquired some one hundred thousand acres of forestland in the Florida panhandle and double that amount in south­ern Ala­bama to feed his mills in Pensacola.32 Between 1878 and 1888 over 5.5 million acres of federal land in the South was sold, some for as little as $1.25 an acre. Individual states sold tens of millions of acres of additional lands at even lower prices, and with the old eighty-­acre limit of the Homestead Act gone, enormous holdings were acquired by speculators. Lumbermen, pub­lic officials, and the people of the South shared responsibility for the way the regions’ forests were exploited. South­erners seemed to feel that their forests were both inexhaustible and of limited value, and in fact they viewed them to some extent as impediments to progress. As Thomas D. Clark has noted, “Pine-­belt backwoodsmen regarded a good forest as one lying in log and brush heaps ready for the application of the torch.” As late as 1880, even though the South had 5,573 sawmills, most of them were small and located on or near waterways, and the industry had scarcely penetrated the vast forests of the interior.33 By providing access to markets, the extension of railroads into new areas of the region also facilitated the lumber industry’s south­ern migration. The skeletal railroad sys­tem of the antebellum South was now augmented by the construction of new roads and mergers of old ones that provided connections from the Gulf to the Ohio River, and from the Mississippi to the Atlantic. These railroads depended heavily on lumber for their support, with the Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis Railroad advertising itself as the “Great Lumber Route,” and the Gulf, Mobile and North­ern penetrating the Ala­bama and Mississippi pine belt.34 The US Bureau of Corporations reported in 1911 that the value of yellow

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pine stumpage had nearly tripled over 1899 values. By 1919 stumpage values were nearly 100 percent greater than in 1904. In Ala­bama they had more than doubled. Men of enormous wealth were among those who purchased south­ ern timberlands, and many lumbering families intermarried and sent younger sons, nephews, and associates into the South to manage their interests. Some of these men settled permanently in the region and became fiercely loyal to the South, and even somewhat provincial. This was ironic, for the migration into the South came not long after the end of the Civil War, and the emotions of that conflict had not totally subsided. Frederick Weyerhaeuser, for example, origi­nally resisted investment in the South. He “kept a lingering memory of Civil War antagonisms,” and “the idea that some members of his family would have to live in the South was repugnant to him.” However, during an 1894 excursion to look at south­ern timber and mills Weyerhaeuser was “converted.” Traveling with a group of lumbermen and friends on two special cars of the Illinois Central Railroad, he was wined and dined by businessmen in Memphis and charmed by an old Confederate general in Vicksburg. Weyerhaeuser told E. W. Durant of Still­water, Minnesota, who arranged the trip, “I think I would better take back my ideas of this south­ern lumber and the people.”35 Not all of the north­ern investors and lumbermen came south to exploit and leave. John L. Kaul was trained in lumber manufacturing by his father, Andrew, a successful lumberman in Pennsylvania. John L. Kaul came to Ala­ bama in 1888 scouting for investments and bought an interest in the Sample Lumber Company of Hollins. The Kauls bought out the other stockholders. The company’s name was changed to the Kaul Lumber Company in 1902, and in the same year, the family incorporated the Kaul Land and Lumber Company to purchase and hold land. The Kaul mill at Hollins employed more than 800 men, with 250 of them working in the woods cutting and transporting timber. The mill at Hollins burned in 1908, was rebuilt, and finally shut down in 1911. By that time it was reputed to have processed the timber from between eighty thousand and one hundred thousand acres of timberland. The Kaul Lumber Company then built a new complex near Tuscaloosa at Kaulton, where it had manufacturing facilities and a company town. Kaul had an estimated twenty-­five-­year timber base. From the beginning the firm practiced selective cutting. The Kaul Lumber Company became one of the largest lumber producers in Ala­bama and a stalwart of the south­ern pine industry. It built an extensive railroad sys­tem to bring logs from the north and the east to Hollins over some seventy-­five miles of narrow-­gauge track. It operated at Kaulton until 1931, when the mill was shut down, although the company

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continued to manage its land and rental properties until the early 1960s. The Kaul Lumber Company was one of the giants of the golden age and survived into the twenty-­first century, with headquarters today in Birmingham and timberland holdings in Clay and several other Ala­bama counties.37 Far from being viewed as carpetbaggers, north­ern lumbermen like the Kauls were of­t en strongly encouraged by local citizens to bring capital into the South. One Tennessean said, “As for these investments of North­ern capital, the South is glad to have it come. We welcome the skilled lumberman with the noisy mill.”38 It was common for large lumber interests to acquire stumpage from several sources, and as competition for land became heated, prices and tempers rose. In a single decade around the turn of the century the price of some south­ern pine acreage rose significantly.39 On the other hand, Ala­bama’s Escambia County differed from the general pattern in that its lumber industry developed mainly with local capital rather than north­ern investments, and the profits were reinvested locally.40 As north­ern lumbermen and land speculators invested heavily in south­ern timberlands after the repeal of the South­ern Homestead Act in 1876, in Escambia they acquired only about 20 percent of the timberlands. Even this outside investment was resented by some local commentators. The only major north­ern investor in Escambia County during the p ­ eriod was the R. G. Peters Lumber Company of Manistee, Michigan, which purchased the Ala­bama Lumber Company in 1885 and acquired over 5,600 acres of federal land in south­ern Ala­bama. By 1891 the company had several mills and dry kilns and owned over 36,000 acres of forestland. By 1893 the company employed over six hundred workers, but when its mill near Brewton burned down in 1896 it was not rebuilt.41 The Illinois Central Railroad ran special trains into the South from Chicago to serve the timber speculators. Within a decade of the repeal of the South­ern Homestead Act, some six million acres of federal land in the five Gulf states had been sold, and additional large blocks of state lands were transferred as well. The speculators came from New York, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, and other states, and they were joined by south­ern speculators and millmen as well. In Ala­bama the purchasers acquired a half million acres of pinelands, and during the 1880s some six million acres across the South were preempted. Logging railroads influenced land acquisition. The economics of railroad logging dictated the concentration of timber ownership in a relatively few hands. Railroad construction was extremely expensive, and to support the cost, the land a logging railroad sys­tem served had to be both large and compact. If the land was compact, the railroad did not have to pass through or 36

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around land that generated no traffic. Large owners had a tacit under­stand­ ing to keep other large buyers out of their territory. Small tracts of land were less valuable per acre than large ones, and as the sys­tem developed, small owners who wanted to sell were virtually forced to deal with the owner of the nearest logging railroad.42 Large timber purchases and land swapping were rampant. Ala­bama had 32,462,000 acres of pub­lic land in 1866, and by 1876 all but 4,637,808 acres had been transferred into private ownership. From 1877 to 1888 some 878,413 acres of federal land were sold in Ala­bama. Among the large purchasers was Daniel F. Sullivan, who controlled nearly 250,000 acres in west­ern Florida and Ala­bama, with 150,000 acquired directly from the federal government. In 1899, T. R. Miller and D. W. Blacksher of Brewton sold their mill and 60,000 acres of timberland in Conecuh and Escambia Counties to Foshee and McGowin for $60,000. The purchasers operated the business for a few months and sold out to Lovelace Brothers for $110,000. In 1900 the newly organized Alger-­Sullivan Lumber Company purchased Daniel F. Sullivan’s timber holdings in Ala­bama, now in­clud­ing some 225,000 acres, for $1 million. In 1911 the company purchased 42,000 acres of timberland in Conecuh, Monroe, and Butler Counties from the Michigan Land Company for $500,000.43 There was widespread fraud, as lumber companies paid men to establish homesteads for the benefit of the companies. They would build a crude shack and claim to have established residence. One group went so far as to build a virtual Potemkin village of miniature fourteen-­by-­sixteen-­inch structures and claim that they had constructed board houses “fourteen by sixteen,” with a shingled roof, floor, doors, and windows.44 As previously mentioned, near Brewton, Ala­bama, the Blacksher brothers erected a sawmill in 1879 and began purchasing timberland. Using a barter sys­tem they traded commodities for land. To purchase in fee simple forty acres of old-­growth longleaf pineland, they offered three sacks of corn, three sides of bacon, a ten-­pound caddy of tobacco, one barrel of flour, and forty pounds of coffee. For especially good timber they might throw in an additional sack of corn and an extra ten pounds of coffee. The landowner would sometimes refuse to sell unless given a contract to cut the trees. The commodities required to purchase forty acres were estimated to be worth twenty-­ seven to twenty-­eight dollars.45 By the late 1880s, the concentration of south­ern land in the hands of large investors and companies aroused the specter of a “lumber trust.” This fit in with the growing fear of monopolies and trusts, which were regarded as threats to traditional Ameri­can practices and values. The south­ern pine in-

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dustry was frequently charged with monopolistic practices. Those and similar charges resulted in an investigation of the entire lumber industry by the US Bureau of Corporations, which issued its report in 1913–1914.46 South­erners also began to reconsider their pub­lic land policies. After 1876 legitimate homesteading was resulting in the establishment of numerous small and productive farms, and they now wanted to eliminate large-­scale sales of their lands so that they could be reserved for still more new farms. As late as 1880, more Ala­bama trees were cut to clear land for farming than to produce lumber. Through the efforts of south­ern congressmen, antimonopolists, and conservationists, the movement to shut down large-­scale speculation began in 1888, and the next three years brought the end of cash sales and baronial purchases of pub­lic lands.47

III. The Industry The bonanza period of south­ern timber buying saw many huge purchases by large, powerful companies. However, they were unable to keep out numerous competitors, and the industry was characterized by producers of all degrees of size, skill, and performance. Although there were intricately interwoven relationships between companies, an effective lumber trust was beyond the far-­flung and highly volatile industry’s grasp. Nonetheless, production did come disproportionately from the large operations.48 Areas of settlement in the South created factional divisions. Sawmill men from the Great Lakes states tended to move south along two separate paths. Some settled east of the Mississippi River in Ala­bama, Mississippi, and east­ ern Louisiana. Others established themselves west of the river in Missouri and then filtered down into Arkansas, west­ern Louisiana, and Texas. These groups became distinct factions within the industry, and there were frequent outbreaks of animosity centering on disputes over freight rates. Companies west of the Mississippi River looked to Kansas City for financ­ ing and marketing. Most of their production was shipped to consumers in the plains and prairie states west of the river. Producers east of the river were oriented toward Chicago for financing, and their domestic lumber shipments went primarily to the states of the older Midwest and Northeast. For example, in 1906 Ala­bama’s W. T. Smith Lumber Company shipped 434 carloads of lumber. Ala­bama customers got 183 carloads of this lumber, followed in order by Kentucky, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Illinois, and Indiana. States west of the Mississippi River got a total of 6 carloads.49 Some sold through wholesalers and commission men. There were attempts

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to organize selling corporations to handle the output of several mills with corps of salesmen. Nothing seemed capable of overcoming the lumbermen’s individualistic instincts.50 In largely unsuccessful efforts to control the competition and establish standards for pricing and manufacturing, lumbermen organized a number of trade associations, in­clud­ing the South­ern Lumber Manufacturers’ Association, the South­ern Hardwood Manufacturers’ Association, the Yellow Pine Manufacturers’ Association, and the South­ern Pine Association. Always looming over these efforts was the specter of antitrust prosecutions by the federal government. And, in fact, the US Bureau of Corporations investigated the entire industry. In 1913 the Supreme Court in Missouri ordered the dissolution of the Yellow Pine Manufacturers’ Association for violation of antitrust laws.51

IV. Producing and Marketing South­ern Pine Lumber The US Forest Service’s statistics on timber and lumber production in the South from 1869 until 1954 show some interesting patterns. In 1869, at the end of the Civil War decade, the massive purchases of south­ern timberlands by lumbermen and timber speculators had not yet shifted into high gear. In that year the total production in the South was 923 million board feet. It nearly doubled by 1879, more than doubled again by 1889, and doubled yet again by 1899. By 1899 the south­ern states had some 3,893 active sawmills, producing 8,403,802,000 board feet of lumber. Ala­bama had 738 active sawmills, producing 1,101,386,000 board feet. Clearly there was tremendous expansion of lumber production in the South and in Ala­bama.52 In 1870 south­ern sawmills turned out only 11 percent of the nation’s lum­ ber, but by the end of the century this would increase to nearly 32 percent, and nearly one in five industrial workers would be employed by lumber producers. By then the industry was in its boom years, and from 1899 to 1929 it rose more or less steadily, to a level of about thirteen billion to fourteen billion board feet annually. The peak year was 1925, with 15,212,000,000 board feet. By that time much of the South was supposedly cut over as a result of cut-­out-­and-­get-­out lumbering, and the manufacturers were jumping to the Northwest and Inland Empire. Interestingly enough, south­ern production remained above 12 billion board feet until 1930, in the wake of the Great Crash of 1929. During the Great Depression from 1931 through 1934 it remained above 5 billion board feet (except for 1932, when it was 4.1 million) and then began to rise again. By then, two factors were affecting the situation. One was rising production

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from small “peckerwood” mills that harvested timber on the cutover lands left by the large producers, and the other was the maturing of the “sec­ond forest,” which was a product of selective cutting and planting by the pioneering companies that had begun to practice “sustained yield” management. In 1935 production was back above seven billion board feet, rising steadily to nearly eleven billion board feet by the early years of World War II. Production declined somewhat during the war but quickly rebounded in the postwar period and generally remained between seven billion and nine billion board feet until 1954.53 South­ern pine was, of course, the major product of the South, moving from 1,378,000,000 board feet in 1869, to 11,522,000,000 board feet in 1904, and a pre-­Depression peak of 16,277,000,000 board feet in 1909.54 Stumpage prices for south­ern pine nearly tripled between 1899 and 1911.55 Ala­bama’s lumber production in 1869 was 97,192,000 board feet, ranking fifth in the South. Following the end of Reconstruction in 1879, Ala­ bama was third in the South, with 251,851,000 board feet of production. A decade later, in 1889, Ala­bama had risen to sec­ond, trailing only Texas, with 625,409,000 board feet of production. By 1899 Ala­bama had 738 mills, third in the South, with production of 1,101,386,000 board feet, ranking sixth in the region. By 1909 there were 2,125 sawmills in Ala­bama, fifth in the South, and they produced 1,691,001,000 board feet, also ranking fifth. Ala­bama in 1919 had 1,926 mills, third in the South, with production of 1,798,746,000 board feet, also ranking third behind Louisiana, whose production came from extremely large mills, and Mississippi. In 1929 Ala­bama had 1,816 mills, first in the South, with production of 2,058,964,000 board feet, third in the South, trailing only Louisiana and Mississippi.56 Many of the sawmills that moved into the virgin forests of the South were large operations, and some were capable of cutting over one hundred million board feet a year. They remained dominant through­out the early-­twentieth-­ century bonanza period of south­ern lumbering, and as late as 1929, more than half of the lumber produced in the South was cut by band mills producing over five million board feet a year. However, as the big mills cut through their more accessible and better stands of timber, many companies prepared to pick up and continue their migration across the country. For others migration was not an option. The hard times of the Great Depression forced them to shut down, and a good deal of cutover timberland was caught up in tax proceedings. Those that survived frequently found themselves with lands and equipment heavily mortgaged.57 The rise of the south­ern lumber industry was fueled by a national demand for south­ern pine after about 1880. Pine was preferred over hardwoods in

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general construction because it was easier to work. Approximately 80 percent of the lumber in commercial use his­tori­cally has been pine.58 Until the late nineteenth century there had been prejudice in north­ern markets against lumber produced in a warm climate, based on the belief that fast-­growing trees were not as strong as those that had survived north­ern winters. South­ern pine began to win acceptance in Chicago when it was used for the interior trim of a handsome mansion that was constructed in the mid-­ 1880s and attracted favorable attention. In the same period a lumber agent for the Illinois Central Railroad convinced his superiors to use south­ern pine rather than pine from the Great Lakes states for railroad car decking, opening a lucrative market for south­ern lumbermen. In 1884 two million board feet of south­ern pine were exported from Mobile for use in Belgium’s Antwerp Exposition, and by 1893, when many of the buildings for the Chicago World’s Fair were constructed with south­ern pine, much of the prejudice had been overcome. Soon south­ern pine was replacing north­ern pine for housing construction and in both foreign and domestic markets.59 South­ern pine in this era was marketed as “yellow pine,” and many lumbermen and consumers did not distinguish between longleaf, shortleaf, and loblolly. Longleaf was considered the most valuable, because of its strength and durability. The shortleaf was next in commercial importance. It is lighter and softer than longleaf, and thus well adapted for finish work like trim and sash and door manufacture. Loblolly became more important as the longleaf and shortleaf were cut. It became dominant in cutover areas and was of­ten called “old field” pine because it took over old fields.60 The export market for south­ern pine in the late nineteenth century was also huge. Contemporary New Orleanian Thomas Hassan Jr. described it graphically: South­ern pine is rapidly winning its way into popu­lar favor in nearly every part of the United States and also in foreign countries. The shipment of this lumber from Pensacola, Pascagoula, Mobile, Jacksonville, and other south­ern ports to Europe has become an enormous business during the past few years, and gives employment to many vessels, both sail and steam. From the same ports millions of feet of yellow pine are shipped to Baltimore, New York, and other north­ern cities, a very large fleet of fine coasting vessels being constantly engaged in this trade. The west­ern cities are also consumers of this lumber, and in this direction, as well as in the others already mentioned, the demand is steadily increasing.61

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Most of the lumber manufactured on or near the Ala­bama coast was sold in the export market prior to 1914, largely because of shipping facilities and costs. Mills closer to the center of the state had a freight rate advantage on lumber shipped to north­ern markets in the Midwest. Mills in the south, around Mobile, could ship by water to markets in Latin America. For example, many of the ties and timbers used to construct railroads in Mexico were shipped out of the Mobile-­Pensacola area. Producing and marketing for export was complicated and tricky, and many producers believed the risks exceeded the benefits.62 While pine was “king” in Ala­bama, hardwoods were also important. For example, the W. T. Smith Lumber Company of Chapman cut about 70 percent pine and 30 percent hardwood. There was significant hardwood production in vari­ous parts of the state, especially in the north­ern counties in the vicinity of the Tennessee River. In 1869 Ala­bama’s total hardwood production was nine million board feet, while softwood was eighty-­eight million board feet, an accurate reflection of the relative importance of the different species. Ten years later, in 1879, hardwood production had risen to seventeen million board feet. At the time, only Louisiana (narrowly) and Florida (widely) led Ala­bama in south­ ern hardwood production. Ala­bama’s hardwood production by 1889 had risen to 58 million board feet. By 1899 Ala­bama produced 109,150,000 board feet of hardwood, with oak by far the most popu­lar species. In 1914 the state’s hardwood production was 149,544,000 board feet, well down the list of south­ern hardwood-­ producing states. By the beginning of the 1920s, the last big decade of the south­ern lumber boom, Ala­bama was producing 119,215,000 board feet of hardwood. By 1929, on the eve of the Great Depression, hardwood production was 289,256,000 board feet.63 Mobile was Ala­bama’s center for the manufacture of pine and cypress lum­ ber and was also a distribution point for naval stores. The 1880 census reported that “a large amount of pine lumber is manufactured . . . along the line of the railroads penetrating the pine belt in Etowah county, and considerable hard wood is sawed in counties bordering the Tennessee river for local use and north­ern shipment.”64 Charles S. Sargent said that the iron industry of northeast­ern Ala­bama had “stripped of their tree covering many of the low hills.” Also, “the best pine has been gathered from Mobile and Baldwin counties, in the neighborhood of Mobile bay, from the lines of railroads and the banks of streams heading in the south­ern part of the state and flowing to the Gulf through west­ern Florida.” Sargent also observed that “the pine

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forests of south­ern Ala­bama have long suffered from the reckless manufacture of naval stores.”65 In 1880 improved farmland covered 19.5 percent of Ala­bama, leaving the remaining 80 percent under forest cover.66 While there were scattered hardwoods in most areas, they were of little commercial value south of the fall line. North of the line the hardwoods were important in local markets as fence posts, railroads, and mine props, and the primary commercial use before 1900 was as raw material for charcoal in the iron industry.67 The manufacture of lumber for north­ern markets began in 1876 in the pine belt of central Ala­bama. In 1880 sawmills on the Louisville & Nashville Railroad between Clear Creek and Elmore in Elmore County produced sixty-­ seven million board feet, and there was also significant production in Clinton County along the line of the Selma, Rome and Dalton Railroad. For years logs had been transported down the Coosa River to Gadsden, where they were manufactured into lumber, with an estimated volume of about twenty million board feet annually.68 In 1976 Earl M. McGowin remembered that when he was growing up in the 1920s the principal market for his f­amily’s W. T. Smith Lumber Company was “New England, and to a lesser extent the Middle West, and, of course, export to Europe, South America, and the West Indies.” He also noted that “we always sold large quantities to the railroads, material such as stringers, sills, and siding. Most of the railroad freight cars were built of wood . . . we always had big orders for railroad material through the creosoting plants as well as for highway bridges and any other plant where timbers were used.”69 McGowin also remembered his father, James Greeley McGowin, saying, “When the Panama Canal was opened, it spelled the doom of the east­ern markets as far as the south­ern mills were concerned,” because, as Earl McGowin noted, “that meant the west coast mills could get their lumber through the canal up the east­ern seaboard to Providence, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, cheaper than we could by rail. His prediction was right. They took over that market and drove south­ern pine back into the interior.” Earl McGowin went on to note that by the mid-­1920s “our market had shifted to the Middle West and our principal markets were Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, and Michigan. . . . There was a smaller amount into Pennsylvania and Illinois. We had difficulty going east of Pittsburgh, Buffalo, and north and west of Chicago because of railroad rates.”70 Railroads in the timber regions were lined with sawmills. Along the main line of the Louisville & Nashville Railroad there were especially notable operations at Atmore, Brewton, and Chapman. Atmore was the home of the W. M. Carney Mill Company, established by a North Carolinian who came

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to Ala­bama in 1856. During and after the Civil War, Carney was involved in the turpentine business in and around Wilson Station, which later became Atmore. He amassed large timber holdings in Baldwin County. In 1881 he built his first sawmill, which was enlarged a year later. The mill was still in operation in the early 1930s. Carney’s home was on the Perdido River, and he later sold his Baldwin County holdings to George A. Robinson, who founded the Robinson Land and Lumber Company of Chicora, Mississippi. Robinson built a lumber mill, but a good deal of the Baldwin County timber came under the control of the South­ern States Land and Lumber Company of Pensacola, Florida.71 Brewton became a lumber manufacturing center during the Civil War. In the early 1930s, W. T. Neal, president of the T. R. Miller Mill Company, outlined the area’s history to lumber journalist James Boyd. Neal’s description is essentially a capsule summary of development patterns in the Ala­bama lumber industry. After the close of the Civil War, and the soldiers returned to their homes, some of them, in­clud­ing E. Downing Sr. and T. R. Miller, engaged in getting out hewn longleaf yellow pine timbers for export, put them up in rafts, floated them down Conecuh River into Escambia River, and then into Pensacola Bay to Pensacola, where they sold these timbers to export merchants. From this they operated sawmills, with upright saws, similar to the upright gang saws that are used in these days, cutting choice longleaf trees into square timbers, and continuing the process of floating them down to market. This business was engaged in by any number of people, but very few developed into businessmen and made any financial success. Mr. Downing and Mr. Miller were the most successful, and they gradually developed into larger mills, using circular saws and steam power, gradually on to dry kilns and planing mills, and it was in the early 1890’s that three gentlemen from the North bought some pine timber and began operating a sawmill and planing mill, calling it the Ala­bama Lumber Company. This mill was located one mile south of Brewton on the L. & N. They cut square timber, as well as all kinds of domestic lumber, flooring, ceiling, siding, finish and moulding. Another trio of early lumbermen was the Blacksher Bros., D. W., Uriah, and Jeptha. They operated sawmills for a period of years and later developed what was termed in those days a large sawmill at Brewton, and included in their operation dry kilns and planers. As time went on, T. R. Miller and S. J. Foshee became interested with the Blacksher boys and operated for a number of years as the Blacksher-­Miller Lumber Com-

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pany, specializing in sawn timber, which they delivered to the Pensacola market by water, as the water transportation was cheaper than a 4 cents per hundred lbs. rail rate.72 In the Brewton area there were six large companies: Blacksher-­Miller, Harold Brothers, Cedar Creek, Lovelace Brothers, C. Y. Mayo and Sons, and Parker and Lovelace. Combined with two smaller operators, Mills and Harrison, and W. B. Franklin, they cut about 27,000 cubic feet of lumber daily, had 375 men on their payrolls, and operated 81 teams of horses.73 In the longleaf district between Mobile and Meridian and Birmingham there were about 4.5 million acres. The area had railroads, as well as some two thousand miles of navigable streams emptying into Mobile Bay. As mentioned earlier, there were several mills producing for export and for railroad construction.74 In 1880 there were eleven lumber manufacturers, capitalized at only about $37,000, operating in Escambia County. By 1890 there were twenty-­nine and the investment had increased spectacularly to $1,194,302. The early manufacturers set up near streams so that they could cheaply transport logs to the mill, and as they moved away from the waterways, they constructed ditches to supplement the natural water system, thereby avoiding the higher cost of constructing tramways and logging railroads. However, eventually they came to depend on railroads, and an important development for Escambia County was the construction by the Mobile & Ohio Railroad of a line through Brewton, breaking the area’s dependence on the Pensacola market and opening up possibilities of access to north­ern customers.75 In 1885 at Behrman, Ala­bama (later Fulton), the Behrman Lumber Company operated a mill that cut only square timbers. The company later received additional financial backing from Mobile and became the Virgin Pine Company. This company built a large mill that could turn out forty thousand board feet daily, but because of conflict and litigation it never operated. It was then sold to Canadian investors, who changed the name to Scotch Lumber Company. The company became a major presence in the south­ern pine industry.76 Around the turn of the century Peter Vredenburgh and sons, of Springfield, Illinois, built and operated a mill at Vredenburgh, which operated as the Vredenburgh Sawmill Company. The mill was still operating in the early 1930s. The W. G. Mitchell Lumber Company operated a mill at Shortleaf for several years until its timber was exhausted, and it then moved to Tuskegee, where it built a large mill. There were also mills along the Atlanta & West Point Railroad, the West­ern Railway of Ala­bama, the Georgia Railroad, and the Georgiana and Graceville branch of the Louisville & Nashville Railroad.

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Among the best known of these was the Horseshoe Lumber Company at River Falls, operated by E. L. Moore.77 In 1906 William Elbert Belcher Sr. founded the W. E. Belcher Lumber Company, with its first lumber and sawmill operation located four miles from Eoline, Ala­bama. By 1915 the business had expanded to the point that Belcher opened an office in Centreville, followed in 1918 by construction of a planing mill at Fairdale. Later at Fairdale he added two band saw mills, several planing mills, a veneer mill, a broom handle factory, a box factory, and other facilities. The W. E. Belcher operation grew into one of the largest lumber companies in Ala­bama, and by the 1940s Belcher had several other enterprises and employed over 435 workers, at Fairdale, Four Points, and Plantersville. He owned several sawmills in Bibb and other nearby counties. The company also owned over one hundred thousand acres of agricultural and timbered land. Belcher was a remarkable man who went to work at the age of thirteen and thus had little formal education, and who was also marked by the fact that he lost his sight while still in the midst of his business career. During the Depression in the 1930s he continued to operate his businesses, of­ten at a loss, because he felt a responsibility to his workers, both black and white. Eventually, in 1970, the Belcher family sold the entire company, in­clud­ing the sawmills, veneer mill, plywood plant, and eighteen thousand acres of land to Hammermill.78 The complex included an old band mill, a wood flour plant, a laminating plant, a veneer mill, a plywood plant, and a plant that produced broom handles. A Hammermill executive described the Belcher operation as “really a step back in time,” with a “beautiful boiler with a central line shaft down under the mill that drove all of the edgers, etc.” Hammermill at first made a deal with the Fox brothers of Pine Bluff, Arkansas, to operate the mills, which could use sawed timber that Hammermill was producing. However, the Fox agreement was soon terminated, and Hammermill built a chip mill at Linden that better served its needs. That mill was eventually sold, as were the Belcher facilities.79 Among the oldest lumber firms in Ala­bama was the W. T. Smith Lumber Company of Chapman, located southwest of Montgomery on the main line of the Louisville & Nashville Railroad in Butler County. There were several Butler County sawmill operations in the late nineteenth century, in­clud­ing the Gulf Red Cedar Company in Greenville, the Milner, Caldwell and Flowers sawmill three miles north of Chapman, and an early mill at Bolling. In the 1920s there was also a sawmill at Bolling operated by the Ralph Lumber

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Company, and another sawmill operated by a partnership of W. M. Flowers and Gid Peagler between Bolling and Greenville. Other early operations included a water-­powered mill at Shell, about five miles southeast of Chapman, and the Dunham mill, about six miles south of Chapman.80 As railroads began to penetrate the longleaf region, steam-­powered logging and milling enterprises began to replace the older water-­driven mills that transported their logs and products by water. A number of new companies sprang up along the tracks. Among these was a mill on the Oak Grove & Georgetown Rail Road, a narrow-­gauge railroad that was operated by the M. L. Davis South­ern Pine Lumber Company, sixteen miles northwest of Mobile. Davis came to the area from Pensacola, planning to log timber on lands controlled by the Mobile & Ohio Railroad. The Mobile & Ohio lands included vast acreages of old-­growth forests and were held in trust by a New York company. In 1885 the railroad created a subsidiary company to manage the lands, called the Ala­bama Land and Development Company. The plan was to lease the land to lumber companies that would log the mature timber. Then the remaining timber would be leased to turpentiners for a few years. Finally, the land would be advertised as “cleared for farming” and sold to farmers and homesteaders.81 In 1886 Matthew Davis signed an eight-­year contract to build a narrow-­ gauge tram or pole railroad into previously “inaccessible” areas of the Ala­ bama Land and Development Company holdings and cut at least 2.5 million board feet of timber yearly.82 Davis built a steam-­powered circular sawmill with a daily capacity of 50,000 board feet adjacent to the Mobile & Ohio tracks at Oak Grove. Six miles away at Georgetown he established a company store and train shops. He then built temporary logging spurs to the northwest, using oxen to skid logs to the tracks and mules to load them onto the cars. Eventually he replaced the wooden-­pole tracks with steel and powered his log trains with several small locomotives. Davis’s lease was extended several times, and he got logging rights in nearby Greene County, Mississippi, to cut pine, oak, gum, or any other “valuable” timber. Matthew Davis eventually pushed his logging railroad into Mississippi and continued to operate until he became a victim of the Great Crash of 1929 and the ensuing Depression. The South­ern Pine Lumber Company mill closed, and the railroads were dismantled and abandoned, leaving virtually no physical record of some forty-­three years of operation.83 During the late nineteenth century the Southwest­ern Pine Hills in south­ ern Ala­bama was the most important lumbering area in the state. In 1913 there were 424 miles of logging railroads in the region, more than in all of the rest of the state and west­ern Florida combined. The largest mill in Ala­

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bama was at Lockhart in Covington County. This mill had a daily capacity of 275,000 board feet of lumber, and there were four or five other mills with a daily capacity of over 100,000 board feet and twenty or more that cut as much as 50,000 board feet. In 1913 the south­ern red hills area had seventy-­ six sawmills, in­clud­ing some of the largest in Ala­bama. This area continued to be a prime lumbering area into at least the middle of the twentieth century.84 By 1913 several companies had investments of well over $1 million. Companies like the Jackson Lumber Company, the Kaul Lumber Company, the T. R. Miller Mill Company, the W. T. Smith Lumber Company, and the Vrendenburgh interests had investments of from one to several million dollars.85 The Seaboard Manufacturing Company of Fairford, in Wash­ing­ton County, Ala­bama, established in 1886, employed 1,500 workers by 1893. The company owned extensive timberlands and had a sawmill with a capacity of 125,000 board feet daily, with one large circular saw, one band saw, and two gang saws. There were twelve dry kilns, the planing mill could process fifty thousand board feet daily, and the shingle mill produced 150,000 shingles a day. Power was supplied by thirteen steam engines and ten large steam boilers. The company had its own blacksmith and machine shop and steamships to carry its goods, in­clud­ing cross ties, to Mexico.86

V. Major Companies As noted earlier, Ala­bama differed from some other south­ern states in that there were a number of large companies, some founded by south­erners, others by north­ern lumbermen who came South, that operated over the long haul from the age of “cut out and get out” into the mid-­twentieth century. They were affected by and reflected the changing environment from the birth of scientific forestry and sustained yield management, through the arrival of the pulp and paper industry, to the evolution of conservation into environmentalism. Among these companies were the Alger-­Sullivan Lumber Company, the W. T. Smith Lumber Company, the T. R. Miller Mill Company, and the Scotch Lumber Company. Alger-­Sullivan A history of the Alger-­Sullivan Lumber Company describes the firm’s new mill at Century, Florida, in the early twentieth century, which was fed by timber from south­ern Ala­bama’s pine forests: The cutting mill was 300 feet long and 60 feet wide. A huge Corliss steam engine fed by ten horizontal boilers supplied power. The eigh-

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teen foot flywheel of this steam engine transferred power to the line shafting of the mill through a 210 foot drive belt made of leather four feet wide and one inch thick. Logs from the mill pond were pulled up a ramp into the mill by a continuous chain mechanism, which deposited them on one of two powered slide carriages. These carriages fed logs through the central feature of the mill, a double-­cut bi-­directional vertical band saw. The saw blade ran around two nine-­foot drive wheels, and had teeth on both edges so that cutting was done with each forward and reverse pass of the log carriages. The blades were sharpened by automatic filing machines, and could be changed in only 10 to 15 minutes. The . . . mill was capable of producing 300,000 board feet of lumber in a ten-­hour day.87 Alger-­Sullivan was a major presence in terms of owning and managing Ala­bama timberlands, although its mill and operational headquarters were domiciled in nearby Florida, virtually on the Ala­bama state line. The company originated in the ambition and vision of Daniel F. Sullivan, an Irishman who left for the United States during the potato famine of the 1840s. After serving in the Confederate military during the Civil War, and after vari­ous adventures in South America, Daniel and his younger brother, Martin, appeared in Pensacola determined to learn the lumber business. After working for a year in the lumber camps of west­ern Florida, and with financial backing from English investors, Sullivan became a major mill owner, timber broker, and railroad investor in Pensacola. In 1869 Sullivan purchased the Pensacola Railroad, which ran north from that city to Flomaton, Ala­bama, just across the state line, where it joined the main line of the Louisville & Nashville Railroad. He later bought the Pensacola & Selma Railroad, which was being constructed to connect Flomaton with Selma. As he was acquiring the railroads, Sullivan also amassed hundreds of thousands of acres of prime timberland in Ala­bama and west­ern Florida. In 1880 Sullivan sold his railroads, and then, in 1884, he died. Martin Sullivan took over his brother’s interests and formed the Sullivan Timber Company, with three large sawmills in Ala­bama. Martin Sullivan’s primary interest was not lumbering. He had investments in many fields, and by the turn of the twentieth century he was reputed to be the sec­ond richest man in Florida. He had never been enthusiastic about his brother’s timberland acquisitions, and he looked toward divesting the Ala­ bama pinelands. He joined forces with a New York promoter, speculator, and opportunist named William D’Alton Mann to locate a buyer. Mann contacted an old comrade from the Civil War, General Russell A. Alger.

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Alger was an Ohioan who relocated to Michigan as a young man and went to work in the lumber business. A classic self-­made man, he served in the Michigan Cavalry during the Civil War, rose to the rank of general, and returned home a hero. He became a major fig­ure in the railroad logging industry in the area around Lake Huron, with companies in Michigan and Minnesota and headquarters in Detroit. He was, to say the least, po­liti­cally well connected. He served as a Republican governor of Michigan; was commander in chief of the Grand Army of the Republic, the Union Army veterans’ group; and narrowly lost the 1888 Republican presidential nomination to Benjamin Harrison. He also served as President William McKinley’s secretary of war. Near the turn of the century Alger was back in Detroit, and Mann offered him the opportunity to purchase 250,000 acres of pineland in the South for $1.5 million. Alger sent two timber cruisers to inspect the lands, and they reported that the tract was not as large, nor the timber as good, as had been represented. There were other difficulties as well, but they were resolved and in April 1900, Alger agreed to the terms and signed an agreement with Martin Sullivan and Mann to establish a corporation called the Alger-­Sullivan Lumber Company. Alger was president and agreed to purchase Sullivan’s 221,172 acres of timberland in Ala­bama, a mill site across the Florida state line on the railroad running to Pensacola, and dock facilities in that city. The company gave Sullivan $1 million in mortgage bonds at 3 percent interest over a period of eleven years. Mann and Sullivan were on the board of directors, and Alger brought in other associates, in­clud­ing Frank J. Hecker, who in turn recruited his nephew, Edward A. Hauss. The company headquarters were in Detroit, and Hauss was made superintendent of the south­ern operations. Alger issued $300,000 worth of stock and planned to use the money to build a railroad and a large, modern sawmill. Hauss arrived in Ala­bama in the fall of 1900 and went to work with the assistance of a corps of lieutenants who were veterans of the Great Lakes lumber industry. The company bought a mill at Foshee, Ala­bama, for $40,000 to begin operations while a new sawmill was being constructed. The site chosen for the new mill was on the railroad to Pensacola, two miles south of the Ala­bama border town of Flomaton. Thus, while the timberlands were in Ala­bama, the sawmill and company town were to be in Florida. The mill would specialize in export lumber and timbers shipped out through the Port of Pensacola.88 Alger-­Sullivan built a sixty-­mile, standard-­gauge railroad from the mill extending northward into the Ala­bama timber holdings, with several branch lines running from the main line to the cutting areas. The branches were moved as areas were cut over, and the sys­tem was tied into the Louisville &

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Nashville Railroad system. The company had a large fleet of rolling stock, in­ clud­ing nineteen steam locomotives. The line was called the Escambia ­Railroad. Alger-­Sullivan’s forest management strategy was founded on the determination to operate over a long period of time. Thus, in the early years it cut only mature trees over twelve inches in diameter, leaving the small growth to mature over time. It also expanded the timber base, most notably purchasing in 1911 the 44,000-­acre so-­called Michigan Tract, described by one author as “containing some of the finest timber remaining in south­ern Ala­bama.” The strategy worked, and Alger-­Sullivan survived into the mid-­twentieth century, eventually selling out to paper company interests in 1957.89 McGowin/W. T. Smith One of the oldest and longest-­lived lumber firms in Ala­bama was the W. T. Smith Lumber Company of Chapman, located near Montgomery on the main line of the Louisville & Nashville Railroad.90 Among south­ern Ala­bama’s early lumbermen was Alexander McGowin, who came with his family from Georgia. Like most other settlers of the region, McGowin’s father was a small farmer. After serving in the Civil War, Alex returned to Conecuh County, where he farmed and kept a store. He got into lumbering by partnering with his brothers-­in-­law, E. J. Blow and Reuben Hart, in a small logging and milling operation with a store. The McGowin, Blow and Hart Lumber Company was located on Smith Creek near Brewton. They cut square timbers, which were floated via a human-­made ditch to the Conecuh River and then down to Pensacola. Alex McGowin’s sons, Alex Jr., Joe, and Greeley, also had some early experience in the lumber business. By the time the brothers bought the W. T. Smith Lumber Company in 1905, the family had been in south­ern Ala­bama for seventy-­five years. Unlike many cut-­out-­and-­get-­out operations, the McGowin company lasted some seventy-­five years.91 The origins of the W. T. Smith Lumber Company go back to the 1880s, when two Ala­bama sawmill operators, K. L. Davis of the Georgiana, Ala­bama, area, and M. L. Sheppard, who operated a mill at Mill Hill, near Chapman, combined operations. They established a mill at East Chapman in 1883. The mill had a daily capacity of twelve thousand to fourteen thousand board feet. They also built dry kilns and a planing mill.92 Within a few years the operation passed through several owners and was acquired in 1887 by a group who incorporated as the Rocky Creek Lumber Company and named J. R. Chapman president. Finally, in 1891, the ownership shifted to W. T. Smith, who renamed the company. Smith was from Autauga County and had experience as a lumberman in

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Birmingham. The company’s production grew to a reported four hundred thousand to five hundred thousand board feet monthly, but by 1902 Smith had medical concerns, and he wanted to return to Birmingham. Also, he may have believed that the best of the timber had been harvested and it was a good time to sell. In any case, in De­cem­ber of 1902 members of the Foshee and McGowin families acquired the W. T. Smith Lumber Company. The families were related, with Alexander McGowin Jr. being a nephew of S. J. Foshee. The Foshees sold their Chapman properties to the McGowins in April 1905.93 The purchasers included members of the third generation of Ala­bama McGow­ins. The family had varied experience in Ala­bama mercantile, sawmilling, and logging endeavors, and, unlike the stereotypical lumberman of the period who came South to “cut out and get out,” it had local roots and was committed to the business and the area for the long haul. Once the McGowin family bought controlling interest in the company, it maintained tight control.94 The McGowins designated J. Greeley McGowin to run the Chapman mill as general manager, and he moved to Chapman, where he would see the company through its first twenty-­five years of McGowin control. They also decided to keep the W. T. Smith name because it was known and recognized in the business, and its product was identified by that name in European markets.95 Before purchasing the W.  T. Smith Lumber Company, James Greeley ­McGowin and his brothers operated a Mobile firm called the McGowin Lum­ ber and Export Company, with a sawmill north of Mobile at Magazine, Ala­ bama. Like other south­ern Ala­bama sawmillers, they cut longleaf pine, and McGowin’s son, Earl, later remembered that they sold their products in England and the West Indies, especially Cuba. As Earl McGowin recalled, “My father used to use the expression ‘Liverpool squares,’ which were large timbers sold in the British market. In the early days at Chapman we would ship squares of ten inch by eleven inch and up, sixteen feet and longer to average thirty cube, which meant they had to average at least twelve inches by twelve inches, thirty feet long. Timbers had to be merchantable heart timber. . . . Those squares were shipped to Liverpool and many of them went to the continent where they were re-­manufactured into window casings, doors, and all the other building materials.”96 Earl McGowin remembered in 1976 that the W. T. Smith Lumber Company built a veneer mill after World War I. As he told the story, “We had fine gum logs but we didn’t have a hardwood mill so we established a veneer mill. We’d sell it to the meat packing plants who used sheets of veneer to make their boxes. From that we got into making vegetable and fruit crates. We made lettuce and celery crates and shipped vast quantities of those up to Long Island

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and such places as Batavia, New York, and the surrounding areas. . . . We made pineapple crates for Cuba and Puerto Rico. Then we got into the orange and grapefruit crate business. . . . We stayed in that business until about 1935.”97 Not until the sec­ond half of the twentieth century would the family dispose of the business. The McGowins finally sold to Union Camp in 1966, and even by that time, Nicholas Stallworth McGowin could note that “I was a blood relative of every stockholder at the time of the sale.”98 T. R. Miller The “official” account of T. R. Miller’s history traces the origi­nal mill back to 1848. It is described as a “small, water-­driven mill,” whose “location still commands admiration.” Noting that little is known of the mill, the account goes on to say that Cedar Creek powered the mill and was used to transport logs from the forest and to float the sawed timbers down to Pensacola for export. The mill site was a few miles from the area’s first mill site, some eighteen miles from Brewton, where a settler named Mendenhall had dammed the creek to power a gristmill and sawmill.99 After some two decades of operation, its founder, Ira Bond, sold the origi­ nal mill to Rev. Andrew Jay, who in turn sold the mill and its woodlands to Elisha Downing in 1872. Downing was a Civil War veteran and former prisoner of war who returned to the west­ern Florida–south­ern Ala­bama area after the conflict to cut timber for railroad construction and export. Downing’s enterprise grew during the 1880s, and in 1885 he began the construction of three additional mills. By 1891 the Cedar Creek mill had twenty-­three workers and processed about one hundred logs daily. He controlled some thirteen thousand acres of timberland, and the mill was valued at $75,000. He then sought to link his operations with the national railroad sys­tem by building a spur line from Cedar Creek to Brewton, which was on the main line of the Louisville & Nashville Railroad. However, rather than building the line, Downing determined that moving the mill itself would be more cost effective, so in 1892 he built a new steam-­powered mill adjacent to the L & N line in Brewton.100 Downing continued to amass timberland to support his mills. His largest acquisition came in 1897 after the Peters Lumber Company mill in Alco was destroyed by fire. The Michigan owners decided not to rebuild. Downing purchased their thirty-­six thousand acres of longleaf timberland, building his landholdings to over seventy thousand acres. However, along with the land, Downing accumulated considerable debt.101 Downing operated the mill for nine years; took on partners, with his son Wiley and a man named Maddox joining the firm; and began to build canals

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and flumes to transport logs. He also invested in additional mills at Castleberry and Kirkland, Ala­bama. Downing remained active in the operation until the end of the nineteenth century. Wiley Downing, Thomas R. Miller, and Francis C. Brent purchased the mill in 1899. They improved the facility and continued to operate as the Cedar Creek Mill until 1913.102 The Miller family settled in Ala­bama’s Conecuh County in the late nineteenth century. Robert Miller was a small farmer who had twelve children. Thomas Richard Miller, the fifth child, had little or no formal education and apparently a dislike for farming. He enlisted in a Civil War cavalry company and was captured and imprisoned at Ship Island and Vicksburg, Mississippi. After the war he married Mary Elizabeth Foshee. The couple had ten children, two of whom died shortly after birth.103 The Millers struggled to survive economically, and then, in 1868, Thomas purchased the Wesley Blacksher property, which included a small gristmill and a water-­powered sawmill on Cedar Creek. Miller had an early associate named “Buck” Dixon, and they hired men to cut timber and work in the mill. The men were paid twenty-­five cents daily, and when cash was short, they were compensated with corn and cornmeal. The mill produced sawed timbers that were sized and floated down the creek to Brewton. They were then rafted down the Escambia River to Pensacola.104 While Miller prospered, his mill was deep in the woods, and in 1876, a severe drought made it impossible to float timbers to market. After momentary financial troubles, rains again made shipment possible, and by the end of the cutting season Miller had some $8,000 in cash. He purchased a nearby mill and additional forestland run by his brother-­in-­law. Unsatisfied with the way the operation was run, Miller approached another brother-­in-­law, S. J. Foshee, who joined him in buying out the partner, and the firm of Miller and Foshee was born.105 By 1887 Miller decided to move his base to Brewton from Cedar Creek. He invested $50,000 in a mill operated by the Blacksher brothers near Burnt Corn Creek, leaving Foshee behind to operate the Cedar Creek property. The Burnt Corn Creek operation was renamed the Blacksher Brothers and Brewton Mill Company, with T. R. Miller becoming the operating and financial manager and the Blacksher brothers handling the logging. In 1892 the Miller and Foshee operation was also moved to Brewton, and in 1899 Miller joined W. W. Downing and F. C. Brent in purchasing the holdings of others in the Brewton operations and forming a new company called the Cedar Creek Mill Company. Miller and Foshee prospered, and in 1883 they bought out Clements. They also loaned money to the Blacksher family, who were building a large saw-

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mill in Brewton. Foshee was married to a Blacksher, yet another family connection. In 1887 T. R. Miller moved to Brewton and bought an interest in the Blacksher mill for $50,000 in cash. Miller managed the mill, and the Foshees handled the logging. Miller and Foshee sold the Clements mill, and Foshee moved to Brewton, accompanied by his nephew Alex McGowin, who was also a cousin of both Miller and the Blackshers. McGowin became the sales manager. By 1891 the company, now called Blacksher-­Miller Lumber Company, was owned by Miller, David Blacksher, and Alex McGowin. The company now had thirty-­five thousand acres of timber, a large sawmill, a planing mill, five dry kilns, and thirty miles of log ditches. Logs were brought to the mill by ditches until 1905, when the ditches and flumes were abandoned, and the company turned to railroads. The mill had a steam-­powered circular saw, which could cut sixty thousand board feet daily. The mill was valued at $175,000 and employed 175 workers.106 Miller adopted an increasingly extravagant lifestyle. In 1889 his wife died and Miller remarried. He and his sec­ond wife had three children. Miller’s marriage and his new persona triggered resentment from his first wife’s family, the Foshees, and in 1891 Stewart Foshee broke with Miller and sold his interest in the mill. Soon after, Alex McGowin also left, leaving Miller and David Blacksher to run the company. Miller soon began to rely on a young man named William Thomas Neal for labor and advice. Finally, in 1899, with Miller planning to retire, David Blacksher left to join a new Blacksher family logging operation in Baldwin County, and Miller sold the Blacksher-­Miller Company.107 Fate interfered with Miller’s retirement plans, as he was approached with a new offer from Elisha Downing. By this time Miller had developed a business relationship with Francis Celestine Brent, a Pensacola banker and investor, in several lumber companies. Between 1910 and 1914 Miller and Brent were involved in several business relationships, in­clud­ing the purchase of a sawmill at Foley, Ala­bama, which was operated by three of Miller’s sons. Miller and Brent also acquired Downing’s Cedar Creek Lumber Company. The two men each agreed to pay Downing $100,000 in cash. They also assumed Downing’s debt of another $200,000 and agreed to bring in Downing’s son Wiley as a third equal partner. Miller became president of the Cedar Creek Lumber Company, and a top management officer was William Neal. One of Miller’s sons managed the sawmill. The company had labor difficulties, the Miller family and the Downings clashed, and Miller became distanced from active management as his health began to fail. William Neal became the driving force, and he brought a cousin, Ed Leigh McMillan, who was a young lawyer and T. R. Miller’s son-­in-­law, into the management structure.108 Miller and Brent opened a company store in Brewton and expanded the

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company’s operations to include a sash, door, and window plant in 1902, a logging railroad in 1904, a veneer plant in 1910, and a box factory in 1913. As south Ala­bama and north Florida moved into the twentieth century, there was a rapidly growing population and a strong demand for housing. Area builders were designing and constructing large neoclassical, neo-­Tudor, Queen Anne, and Victorian houses with ornate features that required fancy millwork, providing a market for the sash, door, and window plant. In 1911 Miller bought out Brent, and the following year the company became the T. R. Miller Mill Company. By 1913 the Miller organization employed over eight hundred people.109 Miller also developed close financial relationships with a Florida and Ala­ bama lumbering and export company headed by William and Albert Rosasco. The Rosascos were timber export agents based in Pensacola. In the 1890s Miller began to negotiate some of his shipments to Europe through the ­Rosasco Brothers Pitch Pine Export Company, and when the Rosascos began to operate their own fleet of ships, Miller sent many of his shipments on their vessels. Later the brothers entered the timber business and cooperated with Miller’s operations. Eventually, after a storm destroyed much of their standing timber, the Rosascos closed their lumber mill, and later Miller purchased timberlands, possibly in the amount of three thousand acres, from the Rosasco heirs.110 Thomas R. Miller died in 1914 and was succeeded by his son George as company president. His son-­in-­law Ed Leigh McMillan was named corporate attorney. W. T. Neal, whose family had moved to Brewton when he was eight years old, became vice president and general manager. Neal had first gone to work for T. R. Miller in 1887 at the age of fourteen and had risen to successively more responsible positions, leaving at one point to run his own lumber business. George Miller served only until 1924, when he left the company and was succeeded by W. T. Neal.111 W. T. Neal’s only son was born in 1920. Tom Neal attended Indiana’s Culver Military Academy and Cornell University and then became a bomber pilot flying missions over Germany during World War II. After spending little time in Brewton for some twelve years, Neal joined the T. R. Miller Mill Company in the forestry area and then moved to marketing in the Treating Division, which produced utility poles. When W. T. Neal died in 1950, Ed Leigh McMillan became company president and Tom Neal served in a number of positions, mostly involving marketing. Over time Tom Neal, Adrian Downing, and John Miller handled operations management, and Ed Leigh McMillan functioned largely outside of line operations, but as he aged, McMillan moved to the position of board

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chairman, with John Miller now becoming president and Tom Neal executive vice president. The company’s longevity was predicated in part on its timber management practices. In the early years as a water-­powered mill, economics dictated cutting only large, mature trees. Later in the twentieth century the trees left behind in the origi­nal logging matured, and by that time the company had become actively involved in reforestation. Eventually the company had a timber base of some 200,000 acres. James Boyd said that no section of the country “was blessed with a greater supply of longleaf timber” than the area within a hundred-­mile radius of Brewton. Miller’s successors purchased hardwood operations and forested land in Ala­bama and west­ern Florida and organized the Neal Lumbering and Manu­ facturing Company with Neal as president. By 1950 they owned some 75,000 acres. In 1952 they purchased another 5,300 acres in Santa Rosa County, Florida. Then, as a ten-­year “waiting period” specified in T. R. Miller’s will neared its end, they brokered vari­ous stock sales and transfers among Miller’s heirs and the T. R. Miller Mill Company stockholders.112 In the meantime the Neal Manufacturing and Lumber Company moved out of manufacturing and became the Neal Land and Timber Company, with landholdings of some 82,000 acres in northwest­ern Florida by 1997. In 1990 Tom Neal died, and leadership passed to yet another generation.113 Harrigan/Scotch Lumber Company Among the Ala­bama companies whose roots go back to the arrival of north­ ern lumbermen in the late nineteenth century is the Scotch Lumber Company, a firm that stayed and survived for over a century. The story begins in 1888, when German lumberman Marcus B. Behrman and his wife purchased a total of eight acres of land for $280 near Bassett’s Creek in Clarke County. Located on the right-­of-­way of the Mobile & Birmingham Railroad, it was an excellent sawmill site, for lumber could be moved by rail to Mobile and then on to foreign markets. By No­vem­ber, Behrman had formed a partnership with another German lumberman, Joseph Zimmerman, called the Virgin Pine Company, and the mill began operations at a settlement known as Wade’s Station. The company’s steam-­powered mill produced lumber and shingles, and the owners also worked the longleaf trees for turpentine. The company built a commissary and a post office, and the name of the community was changed to Behrman. After only a year of operation, the Germans sold out to Alexander McTaggert for $10,000 in 1889. McTaggert was a physician and investor from Park Hill, Ontario. He recruited two other investors and negotiated contracts

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with landowners in the area to provide timber for the mill. McTaggert and his partners changed the name to the Scotch Lumber Company. In 1896, following a period of economic recession, the company again changed hands and was acquired for $22,500 by a group of New York investors. An attorney for the syndicate, George R. Hannon, relocated to Montgomery, Ala­bama, and acted as its agent. The name of the town was again changed, this time to Fulton, in honor of Hannon’s hometown of Fulton, New York. The new owners formed the Fulton Land Company, increased the firm’s landholdings, and also established the Ala­bama and Tombigbee Railroad Company to build “dummy” lines to transport logs from the woods to the mill.114 The plan was to expand the sawmill into a fully developed company, and the mill was reequipped to specialize in producing flooring. Through purchases the land base was gradually extended to sixteen thousand acres. In 1902 the entire operation was sold to Frederick Herrick for $160,000. ­Herrick had prospered harvesting white pine around Lac du Flambeau in Wisconsin and, like other Great Lakes lumbermen, had come South looking for opportunities in the pine forests there.115 Herrick recruited William D. Harrigan of Rhinelander, Wisconsin, who traveled south to investigate possible locations to invest in a sawmill. In 1902 Harrigan and Herrick purchased the Scotch Lumber Company for $160,000. They got ownership of the lands, mill and machinery, and the Ala­bama and Tombigbee Railroad. Will Harrigan, at thirty-­nine years of age, moved to Ala­bama to oversee the operations and began to run the Scotch Lumber Company. The first task was to increase the timber base. The origi­nal landholding was about two thousand acres, enough to produce only eight million board feet of lumber annually. The partners began to purchase land, mostly from the Russell Sage Land Company of New York, which had purchased thousands of acres in Clarke County for as little as fifty cents an acre. Harrigan and Herrick purchased some 30,000 acres from the Sage Land Company, with the most important purchase in the Silver Creek section of east­ern Clarke County. This was an area of luxuriant longleaf pine and became a point of pride for the Scotch Lumber Company. Eventually the company had roughly 145,000 acres in Clarke County. In the early 1900s the company built rental houses, a hotel, a school, and a church in Fulton and employed a company doctor to serve its residents. However, Herrick’s eccentric and confusing administrative, financial, and record-­keeping procedures frustrated and alienated Harrigan.116 Herrick’s ambitions knew few boundaries, and he extended his lumber and

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timber investments to Florida, Mississippi, and Idaho, where the government was selling timber in the national forests. Eventually Herrick concentrated his personal attention on Idaho and became the largest independent lumber operator in that area. In the meantime Harrigan ran the Ala­bama operations, which continued to grow and prosper. The logging railroads were extended, utilizing both traditional and Shay locomotives. Harrigan imported hundreds of Af­ri­can Ameri­can workers, which caused tension with the native white inhabitants of the area.117 In 1919 William Harrigan died unexpectedly at the age of fifty-­six. His brother-­in-­law John M. Gray and Alex Manes took over leadership of the Scotch Lumber Company. Nearly a decade later, in 1928, William Harrigan’s widow, Helen, moved to get complete financial control of the company by buying out a delinquent note that Herrick had with a Chicago bank, using Scotch Lumber Company stock as collateral. Mrs. Harrigan and two other investors, in­clud­ing John Gray, put up part of the money and borrowed the remainder from a Mobile bank. Mrs. Harrigan took control as president, with a son, Billy, and daughter, Virginia, who was married to Thomas O’Melia, as directors. The Scotch Lumber Company was now a family business and remained as such until the late twentieth century.118 The change in ownership and management was soon followed by a time of natural disasters. A devastating flood in 1928 caused major damage to the town of Fulton and the mill, and two years later, in 1930, the sawmill was ­completely destroyed by a fire. Billy Harrigan returned to Fulton after graduat­ing from Georgetown University and Law School in 1931 and took over management of the company with the assistance of his mother and other family members. The mill was rebuilt and production resumed around 1935. In the 1930s Scotch began to introduce motor-­driven machinery—­Caterpillar crawlers and logging trucks—to the woods, and in the 1940s came the addition of truck loaders and diesels. In a 1956 letter W. D. Harrigan remembered the fire as occurring in August 1931. Harrigan also remembers some of the other dates in the company’s history differently from the account above.119 Scotch actively pursued efficiency and responsible management in its woods and mills. By the 1960s the company was using a “logger’s friend,” a log stacker, to move logs from logging trucks to the log pile at the mill, and it also moved toward fuller utilization of the wood. The tops of trees that had been left to rot were now used for pulpwood, and slabs and other “waste” from the trees that were once burned were now chipped and sent to paper mills. In 1965 the company opened a plywood mill, and it was soon joined in 1968 by another mill in Waynesboro, Mississippi. By the late 1980s the company

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1. Planing mill of Scotch Lumber Company at Fulton, Ala­bama. Courtesy of the Ala­ bama Forestry Association.

claimed that responsible forest management had enabled it to “remain one of few privately owned lumber mills east of the Mississippi River.”120 In the late 1960s and early 1970s Scotch opened a plant to impregnate wood with preservatives to resist decay and insects. The old double gang saw was replaced with a more efficient Chip-­N-­Saw. In 1974 the Harrigans created the Harrigan Lumber Company at Monroeville in Monroe County, Ala­ bama, and in 1977 opened a plywood plant near Beatrice in the same area. In 1976 Billy Harrigan died, and his sister, Virginia H. O’Melia, assumed the presidency of Scotch Lumber.121

VI. The Cut-­Out-­and-­Get-­Out Philosophy versus Utilization Efficiency and Sustained Yield Management Long before the depletion of timber resources and presaging the emphasis on wood utilization and efficiency of the late twentieth and early twenty-­first centuries, some mills tried to use as much of the timber as possible in the pursuit of “green gold.” For example, the W. T. Smith Lumber Company of Chapman manufactured barrel headings (the end caps) and staves, as well as boxes. As N. Floyd McGowin later remembered, “The idea was to use pieces that you couldn’t sell otherwise. For instance, at our planing mill the boards

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were twelve, sixteen, and twenty feet long and maybe they’d cut off parts of these. We picked up the short pieces and took them down to the box factory where they would be cut into box lengths. These would go into celery boxes or pineapple boxes we sent to the islands. We did a thriving business with vegetable shippers of New York State.”122 On the other hand, Richard W. Massey Jr. described the way in which most south­ern lumbermen operated in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as “a prime example of wasteful practices, outside exploitation, and rampant laissez-­faire capitalism.”123 One account says that in the late nineteenth century “the very lavishness of the supply invited wantonness.” Beyond mills operating near capacity daily, the forests were targets of naval stores producers: “So pronounced was the urge for immediate rewards that it has been said ‘a man without a reputation, business experience, or financial credit, if he could swing an ax or secure and control a number of box choppers, could get all the money he required.’”124 Pioneering south­ern forester Inman F. Eldredge attached great significance to the influence of taxation in shaping “the ruthlessness of the out-­of-­state operator who cut the timber. He went into a body of timber that was worth something tangible as a tax base and cut that down to bare land and then it was worth nothing to the county. . . . So the local authorities said, not unreasonably, ‘Now, if these people are going to lead us into that, we’ve got to tax them high as hell while they’re cutting it.’” Eldredge went on, “We’ll get all we can to build our courthouses and our highways and our schools while the timber is standing. Immediately the lumberman, the landowner, said, ‘That being the case, we’d better cut it clean as the devil and take every nickel out of it and turn the land back to the state and let the bastards suffer.’”125 Lumberman J. R. Weston remembered that in response to Mississippi’s effort to tax cutover land that still had some trees as timberland, Edward Hines “ordered his woods crews to go back over the cut over land and cut every pine tree over 2 inches in diameter and I understand his woods crews followed those instructions until he ceased operations in 1930.”126 Neal F. McGowin also remembered the impediment that taxation placed on lumbermen who otherwise might have been inclined to operate more conservatively. As McGowin reported, “I recall a statement Mr. Edward Hines made at a meeting of South­ern Pine operators held in the early ’20s. He said he was running his Mississippi mills two shifts; that the State of Mississippi held a first mortgage on all of his properties there and he was cutting out and getting out of Mississippi as fast as he could.” During a visit to Laurel, Mississippi, in the mid-­1930s McGowin was impressed by the large operations of Eastman-­Gardiner, Gilchrist-­Fordney, Mara­

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thon, and Wausau-­South­ern, which were cutting a total of a million board feet a day. “They, too, were plagued by the tax policy of the State of Mississippi,” McGowin recalled. “Mr. Phil Rogers, general manager of Eastman-­Gardiner, told me they would give their land to anyone who would assume the back taxes, which he considered more than the value of the land.”127 Taxation was not the only problem. Even the large companies had to borrow capital to purchase timberlands, construct a mill and railroad, and purchase logging equipment. During the late nineteenth century north­ern banks and trust companies began to issue timber bonds. Issued with the timberlands as collateral, the bonds allowed the lumber companies to fund their indebtedness and stretch the payments out over a period of years at a reasonable rate of interest. Most were issued as serial bonds, with maturities at regular periods during the life of the issue, and semiannual interest payments. The borrower was required to deposit a certain amount with a trustee for each thousand feet of timber harvested, with the money going into a sinking fund to pay the serial accounts as they became due. In some cases debt and tax obligations forced the cutting and dumping of timber and lumber on glutted markets. Cutthroat competition between mills became the norm. In 1917 a US Forest Service study by William B. Greeley concluded that the instability of the lumber business and the sorry state of forest conservation were largely products of this financing system.128 As many of the larger companies cut out the virgin timber and moved on to other locations, of­ten in different states and distant parts of the country, the people who were left behind continued to utilize what was left of the resource. For example, in Clay County, where the Kaul Lumber Company had cut most of the old-­growth forest, local residents began to operate small portable “peckerwood” sawmills, moving from site to site and cutting the remnants of the large timber until even those were exhausted by the late 1950s. Peckerwood mills could be constructed for only a few thousand dollars. By the early 1930s many of the small mills were “tractor mills,” powered by gasoline engines and moved from place to place on small tracts of timber. By that time their aggregate production was approaching that of the large mills. As James Boyd noted, “Such is the manufacture of yellow pine—small mills, large mills, and now small mills again.” The small mills usually did not practice reforestation, so when the land was cut over it was considered worthless and was abandoned to be sold for taxes in auctions at the county courthouse.129 While some companies abandoned their cutover land and left, others attempted to sell it to farmers as cropland. Some companies did better than others in disposing of these lands. One of the more successful was the Ala­ bama Land and Development Company, which managed the Mobile & Ohio

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2. “Peckerwood” sawmill. Courtesy of the Ala­bama Forestry Association.

Railroad lands. After these lands were logged and then tupentined, they were cleared. In 1903 the company advertised 275,000 acres for sale in Ala­bama and Mississippi with the slogan “Cheap Homes for the People.” The land was described as good for farming, cattle raising, and truck farms, in an area with good weather and a mild climate. There was slick advertising with ­lavish photo­graphs, and within three years the company had sold 95,000 acres, much in 40-­acre farm plots for around $1.25 per acre.130 The W. T. Smith Lumber Company’s approach in the late nineteenth century was to log its lands and then sell them to farmers. In 1895 Smith was negotiating with the Louisville & Nashville Railroad about an extension of its line through his logging territory, and a railroad official described Smith’s approach in an intercompany memorandum: “The territory sought to be penetrated by this extension is, without any question, almost altogether good agricultural land, after the timber shall have been cut off. There are not a great many small farms scattered through­out the district, and the policy of Mr. Smith will be to induce settlement with a view to developing the territory agriculturally, as rapidly as the land is denuded of its timber—indeed, this is and has been for long his policy.”131

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On the other hand, there were some early efforts to operate differently, although many lumber industry people shared the view of James Elliott Defebaugh, the editor of the Ameri­can Lumberman, an important trade journal, who wrote in 1906 that “conditions in the United States concerning timber supplies and prices of forest products have been such that until within a few years the private practice of forestry methods has been well nigh impossible from a commercial standpoint. What has been done by private timber owners has been experimental and largely a labor of love.”132 Defebaugh noted that for about thirty years there had been a growing effort in the private sector to promote forest preservation, triggered in part by a decrease in the standing timber supply and the growing value of forest products. He cited the establishment of Arbor Day, which began in Nebraska in 1872, and organization efforts, which culminated in 1882 in the Ameri­can Forestry Congress, which became the Ameri­can Forestry Association. By 1906 the association had nearly three thousand members and had become a major voice in promoting responsible forest legislation and use. Its officers and board in 1905 were a veritable “who’s who” of forestry in the United States. Among the board members was Ala­bama’s John L. Kaul.133 There were isolated incidences of lumbermen who were ahead of the curve. The Cedar Creek Company in Brewton, Ala­bama, announced in 1903 that despite having forestlands that could supply its timber needs for forty years, it would cut more cautiously in the future.134 A few attempted to introduce selective cutting and reforestation to continue operating. However, as one Ala­bama lumberman, N. F. McGowin, remembered, “At no time before 1935 did the management of the company ever believe they would be able to operate longer than eight or ten years.”135 In fact, McGowin’s father, James ­Greeley ­McGowin, believed that the family’s timberlands would eventually be stripped and unable to supply raw material to keep the mills going.136 Ironically, when McGowin died in 1934, “he left as a heritage a fine operation of one hundred forty thousand acres of largely cutover land. It was on that very large base that we were able to pick up and build whatever we have done.”137 Along with the loss of trees and devastation of forests, there was a considerable diminution in the wildlife population during the age of cut out and get out. Environmental historian Albert E. Cowdrey said that the late nineteenth century brought the first regional extinctions since Pleistocene times. Among the species that disappeared from their homes or migration patterns in the South were the passenger pigeon and the ivory-­billed woodpecker.138 Not all of the early companies followed this wasteful and ultimately shortsighted path. In 1886 Matthew Davis signed an eight-­year contract to log some of the forests belonging to the Ala­bama Land and Development Com-

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pany. He was to practice selective cutting, harvesting only trees “which measure fifteen inches and up in diameter and twenty feet and up in length.” ­Davis’s lease was extended several times, and he got logging rights in nearby Greene County, Mississippi, to cut pine, oak, gum, or any other “valuable” timber. Again, there were cutting restrictions. He could cut trees measuring twelve inches or more in diameter at the stump and had to notify the owners if he cut anything smaller.139 Also, the Alger-­Sullivan Company began to investigate “sustained yield management” in the 1920s and hired a professional forester to implement reforestation efforts. By the time the company was fifty years old, it calculated that it had the same timber volume on its lands as at the time of its founding. Eventually, in 1957, the Alger-­Sullivan lands were sold for some $25 million to five purchasers, in­clud­ing the St. Regis Paper Company, Scott Paper Company, International Paper Company, Koppers Company, and ­Cyprus Mines Company.140 Other companies were not so fortunate. John Kaul, founder of the Kaul Lumber Company, died in 1931 and was succeeded in management by a group of trustees headed by his son, Hugh Kaul. Battered by the Great Depression, the Kaulton mill closed down in the fall of 1931. The company still owned large tracts of land, and from the 1930s until the early 1960s, operating out of offices in Birmingham, it sold timber rights to other companies and sold land to other companies, individuals, and the federal government. The company never again manufactured lumber. It derived income from renting houses and other buildings at Kaulton, but the property was later sold.141 The early twentieth century was the bonanza period of south­ern lumbering, and for a time, the South led the nation in production. However, even as the section was nearing its peak, Ala­bama lumberman N. Floyd McGowin recalled, “There was great concern over the ‘cutting out’ of South­ern Pine mills. These mills were planned to operate on large tracts of timber with definite depletion dates ranging from 15 to 25 years. Statistics then showed that within a period of ten years, 80 percent of the mills would be out of business.” McGowin remembered that “the South­ern lumbermen . . . regarded the large stands of timber in the West as the last frontier, and proceeded with their plans for liquidating their South­ern operations—mills and timber—and moving out West.”142 McGowin’s analy­sis was prescient. By the 1930s most of the virgin timber of the south­ern pine belt in the South had been cut over. Some companies had picked up and moved on to the West Coast to begin the process anew. Others were simply driven out of existence by the conditions of the Great Depression. Some were still hanging on, although heavily burdened with debt,

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taxation, and the diminished value of their denuded lands. In fact, many considered the land a liability rather than an asset. As former Crown Zellerbach forester Jeff Hughes remembered, “A lot of ’em wanted to move on out to the West Coast where the big money and the big trees were. And they were glad to get rid of the land. . . . In the early days the tax rates on cutover pine lands were exorbitant. . . . My grandfather used to gamble with deeds to lands he’d cut the timber off of . . . somebody’d raise the ante five bucks and he didn’t have five bucks to cover it, he’d throw a deed for forty acres of cutover land on the table. . . . I’ve had some reliable witnesses tell me of watchin’ that scene. . . . So land wasn’t worth very much.”143

VII. Naval Stores Wasteful logging methods and timber depletion were not the only problems of the Ala­bama forest products industry. One reason for the lumber industry’s surge in the late nineteenth century was that Gulf Coast ports like Pensacola, Mobile, and New Orleans had become major lumber export centers. Their ports were full of sail-­driven, wooden-­hulled ships that required caulking and coating, creating another source of “green gold” for the owners of pinelands in south Ala­bama. Turpentiners who had been active along the southeast­ern Atlantic coast began to move into south Ala­bama to tap the area’s rich pine forests and serve the maritime market. The watercraft were soon joined by new railroads that required timber for cross ties, as well as poles for bridging.144 Several naval stores corporations formed in Baldwin County in the early twentieth century. They included the Bay Minette Naval Stores Company, the Home Turpentine Company of Bon Secour, the Jennings Naval Stores Company, the Owens Naval Stores Company of Gateswood, the Dyas ­Naval Stores Company, the Newport Turpentine and Resin Company, the O.K. ­Naval Stores Company, the P & S Naval Stores, the Rabon Turpentine Company, and the Turkey Creek Turpentine Company. By 1926 Ala­bama had 134 turpentine operations, and Baldwin County was the most productive, with 40 turpentine operators. In 1933 the companies listed above were joined by Malbis Plantation and Baldwin Timber and Naval Stores. Most of Baldwin County’s turpentine was shipped from the ports of Mobile and Pensacola. The principal market for crude turpentine in Mobile was Taylor and Lowenstein, and in Pensacola it was Stallworth.145 Lumber companies, which had large timber holdings, seized the opportunity to tap the pine trees for turpentine and profit before cutting them down for sawlogs. While naval stores production was ordinarily a separate business, some Ala­bama lumbering companies experimented with the production of

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naval stores in a major way. The Kaul Lumber Company had over 250,000 turpentine boxes on its land in Coosa County and a great many more in Tuscaloosa County. However, the company found that the practice did not pay because of damage to the trees. When a tree was cut for turpentine it formed resin to protect the cut, and the excess resin lowered the value of lumber manufactured from the tree, offsetting the value of the turpentine. One exception was in cases where rather than producing lumber, the timbers were used for structural building purposes. In these cases the resin acted as a preservative and added to the value of the timber. The T. R. Miller Mill Company added a naval stores operation in 1902, which it operated for thirty years.146 The Kaul Lumber Company’s concerns were well founded. In the early days the lumbermen believed that cutting a turpentine face on a tree weakened the timber. This was disproven by pioneering forester Bernhard ­Eduard Fernow in 1893. However, it was true that the early “chop box” method of collecting gum wasted a lot of material, especially when the faces were burned. Around the turn of the twentieth century W. W. Ashe and Charles Holmes Herty developed more conservative methods that employed shallow chipping. A cup and gutter sys­tem replaced the chop box. After about 1910 a sys­ tem using metal cups and gutters became popu­lar. To protect the faces from fire, the turpentine operators raked a strip around each tree and conducted controlled burns in the area.147 Still, chipping of pine trees for gum production retarded the annual growth rate by about 25 percent with one face and by 40 percent with two faces. Also, the butt portion of the tree was usually not suitable for lumber, and this reduced the available board feet by about 30 percent. Burned faces and butts were generally not usable for wood products, and nails and tins could damage sawmill or chipper blades. Dry faces were subject to insect attacks and fungi that reduced the wood quality with stain and decay.148 One US Forest Service study indicated that chipping pine trees for turpentine production resulted in abandonment of the timber after four to five years, with a 50 percent mortality rate. Carrol Butler notes that “the remaining timber was logged leaving the area almost treeless, a monument to the destructive method of turpentining.” Later Dr. Eloise Gerry, a researcher at the US Forest Products Laboratory in Madison, Wisconsin, conducted studies that pointed toward more productive and less damaging chipping procedures.149 The turpentine operators had a devastating impact on the forests. One observer of the early industry noted that “lumber made from trees worked for turpentine is of inferior quality . . . few trees . . . once boxed are manufactured into lumber . . . 20 per cent of them, weakened by deep gashes inflicted upon their trunks, sooner or later are blown down and ruined; fires . . . every

3. Primeval stand of longleaf pine in Walker County, Ala­bama, near Jasper, showing “boxing” of trees to yield turpentine and resin. Photograph taken in 1898 by Carl Alwin Schenck at behest of Gifford Pinchot, chief of the US Division of Forestry. Courtesy of the Forest History Society.

4. Trees damaged by turpentining and fire in Covington County, Ala­bama. Photograph taken in 1919, probably by pioneering forester Austin Cary, for the US Forest Service. Courtesy of the Forest History Society.

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year destroy vast areas of the turpentine orchards.” “Fat” wood and stumps were gathered and burned in home fireplaces or industrial boilers. Some was burned in tar kilns, and the remaining resin was extracted to produce “rope-­ makers” tar. The work in the orchards and stills was dangerous, degrading, and onerous. Most turpentine workers were black, and they were of­ten trapped in virtual slavery by debt, peonage, or unscrupulous officials and employers. The turpentine industry was not modernized until the work of Charles Holmes Herty between 1900 and 1910 began to impact the industry.150

VIII. The Impact The rise and decline of the south­ern lumber industry was rapid, dramatic, and ultimately devastating in its impact on the land, people, and forests. In 1906 James Elliott Defebaugh, editor of the Ameri­can Lumberman, described the south­ern pine belt as “the seat of the most active and extensive development of the lumber industry” within the last twenty years.151 Defebaugh discussed the range of the longleaf pine, noting that the average density of growth increased as one moved west along the Gulf states. Writing in the early twentieth century, he predicted that the lumber industry based on longleaf pine had “probably reached its maximum in Georgia and Ala­bama.”152 The south­ern lumber industry peaked in 1909, when south­ern producers supplied one-­third of the nation’s lumber, and there was another brief spike during World War I. The dominant cut-­out-­and-­get-­out methodology of most companies, along with burning and grazing abuses by south­ern farmers, took a heavy toll on the “virgin,” or old-­growth, forests. During the same period, the naval stores industry also contributed to the depletion of the South’s “first forest.”153 By the early 1920s the large lumber mills operating with a cut-­out-­and-­ get-­out methodology had harvested most of the timber from the old-­growth forests, the so-­called first forest of the South. Timber still remained in both hardwood and pine areas whose relative remoteness made access or transport to the mills difficult, and in scattered patches that the large operators simply skipped over or missed. However, production was still sizable. A US Forest Service report indicated that in 1920 Ala­bama had 903 sawmills, producing a total of 1,108,188,000 board feet of softwood and hard­ wood. Yellow pine constituted 988,973,000 board feet of that total, with vari­ous hardwoods accounting for 119,215,000 board feet. Ala­bama ranked seventh nationally in lumber production (the fig­ures for California and Nevada were combined) and trailed only Louisiana, Mississippi, and Arkansas in the South.154 In that year Ala­bama had twenty-­two of what the Forest Service catego-

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rized as “Class 5” mills cutting over 10,000,000 board feet annually. There were twenty-­six “Class 4” mills cutting between 5,000,000 and 9,999,000 board feet annually, and 173 “Class 3” mills, which cut between 1,000,000 and 4,999,000 feet yearly. Ala­bama had 157 “Class 2” mills with an annual cut of between 500,000 and 999,000 feet, and 525 “Class 1” mills that cut between 50,000 and 499,000 feet annually. The largest mills had by far the largest total cut, with 428,102,000 board feet per year. The authors of the report estimated that a Class 5 mill with a daily cut of 1,000,000 board feet would consume fifty to three hundred acres of forest daily.155 By 1920 the boom years of lumbering in Ala­bama were nearly over. By that time the state had 1,685 establishments, turning out products valued at $55,139,000, now trailing cotton goods and iron and steel. The industry employed 25,778 workers.156 The Capper Report, prepared in response to a Senate resolution in 1920, reported that half of the land cut over by the lumber industry had not been converted to farms, and that one-­fourth of that was left without trees or people, with the devastated land totaling millions of acres. Much of the former forestland gave way to cultivation, but repeated planting to corn and cotton eventually exhausted the land, and, like the large lumber companies and the peckerwood mills, the farmers moved on, searching for better land or jobs in the cities.157 By 1931 Ala­bama was down to 320 lumbering establishments, with annual production valued at $14,619,341, and a workforce of 9,553. Ala­bama ranked fifth among the south­ern states in value of annual production, and ninth nationally. It should be noted that although International Paper’s South­ern Kraft Division was already established in Mobile by this time, the US Census of Manufactures still did not list pulp and paper as among Ala­bama’s leading industries as late as 1920.158 Historian Thomas D. Clark noted the three major obstacles faced by south­ erners and conservationists as they began to assess the damage and the lands left behind: “There were three areas in which South­erners were almost wholly ignorant. One was the full extent of the pine belt, some notion of how much and how fast it was being destroyed. A sec­ond was any understanding of how rapidly seedling trees on reasonably fertile ground could be brought to maturity. The third was any notion of proper forest management.”159 However, in the wake of these abandonments the land began to recover. Natural regeneration, the arrival of pulp and paper and lumber companies that began to plant trees and practice selective harvesting, and the New Deal reforestation programs of agencies like the Civilian Conservation Corps resulted in the emergence of the “sec­ond forest” on the sites of old-­growth forests and small abandoned farms. It should also be noted that the relatively

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warm climate of Ala­bama, with a growing season exceeding 220 days, and the rich soils enabled the forests to regenerate more rapidly than those in some other parts of the nation.160 Changes were on the horizon that would drastically alter conditions in the south­ern piney woods. A few pioneering companies and foresters were beginning to realize the regenerative potential of the south­ern timberlands, and a new industry with different timber needs, a different capital structure, and a different woodlands philosophy was beginning to invade Dixie. As Inman F. Eldredge saw it, “The biggest single thing that has stimulated the South has been the coming of the pulp and paper industry.” The evolution of the south­ern lumber industry into the forest products industry was at hand.161

3 Changing Patterns of Technology and Work in the Ala­bama Forest Products Industries The most gratifying feature about the whole wonderful change from “slave” to “free labor,” and the wonderful impetus given to manufacturing industries of late years in this war-­desolated section, has to be in the fact that labor has been respected and has received all the compensation that it earned. There has never been, in all these hard years since the war, a single serious strike, of any outrage on the part of the working classes, that originated in any of the South­ern States. —South­ern Lumberman, August 1, 1885

Work in the woods, sawmills, turpentine camps, and plants of south­ern forest products manufacturers has never been for the weak of spirit or body. Falling trees and limbs, sharp and heavy tools, heat, snakes, insects, and other hazards were part of the job from the earliest period. But in the sec­ond half of the nineteenth century, with the advent of railroad logging and high-­speed saws in mills, the work became even more dangerous. Increased production exacted a human price, while also wreaking havoc on the forest environment. The large lumber firms brought a new and highly destructive mode of logging into the South. The timberlands of the interior had scarcely been touched by the lumbermen who had used mules and oxen in the woods and shipped their products out by water. The large operators introduced railroad logging in order to reach their huge blocks of timberland in the backcountry. They constructed spur lines into the interior at quarter-­mile intervals and pulled five or six huge logs at a time to the spurs with powerful Clyde and Lidgerwood skidders. As the skidders dragged the logs across the ground they tore up everything in their path, in­clud­ing the small seedlings that could have regenerated the forest. Some narrators disagree with this assessment. For example, a history of the Scotch Lumber Company argues that “it is now believed that method of dragging the trees helped plow the ground, thus making a seedbed for natural

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reseeding with pine.” The logs were piled along the rails and loaded onto cars with a McGiffert loader that straddled the rails. The timber stands were clear-­cut by saw crews who lived in company shantytowns that were of­ten moved to another location once an area had been cut over. The large companies constructed enormous band mills that could cut over one hundred thousand board feet in a single eight-­hour shift, with the first all-­steel mill being built by the Great South­ern Lumber Company at Bogalusa, Louisiana.1

I. Technological Change: The Mills Lumber manufacturing was origi­nally a primitive, low-­technology industry. Most lumber was produced by whipsawing, or, as it was sometimes called, pit sawing. Timber was roughly squared with a broadaxe and placed over a pit where a saw was pulled up and down by hand with one man in the pit and another standing above on a platform. The next technological phase was the development of water-­driven sash saws. The sash saw was a straight saw running in a rectangular sash or frame. The frame moved up and down with the saw, which cut on the down stroke. A crank or shaft attached to a waterwheel provided the power, and the log was pushed into the saw by a mechanical feeder. Next came the muley saw, which resembled the sash saw but eliminated or lightened the frame. Some ran in frames and the stroke was faster. The introduction of the gang saw, in which two or more saws were installed in the frame, brought another production boost. Some mills used the so-­called peckerwood saw, which featured “an iron bar six to eight inches wide and about seven feet long, swung at the center with teeth on each end. It literally chewed its way through the log.” Muley saws were of­t en run in conjunction with a gristmill, and some remained in operation until after World War I. There was one muley mill still operating commercially in Ala­bama as late as the early 1920s.2 Typical water-­powered commercial sawmills had a mill pond or storage area for logs. Logs in a pond were easy to handle, and protected from attacks by insects. Workers used chains to drag logs from the pond up an incline onto the log deck. The logs were then placed on a carriage and moved toward the saw. After each cut the log was manually repositioned on a carriage. The early mills produced rough and uneven lumber, with a maximum of five hundred to two thousand board feet daily.3 The modern lumber industry with large-­scale production was founded on technological change. Steam engines, circular saws, and band saws revo-

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lutionized lumber manufacturing. Circular saws were patented and used in English shipyards by the 1770s. They did not appear in the United States until 1814, when a New York lumberman invented a hand-­forged blade and installed it in his mill. The design was improved during the 1820s, and in 1846 a Californian perfected a blade with removable teeth that made repair easier. When powered by steam, a circular blade could eventually cut up to eighty thousand board feet daily. Workers feared the high-­speed circular saws. The saws also had a wide cutting groove that took a quarter of an inch of the board at each cut. One scholar estimates that a circular saw with a bite of five-­sixteenths of an inch produced 312 feet of sawdust for every thousand feet of one-­inch boards cut. Some critics of the period described the circular saw as “sawdust making machines that produced some lumber as a byproduct.” The blades became thinner, faster, and more dependable, but by the 1880s many mills used them only for cutting rough timbers and replaced them with band saws for other applications. However, from the 1880s until World War I most commercial Ala­bama mills used circular saws almost exclusively.4 The band saw was probably invented in France during the seventeenth century and was in use in Baltimore by 1819 and in New York by about 1860. Jacob R. Huffman of Ft. Wayne, Indiana, introduced it into the modern lum­ ber industry in the late 1860s, and both Hoffman and the Disston Saw Company developed vari­ous improvements. A major breakthrough was a Disston exhibition at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876 featuring an enormous band saw. The first band saw south of the Ohio River was installed by the Arentz Brothers at Decatur, Ala­bama.5 The first steam engine to power a sawmill supposedly appeared in New Orleans in 1811. There were a few other steam-­powered mills, but as late as 1838 there were only 208 steam engines in Ameri­can sawmills, with another 65 in planing mills, mostly in the Northeast. While steam engines provided greater speed and reliability than water power, they were expensive. Their adoption in the lumber industry depended on the widening of markets and the advent of more heavily capitalized and larger firms than came immediately following the Civil War. As late as 1870 sawmills were using only 192 steam engines, producing 5,666 horsepower.6 Along with the improvements in saws and the advent of steam power came edgers to square boards, which were invented in 1825, and in 1850, mechanized carriages to carry the logs past the saw. The planing machine was invented in 1828, and by the end of the 1840s there were planers that produced a variety of specialized products. There were machines to make shingles, to

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cut laths, and for mortising as well as other purposes. Steam-­powered machinery replaced manual labor in moving logs from the pond, through the mill, and toward shipment.7 Large, steam-­powered band saw mills generally had two or three levels. A jackladder, which was a V-­shaped trough inside of which ran an endless, power-­driven chain with “log dogs” or hooks attached every six to ten feet, ran at a downward slope from the mill to the log pond. The logs were maneuvered into the trough, snagged by the log dogs, and pulled up into the mill, where a circular cutoff saw broke them down into specific lengths. They were then moved out of the trough by a mechanical log kicker and rolled down a slight incline to a holding point on the log deck parallel to the carriage. The log deck was a platform, usually twenty-­four to forty feet in length and from sixteen to twenty feet wide, which sloped gradually from the log trough toward the carriage. Some large mills had two carriages, one on either side of the trough. The carriage grabbed the log as it rolled off the deck and held it in place as it moved past the head rig. The head rig could be either a circular saw or a band saw, and it was the sec­ond saw that cut the log after it entered the mill. After the log passed the head rig it was repositioned for the next trip. This work was done manually in the early period and later by hydraulically powered machines and an operator at a control board.8 The carriage traveled on railroad tracks parallel to the saw blade, pushed by a long piston rod called the shotgun feed. The sawyer rode the carriage and decided how the log would be cut. He was assisted by two block setters, who repositioned and clamped the log into position after each pass. The position of the sawyer was in some ways the most important in the mill. The sawyers were well paid and respected. For example, in 1904, the head sawyer of the W. T. Smith Lumber Company was the only employee who lived in the same boardinghouse with the mill owners, with whom he associated essentially as a social equal. Next to the sawyer, the most important workers were the saw filers, who sharpened and inspected the blades. The saw blades were ordinarily pulled twice daily for sharpening, cleaning, and inspection. This was essential, for clean, sharp blades cut faster and cooler, and dull blades caused friction that could trigger fires. Also, the property and human damage caused by a broken blade could be devastating.9 The steam engines and furnaces were on the first floor and were connected to the saws on the upper floors by pulleys and drive belts. By the end of the 1850s, mills with circular saws could produce about twenty-­five to twenty-­ seven thousand board feet of lumber daily, or nine million board feet in a year. Band saw mills could produce fifty thousand to seventy-­five thousand

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board feet daily, and larger mills with two band saws and two carriages as much as one hundred thousand or more board feet daily. By the late nineteenth century fifty thousand board feet daily was considered the threshold of industrial production. Most mills that were large enough to employ railroad logging had one or two band saws. By 1900 there were 211 large mills in the South that produced more than ten million board feet annually, and by 1919 there were 352.10 Obviously the investment in a big mill was considerable, and it was risky. A major threat was fire from vari­ous kinds of carelessness, arson, and the omni­ presence of combustible materials and processes. In 1885, it was estimated that the average life of a sawmill in the United States was seven years before it burned. By the early 1880s the cost of building and equipping a large mill required an investment of about $60,000, with an additional $25,000 to $40,000 in working capital. Mills of this size employed between 140 and 170 men.11 Because of the large investment in machinery, it was imperative for a mill to turn out as much volume as possible and at the highest grade. The first phase of manufacturing was the production of squared timbers called cants, boards, and beams. Some of the beams became railroad ties, ship keels, and trestle posts. Others were run through gang saws or resaws, of­ten consisting of several parallel blades, and emerged as low-­quality boards used to build containers and other common articles. Larger boards traveled on gravity-­ powered rollers on conveyors toward edgers (small circular saws) and trimmers that determined their final shape and size. Throughout the process decisions were made concerning the optimal conversion of the logs, cants, beams, and boards into merchantable products. There was incredible waste; some 40 to 60 percent of the origi­nal tree was not converted into merchantable lumber. After the lumber was dried, origi­nally by being stacked outside for natural air circulation and later in fire-­heated kilns by air or steam, it was processed by planing machines with revolving knives, which gave it its final appearance. Hardwood manufacturers preferred air drying even after the introduction of kilns. There were steam-­operated dry kilns in Ala­bama by the early twentieth century. Edgings were cut into smaller products, such as shingles or laths, and the remains were conveyed to a refuse grinder, or “hog,” where they were chipped to make fuel, which was then blown into the furnace to provide power. By 1914 Ala­bama’s Kaul Lumber Company was producing 750,000 board feet of lath annually from what had formerly been a waste product.12 Steam power and technology transformed sawmilling, making lumber pro­duction much faster and more efficient. By the 1880s lumbering had become a dominant part of the south­ern economy, and steam-­powered mills

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that could cut over forty thousand board feet of lumber daily were increasingly common, with some capable of producing twice that amount. By the end of the century sawmills powered by steam and utilizing mechanical carriages and double-­bladed band saws represented the cutting edge of technology, so to speak. As circular saw blades became larger in diameter they also grew in thickness to prevent overheating and rotation wobble. The thicker blades required more power and also cut a larger kerf, wasting more of the log as sawdust.13 By the turn of the twentieth century the trend was toward larger and larger operations. The Ameri­can Lumberman reported in 1902 that large firms were beginning to dominate the south­ern lumber industry, with a number of lumbermen investing more than $100,000 in their operations. However, there were optimal limitations to size, and mills with daily capacities of seventy thousand to two hundred thousand board feet daily, which were designed to operate in one location for fifteen to twenty years, were considered the ideal.14 The normal estimate was that a mill cutting thirty million board feet annually required twenty thousand acres of virgin timberland for a ten-­year period. The size of the investment was considerable. In 1898 a double band mill would have cost about $175,000 and the two hundred thousand acres of timberland, $60,000 to $90,000, but by 1907 the fig­ures were up to $325,000 and $1.2 million, respectively. In 1915 the initial cost of an average-­sized mill with a life expectancy of fifteen years was $500,000, and the value of the timber supply was from $2.5 million to $3 million. By the 1930s the South­ ern Pine Association considered six million board feet of production as the dividing line between “large” and “small” mills. Some believed that a medium-­sized mill was about as efficient as a large one, and that there was no advantage in a really large operation. The key was to have the mill close to its timber supply, and it was better to have several small mills located close to the timber than a large one that required transporting logs over a long distance. There was no advantage in enlarging a mill beyond a capacity of twenty million to twenty-­five million board feet a year. Many believed that in the yellow pine belt a twenty-­million-­board-­foot mill was more economical than a larger one.15

II. Technological Change: Moving Logs to the Mill Most timber and lumber in Ala­bama at the end of the Civil War moved by water. When the timber was located near rivers or creeks, logs were floated to the sawmill. Oxen and “big wheels,” or high-­wheeled carts, could move logs short distances but were too slow and expensive to be used for distances

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greater than a couple of miles. Steamboats transported some forest products along the coast and down the rivers. John W. Callahan of Bainbridge, who made a fortune in the timber and naval stores businesses, opened the Callahan Line of steamboats in 1906. His service operated between Bainbridge, River Junction, and Apalachicola.17 It sounds simple enough to move logs to water and then float them individually or in rafts to the mill. The problem is that all logs do not float. However, most of the pine logs cut in Ala­bama during the early days of the industry would float, although there were occasional “sinkers.” An interesting unknown side effect of this situation was that logs from sappy trees would not float and trees with defects were not cut; thus seed trees were inadvertently left for reforestation.18 Initially only trees near the streams were cut, but as they were depleted the loggers moved as far as two miles from the water. The logs were dragged or hauled to the banks and assembled at a place where they could be rolled into the stream. They were piled in the streambed until a heavy rain caused a “rise” that would float them as long as the surge of water lasted. The operation was repeated until the logs reached their destination.19 On smaller streams logs were usually run individually so that they could negotiate sharp bends. Loggers, using a stout pole with a sharp spike on the end called a peavey, walked along the banks of the stream keeping the logs moving. Sometimes the loggers rode the logs down the streams. White loggers usually wore calked boots to secure their footing, while Af­ri­can Ameri­ cans of­ten rode barefoot, claiming they got a better feel of the log. This work typically paid one dollar daily, plus board, which was twice the salary of farm laborers. The workers paid for their own peaveys, which were typically about $1.50 each. Breaking logjams was extremely dangerous work, and experienced workers who could find and move the “key” log that would break the jam were prized.20 The logs were branded for identification by the downstream mills. The mills drove pilings in the middle of the stream about a half mile above the mill, with a swinging boom from the bank that could be attached to the piling. As the logs came downstream, a worker jumped on them, examined the brand, and let them continue or attached them to the pilings. Some of the booms would hold several thousand logs. In some cases shallow ditches three to four feet deep and wide were dug and lined with scrap boards to float the logs, attached end to end, to the mill. The ditches were fed by water from nearby streams. Some mills had many of these ditches.21 On larger streams ten to fifteen logs were assembled into cribs, and then several cribs were tied together to form a raft. Dirt was sometimes piled in 16

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5. Ditch used to transport logs in south Ala­bama. Photograph taken by Yale Forestry School professor Herman Haupt Chapman in early twentieth century. From the author’s collection.

the middle of the raft to build a fire for heat and light. Sometimes the rafts also had a lean-­to for shelter. Guiding the rafts was difficult. Hewed or sawed timbers were also rafted. Rafting was obviously dangerous work and was usually done by independent contractors.22 The advent of railroads lessened the importance of streams in moving logs, but not until after World War I did a combination of railroads, motor trucks, and tractors largely eliminate water transportation. Also by that time many of the streams were silting up, and there were more “sinkers” as logs were increasingly cut from sec­ond-­growth timber with higher resin content.23 Getting the logs to the stream or railroad may have been the most difficult part of logging. Initially the logs were simply dragged along the ground by teams of horses, mules, or oxen. The oxen were housed at night and on weekends in ox lots near the logging camps. The T. R. Miller Mill Company actually decided to raise cattle in 1908 to ensure that it would have a supply of good oxen. The oxen nearest the log were called “tongue steers,” the sec­ ond yoke were the “grab steers,” the third were the “swing steers,” the fourth were the “lead swing steers,” and the fifth yoke were called the “lead steers.” The drivers carried whips of plaited rawhide with “poppers” on the end at-

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6. Moving logs by river. Courtesy of Keville Larson.

tached to a long handle. The whips were ordinarily used to guide and direct the oxen, not for punishment. In many companies tractors and trucks replaced the oxen and drivers in the mid-­1930s. The T. R. Miller Mill Company abandoned logging with oxen in early 1940. The company also eliminated its logging railroad in 1940. By that time the firm had twenty-­three trucks, as well as tractors that were used in cutting and transporting timber.24 If the distances were greater, the logs might be loaded onto ordinary wagons or Conestoga wagons, but getting the logs onto the wagons was a major and dangerous project.25 In 1904 the South­ern Lumberman described the procedure: When a saw log was to be loaded onto the wagon it was placed alongside of it, and one hind wheel taken off, laid flat on the ground with the point of the axle resting on the hub over the center of the hind box. Skid poles were laid, and “all hands and the cook” called up to roll the log on the wagon by “breasting” it—cant hooks then being unknown, and head spikes being useless after the log was any distance from the ground. The log being in place, the hind wheel was put on by a dead

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lift of as many as could get on the rim of the wheel, and the linchpin put in place. The log was fastened to the wagon by passing a log chain under the coupling pole, crossing it above, passing it over the log and hooking it, with slack enough to permit it being drawn taut by a “spring pole.” The process of unloading at the sawmill was simply the reverse of the loading, but required much less of “main strength and awkwardness.”26 Another device used to move logs for short distances in the woods was the “caralog,” also known as “big wheels.” These carts had two seven-­to ten-­foot wheels connected with an axle. A windlass lifted and positioned one end of the log onto an axle, and the other end was dragged along the ground. Typically pulled by mules or oxen, these carts were commonly used to move logs for distances of up to about two miles. Oxen were preferred because with their cloven hooves they did not mire easily in wet and swampy areas. Different animals had advantages and disadvantages. Horses were strong, nimble, and easy to command but were expensive, injury prone, and bothered by hot weather. Mules were less excitable than horses and required less care. They were almost as strong and quick as horses and had better tolerance of the heat but were more difficult to work. Oxen were the least expensive and easiest to work and maintain, but they were slow and cumbersome. Mules were faster than oxen and could withstand heat, but they tended to bog down in wet areas.27 After the turn of the century the caralogs were increasingly replaced by eight-­wheeled wagons developed by John Lindsey of Laurel, Mississippi. The Lindsey Log Wagon’s wheels were about half the diameter of the “big wheels” and were grouped in fours in a manner similar to railroad trucks. The in­di­ vidual wheels could move up and down as the wagon moved across irregular terrain, keeping the load in balance. The wide wheels kept the wagon from miring down in wet ground. Oxen loaded the wagons by pulling the logs onto them on skids. By the early twentieth century several thousand Lindsey Log Wagons were used in south­ern forests, with eleven large Ala­bama companies employing them by that time.28 During the 1880s people in several parts of the country experimented with mechanical skidders to move logs short distances to railroads for transportation on to the mills. Only a few Ala­bama companies used the skidders in the early years. They were expensive and dangerous. A typical skidder consisted of a stationary steam engine attached to a rotating drum. Flexible cable or wire rope was wound around the drum, with the other end attached to a log. As the drum rotated it drew in the rope and pulled the log to the skidder. If

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7. Oxen hauling logs for Eufaula Lumber Company. Courtesy of the Ala­bama Forestry Association.

the ground was irregular, it could put the cables in a bind and cause them to break. When broken they whipped back or flailed about and could cause serious injury or death to anyone unfortunate enough to be in their path. They were also extremely destructive to young growth in the forest. As the logs were pulled along they uprooted everything in their path, lessening the opportunity for natural forest regeneration.29 In the woods, loggers largely abandoned the axe and used two-­man crosscut saws. The logs were hauled to the railroad by draft animals or by a steam-­ powered skidder. Edward Hauss of the Alger-­Sullivan Lumber Company was a disciple of the new philosophy of scientific management promoted by Frederick Winslow Taylor that purported to bring greater efficiency to the workplace. Alger-­Sullivan conducted field studies to determine the relative efficiency of horses, oxen, and steam skidders in transporting logs and determined that a steam skidder could do as much work as nine teams of oxen at lower cost. Hauss then purchased a sec­ond steam skidder and eventually a steam-­powered loader as well.30 Both the Kaul Lumber Company and the W. T. Smith Lumber Company utilized power skidders but abandoned them after a short time. However,

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8. Log train, loader, and loggers. Courtesy of the Ala­bama Forestry Association.

these and other companies did use power loaders to lift logs onto railroad cars. Initially, these were stationary steam engines with derricks to lift the logs and place them on railroad cars. They were difficult to move, and so a later development was the Barnhart Self Loader, which was a self-­contained unit that ran along tracks permanently mounted on a series of flatcars that also hauled logs. The loader moved from car to car loading logs until it made it back to its own home car. The Barnhart Self Loader was first used by the Kaul Lumber Company in 1905. Next came the McGiffert Log Loader, which was patented in 1908 by employees of the Clyde Iron Works in Duluth, Minnesota. This machine was self-­propelled and ran along railroad tracks. When in position, the wheels retracted, and the machine rested on four long legs that straddled the tracks. There was enough clearance for empty log cars to run beneath it, and the log train pulled its cars through the machine until they were fully loaded. To move the machine, the operators lowered the wheels, and it moved to the new location on the railroad tracks. The McGiffert could also be used as a skidder and even as a switch engine. McGiffert Log Loaders were omnipresent in the south­ern lumber industry.31 The Scotch Lumber Company of Fulton, which used oxen and mules to move logs to and onto the logging trains in the early years, later utilized

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9. McGiffert Log Loader used to load logs onto log trains. Courtesy of the Ala­bama Forestry Association.

steam-­powered skidders and loaders for those jobs. By the time of Will Harri­ gan’s death, in 1919, the company was operating six locomotives.32 As the timber close to waterways was exhausted, independent mills that purchased logs on the open market became less important. The power equipment and railroads needed to move the logs longer distances were expensive, and independent logging contractors were of­t en driven out of business.33 The transportation equipment could be as expensive as equipping a medium-­sized mill, and the larger mills with high fixed costs needed a guaranteed log s­ upply. They could best ensure a constant supply of logs by controlling everything, from felling the trees through delivering logs to the mill. They were probably also happy to squeeze out small, low-­cost operators who could depress lumber prices.34 As lumbermen cut over the lands close to streams, they had to move farther and farther into the forests for their timber. It was increasingly difficult and expensive to transport logs by water. Therefore, they began to experiment with early forms of railroads to move the timber: pole roads with gravity propulsion, primitive iron or steel tracks, and eventually log trains pulled by geared Shay and Heisler locomotives. By the end of the century the Ala­bama

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forests were dotted with both narrow-­gauge and standard-­gauge logging railroads with log trains pulled by Heisler and Shay locomotives from the woods to the mill, and tying in with standard-­gauge, main line railroads that transported the finished lumber from mills to markets. Wayne Cline’s Ala­bama Railroads, the standard source on the subject, mentions about twenty logging lines in his text and more than twenty in his index. There were many other small lines that Cline does not mention or discuss.35 Experimentation with railroads in the Ala­bama lumbering industry began in the late nineteenth century. The early lines used logs or sawed timbers as rails, fastened to cross ties with wooden pegs or iron spikes. The cars were pulled by work animals, most commonly mules. Loggers then began to use steam locomotives on pole roads that at first used animal power to move the cars in relatively level areas. Some pole roads were constructed of long poles, four to five inches in diameter at the top and not over eight or nine inches at the butt, which were peeled and placed end to end directly on the ground. After use they ordinarily sank far enough below the surface to provide stability. In other cases long hardwood pegs or iron spikes secured the poles to cross ties that were about five or six feet apart. The locomotive wheels had a lateral play on the spindles, which allowed them to move up and down or in and out to allow for irregularities in the track. The rims of the railroad cars were concave and thus stayed on the poles. When steam locomotives replaced the animals, they had wheels that could move up and down and back and forth to accommodate irregularities in the track. The locomotives cut transportation costs. In Ala­bama a steam locomotive could deliver logs to the mill for sixteen to twenty cents each per mile for distances of up to five miles. The same trip by oxen cost about sixty-­five cents per log. The first recorded pole road locomotive was invented by Captain W. E. Cole of Mountain Creek, Ala­bama, and was built in Nashville, Tennessee. It was delivered to the C. J. Sowell Company of Wallace Station, Ala­bama, in 1884.36 Early logging railroads used vari­ous gauges. Some were narrow gauge and built with light, used rails. Others were standard gauge. Some logging companies purchased used equipment from commercial railroads, which were of­ten glad to cooperate since hauling lumber was becoming a major source of revenue. The locomotives were typically wood fired, consuming up to ten cords daily. The water used in the boilers tended to have a high mineral content that caused scaling, which meant that tubes had to be replaced or de­ scaled frequently. Lumber company railroads usually had a machine shop and millwrights to maintain the equipment.

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In the woods the logs were loaded on flatcars that were about thirty feet long. Since the logs were of­ten longer and hung over the ends of the cars, the cars were connected with long rods called “rooster poles.” The flatcars did not have brakes, so the engineers had to be skillful in stopping and starting the train without breaking the rooster poles. The logging railroads were expensive to build, costing as much as $1,500 or more per mile for lines with steel rails, but the cost was recovered in scale of operations and revenue.37 Some of the large lumber producers constructed and operated railroads that carried logs from the forest to the mill or lumber from the mill to markets, and sometimes they operated as common carriers as well. The Bagdad Land and Lumber Company, a Florida firm, operated the Florida and Ala­bama Railroad, which reached nearly seventy-­five miles into south­ern Ala­bama.38 During the 1880s lumber operators experimented with gravity-­powered railroads called “gravity trains” or “stringer roads.” The cars rolled down a hill and were then unloaded and towed back to the top by oxen or mules. The W. T. Smith Lumber Company used this sys­tem to connect a sawmill and planing mill.39 A typical stringer road was used by the W. T. Smith Lumber Company of Chapman, Ala­bama, in the early 1880s. The company had a planing mill a couple of miles from its sawmill and at a lower elevation, and it built a railroad with wooden rails to connect the two facilities. Cars were loaded at the sawmill and then ran by gravity to the planing mill. They stopped just short of the mill and were then pulled by mules or oxen into the mill, where they were unloaded, and then they were towed back up the hill. The Smith operation was copied by some other mills.40 The Shay locomotive, invented by a Michigan lumberman, was a geared machine known for its ability to navigate tight turns and steep grades of the sort of­ten found on the relatively primitive roadbeds of the logging roads. Oxen and big wheel carts pulled logs to the railroad, except in hilly areas where they were transported by “go-­devils,” a type of two-­wheeled “self-­loading skidder” manufactured by the Lindsey Wagon Company of Laurel, Mississippi. Logging railroads used several types of slow-­speed, high-­traction locomotives, in­clud­ing the Climax and Heisler in addition to the Shay.41 The pole and stringer roads wore out quickly. Experiments placing steel rails on top of the stringers or poles were not very successful. They were soon replaced by narrow-­gauge railroads using steel rails. The large companies were soon building extensive railroad networks of these facilities, and between the early 1890s and World War I they dominated transportation

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10. Shay locomotive of Kaul Lumber Company, built in 1905 and used on Kaul’s Syla­ cauga and Wetumpka Railroad. Photographed about 1921. Courtesy of the Forest History Society.

in the south­ern lumber industry. The W.  T. Smith Lumber Company had over one hundred miles of right-­of-­way, and the Kaul Lumber Company had seventy-­five.42 Most logging railroads were narrow gauge, but if a lumber company’s facilities were close to a commercial or main line road, it was advantageous to use standard gauge so that the equipment was compatible and could move back and forth between the two systems. Even though equipment was usually purchased sec­ondhand, it was still very expensive. Both narrow-­gauge and standard-­gauge systems cost a minimum of about $1,500 per mile. It was estimated that one logging locomotive could do the work of ten to thirty teams of oxen. The annual cost of ten teams of oxen was $9,000, that of one logging train, in­clud­ing crew, maintenance, and depreciation, was about $7,000, and the train could handle a much larger volume of logs.43 During the course of the railroad logging boom, Ala­bama had at one time or another a total of some 311 railroads, plus a few more that cannot be fully documented. Nearly nine hundred steam locomotives were used by these operations. The peak of railroad logging was in about 1910, and by the end of the Great Depression in the 1930s, most railroads were gone, victims of the hard times, destructive logging procedures, and increasing use of trucks and

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tractors. The proliferation of railroads triggered a considerable business for sawmills producing cross ties.44 It is worth noting that if a company did not have extensive timberland holdings, it was not worth it to make the large investment required to build a railroad system. The rule of thumb was that it made sense to build logging railroads only if you had enough timber to operate a large mill for twenty years. The general rule was that you needed to cut at least one million board feet of timber per mile of railroad to support its cost. The need to generate revenue to support the road led to clear-­cutting, stripping even small trees for use as fence posts and rails.45 The Kaul Lumber Company’s rail sys­tem was typical for the large opera­ tions. There were thirty miles of main line track, with forty-­five miles of branch lines running at right angles in each direction and fairly evenly spaced. When all of the timber in a branch line area was cut, the rails were taken up and relaid in another section.46 The T. R. Miller Mill Company began construction of a standard-­gauge railroad in 1904, and it had sixty miles of operating tracks and sidings. Used locomotives and other equipment were purchased from commercial railroads. The locomotives were wood fired and of several different designs. The T. R. Miller Mill Company railroad was among Ala­bama’s most successful for over forty years.47 The railroading history of the W. T. Smith Lumber Company goes back to the late 1880s, when the operation was called the Rocky Creek Lumber Company. The company purchased a locomotive (called the Florence Baldwin), thirteen flatcars, and sec­ondhand iron and steel rails from the Louisville & Nashville Railroad Company. In 1891 W. T. Smith of Birmingham purchased the company, and according to an early employee, by 1898 the company, now under the name W. T. Smith, was again purchasing sec­ondhand rails from the L & N. The company also negotiated with the L & N for right-­of-­way leases on several occasions.48 By 1895, the company was shipping nearly two million pounds of freight annually over the L & N Railroad. The company continued to have a close relationship with the L & N over the years, leasing steel rails to extend its logging road and continuing to build until it had 140 miles of track. By the early 1900s the W. T. Smith Lumber Company was operating five locomotives that it maintained in its own machine shop.49 The L & N Railroad fully understood that helping the lumber company was in its best interest, and that one of the W. T. Smith Lumber Company’s objectives was to eliminate small producers in the area. An interrailroad letter reported that leasing rails to the lumber company would “leave his capital largely in his own hand, so that he can at once proceed to buy up and otherwise secure the timber through­out as much of this section as possible, thus

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cutting off the supply from the vari­ous little mills already existent there, thus stopping them. . . . We not only place ourselves in position to handle this business, lumber and all, but we assist in developing a section of country agriculturally, whose outlet will naturally be our own line.”50 Expansion of the railroads was rapid after the company was purchased by the McGowins. In 1905, they purchased three additional narrow-­gauge locomotives, followed by yet another in 1907. By the end of that year two separate narrow-­gauge logging lines were in operation. By 1909 the W. T. Smith Lumber Company owned six locomotives, eighty-­five log cars, and fifty miles of three-­foot narrow-­gauge track. In 1912 the company acquired the Empire Lumber Company of Andalusia, with fourteen miles of standard-­ gauge track and three locomotives. One old-­timer remembered that the company at its peak had fourteen operating locomotives running over 175 to 200 miles of track.51 Other accounts indicate that the W. T. Smith Lumber Company had about 125 to 150 miles of railroad at its peak. The rails crisscrossed its lands, and to reach part of its timberland, it had to run trains over a branch line of the L & N Railroad, which, of course, was standard gauge. It bought some standard-­gauge equipment but also kept its narrow-­gauge lines and equipment. Earl M. McGowin later recalled that “we kept the narrow gauge roads, and simply added a third rail for the standard gauge trains. In the mill yards we used narrow and standard gauge trains on the same track.” McGowin also said that the company hauled logs thirty or more miles on their lines.52 Railroads were prodigious consumers of timber. While the rails, locomo­ tives, and part of the other rolling stock were made of iron and steel, the ties, buildings, trestles, telegraph poles, and cars (except for the trucks) were constructed of wood. The railroads also used wood as fuel. Forests bordering railroads were stripped of much of their timber for the ties alone. There were 2,500 railroad ties for each mile of track, and they lasted for only five to seven years. As James Boyd noted, “While the railroads were building, the principal market for the lumber produced by the sawmills was the railroads themselves. The cut was chiefly ties and timbers, but there were some boards cut that went into structures.”53 The impact was larger than simply the amount of timber utilized. As Charles S. Sargent observed in 1884: The railroads . . . using in the construction and maintenance of their permanent ways vast quantities of timber, inflict far greater injury upon the forests than is represented by the consumption of material. Railway ties . . . are almost invariably cut from vigorous young trees from 10 to

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11. Logging locomotive of W. T. Smith Lumber Company of Chapman, Ala­bama. Courtesy of the Forest History Society.

12 inches in diameter; that is, from trees which twenty or thirty years ago escaped destruction by fire or browsing animals, and which, if allowed to grow, would at the end of fifty or one hundred years longer afford immense quantities of valuable timber. The railroads . . . consume every year not far from 60,000,000 ties; the quantity of lumber in 60,000,000 ties is comparatively not very great, and would hardly be missed from our forests; but the destruction of 30,000,000 vigorous, healthy young trees, supposing that an average of two ties is cut from each tree, is a serious drain upon the forest wealth of the country and should cause grave apprehensions for the future.54 Despite their high cost, by 1913 there were over 750 miles of private railroads operating in Ala­bama south of the fall line. Some 165 miles of these were in the central pine belt, 114 in the south­ern red hills, 424 in the southwest­ern red hills, and the rest scattered in vari­ous locations.55 While there were no commercial railroads built specifically to serve the lumber producers, the existing roads constructed sidings and short lines to handle their products. The logging railroads gave the large mills a considerable advantage over small competitors until World War I. By that time, many

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of the forests were cut over, and the industry was changing. In the postwar era, the internal combustion engine was used to power trucks and tractors, and the small, portable “peckerwood” mills became competitive as they logged what was left on the lands the large companies left behind.56 Were the large investments in timber, mills, and railroads worth it to the investors? The Kaul Lumber Company, which was considered well run, made a net profit of $114,165 in 1913 and $111,804 in 1914. The company’s capital investment was about $2 million, so the net return was slightly more than 5 percent. The investors must have considered it acceptable, because during the boom years of the Ala­bama lumber industry in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a significant number of them were willing to invest in these enterprises.57 By the early twentieth century, railroads were becoming increasingly domi­ nant for most kinds of freight. Cotton was shipped primarily by railroad, and the river boats depended on other freight, in­clud­ing resin and turpentine. Lumber and tons of cypress shingles were shipped down the Chattahoochee toward the Gulf. By the time of World War I, railroads crossed the Chattahoochee and Apalachicola Rivers at several points. There were also lines paralleling these rivers linking the interior to the coast. Railroad logging was dominant.58

III. The Labor Force Both the lumber and the pulp and paper industries served by the railroads were attracted to the South and Ala­bama not only by the abundant forests, but also by the availability of cheap and plentiful workers to harvest the trees and work in the woods, mills, plants, and on the railroads. There was generally an abundant supply of relatively docile labor, both black and white. However, one Ala­bama operation in 1901 found it difficult to recruit workers. The company’s problem was possibly cultural, since its managers were all transplanted north­erners who did not communicate well with the native south­ern workforce. One booster described south­ern labor as “energetic, white, Anglo-­Saxon strain, loyal and possessing native intelligence. No labor troubles and no ‘isms.’ Plentiful supply of colored labor for pick, shovel, and saw jobs.”59 Many of the people who labored in the south­ern logging camps, sawmills, and early pulp and paper operations were local farmers, both black and white. They lived in areas that were not especially prosperous agriculturally and that had little or no industry to offer alternative employment. The only industrial

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work available in most forested areas of Ala­bama was with the forest products companies. Workers shuttled back and forth between work on the farms and employment in the logging camps and mills. They were accustomed to working long, hard hours for little income on the farm or plantation, so transition to the low-­wage, arduous, and sometimes dangerous jobs of the forest products industries did not require a major adjustment. As the forest products industries became more important, the opportunities for permanent full-­time jobs grew. J. H. Foster’s 1909 description of labor conditions in the Ala­bama lumber industry reflected the prevailing management attitudes of the time: The labor is largely negro [sic] through­out the Coastal Plain region of the State. White labor predominates in some of the mountainous parts of the north. There is a general tendency for negroes [sic] to leave the farms and go to the towns and cities where they are employed on the pub­lic works. This has led to the abandonment of many farms in the finest agricultural regions. In the forest industries little difficulty is experienced in getting labor, such as it is. Negroes are largely employed as common laborers where the exercise of intelligence is not required. The average wages are from fifty cents to one dollar per day, the larger amount usually being given by operators of forest industries. Farm labor seldom exceeds fifty cents per day. Convict labor is used extensively in some parts of the State in the lumber mills and naval stores operations.60 Hard work and forced labor in the woods and mills began early in Ala­ bama’s history. Prior to the Civil War, John T. Milner and William Hampton Flowers operated timber-­harvesting operations near Bolling, Ala­bama, using slave labor. The slaves hacked ties for the railroads being built across south­ ern Ala­bama. Even after Appomattox some lumber industry workers were not free. After the war the Milner, Caldwell and Flowers Lumber Company built what one scholar terms a “state-­of-­the-­art” sawmill and controlled “tens of thousands of acres” of prime timberland. From the 1880s through the turn of the twentieth century the company leased thousands of convict laborers from counties and the state of Ala­bama to produce lumber, cross ties, and turpentine.61 In his Pulitzer Prize–winning book, Slavery by Another Name, Douglas A. Blackmon described the use of convict labor in the south­ern Ala­bama lumber industry:

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The Samples Lumber Company sawmill outside the nearby town of Hollands . . . like virtually all lumber cutting operations in south­ern Ala­bama, Georgia, and Florida at the time, was a spectacle of horrifying abuse. Young black men—and occasionally whites—were routinely lured to remote timber camps deep in the forests with promises of solid wages and good working conditions. As of­t en as not, the camps became prisons, where men and boys were held against their will for months or years, fed and housed miserably, worked under brutal circumstances, and paid little or nothing. Hundreds of other black men were purchased from jails across the state. Since black men knew they enjoyed no protection from these abuses from local sheriffs or judges, they relied on word of mouth in Af­ri­can Ameri­can neighborhoods or among other itinerant workers to identify which camp fulfilled their advertisements and white men who could “be trusted.”62 Those who attempted to leave were of­ten pursued, tried on trumped-­up charges, and returned to the camps. Some were subjected to beatings and other forms of violence and intimidation both to warn other workers and to satisfy the urges of their supervisors. A convict sentenced in Henry County in 1915 was sold to the Henderson Land & Lumber Company and worked in a turpentine camp near Tuscaloosa, but within five months he was dead. As late as 1907 a lumberman named Henry Stephenson was holding black workers as forced laborers at a cross-­tie camp near Enterprise, Ala­bama, and was accused of shooting and killing a worker who ran away. At the beginning of the twentieth century, scores of prisoners were working in the turpentine and lumber camps of Henderson-­Boyd, Horseshoe Bend, and other companies in the forests of south­ern Ala­bama. By 1910, hundreds of Af­ri­can Ameri­can prisoners were employed in south­ern Ala­bama timber and turpentine camps operated by the Henderson Lumber Company, Horse Shoe Lumber Company, McPhaul Turpentine Company, and other operations.63 By 1913, the convict lease sys­tem had been eliminated across the South except in Ala­bama, Florida, and Georgia.64 After the Civil War, Ala­bama, like other south­ern states, leased the inmates of state prisons to work in vari­ous industries, in­clud­ing lumbering. Before 1880 most were leased to coal and iron producers and to planters, and after that time most worked for the Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company, a subsidiary of the United States Steel Corporation. From 1910 to 1914, there were an average of 2,500 convicts in the state

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prison, and of these 1,300 worked in coal mines, 75 in a state foundry, 600 on state-­owned farms and cotton mills, 175 in the turpentine fields, and 300 in sawmills.65 Ala­bama counties also leased out prisoners, but minimal numbers requirements and the costs of building housing, providing security, and apprehending escapees confined the practice to the larger companies. Among the Ala­bama companies that leased convicts were a mill built by the Stollenwork family in Butler County in the early 1890s and a mill built by E. L. Moore of River Falls, Ala­bama.66 The lumber industry also used immigrant contract laborers, mostly from south­ern and east­ern Europe, who were contracted from east­ern agents. The labor agents agreed to furnish a certain number of men at a stipulated weekly wage. The company of­ten paid the railroad fare to get the workers to Ala­ bama, and this was later deducted from their wages. The Kaul Lumber Company experimented with Italian workers in their operations near Tuscaloosa in 1906–1907, and the Jackson Lumber Company of Lockhart, Ala­bama, also used contract laborers. The companies found that the foreign contract laborers did not work as efficiently as local Af­ri­can Ameri­cans and whites, and workers were dissatisfied with the nature of the work, housing, and diet. The Jackson Lumber Company also ran into legal trouble when it was charged by the federal government with peonage. Most Ala­bama lumber companies preferred Ameri­ can workers, black or white, over foreign laborers.67 There was seldom a labor shortage in the lumber industry before World War I, because the forested areas of Ala­bama generally had marginal agricultural production and little or no industry. Lumbering was the most ready source of cash income, and jobs in the woods and mills were prized. Little boys in sawmill towns grew up wanting to be loggers or to work in the mill. One W. T. Smith Lumber Company veteran of forty-­five years reflected this view in a poem published in the company paper in 1951. My old age is slowly creeping on me My toils of life will soon be done. I would like to tell of my long stay With the W. T. Smith Lumber Company And just how I first begun. To make this very plain so that you may understand, I will start back when I was just a little boy and playing in the sand. When I heard their log train blowing

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It gave my tender heart the blues I would say some day I will be a man And I will work with some of their crews. This little talk I had while playing in the sand It really came true Except I did not wait to become a man To work with some of their crews. I only waited on till the age of seventeen Before in one of their crews I began to drive a team. Driving a team seemed to me like fun And I drove on until I passed the age of twenty-­one And I felt like many a dollar I had earned. Then in order to make more than a team driver could ever make I asked if a job of log sawing I might take. I thought the job of log sawing was mighty fine When I began to cut those virgin pines I like so well to saw them down. I liked to hear the rumble they made when they hit the ground. Then I felt like an awful man And why I felt so I can’t hardly understand.68 The strong paternalistic tradition of south­ern agriculture was replicated in the forest products industries. Landowners who employed laborers used a top-­down managerial style. Workers were expected to follow orders and have little or no input into the ways things were done. It was also the norm for workers to be racially segregated in both their nonworking and working lives. There were exceptions, as in the case of the Kaul Lumber Company, where Af­ri­can Ameri­cans were occasionally promoted to foreman positions.69 The Scotch Lumber Company imported hundreds of Af­ri­can Ameri­can workers, which caused tension with the native white inhabitants of the area.70 Lumbermen argued that their workers were well taken care of and contented. Unions, strikes, and labor violence were confined, many of them said, to other parts of the country. This attitude is well reflected in an 1885 editorial in the South­ern Lumberman. We turn with pride and pleasure from a perusal of the labor troubles, and mob violence that attends them in the North and Northwest, to

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a contemplation of the calm and peaceful relations that have marked this feature of the social history of the South­ern states since the war. But the most gratifying feature about the whole wonderful change from “slave” to “free labor,” and the wonderful impetus given to manufacturing industries of late years in this war-­desolated section, has to be in the fact that labor has been respected and has received all the compensation that it earned. There has never been, in all these hard years since the war, a single serious strike, of any outrage on the part of the working classes, that originated in any of the South­ern States.71 The Ala­bama lumber operators were of­t en termed paternalistic by contemporaries and by scholars since that time. Were they? Perception is of­t en reality in the eyes of the observer. For example, in Escambia County, where there had been battles over union organization in the 1890s, by the early 1900s the union (the Knights of Labor) had been broken, and the manufacturers pretty much determined the conditions of employment in the woods and mills. In 1902 the mills were operating double shifts and producing record volumes of timber. In that atmosphere, T. R. Miller, president of the Cedar Creek Mill Company, told his workers that if they cut seven thousand pieces of sawed timber during April, each would be given a straw hat. The workers cut 7,400 pieces, a company record, and earned their reward. Paternalism? Benevolent paternalism? The local newspaper, hardly an objective source, reported the events in very positive terms: “On last Saturday each employee of the liberal firm came to town and received a nice hat. Such acts as these on the part of the employer are appreciated by the men, and if all the mill firms should adopt such a policy, strikes and labor troubles would be unknown.”72 Many workers and observers might argue that higher wages and safer work­ing conditions would be preferable to straw hats. However, one black worker remembered that “we, the Negroes, are very proud of the example of Mr. Miller, for early in 1890, when there was no sale for timber, Mr. Miller fed one hundred or more Negroes for three months during a shut down.”73 Some argue that the paternalism of south­ern lumber operators represented a continuation of the plantation tradition, others that it was an expression of the new age of scientific management. In any case, company towns, commissaries, and rigid separation of workers by race and job category were common features of the system, although there were apparently exceptions in job categories at some companies.74 In fact, Escambia County was typical in that workers in the area’s lumber industry did not share fully in its success. They suffered from low wages, hazardous working conditions, payment with com-

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pany scrip, and poor housing. Employers in the area vigorously opposed any attempts at union organization.75 Nevertheless, there was occasional union activity among Ala­bama lumber workers. In the 1880s there were strikes along the Gulf Coast. At the turn of the twentieth century there were again strikes along the Gulf Coast, and the Knights of Labor were active in the area.76 Shortly after the turn of the century, workers of the Harold Mill Company at Brewton were trying to organize a local of the Knights of Labor and were threatening a strike. The president of the company told them that if they struck he would close the mill. When they struck he followed through. Later the operation was sold, but the mill never reopened, and the two hundred workers lost their jobs. It should also be noted that workers sometimes found other weapons of retaliation. One scholar has termed the extent of arson in the mills “astonishing.”77 Escambia County was a center of Knights of Labor activity in the 1890s. Despite rising lumber prices wages remained stagnant, and the Knights were able to establish local assemblies at Mason, Boykin, Brewton, Canoe, Atmore, Pollard, Kirkland, Hammac, Flomaton, and Harold. The Knights claimed a membership of over six hundred in Brewton, a town of twenty-­five hundred people. In 1899 the union went on strike through­out Escambia County. Some companies replaced union members with scabs and some cut wages, but the union was momentarily carried along on a wave of enthusiasm. In 1900, the Brewton assembly hosted a meeting of all south­ern regional lumber associations, and thousands attended, with fifteen hundred marching through town. Later in the year a Knights member was elected to the state legislature from the district representing Escambia County. More importantly, the Knights dominated the local labor market and wages momentarily rose. Knights of Labor organizers also fomented a brief strike at the T. R. Miller Mill Company, which had an impact on T. R. Miller himself. The strike “affected him emotionally and had a serious effect upon his health. He could not sleep, and his digestion suffered.” However, a decline in lumber prices, wage cuts, mixed success in a number of strikes, and internal conflicts, in­clud­ing racial tensions, led to the union’s rapid decline in 1900–1901.78 When the manager of the Kaul Lumber Company plant noticed workers holding meetings behind one of the mills, he directed a Pinkerton detective to infiltrate their ranks. One of the ringleaders was fired. Later, when machinists joined a union, company owner Hugh Kaul said that was all right, but they should remember that he was “still going to damn well run the company.” The Kaul Lumber Company occasionally hired undercover agents to circulate among its employees and file reports on those who exhibited

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union sympathies. The company also took measures to keep Af­ri­can Ameri­ can workers from migrating north or being lured away by labor recruiters from other states. When the Knights of Labor were trying to organize Ala­bama lumber workers at the turn of the century, the Alger-­Sullivan Lumber Company began to recruit Af­ri­can Ameri­cans to provide controllable unskilled labor. In fact, in 1901, the general manager of the firm told one of the owners that “the Knights of Labor are a troublesome feature, most of our men are members and we believe those who are not are frightened away.”79 Labor in the industry was his­tori­cally cheap. In 1907, the wages for Ala­ bama sawmill workers averaged only 3.1 cents per hour, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. But wages in other Ala­bama industries were low as well. One study comparing the W. T. Smith Lumber Company’s wage scale in the late 1890s with that of an Ala­bama iron manufacturer showed that the wage rates were similar.80 What about the workers’ purchasing power? Workers were largely restricted to shopping in company stores or commissaries, and most writers agree that prices in these facilities were generally inflated and that the selection was of­ten limited. However, it should also be noted that most small-­ town residents of this time had limited opportunities for comparison shopping. Small towns had few stores, and selection was limited and prices high. Chain stores had not yet appeared, although by the late nineteenth century there were mail-­order merchants like Sears and Roebuck that had greater selections and somewhat lower prices.81 The T. R. Miller Mill Company built the Cedar Creek Store in 1903. It operated the store until 1950, when its management was turned over to a company that operated several lumber company commissaries. This arrangement lasted until 1993, when, with the advent of Wal-­Mart and other large discount stores, it was closed.82 The workers of­t en did not have cash to purchase from mail-­order companies. Rather than requiring payment in cash, lumber company stores and commissaries of­ten offered merchandise on credit. In fact, only one Ala­bama lumber company in 1880 reported that it paid its employees entirely in cash. In 1902, the W. T. Smith Lumber Company still paid with merchandise checks.83 While workers were not technically convicts, their plight in the naval stores industry was not much different or better than that of prisoners. Until the twentieth century, when turpentine and resin could be distilled from longleaf pine stumps or produced as a by-­product of kraft pulp manufacture, they were distilled from crude gum collected in the forest. Until World War II the heart of the sys­tem was the turpentine camp. The

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camps were typically located in privately owned or leased forests and varied markedly in size. They usually included houses for a woods rider and a camp manager, a commissary, a meeting hall, housing for the workers, and a still. One student of the industry described the workers and their situation in terms that are far from “po­liti­cally correct” but that undoubtedly capture the attitudes of employers and supervisors in the business toward their workers. Both woods rider and camp manager were masters in the art of ­handling turpentine negroes [sic]. These men knew negro [sic] labor as no other white men did. They could tell when a woods hand was playing sick or when one half crazed with liquor was about to run amuck. They knew how to slip into a rival turpentine camp under cover of darkness and entice with honeyed words a good chipper from his employer. The turpentine negro [sic] was different from all others of his race. He was a real product of the piney woods. Simple, happy, and carefree, he was content to work ten or twelve hours a day in the woods by himself, pausing now and then to give vent to a strange but melodious half cry-­half yodel, clearly heard for a mile or more. He liked, too, the free and easy atmosphere of the camp quarters. Here his credit at the commissary was most elastic. This was his home—a home he kept well stocked with sprawling children and “lice” dogs. It was a home far from sheriffs and jails. There the law was provided by men who understood him and whom he in turn understood. He was as much a tar heel as his “boss man” and could probably trace his lineage directly to one of the colored slaves who gathered wood three hundred years earlier for the first tar pit on the Cape Fear River.84 The leading student of the convict lease sys­tem describes the camps as follows: “Imprisoned in stockades or cells, chained together at night or held under armed guards on horseback, the turpentine farms were bleak outposts miles from any chance of comfort or contact with the outside world. Workers were forced to buy their own food and clothes from a camp commissary and charged usurious interest rates on the salary advances used to pay for the goods—typically at least 100 percent.”85 Turpentine operators regarded a crop as consisting of 10,500 cuts or faces. One chipper could cut approximately 5,000 to 7,000 faces a week. The method of getting the resin from the tree changed over time, and workers were paid by the contents of each barrel of crude gum dipped. Getting the resin from the tree to the still required nineteen to twenty chippers, six or seven dippers, and two woodsmen. The barrels were hauled on ox-­drawn carts or on wag-

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ons pulled by mules. There were two or three workers in the still, in­clud­ing a cooper who made the wooden barrels, a bookkeeper, and the distillers.86 During World War II, with much of their traditional labor force lost to military conscription, the lumber manufacturers turned in part to prisoners of war to supplement their workforce. The lumber and pulpwood industries were struck by labor shortages during the war, and furnishing POW labor for those industries became a high priority for the War Labor Board. By 1945, “one third of all pulpwood in the South and in Appalachia was cut by POWs. The pulpwood and lumber industries used a total of 165,743 man/months of POW labor from June 1944 to August 1945.”87 Floyd McGowin of the W. T. Smith Lumber Company later remembered that during the war the company for the first time used women for some of the jobs in the plant and also turned to the use of prisoners of war. A large contingent of captured Germans of the Afrika Korps had been shipped to the southeast­ern United States, in­clud­ing some held in a POW camp at Alice­ville in west­ern Ala­bama. The Aliceville camp was one of the largest new German POW camps, holding about six thousand prisoners in six separate enclosures. Julian McGowin negotiated with the army to secure two hundred prisoners for the duration of the war. The prisoners were housed at an old Ala­bama Highway Department camp north of Greenville. The prisoners arrived in 1943 to work for W. T. Smith, and they were assigned to logging crews to fell trees and cut them into log lengths. Each work­ ing party of Germans was accompanied by a guard with an M1 carbine. While the performance of POWs in the south­ern lumber and pulpwood industries varied, a Red Cross report on prisoners from Camp Greenville noted that “all these (POWs) work with Ameri­can civilian workers. They demand from POWs one third the output of a civilian worker. . . . The POWs do not always achieve that.”88 The T. R. Miller Mill Company also used German prisoners. Between thirty and fifty prisoners were held at the Evergreen Prisoner of War Camp and were employed by T. R. Miller for about eighteen months. One Ameri­ can employee remembered that “they were very good workers, and many enjoyed working out in the sun, where they would strip off their shirts and get a good South­ern tan. They made no trouble. I guess they preferred working in the woods to being on the Russian front.”89 The rebirth of the lumber industry after World War II was not without labor-­management difficulties. In the 1950s, as part of “Operation Dixie,” the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) attempted to organize the workers of the W. T. Smith Lumber Company. Earl M. McGowin said in 1976, “I remember when we had a long and bitter strike in the fifties. The CIO . . .

12. Placing crude gum from tree cup into carry­ ing bucket. Photograph probably taken in the 1930s by a US ­Forest ­Service photographer. Courtesy of the Ala­bama Department of Archives and History.

13. Turpentine still in the Gulf Coast pinelands. Photograph taken in 1939 by Farm Security Administration photographer Marion Post Wolcott. Courtesy of the Ala­bama Department of Archives and History.

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sent a man here to do a story for their paper—a tabloid. And he headed that story ‘Chapman, Ala­bama, lonely feudal outpost.’ We laughed and said he misspelled feudal. As far as we were concerned it was futile. Nobody wins a strike. After three bitter years, we were still here and they were gone.”90 Like many other south­ern lumber producers, the W.  T. Smith Lumber Company recognized the organization of its workers by the International Woodworkers of America, a CIO union, in 1946, in­clud­ing a provision that called for the mandatory deduction of union dues from an employee’s pay for deposit into the union treasury. This was called a “dues checkoff.” There was a brief strike in 1949. The union contract ran until 1955, and as the time came for renegotiation and renewal, the company decided that it would not renew the dues checkoff. The union refused to reach an agreement on this basis and on July 20, 1955, announced that its members were going on strike. There were charges that the union was harassing the company, with incidents at the Chapman and Greenville mills. The union filed several charges against W. T. Smith with the National Labor Relations Board, none of which were upheld. The declaration of the strike was soon followed by violence at Chapman involving dynamite, firebombs, firearms, and other weapons. The plant was closed down for nine weeks, and then it reopened with workers who were willing to cross picket lines and return and others who were newly hired. The strike continued for several months with recurring incidents. Some workers were evicted from company houses after several months of not paying rent. A number of union men were arrested on vari­ous charges. Finally, as the unemployed workers found their union and in­di­vidual financial situations deteriorating, the strike ended in 1956.91 There was also a brief strike against the T. R. Miller Mill Company. Ed Leigh McMillan became president of the company in 1950. By that time there had long been interest by the International Woodworkers of America union of the CIO in organizing the company. In 1948, the National Labor Relations Board conducted a vote on union status, and the union narrowly won. The union contract provided for a dues checkoff, and when the time came for a renegotiation of the contract, the company refused to continue the checkoff. McMillan stated that “we just didn’t feel right about taking money from a man’s paycheck and turning it over to a Union for—well—for whatever they might do with it. We knew that even some men who had joined the Woodworkers objected to the tactic, and we held firm.” The union called what it termed “an unadjourned Union meeting,” namely a work stoppage or strike, and the mill continued to operate with nonunion workers, although the company claimed it would not hire strikebreakers. The conflict dragged on for months, until the union finally withdrew in 1955.92

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IV. Working in the Woods and Mills Work in the woods changed very little during the late nineteenth century. The major technological change was the introduction of the crosscut saw, but it, as well as specialized wagons to haul logs to the mill, was just beginning to appear in the South. It was not commonly adopted in the South until around the turn of the century. Part of the resistance was due to the elevated status of skilled axmen, who could cut logs about as smoothly as men with crosscut saws.93 When felling a tree an axman first made a notch in the side where he wanted it to fall and then chopped on the opposite side. This part of the job did not require great skill, and the crosscut saw was more efficient. However, axmen were still favored for hewing logs into square timbers and spars. The square timbers were used in vari­ous construction projects and were particularly needed as railroad ties. During the late nineteenth century, as main line and spur railroads were being constructed in Ala­bama and across the South, each mile of track required approximately 2,500 to 3,000 ties. This was before the development of modern wood preservatives, and railroads typically replaced two hundred ties per mile annually. The hewing of spars for sailing ships was more specialized and exacting. While the shapes varied, most were octagonal, and it usually required a full day for one axman to complete a spar.94 The early crosscut saws were troublesome. They became choked with sawdust, and resin from the south­ern pines adhered to the teeth and prevented them from cutting. Manufacturers soon refined the teeth so that cutting teeth alternated with raker teeth, which removed the sawdust. There were different patterns for different kinds of wood. Workers quickly learned to sprinkle kerosene on the saws to eliminate the gum. Crosscut saws tripled labor productivity. Unlike the ax, they required no special skill. When felling a tree, sawyers cut a notch with an ax on the side toward which they wanted the tree to fall. The sawyers then began sawing on the opposite side, using wooden wedges to keep the weight of the tree off the saw. Stumps two to four feet high were commonly left, but as timber became more valuable there was pressure to leave lower stumps. Eventually lumber operators generally agreed that stump heights should not exceed the diameter of the tree, with a twenty-­inch maximum. Logging crews consisted of two men. The fallers or timber cutters cut down or felled the tree. The buckers removed the top and limbs and cut the tree into lengths, or bucked it. The lengths depended on the size of the tree and the needs of the mill. The timber cutters used axes, crosscut saws, and wedges

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and usually carried a bottle containing coal oil or kerosene to lubricate the saw and remove resin from it. Once the tree was felled and bucked, it was ready for the trip to the mill.95 The first, or “butt,” log was normally cut sixteen feet in length, while the remainder varied. Cutting the trees close to the ground became ever more important as the companies became more economically or environmentally conscious. This required the workers who operated the saws, even in the later age of power saws, to bend over in an uncomfortable position. With the working day stretching from sunup to sundown, the effect on men’s bodies had to be crippling.96 As late as the late 1940s loggers for the pulp and paper mills were using two-­man maul saws as the primary means of felling trees, but by the mid-­1950s, Ala­bama loggers had Poulan, Homelite, and McCullough one-­man power saws.97 F. E. “Buck” Stabler began working in the Ala­bama forest products industry in the 1930s. Remembering the evolution of pulpwood logging in a 1999 interview, Stabler said that at first pulpwood was harvested with crosscut saws. Then, he said, “The Sandvik saw man came around and made monkeys out of them, with the one-­man bow saw.” Next was the “wheel-­type circular saws that got almost as many arms and legs as it did pulpwood bolts.” Finally came the chain saws. “It started out with the old two-­man saw that the lumber industry had,” said Stabler, but then “they shrunk to one-­man saws.” Finally, the feller buncher was adopted, which cut off a tree with a low stump. ­Stabler recalled that “long-­logging for saw mill logs and all that came in about the same time. You didn’t see much short length logging.”98 Bob Nonnemacher went to work for International Paper in the late 1940s and, in a 1998 interview, remembered working as a conservation forester in that period. He recalled that “they were cutting up wood with hand saws; cross-­cut saws. You could tell what time of day that the timber was cut by how far down they were leaning during the day. The stumps got higher and higher.” He also observed that “part of that job was to go out with those logging guys and try to teach them about fires because they would always start a warming fire and it’d get away from them.”99 Labor in the woods was dangerous, with the obvious possibilities of being injured by the saws or axes. A greater threat was falling trees and limbs. Medical care in the woods was rudimentary, so victims were ordinarily hauled back to the logging camps or mill towns. Workers on the logging trains could also be injured loading the cars or coupling them with the old link and pin coupling systems, or in boiler explosions or train wrecks. Ala­bama did not have workmen’s compensation laws until 1920. In the earlier period workers simply thought of injuries as part of the job. The legal

14. Bottomland loggers using axes. From the author’s collection.

15. Loggers using crosscut saw. From the author’s collection.

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structure protected companies against injury claims, but most provided assistance for wounded workers. They employed company doctors, but workers were of­ten assessed a monthly fee for medical services. While most of the accidents occurred in the woods and on the railroads, there were also injuries in the mills, in­clud­ing those caused by boiler explosions and flying shrapnel from disintegrating saws.100 The atmosphere of a railroad logging operation was described in colorful detail by one writer: “It was an awesome scene to visit. The once serene and towering trees fell, one by one, in slow, rushing crunches to the slicing of the saw. The air was filled with locomotive smoke, the tang of pine resin, the shouts of men, the jangle of harnesses. The saw filers’ rasping, the cracks of the whip, the long whistle from the train about to depart—all crowded around as in a factory without walls or roof.”101 The introduction to the best book on railroad logging in Ala­bama notes that “overloaded trains, hotboxes, washouts, derailments, collapsed trestles, landslides, boiler explosions, bad track, stray animals, collisions, run-­aways, unsafe equipment, poor brakes, and other hazards” made laboring on these roads extremely dangerous, not to mention “a general lack of discipline, occasional bad judgement, and streaks of independence on the part of train crews.” Many crews kept a jug of moonshine whiskey handy to deal with timber rattlesnake bites. Ordinarily the only brakes were on the locomotive, and the log cars were of­ten connected by long timbers with link and pin couplers on each end that had a propensity to devour fingers. In addition, doctors and clinics were of­ten available only in the sawmill town, and as a result of accidents in the forest “many good men died under a log or were left crippled for life due to the lack of proper medical care.”102 The camps were ordinarily close to logging operations. Most workers lived in the camps, with the work animals domiciled nearby. The men lived in tents, shacks, or, in more permanent camps, larger buildings. As c­ ompanies adopted railroad logging, workers, and sometimes their families, lived in portable dwellings that could be loaded on trains and moved. Other railroad camps housed men in dormitory cars, old boxcars with double-­decked bunks, known as “Shaking Jacobs,” twenty to a car. There was a kitchen car in the middle of the train, with dining cars on either side. Many, if not most, of the men were farmers, who had nearby farms and saw their families only on Sundays. The living and eating quarters were segregated. A fairly typical example of a woods worker was J. M. “Cap” Mitchell, a small farmer who also worked off and on in W. T. Smith logging camps. In 1914 he earned $1.40 daily for driving ox teams, but later his wages were cut to $1.10 for driving mules. Later he worked at clearing and plowing land on

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16. Loggers using power equipment. Courtesy of the Ala­bama Forestry Association.

the company farm for one dollar a day. In about 1928, Mitchell was snaking trees when he was hit by a tree that broke his jaw and knocked out several teeth. He later worked for the company “looking over the woods” for one dollar a day during the Great Depression.103 In 1920 the W. T. Smith Lumber Company operated four logging camps, located from ten to thirty miles from the company mills in all directions. There were two logging general managers, and each camp had a super­inten­ dent assisted by a foreman who supervised sawing, skidding, loading, and hauling. He also oversaw the building and maintenance of railroad facilities, the kitchen and sleeping quarters, the mechanical shop, and timber ­cruising.104 Logging and lumbering in late-­nineteenth-­century Ala­bama were considered by most companies and workers to be temporary pursuits that would end when the forests were cut over and the lumbermen moved on to other stands, states, and regions. As noted before, few thought that sustainable forestry and reforestation were economically possible. Therefore, the logging camps and most sawmill towns had an aura of impermanence. Living quarters were usually rudimentary, and the companies did not think it necessary to construct durable schools, churches, stores, or recreational facilities.

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However, many people who worked and lived in these communities remember them fondly. One reason is that most small towns in the region at the time were not very impressive physically or replete with cultural, educational, and recreational opportunities. In some ways the sawmill towns may have been better physically than neighboring settlements. There were of­ten electric lights powered by the generators that ran the mill. For example, in the town of Century, Florida, the Alger-­Sullivan Lumber Company sawmill provided running water and electricity. Children could swim in the mill pond. And over time, especially when the companies began to see the possibilities of long-­range operation, the houses and other facilities improved. In some cases, the companies allowed workers and their families to travel on the logging railroads on Sundays. They could go from the logging camps to town and to church. Benches were installed on flatcars for this purpose, and a barrel of drinking water was usually supplied for refreshment. There were also cases where a member of the logging crew would “borrow” a locomotive for an illicit trip to town. Company officials sometimes gave parties and picnics for their workers and tried to find work for them when business was slow or the mill was closed down.105 William “Will” Harrigan, one of the driving forces behind the rise of the Scotch Lumber Company, ran the company with an iron hand and worked to keep his workers from organizing. The company controlled the town of Fulton, from the houses to the stores and social services. The workers were paid with nontransferable coupons that were redeemable at the company commissary. On the other hand, Harrigan’s son, Billy, was later famous for touring company work sites in his automobile and taking a personal interest in the workers. One longtime Scotch employee remembered that “Scotch is known for the fair way they treat their employees.”106 The Harrigans provided other amenities at Fulton. They dug a swimming hole on the Old Mill Road for residents to use during the summer. They brought in an instructor to teach dancing. The community center, Woodman Hall, became the locale for weekend dances and parties. They built Clarke County’s first golf course, as well as its first motion-picture theater, the ­Airdome.107 Some of the company towns were built with aspirations to a higher standard. The Kaul Lumber Company’s new mill town at Kaulton, near Tuscaloosa, was built in nine months and opened in 1912. The complex included a sawmill, facilities for a planing mill, kilns, a machine shop, rail lines, and the company town. Kaul employed more than 800 workers, 250 of whom were loggers who lived with their families at logging camps in “portable shacks.”

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17. Logging camp of Scotch Lumber Company near Fulton, Ala­bama. Courtesy of the Ala­bama Forestry Association.

John Kaul, like the railroad car entrepreneur George M. Pullman, was an apostle of “welfare capitalism.” He saw the company town as a means of creating a positive working environment and good relationships between workers and management. At Kaulton, the lumberman visualized a clean and attractive community that would be “calculated to attract labor, and also to raise the standard of living, which is to raise efficiency.”108 Kaulton was segregated, with white families living in five-­or six-­room single-­family dwellings or duplexes. The houses had kitchens and large rooms with eleven-­foot-­high ceilings. The doors and windows had screens to protect against insects, and there were facilities for workers to keep chickens, cows, and horses. The company gave prizes for the best vegetable gardens and yards, and there were ball fields, playgrounds, a club and bathhouse, a school, and a company store. Workers also had access to company physicians. Unlike many lumber company workers, Kaul employees were paid in cash, and the company store competed with other outlets in the Tuscaloosa area for their business. Af­ri­can Ameri­can employees and their families lived in a separate area, about a half mile from the white residences. They apparently had similar facilities and services, in­clud­ing a separate club. There was a boardinghouse for single workers, and a church that was constructed with company funds and contributions from the workers. The houses of black workers were smaller

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than those of whites and were located closer to the mill and the railroad tracks. The prizes for best yard and garden were smaller than for their white counterparts. The residents of Kaulton, black and white, paid rent for their houses and contributed to pay for sanitation and community facilities such as ball fields. Kaul argued that paying rent allowed workers to maintain a feeling of independence rather than dependence on the company.109 The eventual fate of some company towns is interesting. The W. E. Belcher Company of Centreville sold out to Hammermill, which acquired some fifty houses and a commissary along with the land and manufacturing facilities. Part of the housing complex was an area called ZuZu, where the black employees and mill hands lived. Hammermill surveyed the area and gave notice that on an announced date they would sell the houses and land plots to the residents for one dollar. Over a two-­day period all of the houses became the property of the residents.110 In the railroad logging camps the sleeping and dining facilities were segregated, with separate dormitory and dining cars for Af­ri­can Ameri­cans and whites. The kitchen car turned out family-­style meals. The meals were adequate and the same for both races. Breakfast usually included fried fat pork, biscuits, and syrup and coffee, with occasional oatmeal. Supper was boiled meat with black-­eyed peas or navy beans, cornbread or biscuits, and coffee. Lunches similar to dinner were sent out to the men in the woods. The workers ate at long tables flanked by benches.111 Housing was in bunk cars or simple bungalows built to fit on railroad cars. They were of­t en constructed over metal frames, with hooks on the top so that they could be picked up by log loaders, placed onto a railroad car, and transported to the next logging site.112 Breakfast was served before dawn, and the standard workday in the woods was from sunrise until sunset. Getting the logs to a stream or railroad for transfer to the mill may have been the most difficult part of logging. On the other hand the locomotive engineer, or “hogger,” was of­ten the highest-­paid and most envied worker on the logging operations, with a salary and responsibilities equivalent to the camp superintendent.113 One account of the Scotch Lumber Company’s history details the job of the engineer: A typical day for an engineer started at sun-­up with breakfast in the camp dining hall. . . . The “night hostlers,” which was the name given to the engine’s night maintenance crew, would have the engine serviced, loaded with coal, and prepared to make its day’s run. The train departed

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18. Lumber mill of Kaul Lumber Company at Kaulton, Ala­bama. Courtesy of the Ala­bama Forestry Association.

with crews on board and made its way to the logging sites. When ten to twelve cars were loaded with either 16 or 32 ft. logs, the train was considered full and the engineer’s job began. The trainsmen fired the engine and the train started its trip to the mill. . . . Three men were required to keep the engine fired with coal. . . . The train pulled into the mill and dumped the logs in a mill pond. . . . After the logs were unloaded, the train was fired up and headed back out into the woods for another load. An engineer began his job making ninety cents a day and advanced with prosperity to around four to six dollars a day during the latter part of the era.114

V. Working in the Pulp and Paper Industry Labor shortages during World War I and the arrival of the pulp and paper industry spurred efforts toward greater mechanization and efficiency. During the early 1930s pulpwood producers experimented, mostly unsuccessfully,

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with several types of portable chain saws. More successful was the circular power saw, used for felling and bucking, which was introduced during World War II. Finally, in the 1950s, a successful portable chain saw was developed, and it became the essential pulpwood cutting tool.115 In the 1940s and 1950s there were also improvements in skidding, loading, and transportation. Mechanical skidding machines with wheel-­and crawler-­ type tractors were used in skidding, and portable equipment was developed that combined bucking and loading operations. Finally, after 1950, a number of machines were produced that combined harvesting steps. While expensive, they operated at high production rates and reduced the need for labor. One of the most celebrated was the Busch combine, invented by T. N. Busch of the International Paper Company. The machine could cut sixteen cords of pulpwood daily with a two-­man crew. In less than two minutes, it could fell a tree and lift it and pull it through a delimbing device, simultaneously cutting it into five-­foot-­three-­inch bolts. Then it bundled the bolts, one cord at a time, and stacked them vertically for transportation by another machine to a trailer. Longtime International Paper (IP) forester and executive Bob Nonnemacher said that it “mechanized wood unloading. A change in the whole industry came with that.”116 Technology further transformed pulpwood harvesting in the 1970s. The new equipment was expensive. Whereas the old one-­truck producers had an investment of about $15,000, the costs of the new equipment escalated that fig­ure to between $100,000 and $200,000. Successful producers became better trained and educated and spent more time in supervisory and managerial activities. Mills and concentration yards began to accept long-­log pulpwood (over five feet in length) and became more sophisticated in maintaining wood supply to anticipate changes in needs. They apportioned orders on a “least cost” basis to the mill, and since prices were generally about equal through­out the procurement region, cost differentials were of­ten determined by transportation expenses. Railroad loading areas with high freight rates were at a disadvantage in comparison with truckwood areas. Producers were forced to alter the size of their crews and work more or fewer days depending on mill demand. Most workers had few other employment opportunities.117 In the early 1950s the International Paper Company’s previously mentioned Tom Busch, who worked at Georgetown, South Carolina, developed a machine that had slings and a crane that could unload a truckload of wood. By the 1960s mechanization and the use of longwood had changed pulpwood production. There were three types of production: nonmechanized short­wood, mechanized shortwood, and mechanized longwood. Nonmecha­

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nized short­wood crews consisted typically of three or four members and were the most labor intensive. Mechanized shortwood systems varied, some using only tractors for skidding, others using vari­ous machines ranging from hydraulic felling shears to prehaulers equipped with hydraulic loaders. Longwood systems were the most expensive and the most productive. They required large tracts of timber and sophisticated machinery to convert the long logs to shortwood or chips.118 The paper industry’s migration into the South created jobs with higher wages than those in other industries. In addition, for every worker employed in a mill, two were needed in the woods to supply the wood. Producing pulpwood provided desperately needed income for south­ern farmers, who both supplied part of the wood and found part-­time employment during slack farming periods.119 The labor scene in the south­ern pulp and paper industry was g­ enerally peaceful. The industry did not become significant until the 1930s, and unionization did not begin until the latter part of that decade. Companies accepted unions reluctantly in order to maintain peace, production, and profits. Wage rates in the industry were relatively high compared to other south­ern employers and were higher than those earned in other parts of the country, excluding the Pacific Northwest. Workers did relatively well in the areas of wages and hours, health care, retirement, and other fringe benefits. One of the major labor problems in the south­ern pulp and paper industry was discriminatory treatment of Af­ri­can Ameri­cans. During the 1960s, a time of national civil rights struggle, this was somewhat resolved through labor and management negotiations, as well as pressure or mandates from the federal government.120 When International Paper was unionized, the union of woods workers also represented the mill workers. Labor rates were higher in the mill than the woods, but Bob Nonnemacher, a longtime IP executive, noted that “they [the unions] recognize that woodlands people are living out in these small, rural communities where things are a lot less expensive than they are around a big mill town. . . . So, they acquiesced to having some lower rates in woodlands.”121 The south­ern pulp and paper industry had relatively low labor turnover because of its relatively high wages and good fringe benefits, and also because mills were usually located in areas that had few alternative employment opportunities. As the technology improved and automation took the jobs of many production and maintenance workers, there were new opportunities for professional and technical workers, and most displaced workers were absorbed in other jobs as the industry grew.122 Not until the 1960s did the forty-­hour workweek become standard in the

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19. Logging camp of Scotch Lumber Company near Fulton, Ala­bama, in 1948. Courtesy of the Forest History Society.

industry. Before that time, the pulp and paper manufacturers generally used a seven-­day, three-­shift system, with the paper mill machinery running around the clock and operated by four rotating crews who worked an average of 42 hours weekly. The average workweek ranged from 52.7 hours in 1923 to 39.1 hours during the Great Depression, and 43.8 hours during World War II.123 Wages in the pulp and paper industry were about in the middle for manufacturing industries and at the higher level for producers of ­nondurable goods, increasing rapidly after the 1930s. They went up 127 percent from 1939 to 1949, 58 percent from 1949 to 1958, and 74 percent from 1958 until 1971. The wage rates were relatively uniform within the South, with some interregional differentials. Large companies, like International Paper, tended to establish patterns that were then followed by other companies in their negotiations with the unions. Over time, the wage differentials between skilled and unskilled workers narrowed considerably. Workers in unionized mills did better than those in nonunion operations. South­ern workers’ wages increased relative to those

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20. International Paper Company’s mechanical feller buncher called the Busch combine. Courtesy of Keville Larson.

in the Northeast, and after 1940, they were consistently higher than the national average.124 The industry employed many skilled and semiskilled workers who operated and repaired pulp-­and paper-­making equipment. Over half the workers were operators, while craftsmen, laborers and service workers, and clerical employees each made up 10 to 15 percent. The remainder were professional, managerial, and sales personnel. Most workers were white males, and until 1940 few Af­ri­can Ameri­cans worked in the industry. Between 1920 and 1930 only 3 percent of paper workers were black nationally, and that rose to only 4 percent by 1940. Things began to change as the industry moved into the South, which had a much larger percentage of Af­ri­can Ameri­can residents than other parts of the country, and as a result of labor shortages during World War II. By 1940, some 19 percent of south­ern paper workers were Af­ri­can Ameri­can, and by 1950, this had risen to 20.8 percent. While some worked in positions formerly reserved for whites, the pulp and paper manufacturers had a peculiar

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seniority system, which, coupled with hiring practices, resulted in discrimination against Af­ri­can Ameri­can workers. Af­ri­can Ameri­cans were of­t en denied admission to jobs that would allow them to move up the seniority ladder to the higher-­paying tasks.125 As one writer described the situation: Segregation was widespread in the south­ern paper industry. Blacks were hired for certain jobs and whites for others. Blacks were employed to load and unload wood and operate small equipment in the woodyard. In the pulp mill they had the hot, messy, and difficult task of cleaning slag out of furnaces. In the paper mill they were used to gather wastepaper and broke for reprocessing—another hard, dirty job. Prior to the use of automatic equipment, blacks were used to shovel coal for boilers. In addition, the black was used as a general laborer and janitor. Whites only were employed to operate the paper machines, heavy equipment, the power and recovery boilers and as skilled maintenance laborers. Moreover, cafeterias, locker rooms, recreation, and other facilities were maintained on a strictly segregated basis.126 Unionization in the paper industry dated back to the 1890s, when the United Brotherhood of Paper Workers was chartered. Over the years there were organizational and jurisdictional battles, and during the early twentieth century, the Ameri­can Federation of Labor had separate affiliates for skilled and semiskilled workers. The skilled workers included paper machine operators, beater operators, and finishing room employees. Those who worked in the wood room, wood yard, and pulp mill were considered semiskilled.127 South­ern pulp and paper workers were overwhelmingly unorganized prior to 1935. An attempt at unionization of the workers at Louisiana’s Bogalusa Paper Company was defeated due to racial prejudice, company thugs, and imported strikebreakers. In 1935, a three-­month strike against the Gulf States Paper Corporation in Ala­bama was defeated. Prior to 1940, there were low wages in the south­ern industry, but unions made little headway despite the workers’ interest because of poor leadership.128 In 1937 the Tennessee Paper Company of Chattanooga agreed to the first union shop contract in the south­ern paper industry. Other south­ern mills, in­ clud­ing Union Bag’s Savannah mill and the South­ern Kraft Division of International Paper, soon followed, and unionization spread rapidly through the region. The local unions were segregated, and Af­ri­can Ameri­can locals usually accepted the terms negotiated between the companies and white workers. Most of the agreements were reached without conflict or labor stoppages.129

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The unions reinforced segregation. They issued separate charters for black and white workers, and, as another scholar noted, “The dominant white unions not only used their power to institutionalize the sys­tem of segregation and discrimination but sometimes even ignored fair treatment.”130 The civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, coupled with recessions in 1958 and 1961 and improved technology and automation, brought efforts to merge the Af­ri­can Ameri­can and white unions, which were reinforced by the President’s Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity. There was strong resistance by white unions, some of whose members belonged to the Ku Klux Klan and White Citizens’ Council, but the companies began to provide equal employment opportunities and open up more jobs to Af­ri­can Ameri­cans. Some went beyond that. For example, during the late 1960s, the Ameri­can Paper Institute implemented a program, funded in part by the Ford Foundation, to provide concentrated education for Af­ri­can Ameri­cans so that they could move up in the industry.131 While, as noted previously, labor relations in the pulp and paper industry were generally peaceful, there were occasional disputes along the way. Most were nonviolent strikes centering on wages. In 1940, workers at International Paper’s Mobile plant staged an unsuccessful three-­day strike for a wage increase. The same year, there was a two-­day strike at St. Joe Paper Company, centering on charges of discrimination against union members. In 1941, Florida workers at the National Container Corporation and the Container Corporation of America struck over vari­ous issues, in­clud­ing recognition of the right to organize. There were other strikes in the 1940s in Florida, West Virginia, and North Carolina. During the 1950s and 1960s there were strikes in several states revolving around the same issues, the most violent being one against the Calcasieu Paper Company of Elizabeth, Louisiana, which involved explosions, fires, and firearms.132 One way the companies kept their workers happy and on the job prior to the advent of unionism was to adopt paternalistic policies, such as the provision of attractive rental houses or the opportunity to reasonably purchase lots in company-­sponsored subdivisions. They also provided recreational and social opportunities.133 Many companies opened their lands for recreational purposes. The Ameri­can Forest Institute conducted a survey in 1968 that found that more than sixty-­one million acres of company land, 88 percent of the total corporate landholdings, were open to the pub­lic for recreation.134 Eventually, the Ameri­can Federation of Labor unions were challenged by a Congress of Industrial Organizations affiliate in the 1930s. Finally, in 1972, the competing unions merged into the United Paper Workers International.

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The operators and craftsmen, who made up well over half of the industry’s workers, constituted the heart of the union members. In the early 1970s there was a strike against the Ala­bama operations of MacMillan Bloedel. Longtime MacMillan Bloedel executive Angus Gardner remembered that the strike lasted three months, and that the leaders of the strike were “from Mississippi, and they were Ku Klux Klanners. They wouldn’t let the blacks come to their meetings, and we had a lot of blacks working for us.” He went on to say that he believed the men were “plants” by the labor union, and that the union thought the company was an “easy mark” with whom they could get an agreement that other companies would be pressured to follow. Two months into the strike, a group of salaried employees came to Gardner and “asked if they could try to start up and run the mill. To my knowledge it had never been done before.” Gardner gave his permission, and “the railroad at the mill supplied a dining car and two pullman sleepers.” Another employee served as chef, and “we ended up making paper successfully. . . . The strike was over about 48 hours later.” After the settlement the Mississippians left.135 When MacMillan Bloedel began operations in 1968, the company had one brief encounter with the civil rights movement. The company had an office in Thomasville, Ala­bama, and its labor relations official was contacted by an Af­ri­can Ameri­can named Henry Ford who wanted a meeting to discuss hiring and other issues. The meeting was arranged, and when Ford showed up he was accompanied by Jesse Jackson. The labor relations official said, “I made a date to see Henry Ford. I’m going to see Henry Ford. Nobody else.” MacMillan Bloedel executive Angus Gardner, who was in charge of the Ala­bama project, said, “It made me kind of upset. So I wrote a letter to both of our senators, to the head of whatever Henry Ford’s outfit was.” He went on to say, “I never heard anything more from it. We never heard another word. So they let us alone. And of course, what I emphasized was that we knew the law. We were going to obey the law. We were going to do everything according to the law.”136 While most paper companies reluctantly accepted the fact of unionization, they resisted developments that they believed invaded their ownership or management prerogatives. During the 1930s, they believed the Lumber Code of the National Recovery Administration imposed unrealistic wage standards. In 1941 the National Labor Relations Board ordered the Brown Paper Company, which became Olinkraft, to stop retaliating against workers involved in unionization. A year later the South­ern Kraft Division of the International Paper Company, along with six other companies, was charged with violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act. However, most companies

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complied with the law, and by the end of World War II, seeing the boom years ahead, they recognized that unions were part of their future. They did, however, support the Taft-­Hartley Act and the passage of state right-­to-­work laws under that legislation.137 Bogalusa, Louisiana, was again the scene of a strike during the 1960s. In this case it had a significant impact on the racial practices of the south­ern paper industry. The Great South­ern Lumber Company origi­nally owned the paper mill at Bogalusa, and in 1938, it was purchased by the Gaylord Container Corporation, which merged with Crown Zellerbach in 1955. Gaylord was unionized with blacks and whites in separate locals. Jobs were segregated, and when Crown took over, it decided to update antiquated equipment, which resulted in reductions in the workforce. This triggered a strike, with the white unions determined to maintain job and social segregation. The Ku Klux Klan became involved on one side, the Congress of Racial Equality on the other, resulting in demonstrations and some violence. After prolonged battles with the Office of Federal Contract Compliance, the US Department of Justice, and the federal courts, Crown Zellerbach in 1969 implemented a sys­tem that provided for promotions, demotions, and layoffs involving Af­ri­can Ameri­cans to be determined by mill rather than job seniority. This was generally acceptable to all parties and started the process toward reform of the seniority sys­tem in the south­ern paper industry. During the 1960s a number of companies implemented nondiscriminatory hiring standards and employment systems.138 Just as in the lumber industry, safety was a major concern of pulp and paper workers, both in the woods and mills. Until World War II, the industry led most other major industries in the frequency and severity of injuries to its workers. In the woods, the dangers were the same as those discussed earlier for lumbering: falling trees and limbs (widowmakers), sharp-­edged hand tools, and heavy equipment. In the mills, there were sickness and accidents as well as dangers from dust and noise; explosions of boilers, digesters, and caustic tanks; operating machinery; exposure to toxic materials; fires; flying particles; chemicals; slippery working surfaces; misuse of hand tools; and myriad other situations. In 1943, the National Safety Council reported that the pulp and paper industry was among the most hazardous in the nation. By the 1950s, the industry’s safety record had improved markedly as a result of a combination of training and informational, incentive, and managerial programs.139 Union Camp executive Dick Mordecai remembered in a 1999 interview that “we were all safety conscious over the last 25–30 years. . . . We brag about how safety conscious we are. The woods used to be a very, very dangerous

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place to work and as safety programs and equipment have progressed, we have very few bad woods accidents anymore.”140 In summation, work in the woods and mills of the forest products industry changed over the years, but it was hard and of­ten dangerous. The workers, black and white, were sometimes well paid, sometimes not, but given the shortage of other alternatives they were of­ten happy to have their jobs. Despite the claims of company owners and spokesmen, the relationships between workers and management were not always peaceful. The living and working conditions of the industry mirrored the society around it, but it also provided an impetus for change, particularly in the area of racial relations.

4 The Rise of Forestry At the turn of the twentieth century, millions of acres of bleak cut-­over land, apparently useful for no gainful purpose, cursed and shamed every state in the South. Instead of attracting more people, the sawmills left “ghost towns,” equaled in their bleakness and spirit of desolation only by the surrounding expanse of sun-­baked land. People simply moved out, fading away with the lonely wails of the mill whistles which echoed for the last time over the endless land of stumps. —Frank Heyward, “History of Industrial Forestry in the South” All the men in the village worked in the mill or for it. It was cutting pine. It had been there seven years and in seven years more it would destroy all the timber within its reach. Then some of the machinery and most of the men who ran it and existed because of and for it would be loaded onto freight cars and moved away. But some of the machinery would be left, since new pieces could always be bought on the installment plan—gaunt, staring, motionless wheels rising from mounds of brick rubble and ragged weeds with a quality profoundly astonishing, and gutted boilers lifting their rusting and unsmoking stacks with an air stubborn, baffled and bemused upon a stumppocked scene of profound and peaceful desolation, unplowed, untilled, gutting slowly into red and choked ravines beneath the long quiet rains of autumn and the galloping fury of vernal equinoxes. —William Faulkner, Light in August In technical matters—what should be done—[Dr.Schenck] differed from all of the other leading foresters. . . . He used to say . . . that this was one of the peculiarities of foresters—they always fight each other; they never believe in each other’s carryings-­on. —Inman F. Eldredge interview, Voices from the South

I. The Problem By the early twentieth century the devastating effects of cut-­out-­and-­get-­out lumbering and irresponsible naval stores operations were obvious to all but

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the most obtuse or stubborn observers. William Faulkner’s Light in August poetically describes the typical life cycle of the south­ern lumber industry from its modern origins until the depths of the Great Depression. South­ern pine lumbering had developed as simply another phase in the long tradition of the Ameri­can lumber industry as a business that swept across the forested regions of the United States, clear-­cutting and utilizing steam skidders that belched smoke and fire as they dragged the newly cut logs across the ground, uprooting everything in their paths and the hope for new growth as well. They then moved on to new timber stands, leaving devastated land, hopeless people, and abandoned communities in their wake. Faulkner’s fictional village had numerous real-­life counterparts. Most sawmill communities simply withered away with scarcely a whimper. But occasionally their plight came through more vividly, as in the case of a town in west­ern Louisiana, described by pioneering Yale forester H. H. Chapman. The tragedy of the timberlands was symbolized Monday, when the last of the population of McNary, Louisiana, moved away in a 21-­coach train bound for the new village of McNary, Arizona. Two months ago, Louisiana had this thriving town of 3,000 persons. As the forests became denuded of pines, the employers of the villagers began looking about for a new site. They found it in Arizona. In two long special trains half of the town was started westward to build a new village. Today the last of the inhabitants left. In 52 hours they will be at a point 80 miles from the new activity. Thence they will travel over a railroad just built into the heart of the timber country, and they will be back home in McNary.1 McNary was a victim of the standard business strategy of the south­ern pine lumbermen. Timberland was acquired at relatively low prices, and large mills were constructed. The operations were based on getting a rapid cut in order to pay interest, dividends, and taxes, and to depreciate the plant on the theory that everything—plant, railroad rolling stock, equipment, town, and so forth—would be liquidated when the last tree was cut. The prevailing attitude was summed up in 1919 by the general sales agent of the powerful Kirby Lumber Company, which operated in Texas and Louisiana. “As a lumberman,” he said, “my interest in forestry is nil. . . . When the lumberman of today saws the trees he owns and scraps his plant, his capital will enable him to become the banker, the ranchman, or the manufacturer of some other commodity.”2 Pioneering south­ern forester Inman F. Eldredge recalled that “by 1920 the lumber business, insofar as it was measured by big mills, was declining. Mill after mill was closed up, tore up their steel, junked their mills, blew the lo-

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21. Cutover and burned longleaf pineland on Vredenburgh property. Photograph taken three years after heavy cut by W. R. Mattoon for the US Forest Service. Courtesy of the Forest History Society.

comotive whistles for the last time, and moved out. Some men went to the Coast and some just simply liquidated and bought yachts and polo ponies.”3 US Forest Service officials in the early 1920s preached the gospel of reforestation, while bemoaning the of­t en shortsighted behavior of their countrymen. They warned that it was “already too late to avoid the results of the past century of exploitation,” noting “the pinch for lumber will be upon us before new forests can be grown.” They acknowledged the demand for wood created by a growing population and predicted rising prices for lumber and other commodities. They also commented, “There seems to be among the Ameri­can people a sort of naive confidence that each form of natural resource will last indefinitely, no matter how great the inroads upon it. There was mild surprise when the buffalo vanished. The practical exhaustion of free Government farm lands aroused a half resentful disappointment. The peak of lumber prices caused widespread indignation, and was attributed to every sort of cause except the fundamental reason that depletion had so localized the remaining timber supplies as to make them unavailable.” After further detailing the depressing scenario, the authors observed, “Forest culture in the United States is inevitable. Price pressure will attend to that. . . . Thus, muddling through

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in Anglo-­Saxon fashion, we shall finally bridge the gap between the pioneer methods of the past and scientific use of forest lands. . . . The restoration of Ameri­can forests awaits only the impulse of a clean-­cut pub­lic conviction that timber is essential and that a new crop must be grown.”4 Even as Faulkner wrote and Forest Service spokesmen pondered, some leaders in the south­ern lumber industry were attempting to reverse this tragic record. Their work was built on that of earlier pioneers who struggled to create a responsible, permanent industry despite overwhelming economic, social, and po­liti­cal obstacles, as well as a woeful lack of scientific knowledge concerning the regenerative powers of south­ern pine. These people were “conservationists” by some definitions, but they were definitely not “preservationists” or “environmentalists” in the modern sense. Their goal was simply to work toward a continuing supply of south­ern pine timber as an economic resource, not for recreational use or for scenic or biological preservation. Their efforts eventually contributed to acceptance of the “multiple use” concept, but other uses were always subordinate to sustaining the forests as suppliers of timber. Companies that practiced “conservation” did so because they believed it would pay.5 The problems created by cut-­out-­and-­get-­out lumbering were national, but they were particularly acute in the South, where the lumber industry was at its peak and leading the nation in production. However, some in the lumber business, general public, government, and the nation’s newly minted forestry schools at Biltmore, New York, and Yale were convinced that the United States was nearing a crisis, that a “timber famine” was looming in the near future. In 1908 President Theodore Roosevelt summoned a White House conference of state governors to consider conservation of the nation’s natural resources. Following the conference, the chief forester of the US Forest Service wrote to the state governors and offered to assist them in making surveys of forest conditions in their states so that they would have sound information for the formulation of policy. Ala­bama took advantage of the offer and contributed $200 for that purpose. The Forest Service contributed a like amount and, in addition, agreed to pay the salary of the examiner. The examiner was to be J. H. Foster, a 1907 graduate of the new Yale Forestry School, and in Oc­to­ber and No­vem­ber of 1908, Foster undertook the task of gathering information on the condition of Ala­bama’s forests.

II. The Condition of the Land Rather than undertaking a comprehensive field survey of all Ala­bama counties, Foster studied representative counties, consulting county records and

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22. Forestry employee among naturally regenerated six-­year-­ old longleaf pine seedlings in south Ala­bama in 1899. Photograph by Carl Alwin Schenck. Courtesy of the Forest History Society.

conducting interviews with officials, lumbermen, and landowners. He also talked with state officials and consulted published materials and other reports on the region’s forest resources. On the basis of all of this information, Foster prepared a report that was completed in 1909.6 Foster produced a detailed discussion of forest conditions in all areas of the state and concluded that “the timber wealth of the state is rapidly disappearing,” and that “if the present mismanagement and neglect is continued there is little hope for a valuable yield of timber in the future.” He predicted that the virgin timber would be nearly gone in fifteen years and noted that the present consumption of timber was about five times the amount of annual growth. Foster also said that neither the lumbermen nor the turpentiners were making provision for future yields.7 In the bulk of his report Foster described the land, forest resources, and use patterns for vari­ous parts of the state. He divided Ala­bama into seven distinct forest regions: (1) the Tennessee Valley Country, (2) the Coosa Valley and Coal Measures, (3) the Piedmont and Crystalline Regions, (4) the Central Pine Belt, (5) the Prairie or Agricultural Region, (6) the Upper Coastal Pine Belt, and (7) the Lower Coastal Pine Belt. He described subdivisions

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within each section in greater detail and, in some cases, took the analy­sis down to the county level. Foster pointed out that Ala­bama was well served by railroads, with none of the sixty-­six counties devoid of railroad facilities. There were “isolated regions” that were thirty miles or more from railroads, but they were the exception. In addition, the rivers of the coastal plain were navigable for small steamers as far north as the fall line, and both Montgomery and Tuscaloosa were situated conveniently near the heads of navigation. Foster also described the navigable stretches of the Coosa and Tennessee Rivers above and below the impediment of the shoals. The streams were valuable adjuncts of the railroads in moving products to market, but the state’s pub­lic highways were generally poor, especially during periods or seasons of wet weather.8 Foster reported that in the Tennessee River Valley proper “the forest growth has largely been removed except in coves and on slopes too steep to cultivate.” He noted that there were still “many valuable stands of poplar, oak, and hickory,” and that “hardwood mills, cutting from 5,000 to 10,000 feet per day” were scattered along the river, with some hauling logs from as far as thirty miles away to the mills. In addition, “shortleaf pine is still cut in the hills . . . and it is usually hauled to the railroads by team.” Along the Tennessee River, “hardwood logging is carried on almost exclusively,” and “mill men usually buy their logs delivered along the banks.” Poplar had almost disappeared from the region. There were stave mills and box and heading mills in this region, as well as several tie cutters. East of Huntsville, red cedar was the most important commercial timber. By the time of Foster’s report, many of the cedar posts and fences were being purchased by pencil companies, and the best of the cedar had disappeared. Cedar was also used for telephone and telegraph poles and bridge pilings.9 Throughout the Cumberland Plateau, the slopes and mountains had “an inferior hardwood growth, the best timber having long ago been culled.” There were some virgin stands of oak and hickory on some of the least accessible slopes, but even these stands were “apt to have been culled for oak staves, hickory handle stock, or oak and poplar lumber.”10 According to Foster, north-­central Ala­bama’s Coosa Valley varied more in its forest conditions than any other part of the state. An important feature was the “flatwoods,” where the origi­nal forests of post oak and shortleaf pine had been almost entirely exhausted to supply mine timbers. The region origi­nally contained both hardwoods and pines, with the largest amounts of remaining hardwood in Winston County, which still had large areas of virgin stands “owing to the difficulty of hauling the logs to the railroad.” In lower elevations there were longleaf, shortleaf, and loblolly stands. The Birming­

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ham and Coosa Rivers marked the farthest north­ern extremity of longleaf pine. In Walker County there was an area of longleaf and upland oaks where there had been relatively little lumbering and where the owners were cutting slowly and expecting many additional years of operation. North of Tuscaloosa was another region of longleaf west of the Warrior River that had been only partly lumbered. In Cherokee County’s flatwoods along the Coosa River, one lumber company had been operating for more than thirty years, origi­nally cutting longleaf, but upon its exhaustion turning to shortleaf. Foster said that about fifty million feet of the shortleaf remained, and that it would last only a few more years. The timber was floated down the Coosa River. Some of the best timberland in this area was once owned by railroads, but large tracts were now owned by mining and lumber companies and by speculators. The flatwoods of the Birmingham Valley were covered with mixed forests of hardwoods and shortleaf and loblolly pines. There were also low ridges with scattered longleaf stands. Foster said that “the origi­nal timber has been almost entirely removed to supply the iron mines along the ridges and the small sawmills through­out the country.” In the Coosa Valley, south of the Coosa River, the longleaf, which had formerly covered large areas, was “almost entirely exhausted and the country is growing up to black jack oak and mixed shortleaf and loblolly pine.” South of the flatwoods of the Coosa Valley, there was very little large-­scale lumbering, but farmers of­ten ran small sawmills in conjunction with cotton gins. Small shingle mills cut the scattered stands of longleaf and shortleaf pines left from earlier lumbering operations. Most of the remaining merchantable timber in this section was in the hills where most of the accessible timber had already been cut. South­east of Birmingham was an area “rich in mineral and forest wealth.” Foster described part of this region as “almost a wilderness,” although “the finest of the timber has been culled.” There were both “a small number of mills doing extensive lumbering” and a “large number of mills cutting small amounts of timber for local use.” Most of the timber cut was for the mining industry. Foster concluded that while the timber could supply local markets, “there are no vast timbered areas which can supply large mills timber for export markets,” because “the country is rough, difficult to log, and the timber is scattered.”11 In this area, “as in the Tennessee Valley country and the whole State in general, fires burn over the country almost annually.” The fires, Foster reported, “are caused by sparks from locomotives and by carelessness and lack of interest on the part of the general public. There is little or no attempt to stop fires.”12

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In the Piedmont Region, in east-­central Ala­bama, the most characteristic timber growth was longleaf pine, which covered the foothills and slopes of the higher ridges. Foster said that in Clay, Coosa, and Chilton Counties, “some of the finest timber within the entire range of the species has been found.” These forests supplied large sawmills for many years, with hundreds of millions of feet of timber removed. By the time of Foster’s survey, the only large remaining areas were in north­ern Clay County, southwest­ern Cleburne County, and northwest­ern Randolph County, which Foster said were “previously too far from the railroads to be of commercial value.” He noted that the extensive forests of longleaf pine in Coosa County had been “largely lumbered.” In the Central Pine Belt, west of Tuscaloosa, there were mixed forests of longleaf pine and oaks, and of shortleaf pine and hardwoods. East of Tuscaloosa there were stands of longleaf pine in “nearly a solid body.” As Foster described the situation, “Lumbering has been carried on extensively for many years and much of the entire area has now been cut over.” He noted that “a few very excellent bodies of timber still remain uncut and large companies are engaged in cleaning up the remains of many other extensive holdings.” Many mills had closed because of a lack of timber, while others were cutting small tracts long distances from their plants and hauling the logs by railroad. Still, Foster said, “The reports of an immediate or early exhaustion of the timber simply are exaggerated and not well founded.” He noted that in Autauga, Elmore, and Chilton Counties, “there are still scattered stands of good longleaf pine, most of it grown up since the removal of the largest timber during the earlier days of the lumber industry.” He also pointed out, contrary to the general folklore of the industry, “This section has not been entirely exhausted, largely because the earlier operations were not destructive.” Foster noted that in one section north of Montgomery lumber had been shipped continuously for seventy years, with trees not “cut much below 14 inches.” In the east­ern extremity of the pine belt, there was “almost no virgin timber. The land is largely cleared and has the general appearance of the prairie region adjoining.” Between Montgomery and Tuscaloosa there were still “excellent stands of longleaf pine,” although large areas had been cut over, and the longleaf within reach of the railroads was almost entirely gone. Foster reported that “no less than 15 mills are located on the Mobile and Ohio Railroad between Montgomery and Tuscaloosa, with an average daily capacity of about 25,000 board feet.” The lumbering had not been extensive enough to change the type of forests, although near the borders of the region the longleaf was being succeeded by stands of loblolly and hardwoods. Foster also said that in this area “turpentining has been more disastrous than in other parts of the central pine belt.”

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Naval stores operators had been boxing young trees left from logging, and Foster said that if this continued “the end of the longleaf forests is in sight.” The largest body of longleaf timber was in Bibb County, with one tract of fifty thousand acres located in Bibb, Hale, and Perry Counties. Foster said that this tract would furnish longleaf lumber after most of the other mills in the state had been abandoned. There was another tract of twenty-­five thousand acres of longleaf in southeast­ern Bibb County that had not been lumbered. Northwest of Tuscaloosa, shortleaf pine, mixed with hardwoods, constituted about half of the tree growth. By the time of Foster’s survey hardwoods predominated in the mixture, and abandoned farms were being claimed by loblolly or “old field” pines. The forest had been badly burned, but there was still a good deal of timber and the area was being logged by small lumbermen. Along the southwest­ern border of the shortleaf belt the timber had largely been cut, and lumber companies were logging hardwoods along the Black Warrior River south of Tuscaloosa.13 South of the Central Pine Belt, in the Black Prairie Belt, there were large tracts of post oaks and shortleaf pines. This type of forest was called “post oak flatwoods.” Some of these areas had never been lumbered by the time of Foster’s survey and contained the largest remaining areas of timbered land in the region. In the east­ern part of this region, the best timber had been removed. In the more elevated northwest­ern part there was red cedar, much of which had been cut to produce poles, posts, and pencil stock. The large trees were practically all cut. There were numerous small mills that Foster said engaged in “promiscuous cuttings,” and he went on to say that “new fields are cleared by ‘deadening’ thrifty timber in a manner to suggest the early days of ‘log rolling,’ when the land had to be cleared, and there was no market for the timber.” In the river bottoms there were hardwoods, which were “of the finest quality,” and “some very valuable hardwoods are still found there.” Wood from this area was sent to north­ern factories to produce wagon bottoms, wheel rims, spokes, and tool handles. In this area, “clear cutting is never practiced and owners are usually careful to save young growth.” Foster characterized the forest growth of the prairie region as “isolated or widely separated woodlots in narrow strips along water courses or separating the plantations.” Loblolly pine was the most important commercial timber in the region, with a few scattered patches of longleaf. He reported that there were few large sawmills, with three or four companies cutting extensively in the west­ern counties of Sumter, Marengo, and Dallas. There were also small mills, of­ten connected with cotton gins. Foster noted that there were numerous trams operating from the South­ern Railroad into the flatwoods of Marengo County.14

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The remainder of the state was occupied by the longleaf pine belt, with differences in the character of the forests in the upper and lower parts of the region. Longleaf pine origi­nally covered about half of the upper part of the region, with some mixed stands of longleaf and shortleaf and of longleaf and hardwoods. There were also some hardwood forests and stands of cypress and tupelo in the bottoms of the principal streams. Foster observed in 1909 that “to-­day only remnants of these origi­nal stands are found. In many of the counties . . . the virgin forests have almost wholly disappeared and the land is under cultivation.” Wash­ing­ton County had been cut over and the remnants harvested. Foster reported that timber had been hauled to the Tombigbee River for years, and that the large mills had worked the longleaf pine in every township. The railroad carried large volumes of pine from small producers as well as high-­ graded hardwoods from the bottoms. Naval stores operators were boxing young pines left from logging, threatening the prospects of longleaf reproduction, and fires burned the cutover areas annually. Thus, said Foster, “Wash­ ing­ton County now presents a great expanse of cut-­over land. . . . The recent extensive lumbering and turpentining have given the country a desolate appearance.” Choctaw County, said Foster, had been lumbered for many years and the logs hauled to the Tombigbee River over tram roads. However, the county still had valuable tracts of timber, which would not be removed until a railroad was completed through the area. Clarke County was “once covered with the very finest of longleaf pine on the uplands,” but it had been “rapidly stripped of its timber through the big mills at Jackson and other points on the South­ ern Railroad, and along the rivers,” and by the time of Foster’s report, it contained a large proportion of cleared and agricultural land. Foster said that Conecuh County “still presents extremely high lumbering possibilities, but toward the north, the timber rapidly disappears.” As you moved north, the proportion of hardwoods increased and the pine left from logging was being boxed for turpentine. Foster noted that “big mills at Chapman have cleared the timber from south­ern Butler County, and tramroads have tapped the resources in Crenshaw County.” There were no large timbered areas in Butler County, and the remaining small patches were being cut by small mills along the railroads. Crenshaw County, according to Foster, had until fairly recently contained “vast supplies of timber,” but now it had “probably less than 1,000 acres of longleaf timber outside the holdings of one company.” Coffee County still had “much timber,” and, since the construction of a railroad, “a number of important mills have started, in­clud­ing a convict mill.” Barbour and Dale Counties

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had little timber, and in Dale County, the land was “everywhere . . . recently logged and under cultivation.” South­ern Monroe County was “well forested in general,” but the growth was scattered so that “only small mills can hope to operate extensively for any length of time.” A large longleaf area on the ridges in the northwest­ern part of the county was being logged from the Ala­bama River. Wilcox County had “valuable stands” of shortleaf pine, with scattered longleaf.15 Assessing the overall region, Foster said that it “occupies so far as its timber resources are concerned, an intermediate position between a purely agricultural region and one which has been so recently opened up that the forest products are still of paramount importance.” He also pointed out that most of the land was burned over annually or periodically and warned that “these fires must be checked in order to get the best development of the forests in the future.”16 The last section Foster discussed was what he termed the Lower Coast Pine Belt. This was an area of longleaf pine, although Foster also recognized the “magnificent forests of cypress and tupelo gum” that origi­nally flourished in the bottomlands of Mobile and Baldwin Counties. Away from streams, the longleaf origi­nally covered the land in “an almost unbroken belt” unmixed with any other species. The trees were “somewhat inferior in size and quality” to those found farther north, where hardwoods were a larger part of the mixture. However, the longleaf here yielded more per acre than anywhere else in the state. “The type is rapidly disappearing,” said Foster. In moist depressions bordering streams, “hardwoods and loblolly take the place of longleaf.” In east­ern Ala­bama, Foster reported that Houston County, which had once been solidly covered by longleaf, was now cut over and cleared, and the only remaining timber was in small patches controlled by farmers. “Ten or fifteen years ago the country was barely opened up. The largest mills have entirely passed away and the few mills doing a large business are cutting in Florida.” As Foster’s report moved west from Dothan, he said the amount of timber increased and lumbering began. He reported that a branch of the Georgia Central Railroad that went west from Dothan had been completed for six years, and “since that time the vast belt of pine land has been more than half stripped. Where there were only occasional homesteaders, squatters, and turpentine men, now sawmills of all sizes are located at every station. Solid blocks of timber have been cleared away and towns have sprung up on the cut-­over areas.” Similar conditions existed in Geneva County as well, and from that county through Covington to Escambia County “are found the largest bodies of longleaf pine timber and the most extensive lumbering operations in Ala­bama.” Foster reported that “the development of the lumber

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industry has been so rapid and so recent that stumps of the longleaf pines still stand in the main streets of many of the towns.” There were also hordes of small mills, and Foster observed that “the great increase in the price of lumber in recent years caused people to go lumber crazy along the new lines of railroad. Whoever could buy a portable mill and some timberland went into the lumber business.” The mania was especially strong in Geneva County, and in neighboring Covington County a few companies held large tracts, with two having enough timber to operate for another twenty-­five to thirty years. Most operators were not that fortunate, and Foster estimated they would be gone in half that time. He said that “the general policy . . . seems to be to clear up the timber and move away. . . . The lumberman opens the way for the permanent settler.” The situation was similar in Escambia and Conecuh Counties, “except that the lumber industries have been in operation much longer, the railroads are older, there is a greater population, and the cut-­over areas are more extensively cultivated.” Baldwin County, which was “once heavily timbered with longleaf pine,” was now “almost entirely cut over.” Foster said that turpentining was destroying much of the forest in these two counties and that the “destruction of forests in this region and the lack of appreciation of the value of the timber left in the woods is lamentable.” In some areas, Foster concluded that turpentining had done so much damage that no further lumbering was possible. Boxed timber was left to fall down and burn, since no one would purchase it. However, Foster reported that recently owners of land that had been turpentined would sell the timber to lumbermen and give them five to eight years to remove it. He praised the fact that some lumbermen boxed only the trees they planned to cut, and a few refused to allow their trees to be worked by the turpentiners at all, despite the fact that “turpentining is very profitable, especially where it is carried on in conjunction with lumbering.” Foster observed that Mobile and Pensacola had long been the shipping points for the “best timber along the great rivers flowing into Mobile Bay and the Gulf.” There were still large sawmills located above Mobile, and “cypress and hardwoods as well as the finest of the longleaf pine have sawed in these mills and shipped to foreign markets.” The large areas of swamp were still “well forested,” but the timber was tupelo, other “inferior oaks,” and other hardwoods that had formerly been considered worthless.17 Foster noted that it was still true in 1909 that “large quantities of the finest timber are transported from the Coastal Pine Belt . . . to Mobile and Pensacola for shipment abroad or to other parts of the United States. The bottomlands are culled of the best hardwoods and cypress for this market.”18 In the cypress swamps above Mobile Bay, some of the best cypress was

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used by the shingle industry, but by 1909, the exhaustion of the cypress timber was “very nearly complete in Ala­bama.” The cypress and longleaf of this area were also used to manufacture railroad ties, but cypress was preferred. However, Foster concluded, at the present rate of lumbering and turpentining, large operations in both of those industries would be “exhausted,” and “the day of the large mills in Ala­bama is nearly over.” On a hopeful note he predicted that as the large operations disappeared, “the forests of longleaf pine will slowly recuperate wherever turpentining and fires have not d ­ estroyed them altogether.”19 Foster described one situation that might be considered symbolic of some of the problems in Ala­bama’s forest products industry by the early ­twentieth century: One railroad company which formerly owned fifteen miles in alternate sections on each side of its right of way in two counties, now owns only about 44,000 acres. Before the Civil War, these lands were covered with a luxuriant growth of longleaf pine, uninjured by turpentining or lumbering. Thousands of cattle grazed over the uplands and there were no destructive fires. As the turpentine industry made its appearance, the forests of the railroad were boxed, like the pub­lic lands, without permission or authority. The railroad attempted to prevent this practice but was powerless. No jury could be induced to bring a verdict in favor of the company and the agents who tried to protect the lands were threatened with personal violence. Later, in order to obtain some revenue from their depleted forests, the company leased the turpentine rights for the mere privilege of shipping out the products. Afterwards, the company sold what was left of the timber to lumber companies. . . . It is estimated that $4,000,000 worth of timber at the recent values has been destroyed without any revenue to its owners, from turpentining and subsequent fires.20 Foster’s overall conclusion was that “a great economic resource is being exhausted in Ala­bama and conditions affecting the prosperity of wide areas are rapidly changing for the worse. The aim and policy should be to correct the present extravagant misuse of forest wealth and assure a steady and permanent yield of necessary timber for the future.”21 The most pressing problems Foster reported were fire, livestock (pigs) in the woods, lumbering methodology, turpentining, reforestation, and equitable taxation. He estimated that 75 percent of Ala­bama’s forestlands burned annually or periodically.22

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III. The Birth of Forestry It can be argued that Ameri­cans have always had a conservation ethic with regard to natural resources, in­clud­ing forests. They have simply disagreed about what “wise use,” as Gifford Pinchot termed it, meant. And in the early days, they certainly were not what became known in the late twentieth century as environmentalists, understanding and caring about the interconnectedness of all entities in the natural world. In 1906, the editor of the Ameri­can Lum­ berman, in noting the early conservation instinct, said, “The idea at first took the form of forest preservation rather than of re-­forestation and progress was slow, because it combated the commercial instinct.”23 In the colonial period vari­ous colonies attempted to regulate timber cutting and preserve forests, and the origi­nal thirteen states passed laws for the prevention of forest fires. However, as the nation grew and settled the West, the need for materials to build physical infrastructure and the idea of inexhaustible natural resources, in­clud­ing forests, combined to suppress the conservation instinct. There were occasional voices in the private sector that called for more judicious use and protection of forests, but their warnings were largely drowned out by the advocates of physical “progress.” By the late nineteenth century, as James Elliott Defebaugh said, “Conditions in the United States concerning timber supplies and prices of forest products have been such that until within a few years the private practice of forestry methods has been well nigh impossible from a commercial standpoint.”24 The forests of the North­east and the Great Lakes regions were largely sacrificed in the name of progress, and as the timber of the North disappeared, lumbermen and timber speculators turned toward the South and attacked the south­ern forests with a vengeance. Under the assault of cut-­out-­and-­get-­ out lumbering the experience of the north­ern forests was largely repeated, but with one significant difference. The great south­ern lumbering boom coincided with the birth of the forestry profession in the United States. Some argue that forestry was born in Europe and was simply imported to this country, and it cannot be denied that Ameri­can forestry was deeply influenced by the European experience. But there was a difference. In Europe, foresters dealt with a resource that had long been depleted. Their task was to maintain and manage a limited amount of forestland for a large population. In America, the resources were much larger, the population smaller, and, especially in the South, the conditions for forest growth and regeneration more favorable. In Europe, because of limited resources and great demand, practically all

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timber was marketable. The practice was to cut everything and replant, thus eliminating less valuable or desirable growth. In the United States, because of the abundance of timber, not everything in the forest was marketable. Some argued that because of the size, character, and composition of the growth, only about one-­third of the timber in the late nineteenth century was worth removing. Thus, as one industry observer noted, “When . . . approximately only one-­third of the forest is removed, there remains, under proper cutting methods, a vast quantity of valuable young growth which it would take from ten to seventy-­five years to replace by the artificial planting of trees or seed. The Ameri­can method . . . is . . . a continuous selection and cutting of only mature timber, thus permitting the immature timber—which includes two-­ thirds of the ordinary Ameri­can forest—to attain its growth.” However, he predicted that the time would come when the European approach of clearing the forest and replanting would become common in the United States.25 The forestry profession arrived relatively late on the Ameri­can scene. While the origins of both lumbering and the pulp and paper industry can be traced back to the colonial period, there were no professionally trained foresters in the United States until the late nineteenth century. Even then, the only professional foresters in this country were either European immigrants or Ameri­ cans who had been trained in Europe. While there was not any single approach to forest management among these early foresters, they were heavily influenced by the examples and experiences of European forestry.26 Pioneering south­ern forester Inman F. “Cap” Eldredge, who attended the Biltmore Forest School in North Carolina, vividly remembered the ­German influence communicated to his students by BFS founder Dr. Carl Alwin Schenck. “We were all required to have horses,” Eldredge recalled. “Schenck himself said it was based on the master schools that were prevalent in Germany, in which a master took a number of young men with him in his daily rounds where they could ride at his heels, watch him, hear him lecture, and pick up forestry in that manner. . . . He wore a uniform from one of the German forest services he’d been in before he came over here.”27 Schenck was among a number of pioneers who helped create a concern about resource management and an interest in the profession of forestry at the national level. Other influential national fig­ures included George Perkins Marsh, Gifford Pinchot, and Bernhard Fernow. They were not all trained as foresters, and they did not share the same philosophy of resource or forest management. Yet each in his own way contributed to the birth of forestry as a profession in the United States. Probably most significant among the nonprofessionals was George Per-

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kins Marsh. Marsh was a lawyer, editor, farmer, businessman, congressman, and diplomat from Vermont who had interests ranging from Scandinavian languages to the lumber business. After years of observation and study, both in his native New England and abroad, during which he had witnessed the devastation of forests and despoliation of the land under the impact of human “development,” Marsh in 1864 published Man and Nature; or, Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action. In his famous work, Marsh discussed the relationships between human society, water, soil, and vegetative cover. He pointed out the wide-­ranging ramifications of indiscriminate clearing of the woods and stimulated a good deal of interest within the scientific community and among concerned and thoughtful laymen. Marsh’s work helped create the climate that gave birth to the concepts of scientific resource management.28 As Thomas R. Cox put it, Marsh’s work “signaled a turning point in Ameri­can attitudes toward forestlands . . . [and] marked the beginning of an accelerating campaign for the husbanding of the nation’s forests.”29 Another major fig­ure was Gifford Pinchot, who was both the white knight and the bête noire of Ameri­can forestry at the turn of the century. One of the earliest professional foresters, Pinchot was trained at the French Forest School at Nancy and in the Sihlwald in Zurich. After managing the Pennsylvania lands of Phelps, Dodge, and Company, Pinchot was hired to supervise the huge area of mountainous lands in west­ern North Carolina that constituted George Wash­ing­ton Vanderbilt’s famous Biltmore estate. Pinchot then moved to Wash­ing­ton in 1898 to head the Forestry Division in the Department of Agriculture. Along with President Theodore Roosevelt, Pinchot became a hero of the Progressive conservation movement, and because of his charisma he helped to capture the public’s interest and focus it on natural resource issues. Pinchot was the father of the Yale Forestry School and recruited young, able, enthusiastic men to staff the Forest Service. He certainly had a great deal of influence in shaping the pub­lic image of the forester or ranger. Unlike John Muir, who favored preservation of natural resources and lands by closing them off from development, Pinchot was an advocate of multiple use. He defined conservation as “wise use” and wanted to bring rational, efficient, scientific management to the nation’s forests. However, Pinchot was extremely distrustful of big businessmen, and his attacks on the lumber industry alienated him not only from the lumbermen but also from his pioneering colleague Dr. Carl Alwin Schenck, who regarded Pinchot’s views and rhetoric as unwise and counterproductive. Nonetheless, Pinchot played an important role in raising the consciousness of the country

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(and the forest products industry) regarding the profession of forestry, the importance of the nation’s forest resources, and differing strategies of forest management.30 Dr. Carl Alwin Schenck was one of Pinchot’s great adversaries and followed him as manager of the forests on Vanderbilt’s Biltmore estate. Founder of the Biltmore Forest School and among the pioneers of the forestry profession in the United States, Schenck probably came closest to sharing the outlook and philosophy of the modern industrial forester. Schenck believed in the management of forests for use, and, as former International Paper forester and woodlands administrator Fred Gragg viewed it, Schenck would have endorsed the use-­oriented philosophy of modern industrial foresters because “Colonel Schenk was a pretty smart German. . . . What he couldn’t abide was waste.”31 The man who is considered the first technical forester to permanently reside and practice in this country was Dr. Bernhard Eduard Fernow, a Prussian who was trained in the German forest service and came to the United States in 1876. Fernow became manager of the Cooper-­Hewitt and Company timberlands in Pennsylvania, and in 1882, he was a founder and the early secretary of the Ameri­can Forestry Congress. He later served as chief of the Division of Forestry in the US Department of Agriculture from 1886 to 1898, leaving to become professor of forestry at Cornell University. Fernow prepared the first federal forest reserve law. In 1891 Congress passed the Forest Reserve Act, which permitted the president to establish forest reserves from the pub­lic domain. By 1897 some forty million acres had been set aside as forest reserves. Although these reserves were not managed forests in the European tradition, the acquisition of pub­lic forestlands created a need for foresters and stimulated the growth of the forestry profession. Most of the early foresters were publicly employed. While a few of the early foresters were employed in the South, the innate conservatism and prevailing cut-­out-­and-­get-­out philosophy of the lumber industry, plus the lack of silvicultural knowledge and the regressive tax structure, made forest management very slow in gaining acceptance. This was true despite the pioneering efforts of companies like Louisiana’s Urania and Great South­ern lumber companies. “Cap” Eldredge remembered the “communications gap” between the lumbermen and early foresters: None of the men who taught [forestry] at that time, or practiced, had any experience in utilization. . . . You produced the timber and cared for it, and then you turned it over to the roughnecks to cut it up and ship

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it around. There wasn’t any science or art to it; it was just a process— running a sawmill or driving oxen and pulling logs. . . . The people who did manufacture lumber knew nothing about forestry and didn’t give a tinker’s damn for the concept. The two lines of thought were as different as night and day. There wasn’t any kinship; the people who were in lumbering thought forestry was next door to bird watching. . . . They had no use for forestry, no real use. It just didn’t fit into the picture. Foresters did not grow virgin timber, and that’s what they were cutting. It’s quite understandable. It wasn’t entirely ignorance. As a matter of fact, fifty years ago forestry had no part in the lumber industry. Only if you were looking forward to a crop fifty years hence could you see where forestry might come in.32 A. E. Wackerman, division forester for the South­ern Pine Association, while generally praising the forestry activities of that organization’s lumber manufacturer members, noted in 1935 that in his own case, “It was with some misgivings, personally, that I undertook . . . to make personal calls on as many south­ern pine operators as we could contact, because of the old prejudice that existed between lumbermen and foresters in years gone by. It is not so long ago that all foresters were considered impractical theorists by lumbermen and that lumbermen were viewed by many foresters as inhuman woods butchers.” However, as Wackerman pointed out, there were a number of pioneering fig­ ures who were shaping the development of south­ern forestry even though many lumbermen were not paying much attention. Among these pioneers were Charles Mohr, Carl Alwin Schenck, Austin Cary, Herman Haupt Chapman, Inman F. Eldredge, Walter J. Damtoft, and others.33 These people were not all professionally trained. Some of them moved back and forth between the pub­lic and private sectors and thus helped to bridge the gap between pub­lic and industrial foresters. They did not all advocate precisely the same methodology, but they were all imbued with a sense of mission, a feeling that they were doing something positive and important. And at least, whatever their prescriptions, they were doing something to manage the forests—that was the key difference between good forestry and bad. Doing nothing except stripping the land bare and making no effort to regenerate was the dominant approach among the old lumber companies. The enlightened pioneers among the lumber companies, like Urania, Great South­ern, and Crossett, or the pulp and paper companies that came later could be described as practicing good forestry whatever their specific approach, because at least they were trying to do something. In fact, controversy and disagreement about philosophy, prescriptions,

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and methodology have been endemic among those in the forestry profession from its earliest years in this country. “Cap” Eldredge remembered of Dr. Schenck that “in technical matters—what should be done—he differed from all of the other leading foresters. . . . The good Doctor didn’t think that they were right more than half of the time, and he was very outspoken about it. He used to say in class that this was one of the peculiarities of foresters— they always fight each other; they never believe in each other’s carryings-­on.”34 There was no simple or single textbook definition of what good forestry was, and therefore it was implicit that the important thing in these formative years was to try. In trying, the companies with forestry programs were discovering and accumulating the knowledge that would give greater definition to forest practice as the forest products industry evolved. A major fig­ure in the accumulation of that knowledge was Charles T. Mohr. Mohr was a native of Esslingen, Württemberg, who arrived in the United States in 1848. He drifted into the South and settled in Mobile in 1857 to pursue his botanical interests. Living in the heavily forested Gulf coastal area, he became enamored of the piney woods. By 1880, Mohr had become a well-­ known and respected botanist. In 1884 he published part of his huge report on south­ern pines under the title The Timber Pines of the South­ern United States, and three years later he produced a far more complete survey that was published in the Department of Agriculture’s revised Bulletin 13. Mohr’s work became one of the basic sources in the his­tori­cal literature pertaining to south­ ern forestry. By 1890 Mohr was generally recognized as the best-­informed authority in the nation concerning the timber resources of the South. One of Mohr’s signal contributions was the preparation of the south­ern forest estimate that appeared as part of the Tenth Census report of 1880. By this time, according to Thomas D. Clark, Mohr had “perhaps . . . the soundest overview of regional forest resources of any south­erner.” Much of the census text applied to the South and was based on the Mohr report. Mohr’s work was far more specific than earlier efforts in estimating the overall inventory of timber in the South, and it was particularly good with regard to the volume of south­ern pine. Mohr helped establish the information base on which later forest policies would be constructed.35 Charles Holmes Herty, like Mohr, was not a forester. Dr. Herty was a chemist, and as “Cap” Eldredge remembered, “His main contribution was to find that south­ern pine was a fine source of paper pulp . . . and his broadcasting as he did with the utmost energy the fact that good kraft paper could be made out of south­ern pine.”36 Henry Clepper, the former executive secretary of the Society of Ameri­can Foresters, describing Herty’s pulp and paper laboratory at Savannah, Georgia, said that “his demonstration and promotion of news-

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print manufactured from the south­ern pines dramatized the economic possibilities of forestry for profit.”37 Retired forester Clinton H. Coulter described Herty as “a high-­class, almost inspirational, promoter” who “did a lot of good to get industry down to the South.” Noting that Herty should not “be credited with all the work of converting south­ern pine to pulp because that was done by the Forest Products Laboratory at Madison and others,” Coulter nonetheless argued that “he talked to people . . . he talked to anybody he could get an audience with on the growing power of south­ern pine and how much they could make for the South. . . . I knew him and thought a lot of him for his pioneer promotional work.”38 Austin Cary was a forester, and he came South in 1917 as a logging engineer for the US Forest Service. Cary was intrigued by the backwardness of south­ern forest practices, and he hoped to promote sound forestry among both the large and small landowners of the South. He tirelessly toured south­ ern lumber operations and convinced the lumbermen to conduct experiments on small plots to prove the efficacy of improved forest practices.39 “Cap” Eldredge remembered that “Dr. Austin Cary did a tremendously fine job in getting interest started. He didn’t convince anybody to the extent that the day after he left they went out and did something, but he was a persistent old New England Yankee and he’d come back talking all the time. They liked him and enjoyed him. . . . He generated a lot of interest that grew little by little and men commenced to do something . . . but the thing that made it all blossom was that the price of land and timber went up under the impact of the pulp development. Then it became economically possible and profitable to hold land for successive crops of timber.”40 Elwood L. Demmon recalled that “Austin Cary . . . could do better than almost anybody in interesting lumbermen in forestry. He really had a knack for taking businessmen out into the woods and showing them how trees grew and instilling in them the fundamentals of forestry. He always carried an axe with him and did not hesitate to cut down a tree just to illustrate its growth rate by counting the annual rings. Observations such as this made a deep impression on many of these old-­time lumbermen, and they had great respect for old Dr. Cary.” Demmon concluded: I would say that of all the foresters who have worked in the South, he probably had more influence with the lumbermen, selling them forestry, than any other technical forester. Dr. Cary was a technical forester, and he was also a very practical man and knew how to speak the

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language of the lumberman. . . . Peculiar as he was, Dr. Cary did a lot of good in getting forestry started in the South. . . . He would barge right in to a lumberman’s office. He wouldn’t spend time with any of the underlings; he’d just go to the general manager or company president and tell him that he ought to be interested in the future of his timberlands. He would take these men right out into the woods and cut down a tree or two and show them how rapidly these trees were growing and that forestry was not such a long-­time proposition as they might have thought. Many a hard-­headed lumberman became interested in forestry by just such tactics. . . . Dr. Cary would get them right out in the woods and show them on the ground. He spoke their language.41 Cary’s contribution was summed up by Frank Heyward, who said, “Austin Cary dedicated the last 19 years of his life to awakening south­ern wood-­using industries to the possibilities of timber growing. He was successful to a remarkable degree, and his accomplishments in the fields of fire protection and forest management comprise the greatest contribution by any single person to south­ern forestry.”42 In some ways Dr. Carl Alwin Schenck is the most important of the pioneers who shaped the background of industrial forestry, not only because of his charisma and the number of students he actually trained at Biltmore, but also because of the philosophy of forest management he espoused. While a lot of professional foresters, like Gifford Pinchot for example, favored a multiple-­ use concept rather than simply locking up resources in the name of preservation, many of them had at best an ambivalent attitude toward the businessmen and companies who owned large tracts of timberland. They were not at all sure that the private sector could be trusted to manage its lands responsibly. “Cap” Eldredge remembered that Schenck had a totally different attitude: “His concept of forestry included not only the cultivation, raising and protection of timber, of trees, but their utilization, their processing as well. He thought  .  .  . that sawmilling and the manufacturing of lumber are just as much a part of forestry as the growing and producing of the trees. That was the main way he differed . . . from all of the other foresters of his time in this country.”43 One of the expressions he used frequently was that “‘The best forestry is the forestry that pays most.’ In other words, not silviculture for silviculture’s sake, not forest management just because it’s a process, but forestry that pays most is the best forestry.”44 One of Schenck’s Biltmore students, “Cap” Eldredge became a legend in his own right. Following graduation from the Biltmore Forest School, Eldredge worked for the Forest Service. He left in 1926 to join the Superior Pine Prod-

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ucts Company in Georgia, managing its forests for six years before returning to pub­lic service to direct the Forest Survey of the South.45 As Frank Heyward, former general manager of the South­ern Pulpwood Conservation Association, describes it, “The forest survey was more than a gigantic timber cruise. Equally as important as total volume of wood by in­di­vidual species was information on industrial use, mortality, and net growth. For the first time each state knew the ratio of growth to drain. The survey removed any guessing as to highly important conditions of supply, use, and mortality. Industry for the first time had factual data pertaining to the timber resource.”46 Elwood R. Demmon remembered “Cap” Eldredge as “the forerunner of technical foresters in the South . . . one of the foremost industrial foresters in the South. . . . When the Forest Survey got under way in the South in 1930 while I was director of the South­ern Forest Experiment Station, we looked over the field very carefully for a man to head up the survey. There was no one who had a better background of south­ern experience than Cap Eldredge.” Demmon went on to say: I think that Cap Eldredge personified the Forest Service to many people and was, through the friendships he established in industry, largely responsible for the excellent relations that grew up between the Forest Service and forest industry in the South. . . . Cap was one of the few south­erners who had gone into forestry. Most of us who worked in the South came from other parts of the country. . . . Most of the state foresters and other technical foresters in the South were educated in the North. . . . Forestry education got under way rather slowly in the South, and the south­ern schools did not graduate many foresters until along in the thirties, so it was an advantage to have someone whom south­erners could consider as one of their own boys. Cap Eldredge spoke their own language, knew their customs and way of life, and he was also a technical forester with a national reputation. . . . What Cap said meant a lot more to south­ern people generally than what some of the rest of us would say. They listened to Cap with respect, and he appeared on the program at many of the forestry meetings down here. Whenever industry representatives became interested in the South, one of the first men they’d get in touch with was Cap Eldredge.47 Walter J. Damtoft, a Yale graduate who was employed by the Champion Paper and Fibre Company in 1920, was the first industrial forester hired in the South. In 1959, Elwood R. Maunder of the Forest History Society conducted an interview with Reuben B. Robertson, who spent more than half a century

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in the management of the Champion Paper and Fibre Company, serving as both president and chairman of the board. Maunder asked Robertson about Champion’s development of an industrial forestry program following World War I and its employment of Walter Damtoft. He asked why that decision was made, and Robertson replied that “it was primarily the thought of safeguarding our capital expenditures here. We knew that when you spend several million dollars on a plant, you can’t afford to write it off in a short period for lack of raw material.”48 These pioneers helped stimulate concern about the state of America’s forests. The growing interest was also reflected in the formation and activities of a number of organizations. In the 1870s, the Ameri­can Association for the Advancement of Science lobbied with Congress and state legislatures for legislation to promote forest preservation and timber cultivation. The Ameri­can Forestry Association was organized in 1875 for the same purposes. A year later, Dr. Franklin B. Hough was appointed as a special agent in the US Department of Agriculture to study the nation’s timber supply and usage and to consider possible measures for forest renewal and preservation. Hough and his successors during the next decade and a half were aware of the principles of forest science in Europe but did not know if they could be applied to resources in this country.49 Their work contributed to the passage of federal legislation to create the pub­lic agencies that provided jobs and facilitated the development of the forestry profession. The Weeks Act, passed by Congress in 1911, provided matching funds for any state that set up an acceptable sys­tem of protection for forested watersheds along navigable streams. The law marked the beginning of extensive cooperation among private industry, the states, and the federal government to protect forests from fire and other threats. It triggered a spurt of state activity, and many states established or strengthened their forestry departments.50 The 1924 congressional approval of the Clarke-­McNary Act ended years of debate among those favoring vari­ous approaches to forest and conservation policy. The law added to the programs of the Weeks Act and emphasized cooperation among the federal, state, and private sectors rather than confiscation or coercion to improve conditions on private forest lands. The hope was that cooperative action would solve the problems of fire and taxation and enable private owners to profitably retain their forestlands as continuing producing units.51 However, despite the spate of federal and state activity, the first efforts to actually manage a forest and practice forestry originated in the private sector.

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In 1892, George W. Vanderbilt hired Gifford Pinchot to supervise the lands of the Biltmore estate in west­ern North Carolina. Eventually, the Biltmore holdings grew to about 125,000 acres, and Pinchot managed the forest in much the same way as a modern industrial forester would have approached it. In 1895, Pinchot was succeeded by Dr. Carl Alwin Schenck, and three years later, Schenck opened the Biltmore Forest School to provide practical forestry training. This was one of the first steps toward the development of professional forestry education in the United States. Biltmore was followed by the establishment of the New York State College of Forestry at Cornell University in 1898 and the graduate school of professional forestry at Yale University two years later.52 Henry Clepper argues that while in 1897 “there were a few technical foresters in the United States—Fernow, Pinchot, Schenck, and Graves—who had received technical ­training . . . there were none who could be described as professional foresters, because they lacked the kind of education in forestry that is available today.”53 Practically all of the early professional foresters were employed by pub­lic agencies, primarily the US Forest Service, which evolved out of the old Division of Forestry in the Department of Agriculture. Private forestry developed slowly, and its origins are sometimes traced to the northeast­ern United States, where pulp and paper companies were becoming concerned about an adequate timber supply to serve their expensive plants. One of the pioneers was Finch, Pruyn and Company, which implemented forest management plans on its holdings in New York State in 1904.54 By the post–World War I era, when a growing number of industrial forestry positions were beginning to appear, there were eighteen colleges and universities that offered forestry training. It is estimated that less than 1 percent of the some two thousand graduate foresters trained from 1900 to 1920 were privately employed as foresters. In 1933, the Copeland Report estimated that there were 146 technically trained foresters employed by 79 companies in the United States. A year later a survey of Society of Ameri­can Foresters (SAF) members revealed that only about 11 percent were privately employed. By 1937, a similar survey showed that private owners, who by then controlled 75 percent of the country’s forests, employed less than 10 percent of its professional foresters. However, the employment of industrial foresters rose markedly in the post–World War II period, and another SAF study showed that the number of industrially employed foresters increased from 4,400 in 1951 to 6,050 in 1961. Much of this growth occurred in the South.55 The key difference that set industrial foresters apart from their colleagues with the US Forest Service and other pub­lic agencies was, of course, the profit

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motive. As a 1928 editorial in the Journal of Forestry entitled “What Is Industrial Forestry?” put it, “It is an attempt to give an expression to a type of forest practice consistent with the business interests and the profitableness of the undertaking of the timber operator. . . . Industrial forestry means treating timber growing as a business enterprise.”56 Henry Clepper argued that industrial forestry did not really develop in the United States until the period from 1930 to 1960, and that it was the product of a coalescence of factors in­ clud­ing, perhaps most importantly, federal legislation such as the Weeks Act and the Clarke-­McNary Act.

IV. Forestry in the South and Ala­bama During the Depression decade of the 1930s, change began to invade the forested regions of the South. Faced with poor economic conditions and lands that had been stripped of much of their value, a few lumbermen began to listen more seriously to colleagues, who, during the bonanza period, had been considered impractical visionaries when they advocated selective cutting and other practices that would allow the land to regenerate and their industry to operate on a permanent basis. Also, as they examined their own lands, some of the lumbermen, and especially their sons, began to see firsthand evidence of the marvelous regenerative power of south­ern pine. By this time, it was clear to those who were willing to look realistically or honestly that much of the cutover land of the South was poorly suited for agriculture, and it was obviously of little value unless it could produce additional stands of merchantable timber. Several south­ern lumbermen and firms stand out as pioneers in the realization that their timberlands might be held and regenerated profitably. First was Henry Hardtner of the Urania Lumber Company in north-­central Louisiana. Hardtner’s was not a big operation by the standards of the industry giants, but his hands-­on approach, close to the land and the mill, produced significant long-­term dividends for the South. Hardtner reacted strongly against the efforts of many lumber companies to unload their land for agricultural use once it had been cut over. In 1917 the South­ern Pine Association held a cutover land conference in New Orleans and became involved in the campaign to promote agricultural utilization of the lands. Hardtner derided the meeting as “a big scheme to try to sell land that was not worth while for agriculture at all,” and he later charged that the entire plan was “just a skin game to fool people in the north and west, to think that they could make a whole lot of money out of poor lands.”57

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The evidence strongly indicates that Hardtner was absolutely correct in his negative assessment of the suitability of cutover lands for agricultural use. A 1920 description of farming on cutover lands is typical: “Anyone who has ever seen the cut over pine land, where the people are trying to farm ought to realize the sadness of this situation. I don’t know which is the sadder, the devastation of pine lands, or the people who are trying to live on them. Year after year these people go on . . . and try to farm on this land. It is so poor that it will scarcely grow peanuts, but still they go on there.”58 One writer noted that the companies tried every conceivable type of agriculture, and horticulture was tried without much success.59 At the time Hardtner first became interested in the regeneration of his lands, there was virtually no scientific information available regarding the reproductive abilities of south­ern pine. So, as he later recalled, “At first I had to pioneer every step in my investigation of the reproduction of longleaf pine. I thought it would take 60 to 100 years to grow a merchantable crop. No one could tell me what was possible, no yield tables . . . were then available. I had to work out the problem for myself.”60 Hardtner implemented three policies to restore his lands. First, he tried to control fires and hogs; sec­ond, he enforced a diameter limit on the trees to be harvested; and third, he insisted that seed trees be left on each acre logged. Hardtner was regarded as a foolish visionary by many of his more “practical” contemporaries early in the century. He later recalled ironically that “you didn’t hear any of them talking about putting timber back on the land did you?” Nonetheless Hardtner had faith in what he was doing, as demonstrated by his purchase of additional cutover lands as early as 1904 and 1905. Hardtner’s program was not based on romanticism; he believed that there was a sound economic basis for his reforestation efforts. He was also instrumental in the establishment of the Louisiana Forestry Commission, and his timberlands became the sites for annual summer camps and experimentation by the Yale University School of Forestry. Thus, Hardtner did a great deal to provide the foundation of information on which others would later build.61 One of the first products of Hardtner’s influence occurred in May of 1920. He invited officials of the Great South­ern Lumber Company of Bogalusa, Louisiana, to visit Urania and get a firsthand look at what he was doing. A. Conger Goodyear, president of Great South­ern, said that by 1920, “quite clearly we were going to run out of our raw material—timber—the very reason for our existence.”62 Colonel W. L. Sullivan, general manager of Great South­ern, was obviously impressed by what he observed, for on the trip back to Bogalusa he announced to members of the New Orleans press that his company was planning to im-

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plement a comprehensive reforestation and conservation program.63 Not a bad conversion effort for a man who, in the words of Philip C. Wakeley, the South­ern Forest Experiment Station and Great South­ern Lumber Company forester, “had an old rattle trap mill and . . . [a] town, [that] was nothing to look at.”64 Great South­ern invited Austin Cary to Bogalusa for consultation, and Goodyear later commented that “more than any other man Austin Cary was responsible for the spread of the gospel of reforestation in the yellow pine lands.”65 Great South­ern initiated a massive planting program, and in Bogalusa, Red Bateman, chief ranger for Great South­ern, designed a dibble and planted some twenty thousand acres of longleaf seedlings.66 A pioneering firm in the implementation of a sustained-­yield program was the Crossett Lumber Company in Arkansas. The Crossett story is legendary among people in the south­ern forest products industry. As former Weyerhaeuser vice president Richard “Dick” Allen told it: Crossett was one of the largest mills in the country. And they were fixin’ to shut that big plant down. And so the board members came down to Crossett, Arkansas, to see the last logs bein’ sawed and to decide what to do. . . . This director they said, walked up on the green chain where the logs were bein’ pulled up to the saws, and he saw a log comin’ up there about 14 inches in diameter. The rings were pretty far apart. And right ahead of it had been a log that was just real dense. . . . And he stopped it, and he said, “I wanta know where this log came from and where this came from.” And he counted the rings and this one here was 28 years old . . . this one over here was 60 sumpin years old. And he said, “What’s goin on here?” . . . They . . . found some more logs like that on the yard and they said that logger that’s bringin’ these in, came from, and they gave the location. . . . They went out there and they had had a cyclone through that site some 25 years before then. And there was plenty of seed sources, it had blown these trees down and opened up the forest and it reseeded into this young growth, and so this 25 year old cruiser said, “All we’ve gotta do is reseed it.” You don’t just go in and cut it, and burn it, and get out and let it go back for taxes. And that’s when Crossett became what it is today.67 The Crossett Lumber Company built its mill in 1899 and was one of the earliest south­ern lumber companies to seek professional advice in the management of its timberlands. The 1912 class of the Yale Forestry School studied its lands and submitted a report by Professor H. H. Chapman, who became a regular consultant to the company. The report estimated that at the present

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rate of cutting, over 200 million board feet annually, the harvesting of mature timber could continue for about eighteen to twenty years. On the other hand, Chapman said that “it would be possible under proper management to maintain a perpetual supply of timber on the holdings of this company, but the present output (200 million board feet) could not be maintained. The forest itself is admirably adapted to continuous ­production.” Chapman recommended the employment of a forester, and Crossett employed its first graduate forester in 1922. The forester surveyed the company’s cutover lands in 1923 and recommended acquiring additional lands and limiting the yearly cut. By 1925, the company was practicing sustained yield management. In 1930, Professor Chap­man opined, “The organization for fire protection has reached a high state of efficiency,” and by the late 1950s, the company had about 150 people in its Forestry Division, nearly 90 of whom appear to have been trained foresters. A half century after the implementation of its forestry programs, Crossett was still harvesting timber from the same holdings.68 Around the turn of the twentieth century, several south­ern lumber companies, looking toward the future, asked the US Forest Service for advice on growing trees. The Forest Service prepared forest management plans for a number of these companies, in­clud­ing Ala­bama’s Kaul Lumber Company. As a result of these recommendations, the Kaul Lumber Company left seed trees on one of its tracts, but it did not adopt a general forestry policy for all of its lands until many years later.69 The Forest Service also promoted selective cutting through publication and dissemination of the results of research conducted by the US Forest Products Laboratory and other Forest Service research agencies. For example, in 1930, the South­ern Lumberman, a leading trade journal, published the results of 1929 joint studies by the Forest Products Laboratory and the South­ ern Pine Association, which found that lumbermen lost money when they cut shortleaf pine trees of ten inches or less in diameter, but that the losses were disguised in their records by the profits from trees in the same stands of twenty-­four inches or more in diameter. Based on these studies, the National Lumber Manufacturers’ Association joined the other two organizations in recommending the implementation of selective cutting.70 The Yale Forestry School was a major force in the introduction of forest management in the South. Professor Herman Haupt Chapman consulted with Louisiana’s Urania Lumber Company and performed much of his experimental work on their lands, as he became known as one of the nation’s leading experts on south­ern pine management. As one student later wrote of Chapman, “No other forester has written more on south­ern forestry.” In

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1907, Chapman examined the pinelands of the Louisiana Central Lumber Company in the Ozark Mountains of south­ern Missouri. The next year he prepared a management plan for Ala­bama’s Kaul Lumber Company. During the next decade Chapman examined the lands and made management recommendations for the Thompson Brothers Company of Texas; the Louisiana Central Lumber Company of Clarks, Louisiana; the Crossett Company and South­ern Lumber Company of Arkansas; the Great South­ern Lumber Company of Louisiana; and the Vredenburgh Sawmill Company of Ala­bama. Chapman and Yale Forestry School colleague Ralph Bryant also consulted with the Jackson Lumber Company of Lockhart, Ala­bama, as they moved from cut out and get out toward sustained yield operations. Chapman’s many contributions to south­ern pine management included, probably most importantly, the proper use of fire in growing longleaf pine. In Chapman’s 1908 management plan for the Kaul Lumber Company, he advocated the use of fire to obtain longleaf pine reproduction. According to the same student, “In this field he was at least 25 years ahead of the forestry profession as a whole.” In 1928, Chapman and Henry Hardtner began a series of burning studies at Urania.71 Hardtner became a great admirer of the Yale Forestry School. He advocated that lumbermen form a holding company to purchase and manage one hundred thousand acres of cutover land where they would plant trees as a demonstration experiment. “The cost,” said Hardtner, “would not be great and since our lumber friends are so liberal as to donate $200,000 to the Yale Forestry School, why not donate 100,000 acres to the Yale Forestry School and let them do the rest?”72 Austin Cary was another promoter of responsible fire management. Cary believed that fire had a role in south­ern pine management, and, as one scholar has written, “It is possible that his thinking on this subject was influenced by H. H. Chapman of Yale for whom he had great admiration and who in turn had profound respect for Cary’s viewpoints.”73 In 1920, Chief W. B. Greeley of the US Forest Service visited several south­ ern reforestation projects, in­clud­ing a tract in Ala­bama’s Coosa County, which was cut over between 1900 and 1910 in accordance with suggestions from the Forest Service. Upon his return Greeley wrote, “I believe that the time is here when the timberland owners of the South generally will recognize the growing capacity of their lands as one of its valuable assets.”74 These pioneering firms led by example, and it is significant that while there were common themes in their approach to managing the forest, there were also variations. All of them were concerned about the prevention of wildfire, uncontrolled burning of the woods. All adopted the technique of cutting to

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a diameter limit. Both Henry Hardtner at Urania and Colonel Sullivan at Bogalusa were cognizant of the damage that grazing could bring to their forests and tried to keep hogs out of their timberlands. However, they used different methods of regeneration. Hardtner left seed trees and depended largely on natural reseeding. The origi­nal situation at Crossett was much the same. At Bogalusa, the Great South­ern undertook the first large-­scale planting effort in the South. All of these firms provided early examples of enlightened forest practices, but each operated in its own way in a manner that was best suited to its economic situation, site characteristics, and company objectives.

V. Ala­bama Ironically, the pioneering school that may have had the greatest impact on the South was Yale University, a Connecticut-­based Ivy League school with a national and even international reach. From the beginning, formal forestry education in this nation (following the European example) included instruction in the field, spring forestry tours, summer camps, and so forth. During the Yale Forestry School’s early years, and in fact until the latter part of the twentieth century, fieldwork in the South and south­ern forestry tours were an important part of the fledgling professional forester’s agenda. Ala­bama played a significant role in that process. For many years the Yale students studied the management methods of the Kaul Lumber Company’s extensive holdings.75 The T. R. Miller Mill Company of Brewton was also a pioneer in enlightened forest management. Both Yale’s H. H. Chapman and Austin Cary of the US Forest Service consulted with the company about forest management and reforestation. The company employed consultant Frank LeMieux from New Orleans in the mid-­1930s and then hired Brooks Lambert to oversee the company’s woodlands. Lambert was an innovator who replaced hand planting with machines and implemented Chapman’s ideas regarding controlled burning. Studies of fertilization and species selection were also undertaken, and the company cooperated with state and federal agencies, in­clud­ing the US Forest Service, in these activities. In 1946 the South­ern and Southeast­ern Experiment Stations established local research centers, with one at Brewton, Ala­bama, which concentrated on longleaf pine management. The T. R. Miller Mill Company provided three thousand acres of land for experimentation, and in 1947, the land was leased to the government for ninety-­nine years without cost. It became known as the Escambia Experimental Forest. This work contributed to scientific forest management in the area and, particularly, the elimination of the practice of

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small farmers grazing their cattle and hogs on privately owned neighboring lands. The Escambia Forest was also active in the introduction of improved fire prevention, detection, and control. The T. R. Miller Mill Company also implemented a program of compartmentalization of its forest properties and placed additional professional foresters in the field. Ten-­year forest operating plans were introduced to identify needs and harvesting and planting schedules.76 The T. R. Miller Mill Company’s policy of sustained yield management and reforestation attracted national attention in 1935, when a delegation led by F. A. Silcox, chief of the US Forest Service, toured the company’s operations and praised T. R. Miller’s harvesting and reforestation as the best he had seen. During the same period, graduating classes of the forestry school of Louisiana State University visited the Miller lands to study enlightened management practices.77 By the early twenty-­first century, T. R. Miller was still operating, logging much of the same land, employing 275 people and producing lumber, distribution and transmission poles, lattice, flooring, decking, and siding. The company stood as a monument to the multiple benefits of sustained yield forest management.78 Another company that pioneered the restoration of Ala­bama’s timberlands was the W. T. Smith Lumber Company of Chapman. Earl McGowin of the W. T. Smith Company remembered, in 1976, his company’s methods prior to 1935. Questioned about whether the company had attempted to practice forestry, McGowin replied, “Never heard to it.” He went on to describe the way his company operated: “Mills cut out and got out. After you cut over an area you pulled up the railroad track and never expected to see that forest again because there was no way to get there.” He went on to describe the thing that made sustained forestry possible: “What makes all this possible today? The truck. Trucks provide flexibility that railroad logging never dreamed of. It provided a way of going to isolated tracts. You could take one tree or a hundred trees. That was impossible in the old days.” He also noted that the only reason the company had not sold its cutover lands was because there was no market for them.79 Another factor was the balance between timber supply and demand. Earl McGowin said that his father had little interest in forestry, because “in his lifetime there was no need to restore forests. . . . It wasn’t until the mid-­thirties that the balance between supply and demand started to become about even, and as we looked down the long road we saw that we had to start restoring forests if we were going to have any wood for the future.”80

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Earl McGowin described the way the W. T. Smith Lumber Company became “interested in forestry”: In 1935 . . . Julian, my brother . . . became interested in forestry and somewhere he met Les [Leslie K.] Pomeroy. Pomeroy had been very successful in his own operation out in Arkansas. . . . Julian brought him here to Chapman to do a survey of our mill and that brought about a remarkable change in our lives. It took him about a year to complete it. That was the first time that anybody had ever looked at our cutover land in years. When we cut over a section we would simply mark it off on our land book and nobody would look at it again. So when he went back there he found we had considerable new growth of timber, in spite of uncontrolled fires, mechanical logging, indiscriminate cattle grazing, and all that. Nature still had put a sizeable number of trees back, and we then and there decided to go into the business of growing trees and to start a long-­term forest policy.81 The W. T. Smith Lumber Company pioneered the development of methods to minimize the results of insect infestation. In 1956, it began doing aerial surveillance of company lands, with observers noting the location of “bug infested” trees and entering the information on aerial photographs. The marked photographs were then translated onto large maps, which were given to salvage contractors who logged the damaged trees, thus getting money for the timber and preventing the infestations from spreading. The aircraft used for “bug” surveillance were also utilized in fire prevention and control.82 Among the criti­cal ingredients in a successful sustainable forestry operation were control of woods fires and the open range for grazing. In 1976, Earl McGowin remembered, “My father, in his time, ignored woods fires. There was no hazard to standing, mature trees in the South because the big trees don’t burn.” He went on to say, “Nobody cared about the cutover land because we never dreamed that we’d go back there again. . . . It was the custom of the countryside for local farmers to burn the woods every year. There was unlimited, indiscriminate grazing of cattle. There were few fences to keep cattle out. It was not until after we started selective forestry in 1935 that attention was paid to wood fires.”83 McGowin served in the Ala­bama legislature, which had battled over a statewide stock law since the late 1930s. It passed the law, but McGowin remembered, “That was the toughest po­liti­cal fight I ever got into. Farmers marched on the capitol. They said to us, ‘You pass this bill, and we’ll show you

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some fires.’” McGowin told the Ala­bama governor, “We can have fire towers and manpower but unless we have pub­lic opinion on our side, we can’t win. We worked long and hard . . . and finally got the message over. In the olden days when a man going down the highway saw a woods fire, he’d just let it go. Then they began to report them and even helped put them out. It was a great change in pub­lic attitude.”84 The “official” history of the W. T. Smith Lumber Company says that the “closest thing” the company had to a forestry policy prior to the mid-­1930s was “just to continue owning its cut over timberland.”85 In a letter to the State Commission of Forestry in 1932, Greeley McGowin said that the company’s lands consisted largely of sec­ond-­growth shortleaf pine, since “practically all the virgin longleaf has been cut,” and “we have never made any definite effort to protect it from fire although we do so as far as possible.”86 In 1936 Julian McGowin described the company’s new forestry program: The practice of forestry is generally associated with the planting of trees on denuded areas and waiting for them to grow. Our program does not call for any planting as we already have, with proper management, enough trees growing on our land to run the Chapman mill for 40 or 50 years. Instead our problem is to remove the present mature and defective trees, leaving the smaller ones to grow extra inches in diameter until they are ready to cut. This has meant several drastic changes in our milling and logging methods as well as a reduction in the amount of lumber produced. These changes will mean a sustained yield or perpetual operation. The first step in any forestry program is the elimination of forest fires.87 These policies resulted from recommendations by Arkansan Les Pomeroy, who became Julian McGowin’s partner in the pioneering forestry consulting firm of Pomeroy and McGowin. The company made an inventory of its lands and determined to change its operating policies, so that growth exceeded drain. To accomplish this goal it stopped logging with railroads and skidders; adopted selective cutting on company-­owned land; made more complete use of the trees that were cut; eliminated its cooperage mills, which had formerly used the small logs; eliminated a veneer mill and box factory; continued the purchase of timber and timberland; continued the purchase of logs from independent loggers; and continued the purchase of lumber from portable mills. It also began a program of modernizing its Chapman and Greenville mills. W. T. Smith also discontinued a mill at Fountain and combined its operations with a new mill at Linden.88

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Companies with a large land base were best situated to make the transition from the old methodology to the new. Remembering the pioneering companies in reforestation, Earl McGowin said, “The Hardtner brothers started first. They were the first commercial foresters and later came Allison Lumber Company in Bellamy, Ala­bama.” He also noted the importance of the Great South­ern Lumber Company at Bogalusa, Louisiana, observing that all of these pioneers had large land bases, while the W. T. Smith Lumber Company “had to build ours. We would buy a few thousand acres and then cut it and then add some more. . . . At the time my father died we had a hundred forty thousand acres but at no time during his lifetime did he ever see more than eight years ahead. Most of the time it was two, three, four, five years ahead and in that position you simply can’t be planting a tree for a tree. If we made any contributions at all later, it was in taking over a cutover forest and restoring it to commercial production.”89 When the McGowin brothers took over management of the company upon their father’s death in 1934, the W. T. Smith Lumber Company had a land base of 140,000 acres. By the time they sold the company to Union Camp in 1966 the brothers had built the land holdings to 222,000 acres.90 Georgia and Louisiana were among the south­ern pioneers in starting forestry schools, but it was not until after World War II that Ala­bama joined their ranks. Some claim that Auburn University had a course in forestry as early as 1897, and a professional forester was hired in 1935 to provide “token” education in forestry for agriculture students. Finally, in 1945, the Ala­bama legislature authorized a four-­year professional degree–granting forestry program at Auburn. A joint Department of Horticulture-­Forestry was established in 1946. The program received accreditation by the Society of Ameri­can Foresters in 1950. A master’s degree program was started in 1952, and Auburn awarded its first doctorate in forestry in 1971. In the early 1970s, the first women and minorities were admitted to the undergraduate program, and the first woman enrolled in the graduate school in 1973. In 1976 the first minority student earned a BS degree in forestry at Auburn. From the early years, the school received funding from forest products companies, in­clud­ing Gulf States Paper Company of Tuscaloosa, the president of Alger-­Sullivan Lumber Company, and others. The school was strengthened in 1962 when the US Forest Service established the Forest Engineering Laboratory on the Auburn campus, and the laboratory began to coordinate the development of programs with the forestry school. Accreditation required a school forest to provide field instruction, and in 1960, Auburn met that standard when the US Forest Service granted a special-­use permit for about 1,400 acres on the newly created Tuskegee Na-

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tional Forest near the campus. In 1969 the school added an outdoor recreation option to its forest management curriculum. Forestry research at Auburn preceded the establishment of the forestry school. In 1927, Auburn researchers made the first recorded attempt to establish south­ern pines in plantations and, in 1933, began to publish the results of forestry research in the annual reports of the Agricultural Experiment Station. In order to carry on experimentation on different soil types, forestry researchers conducted work at the Agricultural Experiment Station, as well as in several different Ala­bama counties. By the 1940s, Auburn researchers were conducting studies on planting and the use of fire on cutover and burned-­over lands. By the 1950s, research was under way in forest management, silviculture, genetics, physiology, forest products, and forest soils. In 1963, Auburn was the first forestry school in the United States to conduct a comprehensive review of its research program under the auspices of the US Department of Agriculture’s Cooperative State Research Service.91 Traditionally, few Af­ri­can Ameri­cans entered the forestry profession in the United States. Ala­bama’s Tuskegee University began to address that situation in 1965, with university faculty and administrators consulting with forestry and natural resource professionals; studying the programs at the University of Michigan, the University of California at Berke­ley, and Iowa State University; and consulting with professionals from the US Forest Service. They then appointed a team to study the development of a natural resources program, which recommended that ultimately Tuskegee should establish a professional degree program at the bachelor’s level. As a first step, Tuskegee began offering a two-­year natural resources program, followed by completion of a degree at a cooperating institution. The cooperative work began with the University of California at Berke­ley, and then the University of Michigan. Discussions were initiated with several schools—Michigan, Berke­ley, Minnesota, North Carolina State, Syracuse, Michigan State, and Purdue—in efforts to fund scholarships for Tuskegee students matriculating at those institutions. In 1967, Tuskegee entered into discussions about cooperation with the US Forest Service research unit at Brewton, Ala­bama, in undertaking soil analy­sis research for the unit. An agreement was signed, followed by a memorandum of understanding whereby the Forest Service agreed to place and finance a “mutually acceptable forestry professional” at the school for two years to develop a research relationship and recruit students. Established in 1968, by 1979 the Tuskegee Forest Resources Program (administered by the US Forest Service, South­ern Forest Experiment Station)

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had produced fifteen BS graduates and one graduate with a forestry technician certificate. Administration of the program was shifted in 1979 to the Forest Service’s South­ern Regional Office in Atlanta, and from 1980 to 1990 it produced an additional thirty graduates. Several of the graduates went to work for the Forest Service following completion of their studies. Eventually, Tuskegee students who completed three years of coursework could enroll for an additional one to three years of courses at any of eight universities, in­clud­ing Auburn, Duke, Mississippi State, North Carolina State, Oregon State, California at Davis, Florida, or Wash­ing­ton, to complete a bache­ lor’s or master’s degree in a natural resources field. At the time the program began there was, according to one account, only one Af­ri­can Ameri­can forester in the United States. Twenty years later there were eighty-­eight, fifty of whom were graduates of the Tuskegee Forest Resources Program.92 The restoration and recovery of the south­ern forests was a product of several forces, in­clud­ing the rise of the profession of forestry and of research that helped develop new processes and uses for wood. Chemists, foresters, entomologists, and other scientists all played important roles, as did forestry associations, the federal and state governments, and industries. All were motivated by the conviction that growing trees could again be profitable. However, in the early days, the message required evangelistic efforts by pioneers who were working in a section that many large lumber operators had deserted and that had a largely complacent or antagonistic local population.93 Fred Gragg, longtime International Paper Company forester and executive, remembered that when he came to Mobile in the late 1930s, “there were very few professional foresters in the state of Ala­bama.” Gragg recalled state forester Brooks Toller as having a “very competent, small crew of high-­class, well-­trained professional people,” but also limited funding, which restricted the amount of work they could do. Gragg recalled that forestry demonstrations for landowners conducted by both pub­lic and corporate foresters were helpful in disseminating the message about improved forest management, and he singled out the McGowin family, Fred Stimpson of Gulf Lumber Company, and Earl Porter of International Paper as early forestry leaders.94 Still, the foundations for sustained yield forest management were in place. By the sec­ond half of the twentieth century some 60 percent of the south­ern land area was in forests. Ala­bama was by then cutting more lumber than any other south­ern state, but the annual growth of its forests was triple the production of all sawmills in the state. The growth was, in fact, equal to the total removal of timber for all purposes, in­clud­ing sawlogs, pulpwood, poles, pilings, fuel, and losses from fire and insects. The rebirth of the forest products industry was at hand.95

5 Rising from the Ashes The Restoration of the Forests and the Early Resurgence of the Lumber Industry Scarcely more than a century ago, people’s attitudes toward the forest began to shift to viewing forests and wildlife not as products to be mined or hunted, but as resources that could be managed over the long term on a scientific basis for both products and environmental services. —Brad Smith, John S. Vissage, David R. Darr, and Raymond M. Sheffield, Forest Resources of the United States By the 1930s, a forest policy framework had emerged that emphasized protection of forests from wildfire and their management under scientific principles. Specific actions focused on  .  .  . suppressing and preventing fires . . . establishing and enhancing the profession of forestry . . . improving the art and science of forest culture and management . . . improving the efficiency with which wood products are utilized . . . improving the quality of forest management on private lands . . . establishing and expanding the national forests for watershed protection, irrigation, and sustained timber management. —Brad Smith, John S. Vissage, David R. Darr, and Raymond M. Sheffield, Forest Resources of the United States

Like a phoenix from the ashes, the lumber industry began to recover even as it was in the depths of despair. Several factors enabled its reemergence. First, the south­ern forests contained a vast number of trees, even in their depleted condition. Given the warm weather and abundant rainfall of the region, forests recovered more rapidly than anyone might have imagined. Even native south­ erners were amazed by the resilience and recuperation of the cutover land. Second, even areas that had been clear-­cut of­ten retained in­di­vidual trees or patches of woods that provided the seed trees for regeneration and the emergence of the South’s “sec­ond forest.” While much of the South’s forestland lay barren, the trees passed over by the lumber and naval stores produc-

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ers were producing a new crop of timber. This sec­ond forest was inferior in quality to the old-­growth forests, but it was timely and certainly adequate to supply timber, particularly of the size needed by the pulp and paper industry.1 In fact, it can be argued that the rapid cutting of the old-­growth stands was not necessarily a bad thing. Harvesting of the old or mature forests opened the way for stand renewal. The real crime was in not leaving seed trees or replanting and in not implementing fire protection.2 Third, during the early twentieth century knowledge of how forests grow and develop increased exponentially. The traditions and knowledge accumulated for centuries in Europe came to the United States and the South with the establishment of the first Ameri­can forestry schools and the birth in this country of the profession of forestry. Pioneering foresters in the South recruited a few lumbermen who began to demonstrate on their lands that it was possible to both harvest trees and provide for reforestation while making a profit. This process was aided (sometimes acrimoniously) by the arrival of a new industry in the South—pulp and paper production—which because of its economic structure depended on sustainable forestry to guarantee timber supply for its mills. There was growing pub­lic interest in the south­ern landscape. Nature organizations, from forest conservation groups to bird-­watchers, proliferated at the turn of the century. Trade associations and vari­ous local promotional groups also appeared that were concerned with such matters as conservation, recreation, tourism, and vari­ous related service businesses. Among these was the Appalachian Mountain Club, formed before 1900, which supported Senator George Pritchard of North Carolina’s Appalachian Bill, introduced in Congress in 1899. The bill proposed creation of an Appalachian restricted forest area in the south­ern highlands. At the time, W. W. Ashe estimated that roughly one-­seventh of Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Ala­bama fell into this category.3 Charles A. Connaughton, a legendary career man with the US Forest Service, came South during these formative years, serving in the region from 1944 to 1955. He recalled that I was experiencing or enjoying what I later termed “a great Ameri­can revolution in forestry.” Because, right here at the close of World War II is when, in my judgment, a real revolution in Ameri­can forestry occurred. It was centered in the deep South. Why did this happen at this particular time? There were a number of reasons. . . . One, a whole strong set of markets were available which made it economical to grow trees as a crop. . . . We began to get a wide range of markets—in the pulp busi-

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23. Natural regeneration of longleaf pine in south Ala­bama in 1899. Photograph by pioneering forester Carl Alwin Schenck. Courtesy of the Forest History Society.

ness particularly with opportunities for small products—which made thinnings possible. . . . This made intensive management feasible where it wasn’t before. Then there was a whole fund of new knowledge becoming available. The early research which was undertaken in the South in the late teens and the early twenties was bearing fruit, and this was showing that you could practice forestry profitably. . . . Then the results of forest protection were beginning to show up. . . . There were a number of places where state programs on privately owned lands were demonstrating that we could protect forest lands. They didn’t need to be burned at will. Then lastly, perhaps, a whole new generation of managers was entering the picture, a group that replaced the old group that was basically oriented toward exploitation of the virgin timber crop. . . . It was stimulating to be a part of this development because of the many challenges that were offered.4 US Forest Service statistics show that by the end of the 1920s, the last decade of the south­ern lumber boom, both production and prices in Ala­bama

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remained reasonably high. In 1929 Ala­bama’s annual production of south­ern pine was 1,761,206,000 board feet, and the price was $21.92 per thousand board feet. This was still considerably below the south­ern average, and only Tennessee and Georgia were lower. Production fell drastically during the Great Depression, reaching its nadir in 1932 with annual production of 459,664,000 board feet and a price of only $11.41 per thousand board feet. Both production and prices then began to rise, if unevenly, during the remaining years of the Depression decade. By 1939 annual production was 1,226,508,000 board feet and the average price was $17.44 per thousand board feet. Ala­bama’s production led the South, but prices were somewhat below the south­ern average. Production and prices dramatically increased through 1943, and the production dropped off in 1944 and 1945. Production in 1945 was 1,044,477,000 board feet, trailing only Georgia, which Ala­bama had led a year earlier.5 The first step in restoring the south­ern forests was the control of wildfires, some set by lightning, others by arsonists or by accident. The 1880 census reported that during that year Ala­bama lost 569,160 acres of forestland to fire, with a property value of $121,225. Thirty-­four fires were set by people burning the woods to improve pasturage, sixteen in the process of land clearing, four by locomotives, twenty by hunters, and three by campfires. No fires resulting from lightning or “malice” were reported. Charles S. Sargent’s 1884 Report on the Forests of North America noted that efforts to improve pasturage were especially harmful: “This habit induces the burning over every year of great tracts of woodland, which would otherwise be permitted to grow up naturally, in order to hasten the early growth of spring herbiage [sic]. Such fires, especially in the open pine forest of the south, do not necessarily consume the old trees. All undergrowth and seedlings are swept away, however, and not infrequently fires thus started destroy valuable bodies of timber.”6 The census report of 1890 revealed how little regard many south­erners had for seedlings and forest renewal. The practice of wanton firing reflected both ignorance and malevolence on the part of far too many people. The burning of south­ern woods at annual intervals reflected meanness, ignorance, and folklore. Not only did burning kill snakes and bugs and, perhaps, help sprout grass, it killed off a sizable chunk of south­ern wealth.7 The federal government’s attention to the fire question originated in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as several giant wildfires mesmerized the nation. Among the most dramatic were the massive Peshtigo, Wisconsin, fire of 1871, and the “Big Blowup” of 1910 in Wash­ing­ton, Idaho, and Montana that burned about five million acres. In 1898, Gifford Pinchot, chief of the Forestry Division of the US Department of Agriculture, cata-

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24. Fire was a major ­obstacle in efforts to regenerate ­Ala­bama’s forests. From the author’s collection.

logued more than five thousand forest fires to evaluate their damage to people and resources. Pinchot’s study convinced many of the need for fire prevention and suppression. It also led to the widespread belief that the use of fire as a management tool for clearing land or undergrowth in forested areas, a traditional practice in the South, was harmful. The US Forest Service soon declared fire prevention the best way to protect the nation’s forests and urged state cooperation in the development of effective policies. In 1911 Congress approved the Weeks Act. Section 2 of the legislation authorized federal matching funds for states with forest protection agencies that met federal standards. In 1924 came the Clarke-­McNary Act, which encouraged closer federal, state, and private cooperation in fire control. During the first decade of the twentieth century, several modestly funded state fire control agencies were established, in­clud­ing the Ala­bama Forestry Commission.8 While the wildland fire situation was more pressing in the West, there were also long debates over fire in the South. The South was also affected by the no-­fires policies, but pioneering foresters, like H. H. Chapman of Yale and Austin Cary of the US Forest Service, learned quite early in the twentieth century that fire was necessary and beneficial for south­ern longleaf forests. They advocated the use of prescribed or controlled “light burns” in the longleaf forests and argued against the accepted orthodoxy and government policies. Some early foresters even advocated that naturally caused backcountry fires should be allowed to simply burn themselves out. There was irony in the fact that fire is a natural part of the process of forest growth and regeneration in the longleaf forest. Longleaf requires and tolerates much more fire than loblolly, shortleaf, or slash pine. As one observer later noted:

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In its young “grass” state a longleaf pine seedling is resistant to fire, and of­ten survives passing flames, which consume other competing plant growth. Even after reaching maturity this species is able to endure flame better than other trees. Nature not only designed the longleaf to survive fire, but also equipped it with tools to employ forest blazes to its benefit. These pines produce a heavy annual fall of needles that turn into a highly flammable tinder, and this combustible carpet of needles supports seasonal fires that burn quickly through a stand of trees, clearing the ground of other growth while not harming the tall longleaf pines. In fact, without a frequent recurrence of burning the longleaf pines get crowded out by hardwoods and other conifers. The burn-­off of needles and other residue on the forest floor also helps to perpetuate the stand, for longleaf seeds ideally need bare soil in which to germinate.9 The Lumber Code of the National Recovery Administration was not the only New Deal program affecting Ala­bama’s forests. As part of its campaign to put people back to work, in 1933 Congress implemented Franklin D. Roose­velt’s proposal to put some 500,000 unemployed young men to work in the national parks and forests, state parks, and other outdoor areas. At the time there were some 13.6 million unemployed, and more than 200,000 were simply wandering the country looking for work and hoping to survive. Roosevelt’s plan was to put some of these people to work planting trees, clearing streams, fighting erosion, building trails and shelters, and generally improving wilderness and park systems across the nation. The new organization was called the Civilian Conservation Corps. Originally applicants had to be between the ages of eighteen and twenty-­five (later expanded to seventeen to twenty-­eight), unmarried, physically fit, and with family dependents. They were paid thirty dollars monthly and were required to send twenty-­five home to their parents. Ala­bama initially employed some twenty thousand men in its thirteen state forests and seven state parks. Living in military-­style camps, these laborers performed worthwhile work and developed tremendous esprit de corps. For some, their experience as “CCC boys” was the high point of their lives. Between 1933 and 1942 an average of thirty camps operated in Ala­bama, and the corpsmen accomplished a remarkable amount of valuable work. CCC corpsmen built 1,800 miles of roads and bridges, erected 188 buildings, and installed 1,430 miles of telephone lines. The roads and telephone lines were an integral part of fire control, and in addition, the CCC boys constructed 61 fire lookout towers and over 2,200 miles of firebreaks. The corpsmen gathered 285,000 bushels of pine cones and 62,000 pounds of hardwood

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seeds to sow in plant nurseries, and they planted trees on nearly 20,000 acres in Ala­bama’s national forests. They did timber stand improvement work on 114,000 acres and conducted forest inventories and timber estimates on over 296,000 acres. Because of the fire protection work, the State Division of Forestry was able to improve fire protection on thousands of private forestland acres. By Janu­ary 1942, over 9.5 million acres of state and private Ala­bama forestlands had fire protection.10 The CCC did work for a variety of agencies in Ala­bama. For the Soil Conservation Service, the corpsmen constructed terraces and water control systems on farmers’ fields. They planted trees and other plants (in­clud­ing kudzu!) on marginal agricultural land and built erosion control check dams in gullies. They also grew seedlings for conservation projects, conducted sediment studies, and developed habitat for wildlife. For the Tennessee Valley Authority the CCC boys worked on reforestation projects, soil erosion control projects, and recreational facilities along waterways. They also worked on a number of projects on state and private forests.11 An important part of the solution to Ala­bama’s forest problems was the development of increased emphasis on forest issues by state authorities. In 1907, Ala­bama established its first Forestry Commission. The law that established the agency authorized counties to appropriate sums of up to $250 annually to pay for forest protection and directed that the money collected as penalties for “firing the woods without five days notice to adjacent landowners” should be placed in a forest reserve fund. In a 1908 report, the new commission said that it had made progress toward discouraging annual burning of forestlands, but the agency was chronically underfunded. With the establishment of a new Ala­bama State Forestry Commission in 1923, the state began to hire personnel to build a state fire control organization. By 1925, fire protection had been organized for an area of nearly 6 million acres. About 6.5 percent of the protected forests burned during the year. The area under protection slowly increased, until by 1939, when the Department of Conservation assumed control over forestry operations, there were 7,629,494 acres under fire protection. That year there were 4,461 fires that burned a total of 199,014 acres, 2.95 percent of the protected area. In the 1930s, the State Forestry Commission joined the National Park Service and the US Forest Service in securing the assistance of the CCC to implement fire control improvements. Ultimately they built forty-­nine fire towers, which carried the burden of fire detection until the advent of airplane surveillance. In 1939, the Acts of Ala­bama directed the Forestry Commission to establish designated forest protection areas. Counties were to collect a tax,

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25. Scotum Hill Tower, built in 1924 in central Ala­bama by Evan Frank Allison, was the state’s first fire lookout tower. Courtesy of the Forest History Society.

with the monies placed in a “forest protection fund” that could be expended by the Forestry Commission for forest fire protection.12 At the end of World War II, the South had more than 75 percent of all forest fires in the United States. More than 70 percent were on lands without fire protection. Most south­ern fires were set by humans, many through carelessness, and others by arson. In Ala­bama in 1947, 41 fires were caused by lightning, 408 by railroads, 225 by campers, 1,941 by smokers, 1,253 by debris burning, 2,655 by arson, 180 by lumbering, and 780 by miscellaneous causes. Only 66.5 percent of Ala­bama’s land was under forest fire protection. Thirty-­two percent of Ala­bama’s forestland burned in 1947, while 68 percent of unprotected land was struck by fire.13 J. O. “Ollie” Newton worked in vari­ous capacities for several lumber companies, in­clud­ing W. T. Smith, for whom he cruised and purchased timber, retiring in 1942. Newton said that he thought the biggest improvement in woods operations during his career was in fire protection. As he remembered, “When I was working, everyone burned over their land every Spring

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and when you came upon a place that had not been burned, it looked funny. Why, everybody would go out and set fire to their land. Now you don’t see that done any more. I try as hard as anybody now to keep fire off my place. I have learned that is the thing to do.”14 In 1950, Ala­bama for the first time was able to provide statewide fire protection for the 18 million acres of pub­lic and private forestland in the state. That year there were 9,947 fires, which burned 415,826 acres of wooded land, or 2.3 percent of the protected area. In some parts of the state the fire control organization was still rudimentary. However, increases in manpower and equipment were moving Ala­bama in the right direction. By the 1960s the state had 157 lookout towers. There were 989 miles of telephone line, 104 fixed radio stations, and 227 mobile radio units, as well as additional units operated by cooperating landowners. After long reliance on hand tools, the Division of Forestry now had 147 tractors with fire suppression plows and other equipment. Money for the sys­tem came from state, federal, and county funds, landowner contributions, and a forest fire severance tax.15 In 1969, the Division of Forestry was removed from the Ala­bama Department of Conservation. That year the Ala­bama Forestry Commission was created, with a charge to take all reasonable and practicable measures to prevent and suppress forest fires. Since 1980, there has been a mechanism whereby counties can obtain assistance for the establishment and management of volunteer fire departments. By the early twenty-­first century, the problem of wildfire was still evident. The South led the nation in the number of wildfires, with some 93 percent caused by people rather than natural causes. The problem has been further impacted by the movement of people from urban areas to suburban and rural areas, thus increasing the importance of the wildland-­urban interface. The Ala­bama Forestry Commission joined Firewise, a cooperative effort among several states, the federal government, and private agencies to enable landowners to plan and execute fire prevention.16 During the early twentieth century some lands were simply abandoned by private owners and passed into pub­lic ownership and management. As the lands of Ala­bama and other south­ern states were cut over, their owners looked for solutions to their economic problems. Unwilling to pay taxes on the land and wait for natural reforestation to occur, or to invest in planting, some simply picked up and moved to uncut forests in other parts of the country, particularly the Intermountain West and the Pacific Northwest. Others tried to dispose of their cutover lands to small owners, particularly World War I veterans, who would try (usually unsuccessfully) to farm them. Some

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26. Lookout tower and airplane connected with two-­way radio for fire detection in Ala­ bama. Courtesy of the Forest History Society.

looked to the federal government, which began to purchase worn-­out lands to create new national forests or add to the acreage of existing forests during the 1930s. In addition, the state of Ala­bama began establishing state parks. Ala­bama’s first state park was created in 1930, and by 1933, it was joined by six others. The state Forestry Commission had been given control of state lands in 1927, with a Bureau of Parks and Recreation to manage them. In 1933 the State Forestry Commission and the National Park Service began work on the parks with the assistance of the federal Civilian Conservation Corps. During the depression, CCC workers built roads, cabins, cottages, shelters, outdoor ovens, water systems, lighting plants, trails, and swimming facilities in the parks. By 1938, Ala­bama had fourteen state parks, with a total of 21,769 acres, which soon grew to about 39,000 acres.17 Ala­bama had three national forests: the William B. Bankhead National Forest in the north­ern part of the state, the Talladega National Forest in the central region, and the Conecuh National Forest in the south­ern or flatwoods section. The Bankhead was created in 1918 and origi­nally called the Ala­bama National Forest. Containing 198,426 acres, it was administered as part of the

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Cherokee National Forest. During the Great Depression, in 1936, its size was increased to 560,604 acres, of which 178,057 were government owned or controlled, and the name was changed to the Black Warrior National Forest. In 1942, it was renamed the William B. Bankhead National Forest. Located in mountainous topography and composed of stands of mixed hardwoods and pines, the Bankhead was managed for multiple uses, in­clud­ing timber production. It had abundant wildlife, and soon after it was established, the 16,000-­acre Sipsey River Game Refuge was created. In 1938, a cooperative wildlife management area of 98,800 acres, administered by the Ala­bama Conservation Department and the US Forest Service, was established. In 1935, the National Forest Reserve Commission established the Conecuh Purchase Unit in Covington and Escambia Counties. The Conecuh National Forest was created by presidential proclamation in 1936. It consisted of 54,177 acres of mostly barren, cutover and burned-­over lands, which had not been considered of any value by loggers. Its forests consisted largely of longleaf and slash pine, with a mixture of bottomland hardwoods along the drainages. Under forest management, it began to recover with both planting and natural reproduction and controlled burning. It was also managed for multiple use. Also in 1936, the federal government established the Oakmulgee Ranger District of the Talladega National Forest, consisting of 280,423 acres. In 1938 President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued a proclamation ordering that lands acquired or in the process of acquisition by the National Recovery Administration through the Farm Security Administration and its predecessors should be added to the Talladega. In 1940, additional lands that had been acquired under land rehabilitation programs were added. Much of the area consisted of eroded farmland, which has reverted to pine forests, but there are also hardwood stands. The forest includes a 47,000-­acre wildlife management area. The sec­ond district of the Talladega National Forest is the Shoal Creek Ranger District, which was also established in 1936. The district origi­nally included 441,000 acres, but in 1945 it was divided into two parts. The Shoal Creek Ranger District in the north contains 212,795 acres, of which 97,899 are government controlled or owned, and the forest is mixed pine and hardwood. The district contains the 39,000-­acre Choccolocco Cooperative Wildlife Management Area and is managed for multiple use, in­clud­ing the aesthetic enjoyment of spectacular mountain scenery. The Talladega National Forest also includes the Talladega Ranger District of 228,156 acres, 103,518 of which are government owned or controlled, which was carved out of the national forest in 1945. The primary manage-

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27. Rock ledge in ­Talladega National Forest. Courtesy of the Ala­bama Department of Archives and History.

ment goal of this district has been forest products, but it also provides striking mountain scenery. Another development of the period was the Tuskegee Land Utilization Project, also known as the Tuskegee Planned Use Demonstration. The origi­ nal project contained a little over 10,000 acres of eroded, worn-­out farmland in Macon County that was purchased between 1935 and 1938 under the Bankhead-­Jones Farm Tenant Act, which was also called the Submarginal Land Program. The occupants were resettled and the land was managed for forestry, wildlife, and recreation. In 1959 the area became the Tuskegee National Forest of some 11,252 acres, the smallest national forest. In this and the other Ala­bama national forests, one of the major accomplishments of the US Forest Service has been the establishment of effective fire control, in­clud­ing trained crews and lookout towers.18 The resurgence of lumber manufacturing played an important role in the recovery of Ala­bama’s forests during the sec­ond half of the twentieth century.

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In 1930 the state had 1,303 sawmills, ranking sec­ond in the South, trailing only North Carolina, and they produced 1,341,624,000 board feet, third in the South behind Louisiana and Mississippi. By the end of the Depression decade, in 1940, there were 1,846 mills, fourth in the South, and they produced 1,750,246,000 board feet, ranking first in the South, a position first achieved in 1939. By 1946 Ala­bama was producing 2,158,123,000 board feet and remained the leading south­ern state in lumber production.19 As Ala­bama entered the post–lumber boom decade of the 1930s, during the onset of the Great Depression, its annual softwood production was 1,358,081,000 board feet, trailing only Louisiana and Mississippi among the south­ern states. Its total hardwood production in 1930 was 188,438,000 board feet, ranking in about the middle of the south­ern states. A year later, in 1931, softwood production had fallen off by half to 621,602,000 board feet, undoubtedly as a result of the Depression as well as the cutting out of the “first forest.” Other south­ern states reflected similar patterns, and Ala­bama narrowly trailed only Louisiana and Mississippi among south­ern states in production. Hardwood output was 110,418,000 board feet, about the middle of the pack. By 1935 softwood production had risen slightly to 816,614,000 board feet, narrowly trailing Mississippi among the south­ern states, and hardwood output was 135,493,000 board feet. In 1940, the last year before the beginning of World War II, Ala­bama’s softwood production was 1,571,228,000 board feet, nearly doubling since the middle of the last decade. Ala­bama now led the South in softwood production. The state’s production of hardwoods was 179,018,000 board feet, about the traditional ratio relative to softwoods in Ala­bama. Softwood production dropped slightly during World War II, and in 1946 it was 1,413,136,000 board feet, trailing only Georgia (narrowly) among the south­ern states. The old rivals had now fallen far behind Ala­bama as their old-­growth forests were cut over. Ala­bama’s hardwood production was 744,987,000 board feet and it now led the South in hardwood production.20 But in the 1930s the remaining Ala­bama lumber companies were struggling to stay afloat. For example, in May of 1932, James Greeley McGowin of the W. T. Smith Lumber Company voiced his concerns. “Everything is most discouraging. We have been able to get probably a little better average by shipping all the export saps and cutting of timbers that we can possibly get orders for, but the wages we are paying look as if it is ridiculous, still it is either that or shut down and if we shut down there is nowhere for our men to make a living. There has been a mill running here for forty-­five years or more and a lot of people living here have never worked anywhere else.”21 McGowin had little faith in the efficacy of the Lumber Code Authority of

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the National Recovery Administration to solve the industry’s problems, but as one of his sons remembered, “My father got us all together one day and told us to adhere strictly to each regulation. He ended up by saying, ‘This is not going to work, but it’s not going to be the fault of the W. T. Smith Lumber Company.’”22 In a letter to a colleague, McGowin said, “Broadly speaking, I don’t think there is a thing in the world for anybody to fear from these codes if they undertake to live up to them.” However, he went on to say, “If they undertake to short-­change them or try to develop some means of getting around them . . . I am afraid it is going to lead them into trouble.” McGowin voiced a criti­cal assessment, declaring, “I do not believe in the Code. . . . To me, the whole thing is a mistake, but we are into it and I don’t see anything for any of us to do but try to live up to it. . . . My candid opinion now is for everybody to put his shoulder to the wheel and try to live religiously up to it and let’s give it a fair trial. There are many features to it to be applauded.” McGowin went on to say that “we were all running at a loss, as we have been in the last three or four years, most of the time running just to take care of the people. Eventually I decided I would run at some profit, whatever it took to do that, and I had to pay the people such low wages that I was ashamed of it, but I was running as hard as I could and selling as much lumber as I could and was gradually getting to where we were showing a little profit.”23 Despite their economic difficulties, lumbermen were prominently involved in the rebirth of Ala­bama forests. In the 1930s the W. T. Smith Lumber Company at Chapman, Ala­bama, began implementing a sustained yield strategy.24 The company also had an aggressive land acquisition policy. In 1930, it had about 140,000 acres. The company purchased timber, with the land essentially thrown in. By the late 1930s, its holdings were up to 160,000 acres, and by 1950 they were over 200,000 acres. By the time the company was sold to Union Camp, in 1966, it had 221,000 acres. About 80 percent of the land was within twenty-­five miles of Chapman, and at least two-­thirds had been farmed at one time.25 The company’s operating goal was to harvest around 70 percent of growth, based on periodic timber cruises. In other words, the McGowins were practicing sustained yield forestry long before the term “sustainable forestry initiative” was coined! The W. T. Smith Lumber Company also set aside game preserves and sold hunting permits, with the proceeds used for game protection. It created a 25,000-­acre preserve near Chapman that was stocked with deer and turkey. It was leased to the State of Ala­bama in 1953, and the first deer hunts were held in 1959.26 The Allison Lumber Company also played a significant role in restoring

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Ala­bama forests. Pioneering forester Elwood Demmon later recalled the motivation behind the company’s early forest management innovations: Colonel John Allison of the Allison Lumber Company in west central Ala­bama was another man who believed in forestry in principle, but he didn’t know enough about what was required because he had no technical forester. However, he was sold on the idea of cutting lightly, primarily because he had an interest in hunting deer which exceeded his interest in forestry. He knew that in order to have good conditions for deer and other game, he had to maintain a forest cover, so in all of his timber harvesting operations a good stand of trees was left and the forest was protected from fire. Old Colonel Allison put on a hunt every year and invited all his friends to come. His forest was in the loblolly-­ hardwood type where the light cutting proved to be fairly good forestry. The small and medium-­size trees were left to grow for the future and just the larger trees were harvested. Even today that is one method of forest management that is successful in certain timber types.27 Colonel Allison also pioneered fire control. In 1904 or 1905, he sent a man to the West Coast to examine fire towers in Oregon. At the time, there were no fire towers in Ala­bama, and Allison’s agent returned with a design for wall-­bearing fire towers. Allison built five towers on his property. They were 110 feet tall, with no center post; the paneled walls were self-­supporting. The tower operator slept on the sec­ond floor, the first floor housed his horse, and the top story was the observation post. Harold Hill, a longtime forester and lands administrator whose company, Ameri­can Can, acquired the Allison lands, remembered, “His instructions were, if you see a fire, get on your horse, go to it, put it out. If you can’t put it out, ride to Bellamy and get help. So that man went by himself, with nothing but a hoe and ax, tried to put the fire out, and if he couldn’t, he’d go to Bellamy.” Years later people were climbing and vandalizing the towers, so under instructions from his superior Harold Hill pulled the last one down.28 Colonel Allison’s hunting camp was also used to curry po­liti­cal favor. As Harold Hill remembered, “He had an old log cabin on the property that he had converted into a hunting lodge. He formed a little committee of prominent people around Ala­bama and told them he would fully sponsor a hunt . . . for anyone that they would vote on and propose. . . . He would provide the guns, arms, food, lodging, transportation, everything. . . . Write him a letter saying, you’ve been invited to host a hunt at Bellamy. Make a list of 25 guests that you’d like to hunt free of charge, complete with all services ren-

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dered, and come and hunt with us. And he really opened a lot of doors with that program.”29 Rather than selling hunting leases, Allison gave sportsmen a piece of property to use for hunts on a handshake. The club would sponsor the hunts and “Allison foresters and their men would conduct the hunts . . . the Allison personnel would drive the deer, they would prepare the bar-­b-­ que, they would do everything, just like they did with the po­liti­cal hunt, or prestigious hunt.”30 Alan Bruce was the grandson of pioneering Yale graduate forester Donald Bruce, who taught at the University of California and then joined the prestigious consulting forestry firm of Mason, Bruce, and Girard in Portland. He was also the coauthor of a well-­known book on forest mensuration. Alan’s father, also a Yale graduate, was attracted by the opportunity to practice industrial forestry and was employed by the Allison Lumber Company in Bellamy, starting just after World War II. Alan Bruce remembered that as a boy Bellamy was “kind of a place existing beyond its time. They still had railroad logging . . .[in] 1957. And they were just getting out of that and trying more modern logging practices with the trucks and caterpillar-­type skidders.” Bruce also recalled that Evan F. A ­ llison was “recognized as Ala­bama’s pioneer forest conservationist,” and “his legacy was alive there in Bellamy around conservation morality. Allison was well-­ known in the surrounding communities also for his precepts in forest and wildlife conservation.” Bruce said that example instilled in him a desire to be a “forester practicing conservation.”31 Another forester with a Yale connection came to the Allison Lumber Company in 1936. F. E. “Buck” Stabler was the son of a Yale Forestry School gradu­ate who was a longtime US Forest Service administrator. Buck Stabler graduated from the University of Virginia in 1935 with a degree in economics and then went on to the Yale Forestry School. During the summer following his first academic year at Yale, Stabler worked for Allison as a timber marker on a forestry crew. After finishing school at Yale, he returned to Ala­bama to work for Allison. In 1942 Stabler left Allison for a job with International Paper.32 Harold Hill worked for the Ameri­can Can Company when it acquired the Allison lands, and he remembered the results of its management practices. “Talking about pretty patches of timber and so-­called ‘Virgin Timber,’ although little of Bellamy was virgin,” said Hill. “It had been cut once before; all diameter cut. But the diameter limits was something like 18 inches. They didn’t cut below 18 inches. They did have a 40 acre block that had never been cut, that ran over a million feet on the forty acres.” Hill also remembered “another patch” in longleaf country, on the Scotch Lumber Company lands, that was “really beautiful.”33

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When Ameri­can Can Company acquired the Allison property it brought in the consulting firm of Pomeroy and McGowin, as well as Alan Bruce, who recommended reducing stocking. They made a broadcast cut across the entire property, taking each stand down to about 50 percent of its previous level. The idea was that this would stimulate natural reproduction, followed by another cut, and so forth. After five years, they decided the plan was not working, so they implemented a program of clear-­cutting and planting. Before they began the clear-­cuts, “the woods were ancient . . . most of it short leaf pine . . . beautiful short leaf pine, and loblolly, with an understory of Post Oak. And the ground was almost clean.” One result of the clear-­cutting was that “we started to get browse down at deer level, that population just exploded, to the point where after about the sec­ond year they were eating the trees as fast as I was planting them.”34 Harold Hill remembered that “we would take an area that had been burned prior to planting, plant our trees, go out the next morning, and they’d be gone. The deer would pull them up.” Eventually the company dealt with the problem by sponsoring a deer hunt, with the hunting fees going to charity. The first two-­day hunt attracted six to seven thousand hunters. Nearly three hundred deer were killed, but while the deer problem with planting was not solved, it did demonstrate the beneficial effects of clear-­cutting on the deer population. It also stimulated the company’s interest in wildlife management and led it to hire Auburn University to undertake a deer study.35 Almost by accident, some companies adopted forest-­harvesting methods, such as leaving seed trees, that allowed their lands to regenerate naturally. For example, W. T. Neal, president of the T. R. Miller Mill Company in Brewton, Ala­bama, remembered that “we have never had a cut-­over land problem. I might say that we have done selective cutting from the beginning of our operation, which was about the year 1878. . . . In this kind of operation we did not cut down any trees that wouldn’t float and didn’t cut any smaller trees than would make a 30-­cubic-­foot average, so in the beginning our set-­up was selective cutting by accident.” Similarly, the Jackson Lumber Company of Lockhart, Ala­bama, adopted a diameter limit for harvesting in 1908, leaving adequate growth for later harvests and avoiding a cutover land problem.36 An important role in the rebirth of the Ala­bama lumber industry was played by small, locally owned companies with loyalties to the area, which either survived the demise of the lumber boom or were born in the last days of the old era and operated on the lands left behind. Among these was the M. C. Dixon Lumber Company, which was founded by Mack C. Dixon, a native of Dale County’s Arguta community. Dixon founded the M. C. Dixon Lumber Company in Clayton in 1928, survived the Great Crash of 1929, and

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joined forces with his brother Donald A. Dixon, who had an associated business. In 1935, the Dixon brothers purchased an existing lumber manufacturing plant in Eufaula, which Mack managed under the name Dixon Brothers Lumber Company. In addition to the new company, the brothers continued to operate their in­di­vidual businesses, called the M. C. Dixon Lumber Company and the Donald A. Dixon Lumber Company. Donald Dixon died in 1954, and the M. C. Dixon Company eventually passed into the hands of later generations, in­clud­ing the third generation by the 1990s. By the late 1990s the company continued to operate on the origi­nal 1935 site in Eufaula. By then there was a modern, computerized mill, which employed over one hundred people and contributed over $20 million annually to the local economy. Electrical and steam power to operate the plant were supplied by a waste wood–fired power plant. The M. C. Dixon Lumber Company produced enough yellow pine lumber to construct four thousand homes annually, in­clud­ing framing lumber, decking, timbers, and boards for both the domestic and export markets. It also produced wood chips and pulpwood as by-­products that were sold to the pulp, paper, and particleboard industry. It owned timberlands and promoted sustainable forests through programs for local timberland owners.37 Ala­bama had another Dixon operation begun by a different family. Charles Dixon, of Andalusia, returned from World War I and entered the turpentine business with his father and brother Jesse. In about 1939, Charles and Solon Dixon founded the Dixon Lumber Company in Andalusia and eventually had affiliated mills in Evergreen, Lockhart, and Brantley. Dixon became involved in many other enterprises in vari­ous fields and built one of the first south­ern pine plywood mills at River Falls, Ala­bama, in 1970. Dixon was a dedicated conservationist and implemented a planting program that resulted in planting more than forty million trees. His family home became part of Auburn University’s Solon Dixon Forestry Education Center. In 1976 Charles Dixon was named Ala­bama’s Conservationist of the Year. He also died that year, and in 1978 the Dixon family sold their manufacturing facilities, which consisted of four sawmills and a plywood mill, to Tennessee River Pulp and Paper Company, retaining the timberlands to be managed on a multiple-­use basis.38 Changes in woods technology and methodology also contributed to the recovery of Ala­bama forests: by the late 1930s motor trucks were more and more widely used in logging, and railroad logging was on the way out. By the end of World War II the W. T. Smith Lumber Company had only two locomotives in limited service, and its last locomotive was a switch engine used at the mill in the mid-­1950s.39

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Floyd McGowin Jr. later described the changes in logging methods between the mid-­1930s and the mid-­1960s. He said that railroad logging had recently been discontinued at the beginning of the period, and selective cutting had replaced clear-­cutting. The rail-­mounted steam skidders were retired. Now the trees were felled by two-­man teams pulling “gator tail” saws, and the felled trees were then cut into log lengths, attempting to match the logs with mill requirements. The logs were then “bunched” by Caterpillar tractors to clearings in the standing timber. The tractors could pull several logs tied with log chains and did little damage to the trees or soil. Each tractor had a roper who spotted logs and directed the driver to maneuver the Cat to a place where he could get a chain around and under the logs and fastened with a hook. The logs were ordinarily skidded about two to three hundred feet. Once in the landing, the logs were unhooked in front of a loader to be placed on trailers pulled by gasoline-­powered trucks. The trailers were short and light, some homemade and some commercially manufactured. None of the trailers had brakes or lights. Two company crews supported the mill in Chapman, and they used “Speeder” loaders, which were mounted on Caterpillar undercarriages. They had a long boom mounted on a turntable, which supported a cable with steel tongs that was powered by a strong winch to pick up and position the logs. Smaller company crews used machines called “Loggers’ Dreams,” which were mounted on trucks and lifted the logs and swung them aboard and dropped them on the trailer. The loads ranged from seven to ten tons, and the trucks of­t en had to be pulled by a Caterpillar tractor over the woods roads to the pub­lic roads. Once on a pub­lic road, the trucks and trailers traveled either to a company railroad or directly to the mill.40 After World War II new, more powerful Caterpillar tractors were introduced with winches on the rear, which could pull logs out of wet areas. “Speeder” ­loaders were replaced with large cable loaders that were transported on rubber-­ tired self-­powered carriers. The crews were now doing mostly tree-­length logging. In the late 1940s, the loggers began to use heavy two-­man chain saws for felling and bucking. Within a few years the saws were smaller and easier to operate and had almost entirely replaced the “gator tail” and “jitty bug” (small bow saws used to cut pulpwood). Small, powered bow saws were used as well for some time.41 Earl McGowin later observed that modern highways and equipment made logging more flexible than in the days of railroad logging, enabling companies to adopt long-­range forestry programs. In addition, he argued, fire protection had been criti­cal in the process. By the end of the 1930s, the US census reported a total of 612 sawmills, ve-

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neer mills, and cooperage-­stock mills in Ala­bama, in­clud­ing those combined with planing mills and logging camps. They employed 18,627 workers, and the value of annual production was $32,512,574. It also listed eight producers of paper and allied products, which employed 2,053 workers. The value of production was combined with several other industries and not listed individually. There were also 33 logging camps and logging contractors, which employed 322 people and turned out products worth $514,644. There were 68 processors of gum naval stores, with 163 workers and annual production worth $1,238,532.42 By 1947, Ala­bama ranked first among the south­ern states in lumber production, with an annual value of all forest products of about $200 million. Pine, particularly loblolly, was the principal source of lumber, followed by sweet gum, oak, yellow poplar, and tupelo gum. Other commercially important trees were hickory, walnut, ash, cypress, cottonwood, elm, and maple. The state produced 1,258,751,000 board feet of softwood, and 536,210,000 board feet of hardwood. By 1945–1946, the state ranked third in turpentine production. There was also a great deal of wood consumed by coal and iron mines, mainly for mine props.43 While the lumber companies were making progress in restoring the land and recovering from the Depression, they felt pressured by the growing influence of pulp and paper companies in the South. The paper companies became fierce competitors for the land, because their huge investment in plants meant that they absolutely required a continuing wood supply for their mills. It was extremely expensive to shut down a paper mill because of a lack of wood. Also, paper company foresters managed the land differently, harvesting trees at a younger age, or, as they put it, on a shorter rotation, to produce pulpwood. The lumbermen at first thought that the paper industry’s methodology threatened the progress being made in forest restoration. There was considerable distrust between the lumbermen and the pulpers. However, over time, the paper industry also contributed to the restoration of Ala­bama’s forests. The lumber industry was evolving into the forest products industry.

6 The Rise of the Pulp and Paper Industry Between 1934 and 1940 there occurred the most significant industrial event in the South since the invention by Eli Whitney of the cotton gin. This was the expansion of the paper industry. —Frank Heyward, “History of Industrial Forestry in the South” I would say that the coming of the pulp and paper industry to the South was the boost that the South needed to promote a real forestry program because it offered an outlet for much wood that otherwise was valueless. . . . In the early days it was difficult to prove the financial advantages of practicing forestry when the market might not be available for twenty, thirty, or forty years in the future, and very few people are interested in what may happen that far ahead. . . . Here is where the pulp and paper industry has been a great boon to the South. —Elwood L. Demmon interview, Voices from the South The forestry we were faced with applying during my career was starting with cutover, burned over, what I called “moth-­eaten” stands and attempting to bring those back to a productive forest . . . some of your lands had . . . not even a seed source on ’em. Some of the lands had maybe a seed source, mostly residual trees and the trees that had been left by the loggers generally were not very good trees. —Fred Gragg interview

Just as the concept of sustained yield was beginning to catch hold among a few firms in the lumber industry, a competing market for timber was developing in the South. This new inhabitant of the piney woods, the pulp and paper industry, invested a far greater amount of money in its productive facilities than the lumber firms and, from the outset, planned to locate only in areas that could provide a long-­term, if not permanent, supply of timber to feed its mills. It would have seemed a perfect complement to the lumber industry if not for one key difference—the pulp and paper mills used timber cut to a much smaller diameter limit. Thus the lumbermen of the early days

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viewed the pulpers as a threat, taking the young timber off the land and out of the hands of independent timberland owners before the forests could regenerate and produce timber of merchantable sawlog size. The appearance of pulp and paper mills in the South was an important juncture on a long road that stretched back in time over centuries and in distance to Europe and the Far East. The origins of papermaking have become ritualized as part of the industry’s folklore. The Chinese began to manufacture paper from cellulose fibers about two thousand years ago. The process was introduced into west­ern Europe in the twelfth century by Muslims, and by the middle of the fifteenth century, paper had replaced vellum as the common writing material of the continent. The paper was made by hand, a sheet at a time, and rags provided the principal raw material. The first power-­driven machine used in paper manufacture was a rag macerator introduced in Holland in the eighteenth century. However, the modern era of paper manufacture began some fifty years later when a machine to make paper in continuous sheets was perfected. The first effort to produce paper by machine was in 1799 in France, but it was not until 1803, in England, that the first workable machine went into operation. The introduction of this machine, named for the Fourdrinier brothers of England who perfected it, made the mass production of paper possible. The first Fourdrinier machine was installed in the United States in 1827. However, the industry still had a major problem, for while markets were growing, the raw material supply was limited. After a long period of experimentation with vari­ous raw materials, in 1840 German papermakers developed the groundwood process, whereby wood was fiberized with mechanical grinders. In 1852, the English government issued a patent for the production of pulp by boiling wood in caustic alkali—the basis of the modern soda process. An Ameri­can pioneered the sulfite process in 1867, and the sulfate process was discovered accidentally in 1844 by a German who was seeking a cheaper substitute for sulfite. This produced a new kind of long-­fiber pulp. As a result of further refinement in Scandinavia, the paper produced by the sulfate process came to be known as “kraft,” the Swedish and German word for “strong.” Concurrent with the refinement of the technology and machinery to mass-­ produce paper came the explosion of the paper market in the United States. Compulsory education laws, a rising literacy rate, mass-­circulation newspapers, and other factors brought forth new machines to meet these demands: the linotype machine and rotary press, newspaper cutting and folding machines, machines to produce paper bags, a machine to fill handmade cartons, and other developments too numerous to mention.1

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The south­ern pulp and paper industry was centered on the production of kraft paper, which was ideally suited for wrapping and other protective uses. The first kraft mill in the South was built at Orange, Texas, in 1910, but the process really began to proliferate during the 1920s. Between 1925 and 1931 International Paper bought three and built three kraft mills in the South, in­ clud­ing a facility at Mobile. The paper industry was origi­nally centered in the North­east and the Great Lakes states, but as the north­ern forests were cut over, pulp and paper manufacturers eyed Dixie’s recovering and fast-­growing timberlands as future bases for their expanding industry. They commissioned occasional surveys and identified mill sites, but they did little beyond that. There were a number of small paper mills in the South, but they were of minor importance. Prior to 1930, the total production of the twelve to fifteen mills in the region consumed about the same amount of wood in the aggregate as one of the large mills that came later. The South’s great attraction was potential. Its sec­ond-­growth pine forests did not produce impressive wood volume per acre, and they were scattered over a vast geographical area, but they grew pulpwood-­sized timber in as little as fifteen to twenty years. Two catalysts helped move the South from potential to producer. One was the work and missionary activities of Charles Holmes Herty, who demonstrated that you could produce groundwood pulp from seven-­year-­old slash pine. Second was the completion of the first forest survey by the US Forest Service, which documented the presence of great quantities of fiber in the region and pinpointed its location by survey unit within each state.2 As the North­east was cut over and much of the land cleared for agriculture, papermakers turned to the South to find a larger source of raw material. They were also attracted by the South’s cheap labor, its abundant power and water, and its proximity to markets. Interestingly, in the early period paper mill operators did not consider growing trees specifically for pulp production, for as one of them observed, yellow pine “was too valuable to be worked directly into paper and it is only the waste of the logging and milling operations that the papermaker can hope to touch.”3 The first paper mill in the South was built near Mobile in 1856. Early mills used converted old cotton and wool rags to produce paper. By the late 1800s, the development of a workable process for making wood pulp enabled the manufacture of cheaper and better-­quality paper that was suitable for newspapers and books. Part of the scientific foundation for the establishment of the paper industry in the South, and more than a little of the promotional work, was provided by the previously mentioned Charles Holmes Herty.4

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Herty was a chemist whose experiments showed that south­ern pines were an excellent source for paper pulp. He was described by one observer as “a high class, almost inspirational, promoter,” and Henry Clepper, former executive secretary of the Society of Ameri­can Foresters, said that Herty’s work provided for “demonstration and promotion of newsprint manufactured from the south­ern pines [and] dramatized the economic possibilities of forestry for profit.” Retired forester Clinton H. Coulter said that Herty “talked to . . . anybody he could get an audience with on the growing power of south­ern pine and how much they could make for the South.”5 Some believed that Herty may have gotten more credit for his research than he deserved. The Champion Paper Company had actually been producing white paper from south­ern pine since 1915, and research conducted between 1910 and 1920 at the US Forest Products Laboratory at Madison, Wisconsin, also established the practicality of producing kraft wrapping paper, containerboard, and book paper from south­ern pine.6 The modern south­ern pulp and paper industry was born from 1900 to 1930, and paper mills began to appear in significant numbers during the 1920s. There were early kraft mills in Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Mississippi, Virginia, Louisiana, and Georgia, primarily producing wrapping and bag paper, but as late as 1920, the South still accounted for an insignificant part of national paper production. However, the early mills demonstrated the validity of producing paper from south­ern pine with the sulfate manufacturing process, and by 1930, there were fifteen major south­ern kraft mills, as well as a number of soda and sulfite mills, and the South produced over half of the nation’s sulfate pulp production.7 One of the earliest efforts to manufacture paper from south­ern pine was an unsuccessful attempt by the firm of Smith and Thomas at Pensacola, Florida, in 1903. However, this failure eventually yielded positive results, for the first successful pine pulp paper mill in the South, the Yellow Pine Paper Mill, was constructed at Orange, Texas, in 1910, using machinery that had origi­nally been part of the Pensacola operation. Using yellow pine waste materials obtained from local lumber yards, the mill origi­nally used the soda and, later, the sulfite processes. It converted to the sulfate process in 1911, and after six years of experimentation, it produced an excellent grade of kraft paper from pine. According to one historian of the pulp and paper industry, the Orange mill demonstrated two important facts: first, that it was not feasible to manufacture paper from pine using the soda process, and sec­ond, that sawmill waste could not provide an adequate and dependable wood supply. It would be necessary to harvest trees specifically to feed wood pulp mills.8 The first mill to successfully manufacture sulfate pulp from south­ern pine

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was the Roanoke Rapids Manufacturing Company of North Carolina. The facility was built in 1906 and switched to the sulfate process three years later. The company’s resident engineer recorded the breakthrough in his diary: “Feb. 26, Friday: Cooked and blew both digesters. Everything held! A great success! From South­ern pine, the first Kraft pulp blown in America.”9 Another early operation was a mill at Braithwaite, Louisiana, built in 1898 by English interests to produce paper from bagasse, the cane residue that is left over in sugar making. The Braithwaite mill was converted to the kraft wood process in 1916 but was destroyed a decade later. A third early mill was constructed near Moss Point, Mississippi, by English investors in 1913. The Moss Point mill later became the property of the International Paper Company. Finally, in 1916, an unsuccessful paperboard plant at Bogalusa, Louisiana, was converted into a sulfate paper mill. It was later owned by the Gaylord Container Division of the Crown Zellerbach Corporation. By 1930, there were fifteen major kraft mills in the South, and the region produced over half of the nation’s sulfate pulp. The potential of the early south­ern paper mills was limited, because sulfate pine pulp was considered good only for wrapping paper. It was extremely difficult to bleach, and its high rosin content offered more difficulties. However, research solved that problem, and in the early 1930s, International Paper Company’s Panama City, Florida, mill accomplished the first successful production of kraft paperboard on Fourdrinier machines. This established the technological foundation for the industry’s spread across the South.10 During the same period, Dr. Charles Herty and others were working on the problems associated with manufacturing newsprint from south­ern pine. Their efforts culminated in the construction of the Southland Mill at Lufkin, Texas, which ushered in the newsprint component of the south­ern pulp and paper industry by demonstrating that south­ern pine pulp could be used to manufacture acceptable newsprint.11 The interest in producing paper from south­ern pine was a consequence of the burgeoning use of paper products in the United States. From 1909 to 1919, the tonnage of wood pulp purchased in the United States increased by 29 percent. During the same period the production of kraft wrapping paper increased by 1,421 percent! There was also a whopping increase in the value of wrapping paper and kraft paper, the primary products of south­ern paper mills. At the same time, the pulpwood supply of the Great Lakes was dwindling, with the rotation cycle for pulpwood production ranging from about forty to sixty years. In the South, the land could produce pulpwood in fifteen to twenty years, and the land was cheap. Best of all, the industry used small

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or younger trees, of exactly the sort found across much of the south­ern landscape in the wake of the cut-­out-­and-­get-­out lumbering era.12 So an industry was born, and given its concurrence with the rise of south­ ern forestry, the paper companies understood from the beginning that to operate profitably over the long haul they needed to maintain a large land base on which they would practice sustainable forestry—harvesting, planting, and managing the forests with an eye toward profitable longevity. Given their large fixed investments in mills, the paper companies simply could not afford to cut out and get out in the manner of the early lumbermen. While there was some rivalry in the early days between the lumbermen and the pulpers, ultimately both benefited from a common pool of increasing forest management expertise to which they both contributed. One of the biggest stories for Ala­bama was the rise of the South­ern Kraft Division of International Paper Company. The story of International Paper in the South is closely intertwined with that of Richard J. Cullen. Born in Canada, Cullen began his south­ern career with the Louisiana Fiber Board Company of Bogalusa, Louisiana. As vice president and general manager of that company, he remodeled its mill and sold it to the Great South­ern Lumber Company in 1919. Cullen then looked at possible mill sites in north­ern Louisiana, and, because of the availability of abundant natural gas supplies as well as forests, he built a sulfate pulp mill at Bastrop, Louisiana, in 1920. He called his company the Bastrop Pulp and Paper Company. Cullen added another mill in 1925, under the name Louisiana Pulp and Paper Company. By the time the sec­ond mill became operational, Cullen’s Bastrop Pulp and Paper Company had been purchased by International Paper Company. Two years later, IP purchased the Louisiana Pulp and Paper Company as well. It then created a subsidiary, the South­ern International Paper Company, and named Cullen president. South­ern International opened a new sulfate pulp and paper mill at Cam­ den, Arkansas, in March 1928, and in May of the same year, it reached an agreement to purchase control of the South­ern Paper Company at Moss Point, Mississippi. The following year IP began construction of a large sulfate mill at Mobile, following a campaign by community leaders to raise $100,000, which IP demanded as a gesture of the city’s good faith. By 1930, the South­ ern International Paper Company was the leading pulp and paper firm in the South. IP’s South­ern Kraft Division was not only an early producer of kraft paper in the South; it was the pioneer in the large-­scale commercial production of Fourdrinier kraft containerboard. South­ern Kraft became IP’s largest division in tonnage and dollar volume.13

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The Depression of the 1930s interrupted the growth of the pulp and paper industry. In fact, during the first half of the decade, nearly 40 percent of the nation’s paper mills went into bankruptcy. However, the kraft paper revolution helped trigger a comeback in the South. South­ern production increased by more than 200 percent from 1936 to 1940. The South­ern Kraft Division of International Paper Company was the only part of the IP operation to make a profit during the early 1930s.14 The pulp and paper industry’s movement into the South was slow. This was due partially to the high initial cost of a new mill, ranging from $4 million to $12 million; partially to the reluctance of bankers to finance south­ern mill operations; and partially to the “birth control” provision of the industry’s code of industrial self-­regulation under the National Recovery Administration, which restricted the construction of new facilities.15 The slowness may also have reflected the industry’s lack of knowledge concerning the extent of south­ern timber resources. Inman F. Eldredge remembered that when he took over direction of the South­ern Forest Survey for the US Forest Service in 1932: I wasn’t at all impressed with the pulpwood setup. . . . There were a few mills in the South, but they were of no significance—just isolated operations. . . . So I went over to see a man named Allen in Georgia who had a pulp mill and was promoting another. After I had explained what we were doing . . . I said, “What do you want out of this?” He said, “Above all we want to know the volume of this timber expressed in cords as well as thousand board feet. I know you probably know that there’s an awful lot of wood for pulpwood here in the South. If that can be made known to the pulp industry, it’s going to have an immediate reaction.” Well, I did just that. . . . We greatly expanded our treatment, got advice from several different pulp people on just how they wanted it—by species, by sizes, by location geographically, by stands per acre (whether its practical to operate or not). So we got all that into it and that’s what brought the pulp industry south within the next few years. . . . It was something that they could visualize and evaluate. A statement that so many billion feet of saw timber was there couldn’t help much, but if you said that there were actually so many acres of timber with so many million cords of pine and of oak and of cypress, and that a certain percentage of it is below eight inches, and a certain percentage of it is eight inches to twelve inches, and a certain percentage is twelve to fourteen, then they’ve got the picture right off the bat.”16

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The pioneering firms that were already in the South contributed to the process. As Eldredge remembered, “Everybody was skeptical to start with, everybody. Nobody had ever thought that big. You can understand that in the sawmill industry because the sawmill man, no matter how big he is thinks only of the timber that’s available to him within transporting distance of his plant. He doesn’t give a rap what’s . . . sixty miles away, so he’s not a big thinker in that line. He thinks small. . . . But the pulp people are big thinkers. They have to be. When you put $30 to $40 million, or even $50 or $60 million in a plant that requires 2,000 cords of wood every day of the 365, you’ve got to think in great big terms.” Among the pioneering companies who saw the potential, Eldredge listed International Paper, Mead Corporation, Gaylord Container, National Container, Scott Paper, St. Regis, and several others that he did not specify.17 Another significant part of the Ala­bama story originated in the vision of Herbert E. Westervelt, president of the E-­Z Opener Bag Company of Decatur, Illinois. Just like some of the Ala­bama lumber manufacturers born in the days of cut-­out-­and-­get-­out lumbering that turned out to be in it for the “long haul” and survived through most or all of the twentieth century, this was a pulp and paper company that fit the same pattern. The Gulf States Paper Company originated in the activities of a family of Dutch ancestry. Herb Westervelt had experience in the paper industry, both selling paper products and manufacturing straw paper for packaging in small mills, when, in 1893, he organized the Prairie State Paper Company in Illinois, along with his brother and two other investors. The plan was to build a mill at Taylorsville, Illinois, near Springfield. Wes­ ter­velt purchased the boiler house from the recently closed World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, which was dismantled and moved to Taylorsville. Westervelt also installed a slightly used Beloit paper machine that he located in Nebraska. The machine produced straw wrapping paper. The company concentrated on producing bags for groceries and, in 1907, changed its name to E-­Z Opener Bag Company after the principal product.18 Herbert Westervelt was convinced that wood pulp represented the paper and bag industry’s future, and he was aware of the pioneering pulp and paper mill built at Orange, Texas, in 1910. Westervelt at this early point realized the vast potential of the south­ern pine forests for papermaking, if the high-­resin trees and the resulting dark, muddy-­colored pulp and paper could be processed to make it suitable for vari­ous uses. He built a bag factory adjacent to the Yellow Pine Paper Mill in Orange, Texas, in 1912, and the same year E-­Z Bag produced the first bags at the facility.

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After E-­Z Bag’s contract to purchase paper from the Orange mill fell through, Westervelt, still convinced that the South was the path to the future, leased an abandoned paper mill at Braithwaite, Louisiana, in Plaquemines Parish, on the Mississippi River below New Orleans in 1916. In 1919, E-­Z Bag exercised an option to purchase the mill, but in 1921 a fire devastated the facility, and this was followed a year later by a major flood on the Mississippi River. By this time other paper mills were springing up across the South, and, concerned about wood supply, Herbert Westervelt’s company purchased its first several thousand acres of timberland.19 The legendary 1927 Mississippi River flood came as E-­Z Bag was looking for a site for a new consolidated mill nearer its wood supply. Impressed by the south­ern kraft mills constructed in the 1920s, Westervelt and his associates decided in 1927 to build a new kraft pulp and paper mill at Holt, Ala­ bama, some three miles from Tuscaloosa. They chose the location because of its proximity to abundant timberland, railroads, and the Black Warrior River, not to mention the funds raised in Tuscaloosa to purchase a plant site that were given to the company. Construction began in 1928 on a major pulp and paper mill. In June of that year, the company was reincorporated in the State of Delaware as the Gulf States Paper Corporation. The new mill went on line in April of 1929, employing five hundred workers and manufacturing five million bags daily.20 The same year, Herbert Westervelt went into semiretirement, and leadership of the company passed to his daughter Mildred Westervelt Warner, with legal and financial areas overseen by her husband, Herb Warner. The Warners moved to Tuscaloosa from Decatur, Illinois, where they had been running the home office. Herbert Westervelt continued to argue for the purchase of additional land, noting that “especially am glad that you are getting some timberland. Wish we had 40,000 acres.”21 In 1937 he wrote presciently about the wood supply situation: Since the large number of new mills are building in the South, I have thought the timber question is the most important. In fact, I doubt the advisability of doing anything to add to the amount of wood we need [mill expansion] until we have a much more certain source of supply. We ought to have 100,000 more acres of woodland. The first thing we will learn some bright morning will be that a big mill will be built in our territory and that all the available woodland has been bought up for its use. Then the less wood we need the better. We have allowed the best time for buying to slip by, but it will never be any better in the future than it is now.

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If my estimate is correct, 120,000 acres should produce half the amount of wood we are now using. I wonder how expensive it would be to re-­plant cutover, denuded land. Such land might be secured in very good locations. . . . I think it would be wise to consider this question.22 Westervelt died in 1938, and Mildred Westervelt Warner became president of Gulf States Paper Corporation. In 1937, the Hollingsworth and Whitney Company of Boston chose Mobile as the site for a new sulfate mill that began operating in 1940. ­During the same period, International Paper Company expanded several of its South­ ern Kraft Division mills, in­clud­ing the facility at Mobile in 1942.23 By the late 1940s, there were fifty pulp mills in the South, with about half of the nation’s pulp mill capacity. The South accounted for about 80 percent of the kraft paper produced in the United States. The paper was used mainly for commercial purposes such as wrapping, packaging, and containers. South­ ern pulp mills also manufactured high-­grade white paper for printing and stationery, as well as newsprint.24 Immediately following World War II, several south­ern newspapers, which had traditionally purchased newsprint in the North, were inspired by the work of people like Herty and formed a corporation to build a newsprint mill in the South, where freight rates would be more favorable. Among them were the Atlanta Constitution, Montgomery Advertiser, and Birmingham News. They purchased a site near an old ordnance plant at Childersburg, Ala­bama, and leased a power plant and water filtration sys­tem from the Department of the Army. Kimberly-­Clark Corporation of Neenah, Wisconsin, designed and supervised construction of the plant and furnished supervisory and other key personnel to operate it. The mill began operations in about 1947 as the Coosa River Newsprint Company, with two newsprint machines and a small pulp mill producing bleached pine pulp. They added two more newsprint machines in the late 1950s, and in 1960, Kimberly-­Clark bought controlling interest and renamed the facility Kimberly-­Clark Coosa. The wood was origi­nally purchased from dealers, and Kimberly-­Clark built wood yards in Heflin, Roanoke, and Lineville. In 1961, the company abandoned the independent wood dealer sys­tem and began direct wood procurement. In 1970, it built its first sawmill, followed by others at Mellow Valley, Ala­bama, and Westover, plus a finishing plant constructed at Goodwater in 1972. The company had about 440,000 acres of land, which it managed on a thirty-­year rotation. However, it also depended on outside suppliers. In the early 1970s the Kimberly-­Clark operation had a capacity of about

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28. Men operating machinery at a paper mill. Photograph taken in the 1940s. Courtesy of the Ala­bama Department of Archives and History.

1.1 million cords annually, but in 1974 it built a new $110 million pulp mill with a much larger capacity. To ensure wood supply it built new chip mills at Nixburg and at Ashville, followed by a third near Dickert, between Wadley and Roanoke, in 1981. Eventually, the Coosa mill was sold to a Canadian conglomerate that changed the name to US Alliance.25 The South­ern Forest Survey of the early 1960s influenced not only the Union Camp decision to enter the South, but also Hammermill’s construction of a mill at Selma, Georgia; Kraft’s establishment of the Ala­bama Kraft mill at Cottondale; and three or four additional mill expansions and new mills. Dick Mordecai came to Ala­bama in 1968 as the regional manager for Union Camp, which had recently built a mill at Prattville. Mordecai said the activity was a result of the forest survey, “because it did show there was a plentiful supply of wood.”26 Ironically, even as the abundant forest resources attracted the paper companies to the South, concerns surfaced in some quarters about the prospects for a continuing timber supply. The industry’s rapid expansion in the late 1930s created the misconception that it would ruin the south­ern forests. The early paper mills depended heavily on independent pulpwood contractors for their wood supply, and the pulpers of­ten stripped the lands they logged of their timber, not allowing trees to grow large enough for other uses. In 1939, the Ala­bama State Board of Agriculture, alarmed by the situation, recommended a study of the pulpwood marketing sys­tem and the implemen-

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29. Pulpwood pens seven miles west of Perdido River. Photograph taken in 1937 by W. R. Mason for the US Forest Service. Courtesy of the Forest History Society.

tation of measures to “prevent Ala­bama’s pulpwood reserves from going the way of its timber.”27 US Forest Service officials warned that the south­ern paper mills might endanger the wood supply of the lumber industry if their lands were not responsibly managed. And the Forest Service’s South­ern Forest Experiment Station surveyed south­ern forests from 1935 to 1940 and found that in some areas, the pulp, veneer, and other wood-­using industries were consuming more timber than they were replacing. Other experts disputed these analyses.28 The South­ern Forest Survey, conducted by the survey unit of the South­ ern Forest Experiment Station, surveyed about half of the available south­ern forest acreage, in­clud­ing southwest­ern Ala­bama, and reported that of some 340 million cords of wood suitable for pulpwood, approximately 210 million cords were in trees less than 13 inches in diameter, which were appropriate for pulpwood. It also reported that there was room for expansion of the paper industry, with reasonable forest management, in areas like Ala­bama. In fact, the Forest Service studies indicated that new mills could provide a market for small, rotten, and cull trees that had no other profitable uses.29 Fred Gragg, a longtime forester and administrator for International Paper, recalled that when he began work in the late 1930s, some members of the pub­lic welcomed the industry as a source of jobs, but the lumber industry was

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“not very happy about the development of the paper industry . . . and rightly so, because they visualized the paper industry as being a scavenger industry that was taking the small trees that they were depending on for logs at a later time.” Several mills were being built in that period, in­clud­ing an International Paper facility at Georgetown, South Carolina; a Westvaco mill at Charleston; and a Union Camp operation at Savannah. A congressional committee held meetings around the South to learn about the problem, and at a Mobile hearing in 1939, many of those who testified were criti­cal of the industry. Gregg conceded that at the time, the papermakers in the South “were cutting more timber than we were growing.” One result was the formation of the South­ern Pulpwood Conservation Association, and an agreement by the paper companies to appoint extension or conservation foresters to sell the ideas of responsible timberland management to private nonindustrial timberland owners.30 Just as there were differences in objectives and methodology among lum­ ber companies, there were contrasts between the forest practices of the lum­ ber companies and the pulp and paper firms. Most lumber companies in the 1930s and 1940s were making little or no effort to manage their lands on a long-­term basis. The pulp and paper companies, on the other hand, were generally implementing forest management programs from the outset of their settlement in the South. The lumber firms and pulp and paper companies operated differently, largely because of the vastly different capital structures of the two industries. As one lumber company executive explained, “We didn’t have millions tied up in paper mills like they do.”31 Hostility between early lumbermen and the pulpers was palpable. A former Weyerhaeuser vice president, Dick Allen, remembered taking a paper company forester to a lumberman’s club meeting, because “he didn’t want to go by himself . . . he fig­ured he needed plenty of protection because . . . he was a pulp representative, see.” As Allen recalled, “The lumbermen . . . thought that the pulp people were gonna ruin this country. There would be no sawlogs left. They were goin’ in and cut all the small timber and there would be no saw timber left and they were up in arms.”32 It took a couple of decades before many lumbermen fully realized that the pulp and paper companies could actually complement their efforts to bring the south­ern timberlands back into profitable production. Of course, on the other hand, lumber firms that were looking to get out of the business during the period now had a new market for their timberland holdings. As pioneering south­ern forester Elwood L. Demmon described the situation, “There’s a competitive field for trees of around eight to twelve to fourteen

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inches, which both the industries are interested in to an extent, but if they have any sizeable stands of timber that will make good saw logs, practically all of the pulp mills sell them for saw timber or exchange them for pulpwood stumpage. Some of the sawmill people carry on an active program of thinning their smaller size timber where it’s necessary and it goes into pulpwood, so they’re largely working out their differences.”33 In 1948, Vertrees Young, executive vice president of Gaylord Container Company, personified the effort at reconciliation when he addressed a meeting of the South­ern Pine Association in New Orleans. Young told the assembled lumber producers that “inasmuch as both industries derive their raw materials from the same source, a common point of interest is immediately evident. Whether it is in future to be a conflict of interest or a community of interest depends principally upon how we conduct our respective operations. In the past our two industries have been looked upon as open and avowed competitors for raw materials. Actually, each if properly managed can do much to support and complement the other to their mutual benefit.” Young went on to cite an example of cooperation between the two industries: “International Paper Company in the past ten years has sold 753,000,000 Bf. of saw logs, about half of its pine, from its pulpwood lands and in turn has received 1,627,000 cords of pulpwood. In 1947 it cut 150,000 cords of pulpwood from tops behind logging operations. Other mills, ours included, are also getting sizable volumes from tops. This is wood that is otherwise wasted, and which, if left in the woods, adds materially to the fire hazard.”34 Elwood L. Demmon argued that “rapid progress in forestry did not come about until the pulp mills expanded so greatly in the thirties.” As Demmon recalled, “In the late twenties and early thirties when the pulp mills first came in, pulpwood could be had for twenty-­five to fifty cents a cord stumpage. Then as more pulp mills were established and competition for wood increased, the price of pulpwood stumpage rose until now it is of­ten five dollars or more per cord. That means that the timberland owner . . . can now afford to invest money in his forest where before he couldn’t. In the early days it was difficult to prove the financial advantages of practicing forestry when the market might not be available for twenty, thirty, or forty years in the future, and very few people are interested in what may happen that far ahead. . . . Here is where the pulp and paper industry has been a great boon to the South.”35 Early industrial forester Walter J. Damtoft also argued that “in the South the consciousness of the real value of timber came with the expansion of the pulp and paper industry.”36 In the early 1950s, Lyle F. Watts, chief of the US Forest Service, said that “it was a great day for forestry in the South when

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paper from south­ern pine was made practical. That development brought a demand for small-­sized trees that made intensive forestry possible, the dream of practicing foresters.”37 Obviously a major attraction for the pulp and paper companies that located in Ala­bama was abundant timberland to meet their wood supply needs. They relied on their own lands, as well as those of private, nonindustrial landowners. However, the pulp and paper company foresters of the 1930s and 1940s of­ten found themselves dealing with properties that had been left in deplorable condition by the early lumber companies. The Capper Report of the early 1920s indicated that one-­fourth of the land cut over by the lumber industry had been left totally barren. Much of the land that had been converted into farms had long since been abandoned and had fallen back into desertion by the middle of the Great Depression. One observer wrote that the land had been left “bare with stumps as the only reminder of what was once there . . . beautiful stands of trees. The bare soil began to erode and small rivulets grew into gullies.” The first director of the South­ern Forest Experiment Station wrote a dramatic essay that described the “ghostly desolation” of thousands of square miles of land that had once been covered by magnificent virgin forests. The implications of this situation were far reaching, for “not only were the best trees cut, the worst were left to reproduce. Destruction did not stop with the forest. The relationship between forests and soil, rivers, and wildlife amplified the losses, implying disruption of the linked systems which constituted the natural regimen of the landscape.”38 One overly dramatic description of the land says that “cool, green shadows of the virgin forest were only memories, and no longer did the resinous breezes sing through the tufted tree crowns. Instead the refuse of logging lay bleaching in the sun on millions of acres. Except for stumps and an occasional ‘mule tail’ pine the bared land was reminiscent of the west­ern plains. Scrawny cattle picked at the coarse grass and razorback hogs rooted out the remaining seedlings. Buzzards circled overhead and frequently feasted on the carcass of a cow that had succumbed to the twin hazards of ticks and starvation.”39 Industrial foresters who began to work with the land in that period have left descriptions that are only slightly less graphic. Arthur W. Nelson Jr. remembered that when he went to work for the Flintkote Company during the early 1940s, the company’s timberlands consisted largely of “abandoned, submarginal land.”40 When Fred Gragg started with International Paper in the 1930s, “all the lands that were being acquired by the company . . . were cutover lands . . . most of ’em were very poorly stocked, burned over, cutover.”41 Obviously, despite these gloomy descriptions, there were factors that at-

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tracted the pulp and paper companies to acquire lands that seemed so thoroughly exploited and unattractive. First, they were cheap. Large amounts of land in the South were being virtually abandoned because their owners could not even afford to pay taxes on them, so the paper companies could pick them up for a song. Second, they needed them. The resource base for the industry in the North­east was declining and the industry needed new sources of supply. Third, the south­ern cutover lands were not quite what they seemed on the surface. The potential was there for profitable regeneration, and on a fairly short-­term basis. Two factors brought south­ern industrial foresters and paper companies to this realization. First was the 1932 Forest Survey of the US Forest Service, conducted in the South under the direction of Inman F. “Cap” Eldredge. The survey revealed that there was far more timber remaining in the South than anyone had previously imagined, and it included precisely the kind of information about volume, mortality, and net growth that the industry needed. Second was the evidence on the land itself. While it was true that some of the land had no seed trees left at all, much of the cutover land had not actually been cleared in a literal sense; it had been “high-­graded.” Former Weyerhaeuser forester Dick Allen remembered, “Clear-­cut in those days are cuts to a diameter limit. . . . You cut the big timber first. . . . So there was still plenty of seed left on the ground when you were through.”42 Art Nelson says that “in many instances, the abandoned fields had seeded up directly in pine seedlings, giving rise to what is known as an ‘old field’ stand.”43 What could the new stewards of the land do? Fred Gragg said that “management consisted mostly of trying to establish fire protection. The only method of regenerating was to try to protect enough seed trees to acquire reestablishment of the stand by natural reproduction.”44 Where the young pines were already coming back, the companies tried to remove the overstory of older pines or hardwoods that were retarding the growth of young seedlings. Describing this kind of activity, Art Nelson noted that “almost everything that we did, we copied from other earlier paper company efforts in the South, to take similar properties and get them into shape.”45 The success of their efforts would depend in part on their ability to generate support, or at least to negate harassment, from their neighbors. The South had a high percentage of private forestland ownership compared with other parts of the country. In 1956 the US Forest Service published the Timber Resources Review (TRR), which contained the most complete appraisal of south­ern timber resources up to that time. The study showed that 91 percent of commercial forestland in the South was privately owned, com-

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pared with only 43 percent in the Northwest. In the Northwest, 57 percent was in pub­lic ownership, while in the South it was only 8 percent. Furthermore, in the South, while pub­lic agencies owned 16.5 million acres and wood-­using industries 33.5 million acres, private holders of more than 5,000 acres owned a total of 15 million acres. A total of 128 million acres was owned by small owners of less than 5,000 acres. Of these, 81 percent owned less than 100 acres, and only 1 percent owned more than 500. Many private owners were farmers, but there were many nonresident owners as well. The 128 million acres owned by small private owners exceeded the area of all commercial forestland, regardless of ownership, west of the Great Plains. These small owners supplied more than three-­fourths of the pulpwood consumed by industry. The TRR showed that forestry practices on large ownerships were better than on small holdings.46 Given the heavy dependence of the pulp and paper industry on private nonindustrial lands for part of its wood supply, cultivating and maintaining good relationships with neighboring landowners was a very important part of the job of the modern industrial forester. It would have been, at the very least, counterproductive to operate in the manner of pioneering forester Dr. Carl Alwin Schenck, who, in the words of “Cap” Eldredge, “being a German and fresh from Germany . . . couldn’t understand the independence of the backwoodsman . . . who did things for which they would have had their heads cut off in Germany or, at least, be put in prison. . . . But here they’d be taken to court and the juries would turn them loose. It takes years to know how to handle the backwoods people, and it is never easy.”47 In order to ensure an adequate timber supply, the paper companies not only practiced intensive forestry on their own lands, they attempted to stimulate wood production on private nonindustrial lands. One of the programs the industry promoted was the tree farm movement. The program began in 1940, when the Weyerhaeuser Timber Company designated one of its reforestation projects as the Clemens Tree Farm. The idea spread across the nation and into the South. The origi­nal emphasis was on fire prevention and landowner education in forestry techniques. Less than six months after the dedication of the Clemens Tree Farm, the National Lumber Manufacturers’ Association (NLMA) initiated a campaign among timberland owners called the Ameri­can Tree Farm System. The US Department of Agriculture’s charge to the wood-­using industries to commit themselves to growing repeated crops of timber on the land also contributed to the birth of the system. Ala­bama became the first state to recognize private landowners in 1942, and several of the 1942 tree farms were still in the program in the early twenty-­first century.

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30. E. N. McCall of Dixonville, Ala­bama, had the first certified tree farm in the state in 1942. The plantation in the background consists of slash pine planted the same year. Courtesy of the Forest History Society.

Coordination of the sys­tem was assumed by a subsidiary of the NLMA in 1942. In the early period, the program attracted mostly large timberland owners. After three years the South led the nation in the number of tree farms and total acreage, with 29 percent of the national total in the region. At that point south­ern tree farms averaged ten thousand acres. Critics charged that much of the tree farm acreage was owned by companies that were simply courting favorable publicity by meeting minimum standards. The requirements for certification were strengthened in order to make the program appear less industry controlled, and a greater emphasis was placed on enrolling smaller landowners. Critics also said the program was simply an industry effort to avoid government regulation of cutting and other practices on their lands. At the time, the industry was worried by the 1941 Report of the Chief of the Forest Ser­ vice, which said the only alternative to regulation of private lands was pub­lic ownership and management of more land.48

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As the paper industry and its wood suppliers improved their practices, they reached an accommodation with lumber industry foresters. The improved relationship became particularly important in 1956 when, for the first time, large quantities of sawmill residues were used as a raw material for pulp. (During the year, nearly three-­quarters of a million cords of mill residues were chipped and used for paper manufacture.)49 Landowners developed another voice during this period. In 1941, the industry-­run Forest Farmers Association (FFA) was organized, ostensibly to give forest landowners a greater voice in pub­lic forestry policy. The FFA supported private conservation efforts and worked to develop better markets and higher timber prices. The organization also worked for increases in research funding for the Forest Service and universities and promoted increased governmental support for forestry education, fire protection, and technical assistance for landowners. The Forest Farmers Association also joined the South­ern Pine Association, South­ern Hardwood Lumber Manufacturers’ Association, and the Ameri­can Plywood Association in the 1966 formation of the South­ern Forest Resource Analysis project that produced The South’s Third Forest report in 1969. This study was coordinated by Philip Wheeler, who had recently retired from the South­ern Forest Experiment Station, and by Zebulon White, professor of industrial forestry at the Yale Forestry School. The report analyzed the current situation in the south­ern forests and made recommendations for the future. In 1969, the South­ern Forest Resource Council was created to implement the recommendations, in­clud­ing the promotion of cooperative efforts by south­ern state governments to maintain and properly manage their forests.50 Responding to concerns about timber depletion, the paper ­industry formed the South­ern Pulpwood Conservation Association in 1939 to advise landowners about growing and harvesting timber. It also worked to establish pulp­ wood cutting rules and standards of forest management that contributed to the adoption of good forest practices in the South. The organization’s purpose was also to promote self-­regulation of cutting practices and the implementation of fire protection. Working with pub­lic foresters, the association staged demonstrations and enhanced knowledge of the importance of seed trees, timber marking, partial cutting, and other good forest practices among landowners, pulpwood contractors, and paper company officials. By the time of the sec­ond cycle of the South­ern Forest Survey, in the 1940s, the positive results of these improved practices were evident and documented. The efforts of paper companies and the South­ern Pulpwood Conservation Association to promote good forest practices among private nonindus-

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trial landowners and the citizenry were reinforced and abetted by south­ern railroads, which employed foresters and established forestry departments to promote forestry in their service areas. This made good economic sense. The railroads were attempting to ensure the survival of the forest products industries and their business. Among their activities were annual field forestry demonstrations, like the one conducted by the Seaboard Railroad at Cottonton, Ala­bama, in 1966.51 The paper companies also began to acquire large land bases, on which they implemented responsible planting, management, and harvesting programs. A common goal was to purchase enough timberland to meet at least half of their annual timber requirements. For example, when St. Regis moved into the South in the early 1950s, it purchased large holdings in Georgia, Florida, and Ala­bama, in­clud­ing 20,000 acres in Baldwin County. In 1957, it got cutting rights on 100,000 acres in four southwest­ern Ala­bama counties. In 1966, Union Camp purchased the properties of the W. T. Smith Lumber Company, in­clud­ing 217,000 acres of timberland near Chapman, Ala­bama. The paper companies were also actively pursuing long-­term leases for a period of about sixty years during this time. They also established tree seed nurseries and reforestation programs and implemented research programs in tree genetics, insects, diseases, multiple-­use management, and harvesting techniques. During the late 1960s, genetics research by the companies, universities, and the US Forest Service developed so-­called super trees of vari­ous species, which grew faster, were more disease resistant, and produced more fiber than in the past. International Paper established the first commercial pine seed orchard in Ala­bama, near Bay Minette, in 1958.52 To ensure timber production on their own lands, as well as those of private, nonindustrial landowners, the pulp and paper companies established sizable staffs of professional foresters who practiced intensive, commodity-­ oriented forestry. As late as the 1930s, the number of people trained and employed as professional foresters by private industry in the South was minuscule. Inman F. Eldredge remembered that when he graduated from the Biltmore ­Forest School in 1905, “there were very few openings in forestry. If you couldn’t get into the Forest Service, you were stymied. The chances in industry were very few at that time.” By 1946 pulp and paper companies employed 265 foresters in the South, and much of their effort was directed toward education and assistance programs for the small timberland owners from whom they purchased so much of their wood supply.53 The professional foresters and land managers who assumed responsibility for managing the lands owned and leased by pulp and paper companies in the 1930s and 1940s confronted a wide range of problems. The severity and

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31. A forester from the South­ern Kraft Division of International Paper Company examines terminal buds on grafted slash pine at Baldwin County Seed Orchard. From the ­author’s collection.

extent of these problems varied from property to property and from site to site. Thus, the prescription for one property or site could differ considerably from that for another. Also, the objectives of a particular company or landowner obviously affected both long-­range and short-­range planning and decision making. Industrial foresters knew and accepted the idea that economics would be the final determinant of their actions. Long-­range plans would sometimes be altered by short-­run economic considerations. They realized full well that to separate issues into “forestry” problems and “business” problems was artificial. Virtually every decision an industrial forester made was a forestry decision as well as a business decision, and perhaps a social decision as well. Nevertheless, some general patterns were evident across the South as these pioneer foresters viewed their terrain. First, most of them were dealing with cutover lands that had been left in pretty sad shape by lumber companies or other owners that had not had the time, money, or inclination to manage them responsibly with an eye toward regeneration. How to replenish and re-

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store these lands was thus a major early consideration, and the prescriptions would be affected by numerous factors. Second, the fire problem was endemic in the South. A product of culture, neglect, and poverty, wildfire and incendiary fire were constant threats to south­ern timberland owners and managers. It didn’t make much sense to put a lot of effort and money into managing timberland if it was likely to be destroyed by fire. Getting fire under control was a necessity and a major problem. Third was the simple, yet complicated, task of establishing and maintaining boundary lines. In many cases, the lumber companies had done a very poor job of determining and maintaining their boundary lines, and neighboring farmers were more than happy to encroach on the lands of their larger neighbors. They farmed some of these lands, grazed cattle and hogs on them, burned them, and were sometimes able to legally claim them through adverse possession. For a variety of reasons, clarifying and controlling boundary lines was a major focus of the early paper company foresters and land managers. Government relations and, particularly, taxation were also among the concerns of the early land managers. Obviously they could not afford to put a lot of money into managing their lands and producing a crop of timber if the opportunity for profit was endangered by excessive taxation. Part of the job of the early industrial forester and land manager was to deal with his neighbors, government representatives, and politicians and attempt to create an atmosphere of goodwill in which his industry and company would be treated fairly. The problem of community relations also reached into many other areas. It must be remembered that the pulp and paper industry drew a large percentage of its wood supply from small, neighboring landowners. Thus, it made good business sense to promote improved forest practices on their lands so that they would become more productive. It also simply made good sense to cultivate goodwill so that the company would have the opportunity to purchase their timber. Also, the fire and boundary problems were obviously affected by the company’s relationships with the local community, not to mention the government and taxation. While there were many dimensions to the relationship between pulp and paper companies and their neighbors, there were three areas in particular where the goodwill of the “backwoods” people of the South was criti­cally important. First was wood supply, sec­ond was government relations, and third was fire protection. On the wood supply front, Art Nelson noted that “when you worked with your neighbors . . . you’d find out who else would have some timber to sell. It stands to reason that a good relationship meant they would be more willing to sell it to you.”54

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Jeff Hughes, longtime Crown Zellerbach forester and manager, emphasized the importance of community relations in shaping the governmental climate, noting that “you’re at the mercy of pub­lic opinion. . . . They can increase taxes. . . . They can complain about your forest management practices. . . . We operate at the mercy of the public. . . . There’re laws that can be passed . . . logging restrictions, restrictions on the use of the pub­lic roads. . . . They can and do lobby legislatures and they do call their legislator . . . and they do vote—and they can seriously affect your ability to do business.”55 Dick Allen also emphasized the importance of community relations: “If you have been workin’ with them as neighbors, and helpin’ ’em fight their fires, and helpin’ them with their forestry problems, then you receive support with legislation for forestry and taxation.”56 Finally, always looming large was the matter of owner objectives. An industrial forester or land manager who ignored that dimension of his situation soon became an unemployed industrial forester or land manager. Richard C. “Dick” Allen summed up the situation concisely when he observed that “in that day and time, good forest management or good forest practice or good forestry or vari­ous terms used for it was mainly based on keep the dad blamed fire out, let it reseed, and cut the biggest timber, and keep out trespass, and buy as much land as you can.”57 The early industrial forester was also affected by the prevailing lack of silvi­ cultural knowledge. While the pioneering work of people like Mohr, Herty, Eldredge, Hardtner, Chapman, Cary, and others had provided a foundation, there was still much to be learned. To look back from the perspective of the early twenty-­first century at decisions made by industrial foresters and companies during the 1930s, 1940s, or 1950s is hardly fair. The foresters of that period were developing the information and knowledge that gave their later counterparts a greater arsenal of information on which to base their decisions. The large companies developed sizable forestry programs. By the late 1950s, International Paper owned and leased more than four million acres of timberland in the South and employed 235 foresters. During the 1930s, the IP foresters were involved primarily in fire control and timber cruising. A movement toward actual forest management began in 1937 under the direction of Joseph E. McCaffrey, as the company established a woodlands organization at Camden, Arkansas, and then a year later the central woodlands division at Mobile. Fred Gragg said that when he went to work for International Paper in the 1930s, “I was I guess the only forester that IP had in the Carolinas at that time. We had several people in the Woodlands Department, but most of ’em

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were people that had come up through the ranks and were practical people, some of ’em very talented people, some of ’em knew a lot about forestry, a lot about logging and so forth, but very few of them had any forestry education.”58 By 1969, IP employed 330 foresters in the nine states of its South­ern Kraft Division, with most of them supervising management and harvesting operations on IP lands.59 In 1958 Frank Heyward, director of pub­lic relations for the Gaylord Container Corporation and former forester and general manager of the South­ern Pulpwood Conservation Association, described IP’s lands as “splendidly managed” and noted that International Paper Company “had a finger in a majority of the more important forestry activities within the region the past 25 years.”60 These men, and others like them, shared a sense of mission about their work. They believed deeply in the need to manage the nation’s forests, pub­ lic and private, responsibly in order to perpetuate the country’s timber supply. Arthur W. “Art” Nelson Jr. remembers that as he was finishing forestry school at the University of Idaho in the 1930s, “I was . . . told by a number of people that if you really wanted to accomplish something in your lifetime in forestry, the place to head for was the South. At that time Yale Forestry School had an outstanding south­ern program in which they operated on the lands of the Crossett Lumber Company . . . and the Urania Lumber Company. . . . My interest in coming South prompted me then to apply to Yale.” As Elwood L. Demmon put it, “Most of us went into forestry because we liked the work and we liked to be doing something that would benefit the country.”61 There was, however, no single approach that all of these professionals adhered to as they attempted to implement responsible policies on the timberlands they managed. In fact, R. D. Forbes, director of the US Forest Service Experiment Station at New Orleans, emphasized this fact in a speech before the South­ern Pine Association annual meeting in 1921. Said Forbes: One point cannot be overemphasized at the outset. If you insist that we put down in black and white requirements which will apply to all operations of the South­ern Pine belt . . . you must expect that the best land for timber growing will be penalized on account of the poorest land. Forestry is not, and never will be, something which can be intelligently applied from a swivel chair in an office. The only place to practice forestry is in the woods. Conditions on one type of soil may be most unfavorable to reforestation, while conditions on another soil may be extremely favorable. If you ask us to name measures which will secure the natural reforestation of the entire pine region, which includes bad

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conditions as well as good, you must not complain if those measures are more than is really necessary to secure natural reforestation under the best conditions. . . . The requirements for keeping South­ern Pine lands reasonably productive are as follows: 1. That four seed trees of longleaf pine, or two seed trees of any other kind of pine, be left standing and uninjured on each acre of land cut over. . . . 2. That all tops and slash left in logging be removed to a distance of 20 feet from the seed trees, unless twice the prescribed number of seed trees is left per acre, in which case the slash may be left untouched; the slash to be burned the first winter, or carefully protected by patrol and fire lines for five years. 3. That the cutover lands, when once reseeded, be rigidly protected from fires at all seasons of the year for 3 years in the case of longleaf pine, and for 10 years in the case of other pines, after which less careful protection will be sufficient. 4. That wherever razor back hogs are sufficiently numerous to keep longleaf pine seedlings from reforesting the land the hogs be excluded, unless the land will reforest to other kinds of pine.62 Fire control may have been the most important concern of these early foresters. Fred Gragg noted that for two decades after he went to work for International Paper in the late 1930s, the biggest problem faced by forest managers was fire, and that problem was linked to open range. Ironically, in Gragg’s opinion, the pub­lic was more interested in the problem of people hitting cattle on the highways. The press’s coverage of people being killed between Montgomery and Mobile because of hitting cattle sleeping on the highway led to Ala­bama passing a stock law. This Gragg termed the “most . . . significant single influence that took place to bring an acceptance of fire control to the public.”63 Still, by the latter part of that decade the International Paper Company estimated that fire destroyed 60 percent more wood than that used by the pulp and paper mills, not to mention the destruction of seedlings and damage to the topsoil. On IP’s own lands fire was limited to about 2.5 percent of the total acreage. On unprotected south­ern lands the rate was about 14.5 percent.64 Restoring cutover or abandoned lands was also a high priority. Art Nelson, in a 1978 interview conducted by Auburn forestry professor Warren Flick, described the typical procedures in site preparation and reforestation of the early 1940s: “The largest amount of planting was done on abandoned, submarginal land. This land had usually grown up in sage grass, while it had not been out of cultivation long enough for any large amount of undesirable hardwood brush to get established. In many instances, the abandoned fields had

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seeded up directly in pine seedlings, giving rise to what is known as an ‘old field’ stand and needed no further attention until it was time to thin. So the site preparation work was really confined to very simply sometimes burning off the field before you planted it in order to make it easier to plant.”65 On the other hand, by the time Alan Bruce entered the forestry profession upon graduation from Auburn in 1978, chemical site preparation using 2,4,5-­T herbicides was not allowed because of the controversies surrounding Agent Orange in the Vietnam War. Thus, in southwest­ern Ala­bama, where Bruce was working, mechanical site preparation was common but had problems because of hilly, erodible soils. Later, acceptable herbicides came into use, as well as subsoiler plows that were particularly effective on lands that had previously been used for agriculture and on cutover areas. The plows were first developed in Australia, then modified, and may have seen their first use in Ala­bama by the James River Company. The machines were soon adopted by International Paper and Union Camp.66 In any case, by the mid-­1950s, the fire prevention and planting efforts were paying off. The US Forest Service’s Timber Resources for America’s Future showed that across eleven south­ern states, the growth of wood exceeded the cut by at least 34.2 percent. For softwood, or pine, growth exceeded cut by 31.6 percent. Nearly a decade later, in 1963, the Forest Service reported that the growth of timber in the United States exceeded that lost to harvest, fire, insects, and disease by 32 percent. These trends continued into the 1960s.67 The fig­ures contradicted the argument of some environmentalists that drain exceeded growth. For example, a 2006 publication in ABC-­CLIO’s “Nature and Human Societies” series states flatly that “Since World War II logging of sec­ond-­growth pine forests has exceeded replanting by about 40 percent.” This statement conveniently ignores both the U.S. Forest Service fig­ures and the fact that many of the sec­ond-­growth forests were replaced not simply by planting, but also by natural regeneration through “seed trees” left after logging and through “selective” cutting.68 Some industry people say that for years there was not much competition for wood in some parts of Ala­bama, such as the southwest­ern region on the Mississippi border. That began to change with the expansion of both sawmilling and pulp and paper in the area, so that by the late 1980s one spokesman characterized the situation as one of “intense competition.” A major factor was Macmillan Bloedel’s conversion of its natural stands and movement into

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the wood market to purchase chip-­and-­saw for its sawmills. Also, there was a growing market for moving hardwood chips for export down the Tennessee-­ Tombigbee Waterway. Another factor was the increasing prevalence of chip mills and tree-­length logging as mills were updated to using tree-­length timber. Both the Ala­bama River and James River companies began building tree-­length systems. James River had four chip mills, and at the beginning of the 1990s, it constructed a large chip mill at Naheola that used tree-­length wood. A James River forester remembered that “by this time everybody was hauling tree-­length wood, and the loggers were having to slash it up to make short wood to feed it into our mill woodyard. . . . Short wood was gone from our site within a couple of months. It couldn’t compete . . . the tree-­length wood was just cheaper.” Some small woodlot operators who had older equipment tried to continue producing short wood, but “they were just doomed, because mechanization was just by-­passing them and making wood costs cheaper.”69 Wood supply for the paper mills was criti­cal. Former Champion Paper and Fibre Company president and chairman Reuben B. Robertson pointed out in a 1961 interview that “most pulp and paper mills today—well, they all call for the expenditure of a lot of capital—thirty, forty, sixty million ­dollars—and very of­ten it has to be financed. When you get with the Wall Street banker he wants to know what the chances of survival are for a company investing that much money. How permanent is the raw material supply? So in order to properly finance many of these new jobs, they have to spend money on forests and they have to see that those forests are operated on a management plan, a sustained yield basis.”70 Fred Gragg was well aware that on occasion long-­term forest management plans had to be sacrificed because of short-­term considerations: “If you have a mill that’s out of wood for whatever reason . . . and you have a stand of timber that’s 25 years old close to the mill and you’re managin’ that stand on a 35 year rotation, you absolutely have to consider harvestin’ that stand ten years before its projected maturity in order to protect the plant. Now you’ve got to recognize the fact that that’s expensive wood . . . you’re sacrificing income . . . if you hold it ten more years. But as long as you recognize the fact that you are takin’ a financial sacrifice, that’s good forestry in my view.”71 Bob Nonnemacher also understood the occasional conflict between long-­ range and short-­range considerations in the management of timberlands: “If you accept 100% stocking as a long range objective and then a mill suddenly is running out of wood because of adverse weather conditions and that particular acre of land is accessible even in wet weather . . . you go in and clear cut, go in and thin it, whatever you have to do, to the degree of keeping that

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mill running. Why? Well, economically a mill that’s not running is not making any money; in fact, it’s losing a lot of money and the overhead, which is constant, is eating you up. Perhaps more importantly, you have promised a very valued and a long time customer delivery of 50 tons of paper, you know, next Monday, and if that machine is not making paper you are not going to deliver it and the competition is going to supply him with that tonnage and you’ve lost him forever. Now does that make economic sense to forget the long range objectives today and keep that machine running? Darn right it does because you’ve got eternity to get back into your long term objective.”72 Fred Gragg remembered that following World War II “there was a dramatic change in the degree of the practice of forestry all over the south” as a result of new sawmills, lumber mills, plywood producers, manufacturers of oriented strandboard, and other products. This stimulated the amount of planting, the development of genetics programs, timber stand improvement, precommercial thinning, drainage projects, and other forest management measures.73 Gragg also recalled that the increased use of sawmill waste for wood chips significantly impacted the mill supply situation, as well as growth and drain statistics. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, International Paper began to import debarkers and chippers from Sweden. IP origi­nally purchased thirty of the machines and installed them in sawmills, with 50 percent of the payments coming from chip settlements. International Paper also provided the engineering for the installations. As Gragg remembered, “It was just a gift from heaven, as far as growth and drain relationships were concerned.” The situation was further improved by the increasing use of hardwoods to manufacture some grades of pulp.74 Greeley McGowin of the W. T. Smith Lumber Company traveled to Sweden and observed the machinery firsthand. He returned to become a major promoter of the Swedish equipment in Ala­bama. Art Nelson also remembered the impact of Swedish technology on the south­ern forest products industry. In a 2000 interview, he recounted how some south­ern lumbermen went to Söderhamn, Sweden, where they saw a debarker, bought one, and installed it at the South­ern Lumber Company of Warren, Arkansas. As Nelson remembered, “It worked, but the knots on south­ern pine were just too much for the Swedish machine. It broke the arms. But they had one rebuilt that was strong. And Soderhamm, who have a plant somewhere around Talladega, AL, they have a machinery plant that makes this and chippers and a lot of other things.” With the debarker, Nelson remembered, came the advent of tree-­ length logging in the late 1940s. “That changed it [the industry] completely. It made small, peckerwood sawmills obsolete, because the lumberman needed

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the income from the chips. It greatly strengthened moderate sized sawmills which could merchandise the chips.” Then, Nelson continued, “The mills began to take sawdust. They found that they could blend a certain amount of sawdust in the pulp. . . . And of course then that changed the logging. The five foot log is now relegated to crews just working small . . . pea-­patches of timber. But the main operation is the tree length skidding with sorting at the mill. After the whole log is debarked, the log or peeler portion is cut off, and the top part is sent then to the chipper. And that’s, I think, been a great change.”75 As discussed earlier, pulpwood production changed in the 1960s, when longwood began to be produced and both shortwood and longwood production became mechanized. The new systems were less labor intensive although more productive. Longwood production required more timberland and expensive equipment in order to convert long logs to shortwood or chips.76 Later developments included chipping debarked trees at field centers and hauling the chips to the mills in railcars or special trucks. Some companies established in-­the-­forest debarking and chipping operations. A 1969 study indicated that 68 percent of chips came from sawmills, 15 percent from permanent chip mills, and 10 percent from plywood mills, with the remainder from transportable chip mills, sawdust, and other sources. Pulpwood was hauled to the mill or concentration yard by trucks, railroads, and barges, depending on distance and cost. Trucks were preferred within a fifty-­mile radius of the mill, and rail and barges for greater distances. About 60 percent of the pulpwood transported to south­ern mills was transported by rail, 39 percent by truck, and 1 percent by barge. After 1950, there was a tremendous growth of concentration yards, of­t en located near railroad lines to make shipping more cost efficient. Railroads developed special cars to handle the pulpwood: pulpwood rack cars, chip cars, and chip hopper cars.77 In the early years the paper companies competed feverishly for wood, buying up land and purchasing from small farmers and contractors. The price of forestland soared, and the value of pine saplings too small to make sawlogs exploded from virtually nothing to several dollars per cord. Many tracts of timber were stripped of their sec­ond-­growth pine, repeating the patterns of timber harvesting in the days of cut-­out-­and-­get-­out lumbering. Foresters of the lumber industry who had been working to restore the forests were appalled, as were many pub­lic foresters, government officials, and citizens.79 At first, pulp mills simply published notices that they were buying pulpwood and purchased on a first-­come, first-­served basis from off-­season farmers, unemployed farm laborers, and small entrepreneurs until they had an adequate inventory level. However, as the industry grew, the arrangements

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became more formal. Mills began to appoint wood purchasers at strategic railroad locations. They were given commissions on wood shipped to the mill. They then began to issue more formal wood orders to dealers, who in turn subdivided the orders among producers who were harvesting for them at a particular time. This took the financial and administrative burden of dealing with hundreds of small producers out of the hands of the mill. Some of the timber came from corporate lands. Some came from nonindustrial private landowners. In 1968, some 73 percent of the commercial forestland of the South was privately owned, with pulp and paper companies owning only 14.5 percent. The rest was held in pub­lic ownership and by other forest products industries. A variety of factors, in­clud­ing the small size of most private timber holdings, the small volume from in­di­vidual sales, the small cut per acre, and the small size of trees suitable for pulping meant that pulpwood was not produced in the same way as sawtimber. A sys­tem developed of timber owners, pulpwood producers, pulpwood dealers, and pulp mills. The pulpwood dealers played a criti­cal role in the industry.80 Originally, pulpwood producers of­ten cut pulpwood as a sideline, but as the industry grew they became full-­time workers dependent on pulpwood production for a living. One writer said the typical pulpwood producer at the beginning of the 1960s was “poorly educated, and owned a single-­axle truck capable of hauling three cords of pulpwood, one or two chain saws, and a variety of accessory equipment.” Often the dealers helped the producers acquire and finance the equipment. The producer of­t en hired two or three other workers to assist in harvesting the pulpwood. They typically worked less than 200 days annually and produced less than 1,000 cords a year.81 The relationships between wood dealers and independent loggers were personal and financial, and it was of­ten impossible to separate the two. R. C. Wakefield, who ran a number of wood yards in Ala­bama and Georgia during the 1950s and 1960s, remembered that “you’d buy the tract of timber, you’d finance their old trucks and their saws and tractors and some of them would have a good little bit of equipment that they’d be in my hip pocket pretty heavily. Of course, I was in the bank’s hip pocket quite heavily. So, when they’d show up, I’d just buy the wood and stack it up.” The wood dealers were financed by banks.82 Fred Gragg remembered that the wood dealer sys­tem existed when he started at International Paper. He noted that dealers were frequently foresters, while some were previous employees of industry. He described their function as that of “gathering wood supplies from many thousands of sources for the sale to a relatively small number of papermills.” An increasing trend, he observed, was for dealers to serve both lumber and paper companies, dealing

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in timber, sawlogs, pulpwood, poles and pilings, and other forest products. Some were consulting foresters. He also said that “many dealers over the years have been selected in the beginning because they were well known in their communities and respected in their communities.” He also commented that he didn’t know of “any dealers that’ve been selected because of race, but I’ve known many black dealers in my career.”83 In a 1998 interview, longtime International Paper Company forester and executive Robert Nonnemacher was asked how IP chose dealers in the early days. He recalled that a dealer was a “prominent business man in a local economy. Guy that owned the grocery store or something and could walk out on the porch and scale a truck and accumulate it. Put it on a railroad car by hand and ship it into the mill.” Not all of the dealers were honest. Nonnemacher said some would “stack the wood in the boxcars right in front of the doors. There wouldn’t be any wood behind them. They were drawing an advance on a carload of wood. It just wouldn’t be there when it got to the mill.” IP financed the dealers at times. Nonnemacher noted that “if I was needing wood badly, and a dealer said he could get me more wood if he had a new truck, that he had some laborers but he needed a new truck to haul wood, we’d advance him some money, you know. Then we’d deduct it from his settlements every week.”84 As noted earlier, the worst thing that could happen to a land or procurement manager was for the mill to run out of wood and have to shut down. Nonnemacher remembered that in the mid-­1970s, when the wood supply ran short for International Paper, the president of the company came to Mobile, pounded his fist on a table, and told Nonnemacher, who was responsible for wood procurement, “Nonnemacher, do you know what your job is?” Nonnemacher replied that he thought so. Said the president, “The hell with thinking. Your job is to be sure these mills don’t run out of wood. . . . That’s what your job depends on. Don’t let these mills run out of wood. Do whatever you have to do to keep these mills from running out of wood.” Nonnemacher called in his regional managers and told them, “You guys know what your jobs are. You’re authorized to do whatever the hell it takes.” Nonnemacher and his people quickly spent some ten million dollars on logging equipment, “anything that had wheels or tracks that we could buy and eventually we had more than 150 company logging jobs underway to supply the mills.”85 Another model was that of Union Camp, which built some eight to ten wood or concentration yards where independent dealers would deliver wood. The wood was stored until needed by the mill and then loaded on railroad “rack cars” for delivery.86

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With the exception of the 1937–1938 recession, the pulp and paper industry recovered from the Great Depression and grew rapidly during the late 1930s. During a two-­and-­a-­half-­year period beginning in August 1936, twelve new sulfate mills were constructed in the South, and a number of other plants were enlarged. Altogether, from 1936 to 1940, fourteen new mills were built and many older ones were expanded. During the decade over $80 million was invested in the south­ern pulp and paper industry.87 Ironically, in light of what actually happened, some contemporaries feared that the pulp and paper industry would follow in the footsteps of the lumber industry, cutting over the lands and then moving on to other climes. F. A. ­Silcox, head of the US Forest Service, warned that building “new pulp and paper plants upon the thousands of lumber and other forest industries already established there means that, without some form of intelligent forest management, certain south­ern forest areas may be left in an unproductive condition for generations.” He also argued that pulp mills engaged in indiscriminate cutting and would not leave enough sawtimber for the lumber industry.88 Silcox’s fears proved unfounded. By 1953, 63.5 percent of Ala­bama’s land was classified as forestland. The percentage was increasing, in part as a result of tree planting under the Conservation Reserve phase of the Soil Bank Act. In the same year, the sawlog stock was 38,491,000,000 board feet, and the total growing stock was 11,712,400,000 cubic feet. Forest growth exceeded drain. The state had some 1,800 sawmills, 7 wood-­pulp mills, and more than 100 veneer mills, cooperage plants, wood-­preserving plants, and others. Forest industries were exceeded only by primary metals and textiles in Ala­bama’s industrial economy.89 The pulp and paper industry grew dramatically in the late twentieth century. US paper and board production (excluding hardboard) in 1965 was 42,998,000 tons. Production from that time increased steadily until the mid-­ 1990s, with 52,053,000 tons in 1970, 63,865,000 tons in 1980, 80,445,000 in 1990, and 90,897,000 in 1994.90 Pulpwood receipts (wood received at the mills) in the south-­central region (Ala­bama, Tennessee, Kentucky, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas) increased more or less steadily from the early 1950s until the mid-­1990s. By the early 1970s, they had virtually doubled, and they continued to increase more or less steadily, if less dramatically, until 1996.91 The pulp and paper industry had become a significant and enduring part of Ala­bama’s forest environment and community.

7 The Golden Age of the Forest Products Industry? Into the Future When I first came to Ala­bama, the pulp manufacturing industry was relatively small in size and few in numbers in Ala­bama. There was International Paper Company at Mobile and Gulf States Paper Company in Tuscaloosa. St. Regis was pecking away in south Ala­bama with a mill at Cantonment, Florida. But basically, Ala­bama was a sawmill forest economy. And as the sawmill people clearcut their timberlands, very few practiced sustained yield. More and more of it came up for sale. So, as the sawmill industry . . . had less land that had their type of material on it, it went over to the pulp and paper industry. And as land areas with sawmill sizes went down, the pulpwood area increased. And you can track them—they go together. That played a big part in it. —F. E. “Buck” Stabler interview

The end of World War II ushered in a golden age of unparalleled growth and progress for the south­ern forest products industry that carried it to the threshold of the twenty-­first century. The combination of a growing population and pent-­up consumer demand for both paper products and building materials led to boom years for forest products manufacturers in Dixie. The development of professional forestry and the advent of responsible forest management meant that the South had abundant forests to support both industries into the foreseeable future. Although industry continued to use the term, the old fears of a “timber famine” largely disappeared. Ala­bama was one of the primary beneficiaries of these trends. The lumber industry flourished in the postwar era. Companies that abandoned the cut-­out-­and-­get-­out philosophy and adopted sustainable forestry survived the depletion of the south­ern forests during the early part of the century and saw their planting and selective harvesting techniques start to pay dividends as they began to harvest the “sec­ond forest” in the 1930s. They were now joined by other companies, in­clud­ing some that had fled from the South

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to the West earlier in the century. For example, the Weyerhaeuser Corporation looked to the South after World War II because of the rapid rotation time from planting or reseeding through harvesting. Weyerhaeuser purchased its first landholdings in Ala­bama in 1954. By 1968, Weyerhaeuser had seven hundred thousand acres in the South, and wood-­using plants in Mississippi and Lamar County, Ala­bama. Also, in Greene County, Weyerhaeuser operated a forest-­regenerating center (nursery), which could produce hundreds of millions of seedlings to replant clear-­cut lands.1 The bright future of the Ala­bama lumber industry was evident in the immediate postwar period. The Saturday Evening Post issue of August 14, 1948, ran an ad for an Ala­bama textile company featuring a forester of the W. T. Smith Lumber Company and trumpeting the news that “Now—a great ­‘cotton state’ ranks fourth in lumber!” The ad went on to note that Ala­bama “now surpasses every state in the nation except Oregon, California, and Wash­ ing­ton. Ala­bama’s lumbering industry has grown five times as fast as the nation’s.” The text also boasted of fire protection in the state and said that W. T. Smith was “practicing the South’s new scientific lumbering—forestry with responsibility.” The W. T. Smith Company, said the ad, “cut only the annual growth. They guard our forest wealth today against fire menace. They safeguard it for tomorrow—by planting the next generation’s forest crop now.”2 During this period companies also updated and modernized their mills. For example, in 1958 Brewton’s T. R. Miller Mill Company replaced its mill buildings and equipment on the same site as the older facilities. The sawmill was again totally rebuilt in 1968. By the end of the century, the sawmill was completely computerized with the latest scanners and other sophisticated equipment.3 Besides lumber and pulpwood, south­ern forests produced a variety of other products at the end of World War II, in­clud­ing fuelwood, veneers, poles, pilings, mine timbers, cooperage, and railroad ties. For example, over 50 million ties were produced annually, enough for sixteen thousand miles of track at a rate of three thousand ties per mile. In the Tennessee River Valley area, in­clud­ing fifteen north­ern Ala­bama counties, about 2.5 million cross ties were produced annually by circular sawmills constituting about one-­third of the Tennessee Valley region’s four to six thousand circular mills. The average mill produced about six thousand board feet of lumber and ties daily and had a crew of six men. Most were portable mills that shipped their products to pressure-­preserving plants in several states, in­clud­ing Ala­bama. Most sawed cross ties were cut from oak, followed in order by gum, other hardwoods, and pine.4 A very important development in south­ern lumbering after World War II

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was the manufacture of softwood plywood, which developed in the 1960s. By 1982 the South surpassed the Pacific Northwest in production of softwood plywood, accounting for about half of US production.5 The Scotch Lumber Company was the first independent sawmill east of the Mississippi River to build and operate a plywood plant. Scotch opened a plant at Fulton in 1965, followed by a sec­ond at Waynesboro, Mississippi, in 1968. Then, operating under the name Scotch Plywood, another plant was opened near Beatrice, Ala­bama, in 1977. These additions were accompanied by the addition at Fulton of a lumber-­treating plant and a Chip-­N-­Saw machine to process smaller, sec­ond-­growth timber. By the late 1980s, Scotch Lumber Company was the sec­ond leading lumber producer in Ala­bama and among the top 150 in the United States.6 Of course, while many of the big companies left the South for the greener pastures of the Inland Empire and the Pacific Northwest after they cut over the luxuriant old-­growth forests of the early twentieth century, a few companies, as we have seen, continued operating in Ala­bama. During the sec­ond half of the twentieth century there was something of a reversal in the earlier trends. South­ern lumber production steadily increased from the 1970s on, while production in the Pacific Northwest declined from 24.8 percent of the national total in 1952 to 16 percent in 1997. Companies returned to the South as the “third forest” became a prime timber source, and this was accompanied by declining harvests in national forests, which were largely located in the West. Between 1964 and 1998, the percentage of US timber harvests in national forests declined from 17.5 percent of total harvests to 3.5 percent. Another foundation of the lumber industry’s growth was building materials. The postwar housing market boomed, in large part because returning veterans were able to purchase homes financed with Veterans’ Administration loans. Builders were hyperactive, and sawmills were buzzing. The competition among lumber-­producing regions and states to capture this market was intense, and in 1949, a number of Alabamians, mostly sawmillers, met in Montgomery to form the Ala­bama Forest Products Association (later the Ala­bama Forestry Association, or AFA) to promote and represent forest landowners, loggers, and lumbermen. Hilton Watson, who served two stints as executive vice president of the organization, said the major force in its formation was Earl McGowin, a member of one of Ala­bama’s premier lumbering families. As Watson remembered, “Earl McGowin had the idea of forming the Association. He was in the Legislature. He said he got sick and tired of seeing all these groups coming up there, and there was nobody representing forestry. It was his idea. That’s

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what led to the organizational meeting.” An AFA publication fifty years later said that “with . . . competition stiffening from other states and countries, these charter members decided it was time to harness their resources and refine the development of south­ern pine forests so abundant in Ala­bama.”7 Dues were origi­nally set at ten dollars monthly, plus three cents per thousand board feet for all lumber invoiced monthly. Within a few months, the organization had nearly one hundred members, but the leaders soon realized that in­clud­ing only sawmillers did not give them a large enough base. Thus, in 1950, they expanded the membership to include pulp and paper manufacturers and “all individuals, partnerships, and corporations engaged in the state of Ala­bama in the manufacture, treating, and processing of lumber or timber products of any kind,” as well as those “engaged in growing and marketing timber.” Within a year membership had grown to over 750. Watson said that in the early days he sometimes felt like a “referee” as he mediated between the two groups: “The paper mills and the sawmillers were miles apart. The sawmillers would cuss the pulpwood industry and the pulpwood industry would cuss the sawmillers.” On the other hand, said Warren Flick, forestry professor at Auburn and Georgia, “Some of them, like the Millers, were very positive about paper coming in. The Millers worked to recruit Container Corporation to Brewton. They saw the paper industry as a source for what would otherwise be low grade timber. It would allow them to manage their forests better by having a market for small wood.”8 The old feelings were still evident in a 1999 interview with “Buck” Stabler, a longtime Scott Paper Company woodlands manager. As Stabler recalled, “The so called Big Mules in the sawmill industry . . . established the Ala­bama Forest Products Association in 1949. As they spoke so went the forest industry in Ala­bama. Don’t kid yourself. And when they decided it was right . . . you may get into trouble on this, but when they felt it was to their advantage, they recruited the pulp and paper industry into the membership in the Association, for numerous reasons. One is the pulp and paper industry had money and it owned a big portion of the log sized stumpage. And then the pulp and paper industry gradually took the place of the sawmill industry as a key po­liti­cal force in the state. You don’t want that from me, but that’s what happened.”9 A primary focus of the association in the early days was the prevention of wildfires. In 1951, the AFA endorsed the national “Keep Green” program and adopted the “Keep Ala­bama Green” slogan. In this period Ala­bama spent less than any other state on fire protection. R. C. Wakefield, an Auburn-­trained forester, went to work as the county ranger in Cleburne County in about 1950. He was the first graduate forester in the Dadeville District. In a 1999

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interview, he remembered that most of his time was spent fighting fires, with one assistant. He recalled that “we had one little John Deere crawler tractor with an old middle buster plow in the back,” which meant they were “reasonably well equipped when compared to other counties at that time.” Wake­field graphically remembered Christmas Day of 1950: “I walked up to the third level of steps on the Oak Grove tower near Fruithurst, and counted 25 fires burning at 9 o’clock in the morning. Two of us were expected to extinguish all these. I didn’t know the county well at that time but my helper, named Esdar Long, did. I asked, ‘Where is the best timber? We’ll try to keep from losing that.’ So that’s what we did. We’d pick and choose. But by 10 or 11 o’clock at night, we’d be so tired that we’d just go back home, get a bath and fall in bed. Get up the next morning and know it’s the same thing again.”10 Wakefield said that trying to talk to residents about the fire problem “was like talking to a wall.” One person in particular in north Cleburne County “had the reputation of being a fire bug.” Wakefield encountered the man one day and told him about fire control and said that “we didn’t want to burn— we wanted to manage our trees.” The man’s response was “I’ll burn the woods all the time. I have all my life. It’s good for ’em. So, unless you can catch me and arrest me, I’m gonna burn them again.”11 Another primary concern, shared by associations in other states, was railroad freight rates. Hilton Watson remembered that “our main competition was the West Coast. You could ship a car load of lumber from the West Coast into Ala­bama at one price, turn that same car load of lumber around and ship it back and it would cost you twice as much in freight.”12 Among the programs the AFA initiated were workshops for teachers to tell them about forestry and the forest products industry. It also promoted improved management practices among landowners and foresters. In 1980 the AFA established Forest PAC, a po­liti­cal action committee. It also created the Ala­bama Pulp and Paper Council and the Ala­bama Loggers Council. In 1992, it organized the “Log a Load for Kids” program to assist ill, injured, and abused children in Ala­bama. Under the program, loggers, landowners, foresters, and wood products manufacturers were asked to donate the value of a load of logs, about $350, to the state’s children’s hospitals. By 2010, they had raised more than $6 million through this campaign. The AFA also adopted a Best Management Practices program to improve harvesting practices, in­clud­ ing the protection of streamside management zones to preserve water quality and improve the environment. AFA executive vice president John McMil­ lan noted that “I talk with landowners who commonly give up $50,000 to $100,000 from a timber sale to protect streamside management zones. That’s

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a heck of a contribution to the environment, and I doubt the average Alabamian understands that at all.” The association was also very effective in lobbying state legislators. A prob­ lem common to all timber-­producing states was taxation. Heavily dependent on taxes on lumber companies during the boom days of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, states tried to compensate for the decline of the industry by taxing land that contained timber at a higher rate than bare land. This, of course, was an impediment to reforestation. Some states addressed the problem by imposing ad valorem taxes on timber at the time of sale or harvest. Partially as a result of the AFA’s lobbying efforts, in 1967 the Ala­bama legislature passed legislation placing an ad valorem tax on land and a severance tax on timber at the time of harvest.13

I. Lumber The resurgence of the lumber industry was dramatic. By 1954, Ala­bama had 1,070 sawmills and planing mills, trailing only Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia in the South and Oregon in the West. They employed 19,398 workers, and 223 mills employed more than 20 workers. The value added by manufacture was $53,046,000. There were 598 logging camps and contractors, employing 2,910 workers, with 10 employing 20 or more workers. Their value added by manufacture was $8,137,000. Ala­bama also had 20 veneer mills, with a total of 823 workers. Fourteen of these mills employed 20 or more workers. The value added by production was $2,250,000.14 A decade later, in 1963, there were fewer mills, but they were larger and more efficient. By that time, Ala­bama had 523 sawmills and planing mills. They employed 10,815 workers, and 127 of them had 20 or more employees. Their value added by manufacture was $50,239,000. The state also had 806 logging camps and contractors, 15 with 20 or more employees. Total employment was 3,448, and total value added by manufacture was $14,140,000. There were also 15 producers of hardwood dimension and flooring, 14 of which employed more than 20 employees. Total employment was 1,024 and total value added by manufacture was $5,967,000. Ala­bama also had 24 plywood and veneer plants, with a total of 1,266 workers. Nineteen of these plants had 20 or more workers, and they had $7,017,000 in value added by manufacture.15 A somewhat unlikely entrant onto the Ala­bama lumbering scene was International Paper Company, which had traditionally eschewed involvement in lumber manufacture. In 1969, Bob Nonnemacher moved to Mobile as woodlands manager for IP. At the time, the company had about 5 million

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to 5.5 million acres of land in the South, twelve pulpmills, and a few sawmills. For years International Paper had no use for the larger timber on its lands and sold wood to Weyerhaeuser and Georgia Pacific, among others. Nonnemacher and Fred Gragg, who was the vice president in charge of woodlands and wood products, went to New York to try to convince the top corporate officials to move into serious production of wood products. While IP produced wood products in the Northwest through the old Long-­ Bell Lumber Company, it had nothing in the South. In fact, Nonnemacher recalled, “If I wanted to acquire a major property that had a sawmill involved with it, I had to darn near sign my name in blood that I could get rid of the sawmill. They didn’t want to have anything to do with wood products in the South.” Gragg and Nonnemacher got approval, essentially by arguing that this would eliminate growing valuable timber and selling it to Weyerhaeuser, for, as Nonnemacher said, “You know, you name those names and they started to get red in the face.” With their hard-­earned approval, Gragg and ­Nonnemacher began to move, acquiring a mill in Arkansas and building a complex in Wiggins, Mississippi.16 There were other expansions of lumber operations, both old and new. By the late twentieth century, the Harrigan Lumber Company at Monroeville, owned by Dwight Harrigan, who was also a part owner of the Scotch Lumber Company, operated a chip-­and-­saw mill built in the early 1970s. The facility was outdated because of the price of sawtimber and the availability of computerized equipment and scanners that could provide better efficiency. In the late 1980s, the company built a new, modern mill.17 In 2009, the Scotch Lumber Company merged with Gulf Lumber to form the Scotch & Gulf Lumber Company, which grew timber on thousands of acres of family-­owned timberland in southwest­ern Ala­bama and manufactured wood products at mills and treating facilities in Fulton, Jackson, and Mobile, Ala­bama. It also imported wood and wood products. The merger united members of the Harrigan, O’Melia, and Stimpson families in the operation.18 As the end of the twentieth century neared, Ala­bama had 138 sawmills, 166 sawmill and wood preservation operations, 14 hardwood veneer and plywood manufacturers, and a variety of other types of wood product manufacturers. They shipped products worth $4,381,779,000 annually.19 During this period, the efficiency of mills and wood utilization improved. There were numerous technical improvements in sawmilling after World War II. One of the most basic was the utilization of metal detectors. Adapted and sometimes modified from electronic detectors used by the military to locate antipersonnel mines, the detectors solved the old problem of saws cutting into

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logs containing hidden nails and other metal objects. In addition to the advent of computerized scanning in the 1970s, which is discussed elsewhere, the early 1960s brought the development of chip-­and-­saw mills that permitted the expanded use of sawmill waste in pulping. Also during the period came improved lathes for plywood and veneer manufacturing, which contributed to the opening of the south­ern pine plywood industry.20 Refinements in wood utilization technology substantially improved the efficiency of wood use. By the late twentieth century, much less material was being left in the woods. Many sawmills produced twice as much usable lumber and other products per log input as they did in 1900. Engineering standards and designs reduced the volume of wood used per square foot of building space, and preservative treatments substantially extended wood life.21

II. Pulp and Paper At the end of World War II the pulp and paper industry grew rapidly, with five new mills constructed in Ala­bama between 1947 and 1950. By 1950 the South led the nation in wood pulp production, turning out 50 percent of the country’s supply.22 The rapid growth of the Ameri­can pulp and paper industry occurred in part because of increasing demand for newsprint at a time when Canadian production was flat and northeast­ern Ameri­can production was declining due to timber depletion near the mills. In Ala­bama the Coosa River Newsprint Company was formed in 1946, and after examining several sites, it chose to build a mill near Childersburg, Ala­bama, in Talladega County. The project was the product of a committee formed by the South­ ern Newspaper Publishers Association in 1943 to promote the construction of additional mills in the South. Partial production began in 1949. The mill was in full operation by February 1950. By the middle of the decade it, along with two competitors, represented nearly 30 percent of domestic capacity. The mill was a joint venture between Kimberly-­Clark, which owned about 51 percent of the stock, and a consortium of newspapers across the country that wanted to guarantee a supply of newsprint. Eventually Kimberly-­Clark acquired all of the stock. With a capacity of 350 tons of newsprint and 200 tons of bleached sulfate pulp daily, the mill employed 750 workers. It purchased some land and approximately fifty thousand acres of timber but relied mainly on area farmers for its wood supply. It employed foresters to manage its own land and timber and to work with local farmers to implement responsible timber management, planting the first seedlings in 1949.23 “Buck” Stabler first came to Ala­bama in the 1930s and returned after serv-

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ing in World War II. In a 1999 interview, he described the state’s forest products industry profile. When I first came to Ala­bama, the pulp manufacturing industry was relatively small in size and few in numbers in Ala­bama. There was International Paper Company at Mobile and Gulf States Paper Company in Tuscaloosa. St. Regis was pecking away in south Ala­bama with a mill at Cantonment, Florida. But basically, Ala­bama was a sawmill forest economy. And, as the sawmill people clearcut their timberlands, very few practiced sustained yield. More and more of it came up for sale. So, as the sawmill industry . . . had less land that had their type of material on it, it went over to the pulp and paper industry. And as land areas with sawmill sizes went down, the pulpwood area increased. And you can track them—they go together. That played a big part in it.24 As the pulp and paper companies came in, competition for land and timber increased. International Paper and St. Regis were competing in Ala­bama. In nearby east­ern Mississippi there were Flintkote at Meridian and Masonite in Laurel, not to mention mills in west­ern Georgia. Some of the Georgia companies built mills in Ala­bama. Union Bag of Savannah drew wood from east­ern Ala­bama.25 However, while other companies were competing for land, in 1993 James River began to reduce its south­ern land base, in part because of financial considerations in other parts of the country. This may have been a harbinger of the future. It reduced its land base at Naheola to one hundred thousand acres with sales to John Hancock and transferred the remainder to that firm in 1997. John Hancock purchased the land as part of its portfolio investments. It had earlier purchased land from Ameri­can Can, and it hired Resource Management of Birmingham to manage its landholdings. By this time paper manufacturers and institutional investors were an increasingly important part of the Ala­bama timberland scene.26 Lumber companies watched the continued migration of the pulp and paper industry into Ala­bama with more than casual interest. The T. R. Miller Mill Company of Brewton considered the possibility of locating its own paper mill in the area and finally determined to produce wood chips that would provide further utilization of its pine trees. The company shipped its first output of chips to the St. Regis Paper Company at Cantonment, Florida, in 1957.27 In the meantime, the T. R. Miller firm also explored organizing a consortium of area lumber firms to build a paper mill that would allow all of them to more efficiently and thoroughly utilize their forestlands. John R. Miller Sr.

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approached the Dixon Lumber Company, Alger-­Sullivan, Vredenburgh, the W. T. Smith Lumber Company, and others about building the mill. The proposal got a mixed reaction. Alger-­Sullivan and the McGowin family of W. T. Smith were unable to agree on the value of the timber they owned and that would be pledged to support the new operation. With paper companies in Mobile and Pensacola beginning to purchase their own timberlands, the T. R. Miller Mill Company decided to proceed on its own, fearing that it would be frozen out of the pulpwood market. It had unsuccessful negotiations with the Scott Paper Company in 1951 and then began to explore possibilities with the Container Corporation of America, which operated several mills. In 1955, Container Corporation agreed to build a new mill in Brewton, with the T. R. Miller Mill Company obligated to provide pulpwood for twenty-­five years. Container Corporation started with no land base but then began to acquire land. The paper mill became operational in 1957.28 Hollingsworth and Whitney, a Boston company, built a mill at Mobile in about 1940. In Oc­to­ber 1954, Hollingsworth and Whitney was taken over by Scott Paper Company. Scott had about seventy thousand acres of timberland, and its mill used 600 to 700 cords daily. By 1978, it had around 500,000 acres of fee and lease land, and the mill was using 1,400 cords daily. Most of the wood was acquired from dealers, but Scott also had a small chip mill at Range, Ala­bama, and purchased one from St. Regis at Fort Deposit. The chip mills were supplied by company logging crews and by dealers. They also had chip purchase contracts with several sawmills and plywood plants in Ala­ bama and east­ern Mississippi.29 Scott had an aggressive land acquisition program. Its first big purchase was about 70,000 to 80,000 acres of the Vredenburgh Lumber Company lands in Wilcox and Monroe Counties. Scott was part of a consortium of investors, in­clud­ing International Paper and a group of people affiliated with DuPont in Delaware. They then were involved in the purchase of the Alger-­ Sullivan Lumber Company’s Ala­bama lands, which included some 227,000 acres of longleaf, loblolly, and shortleaf. The longleaf in the north­ern part of the purchase area included the last major longleaf holding in Ala­bama and was largely old-­growth or virgin pine, depending on one’s definition. The consortium also included St. Regis, Container Corporation, Koppers Company, and a West Coast investment group in the Alger-­Sullivan purchase. Logs from the property were sold to Leon Clancy for his sawmill at Century, Florida, and most of the poles went to the Koppers Company. After most of the timber was cut, the vari­ous owners divided the property.30 Scott also operated sawmills. In 1963, it purchased the Mobile River Saw-

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mill Company at Mount Vernon, Ala­bama, from the Robinson family. This purchase included a hardwood sawmill and about twenty-­two thousand acres of river-­bottom hardwood land and timber. In 1968, it acquired the Adams Lumber Company at the edge of Mobile from Boyd Adams and his associates. It also bought about forty thousand acres of land, and a hardwood mill with about eighteen thousand acres, on the Pascagoula River in Mississippi. Ala­bama state and local officials enthusiastically promoted the construction of paper mills. George Wallace may have been known nationally as an opponent of federal power and civil rights, but he was also known in Ala­bama as an avid proponent of industry. Wallace followed through on a promise to build a bridge across the Ala­bama River to help secure the construction of a mill by MacMillan Bloedel. Former MacMillan Bloedel official Angus Gardner remembered talking to local state senator Roland Cooper: While we were in the negotiating stage, I told Roland Cooper, I said, “You know, in order to get over to Camden, on the other side, it’s a 55 mile trip from the mill.” I said, “We need a bridge across the river, so that it would bring the trees and everything to the mill a lot closer to us.” So he said, “Let’s go talk to George Wallace.” So he set up a meeting to see George Wallace about this and he said, “Well, I’ll build a bridge across the river.” So, I said, “Well, I have a Board of Directors in Canada to convince. So, would you write them a letter?” He said, “Oh, yes.” So he called his secretary in and he dictated a letter and he gave it to me to say, “How ’bout that?” It was like a politician. It was a good letter, but he didn’t say that he would damn well build a bridge. So he said, “All right. You do what you want.” So I dictated the last paragraph, which committed him, absolutely, within two years of our start up, and he did just that.31 Wallace was not the only Ala­bama politician who used his influence to attract paper mills to the state. When Marathon South­ern came to Ala­bama it built a mill on land acquired from the Allison Lumber Company. While Marathon was debating about the site for the mill, Ala­bama governor Big Jim Folsom instructed an aide to purchase one share of Marathon Paper Company stock. He then flew to Neenah, Wisconsin, “with 5 cases of Jack Daniels and one share of stock,” and attended the company board of directors meeting. One of the promises he made to Marathon at the meeting was that he would provide a bridge across the Tombigbee River. He delivered by paving between the rails of an existing railroad bridge.32 When Marathon produced its millionth cord, it had a big celebration that

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included the company president, the board of directors, US senator Lister Hill, and US representative Frank W. Boykin. Harold Hill remembered the day vividly. Representative Boykin, he said, “was the ‘Senator Claghorn’ of Ala­bama . . . had flowing white hair, spoke in a loud voice, and was a real south­ern politician. . . . They knew he talked a lot and if he ever got hold of the microphone he would never let it go, so they didn’t seat him at the head table. . . . When they introduced him . . . they were going to pass him right by, he just wouldn’t stand for that. He got up, started talking, and went through all the crowd and went right up to the head table, took over the microphone, and started talking. He said, ‘We love the Yankees. We haven’t hated Yankees in years. We love your money.’” Hill concluded, “That’s what he told the Board of Directors. They had provided him with a golf cart to tour the mill, because he was a little bit feeble, and he toured the whole mill in a golf cart.”33 The industry’s expansion was boosted by the postwar prosperity of the south­ern pulp and paper manufacturers. Sales and net profits after taxes increased, and retained earnings jumped sharply. The industry operated at an average of 93 percent of capacity during the period.34 By 1950, the South produced half of the country’s wood pulp and led the nation in that area. It was also responsible for some 90 percent of the sulfate production. From 1945 to 1950, south­ern paper and board production increased 67 percent, while the national increase was 40 percent. By 1950, the total investment in the south­ ern pulp and paper industry was over $1.2 billion. The prospects for continued growth were good, but only if an adequate timber supply was maintained. South­ern mills produced almost 30 percent of the nation’s paper and paperboard. By the end of that decade, the South produced nearly 60 percent of the nation’s wood pulp and almost 41 percent of the paper in the nation.35 The production of newsprint continued to be a lucrative endeavor. In 1990, the Ala­bama River Companies completed the Ala­bama River Newsprint Mill. The mill was a joint venture between Parsons and Whittemore and Abitibi-­ Price. They also built the new Ala­bama River Pine Pulpmill to supplement hardwood production from the Ala­bama River Pulp Company. The wood supply came entirely from the open market, particularly nonindustrial private landowners, and as part of the long-­range supply strategy, they built chipping plants at Elba and Jacksons Gap, Ala­bama, and Ackerman, Mississippi.36 Another company with an Ala­bama presence was St. Regis. The company originated in the late 1890s and, through a process of combinations, mergers, and expansion, by 1940 had become an established manufacturer of bags and packaging. Its sanitary bags were well suited to the packaging of bulk food staples such as sugar, flour, and meal, and as Ameri­can and world markets for foodstuffs grew, so did its business. In 1946 St. Regis purchased the Florida

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Pulp and Paper Company and thus acquired small paper mills in Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Georgia, and Ala­bama. By 1981 St. Regis owned 2.4 million acres of timberlands in Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, and Ala­bama. St. Regis, like some other companies, also had long-­term leases on thousands of acres.37 There were numerous paper company projects in Ala­bama during the 1950s. In 1952, International Paper completed a $15.6 million chemfibre board mill addition at its Mobile complex. In 1956, it added a new newsprint mill and upgraded its existing mill. The Hollingsworth and Whitney Company was merged into the Scott Paper Company in 1954, and in 1957, Scott completed a $21 million expansion of the old Hollingsworth plant at Mobile. A year later, Container Corporation of America opened a bleached paperboard mill at Brewton. Later in the year, Gulf States Paper Company opened a new kraft mill on the Tombigbee River near Demopolis. The Tombigbee was also the site for a new mill that began production in 1958. The genesis of the mill dated back to 1950, with the plans of the Choctaw Pulp and Paper Company to build a kraft mill at Naheola. The plan foundered until the site was acquired by the Marathon South­ern Corporation in 1955. The mill utilized both pine and hardwood and produced three hundred tons of bleached kraft pulp, paper, and paperboard daily. Also in 1958, the Coosa River Newsprint Company undertook a $35 million expansion of its mill at Childersburg, installing what was then the world’s largest paper machine.38 Gulf States was also very active in this period. Following service in World War II, Jack Warner became involved in the management of the Gulf States Paper Company and began to implement his grandfather’s ideas about wood supply. Gulf States formed a pub­lic relations committee to promote good forest practices, tree farming, and fire prevention on private lands and also began an aggressive program of forestland acquisition, despite the opposition of Jack’s father, Herb Warner, known as H. D., who was tight fisted and believed the land was too expensive. By 1948, Gulf States owned 150,000 acres.39 In 1950, Jack Warner became executive vice president. As the grocery business evolved toward large self-­service chain stores, Gulf States began to move from manufacturing grocery bags to producing bleached paperboard, which was used to make food cartons. The company’s landholdings increased to 272,000 acres, and Gulf States constructed a new pulp mill in 1955, followed by a $20 million expansion of its mills in Tuscaloosa and Demopolis in 1959.40 Mildred Warner relinquished the presidency of Gulf States to Jack Warner in 1957, the same year that the new Demopolis pulp mill began production. Jack became chairman of the board in 1959. By the early 1960s, Gulf States

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had increased its forest holdings to about 350,000 acres. As the company approached the end of the decade, it had grown into a multidivisional organization with plants and offices in Ala­bama and eight other states.41 In 1959 Ameri­can Can Company, into which Marathon had merged in 1957, began installation of new machinery at its Naheola mill. Scott Paper undertook a $20 million expansion project in Mobile during the same year.42 Among the lands acquired by Ameri­can Can Company were those of the Allison Lumber Company, a family-­owned business. The sale was made after the resolution of internal disagreements among family members. Former IP forester and land administrator Harold Hill recalled that the Allison lands were “without question at that time, the finest piece of forest land in the state of Ala­bama. Both timber-­wise and soil-­quality wise.” Hill went on to say that “it was just a magnificent forest and had been managed extremely well.”43 Ameri­can Can Company had about 330,000 acres of land at its peak but got out of the manufacturing business and became a financial company called Primerica. It sold the pulp and paper complex at Naheola to James River in 1982 and began disposition of its forestlands. Ameri­can Can eventually sold off the old Cogle Lumber Company sawmill in Thomasville, as well as the Belamy sawmill. In 1987, James River purchased the remaining lands from Ameri­can Can, roughly 143,000 acres, most of which were within thirty miles of the mill. James River already had cutting rights on the lands. By 1987 James River had a total timberland base of more than 160,000 acres.44 Three Ala­bama mills were expanded in 1963. Container Corporation of America doubled the capacity of its Brewton plant with a $20 million expansion. The Naheola mill of Ameri­can Can Company got new machinery that nearly doubled its capacity. In 1965, Ameri­can Can began a $30 million project to expand production to over nine hundred tons of pulp and paper daily. At Mobile, the Scott Paper Company spent $45 million to increase its mill’s pulp capacity by one hundred thousand tons per year. In 1968, Scott undertook another $25 million expansion at Mobile.45 The steady growth of the south­ern pulp and paper industry during the 1960s was demonstrated by the roughly $1 billion that was invested in new mills and by the rise of wood pulp production to nearly 64 percent of the national total. South­ern pulp and paperboard production increased 84 percent and represented 48.5 percent of the national total. Paperboard production increased by 99 percent, and total paper production by 76 percent. Paperboard production was twice that of paper production. Ala­bama was the sec­ ond ranking wood pulp producing–state in 1969. During the 1960s, a number of companies built container plants in Ala­ bama, in­clud­ing Union Camp in Decatur, St. Joe Paper Company at Birming­

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32. Short logs outside an Ala­bama paper mill in the 1960s. Courtesy of the Ala­bama Department of Archives and History.

ham, Weyerhaeuser at Florence, and Gulf States Paper Company at Maplesville. Also, in 1966, St. Regis purchased the Birmingham Paper Company. A new $100 million bleached kraft mill at Courtland, Ala­bama, owned by Champion Paper Company, opened in 1971. During the same period, the Ala­bama Kraft mill at Mahrt underwent expansion, increasing its capacity and product line. By 1972, the south­ern paper industry had 64.8 percent of the nation’s wood pulp capacity and nearly half of the country’s paper and paperboard capacity.46 Obviously there was tremendous expansion of the Ala­bama paper industry during the 1950s and 1960s. By 1958, Ala­bama was the sec­ond leading pulp-producing state in the nation. The growth continued during the 1960s, and by 1970 the South produced nearly 64 percent of the wood pulp and almost half of the paper manufactured in the United States. In 1965, Allied Paper Corporation, the world’s largest producer of bleached deinked pulp, began operating a bleached sulfate mill on the Tombigbee River in Clarke County at Jackson, Ala­bama. Using both hardwood and softwood

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33. Scott Paper Company mill on the Mobile River in Mobile in the 1960s. Photographed by William Lavender. Courtesy of the Ala­bama Department of Archives and History.

pulp, the mill could produce four hundred tons of bleached kraft pulp daily.47 The next year, the Ala­bama Kraft Company, a division of the Georgia Kraft Company, which was affiliated with the Inland Container Corporation and the Mead Corporation, began operating a $45 million kraft containerboard mill near Holy Trinity, Ala­bama. The mill could produce eight hundred tons of containerboard daily. In 1967, Hammermill Paper Company built a $25 million bleached kraft pulp mill on the Ala­bama River nine miles east of Selma. Another new mill was a $50 million kraft operation owned by Union Camp Corporation at Prattville, near Montgomery. This mill had the largest linerboard machine in the world. MacMillan Bloedel of Canada and the United Fruit Company of Boston completed a kraft linerboard mill on the Ala­bama River at Pine Hill in 1969. The mill was part of a complex that also included a plywood plant operated by MacMillan Bloedel. A year later, Champion International began construction of a $100 million bleached kraft pulp and paper mill on the Tennessee River at Courtland, Ala­bama. During the decade, International Paper built

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or expanded many of its facilities, in­clud­ing a corrugated container plant and a bag and industrial paper converting plant at Mobile.48 In the late 1960s, one of the most formidable names in the paper industry entered the Ala­bama scene. Founded by a family of papermakers from Germany, the Hammermill Paper Company began operations in Erie, Pennsylvania, in the late 1890s. By the late 1930s, Ernst Behrend, one of the founders, was convinced that “south­ern competition to us may be much closer than we think.” Ernst observed experimentation with bleaching kraft paper and concluded, “If we compare the situation in 1930 with today [1938], we find a tremendous step forward has been made. So if the South continues to progress at that rate, there is very little doubt that the situation has to be taken very seriously into account.” He concluded that the “time has arrived when we must put ourselves into the mental attitude to [think about what will happen when] Erie pulp cannot compete with South­ern pulp and what we would have to do to meet this competition.” He concluded that it was “necessary to have our own operation in the South.”49 Despite Ernst’s concerns and advice, Hammermill delayed for nearly three decades before following the path he had recommended. Finally, in the 1960s, concerned about its pulp supply, the company began to explore possibilities in the South. During the same period, the Industrial Development Board of Selma, Ala­bama, informed Hammermill of a 1,500-­acre site ten miles east of the city that was ideally suited to house a pulp and paper mill. The project was momentarily threatened by unanticipated difficulties. The Selma voting rights drive was under way, and the jailing of Martin Luther King by Selma officials, shortly after announcement of financing plans for the mill, generated unfavorable national publicity and pressure on Hammermill to pull out. However, company officials met several times with civil rights leaders and convinced them that the company would pursue nondiscriminatory policies at Selma, as it did in its other operations. Plans for protests against Hammermill were dropped, and the project proceeded. The proposed mill site was on the lands of the old Riverdale plantation. A company feasibility study found it to have abundant water from the Ala­ bama River, energy via the coalfields near Birmingham, and, of course, access to the pine forests of central Ala­bama. In February 1965, Hammermill announced plans to build a 140,000-­ton kraft mill at Riverdale. By the end of 1966, the Riverdale mill was operating, and within two years it was producing 500 tons of bleached sulfate pulp daily, which was 25 percent above its rated capacity of 400 tons. During this early period Hammermill had about 55,000 to 65,000 acres of land and was anticipating the purchase of the W. Belcher Lumber Com-

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pany, whose 127,000 acres would greatly expand the land base. Harold Hill believed that “the acquisition of Belcher Lumber Company was the making of Hammermill’s operation in the south.” By about 1970, Hammermill had about 240,000 acres of land.50 In the 1970s, Hammermill moved into the lumber business. In 1975, it opened a $4.5 million sawmill in Maplesville, Ala­bama, followed by an $18 million companion mill in Tuscaloosa, in 1982. It also built a sawmill at Mound­ville, Ala­bama. The company became the nation’s largest producer of hardwood lumber, as well as a major producer and distributor of softwood lumber in the Southeast. The two Ala­bama sawmills also produced over three hundred thousand tons of chips yearly for the Riverdale Pulp Mill.51 Before Hammermill came to Selma, there had been little or no market for low-­grade upland hardwoods like oak and hickory, which land managers killed with aerial spray or chemical injection to convert the land to pine. After the arrival of Hammermill and other mills, in­clud­ing the Union Camp facility at Prattville and a MacMillan Bloedel mill at Pine Hill, a market for hardwoods emerged, which channeled revenues into the hands of landowners to use for more intensive forestry. By the 1970s, there were fifteen or sixteen pulp and paper mills in Ala­bama.52 Hammermill continued to dramatically expand its Ala­bama pulp and paper operations. In 1979, the company began to enlarge the pulping capacity of its Riverdale operation by over 40,000 tons and, even as that expansion was under way, announced a sec­ond phase of investment in 1981. In about a year, Hammermill constructed new facilities costing $127 million, which raised Riverdale’s pulp production by 500 tons daily. It now turned out more bleached kraft pulp than needed by its paper mills, so it sold the excess in both domestic and foreign markets. It also decided it had a large enough fiber base to support additional papermaking, and in 1984 it constructed a new machine adjacent to the Riverdale pulp mill. Completed in the late 1980s, the machine was 600 feet in length, with a wire width of 350 inches, and it produced 530 tons of vari­ous grades of paper daily. The machine, which Hammermill deemed “world class,” cost some $255 million.53 In 1987, Hammermill merged with International Paper, leaving the com­ bina­tion with four Ala­bama facilities, in­clud­ing sawmills at Maplesville and Moundville, plus pulp and paper mills at Mobile and Selma.54 The Hammermill-­ International Paper “merger” was actually a purchase by IP, which enabled IP, whose strength was in producing “cardboard cartons and Dixie cup stock and that kind of papers” to develop more of a presence in the production of high-­quality bond printing papers.55 By 1979, there were 115 operating paper mills in the South, which con-

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sumed 110,000 tons of wood daily. The region produced fifty-­four million standard cords of wood and plant by-­products annually, with Ala­bama, Georgia, and Mississippi the leading producing states. By 1974, the South produced roughly two-­thirds of the nation’s paper stock.56

III. Forestry, Technology, and Land Management Sustained-­yield forestry, selective cutting, and planting contributed to the emergence of the South’s “third forest,” which would be harvested following World War II, but so did the relative decline of agriculture and the family farm. Much of Ala­bama’s land was best suited to growing trees, rather than other crops, and from the 1930s on a great deal of land reverted from agricultural use back to forests. During the Great Depression, many farmers lost or abandoned their land, allowing it to return to forests. Farms continued to disappear following World War II, and during the 1950s, farmland continued to decline by 20 percent. The south­ern paper industry was known for maintaining large land and timber bases in order to secure an adequate wood supply. Paper companies maintained large staffs of foresters who worked on company lands as well as providing advice for small landowners, who were an important source of timber supply. The South­ern Forest Survey, conducted by the US Forest Service in the 1950s and early 1960s, indicated that the South had adequate timber for future expansion.57 Still, the paper companies were cautious. For example, International Paper’s policy, according to Bob Nonnemacher, was “an unwritten philosophy . . . that in the South we ought to try to own enough land to supply about 50% of our requirements for a mill. That was a little more than we really needed, but that was our insurance policy.” And as mill capacity increased, IP tried to maintain the ratio.58 The organizational structure regarding wood supply, land ownership, and forest management varied from company to company. Some firms depended totally on company lands for wood. Others used wood coming from the lands of private, nonindustrial forestland owners under timber contracts. Some companies used a combination of the two. Some divided forest management and timber procurement into separate operations, while others combined them. The companies of­t en provided land management advice and assistance to landowners, as well as furnishing reliable markets and financial and tax planning. Wood from noncompany land was of­ten criti­cal. Inman F. Eldredge recalled that in the early days of the south­ern pulp and paper industry, private timberland owners supplied more than 75 percent of the pulpwood for the

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mills. He noted that origi­nally the large companies were “saving their own for the simple reason that . . . they had to build up what we foresters call ‘growing stock.’ They bought land that had been cut over . . . and they had to build up timber growth. . . . On the whole some of them take as much as 80 percent of their cut outside because the land they’ve bought and are managing is not over 10 or 15 percent of the territory they draw from.”59 Thus, said Eldredge, “the pulp companies without exception are very conscious of the fact that they will always be dependent on this outside supply. As a consequence . . . the South­ern Pulpwood Conservation Association is working with pulp mills to build up better forest practices on these small noncompany lands.”60 Sometimes it took a little extra ammunition to get the private landowners on board. For example, when MacMillan Bloedel built a pulp mill, sawmill, and plywood plant on the Ala­bama River, it wanted to have one hundred thousand acres of private land under long-­term timber contracts to ensure an adequate wood supply. Angus Gardner, who was in charge of the project, remembered having difficulty getting landowners to sign the timber contracts. So, working with local and state officials, the company arranged a meeting with the landowners. As Gardner remembered, “We had a big meeting with all the landowners. They first came to the Armory in Camden, where our lawyer explained the contract, and we had a roast pig feast for lunch, and then we went to the City Hall where [George] Wallace made a speech. He said, ‘You sign this contract. It’s the best thing you’ll ever get.’ So, it’s very interesting. When the meeting broke up, some of these same fellows that I’d seen a dozen times [said] ‘You come see me tomorrow. I’ll sign.’ And so I got the 100,000 acres within a week.”61 Former Champion Paper and Fibre Company president and chairman Reuben B. Robertson noted one technique his company used in promoting better forest practices among its suppliers: “Many years ago, in our contracts with the small farmer, we put in a clause that we could cancel the contract if he was not handling his wood lot in accordance with sustained yield principles. We seldom had to do it, but we provided field men to help in marking the trees for cutting.”62 Forest management on private lands was also impacted by the increasing importance of forest consultants. Forestry consulting originated in the late nineteenth century, and by 1908, 5 of the 133 members of the Society of Ameri­can Foresters listed themselves as consultants. Some pioneer consultants such as L. K. Pomeroy of Arkansas were advocating permanent forest management by the 1920s. By the post–World War II era a number of economic and social factors made it possible for many private forest owners to

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afford to employ forestry consultants. The number of consultants grew rapidly, and they formed a professional association (the Association of Consulting Foresters) in 1948 and adopted a code of ethics. Among the consulting firms that were active in Ala­bama were Pomeroy and McGowin Forest Managers and Consultants, founded in 1938 with offices in Monticello, Arkansas, and Chapman, Ala­bama. Management and services to families became an important part of its business, and by 1968 it had provided timber estimates for over forty million acres and had served over three hundred companies and institutions and nearly five hundred individuals. In 1957 a separate firm, Pomeroy and McGowin Forest Service Company (renamed Larson and McGowin in 1969) became one of the country’s major consulting firms. Another Ala­bama firm was Sizemore & Sizemore, formed in 1949 with headquarters in Tallassee, Ala­bama, by forester William Sizemore and his wife, Mary H. Sizemore, an attorney. The Sizemore firm became very prominent and active in Ala­bama and across the country. Soon after, John Bradley, a graduate of the forestry schools at the University of California, Berke­ley, and Yale, established South­ern Timber Management Service in Birmingham in 1950. Renamed Resource Timber Management Service in 1956, the firm was a pioneer in the use of computer technology and became prominent nationally. Eventually, in the 1980s as Resource Management Service, it became part of Hancock Timber Resources Group and eventually a major timberland investment management organization (TIMO). By 2000 there were over one hundred forestry consultants in Ala­bama, and they served thousands of landowners who owned millions of acres. Consulting foresters became a significant factor in Ala­bama forest management.63 Forest management was also affected by harvesting practices in the woods that changed with the development of new technology. Labor shortages during World War II led to mechanization of fire control, tree planting, and timber harvesting. Low-­cost shortwood harvesting systems dominated until the early 1970s. Workers harvested shortwood (five-­foot-­three-­inch pulpwood lengths) manually with a saw and loaded the wood for shipment to the mill by hand or with a self-­loading truck. In the 1960s, mechanization and the use of longwood changed pulpwood production. As discussed earlier, longwood systems were the most expensive but also the most productive. They required large tracts of timber and sophisticated machinery to convert the long logs to shortwood or chips.64 As pine plantation management came to dominance in the 1960s, larger and more productive equipment that could produce longwood, such as rubber-­ tired skidders and feller bunchers, became the order of the day in the harvesting process. The sys­tem was most efficient and productive when utiliz-

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34. Longwood arriving at paper mill. Courtesy of the Ala­bama Forestry Association.

ing large clear-­cuts on pine plantations. Between 1987 and 1993, the average production per harvesting crew grew by 28 percent, while the average crew size decreased from 5.7 workers to 5.4. Longwood harvesting replaced short­ wood production. In 1979, 78 percent of south­ern pulpwood loggers produced short­wood. Fifteen years later this had dropped to 20 percent.65 Planting techniques also changed and became more varied. Longtime International Paper forester and land manager Bob Nonnemacher remembered that at one time the company relied heavily on natural regeneration, and that “we’d cut all of the short leaf out and we’d leave some loblolly seed trees or shelter wood to get our natural regeneration.” The result? “You get 20,000 stems per acre and that sort of thing, and the stands will stagnate or it will take a long time for some trees to establish superiority.” IP’s solution?

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“We developed what we called the rolling drum chopper. . . . You’ve seen these highway things that are rolling out the dirt and compacting stuff. We got one of those things and had the . . . machine shops weld cutting blades on the things and we’d pull them with the tractor and we’d go through those natural stands and we’d actually chop down whole bunches of trees so that it appeared to have a plantation effect.” Later, with the development of state nurseries, IP moved toward plantation management. Eventually the company developed its own nurseries.66 The forest products companies intensified their planting programs. In 1970–1971, 490 million seedlings were planted in the South, 455.3 million of which were on company lands. They also emphasized multiple-­use management, in­clud­ing improving the wildlife population in south­ern forests. From 1945 to 1970 there was an eightfold increase in the south­ern deer population.67 One veteran logger with fifty years of experience remembered the changes in the industry in very personal terms. In a 2004 interview, Robert Huff from near Dadeville, Ala­bama, said that “the skidders and the loader is what really made the work faster, and going to tree length, getting off of short wood. I was on short wood until ’77 and they let me start hauling tree length when Nixburg (chipmill) opened up over yonder on Highway 9. . . . Short wood just slows you down. They’d make us measure it, you couldn’t just guess at it. So going to tree length and going to skidders speeded it up a lot. We were still loading it by hand when I first went to my skidders. After a couple of years I bought a loader and that upped production big, plus taken a lot of the work out of it. And then, when they let me go to tree length in ’77, that just about doubled my production.”68 The changes in demand and logging and manufacturing technology changed the economic environment for nonindustrial private forestland owners. These owners traditionally preferred selective cutting when harvesting their lands, while industrial owners preferred clear-­cutting. Because of industry’s preference for clear-­cuts, and the higher productivity of longwood harvesting systems, there was a decline in the number of shortwood loggers. One impact of this shortage was that nonindustrial private owners found it increasingly difficult to arrange for selective cutting on their lands. Many were forced to emulate industry by clear-­cutting their lands and replanting with even-­aged loblolly pine plantations.69 A 1988 history of the Scotch Lumber Company described the procedures of the company’s logging crews and independent loggers. By the 1980s, logs that had once been cut by crosscut saws and dragged out of the woods by ox teams were cut by power saws and loaded on trucks. A typical Scotch log-

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ging crew included four men with power saws who cut down the trees, two men with saws who measured and trimmed the trees for transporting, one who operated a hydraulic loader to put the logs on the trucks, three skidder drivers, and one truck driver to transport the logs to the mill. The entire process of loading the logs took between eight and ten minutes, rather than the thirty minutes of the 1930s.70 Anticipating a rising demand for forest products, the forest products industry began planning, planting, and managing the South’s “third forest” in the 1950s and 1960s to satisfy its future wood needs. This included selective cutting, or, in other words, harvesting large trees and leaving small ones to grow. Foresters thinned the trees, removing those that were small or defective so that healthy ones could grow to maturity. They systematically cruised, marked, and inventoried the forests so that they could plan rationally. Some companies utilized clear-­cutting, followed by natural regeneration from seed trees, while others provided for forest renewal through planting. The forests recovered, although the species composition of­ten changed. Most commonly, this involved the transition from hardwood or mixed species forests to pine forests. Critics came to severely attack the prevalence of pine plantations and monoculture forests.71 Still, no doubt in large part due to the high incidence of private nonindustrial landowners, particularly in the South, it was possible for forestry professionals in the early 1990s to conclude that “while biological advances such as thinning, fertilizing, and vari­ous improvements on natural regeneration were known, they have been applied only rarely and haphazardly in North America until recently.” They went on to say that industrial landowners “do not apply them universally even now” and that nonindustrial owners “of­t en apply these timberstand improvements only if subsidized to do so.”72 Pulp and paper industry spokesmen claimed to be responsible stewards of the land. Beginning in the early twentieth century, the pulp and paper industry implemented studies and fieldwork incorporating timber inventories, selective cutting, planting, and natural reseeding. Industry spokesmen claimed that the pulp and paper manufacturers were the main force behind the passage of the federal Clarke-­McNary Act to promote the sustainability and health of the nation’s forests. They claimed to have faced opposition to industrial forestry from some unnamed forestry schools: “The cloistered ‘pure scientists’ of the older forestry schools resented the pursuit of the dollar, which they considered the prostitution of silvicultural studies.” They argued that “the older type of scientific forester was supplemented by a new crop of practical foresters with paper companies.” By 1960, the pulp and paper industry employed over 2,500

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technically trained foresters and claimed that it was practicing forestry on some forty-­two million acres of forestland, growing timber faster than it was using it.73 In fact, by the late 1950s, the US Forest Service reported that 81 percent of all industry lands in the South were being cut in a manner that would leave them in a high state of productivity. For the pulp and paper industry, the fig­ure was even higher, with 96 percent of its lands being cut in a way that would keep them highly productive. However, as an IP official reported, “The rating of lands owned by farmers and other small landowners is poor. In fact, only 34% of the private non-­industrial holdings in the South were rated as obtaining maximum use of their forest lands.” By the mid-­1980s, it was still true that lands owned by forest products companies received high levels of investment in reforestation and intensive management, while those owned by nonindustrial private owners did not. Growth rates on these lands lagged behind the industrial lands. This is not surprising, given the diversity of owner objectives for these lands.74

IV. Environmental Issues There is no doubt that the industrial foresters of the lumber and paper companies did an excellent job of managing land for timber production and, perhaps, game habitat. However, this did not shield them from criticism by people who regarded forests as more than timber farms. The growth of the environmental community in the late twentieth century became an increasing concern for forest products companies. Declining production from national forests as a product of rising environmental concerns and government policy was also seen as a problem by the forest products industry. The “green” movement placed a high value on protecting old-­growth forests, water quality, wildlife habitat, and endangered species. Organizations like the Sierra Club, Nature Conservancy, and Habitat for Humanity became increasingly influential and helped propel reliance for timber from pub­lic to private lands. Protection of old-­growth redwood and sequoia forests and of nongame wildlife, such as the spotted owl and red-­ cockaded woodpecker, became top priorities for many.75 Forest industry people generally argued that you cannot conserve or preserve a forest simply by banning cutting or protecting it. Forests are not static. They change over time. Trees move from infancy, through youth and maturity, to old age and death. Some are killed by insects and disease; others are injured or killed by lightning. If the old trees in a forest are left uncut or unthinned, they rob the younger growth of light and moisture. With forest

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management, forest development can be “improved” by carefully harvesting mature trees, thinning others that are crowded, and planting seedlings or planning for natural regrowth.76 This view was expressed by a writer for the Ala­bama Forestry Commission in 1996, who noted that “from time to time you may hear environmental prophets of doom who are predicting the utter destruction of our forests, wildlife and rivers in the not-­too-­distant future. Most of the time these concerns are based on a misunderstanding or misrepresentation of two very significant points: Nature is of­ten much more resilient than we give her credit for, and natural resource managers have come a long way in cooperating with her to achieve sustainable productivity and other benefits.”77 Industry spokesmen recognized that “some vestiges of the old feeling against the ‘devastation’ of the forest continued to exist” among environmental groups that “insisted that pollution of streams by paper mill waste would make the rivers uninhabitable for the fish.” But, they concluded that “the paper industry by scientific studies has largely overcome this objection by treatment of paper mill waste and even its commercial utilization in a variety of byproducts such as synthetic vanilla flavoring.”78 Still, by the early 1970s, many in the general pub­lic believed that the pulp and paper industry was wastefully cutting the nation’s forests, although the industry argued that it was responsible for only 25 percent of the total wood harvested. Both government and industry statistics showed that the South was growing more timber than ever before, and the nation was growing about 8 percent more wood than it consumed annually. Seventy-­five percent as much timber was standing as at the time of the 1492 Columbus expedition. In 1972, there were thirteen million more acres of timberland than a generation earlier. A major focus of environmentalists was clear-­cutting. The dean of the Duke University School of Forestry summarized their criticisms in the mid-­ 1970s. While his reference was to pub­lic lands, it was also a good overview of the anti-­clear-­cutting arguments in general. “Some individuals who object to clearcutting question its compatibility with the sustained yield, multiple-­ use concept that is the basic principle for management of pub­lic forest lands. Other groups are disturbed by the esthetic appearance of clearcut areas and are able to show numerous examples that support their views. Claims have also been made that clearcutting has serious adverse effects on water quality and that timber harvesting by this method will ultimately lead to significant decrease in the productivity of forest sites.”79 Industry spokesmen and most foresters argued that clear-­cutting was bene­ ficial; it sped forest regeneration and utilized wood that would otherwise have .

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been lost to insects, fire, or other natural occurrences. They also pointed out that mature, unmanaged forests consumed more oxygen than they produced and contributed no net gain in wood fiber.80 In 1979, noted forestry consultant Marion Clawson wrote that over the past sixty years there had been nearly a fourfold increase in annual wood growth due to the prevalence of younger and more vigorous stands. Improvements in forest management and genetics research also boosted the growth rate of new forests after clear-­cuts. One Ala­bama logger remembered that “in 1964 I clear cut Doss Mountain and they replanted it. In ’94 we had a different forester here and he said ‘I got a tract up at Doss Mountain’ and wanted to show it to me. I told him I knew it because I had cut it once before. The whole year of ’64 I cut up there then we went back in ’94 and stayed the whole year again.” The same logger noted that “I cut some last year that was only 21 year-­old timber and got saw logs out of it.”81 Among the pioneers in south­ern tree genetics work were Bowaters, Camp, Champion Fibre, Chesapeake Corporation, Gerre Woodlands, Halifax, North Carolina Pulp and Paper, Regel, Union Camp of West Virginia, Marathon, and others. They worked with Dr. Bruce Zobel of North Carolina State University. Marathon established seed orchards at Myrtlewood and Bellamy, Ala­ bama, and found some exceptional trees on the lands acquired from the Allison Lumber Company.82 Hammermill built a nursery with a capacity of twenty million tree seedlings in Dallas County, which produced enough hardwood seedlings to regenerate 4,500 acres annually, plus supply some of its landowners. It also had a superior tree seed orchard and was a member of Zobel’s North Carolina Tree Improvement Program, the North Carolina State Hardwood Cooperative, and the Auburn Nursery Cooperative. The company was regenerating from 8,000 to 12,000 acres annually.83 For advice regarding hardwoods on its Allison lands, Marathon brought in “Mr. Hardwoods,” John Putnam of the US Forest Service’s South­ern Hardwoods Laboratory at Stoneville, Mississippi, who was generally regarded as the nation’s leading expert on hardwood regeneration and management. Harold Hill remembered that “Putnam came . . . ‘Put’ as he was affectionately known back then . . . Mr. Hardwood as they called him. He came and visited us and toured the Allison property . . . and we spent two days in the woods with Putnam. The most I learned was that at site 90 and above, hardwood will grow equally to pine. And that’s what he told me and ever since then that’s been true.”84 Gulf States said that long before the term “ecology” came into pub­lic consciousness, it was building technology into its Tuscaloosa mill to protect the

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air, water, and land. It claimed that its measures exceeded government standards and enabled the Tuscaloosa facility to take water from the Black Warrior River and return it to the river cleaner than it had been initially. In 1969, Gulf States acquired land adjacent to the mill and constructed a giant holding pond. It installed a closed evaporator sys­tem at the mill with a huge cooling tower that reduced the mill’s need for water from the river, as well as removing a source of air and water pollution. Pumps were used to move the plant effluent to a hilltop a half mile away, where treatment systems were installed. In addition, Gulf States became the first private industry in the South to hire a graduate wildlife biologist to manage and administer its wildlife resources. On its game preserve it practiced intensive wildlife management and introduced a program of restocking deer and wild turkey.85 For its efforts, Gulf States was awarded the 1974 national first place award for water pollution control by the National Wildlife Federation. It also won the first place Environmental Improvement Award from the Ameri­can Paper Institute and a developmental grant from the Environmental Protection Agency.86 Jonathan “Jon” Westervelt Warner Jr., Jack’s son, joined the company in 1969 and brought a more aggressive approach to its landholding and environmental activities. By this time, the company had some four hundred thousand acres, and Jon moved to produce more than timber and hunting on these lands. The company entered the real estate business, and on its lands bordering the newly created Lake Tuscaloosa, it built the lavish North River Yacht Club, as well as a meeting and conference center, golf course, and horseback riding facilities to complement its land sales efforts. In 1977, Jon Warner became executive vice president and chief operating officer. Finally, in 1978, the Tuscaloosa mill closed permanently.87

V. Into the Future By 1997, 21,964,000 acres of Ala­bama’s total of 32,480,000 acres were forestland. Among the south­ern states, only Georgia had more forestland. Only 1,183,000 acres of Ala­bama’s forestlands were publicly owned. Of these, 869,000 were owned by the federal government, with 619,000 in national forests and 250,000 in wilderness areas and other categories. The state owned 218,000 acres, and counties and municipalities had 95,000 acres. There were 20,781,000 acres in private ownership, in­clud­ing 4,796,000 owned by forest industry and 15,985,000 by nonindustrial owners. Ala­bama had one of the lowest rates of pub­lic forest ownership in the South, in terms of both acreage and percentages. It is interesting that in 1997 the amount of hardwood-­growing stock on

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timberland in Ala­bama exceeded that of softwood. There were 11,101,000,000 cubic feet of softwood and 11,974,000,000 cubic feet of hardwood. The volume of both softwood and hardwood had almost doubled since 1953. In 1996 Ala­bama was one of only three south­ern states in which removal exceeded annual growth on its timberlands, although hardwood growth did exceed removal. The volume of softwood sawtimber in Ala­bama more than doubled between 1953 and 1997, from 21,273,000,000 to 42,814,000,000 board feet. The softwood sawtimber included 7,591,000,000 board feet of longleaf and slash pine, and 31,552,000,000 board feet of loblolly and shortleaf pine. By 1997 Ala­bama also had 33,362,000,000 board feet of hardwood sawtimber. Oaks were the most important hardwood species.88 By the early twenty-­first century timber manufacturing was the leading manufacturing industry in Ala­bama, accounting for 18 percent of total manufacturing. In 2002, the industry employed 64,500 workers and had a payroll of over $2 billion. However, the small family-­run sawmills and “peckerwood” mills that had worked the forests left behind by the migration of the big mills at the end of the cut-­out-­and-­get-­out era in the 1920s had virtually disappeared. The Ala­bama lumber industry now featured big companies that were highly capitalized and operated large, highly mechanized mills that had fewer employees and drew upon much larger land bases.89 Some of the giants of the forest products industry were at the center of much of the consolidation. Former Auburn forestry school dean Emmett Thompson, while conducting an interview in 2000, remarked that while International Paper had “always” had their mill in Mobile, they “bought Hammermill in Selma . . . they bought Union Camp in Prattville, and now they’ve got Champion in Courtland, and the mill just below the line in Florida. So there’s a block of the state that is pure IP. . . . Some people are a little nervous about that. . . . You still have Weyerhauser at Pine Hill and Columbus. Weyerhauser bought MacMillan Bloedel. And Ala­bama River at ­Monroeville. . . . What we’ve been talking about is really consolidation in the industry, which . . . seems kind of like a wave going on.”90 Sawmill consolidation in Ala­bama left many small landowners with a reduced timber market. Consolidation in timber-­dependent counties had the effect of concentrating timberland into large blocks. Small landowners had fewer opportunities to sell to small loggers or mills, but the consolidation of timberland ownership served the needs of high-­production loggers and large mills. Both jobs and opportunities for small landowners diminished.91 The Ala­bama Forestry Commission responded to this problem by making an effort to attract new forest products industries. The commission identified suitable sites for sawmills, pulp mills, and oriented strandboard (OSB)

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plants, considering not only wood supply but such things as transportation and environmental impact. By the end of 1988, the commission had identified eight sites suitable for pulp mills and twelve for OSB plants. The strategy was to draw up plans with the Ala­bama Department of Economic Development to recruit industries to the counties designated as having suitable sites.92 By the late twentieth century, the booming forest products industries— pulp and paper and lumber—were practicing sustained yield forestry on enormous parcels of forested industrial lands that were growing Ala­bama’s “fourth forest.” The companies had acquired much of the acreage early in the century as they began to realize the timber-­growing potential of cutover lands. This became standard operating procedure for forest products companies for three reasons. First, believing that there would be a timber famine at some point in the future, they thought owning timberland would ensure wood supply for their mills while also increasing in value. Second, by owning timberland they had a bargaining lever when dealing with outside wood dealers. Third, especially among paper producers, they found that investment bankers were reluctant to finance mill projects unless they controlled part of their raw material supply. However, as they approached the end of the century, industry leaders realized that the long-­feared timber famine was unlikely to occur. Forest inventories and better exchange of information revealed that timber was abundant. More thorough utilization of the timber resource, as well as the development of substitute, nonwood materials for construction and energy, lessened the pressure on forestlands. Also, production on these lands was increasing through improved silviculture and fire protection, as well as the conversion of abandoned agricultural lands to forests. Additionally, the increasing availability of wood from other countries impacted the situation. For example, by the mid-­1990s one of every three houses in the United States was being constructed of wood imported from Canada. Another part of the picture was the financial situation of the large integrated forest products companies that owned huge areas of timberland. Professors Chadwick Dearing Oliver and Lloyd C. Irland of the Yale University School of Forestry and Environmental Studies have succinctly described the situation: A big problem was the price to assign to timber being transferred within the company from the forest operations to the mill. Since the timberland was bought long ago and cheaply, a low “transfer price” was of­ten assigned to the timber. The result was an apparently high profit in operating mills and an apparently low profit from forest ownership. The

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“transfer price” issue was resolved in many integrated companies by organizing the timberlands as their own “profit center” that allowed them to sell timber to the highest bidder, regardless of whether it was the mills owned by the company. In the 1970s publicly traded, vertically integrated timber companies began unexpectedly being subject to hostile takeovers. The “corporate raider” would purchase enough stock to gain control of the company, and then sell the timberlands or the mills. To everyone’s surprise, the first raiders made large profits, revealing that the mills could continue operating without the need to guarantee a portion of their timber consumption from their own lands. The takeovers also revealed that the timberland could probably be liquidated for more money than it was worth as part of the company. The hostile takeovers continued as investors realized that pub­lic timber company lands were of­ten worth more when divided up and sold than when maintained as a block for timber. If divided up, different parts of the land could be sold for vari­ous “highest and best uses” such as housing developments, to be profitably committed for vari­ous conservation easements, or retained to grow timber.93 By the mid-­1990s shrinking markets for some products, as well as increasing competition from imports and the development of large, modern mills in other countries, led some companies to take on additional debt to meet the competition. Sale of timberlands was a means of paying down excessive debt. Also, since publicly traded “C Corporations” were taxed both at the corporate level and again at the investor level on those receiving dividends, there was an incentive for integrated, publicly traded forest products companies to reorganize and divest their timberlands. This was essentially the same reason that many family-­owned lumber companies had sold out. Thus, at the end of the century, a combination of soaring land values, excessive taxation, environmental regulations, foreign timber resources, and the fear of corporate takeovers led many large landowners, in­clud­ing Union Pacific, Inland Rome, Kimberly-­Clark, and others, to divest thousands of acres. These were then gobbled up by private individuals, limited liability corporations, real estate investment trusts, and timber investment management organizations, which had vari­ous motives, objectives, and management strategies. One can also argue that an industry that had long been concerned about wood supply, a so-­called timber famine, now realized that, in part because of its successes in managing forests and promoting responsible forest management among nonindustrial forest owners, these fears, if ever valid,

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were outdated. Also, with globalization, vast timber supplies in areas such as South America, Siberia, and China were coming into play. No one really knew what the short-­term or long-­term futures held. What was clear was that much of the land in Ala­bama was now owned by private nonindustrial owners, as in Clay County, where over 95 percent of the land was in such ownership. The pattern in that area was dense forests, pasturelands, and chicken houses.94 In fact, across the United States, farmers owned more forestland than private forest industries did (97 million acres to 70.6 million acres in 1987), so forest researchers were looking for synergies between agricultural and forest products. As a US Forest Products Laboratory researcher put it, “It makes sense to look for opportunities to blend the material properties and attributes of the forest fiber with agricultural fibers to maximize the returns from farm resources.” Among the major areas of interest were the blending of corn and wood for biomass fuels, as well as using waste materials from harvesting and converting operations.95 In Ala­bama, by the early twenty-­first century a gradual decline in the forest products and agricultural industries prompted both to consider biomass as a way to help their bottom lines. Experts looked at small-­diameter trees, wood litter from harvesting, wood waste from mills, and vari­ous grass crops for conversion into fuel to generate electricity and for the production of other chemicals. The idea was not entirely new, for some mill operations had been using wood waste for years as a source of power. An organization called the South­ern Alliance for the Utilization of Biomass was formed to coordinate and promote the concept. Executive vice president John McMillan of the Ala­bama Forestry Association summed up the importance of biomass for the Ala­bama forest products community: “Having another market for small-­diameter trees is essential for the south’s forest landowners. Without stronger markets for small diameter timber, landowners will not continue to invest in planting trees, and many stands of young timber will become overstocked and unhealthy.”96 Another developing source of revenue was the production and sale of wood pellets. Burning wood pellets in home heaters had long been common in New England, but the practice did not become significant in the South until the late twentieth to early twenty-­first centuries, when fuel shortages and price increases led south­ern wood producers to consider biomass production and marketing opportunities. Wooden pellet plants use woody biomass, in­clud­ing logging residuals, sawdust, bark, and small trees, to produce pellets. One environmental advantage of wood pellets is that as they are heated, carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere, and since trees absorb it in

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equal quantities as they grow, burning pellets does not increase the amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. Burning pellets also does not pose the risks of explosions or spills that are associated with nonrenewable fossil f­ uels. Another advantage of the pellets is that they are easily stored and transported. However, there are some emission issues with heating wood and freeing volatile organic compounds. Near the end of the first decade of the twenty-­first century, pellets were increasingly used to heat buildings in North America and Europe. Pellet production in the United States and other nations did not meet the growing demand, particularly from European utilities that were anxious to cut carbon dioxide releases from fossil fuels as part of the effort to combat global warming. New plants were under construction to serve these markets, i­n­clud­ing a $75 million facility at Selma, Ala­bama, called Dixie Pellets. The same company, New Gas Concepts, was planning a 500,000-­ton-­per-year plant at Jack­ son, Ala­bama. The pellets from Selma would be shipped by barge downriver via the Ala­bama River, or by truck to Demopolis and then down the Tombigbee River. There was also a pellet plant at Gordo, Ala­bama, producing pellets for use as cat litter. However, by 2011 two of the three plants were no longer operating.97 Other new revenue sources for forest landowners included payment for “ecosys­tem services.” This referred to the payment of fees by corporations, landowners’ groups, environmental groups, and the federal government to landowners for the creation, preservation, or restoration of criti­cal habitats for threatened or endangered species, and for mitigation of natural resources destroyed by development or pollution. There were also new markets for such timber products as OSB. Louisiana Pacific Corporation built a facility at Thomasville, Ala­bama, which would manufacture OSB from small pulpwood-­size trees, but by 2011 the plant had been closed for a couple of years. At Meridian, Mississippi, in 2007, a new plant producing engineered wood products used small pulpwood, much of which came from west-­central Ala­bama. In Anniston, Ala­bama, Kronospan U.S. was opening a $500 million plant to manufacture OSB, laminated wood flooring, medium-­density fiberboard, and several other products, using wood of all size classes.98 The land divestitures of large US forest products companies and the restrictions on harvesting on pub­lic lands, as well as population and economic growth in other parts of the world, led to increased timber harvest pressures in other countries. Some observers believed that the key to the future was not in more timber production but in better utilization of the resource. Noting the belief that the United States was underinvesting in forest products research,

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one writer concluded, “Growing more and better trees is important, but by better utilization we can have our trees and use them too.”99 Thus, by the early twenty-­first century, many of the debates about forest management seemed dated, for the parameters of land ownership in the forested areas of the nation, in­clud­ing the South and Ala­bama, had dramatically changed. No one was quite sure what the future on the land would look like. The trigger was major change in the corporate structure of industrial forestry. Forest products companies merged, separated the ownership of manufacturing facilities from timberland ownership, and completely divested their timberland ownership at a frantic pace. Vertically and horizontally integrated forest products companies virtually disappeared, and institutional investors became dominant in forestland ownership. These new investors had a wide range of landholding objectives, chronological perspectives, and management philosophies. Some of the former industrial forestland remained under industrial-­style management, some was subdivided for residential and recreational development, and some was acquired by small owners and conservation organizations like the Nature Conservancy.100 Most prominent among the new owners were investment trusts called Timber Investment Management Organizations (TIMOs) and Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs). The degree of change in ownership and ownership type has been virtually unprecedented in the history of US timberland. Among the large transfers during the early twenty-­first century were sales of 4.7 million acres by Georgia-­Pacific Corporation to Plum Creek Timber Company, and sales of 9.7 million acres by International Paper Company and 4.6 million acres by Boise Cascade. The total value of corporate forestland sales was estimated to be approximately $30 billion, and the total acreage over 27 million acres. In 1996, about 95 percent of industrial forest­land in the United States was owned by vertically integrated forest product firms, but by 2006 at least half of this industrial acreage was estimated to be owned by TIMOs or REITs. In 1990, there were only two or three TIMOs in the United States, but by 2006 there were twenty-­four, managing timberlands valued at $15.7 billion. One 2005 study reported that 18.4 million acres in the South were sold between 1996 and 2004, with 75 percent being dispensed by vertically integrated forest products companies and over 85 percent acquired by REITs and other investment trusts. In the meantime, the last giant vertically integrated company, Weyerhaeuser, began restructuring as a REIT.101 There were a few examples of continuity. The T. R. Miller Mill Company of Brewton had operated for well over a century and by 2010 was one of the 150 largest sawmills in the United States. With its sister company, Cedar

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Creek Land and Timber, T. R. Miller owned and managed over 215,000 acres of timber­land. It was a fifth-­generation company that had become a diversified operation managing oil and gas properties, timber, and wildlife; and producing lumber, boxes, millwork, treated poles, mulch, wood chips, and pulpwood. By 1997, the company turned out about 4 percent of the poles produced in the United States. T. R. Miller was one of the first companies to establish tree farms, holding the No. 2 Tree Farm Certification in the United States.102 By 1984, Gulf States was a diversified company producing a wide variety of paper products, molded-­wood products, erosion control materials, and reinforcement fabrics. It also had real estate development, meeting and recreational facilities, forest products, and forest and minerals development operations. It operated in Ala­bama and seven other states and, unlike many of its forest products colleagues, survived into the late twentieth century.103 Eventually, the Gulf States Paper Corporation morphed into the Westervelt Company (now privately owned by the Warner and Westervelt families), which owned and managed some five hundred thousand acres of timberland. It operated hunting and fishing lodges in Africa, New Zealand, and the United States. Westervelt also provided wildlife gaming and recreational property management, had residential real estate development in Ala­bama, and was involved in the development of biofuels. The company claimed that it focused “on businesses which sustain our natural resources for the future. We are stewards of the land.” Its Westervelt Ecological Services division was a provider of habitat mitigation services, in­clud­ing mitigation banking. Mitigation banking involves the restoration, preservation, enhancement, or creation of wetland, stream, or conservation areas that offset expected deterioration of similar ecosystems. Under the Clean Water Act the federal government requires mitigation for the disturbance of these ecosystems, and a mitigation bank can sell “credits” to developers to offset damages to the properties they own or develop. The credits are evaluated by a Mitigation Bank Review Team, which gives permits to the mitigation bank. The evaluators may include the US Army Corps of Engineers, National Marine Fisheries Service, Environmental Protection Agency, US Fish and Wildlife Service, and state and local conservation agencies. During the first decade of the twenty-­first century, Westervelt Ecological Services was involved in the establishment of mitigation banks in north­ern California; Tuscaloosa County, Ala­bama; Greene County, Mississippi; and Escambia County, Florida, among others. These mitigation banks preserved vernal pools and habitat for hawks, streams and wetlands, longleaf pine forests, tortoise habitat, and a coastal bog.104

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While it is too early for a clear picture of present conditions or future predictions to be totally reliable, some see patterns emerging. In cases where forestlands have been kept in timber production, they are of­ten managed more intensively with shorter rotations, fewer noncommercial treatments such as thinning, less investment in infrastructure like roads and culverts, and smaller field forestry staffs. In some cases there has been a dramatic increase in harvesting activities as the new owners seek to pay off their acquisition debts. There is also far less interaction among owners, their staffs, and the local communities where the mills are located. However, no one can say with certainty what the future will bring or precisely how “green gold” will be defined.

8 Recent Environmental and Forest Management Issues In environmental circles across the nation, Ala­bama is known to many as a “sacrifice zone.” In other words, the state does not have a very good reputation for enforcing Federal environmental regulations, many of which were put in place during the last few decades as the environmental movement in the United States gained momentum. —Ala­bama Department of Archives and History website

Given the extent of Ala­bama’s forest cover and the importance of the woodlands and their denizens in the lives of Alabamians, it is not surprising that virtually from the beginning of white settlement there have been efforts to supervise or regulate their maintenance and use. One continuing concern has been the regulation of wildlife and hunting. In 1803, while Ala­bama was still part of the Mississippi Territory (it became a state in 1819), a law prohibiting “firehunting,” hunting with a gun at night with the light of pine torches, was prohibited within four miles of any settlement. Whether the emphasis was on game protection or fire prevention is debatable, but it did mark the beginning of Ala­bama conservation legislation.1 In 1837, the state legislature enacted legislation imposing a $200 fine for willfully or maliciously committing trespass by cutting down or destroying timber or wood growing or standing on someone else’s land. In 1854, the legislature established fixed, closed seasons on hunting deer, quails, turkeys, summer ducks, and other game birds in Mobile, Baldwin, and ­Wash­ing­ton Counties. A group of laws in 1866 imposed a penalty of not more than $200 for burning forests on someone else’s land, except during February and March. There was also a fine for the burning of any pine forests used to procure turpentine and for the negligent burning of another’s turpentine forest. One supposes that the February and March exclusion was a recognition of the traditional folk practice of burning the woods in the spring.2 The legislation specifically protected certain species of trees. An act in 1861 imposed a penalty of ten dollars per tree for anyone who cut, girdled,

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deadened, destroyed, or removed any cypress, pecan, oak, pine, cedar, walnut, hickory, or cherry trees or saplings from someone else’s land without his consent. In 1856, the legislature passed a law prohibiting poisoning streams to take fish. This legislation was probably concerned with the quality of drinking water taken from streams and may be the first precursor of modern water-­ quality legislation.3 The major focus through­out the nineteenth century was on game management and hunting. In 1899, the legislature passed Ala­bama’s first comprehensive game law. However, through amendment and additional special legislation, virtually the entire state was exempted, and only Madison County was still covered. In 1900 and 1901 the legislature enacted twenty-­eight special laws for game protection. However, not until 1907 did the state adopt a statewide program of game protection and enforcement.4 Forest protection began with the establishment of a State Forestry Commission in 1907, but there was no funding or professional staff. In the meantime, pioneering conservationist Colonel E. F. Allison erected a fire tower and initiated a selective cutting program on his forested lands near Bellamy. In 1923, the state legislature mandated that licensing fees paid by forest-­and wood-­using industries should be contributed to a State Forestry Fund. Now, the state could appoint a state forester and establish headquarters at Montgomery, and Ala­bama became eligible for official recognition and financial assistance from the federal government. In 1939, the state legislature made the first direct appropriation for forestry, providing $65,000 for general forestry work and $10,000 for state land investigations. A great step forward came in 1945 with the passage of the Forest Products Severance Tax. This law provided that land in the process of reforestation would not be taxed at a higher rate than unimproved land. The tax would come at the time of harvest and sale, thus encouraging reforestation.5 Fire protection was a major focus of the Forestry Commission. By 1924, some 3,250,000 acres, or 14.77 percent, of Ala­bama forestland was under protection. It is estimated that prior to fire control as much as 90 percent of Ala­ bama forestland burned annually. This was reduced to less than 30 percent.6 Increasingly, in the early twentieth century, arguments against fire became more powerful among foresters and land managers. By 1928, the Ameri­can Forestry Association launched the South­ern Forestry Educational Project to stamp out fire. Later, in the 1940s, leadership passed to the US Forest Service and its spokesman, Smokey Bear. The antifire mantra moved from suppressing wildfires and arson to stamping out all fires, and the views of scientists and researchers who disagreed were ignored or concealed. In the late twen-

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tieth century, catastrophic fires in the West, especially in Yellowstone, demonstrated the folly of total fire suppression, and in 2001, the Forest Service began to distinguish between wildfires and other forest fires. One unintended result of the campaign against fire was the loss of longleaf pine stands in Ala­bama. This was, in part, because many of the early antifire crusaders did not understand the importance of controlled fire in the life cycle of longleaf. But fire, or its absence, was not the only villain. The destructive harvesting practices described earlier played a role. So did the methodology of naval stores producers. Perhaps over time, most important was the rise of industrial timberland holdings, with their frequent conversion of longleaf lands to even-­aged tree plantations of slash or loblolly. Herman Haupt Chapman and Austin Cary argued in favor of using fire as a management tool in longleaf forests, as previously noted, and in 1935, they were joined by Inman F. Eldredge, regional director of the South­ern Forest Survey, who concluded that there was “evidence on the ground and in the history of the region to prove that this great [longleaf] pine forest was ushered into this world and has grown into its present development constantly subjected to the influence of wholesale periodic burning.”7 Observers like Chapman and Cary could see that longleaf forests were kept open by frequent fires, allowing light to encourage the growth of grasses and flowers and enabling habitation by vari­ous birds and animals. In the absence of burning, vines and hardwood sprouts proliferate, and the forest closes in. The grasses and flowers that need light slowly die, and the wildlife moves to other areas for suitable habitat. By the late twentieth century, pub­lic and private forestry agencies and other interested parties such as the Longleaf Alliance, which will be ­discussed later, were advocating the return of longleaf and providing management guidelines directed toward that goal. The issue of longleaf restoration was related to fire suppression policy. Alabamians were still plagued by woods arson, although it had become much less of a problem than in the past, and the Ala­bama Forestry Commission even employed a bloodhound named Blaze to help track down arsonists and promote wildfire prevention. However, attitudes toward fire and both its negative and positive effects had become far more nuanced.8 The effort to restore longleaf forests became a matter of federal policy in 2006, when the US Department of Agriculture’s Farm Service Agency (FSA) introduced a program to reforest up to 250,000 acres of longleaf pine in nine south­ern states. The program was under the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) and was available in states that were in the natural range of longleaf forests, in­clud­ing Ala­bama. In Ala­bama, longleaf ’s range was from the coastal plain to the mountains. The eligible land included cropland that was within

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the his­tori­cal longleaf range. It had to be cropped for four of the six years between 1996 and 2001. There were state allocations for the program, and Ala­bama’s was 37,000 acres.9 The Ala­bama Forestry Commission also shifted from a policy of absolute fire suppression to promotion of prescribed or controlled burning through training and cost sharing. However, there was yet another problem, although it involved an insignificant amount of acreage. Longleaf forests that had survived a long regime of fire suppression were at risk if fire reappeared. Thus, forest managers had to recognize the conditions among older trees and use fire accordingly. This meant burning conservatively, with priority given to controlling the reduction of the spongy mounds of pine straw and humus (duff) around the bases of trees. The main concern was to prevent catastrophic smoldering fires. Experts urged patience and conservatism in burning.10 By the early twenty-­first century, longleaf restoration efforts were well under way, but the longleaf forests were, as one writer put it, “fire starved.” One observer noted that after eons of natural wildfires, “in the past several ­decades . . . the precipitous decline of beneficial fires from Ala­bama’s landscape has caused considerable harm. . . . Longleaf pine forests in Ala­bama have declined significantly. . . . The problems originate from the legacy of a well-­intentioned fire prevention program that has resulted in many unintended consequences.”11 Beyond protecting existing forests, in the late 1950s the federal government began to provide direct assistance to landowners for planting trees. The Soil Bank program paid landowners to take farmlands out of production and plant forest trees. Other measures included the Forestry Incentives Program, which, prior to its expiration in 2000, gave landowners rebates of up to 65 percent of the cost of site preparation and tree planting. In the 1980s, the CRP was established to encourage farmers to plant trees or permanent cover crops on erodible farmlands. With this program, administered through the FSA, farmers are paid 50 percent of the cost of tree planting, plus an annual “rental” payment for a ten-­year period. There is also a special CRP program that encourages planting longleaf pines on old farmland using the same criteria as the regular CRP. The Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) provides rebates of up to 60 percent for landowners who address significant natural resource concerns, and it also pays for tree planting and some site preparation. The Natural Resources Conservation Service also administers the Wildlife Habitat Incentive Program (WHIP), which provides assistance to landowners for developing or improving wildlife habitat. WHIP grants rebates of up to 60 percent to be applied to the cost of site preparation for planting

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longleaf pines and some hardwoods, as well as permanent wildlife openings. In addition, there are federal tax incentives for reforestation, in­clud­ing a tax deduction of up to $10,000 yearly for trees planted after 2004. This covers the costs of mechanical and chemical site preparation, seedling purchase, planting, and weed control during the first year. Costs over $10,000 per year can be amortized over seven years. Finally, the federal government provides a special tax benefit for forest losses from hurricanes, tornadoes, fire, ice storms, and south­ern pine beetles, whereby, if income from salvage operations is reinvested within two years in site preparation and planting or the purchase of new forestlands, the taxes are rolled over into the new timber and delayed until the next time that new timber is sold. The State of Ala­bama also provides a cost-­share program called the Ala­ bama Agricultural and Conservation Development Commission Program. This program provides rebates of up to 60 percent for efforts in erosion control, agricultural water quality improvement, and improvement of forest resources. These practices include site preparation and tree planting.12 Ala­bama’s forest geography is dictated by the fall line of the rivers running southward from the interior to the Gulf Coast. The section below the fall line, called the Coastal Plain, is generally an area of pine forests, with some mixed forests. Much of the land is controlled by large ownerships. North of the fall line, in the Piedmont and Highlands regions, the ownerships are smaller and include oak-­hardwood forests and mixed pine-­hardwood forests, many of which are controlled by smaller nonindustrial owners.13 By 1920, most of the forestland in south­ern Ala­bama had been cut over. Cutover land was of­ten cleared for agriculture, particularly cotton cultivation. Much of the remaining forestland was abandoned and began to regenerate naturally. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, many farms were abandoned. Often, the abandoned fields were claimed by loblolly pine that could easily reseed. Throughout the state there was a recurring cycle of forested land being logged or cleared for farming and then reverting back to forest. By the 1940s there was sufficient sec­ond-­growth timber to supply an industry of small “peckerwood” sawmills as well as a number of new mills.14 The conversion of farmland to forest is a natural process. Trees can produce a large portion of their food from carbon dioxide in the air and water from the soil. They enrich the soil by returning dead leaves as fertilizer. Trees can grow on land that is too low in mineral nutrients to produce farm crops such as cotton. Excessive cropping and grazing can rob the land of essential nutrients. Sometimes overuse is followed by erosion and fire. Forests are of­ ten the best use of these lands.15 As lumber manufacturing recovered in the middle of the century, a new

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industry emerged. Ala­bama was an ideal home for pulp and paper manufacturing, and by 1995, there were sixteen mills in the state, with a total pulping capacity of 23,240 tons.16 To feed the mills, the state harvested 1.9 million cords of pulpwood in 1955, increasing to 9.4 million cords by the mid-­1990s. The wood supply area for a mill was extended to a seventy-­five-­mile radius as chip mills became part of the system. By 1998, there were twenty-­three chip mills in the state. The industry grew to the point that it consumed nearly half of the timber harvested in Ala­bama, although sawmills, plywood mills, and manufacturers of composite boards also depended on the state’s forests. By 1996, the combined harvest was 1,414,000,000 cubic feet of roundwood.17 However, despite the increasing demands on Ala­bama’s forests, the amount of forested land continued to increase. From 1936 to 1952, the area of Ala­ bama forestland grew 10 percent, from 18.9 million to 20.8 million acres, with much of the increase resulting from reforestation of abandoned farmland. From 1952 to 1990, forestland increased 5.2 percent, from 20.8 million to 21.9 million acres, constituting some 68 percent of Ala­bama’s total land area.18 As Ala­bama and the South moved past World War II into the 1960s and 1970s, the large forest products companies amassed large landholdings on which they practiced intensive forestry. Sometimes they did “selective” or “improvement” cutting in their forests, but of­t en they clear-­cut and then provided for reforestation by seed trees, or by planting seedlings and converting the land into single-­age, single-­species “tree plantations.” In some cases land that had been covered by longleaf forests became the home of loblolly pine plantations. The composition of the forests changed. The once-­dominant longleaf– slash pine forests declined considerably, with the most significant remnants in the Conecuh National Forest and on T. R. Miller Mill Company lands in south­ern Ala­bama. Even on these lands the longleaf has been replaced in many areas by slash and loblolly pine plantations. The most notable difference was the dramatic increase in loblolly pine forests. In 1982, some 811,000 acres, or 3.8 percent, of Ala­bama’s forestlands were in loblolly pine plantations. By 1990, this had increased fourfold to 2,990,000 acres, representing 13.6 percent of total forestland. In 1972, only 12.5 percent of the loblolly-­shortleaf forests were in plantations, and this increased to 47.8 percent by 1990. These plantations accounted for nearly 20 percent of the state’s forests in 1990 and rose to about 25 percent by the beginning of the twenty-­first century, according to the Ala­bama Forestry Commission. The growing importance of pine plantation monocultures and intensive timber harvesting triggered environmental and sustainability concerns.19

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Even as loblolly became dominant, reports of loblolly “pine decline” began to appear. Trees in the forty-­to fifty-­year age bracket had short, yellow-­green needles, sparse crowns, and reduced radial growth, of­ten followed by mortality within two to three years after the symptoms began to appear. The early recommendations by experts were to reduce the rotation age and convert stands to longleaf pine. The decline was associated with soil and water conditions, deterioration of fine roots, root-­feeding insects, and fungi. Other characteristics that could impact the health of loblolly stands were fire history, previous agricultural practices, lower vegetation density, and landform type. Various solutions such as limiting equipment entry to sites, fertilizing, subsoiling, and other management techniques were recommended. “Pine decline” remained a problem into the early twenty-­first century.20 Ownership patterns affect the ways forests are managed. Public lands, a very small part of Ala­bama’s forested lands, are managed for multiple uses in­clud­ing timber, recreation, and wildlife habitat. Before the massive divestitures of the late twentieth and early twenty-­first centuries, corporate forests were managed primarily for timber, although there was an increase in other uses, in­clud­ing the sale of hunting leases. Nonindustrial private forestlands are managed for a variety of uses, in different proportions depending on the ownership. There is a vast array of private nonindustrial forest owners, ranging from major corporations and investment trusts with huge acreages down to in­di­vidual owners of small parcels. The owners have a wide variety of priorities ranging from economic to recreational and aesthetic. Small private ownerships are more common in north­ern Ala­bama than in the south.21 The wide range of environmental issues raised by changes in forest composition include biodiversity, endangered species, and air and water pollution. The prominence of even-­aged plantation monocultures creates concerns about long-­term sustainability and biodiversity. Monocultures are more susceptible to disease and insects, such as the south­ern pine beetle. They are also more susceptible to damage from fire and ice storms than natural forests. Diversity concerns include habitat fragmentation; ecosys­tem integrity; and species, genetic, and ecosys­tem diversity.22 However, it can also be argued that pine plantations can supply much of industry’s timber needs, thus relieving the pressure on natural forests and allowing them to survive with a diversity of plants and animals. Even in plantations the diversity of indigenous species may increase over time, but this is diminished with harvesting and tree planting. This loss can be mitigated by altering the pattern of rotation times, maintaining plantations in a variety of

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age stands, and keeping some areas in native forest stands with attention to the maintenance of wildlife corridors.23 The people who were responsible for carrying out and sometimes developing the management strategies on these lands were typically professional foresters. Foresters were considered heroes during the reforestation of the South after the end of the cut-­out-­and-­get-­out age of lumbering, but they now found their profession and, sometimes, pub­lic image changing. They rightly thought of themselves as conservationists and felt that they should receive pub­lic credit and recognition for their accomplishments. But, in fact, they lived in a house divided. Forestry was origi­nally a profession dominated by civic-­minded young gentlemen, like Gifford Pinchot and Henry Graves, the founders of the Yale Forestry School; Biltmore’s Carl Alwin Schenck; and others who brought the ideals and methods of European forestry to America. But even the early foresters had disagreements. Pinchot despaired of the lack of commitment by private industrial landowners to reforestation and advocated large-­scale pub­lic land acquisition. Herman Haupt Chapman of Yale and Austin Cary of the US Forest Service advocated the use of “controlled burning” as a management technique at a time when the dominant managerial philosophy was that all fire was bad. These early foresters came from diverse academic backgrounds and brought myriad perspectives to their profession. After World War II, the forestry profession changed. As forest products companies acquired huge forested acreages, they began to employ large staffs of foresters to manage their lands. What they wanted on those lands was intensive management for timber to feed their mills. Other forest values, if considered at all, were essentially given lip service in printed corporate literature. The companies poured large amounts of money into forestry schools that would train the kind of foresters they wanted, people who would grow trees effectively and quickly. New schools sprang up and old ones expanded to produce graduates who were essentially narrowly trained technicians. These foresters could expect to have long and remunerative careers with the large companies or with pub­lic agencies like the US Forest Service, which for a time operated largely as a pub­lic timber farm manager for industry. Research in the forestry schools focused on producing trees that were bigger, more disease resistant, and faster growing. Intensive forest management greatly increased wood production on the land. Dick Mordecai of Union Camp remembered that in the early 1960s the company considered growing a cord of wood per acre annually “sort of

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the magic number.” Over time that shot up to three to four cords, and by 1999 they were “shooting for a lot higher than that.” Why? Mordecai cited improved seedlings grown in the company’s own nurseries, genetics, fertilization, drainage, and improved tree planting methods.24 These foresters believed in what they were doing and truly considered themselves conservationists. But as critics, environmentalists, urbanites, and others began to question their performance and management philosophy, the foresters felt misunderstood. They had never been particularly articulate as a profession, and they had struggled for years with defining the principles of their profession, grappling, in fact, with the very question of whether forestry was a profession. Pinchot defined conservation as “wise use,” and foresters traditionally had spoken of “multiple use” management. In practice, this meant growing timber, protecting the resource, maintaining the integrity of water systems, and providing habitat for wildlife, with perhaps a little recreational use thrown in. By the 1960s, some were questioning how this philosophy worked in practice. Was the conversion of old-­growth, multiple-­species forests to monocultures and even-­aged plantations good management? Were foresters and industrial forestland owners really concerned about streams and watershed protection? And, when they talked about wildlife habitat were they actually interested in all flora and fauna, or simply in game animals and hunting? The age of “conservation” was evolving into that of “environmentalism.” And people who did not own forests, live in forests, or even directly use forests were learning that forests affected their air quality, the climate, and the richness of Ameri­can society. Private nonindustrial forest owners faced a wide range of management choices. Some happily garnered profits from selling timber and sometimes hunting rights, and they were very much in sync with the industrial forestry model. Others began to think about different potential benefits of forest ownership and started to consider the opinions of wildlife biologists, climate scientists, and environmentalists, who brought alternative perspectives to forest management. This was especially true as the profile of nonindustrial forestland owners became more diversified. Where could they look for management models and advice? Were foresters really trustworthy, or were they merely shills for the industrial forestry model? Some landowners joined the Ameri­can Tree Farm system, an industry movement to certify that forests were responsibly managed, but that too could be considered an appendage of the industrial forestry community. In 2009, Ala­bama’s Forest Stewardship Plan for forest landowners was recognized by

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the Ameri­can Tree Farm System’s certification program, facilitating the process for Ala­bama landowners who wanted their forestlands certified as tree farms.25 Ala­bama foresters sought to achieve recognition of their professional status through a movement to have foresters in the state publicly licensed. The effort began with a 1950 meeting of the Ala­bama chapter of the Society of Ameri­can Foresters that considered sponsorship of a licensing bill. A bill for regulation and licensing was introduced in the 1955 legislature and was finally passed in 1957. The law required that foresters licensed by the State of Ala­bama adhere to a code of ethics. The legislation was supported by the Auburn Alumni Association, the Ala­bama Forestry Council, the Ala­bama Forest Products Association (later the Ala­bama Forestry Association), and many, but not all, members of the Ala­bama chapter of the Society of Ameri­ can Foresters.26 By the 1970s, there was open warfare between many environmentalists and wildlife biologists against the forest products industry and production-­ oriented foresters. Private nonindustrial forest landowners were caught in the middle, bombarded by “experts” from both sides. Industrial foresters emphasized growing trees to feed the lumber and paper mills and generate income for the landowner, while environmentalists, wildlife biologists, and some consulting foresters emphasized other forest values such as aesthetics, biologi­cal diversity, and wildlife habitat. Bill Moody, the state forester of Ala­bama, was determined to bridge the gap and provide a blueprint for private forest management that would address a variety of values. While preparing a speech for the Forest Farmers, Moody was visited by Sid McKnight of the US Forest Service, and in the course of their discussion of the problems, they coined the name of a new organization. When Moody spoke to the Forest Farmers in New Orleans, he announced that Ala­bama was going to start a program to encourage the practice of forestry on private lands called the TREASUR forest program. TREASUR is an acronym for Timber, Recreation, Environment, Aesthetics, Sustainable Usable Resources. The name was later changed to TREASURE Forest. Initially, there was not much interest and even some opposition from unexpected sources, especially people involved in the Tree Farm movement who did not welcome the possibility of competition. Also, the Ala­bama State Forestry Commission initially declined to endorse the idea. Finally, the plan was approved in 1973 by the Ala­bama Forestry Planning Commission, a standing committee of the representatives of government agencies whose activities impacted the forestry community. Among these were the Extension Ser-

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vice, Soil Conservation Service, Conservation Department, Farmers Home Administration, US Forest Service, and several others. They then began to define the program.27 Essentially, the TREASURE Forest program coordinated the efforts of state and federal pub­lic agencies to provide management advice and services to private forest landowners, thereby eliminating the necessity for the imposition of environmental regulations on private lands. TREASURE Forest landowners were certified by the Ala­bama Forestry Planning Committee, origi­nally with a minimum requirement that the property be inspected by a forester and a wildlife biologist. All of this was done in the name of protecting landowner rights. As the sys­tem evolved, any landowner owning at least ten acres of forestland was eligible for recognition as a TREASURE Forest owner by meeting three broad criteria: (1) identify one primary and at least one sec­ondary management objective for the property based on timber production, wildlife, recreation, aesthetics, or environmental education; (2) have a written multiple-­use management plan for the property; and (3) practice multiple-­ use management on the property. In 1986, the state forester created a state forester’s TREASURE Forest Advisory Committee. This later evolved into the TREASURE Forest Landowners’ Association, and then simply the Ala­bama TREASURE Forest Association. A slightly modified version was initiated nationally by the federal government and called the Forest Stewardship Program. The Ala­bama TREASURE Forest Association inspired the formation of a group called the National Network of Private Forest Landowners, and its formative meeting was funded by the US Forest Service. The TREASURE Forest program was considered both a philosophical and environmental victory by some Ala­bama forestland owners, but the state and national network associations were controversial. Members of the Forest Landowners Association, the Ala­bama Forest Owners Association, and the Association of Consulting Foresters argued that the Ala­bama TREASURE Forest Association and the National Network of Private Forest Landowners were involved in improper activities, receiving generous funding from the federal government and using the funds to lobby the government for more funding for the organizations and government-­funded subsidy programs for their members.28 In the late twentieth century, the US Forest Service, despite its movement toward less timber production and adoption of the principles of ecosys­tem management, was still strongly inclined toward viewing forests as commodity

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producers, as it pushed the concept of the “fourth forest” to publicize and promote the need for accelerated timber growth in the South.29 By the late 1980s, researchers were talking about a “pine decline” in south­ ern forests. In addition to the problems affecting loblolly mentioned earlier, some experts attributed the “pine decline” to four factors: (1) a decline in the area of timberland; (2) inadequate reforestation on nonindustrial private land; (3) a sharp increase in tree mortality rates, attributed in large part to attacks by pine bark beetles; and (4) reductions in growth rates. Some believed that the reductions in growth were a product of nutrient losses associated with logging and the resultant decline of site quality in pine plantations. During the same period, the composition of land ownership was changing as nonforest corporations such as realty firms, utility companies, hunting clubs, banks, insurance companies, and timberland companies that did not own mills became a larger presence.30 Concerned about the downward trend in the growth rate for south­ern softwoods in the late 1980s, the US Forest Service, with cooperation from several states, universities, forest products industries, and others undertook a study that produced the 1988 publication The South’s Fourth Forest: Alternatives for the Future. The study identified the most serious problems as (1) the lack of regeneration on pinelands after harvest, especially on nonindustrial private lands; (2) increasing mortality and prevalence of cull trees in softwood stands as a result of pine bark beetles and the suppression of overtopped trees due to increasing stand age; and (3) the conversion of timberland to nontimber uses. The Forest Service noted that since the early 1960s, the area of timberland in the South had declined from 197 million to 182 million acres. Most of the loss was from pine stands on nonindustrial private lands.31 What were the recommended solutions? The Forest Service report attempted to take environmental concerns and make them into a defense of increased timber production. It said that declining supplies of timber would force manufacturers to convert to substitute products, such as concrete, steel, plastics, and aluminum. “As production of these substitutes is stepped up, more and more nonrenewable resources, in­clud­ing the ore and fossil fuels used in their production, will be removed from the Nation’s finite supply.” “In addition,” said the Forest Service, “the mining, industrial processing, and power generation associated with increased use of timber substitutes will result in more air and water pollution.” Some scientists believed that air pollution contributed to forest declines, although these connections had not been fully established.32 However, since industry had begun to adapt its technology to use hard-

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woods as well as pine since the 1960s, appeals for programs to promote timber supply were losing some of their attractiveness. Environmental concerns reflected in the Endangered Species Act, National Environmental Protection Act, and Water Quality Act, as well as the growing concern about global warming, were becoming more important, and suggestions for regulation of forest practices as part of the approach to dealing with these problems were attracting favorable pub­lic attention. This added to the frustration of both the forest products industries and private nonindustrial landowners.33 There were also issues involving threats to endangered species, erosion problems associated with logging that could affect water quality, and paper mill effluents that represented some 30 percent of the state’s total air emissions and nearly 60 percent of total toxic stream waste. The emission and toxic stream problems would become less severe as a result of mill closures at the turn of the century. Some argued that state regulatory agencies were too lenient in dealing with these problems. On the other hand, federal regulation was criticized by forest landowners and industry members who regarded environmental laws as inimical to the state’s economy and future.34 The pulp and paper industry posed a much larger problem in the area of air and water pollution than lumber manufacture. Lumber manufacturers “have a minimal impact in terms of toxic releases into the atmosphere.” The major environmental impact in this sector comes from manufacturers of preserved wood products, whose preservatives release arsenic compounds, copper and chromium compounds, creosote, and pentachlorophenol. In 1997, there were thirty-­four manufacturers of preserved wood products in Ala­bama, and they released 184,000 tons of toxins into the air and water. There were also three manufacturers of reconstituted wood products that released nearly 200,000 pounds of toxins, chiefly formaldehyde, a carcinogen; and methanol, which can produce blindness and liver damage.35 Pulp and paper manufacturers posed an even larger problem. Those in Ala­bama consumed roughly half of all timber harvested in the late 1990s. Processing the logs into pulp and the pulp into paper involves vari­ous mechanical, chemical, and thermal activities that vary from mill to mill. These activities transform wood into strands of fiber. In addition to fiber, the most important resource for pulp and paper mills is water. Ala­bama had sixteen paper mills in the late 1990s, located along rivers, and they used an estimated 140 billion gallons of water yearly. A number of chemical compounds are used to produce paper products. To produce white paper the mills use chlorine bleaching. The combination of heat and chlorine produces organochlorines, in­clud­ing dioxin. The pulp and paper industry has been a major contributor to air and water pollution

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in Ala­bama, producing over 30 percent of all toxic air emissions and over half of all water pollution in 1996.36 Some companies did not take environmental criticisms lightly. In a 1984 official history of the Gulf States Paper Company, a caption under a picture of the Tuscaloosa mill notes that “in the ’60’s, even the steam from the Tuscaloosa mill—a former symbol of good times—comes to be called pollution by some do-­gooders.”37 Critics of the forest products industries argue that the regulatory agencies responsible for protecting the pub­lic interest in air and water pollution have been negligent or lax in regulating industry practices, sacrificing environmental quality in the interest of economic progress. Issues of water quality, in­clud­ ing sedimentation from logging operations and toxins from manufacturing, are in the purview of the federal Environmental Protection Agency, which in the 1990s delegated primary responsibility to the Ala­bama Department of Environmental Management. The US Department of the Interior’s Fish and Wildlife Service is responsible for matters relating to endangered species.39 As the national concern about environmental issues grew, Ala­bama had a reputation as a state where interest in these issues was minimal. By 1997, Ala­ bama had one of the worst records in the nation regarding toxic pollutants, ranking number ten in overall releases, number seven in water releases, and number twelve in air releases. The Ala­bama Department of Environmental Management has been accused of being too lenient in granting permits and, generally, being lax in environmental standards and enforcement because of the strong business influence in the state. Critics charge that there may be a link between the release of chemicals by pulp and paper plants and vari­ous pub­lic health problems in­clud­ing cancer, reproductive problems, neurotoxicity, and immune sys­tem damage.40 Protection of plant and animal species is another hot-­button issue. While Ala­bama has the most diverse flora and fauna among the forty-­eight contiguous states, it also has the largest number of species listed as threatened or endangered, in­clud­ing twelve plant species. The US Fish and Wildlife Service is the primary agency for enforcement of the federal Endangered Species Act, assisted in Ala­bama by the state Department of Conservation and the Ala­bama Forestry Commission. Protection of plants is enforced only on pub­lic lands, while species protection covers all lands. The most important endangered species in terms of its relationship to forest management is the red-­cockaded woodpecker. The woodpecker lives in large, old pine trees and is found across the state. If woodpeckers are found, logging operations are impeded while the situation is reviewed by the Fish and Wildlife Service. There are anecdotal reports of loggers using the “shoot

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and shovel” approach rather than reporting the presence of woodpeckers to the authorities. On the other hand, by the early twenty-­first century the Ala­bama Forestry Commission publication Ala­bama’s Treasured Forests contained an article by the head of the Ala­bama Natural Heritage Program noting that “Ala­bama landowners who take pride in their certification as TREASURE forest stewards may also take pride in possibly providing ideal habitat for one of nature’s avian jewels, the red-­cockaded woodpecker (Picoides borealis).”41 While noting that some landowners feared that the bird’s endangered status might result in land management restrictions, the author also said that with “a few relatively minor compromises, the landowner can continue to manage forest lands using most types of timber management activities.” To encourage landowners to protect woodpecker habitat, Ala­bama, in cooperation with the US Fish and Wildlife Service, implemented a program called “Safe Harbors,” whereby landowners agree to manage their land in ways that will ensure and enhance woodpecker populations but will not incur any new restrictions if the population expands beyond the baseline level existing when an agreement is signed. Another threatened species is the Red Hills salamander, whose habitat is found in moist bluffs in Ala­bama’s lower coastal plain. Loggers can alter the salamander’s habitat by removing shale that covers the soil, thus allowing drying due to sunlight. Discoveries of salamander presence can lead to a suspension of logging until biologists have studied the area and conservation plans have been developed. There were a total of eleven fish species—mostly shiners and darters, in­ clud­ing the snail darter—twenty-­four freshwater mussels, and two aquatic snails listed as threatened or endangered in Ala­bama by the mid-­1990s. The mussels are especially significant, because they are filter feeders whose presence or absence is an indicator of water quality. Sedimentation resulting from logging or other forest management practices is a threat to all aquatic species. Mollusks and fish are also vulnerable to changes in water temperature caused by the removal of the forest canopy as a result of logging or other management practices.42 By the early twenty-­first century, the Ameri­can black bear (Ursus america­ nus), which had once been numerous in Ala­bama, was again found in small numbers. Ala­bama’s population was once located primarily in the Mobile River Basin, as was part of the Florida black bear subspecies (Ursus ameri­ canus floridanus). It has recently been sighted in Mobile, Baldwin, Choctaw, Clarke, and Wash­ing­ton Counties, with population estimates of about fifty animals. Another subspecies (Ursus americanus americanus) has been sighted

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in northeast­ern Ala­bama, in­clud­ing DeKalb, Cherokee, Calhoun, and Cleburne Counties. These animals are thought to be transients from north­ern Georgia and Tennessee.43 While critics point negatively to Ala­bama’s record regarding rare and endangered species, other observers boast of the state’s successful record in restoring game animals. During the period of cut-­out-­and-­get-­out lumbering in the 1920s and 1930s, some conservation-­minded lumbermen, such as Fred Stimpson of Mobile and Colonel E. F. Allison of Bellamy, promoted a wildlife conservation ethic and helped establish sanctuaries to maintain huntable populations of native game animals. Nevertheless, by 1940, the writer Tom Kelly penned these lines in A Year Outside: Put very bluntly, the only resident game most people had to shoot in 1940 were quail and rabbits in the thousands of acres of scrub oak hills between patchy, worn out farms, or squirrels in the hardwood bottoms. There were a few turkey hunters in the Southwest corner of the state and in the hills northeast of Birmingham. There would be four or five such individuals living in towns with a population of 5,000. Anybody who killed two turkeys in one year was canonized. Any person who claimed to kill more than two was considered to be either baiting or to be completely reckless with the truth. All deer were driven before dogs. A deer drive that was composed of 80 or 90 standers, 15 drivers and 46 dogs, would make two drives a day and end up with a kill of five or six deer, occasionally. In most instances total daily bag would be two or three.44 By 2002, Ala­bama had “deer and turkey populations and hunting opportunities that are the envy of the rest of the nation.” The change came about in part because of restocking by the Ala­bama Game and Fish Division, private landowners, and hunters. The state also established Wildlife Management Areas (WMAs) as locations for game reintroduction and hunting. Much of the WMA land was provided by corporate and nonindustrial private landowners. This was important in a state where 97 percent of the forestland was privately owned, with most belonging to small nonindustrial landowners. The average forest landholding in Ala­bama, not long after the end of the cut-­out-­ and-­get-­out lumbering era, was eighty acres.45 Ala­bama’s atmosphere of opposition to environmental regulations was symbolized in the early 1990s by groups promoting what they called “wise use.” One of the most prominent was Stewards for Family Farms, Forests, and Ranches. The group, which disbanded in the late 1990s, was founded by

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Bill Moody, who served at the time as head of the pub­lic Ala­bama Forestry Commission. The Stewards actively campaigned for repeal of the federal Endangered Species Act, Clean Water Act, and Coastal Zone Management Act, as representing threats to private property rights. Moody eventually resigned from the Ala­bama Forestry Commission because of pub­lic cries that he was guilty of conflict of interest. Despite the Stewards’ demise, strong, organized opposition to federal environmental legislation continued, symbolized by outcries against the listing of the Ala­bama sturgeon as threatened, because protection of this species would affect dredging along the Ala­bama River, where many of Ala­bama’s pulp and paper mills were located. The issue was argued in terms of economic development and jobs.46 Water quality regulation has been a tortuous process in Ala­bama. The federal Clean Water Act of 1977 placed primary responsibility for enforcement in the hands of the Environmental Protection Agency, which in turn delegated authority to state agencies in states whose laws and regulations were consistent with those of the federal government. Until the late 1980s, the Clean Water Act focused on point source pollution emanating from a source such as a factory or water treatment plant to improve water quality. As the problem of point source pollution diminished, attention shifted to non–point source pollution from undefined sources such as land runoff. Congress amended the Clean Water Act and added Section 319 to regulate non–point source pollution, requiring each state to assess the problem and implement controls. The Ala­bama Department of Environmental Management (ADEM) was assigned that responsibility. In 1982, the Ala­bama Environmental Management Act was passed, giving the ADEM the responsibility for establishing and enforcing water quality standards, regulations, and penalties. The ADEM adopted an Administration Code prohibiting the deposition of pollutants (point and nonpoint) or degradation of the physical, chemical, or biological integrity of the state’s waters. Non–point sources of pollutants associated with the forest products industry included sediment, organic materials, temperatures, trash, pesticides, and anthropogenic nutrients. In 1989, the ADEM determined that forestry activities accounted for 8 percent of Ala­bama’s non–point source pollution. The responsibility for maintaining water quality standards in forestry operations has been broadly defined as in­clud­ing all parties on the production and management side. To provide guidelines, a set of Best Management Practices has been jointly adopted by the ADEM and the Ala­bama Forestry Commission.47 The Ala­bama Best Management Practices (BMPs) for Forestry were published in 1993 and addressed activities within streamside management zones,

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stream crossings, forest roads, harvesting, reforestation, stand management, and revegetation and stabilization. BMPs are mandatory in wetlands.48 The Ala­bama Department of Environmental Management stated in 1997 that the Ala­bama Nonpoint Management Program was “outdated” and did not include an in-­house BMP monitoring program, depending instead on citizen complaints, which were referred to the Ala­bama Forestry Commission (AFC) for investigation. In 1994, the AFC and the ADEM established a cooperative agreement allowing the ADEM to refer water quality complaints that appeared to be related to silviculture to the AFC. If the AFC decides the BMPs were not correctly utilized, or that water quality problems exist or are likely to develop, the responsible party is advised to take remedial action, and if that is not done, the complaint is referred to the ADEM for enforcement. Since 1994 the AFC has conducted random statewide monitoring of BMPs, inspecting each county six times annually. The monitoring found that 90 percent of the logging operations properly used BMPs. The use of BMPs seems to have increased, with a combination of education, regulations, and financial incentives possibly being the key. Many people consider the 90 percent compliance rate a sign that the sys­tem is workable and that most loggers and landowners are trying to do the right thing.49 However, by the late 1990s, forestry activities as a cause of non–point source pollution continued to concern the ADEM, with clear-­cutting and lack of streamside management zones of special importance. These conditions could increase ambient water temperatures, result in excessive erosion and sedimentation, increase pollutant loadings, create unnatural water flow conduits, and reduce the natural habitat and diversity of the biota. Between 1982 and 1989, 2.89 million acres, or 13 percent, of Ala­bama’s forestlands were clear-­ cut, and another 3.5 million acres received partial cuts. In 1997, the ADEM’s Water Quality Report to Congress for 1995–96 noted that “lack of erosion controls, voluntary nonpoint source compliance, as well as lack of voluntary compliance with streamside management zones in Ala­ bama remains an area of special concern.” The Ala­bama Nonpoint Source Management Program, adopted by a silvicultural task force in 1999, looked toward education and technology transfer as the keys to future improvement. Another would be the general public’s willingness to insist on purchasing “green certified” forest products.50 The Ala­bama forestry establishment is less criti­cal of the state’s forest management and industrial environmental problems. In fact, it is of­t en quite criti­ cal of the environmental movement in general. In 2001, while commenting on a book that is criti­cal of many positions of modern environmentalists, the

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executive vice president of the Ala­bama Forestry Association, a landowners’ and industry group, noted that “for years those of us who have labored in the forest products industry have maintained that most of what is said about our industry by environmentalists and eco-­groups is at best embellished and at worst outright lies. . . . Isn’t it refreshing to find an environmentalist who apparently has a conscience?”51 There were significant changes in corporate forest management during the late twentieth century. In 1988, a history of the Scotch Lumber Company proudly described its forest management practices. The company managed about 145,000 acres divided into 1,000-­acre “management compartments.” About 15,000 acres were cruised every five years, and about 3,000 acres were considered for clear-­cutting annually. Cruising was done early in the year, followed by cutting in the late spring and early summer. Following cutting, site preparation was done in the fall, with 85 to 95 percent done with herbicides and the rest mechanically. With the first frost, tree planting was done. The account does not mention streamside protection, wildlife, or species diversity. However, it does note that by 1988, Clarke County had the largest tract of virgin timber in Ala­bama, mostly owned by Scotch, and said that the company’s “wise conservation practices” had contributed to the area’s “magnificent stock of deer and wild turkeys.”52 To demonstrate responsible forest management to journalists, in 2001 Mead Corporation organized a “day in the forest” tour that visited, among other locations, a two-­thousand-­acre tree farm in Russell County. Some five hundred acres of land in the hardwood bottoms along streams and creeks were set aside in Streamside Management Zones and managed for wildlife diversity. At a site being clear-­cut to supply a Mead chip mill, a Mead technical service manager nicknamed “Dr. Dirt” challenged reporters by asking, “What’s so bad about clear cuts anyway?” He responded to criticisms by explaining what he termed the benefits of having clear-­cut areas interspersed with standing timber. “This was a cotton field, his­tori­cally. It probably lost six inches of topsoil” due to erosion and wind, Dr. Dirt said, adding that the land had been turned into a pine plantation about nineteen years ago. He also pointed out that “it is actually good for wildlife to have clear-­cut areas nearby because it allows in the sun, causing a proliferation of plants on which animals can feed.” He said the clear-­cut he was standing in would likely be replanted next year.”53 In 1998, looking back on the most significant developments during his long career as a forester and forest manager in the pulp and paper industry, Fred Gragg identified the acquisition of timberland by professional people as an investment. Anticipating one of the major changes of the twenty-­first

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century, Gragg noted that “the growth of consulting forestry in this part of Ala­bama has been phenomenal, and I think one of the most healthy developments in my career.” He went on to say that he was “of the opinion that future foresters in this country will be more likely to find employment with consultants than they are with industrial or governmental organizations.” He noted that in the past it had been difficult to get financing for forest management, but that situation had changed and “almost every forest owner who has a good plan and who has hope of making a profit can . . . get financing.”54 Aware of growing pub­lic and governmental pressure on the environmental front, forest industry managers became more sensitive to these issues. Arguing that “‘perception’ of how land is managed” is as important as the “‘reality’ of actual practices,” an International Paper Company wildlife manager told an audience of IP foresters and wildlife managers that timber production should be balanced against the needs of wildlife. He noted that customers were becoming more insistent on getting wood from well-­managed forests, noting that “Kinko’s, Lowe’s, Staples . . . they all want to know what we’re doing to enhance wildlife.” IP land managers were also told to set aside land for “special places, having unique or special characteristics in­clud­ing habitat, plant communities, scenic landscapes, endangered species, and his­tori­cal sites.” Another speaker pointed out that IP had set aside thirty-­one “special places” encompassing thirteen thousand acres in its South Central Region. One speaker cited the importance of Streamside Management Zones in keeping sediment out of creeks and tributaries, while another noted that long before humans, “nature used to clear cut . . . with fire, insect predation, tornadoes, hurricanes, ice storms, and other natural events.” The attendees were also told that the Endangered Species Acts of 1966, 1969, and 1972 and the Clean Water Act of 1973 all passed “because the pub­lic wanted it, not necessarily because of science.”55 Among the problems on Ala­bama forestlands near the end of the first decade of the twenty-­first century were slightly increased fuel loads for fire, resulting from hurricanes in 2004 and 2005, as well as increased fire danger in wildland-­urban interface areas resulting from rapid urbanization. Also, the divestiture of large acreages of forest industry land reduced the firefighting resources for those lands.56 By the turn of the century, there were several national, state, and local organizations that publicized and worked to improve environmental conditions in Ala­bama. They did not all focus on the same issues or suggest the same solutions or tactics. While many environmentalists considered the forest products industries and the state po­liti­cal establishment as enemies, there were,

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in fact, programs and organizations on that side that claimed to be promoting favorable environmental policies. However, there was a good deal of acrimony between the two sides, and they of­t en seemed to be talking past one another rather than attempting to seek reasonable compromises and solutions. In addition to the state operations of national organizations like the Sierra Club, Wilderness Society, and Audubon Society, there were groups that were more regionally or locally oriented. Among these was the Dogwood Alliance. Based in Asheville, North Carolina, the Dogwood Alliance claimed to be a network of over seventy groups around the South working to build support for the elimination of what it termed “unsustainable forestry practices” in the region. Its particular focus was on pulp and paper manufacturers, attempting to persuade them to reduce their pressure on “endangered” forests and to convince consumers to demand paper products produced in an environmentally friendly way from recycled sources. In particular, it was criti­cal of chip mills; clear-­cutting and the release of carbon from clear-­cut areas into the atmosphere; pine plantation monocultures; and the use of chemical fertilizers, herbicides, and insecticides. The Dogwood Alliance put particular emphasis on the packaging industry, trying to eliminate paper packaging originating from “endangered” forests, which was used by such businesses as fast-­food companies and manufacturers of beauty products, as well as other goods. On occasion, the Alliance tried to work with paper companies. At other times it conducted campaigns against them, such as criticism of International Paper Company for refusing to meet the standards of the Forest Stewardship Council’s forest management certification system. IP and other paper companies adopted the standards of the Sustainable Forestry Initiative, which the Dogwood Alliance contended were lower. It termed IP’s pub­lic advocacy of this sys­tem “greenwashing,” a deliberate attempt to confuse the public. The Dogwood Alliance also focused on the office supply business, targeting companies like Office Depot, Staples, and OfficeMax in efforts to persuade them to utilize more recycled products. Other goals were to persuade these and other companies not to purchase products derived from endangered forests or from suppliers that were converting forests to tree plantations. The Alliance urged the office supply companies to work with their suppliers to prevent the use of genetically modified trees or those harvested by illegal logging, as well as the unsustainable management of endangered forests that contained exceptional biodiversity, and other unacceptable practices.57 In 1987, the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization issued an alert for global concern about the significant loss of timberland. While the

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definitions of and reasons for the loss of forests could be and were debated, in 1992, the issue of forest sustainability became the main focus of the UN Conference on the Environment at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. The loss of tropical forests became a particular focus as environmental organizations campaigned against the use of tropical hardwoods and forest products worldwide. The nations of Europe, in a series of subsequent meetings, quantified and qualified acceptable forest practices in what became known as the Helsinki Process or Helsinki Accords. A year later, the representatives of twelve non-­European nations met in Montreal to establish standards for the management and conservation of temperate and boreal forests. Soon after, the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) was formed by environmental organizations to protect and conserve tropical forests. Eventually, the FSC grew to include participants in seventy-­two countries, representing over 170 million acres of forestlands. This enabled provision of an “eco-­label” for timber products and a stakeholder’s sys­tem for forest management.58 In 1994, the Ameri­can Forest and Paper Association introduced the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI), which was described by a MeadWestvaco official as being “based on the premise that responsible environmental behavior and sound business decisions can co-­exist to the benefit of landowners, manufacturers, shareholders, customers, the people they serve, the environment, and future generations.” Companies that adopted the SFI program were not only expected to maintain responsible management practices on their own lands, they were supposed to have certified procurement programs whereby they would acquire their wood from known and legal sources.59 By the early twenty-­first century, the SFI included two hundred companies with 150 million acres of certified timberland. In this early period the Pan-­European community introduced the Program for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC), covering 9 percent of the world’s forests. The goal of this effort was to develop international recognition of responsible management measures. Also, in the late twentieth century, some private corporations began to implement procurement policies that reflected environmental values, with some programs providing for labeling and advertising products as “green” or having been produced responsibly. Among the leading examples were Home Depot, Staples, and Time Warner. Also, the US Green Building Council introduced the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program, which was designed to improve the environmental performance and economic return for buildings. The design standards included the use of recyclable materials, preferably produced locally. In addition, Green Globes,

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an alternative certification program, was implemented by building associations. The Ameri­can Loggers Council also developed a certification program to recognize responsible logging practices. By 2007 there were at least sixteen organizations offering vari­ous certification programs.60 Another organization, founded in 1995, was the Longleaf Alliance, which was a result of the efforts of Rhett Johnson of the Solon Dixon Forestry Education Center at Andalusia, Ala­bama, and Dean H. Gjerstad of Auburn’s forestry school. More than a decade later, in 2008, the University Center for Longleaf Pine Ecosystems was established at Auburn University’s School of Forestry and Wildlife Science. The work of the Longleaf Alliance was directed toward landowners and forest managers, with the goal of protecting and restoring longleaf ecosystems in Ala­bama and the South. It served as a clearinghouse for information on longleaf forests and ecosystems. Most longleaf forests are on private nonindustrial land, and the Longleaf Alliance claimed credit for a 60 percent increase in longleaf pine acreage in Ala­bama during the first ten years of the twenty-­first century. The total of about 860,000 acres represented some 3.7 percent of Ala­bama’s forested land. During the same period, longleaf acreage in other south­ern states either remained unchanged or declined. Among the benefits the Longleaf Alliance attributed to longleaf forests were economic returns, aesthetics, hunting habitat, carbon sequestration, water purification, soil stabilization, species diversity in the ground cover, and protection of rare plants and animals or biodiversity.61 One of the leading environmental issues by the late twentieth century was carbon sequestration. Scientists established that trees store carbon dioxide or other forms of carbon, helping to mitigate global warming. Forest landowners and forest products companies were deeply interested and involved in discussions and programs relating to carbon sequestration by the end of the century. Carbon dioxide is a product of combustion and a contributor to global warming. Reducing the problem of CO2 emissions can be accomplished through developing clean energy sources, as well as “carbon sinks” where atmospheric carbon can be removed from the air and stored. The removal of carbon from the atmosphere, or carbon sequestration, can be accomplished by storing carbon in the ground, water, or vegetation. Trees remove CO2 from the air by photosynthesis. The CO2 is broken down and stored in all parts of the tree, which releases oxygen back into the atmosphere. Fast-­growing trees are an extremely effective means of sequestering atmospheric carbon. Carbon storage in trees is measured in terms of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e). Trees are roughly 50 percent carbon, based on dry weight. A carbon credit is equal to one metric ton of CO2e. Thus, the number of carbon credits on a forested property is determined by cruising the property to deter-

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mine the amount of timber volume by weight. Factors affecting the amount of carbon sequestered in a forest include the age of the trees, stocking levels or number of trees, species, and the site index of the soil. A young, healthy stand of loblolly pine on good soil, being managed for maximum growth, will capture and retain about two tons of carbon per acre per year. One ton of carbon is equal to 3.87 tons of CO2, so that stand will store twice that amount, or 7.74 tons, of CO2 per acre per year. A carbon storage market exists in the United States, with the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) serving as the only recognized commodity-­based trading market for carbon credits. The CCX was later acquired by the Intercontinental Exchange. Trading on the exchange is in terms of a Carbon Financial Instrument (CFI) contract, which represents one hundred metric tons of CO2e. Smaller landowners, who do not sequester enough carbon on their land to meet this minimum requirement, sell through agents called aggregators. Reliable aggregators are registered with the CCX. In the early twenty-­ first century the value of carbon credits was relatively low, but the assumption was that if the United States adopted cap and trade legislation requiring reduced emissions the value would rise significantly. To meet the standards for selling carbon credits, landowners have to manage their land under a certified sustainable forest program and sign a commitment to do so for the length of the carbon contract. Among the approved certification systems are the Forest Stewardship Council, the Ameri­can Tree Farm System, the Sustainable Forestry Initiative, and other systems recognized by the CCX. The most common vehicle for private nonindustrial landowners in Ala­ bama is the Ameri­can Tree Farm System. It requires ownership of at least ten acres, accomplishments in sustainable forest management, inspection by a registered forester, and recommendation for certification. The amount of credit and contract length are determined by the type of forest project and the way carbon is being stored.62 By the end of the twentieth century, a new part of the equation was “woody biomass.” Traditionally, the term referred to all of the trees and woody plants in the forest, in­clud­ing limbs, tops, needles, leaves, and so forth. In practice, it came to mean material that had no traditional value and could not be sold as timber or pulpwood. The woody biomass that was harvested for sale in the South was logging slash, small-­diameter trees, tops, limbs, and low-­value trees. Major applications included bioenergy; major concerns were about the environmental impact of removing these materials from the forest.63 Ala­bama had some successes in the environmental area. For example, during the late twentieth century, grassroots campaigns succeeded in achieving

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wilderness designation (and later expansion) of the Sipsey Wilderness Area in the Bankhead National Forest and the designation of the Cheaha and Dugger Mountain Wilderness areas in the Talladega National Forest. A key fig­ ure in the campaign was Mary Ivy Burks, who was one of the leaders in the formation of the Ala­bama Conservancy (later the Ala­bama Environmental Council) in the late 1960s. As a member of the Birmingham Audubon Society, Burks became a friend of Blanche Evans Dean, and the two explored the rock-­walled canyons along the West Fork of the Sipsey Fork River, a tributary of the Black Warrior River, in the Bankhead National Forest. Preservation of the wilderness along the West Fork Sipsey River became the major focus of the Ala­bama Conservancy. The area had been logged but had recovered sufficiently by the 1960s to be viewed as a “wilderness.” However, in the mid-­1960s, the US Department of Agriculture authorized the Forest Service to increase the level of timber production in the national forests and approved clear-­cutting to meet production goals. In the Bankhead National Forest, large stands of hardwood forests were harvested and replaced with pine. The Ala­bama Conservancy lobbied pub­lic and po­liti­cal leaders to protect the West Sipsey watershed from clear-­cutting and include it in the National Wilderness Preservation System, which was established by Congress in 1964. In 1971, legislation proposing a Sipsey wilderness area was introduced, and the Ala­bama proposal was soon joined by similar legislation from other east­ ern states as the east­ern wilderness movement began to flourish. The effort was opposed by the US Forest Service, the Ala­bama forest products industry, and especially by local loggers, who were concerned that locking up forestland would endanger their livelihoods. Eventually, after long years of maneuvering and infighting and after some thirteen different legislative proposals, Congress passed the East­ern Wilderness Act of 1975. The law designated 12,700 acres along the West Fork Sipsey as Ala­bama’s first national wilderness preserve. In 1988, as part of legislation enlarging the Sipsey Wilderness to some 25,000 acres, the West Fork Sipsey River and its upper tributaries were designated as Ala­bama’s only National Wild and Scenic River.64 Also, in 2009, the Nature Conservancy purchased 2,186 acres adjacent to the Little River Canyon National Preserve from the Hancock Timber Resources Group. The Conservancy planned to sell 1,536 acres to Forever Wild, the state’s land preservation program, and transfer the rest to the National Park Service for inclusion in the preserve. The state director of the Conservancy termed the purchase “a significant milestone in our decades-­long pursuit to protect one of the South’s most distinctive natural areas.”65

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35. Sipsey River in the Bankhead National Forest. Courtesy of Alan Cressler.

By the early twenty-­first century, new leaders and organizations had emerged to spearhead the Ala­bama wilderness preservation movement. Some believed that the US Forest Service, which had been timber production oriented during the early battles over Ala­bama wilderness, had now evolved into a more environmentally friendly agency. There were still battles to be won and goals to be achieved. New groups, like the Ala­bama Wilderness Alliance, were now working toward protecting unique areas in the national forests and other pub­ lic lands and linking them together with corridors to promote ecological processes, a concept they called “rewilding.” While cautious and watchful, they were hopeful that the Forest Service’s new management plan, which was in draft form in 2003, would be more sympathetic to their vision. In any case, it was clear that the agency’s emphasis had moved beyond timber production and toward restoration of multiple native species and old-­growth forests.66 In any case, by the early twenty-­first century, the massive land divestitures of private forest products companies and the shifting emphasis of Forest Service management on pub­lic lands were signs that a new age had arrived. In the private sector, lumber prices fell precipitously as the foundering economy devastated the housing and construction industries. Similarly, the paper and packaging markets were affected as businesses and consumers used fewer boxes and containers.

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Large integrated forest products companies that owned enormous forested acreages and produced a wide variety of lumber and paper products began to restructure. Huge companies like International Paper, Georgia-­Pacific, and MeadWestvaco began divesting huge landholdings in the late twentieth century. Georgia-­Pacific owned 6 million acres of timberland in 1993, and virtually none by 2005. International Paper sold 4.5 million acres of south­ern timberland in 2006 and divested thirteen lumber mills, in­clud­ing seven in the Southeast, in 2007. Once a producer of a full range of paper and lumber products, IP now focused on uncoated paper and packaging. No one knew exactly what the future would bring to Ala­bama forest communities. The large companies no longer controlled the entire domestic supply chain from growing timber through harvesting, buying, transporting, and converting to the final product. They were increasingly involved in the global economy, in­clud­ing timber supply, manufacturing, and the export sector. Even companies that held onto their land restructured. For example, Rayonier was one of three major forest products firms that transformed into a real estate investment trust because of tax advantages. Rayonier owned, leased, or managed some 2.6 million acres of timber and land in several states, as well as New Zealand, and sold timber for vari­ous manufacturing applications. It also worked with real estate developers to develop land that it considered more valuable for uses other than growing timber.67 In 2008 an Ala­bama state farm bill mandated an assessment of the state’s forest conditions and a strategic plan for the future, to be prepared by the Ala­bama Forestry Commission working with other state agencies as well as private citizens. The report, published in 2010, noted that while Ala­bama’s timber volume had increased since the 1950s, and growth had exceeded removal, there were still major threats to the state’s forest resources. These were identified as urban growth and development, fragmentation and parcelization, invasive species, changing markets, insects and diseases, wildfire, catastrophic natural events, air quality, and climate change.68 While noting the globalization of capital markets and the forest products industry, as well as the divestiture by industry of “huge tracts of land in Ala­bama,” the report offered little concrete guidance for the future, other than noting the emerging possibilities of new areas such as bioenergy. Although Ala­bama and the South would continue to be heavily forested, no one knew exactly how those forests would be controlled and managed, or for what purposes. There was no clear definition of “green gold.”69

Conclusion

Resilience and productivity have characterized Ala­bama’s forests from prehistory to the present. Prehistoric Native Ameri­cans utilized the forests for building materials, game animals, nuts, berries, and other commodities; cleared areas for farming; and burned the woods for vari­ous reasons in­clud­ing hunting by means of fire surrounds. They undoubtedly left an impact on the forests up to the time of the de Soto expedition. Yet barely a century later, when Europeans returned to the area, the woods appeared to be virtually untouched, contributing to the recurring myth of the virgin forest. The white settlers of early Ala­bama were mostly farmers who viewed the forests as impediments. They chopped down, girdled, and burned the trees as they cleared land for cultivation and used wood to construct fences, houses, barns, sheds, furniture, tools, and implements. Residents of south­ern Ala­ bama built wooden boats and rafts and tapped the pine trees for tar, pitch, and resin used in shipbuilding and maintenance. They utilized the “green gold” of the forests but seemed to take the economic benefits for granted. Despite these activities, by the time of the Civil War the forests of Ala­bama had scarcely been affected by human exploitation. Things changed in the late nineteenth century as hordes of lumbermen moved into the South due largely to the exhaustion of the forests in the North­ east and the Great Lakes states. Ala­bama, with its abundant forests of pines and hardwoods, was among the areas invaded by the lumber manufacturers, who were well aware that the trees did indeed represent “green gold.” Lumbermen came from the North, planning to migrate elsewhere when the forests were cut over, but Ala­bama differed from some of its sister states in that a number of its leading lumber firms were owned by native Alabamians who loved and were rooted in the area. The idea of permanent or even long-­term operation was foreign to the

288 Conclusion

lumbermen of the late nineteenth century. The profession of forestry had not yet arrived in this country, and they knew little about silviculture or the growth cycle of trees. What they did know was how to harvest and process timber to supply the giant maw of a rapidly growing nation. In addition, the prevailing systems of financing and taxing their operations made it necessary for them to come into an area, cut everything of value that was growing, and then move on to another location and repeat the process. Lumbermen called this methodology “cut out and get out.” As they cut rapidly through Ala­bama and other south­ern forests, the idea began to take root that at some point there would be no more areas to exploit. Fears grew that the nation might be approaching the time of a looming timber famine. During the late nineteenth century the profession of forestry was imported into the United States from Europe via the activities of pioneer foresters like Carl Alwin Schenck and Gifford Pinchot. The first Ameri­can forestry schools were established at Biltmore, Cornell, and Yale. Herman Haupt Chapman of Yale and Austin Cary of the US Forest Service forged relationships with Ala­bama lumber companies and evangelized the tenets of forest management via the suppression and prevention of wildfires, control of wild hogs that destroyed seedlings and young growth, tree planting or provision for seed trees, and controlled burning. Among the companies that bought into their message were those controlled by longtime Alabamians like the McGowins, Harrigans, and Millers, and Yankee transplants like the Kauls who had developed strong ties to Ala­bama. In the meantime the forests were indeed “green gold.” Ala­bama timber was used for the ties that supported railroad tracks in the state and elsewhere; it supplied the materials for buildings on farms and in cities; it was used to build bridges, ships, and barges; and pines in the south continued to produce naval stores. The forest products industry became one of Ala­bama’s leading manufacturing sectors as the South surged into national leadership in generating forest products. However, despite the ministrations of the crusading foresters, by the mid-­ 1920s the south­ern forests were extensively cut over, most without provision for reforestation, and many lumbermen moved on to the West to repeat the process. Ala­bama shared the general experience, but there was a difference. In the late 1920s, and then, after the Great Crash of 1929, into the Great Depression of the 1930s, a few Ala­bama companies stayed and struggled to survive. But it was by no means sure that they could succeed at practicing “sustainable forestry” and operating permanently. In the 1930s two major developments combined to produce a far more promising future scenario. First, lands that had been cut over by the lumber-

Conclusion 289

men and areas that had been cleared for farming and then abandoned during the Depression began to sprout new forests. Seed trees that had been inadvertently left by the lumbermen and small farmers spawned progeny that grew rapidly in the warm and moist Ala­bama climate. Observers were astonished by the plenitude and resources of these “volunteer” forests. Small producers operating portable “peckerwood” sawmills produced a growing volume of lumber from the “green gold” of these forests. Second was the arrival in Ala­bama of paper manufacturers who came because of forest exhaustion in the Northeast. Chemists, in­clud­ing Georgia’s Charles Holmes Herty, developed processes to produce merchantable paper from south­ern pine pulp, and the fast-­growing pine forests of the South were perfect for an industry that depended on a large, reliable supply of timber to operate profitably. The paper industry moved massively into Ala­bama, acquiring vast acreages of company forests and negotiating timber leases and contracts with private forestland owners. It employed staffs of professionally trained foresters who were experts in managing forests for rapid growth and large timber volume per acre. The paper industry boomed, and the lumber industry recovered, producing “green gold” for company owners and managers, woods and mill workers, and local and state governments that harvested the tax benefits. Private forest owners now had dependable markets for their timber. Professional foresters during the sec­ond half of the twentieth century did a remarkable job of managing the forests to supply the expanding demands of the paper and lumber manufacturers. Research by universities and companies developed so-­called super trees that provided seeds and seedlings to replenish forests that had been cut over. In cases where clear-­cutting was not the preferred method of harvest, foresters became adept at selective cutting, managing forest harvests so that the overstory would be removed and space provided for the development of young growth. Great progress was made against forest pests and diseases such as pine bark beetles, fusiform rust, and other natural perils that had plagued Ala­bama’s forests. Fire control improved enormously, and controlled burning, using fire as a management technique, especially in longleaf areas, became accepted practice. Still, there were some important concerns by the latter part of the twentieth century as mills moved from obtaining pulpwood by thinning pine forests for short­wood and began to shift to longwood. There were vari­ous rationales for the shift, in­clud­ing safety, mechanical efficiency, and other factors, but there were consequences. Shortwood thinning left larger trees in the forest that grew to become quality sawtimber for solid wood products. It produced plantations of larger and older pines with greater ecological value than short-­

290 Conclusion

rotation, intensively managed plantations. Shortwood operations also were better suited to small parcels of private forest that would have provided more timber and connected more people to the forest industry. The conversion to longwood also necessitated heavier cutting to pay for the equipment, and tree-­length logging of­t en damaged residual stands so that in the end they required clear-­cutting. Some landowners were reluctant to replant since they received so little income from clear-­cutting young trees. The young trees that were harvested contained a high percentage of “juvenile” wood that was weak, frequently warped, and full of knots that caused breaks, of­ten leading to south­ern pine being relegated to lower lumber grades. Also, with longwood came the increasing importance of “chip and saw” operations, in which small logs were “boxed” at the center and cut into a pair of two-­by-­ fours, with the chipped outside sent to a pulp mill. Consequently, south­ern pine sawtimber acquired a reputation in some circles as “junk” wood, possibly contributing to increasing imports of timber from Canada. On a more positive note, by the latter part of the century foresters and industry leaders had begun to realize that the foresters had done their jobs so well that the old specter of a “timber famine” was gone. Ala­bama’s forests were generally healthy and more numerous than at the time of the de Soto expedition. Foresters and landowners had also begun to pay more attention to other forest values, such as recreation and wildlife. Hunting and the sale of hunting leases on forested land became a central part of Ala­bama culture. In the early 1990s, L. Keville Larson, president of the forest management and consulting firm of Larson and McGowin in Mobile, recounted a story demonstrating the forests’ recovery and resilience: John Owen at the Piedmont Agricultural Experiment Sub-­Station in Camp Hill recently told me his aunt’s story of riding as a bride about 1920 from Waverly to her new home just north of Loachapoka, along the road that is now Lee Co. 11, a distance of 7 miles, without seeing a tree! At that time in Ala­bama, the timberlands were cutover, our land was farmed out and overgrazed, the soil was eroding and filling the waterways with mud and silt, there was no game, the economy of the state was in desperate condition. Since then, conditions have steadily improved. Today we have more timberland, more timber volume, and more timber growth than at any other time in the past 60 years. Our soils have been restored, the water is cleaner, there is more game than ever and the annual growth on the timber is enough to support our #1 manufacturing industry. In addition the forests and lands provide many benefits to society. What a success story!1

Conclusion 291

Foresters could rightly claim to be the nation’s first conservationists. Still, there were critics. As the environmental movement began to stir, the general pub­lic became increasingly concerned and vocal about such issues as air and water pollution, provision and protection of natural recreational areas, and the survival of endangered plants and animals. They saw streams and rivers polluted by the debris of logging operations and could not help noticing the smoke and odors belching from paper mills and other forest product manufacturing operations. It was easy to tell when one entered a paper mill town by the odor. In the early days industry spokesmen and foresters cavalierly called it “the smell of jobs and money.” At first many foresters and environmentalists spoke past one another and refused to recognize the validity of the others’ ideas or the legitimacy of their training. Many foresters of the post–World War II era were trained to believe that their job was to keep the forests healthy and grow as much timber as possible on an acre of land. Their philosophy was to do whatever the owner wanted on the land that they worked and managed, subject to the constraints of professional ethics and legal requirements. While some environmentalists were trained in sciences, such as botany, biology, and chemistry, many simply came to environmental activism as interested citizens, of­ten campers, hikers, and nature lovers who had little or no scientific training and were easy to dismiss as fuzzy-­headed romantics. The environmental movement affected the US Forest Service, which was increasingly “greened” from the 1970s on. The agency hired more nonforesters, people from other scientific backgrounds. Under pub­lic pressure the Forest Service began to drastically reduce timber harvests on pub­lic lands, which had of­ten been criticized as “tree farms for industry,” thus putting even more pressure on private lands to support the forest products industry. Forest products companies were well aware of the po­liti­cal pressure that an angry pub­lic could generate, especially when the battles seemed to be between the little guy and large companies. They started to address some of the environmental criticisms, with varying degrees of effectiveness and sincerity. One result, because of both pub­lic regulation and private initiative, was the elimination of most of the atmospheric pollution emanating from paper and other industry plants. Loggers became more careful in protecting the purity of streams and waterways and their inhabitants through the establishment of Streamside Management Zones. Breeding areas for endangered species such as the red-­cockaded woodpecker were protected, and foresters became far more careful in constructing logging roads and other facilities as part of the harvesting process. They began to establish certification programs such as the Sustainable Forestry Initiative, but critics charged that these ef-

292 Conclusion

forts were phony, what they called “greenwashing.” Some merchants, such as Home Depot, joined in to claim that they sold wood and paper products that had been produced with acceptable environmental standards, what became known as “Green Certification.” Questions centering on land ownership and management have intrigued participants, observers, and policymakers over the ages. If one had asked professional foresters of the 1950s and 1960s where the ultimate responsibility for land or forest management rested, most would have replied, “With the owner.” Most agreed that the owner’s objectives were the ultimate and proper criteria in managing forests. But, in fact, owner objectives may change over time. Is it fair for one generation to pass judgment on the practices of its predecessors who operated in a different environment and were shaped by other influences? One example is my own case. I own land that was handed down from my father. On part of this land was a small patch of mixed hardwoods that provided innumerable hours of childhood and youthful pleasure as a place to walk, observe wildlife, camp, and hunt mushrooms in the spring. My father loved the land and liked to hike, visit national and state parks and wilderness areas, and generally enjoy the nature aesthetic. But my father came of age during the hard times of the Great Depression and was acculturated to believe that land had a material value and should “pay its own way.” Thus, he cleared the small patch of woods for cultivation, despite his own love of nature. Over time that land has produced some revenue, but I regret that it was cleared and I would not repeat that process today. It was worth more to me in a natural state than it is as cropland. Similarly, the conservation-­oriented foresters and the emerging environmen­ talists of the late twentieth century of­ten came from different backgrounds and had different values. The foresters had taken pride in the restoration of Ala­bama’s forests since the time of their devastated condition in the 1920s. But they also believed that their ultimate responsibility was to the owner’s objectives, and most owners’ primary objective was economic, to manage their forests for timber to feed Ala­bama’s lumber and paper mills. Most environmentalists believed that forest landowners, both pub­lic and private, had a larger responsibility to the general public, future generations, and to the resources themselves. They believed in the concept of a greater community in which humans were part of nature and all living things were connected. In the late twentieth century foresters and forest landowners began to understand that there was money to be made in environmental activities. For example, in 2010 Auburn-­based Forest Concepts won a $1 million Depart-

Conclusion 293

ment of Energy grant for the sec­ond phase of a biomass production sys­tem to produce particles from wood waste for energy generation. Using forests as filters to purify atmospheric pollution, landowners and brokers began to sell and trade carbon credits. Forest products spokesmen argued that as a renewable resource, wood was more environmentally friendly than such other materials as coal and iron. An emotional issue for south­ern environmentalists was the restoration of longleaf pine forests. By 2010 the US Department of Agriculture’s National Resources Conservation Service had joined other agencies and private groups in sponsoring the Longleaf Pine Initiative to offer landowners incentives to restore and manage longleaf forests. The National Wildlife Federation produced a report arguing that global warming put south­ern forests at risk, but also noting that longleaf pine forests were particularly resilient. The most important segment of both Ala­bama’s and the nation’s forests were those under private nonindustrial ownership. Most such ownerships were relatively small, but collectively they dwarfed both the pub­lic and industrial forests, particularly as industry divested its landholdings from the late twentieth century on. The owners of these lands had diverse motives, but collectively the growth in cubic feet per acre increased dramatically, by nearly fivefold, over the course of the twentieth century. But there were also problems in this area. In June 2007, the Society of Ameri­can Foresters’ online newsletter, The E-­Forester, published an item concerning problems on privately owned forestlands, which it said had an aging ownership and were increasingly mismanaged, fragmented, and sold for development. Many foresters would heatedly disagree with the charge of mismanagement. In 2010, Forests at the Crossroads, a report from the Ala­bama Forestry Commission, said that Ala­bama’s forests had decreased by approximately 225,000 acres between 2000 and 2008. The authors said this might represent a tipping point as urban growth and development outpaced the reversion of agricultural land to forest. The transfer of industrial land to forest-­owning investment trusts and changes in private nonindustrial forestland ownership were major themes in the story of Ala­bama forests in the early twenty-­first century. However, it seems clear that given the state of forest management expertise and the growing pub­lic awareness and concern about environmental and land management issues, Ala­bama’s forests will continue to provide aesthetic pleasure, recreational opportunity, and abundant economic resources for future generations of Alabamians. They remain Ala­bama’s “green gold.”

Notes

Chapter 1 1. For interesting discussions of the construction of myth about the Ameri­can wilderness and nature, in­clud­ing the impact of Native Ameri­cans on that environment, see M. J. Bowden, “The Invention of Ameri­can Tradition,” Journal of His­tori­ cal Geography, Vol. 18, No. 1 (Janu­ary 1992), 3–26; Charles E. Kay, “Afterword: False Gods, Ecological Myths, and Biological Reality,” in Charles E. Kay and Randy T. Simmons (eds.), Wilderness and Po­liti­cal Ecology: Aborigi­nal Influences and the Original State of Nature (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2002), 238–61; and Charles E. Kay, “Are Ecosystems Structured from the Top-­Down or Bottom-­Up: A New Look at an Old Debate,” Wildlife Society Bulletin, Vol. 26, No. 3 (1998), 484–98. 2. Stephen H. Spurr and Burton V. Barnes, Forest Ecology, Second Edition (New York: Ronald Press, 1973), 289–90. See also William M. Denevan (ed.), The Native Population of the Americas in 1492, Second Edition (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992); and William M. Denevan, “The ‘Pristine Myth’ Revisited,” Geo­ graphical Review, Vol. 101, No. 4 (Oc­to­ber 2011), 576–91. 3. James Elliott Defebaugh, History of the Lumber Industry of America, Volume 1 (Chicago: Ameri­can Lumberman, 1906), 8. 4. Spurr and Barnes, Forest Ecology, 272–75; Don Burdette, “The South­ern Forests: A Legacy of Nations,” Ala­bama’s Treasured Forests, Vol. 14, No. 4 (Fall 1995), 27. 5. Spurr and Barnes, Forest Ecology, 276–77. 6. Hazel R. Delcourt, Paul A. Delcourt, and Elliott C. Spiker, “A 12,000-­Year Record of Forest History from Cahaba Pond, St. Clair County, Ala­bama,” Ecology, Vol. 64 (August 1983), 874. 7. Paul B. Hamel and Edward R. Buckner, “How Far Could a Squirrel Travel in the Treetops? A Prehistory of the South­ern Forest,” Transactions of the North Ameri­ can Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference, Vol. 63 (1988), 310, 3–5; Burdette, “The South­ern Forests: A Legacy of Nations,” 27. 8. William Warren Rogers, Robert David Ward, Leah Rawlins Atkins, and Wayne

296 Notes to Pages 10–14 Flynt, Ala­bama: The History of a Deep South State (Tuscaloosa: University of Ala­bama Press, 1994), 6–8. 9. R. Douglas Hurt, Indian Agriculture in America: Prehistory to the Present (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1987), 15. 10. David Bryan Taylor, “The Lure of Longleaf Pine: The Founding of the Alger-­ Sullivan Lumber Company 1900–1902; A Case Study of the Establishment of Industrial Logging in the Deep South” (draft manuscript prepared for the Auburn University School of Forestry and the Ala­bama Forestry Association), 4; Burdette, “The South­ern Forests: A Legacy of Nations,” 27. 11. Lawrence C. Walker, The South­ern Forest: A Chronicle (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991) 29, 5–6; Burdette, “The South­ern Forests: A Legacy of Nations,” 27, 30. 12. Chadwick D. Oliver and Bruce C. Larson, Forest Stand Dynamics, Updated Edition (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1996), 4. 13. Quoted in Oliver and Larson, Forest Stand Dynamics, 5. 14. Ibid., 11. 15. Ibid., 10. 16. Hazel R. Delcourt and Paul A. Delcourt, “Quaternary Palynology and Vege­ tational History of the Southeast­ern United States,” in Vaughan M. Bryant Jr. and Richard C. Holloway (eds.), Pollen Records of Late-­Quaternary North Ameri­can Sedi­ments (Dallas: Ameri­can Association of Stratigraphic Palynologists Foundation, 1985), 20. 17. Hamel and Buckner, “Prehistory,” 311; Delcourt and Delcourt, “Quaternary Palynlogy,” 20; Burdette, “The South­ern Forests: A Legacy of Nations,” 30; Kay, “Top-­ Down or Bottom-­Up,” 484. 18. Hamel and Buckner, “Prehistory,” 311. 19. Ibid., 311–12. 20. George Evans Brewer, “History of Coosa County,” Part 1, The Ala­bama His­ tori­cal Quarterly, Vol. 4, No. 1 (Spring 1942), 36. 21. Michael Williams, Ameri­cans and Their Forests: A His­tori­cal Geography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 42. 22. James Alexander Robertson (trans. and ed.), “The Account by a Gentleman from Elvas,” in Lawrence A. Clayton, Vernon James Knight Jr., and Edward C. Moore (eds.), The De Soto Chronicles: The Expedition of Hernando De Soto to North America in 1539–1543, Volume 1 (Tuscaloosa: University of Ala­bama Press, 1993), 93. 23. Ibid., 95. 24. Ibid., 105. 25. Report of the de Soto expedition quoted in Williams, Ameri­cans and Their Forests, 42; Hurt, Indian Agriculture, 28. 26. Hamel and Buckner, “Prehistory,” 312. 27. Alfred W. Crosby, Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 211; Kay, “Top-­Down or Bottom-­Up,” 490. 28. Williams, Ameri­cans and Their Forests, 28–29.

Notes to Pages 14–20

297

29. Burdette, “The South­ern Forests: A Legacy of Nations,” 30. 30. Paul E. Hoffman, “Introduction: The De Soto Expedition, a Cultural Crossroads,” in Clayton, Knight, and Moore, De Soto Chronicles, 12–13. 31. Charles C. Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus (New York: Vintage Books, 2006), 109. See also Patricia Kay Galloway, Choctaw Genesis, 1500–1700 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996), 133–34. 32. Hamel and Buckner, “Prehistory,” 312. 33. Edward Buckner, “Evolution of Forest Types in the Southeast,” in Thomas A. Waldrup (ed.), Proceedings of Pine-­Hardwood Mixtures: A Symposium on Management and Ecology of the Type (US Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Southeast­ern Forest Experiment Station, General Technical Report SE-­58, Asheville, NC, 1989), 32. 34. Spurr and Barnes, Forest Ecology, 299–300. 35. Ibid.; David Bryan Taylor, “Lure of Longleaf Pine,” 4–5. 36. Rogers, Ward, Atkins, and Flynt, Ala­bama, 8–12. 37. Ibid., 8, 9, 11. 38. Burdette, “The South­ern Forests: A Legacy of Nations,” 30–31. 39. Quoted in Rogers, Ward, Atkins, and Flynt, Ala­bama, 26. 40. Ibid., 29. 41. Ibid., 30–35. 42. Kathryn E. Holland Braund, Deerskins and Duffels: The Creek Indian Trade with Anglo-­America, 1685–1815 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993), 71. 43. Ibid., 65. 44. Quoted in Braund, Deerskins and Duffels, 65. 45. Hurt, Indian Agriculture, 32, 40. 46. William L. Ramsey, “‘Something Cloudy in Their Looks’: The Origins of the Yamasee War Reconsidered,” The Journal of Ameri­can History, Vol. 90, No. 1 (June 2003), 41. 47. Shepard Krech III, The Ecological Indian: Myth and History (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999), 157. Quote from Wilma A. Dunaway, “Incorporation as an Interactive Process: Cherokee Resistance to Expansion of the Capitalist World System, 1560– 1763,” Sociological Inquiry, Vol. 66 (Fall 1986), 6. 48. Krech, Ecological Indian, 157. 49. Neal Salisbury, “The Indians’ Old World: Native Ameri­cans and the Coming of Europeans,” The William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, Vol. 53, No. 3 (July 1966), 455. 50. Ramsey, “Something Cloudy,” 37–38; Braund, Deerskins and Duffels, 61, 65. 51. Krech, Ecological Indian, 156–57. 52. Braund, Deerskins and Duffels, 70–71. 53. Quoted in Braund, Deerskins and Duffels, 71. 54. Ibid., 152–53. 55. Krech, Ecological Indian, 162. 56. Quoted in James Axtell, The Indians’ New South: Cultural Change in the Colo­ nial South­east (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1997), 54. 57. Braund, Deerskins and Duffels, 72.

298 Notes to Pages 20–25 58. Krech, Ecological Indian, 162. 59. Quoted in Krech, Ecological Indian, 162. 60. Axtell, Indians’ New South, 68; Krech, Ecological Indian, 162–63. 61. Quote is from Harvey H. Jackson III, Rivers of History: Life on the Coosa, Tal­ lapoosa, Cahaba, and Ala­bama (Tuscaloosa: University of Ala­bama Press, 1995), 4; S. Stewart, Ecology and Management of the Bobwhite Quail in Ala­bama (Montgomery: Ala­bama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, 2005), 8. 62. Brewer, “History of Coosa County,” 36. 63. Ibid., 103. 64. J. M. K. Guinn, “Randolph County: The Red Man’s Home, the White Man’s Eden,” The Ala­bama His­tori­cal Quarterly, Vol. 4, No. 3 (Fall 1942), 292. 65. Spurr and Barnes, Forest Ecology, 290–91. 66. Philip Henry Gosse, Letters from Ala­bama: Chiefly Relating to Natural History (Tuscaloosa: University of Ala­bama Press, 1993), 117–18. 67. Jackson, Rivers of History, 45. 68. Rhoda Coleman Ellison, Bibb County, Ala­bama: The First Hundred Years, 1818–1918 (Tuscaloosa: University of Ala­bama Press, 1984), 4–6; quoted in Jackson, Rivers of History, 5. 69. Roderick Nash, Wilderness and the Ameri­can Mind, Third Edition (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982). Quoted in Jackson, Rivers of History, 4. 70. Quote from J. Allen Tower and Walter Wolf, “Ethnic Growth in Cullman County, Ala­bama,” Geographical Review, Vol. 33, No. 2 (April 1943), 276. 71. Burdette, “The South­ern Forests: A Legacy of Nations,” 30–31. 72. Benjamin Hawkins, A Combination of a Sketch of the Creek Country, in the Years 1798 and 1799 by Benjamin Hawkins (1848) and Letters of Benjamin Hawkins 1796–1806 (1916) (Spartanburg, SC: Reprint Company, 1974), 23. 73. Paul Wallace Gates, “Private Land Claims in the South,” The Journal of South­ ern History, Vol. 22 (May 1956), 183–84. 74. Gates, “Private Land Claims,” 203. 75. John Appleyard, Helping to Build America: The T. R. Miller Mill Company, Inc. Story, the First 125 Years, 1872–1997 (Brewton, AL: T. R. Miller Mill Co., 1997), 4–5. 76. Spurr and Barnes, Forest Ecology, 299. 77. Ibid., 302, 304; George R. Boyd, “Clearing Land of Brush and Stumps,” US Department of Agriculture, Farmers Bulletin No. 1526 (Wash­ing­ton, DC, 1927, revised 1929, 1933), 1–34. 78. James R. Atkinson, Splendid Land, Splendid People: The Chickasaw Indians to Removal (Tuscaloosa: University of Ala­bama Press, 2004), 194–96. There are discussions of further conflicting claims and resolutions in the area covered by Atkinson’s book. 79. For a discussion of the evolution of US Indian policy from assimilation to removal, with an emphasis on the Cherokee, see William G. McLoughlin, Cherokee Renascence (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), 34–37, 106–7, 128–30, 146–64, 207–8, 221–59, 413–28, 450–51. 80. David Bryan Taylor, “Sawmills in the Piney Woods, Development Patterns

Notes to Pages 25–31

299

in the Establishment of the Logging Industry in Ala­bama: A Collection of Four Case Studies from the Founding Period of the Modern Forest Products Industry in the South” (unpublished manuscript, March 1997), 4. 81. Ala­bama Department of Archives and History, Teacher Resources, Lesson 3: Ala­bama Fever, 1. 82. Quoted in Rogers, Ward, Atkins, and Flynt, Ala­bama, 54. 83. “Autobiography of Gideon Lincecum,” Mississippi His­tori­cal Society Publica­ tions, Vol. 8 (1904), 468. 84. Gosse, Letters from Ala­bama, 75. 85. Weymouth T. Jordan, Hugh Davis and His Ala­bama Plantation (Tuscaloosa: University of Ala­bama Press, 1948), 33. 86. Williams, Ameri­cans and Their Forests, 56, 60; James E. Fickle, Mississippi For­ ests and Forestry (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2001), 44; Brewer, “History of Coosa County,” 122; Taylor, “Lure of Longleaf Pine,” 6. 87. Defebaugh, History of the Lumber Industry, 323. 88. Thomas D. Clark, “The Impact of the Timber Industry on the South,” Mis­ sissippi Quarterly, Vol. 25 (Spring 1972), 143. 89. Joe Whitten, “A Brief History of Odenville, Ala­bama,” accessible online at http://www.StClairCountyAl.com. 90. Edgar V. Srygley Sr., “Descendants of James Srygley Sr.,” 2–3. This account is based on an undated, self-­published family story by Filo D. and Fletcher D. Srygley, http://users.ox.ac.uk/~zool0206/GWSrygley.html (site discontinued). 91. Stanley F. Horn, This Fascinating Lumber Business (Indianapolis: Bobbs-­Merrill, 1943), 100–101. 92. Henry Weston to S. W. Weston, De­cem­ber 15, 1950, reproduced in “The History of the Weston Lumber Co.” (unpublished manuscript in the possession of H. C. Berckes, New Orleans, LA). 93. Burdette, “The South­ern Forests: A Legacy of Nations,” 31; Clark, “Impact of the Timber Industry,” 152. 94. Everett Dick, The Dixie Frontier: A Social History of the South­ern Frontier from the First Transmontane Beginnings to the Civil War (New York: Capricorn Books, 1964), 251. Originally published in 1948 by Alfred A. Knopf. 95. Appleyard, Helping to Build America, 32–33. 96. Clark, “Impact of the Timber Industry,” 152. 97. Taylor, “Sawmills in the Piney Woods,” 4. 98. May Harris, “The Robinson Springs Neighborhood,” The Ala­bama His­tori­cal Quarterly, Vol. 7, No. 1 (Spring 1945), 28. 99. George Evans Brewer, “History of Coosa County,” Part 2, The Ala­bama His­ tori­cal Quarterly, Vol. 4, No. 2 (Summer 1942), 240. 100. Brewer, “History of Coosa County,” 33–35, 57, 82–84. 101. Ibid., 44–45. 102. Ibid., 91–92, 95–99, 102–4. 103. Ibid., 108, 110, 112–13, 120. 104. Taylor, “Sawmills in the Piney Woods,” 4–5; quotation from 5.

300 Notes to Pages 31–35 105. Ibid., 4–5. 106. James Boyd, “Fifty Years in the South­ern Pine Industry”(manuscript in Forest History Society Archives, Durham, NC), 25. Boyd’s article was published in the South­ern Lumberman, Vol. 144 (De­cem­ber 15, 1931), 59–67. 107. Ibid., 28. 108. Horn, Fascinating Lumber Business, 99–100. 109. Boyd, “Fifty Years,” 24. 110. Richard W. Massey Jr., “A History of the Lumber Industry in Ala­bama and West Florida, 1880–1914” (PhD dissertation, Vanderbilt University, 1960), 47. 111. Lynn Willoughby, Flowing through Time: A History of the Lower Chattahoo­ chee River (Tuscaloosa: University of Ala­bama Press, 1999), 70, 68–69, 99. 112. Don C. East, His­tori­cal Analysis of the Creek Indian Hillabee Towns (New York: iUniverse, 2008), 153. 113. W. L. Andrews, “Early History of South­east Ala­bama,” The Ala­bama His­tori­ cal Quarterly, Vol. 10, Nos. 1, 2, 3, and 4 (1948), 99, 128. 114. Thomas R. Cox, Robert S. Maxwell, Phillip Drennon Thomas, and Joseph J. Malone, This Well-­Wooded Land: Ameri­cans and Their Forests from Colonial Times to the Present (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1985), 122. 115. Sargent, Forests of North America, 524. 116. Taylor, “Lure of Longleaf Pine,” 9. 117. Clark, “Impact of the Timber Industry,” 154. 118. Rogers, Ward, Atkins, and Flynt, Ala­bama, 75–76. 119. Jackson, Rivers of History, 54. 120. Rogers, Ward, Atkins, and Flynt, Ala­bama, 75–76. 121. Jackson, Rivers of History, 107. 122. Ibid., 108–9; quote from 109. 123. Ibid., 60–61. 124. Ibid., 99. 125. Rogers, Ward, Atkins, and Flynt, Ala­bama, 177. 126. Thomas D. Clark, The Greening of the South: The Recovery of Land and For­ est (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1984), 15. 127. Albert E. Cowdrey, This Land, This South: An Environmental History (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1983), 91. 128. Willoughby, Flowing through Time, 61. For a discussion of cypress in Ala­ bama, see Mikko Saikku, This Delta, This Land: An Environmental History of the Yazoo-­Mississippi Floodplain (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2005), 179. 129. Saikku, This Delta, This Land, 109. 130. Compendium of the Enumeration of the Inhabitants and Statistics of the United States, as Obtained at the Department of State, from the Returns of the Sixth Cen­ sus (Wash­ing­ton, DC: Thomas Allen, 1841), 364; Statistics of the United States of America . . . the Sixth Census (June 1, 1840), 408. 131. Abstract of the Statistics of Manufacture, According to the Returns of the Sev­ enth Census (June 1, 1850).

Notes to Pages 35–42

301

132. Manufactures of the United States in 1860, Compiled from the Original Returns of the Eighth Census (Wash­ing­ton, DC: Government Printing Office, 1865), 11. 133. Juanita W. Francis, “Baldwin County’s His­tori­cal Forest Industry” (booklet in Warren Flick Files of the Ala­bama Forestry Association), 1. 134. Sargent, Forests of North America, 524, 529–30. 135. “The Turpentine Industry,” author unknown, copy in Ala­bama Forestry Association records. See also Robert B. Outland, Tapping the Pines: The Naval Stores In­ dustry in the Ameri­can South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2004). 136. Gosse, Letters from Ala­bama, 291–92. Consulting forester Keville Larson of Mobile says the trees described as pitch pine by Gosse were probably a different ­species. 137. Carroll B. Butler, Treasures of the Longleaf Pines: Naval Stores, Second Edition (Shalimar, FL: Tarkel, 1998), 180–81. 138. Don Burdette, “The South­ern Forests: 1800–1850,” Ala­bama’s Treasured For­ ests, Vol. 15, No. 1 (Winter 1996), 23. 139. Frank Heyward, “History of Industrial Forestry in the South,” Colonel William B. Greeley Lectures in Industrial Forestry, University of Wash­ing­ton College of Forestry (Spring 1958), 10. For an excellent brief description of the methodology of early naval stores production see Heyward, 10–11. For a short overview of the naval stores industry in the area see John Appleyard, Lumbering in Northwest Florida and Ala­bama: An Overview of Pensacola’s Great Lumbering Era (Pensacola, FL: Appleyard Agency, 2006), 38–40. 140. The Statistics of the Wealth and Industry of the United States . . . Compiled from the Original Returns of the Ninth Census, June 1, 1870 (Wash­ing­ton, DC: Government Printing Office, 1872), 493–94. 141. Henry B. Steer, Lumber Production in the United States 1799–1946 (Wash­ ing­ton, DC: US Department of Agriculture, 1948), 11. 142. Paul Wallace Gates, “Federal Land Policy in the South, 1866–1888,” Journal of South­ern History, Vol. 6 (August 1940), 304. See also Gates, “Private Land Claims,” 183–204, and Gates, “The Homestead Law in an Incongruous Land System,” Ameri­ can His­tori­cal Review, Vol. 41 (July 1936), 652–81. 143. Gates, “Federal Land Policy,” 305–8; C. Vann Woodward, Origins of the New South, 1877–1913 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1951), 115–16. 144. Gates, “Federal Land Policy,” 308–12; Nollie W. Hickman, Mississippi Harvest: Lumbering in the Longleaf Pine Belt, 1840–1915 (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1962), 69–71. 145. Gates, “Federal Land Policy,” 311.

Chapter 2 1. John Mack Faragher, Mari Jo Buhle, Daniel Czitrom, and Susan H. Armitage, Out of Many: A History of the Ameri­can People, Fourth Edition (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2005), 370, 579.

302 Notes to Pages 42–49 2. Quoted in Cox, Maxwell, Thomas, and Malone, This Well-­Wooded Land, 123; Taylor, “Lure of Longleaf Pine,” 11. 3. Horn, Fascinating Lumber Business, 102. 4. South­ern Lumberman (February 1, 1882), 4. 5. Boyd, “Fifty Years,” 1. 6. Horn, Fascinating Lumber Business, 97. 7. Report on the Manufactures of the United States at the Tenth Census (June 1, 1880) (Wash­ing­ton, DC: Government Printing Office, 1883), 88–89. 8. Sargent, Forests of North America, 486–90. 9. Ibid., 490. 10. Quoted in Boyd, “Fifty Years,” 20. 11. Sargent, Forests of North America, 524. 12. Ibid., 525. 13. Ibid., 529. 14. Ibid., 524. 15. Ibid., 525–27; Defebaugh, History of the Lumber Industry, 303. 16. Roland M. Harper, Geological Survey of Ala­bama, Monograph 8, Economic Botany of Ala­bama (University of Ala­bama, 1913), 35. 17. Massey, “History of the Lumber Industry,” 18. 18. Sargent, Forests of North America, 524–25. 19. Manufactures of the United States at the Tenth Census, 424; Sargent, Forests of North America, 524. 20. Sargent, Forests of North America, 524, 526. 21. Defebaugh, History of the Lumber Industry, 323. 22. Manufactures of the United States at the Tenth Census, 424; Sargent, Forests of North America, 524. 23. E. A. Powell, “Fifty-­Five Years in West Ala­bama,” The Ala­bama His­tori­cal Quar­ terly, Vol. 4, No. 4 (Winter 1942), 530. 24. Horn, Fascinating Lumber Business, 102. 25. C. Vann Woodward, Origins of the New South, 115. 26. Robert S. Maxwell, “The Impact of Forestry on the Gulf South,” Forest History, Vol. 17 (April 1973), 31. 27. Defebaugh, History of the Lumber Industry, 377. 28. Gates, “Federal Land Policy,” 311–14; Hickman, Mississippi Harvest, 71–72. 29. Heyward, “History of Industrial Forestry,” 11–12. 30. Gates, “Federal Land Policy,” 313–15; Horn, Fascinating Lumber Business, 102. The Illinois Central, like other south­ern railroads, continued to be intensely interested in the promotion of the forest products industry. In 1950, for example, the IC noted that eleven of every hundred carloads of freight loaded on its facilities originated in the south­ern forests. To promote and commemorate this activity the railroad published a history and description of the south­ern forest products industry. See John Walter Myers, Opportunities Unlimited: The Story of Our South­ern Forests (Chicago: Illinois Central Railroad, 1950).

Notes to Pages 49–52

303

31. Quote by James D. Lacey before the Committee on Ways and Means of the House of Representatives, No­vem­ber 20, 1908, in US Bureau of Corporations, The Lumber Industry, Part 1 (Wash­ing­ton, DC, 1913), 184–85. 32. Statement of W. T. Neal, president of T. R. Miller Mill Company, Brewton, Ala­ bama, in “Proceedings of 26th Annual Meeting, South­ern Pine Association, March 13–14, 1941,” South­ern Pine Association Records (Louisiana State University Archives, Baton Rouge, LA). 33. Clark, Greening, 14, 15. The exploitation of forests in the South was not unlike that of the north­ern pine forests several years earlier. See Henry Clepper, “Plunder of the Pineries,” Journal of Forestry, Vol. 65 (February 1967), 114–19; Taylor, “Lure of Longleaf Pine,” 9–10; Williams, Ameri­cans and Their Forests, 239–45; Woodward, Origins of the New South, 115–20. 34. Clark, Greening, 18; Ralph W. Hidy, Ernest Hill, and Allan Nevins, Timber and Men: The Weyerhaeuser Story (New York: Macmillan, 1963), 208. Interestingly enough, when the promotion and maneuvering to build the Mobile & Ohio Railroad were under way during the decade before the Civil War, its potential for serving the fledgling lumber industry was not much discussed. A letter to DeBow’s Review in 1849 noted that Ala­bama was attempting to diversify its economy and develop activities in­clud­ing “timber-­getting,” which a railroad would facilitate, but this was not a common theme. However, the author of an article on the railroad promotion campaign said that among one of the prominent promoter’s dreams was “developing Mobile as a prosperous center for ship building, with her fine waterfront facilities and immense amount of superb timber in the near neighborhood.” Grace Lewis Mitchell, “The Mobile and Ohio Railroad in Ante Bellum Times,” The Ala­bama His­tori­cal Quarterly, Vol. 7, No. 1 (Spring 1945), 48, 57. 35. Boyd, “Fifty Years,” 4; Massey, “History of the Lumber Industry,” 109–10; US Bureau of Corporations, Lumber Industry, 51. 36. Hidy, Hill, and Nevins, Timber and Men, 208–9. 37. Boyd, “Fifty Years,” 27. 38. Massey, “History of the Lumber Industry,” 15, 17. 39. Chattanooga Tradesman, Vol. 14 (May 1, 1886), 16, cited in Woodward, Ori­ gins of the New South, 118. 40. Clark, Greening, 15. 41. James R. Brennan, “Sawn Timber and Straw Hats: The Development of the Lumber Industry in Escambia County, Ala­bama 1889–1910,” Gulf Coast His­tori­cal Review (Spring 1996), 41. 42. Ibid., 43; Massey, “History of the Lumber Industry,” 18, 19. 43. Massey, “History of the Lumber Industry,” 109–10; US Bureau of Corporations, Lumber Industry, 178. 44. Willis G. Clark, Memorial Record of Ala­bama (Madison, WI: 1893), 303; Richard G. Lillard, The Great Forest (New York: Knopf, 1947), 158; Jeffrey A. Drobney, Lumbermen and Log Sawyers: Life, Labor and Culture in the North Florida Timber In­ dustry, 1830–1930 (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1997), 39–41; Clark, Green­

304 Notes to Pages 52–57 ing, 15–16; Gates, “Federal Land Policy,” 304, 325; Massey, “History of the Lumber Industry,” 26–28, 32–34, 37, 40–41, 49–51, 53–54. 45. Lillard, Great Forest, 190. 46. Massey, “History of the Lumber Industry,” 47–48. 47. R. C. Fraunberger, “Lumber Trade Associations: Their Economic and Social Significance” (MA thesis, Temple University, 1951), 21; Gates, “Federal Land Policy,” 327; Hidy, Hill, and Nevins, Timber and Men, 305–7. 48. Gates, “Federal Land Policy,” 327–30. 49. Hidy, Hill, and Nevins, Timber and Men, 290, 301. 50. Horn, Fascinating Lumber Business, 104–5; Massey, “History of the Lumber Industry,” 188. 51. Boyd, “Fifty Years,” 11. 52. James E. Fickle, The New South and the “New Competition”: Trade Association Development in the South­ern Pine Industry (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1980), 9; Boyd, “Fifty Years,” 11–16, 64; Massey, “History of the Lumber Industry,” 181–86; Ralph Clement Bryant, Logging: The Principles and General Methods of Operation in the United States (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1913), 315. Works dealing with these organizations include James W. Silver, “The Hardwood Producers Come of Age,” Journal of South­ern History, Vol. 23 (No­vem­ber 1957), 427–53; Stanley F. Horn and Charles W. Crawford, “Perspectives on South­ern Forestry: The South­ern Lumberman, Industrial Forestry, and Trade Associations,” Journal of Forest History, Vol. 21 (Janu­ary 1977), 18–30; and Fickle, New South. 53. Dwight Hair, His­tori­cal Forestry Statistics of the United States (US Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Division of Forest Economics Research, 1958), 15; Steer, Lumber Production, 11. The US Forest Service Division of Forest Economics defines the South as the states of Ala­bama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Texas. Tennessee and West Virginia are included with the central or lake states, and the Carolinas and Virginia are categorized as south Atlantic states. Hair’s production fig­ures are given in millions of board feet, those of Steer in thousand feet board measure. 54. Hair, His­tori­cal Forestry Statistics, 15. 55. Ibid., 16. 56. Boyd, “Fifty Years,” 4. 57. Steer, Lumber Production, 11–13, 15. 58. Lee M. James, “Forest Resources and Major Forest Industries of the South,” in Forestry in the South, Monograph 1 in “Studies of South­ern Resources” made by the Institute for Research in Social Science, University of North Carolina, for the South­ ern Association of Science and Industry (Richmond, VA: Dietz Press, 1948), 41. 59. Massey, “History of the Lumber Industry,” 19. 60. Ibid., 27–29; Horn, Fascinating Lumber Business, 100, 103. 61. Massey, “History of the Lumber Industry,” 19–23. 62. Clark, “Impact of the Timber Industry,” 157. 63. Massey, “History of the Lumber Industry,” 88–89, 195.

Notes to Pages 57–67

305

64. Steer, Lumber Production, 25–31, 50–51, 62–63, 80–81. 65. Sargent, Forests of North America, 525. 66. Roland M. Harper, Forests of Ala­bama, Monograph 10, Geological Survey of Ala­bama (University of Ala­bama, 1943), 50–51. 67. Massey, “History of the Lumber Industry,” 18. 68. Boyd, “Fifty Years,” 24. 69. Earl M. McGowin interview, March 17, 1976, in Elwood R. Maunder (ed.), James Greeley McGowin—South Ala­bama Lumberman: The Recollections of His Family (Santa Cruz, CA: Forest History Society, 1977), 36. 70. Ibid., 36–37. 71. Boyd, “Fifty Years,” 24. 72. Quoted in Boyd, “Fifty Years,” 25–26. 73. Robert Leslie Scribner, “A Short History of Brewton, Ala­bama” (MA thesis, University of Ala­bama, 1935, published in The Ala­bama His­tori­cal Quarterly, Vol. 11, Nos. 1, 2, 3, and 4, 1949), 92–93. 74. Boyd, “Fifty Years,” 24. 75. Brennan, “Sawn Timber and Straw Hats,” 45–47. 76. Boyd, “Fifty Years,” 24–25. 77. Ibid., 25. Additional information on the Vredenburgh firm supplied by consulting forester Keville Larson of Mobile. 78. Centreville (AL) Press, July 19, 1945; Billy Bond (interview by Emmett Thomp­ son, February 9, 2000, copy in Ala­bama Forestry Association Records), 7. 79. Billy Bond interview, 10. 80. John Appleyard, The W. T. Smith Lumber Company: A Chronicle (Pensacola, FL: Bodree Printing, 2008), 23–24. Originally written in 1999–2000 by Appleyard, Greeley McGowin, and Floyd McGowin. 81. Taylor, “Sawmills in the Piney Woods,” 15–16. 82. Ibid., 16–17. 83. Ibid., 17–21. 84. Massey, “History of the Lumber Industry,” 15–17. 85. Ibid., 176. 86. South­ern Lumberman (February 16, 1893), 8; Massey, “History of the Lumber Industry,” 176–77. 87. Taylor, “Lure of Longleaf Pine,” 44. 88. Taylor, “Sawmills in the Piney Woods,” 36–43. 89. Ibid., 49–50. 90. Boyd, “Fifty Years,” 26. For a short history of the W. T. Smith company see Appleyard, Lumbering in Northwest Florida, 36. 91. Appleyard, W. T. Smith Lumber Company, 4, 13, 15–16. 92. Ibid., 24–25. 93. Ibid., 26–30. 94. Nicholas Stallworth McGowin interview, April 22, 1976, in Maunder, James Greeley McGowin, 62.

306 Notes to Pages 67–76 95. Appleyard, W. T. Smith Lumber Company, 31, 37. 96. Earl M. McGowin interview, in Maunder, James Greeley McGowin, 30. 97. Ibid., 37–38. 98. Nicholas Stallworth McGowin interview, in Maunder, James Greeley ­McGowin, 62. 99. “About Us” (T. R. Miller Mill Company website, http://www.trmillermill .com); Appleyard, Helping to Build America, 133. 100. Taylor, “Sawmills in the Piney Woods,” 6–7. 101. Ibid., 7. 102. Appleyard, Helping to Build America, 6–7, 133. 103. Ibid., 12–14. 104. Ibid., 15–17. 105. Ibid., 36. 106. Taylor, “Sawmills in the Piney Woods, 9–10. 107. Ibid., 10–11. 108. Ibid., 11–12. 109. Ibid., 12–14; Appleyard, Helping to Build America, 26, 54–56. 110. Appleyard, Helping to Build America, 17–24. 111. Ibid., 62–63, 68–74. 112. Taylor, “Sawmills in the Piney Woods,” 13–14; Boyd, “Fifty Years,” 26. 113. Appleyard, Helping to Build America, 75–82. 114. Taylor, “Sawmills in the Piney Woods,” 21–24; Paige Reeves and Virginia S. Harrigan, “The Scotch Lumber Company History” (unpublished manuscript in files of Ala­bama Forestry Association, 1988), 3–8. For a brief account of the Scotch Lumber Company history see Dan Shell, “101 Years and Growing: Ala­bama’s Scotch Lumber Co.,” Timber Processing (February 1989), 16–20. 115. Taylor, “Sawmills in the Piney Woods,” 22–24. 116. Taylor, “Sawmills in the Piney Woods,” 24–28; Reeves and Harrigan, “Scotch Lumber Company History,” 8–11. 117. Taylor, “Sawmills in the Piney Woods,” 28–31. 118. Ibid., 31–33; Reeves and Harrigan, “Scotch Lumber Company History,” 14– 15, 30–31. 119. Reeves and Harrigan, “Scotch Lumber Company History,” 32–35; W. D. Harrigan to E. E. Hale, No­vem­ber 27, 1956. Letter in Warren Flick Files of Ala­bama Forestry Association. 120. Reeves and Harrigan, “Scotch Lumber Company History,” 36–40. 121. Ibid., 41, 43–45. 122. N. Floyd McGowin interview, March 16, 1976, in Maunder, James Greeley McGowin, 15. 123. Massey, “History of the Lumber Industry,” 5. 124. Scribner, “Short History of Brewton, Ala­bama,” 58. 125. Elwood R. Maunder, Voices from the South: Recollections of Four Foresters (Santa Cruz, CA: Forest History Society, 1977), 47.

Notes to Pages 76–80

307

126. J. R. Weston, “History of Forestry in Southwest Mississippi” (unpublished manuscript in Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Jackson, MS). For discussions of the continuing importance of taxation to timberland owners and forest products companies see William C. Siegel, “Avoid Any Gambles with Your Capital Gains Eligibility,” Forest Farmer (No­vem­ber–De­cem­ber 1984), 14–15; William K. Condrell, “The Case for Continued Capital Gains Treatment for Timber Sales,” Forest Farmer (Janu­ary 1983), 6–7, 16; William Hoover, “It’s Your Opinion That Counts,” The Ameri­can Tree Farmer (End of Year, 1988), 12; E. Carlyle Franklin, “Make the Most of Reforestation’s Tax Advantages,” Forest Farmer (July–August 1984), 12–13; James C. Fortson and Leon A. Hargreaves, “Capital Gains Taxation and the Industrial Forests of the South,” Journal of Forestry, Vol. 72 (June 1974), 345–48; and Clifford A. Hickman, “Timber Severance Taxes: Current Status and Changing Role,” Forest Products Journal (Oc­to­ber 1989), 31–34. 127. N. F. McGowin, “Private Forestry in the South,” in Proceedings of the Golden Anniversary Meeting of the National Lumber Manufacturers’ Association at St. Louis, Missouri (Wash­ing­ton, DC: National Lumber Manufacturers’ Association, 1952), ­46–47. 128. Fickle, Mississippi Forests and Forestry, 83, 101; Boyd, “Fifty Years,” 66; Boyd, “Fifty Years,” Part II, 59; William B. Greeley, Some Public and Economic Aspects of the Lumber Industry: Studies of the Lumber Industry, Part 1, US Department of Agriculture Report 114 (Wash­ing­ton, DC: Government Printing Office, 1917), 14–16; William G. Robbins, Ameri­can Forestry: A History of National, State, and Private Co­ operation (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1985), 31–33; Harold K. Steen, The U.S. Forest Service: A History (Seattle: University of Wash­ing­ton Press, 1976), 112–13; Wilson Compton, “Forestry under the Free Enterprise System,” Ameri­can Forests, Vol. 66 (August 1960), 51; Massey, “History of the Lumber Industry,” 179–80. 129. East, Creek Indian Towns, 148, 170, 172; Massey, “History of the Lumber Industry,” 178; Boyd, “Fifty Years,” 22. 130. Taylor, “Sawmills in the Piney Woods,” 18–19. 131. T. F. A. to F. C. Shepard, Oc­to­ber 21, 1895, quoted in Appleyard, W. T. Smith Lumber Company, 87–88. 132. Defebaugh, History of the Lumber Industry, Vol. 1, 397. 133. Ibid., 399–401. 134. Scribner, “Short History of Brewton, Ala­bama,” 116. 135. McGowin, “Private Forestry in the South,” 46–47. 136. Maunder, James Greeley McGowin, vii. 137. Earl M. McGowin interview, in Maunder, James Greeley McGowin, 51. 138. Albert E. Cowdrey, This Land, This South: An Environmental History, (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1983), 114–15. 139. Taylor, “Sawmills in the Piney Woods,” 16–18. 140. Taylor, “Lure of Longleaf Pine,” 59; Appleyard, Helping to Build America, 112. 141. James L. Baggett, Kaul Lumber Company, Kaul Land and Lumber Company, Sample Lumber Company: Records, 1836–1966 (Birmingham, AL: Birmingham Public Library Press, 1993), 2.

308 Notes to Pages 80–88 142. McGowin, “Private Forestry in the South,” 46–47. 143. Jeff D. Hughes Jr. (interview by James E. Fickle, August 1989, copy in Oral History Collection, University of Memphis). 144. Appleyard, Helping to Build America, 8. 145. Francis, “Baldwin County’s His­tori­cal Forest Industry,” 3–5. 146. Massey, “History of the Lumber Industry,” 73–74; Appleyard, Helping to Build America, 53. 147. Fickle, Mississippi Forests and Forestry, 115–16; Thomas Caldwell Croker Jr., Longleaf Pine: A History of Man and a Forest, Forestry Report R8-­FR7 (Wash­ing­ton, DC: US Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, South­ern Region, 1987), 11. 148. Butler, Treasures of the Longleaf Pines, 65–66. 149. Ibid., 66. 150. Clark, Greening, 21–23. For the situation of the workers see Pete R. Daniel, The Shadow of Slavery: Peonage in the South, 1901–1969 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1972); Robert B. Outland, Tapping the Pines: The Naval Stores Industry in the Ameri­can South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2004); and Douglas A. Blackmon, Slavery by Another Name: The Re-­Enslavement of Black Ameri­ cans from the Civil War to World War II (New York: Doubleday, 2008). 151. Defebaugh, History of the Lumber Industry, 324. 152. Ibid., 326, 328. 153. Jack Porter Oden, “Development of the South­ern Pulp and Paper Industry, 1900–1970” (unpublished PhD dissertation, Mississippi State University, 1973), ­313–14. 154. R. V. Reynolds and Albert H. Person, Lumber Cut of the United States 1870– 1920. US Department of Agriculture Bulletin No. 1119 (Wash­ing­ton, DC: Government Printing Office, 1923), 40, 56, 58. 155. Ibid., 27. 156. Fourteenth Census of the United States Taken in the Year 1920, Volume 9, Manufactures 1919 (Wash­ing­ton, DC: Government Printing Office, 1923), 24. 157. Cox, Maxwell, Thomas, and Malone, This Well-­Wooded Land, 210. 158. Biennial Census of Manufactures 1931 (Wash­ing­ton, DC: Government Printing Office, 1935), 426. 159. Clark, “Impact of the Timber Industry,” 150. 160. John C. Bliss and Conner Bailey, “Pulp, Paper, and Poverty: Forest-­based Rural Development in Ala­bama, 1950–2000,” in Robert Lee and Don Field (eds.), Communities and Forests: Where People Meet the Land (Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 2005), 138–58. 161. Maunder, Voices from the South, 38.

Chapter 3 1. Croker, Longleaf Pine, 11. For the evolution of log-handling procedures in the south­ern pine industry see John E. Hyler, “Log Handling, His­tori­cal and Pres-

Notes to Pages 88–92

309

ent Skidding Practices,” South­ern Lumberman (De­cem­ber 15, 1956), 298, 302, 306, 310–12, 316, 318, 320, 322; and John E. Hyler, “Log Handling, His­tori­cal and Present Skidding Practices,” South­ern Lumberman (Janu­ary 1, 1957), 60–64; Reeves and Harrigan, “Scotch Lumber Company History,” 23. 2. Fickle, Mississippi Forests and Forestry, 66; Massey, “History of the Lumber Industry,” 155–56; M. B. Peabody, “125 Years of Sawmilling,” South­ern Lumberman (De­cem­ber 15, 1956), 193–94. 3. Fickle, Mississippi Forests and Forestry, 66; Drobney, Lumbermen and Log Saw­ yers, 16–17; Robert S. Maxwell and Robert D. Baker, Sawdust Empire: The Texas Lum­ ber Industry, 1830–1940 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1983), 19; Massey, “History of the Lumber Industry,” 159–60. Of course, mill ponds were used by the later steam-­powered mills as well. 4. Quote from Maxwell and Baker, Sawdust Empire, 19; Williams, Ameri­cans and Their Forests, 201–2; Drobney, Lumbermen and Log Sawyers, 19–20; Fickle, Missis­ sippi Forests and Forestry, 66; Massey, “History of the Lumber Industry,” 156–58. 5. Peabody, “125 Years,” 194; Milton A. Nelson, “The Lumber Industry of America,” Ameri­can Monthly Review of Reviews, Vol. 36 (No­vem­ber 1907), 570; South­ern Lum­ berman (De­cem­ber 25, 1906), 57; Massey, “History of the Lumber Industry,” 158–59; Fickle, Mississippi Forests and Forestry, 66–67. 6. Williams, Ameri­cans and Their Forests, 169; A Compendium of the Ninth Cen­ sus (June 1, 1870) (Wash­ing­ton, DC: Government Printing Office, 1872), 918; Fickle, Mississippi Forests and Forestry, 67. 7. Williams, Ameri­cans and Their Forests, 168–69; Fickle, Mississippi Forests and Forestry, 67. 8. Archer H. Mayor, South­ern Timberman: The Legacy of William Buchanan (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1988), 48–56; Kenneth L. Smith, Sawmill: The Story of Cutting the Last Great Virgin Forest East of the Rockies (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1986), 25; Williams, Ameri­cans and Their Forests, 261; Hickman, Mississippi Harvest, 175–76; Fickle, Mississippi Forests and Forestry, 67; Massey, “History of the Lumber Industry,” 160. 9. Mayor, South­ern Timberman, 47–48; Fickle, Mississippi Forests and Forestry, 67–68; Massey, “History of the Lumber Industry,” 161–62. 10. Drobney, Lumbermen and Log Sawyers, 20; Smith, Sawmill, 25–26; Williams, Ameri­cans and Their Forests, 261–62; Fickle, Mississippi Forests and Forestry, 68. 11. Massey, “History of the Lumber Industry,” 170, 195–96. 12. Drobney, Lumbermen and Log Sawyers, 48–49; Smith, Sawmill, 26–27; Williams, Ameri­cans and Their Forests, 261; Fickle, Mississippi Forests and Forestry, 68– 69; Massey, “History of the Lumber Industry,” 163–73. 13. Don Burdette, “The South­ern Forests: 1850–1930,” Ala­bama’s Treasured For­ ests, Vol. 15, No. 2 (Spring 1996), 26–27; Taylor, “Lure of Longleaf Pine,” 43. See also The Saw in History (1916), Second Edition (Philadelphia: Henry Disston and Sons, 1916). 14. Nollie Wade Hickman, “History of Forest Industries in the Longleaf Pine Belt

310 Notes to Pages 92–101 of East Louisiana and Mississippi, 1840–1915” (unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Texas, 1958), 249–50. 15. Ibid., 251–52; Fickle, New South, 63; Massey, “History of the Lumber Industry,” 175–76. 16. Richard W. Massey Jr., “Logging Railroads in Ala­bama, 1880–1914,” The Ala­ bama Review (Janu­ary 1961), 41. 17. Willoughby, Flowing through Time, 145. 18. Massey, “History of the Lumber Industry,” 75–76. 19. Ibid., 77. 20. Ibid., 78–80. 21. Ibid., 81–83. 22. Ibid., 83–87. For a photograph of a log raft see Appleyard, Lumbering in North­ west Florida, 11. 23. Massey, “History of the Lumber Industry,” 89–90. 24. Appleyard, W.  T. Smith Lumber Company, 73; Appleyard, Helping to Build America, 29, 31, 98. 25. Massey, “History of the Lumber Industry,” 62. 26. South­ern Lumberman (August 10, 1904), 29. 27. Massey, “History of the Lumber Industry,” 63–64; Taylor, “Lure of Longleaf Pine,” 35–36; Appleyard, W. T. Smith Lumber Company, 73. 28. “A Study in Expense of Hauling Logs,” South­ern Lumberman (Janu­ary 1, 1904), 42; Massey, “History of the Lumber Industry,” 65–66. Massey tells of one of the last duels fought in Ala­bama, which was triggered by a dispute over hauling logs (66–68). 29. Appleyard, W.  T. Smith Lumber Company, 73–74. Some experts argue that scarification from the cables may have actually facilitated the seeding regeneration of south­ern pines. 30. Taylor, “Sawmills in the Piney Woods,” 44–45. 31. Massey, “History of the Lumber Industry,” 68–71; South­ern Lumberman (Oc­ to­ber 17, 1908), 61; Taylor, “Lure of Longleaf Pine,” 37–38. 32. Taylor, “Sawmills in the Piney Woods,” 33; Reeves and Harrigan, “Scotch Lum­ ber Company History,” 17. 33. Bryant, Logging, 24. 34. Massey, “History of the Lumber Industry,” 71–72. 35. Wayne Cline, Ala­bama Railroads (Tuscaloosa: University of Ala­bama Press, 1997), 222–36. Cline is a standard source on Ala­bama railroads. By far the best record of Ala­bama’s logging railroads, with a plethora of excellent photographs, is Thomas Lawson Jr., Logging Railroads of Ala­bama (Birmingham, AL: Cabbage Stack Publishing, 1996). Massey and Cline are also major sources for logging railroads. Cline says that by 1940, “most Ala­bama lumber lines lay abandoned, their roadbeds choked with thick underbrush” (235). 36. Cline, Ala­bama Railroads, 93–95; Massey, “Logging Railroads,” 43. 37. Appleyard, W. T. Smith Lumber Company, 82–84. 38. Drobney, Lumbermen and Log Sawyers, 73.

Notes to Pages 101–108

311

39. Massey, “Logging Railroads,” 42; Massey, “History of the Lumber Industry,” 91. 40. Massey, “History of the Lumber Industry,” 92–93. 41. Taylor, “Sawmills in the Piney Woods,” 28–31; Taylor, “Lure of Longleaf Pine,” 32. 42. Massey, “History of the Lumber Industry,” 96–97. 43. Ibid., 105–7. 44. Lawson, Logging Railroads, vi, ix–xvii. 45. Massey, “History of the Lumber Industry,” 108–9; Vernon H. Jensen, Lumber and Labor (New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1945), 17. 46. Massey, “History of the Lumber Industry,” 97–98. 47. Appleyard, Helping to Build America, 40. 48. Appleyard, W. T. Smith Lumber Company, 84–85. 49. Massey, “History of the Lumber Industry,” 99–101. 50. Mr. Brooks to Mr. F. C. Shepard, Oc­to­ber 21, 1895. Cited in Massey, “History of the Lumber Industry,” 100. 51. Ibid., 91–92, 96. 52. Earl M. McGowin interview, in Maunder, James Greeley McGowin, 33; Appleyard, Lumbering in Northwest Florida, 9–10. For photographs of some of Ala­bama’s logging railroads see Dothan Landmarks Foundation, Images of Rail: Railroading around Dothan and the Wiregrass Region (Chicago: Arcadia Publishing, 2004); Apple­ yard, Lumbering in Northwest Florida, 12–13. 53. Burdette, “The South­ern Forests: 1850–1930,” 26; Boyd, “Fifty Years,” 9. 54. Sargent, Forests of North America, 493. 55. Massey, “History of the Lumber Industry,” 107–8; Harper, Forests of Ala­bama, 72–128. 56. Massey, “History of the Lumber Industry,” 110. 57. Ibid., 199–200. 58. Willoughby, Flowing through Time, 146. 59. Quoted in Oden, “South­ern Pulp and Paper Industry,” 48. Brief treatments of the south­ern lumber industry and its workers appear in Edward L. Ayers, The Promise of the New South: Life after Reconstruction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 123–31; and Edward L. Ayers, South­ern Crossing: A History of the Ameri­can South, 1877–1906 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 65–68. A far more comprehensive treatment is in Walker, South­ern Forest, 88–145. 60. J. H. Foster, “Preliminary Examination of the Forest Conditions of Ala­bama” (unpublished report in records of Ala­bama Forestry Association), 12–13; Mary Ellen Curtin mentions the use of convicts by lumber companies in Black Prisoners and Their World: Ala­bama, 1865–1900 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2000), ­160–61. 61. Blackmon, Slavery by Another Name, 74. See also Daniel, Shadow of Slavery; Outland, Tapping the Pines; and William P. Jones, The Tribe of Black Ulysses: Af­ri­can Ameri­can Workers in the Jim Crow South (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2005). 62. Blackmon, Slavery by Another Name, 151–52. 63. Ibid., 112, 152–54, 332, 334, 354–55.

312 Notes to Pages 108–117 64. Drobney, Lumbermen and Log Sawyers, 172. 65. Massey, “History of the Lumber Industry,” 142–45. 66. Ibid., 145–47. For the treatment and working conditions of convict workers see 148–49. 67. Ibid., 149–54. 68. Joe Cook in Lumbering Along, Sep­tem­ber 7, 1951, quoted in Massey, “History of the Lumber Industry,” 116–17. 69. Massey, “History of the Lumber Industry,” 111–13; Taylor, “Lure of Longleaf Pine,” 56–57; Baggett, Kaul Lumber Company, 2. 70. Taylor, “Sawmills in the Piney Woods,” 28–31. 71. South­ern Lumberman (August 1, 1885), 6. 72. Brennan, “Sawn Timber and Straw Hats,” 61. 73. Appleyard, Helping to Build America, 47. 74. See Taylor, “Lure of Longleaf Pine,” 52–54, 56–58. 75. Brennan, “Sawn Timber and Straw Hats,” 41. 76. Drobney, Lumbermen and Log Sawyers, 127, 136. 77. Massey, “History of the Lumber Industry,” 126–27, 196–97. 78. Brennan, “Sawn Timber and Straw Hats,” 55–59, 61; Appleyard, Helping to Build America, 58. 79. Edward Hauss to Alger, Janu­ary 9, 1901, quoted in Taylor, “Lure of Longleaf Pine,” 53; Massey, “History of the Lumber Industry,” 127; Taylor, “Sawmills in the Piney Woods,” 47; Baggett, Kaul Lumber Company, 1. 80. Massey, “History of the Lumber Industry,” 119, 129–31. 81. Ibid., 132–36. 82. Appleyard, Helping to Build America, 49–50. 83. Joseph D. Weeks, Report on the Statistics of Wages in Manufacturing Industries (Wash­ing­ton, DC, 1886), 461. Cited in Massey, “History of the Lumber Industry,” 136–37. 84. Heyward, “History of Industrial Forestry,” 10. 85. Blackmon, Slavery by Another Name, 174. 86. Francis, “Baldwin County’s His­tori­cal Forest Industry,” 7–8. 87. James E. Fickle and Donald W. Ellis, “POWs in the Piney Woods: German Prisoners of War in the South­ern Lumber Industry, 1943–1945,” The Journal of South­ern History, Vol. 56, No. 4 (No­vem­ber 1990), 699. For a discussion of the ground rules and procedures for obtaining and using POWs see 696–702. 88. Quote translated from International Commission of the Red Cross Inspection Report, June 3, 1944, in Hermann Jung, Die deutschen Kriegsgefangenen in Ameri­ kanischef Hand—U.S.A. (Munich, 1972), 193, quoted in Fickle and Ellis, “POWs in the Piney Woods,” 711; Appleyard, W. T. Smith Lumber Company, 102–3; Robert D. Billinger Jr., Nazi POWs in the Tar Heel State (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2008), 4. 89. Appleyard, Helping to Build America, 96–97. 90. Earl M. McGowin interview, in Maunder, James Greeley McGowin, 45. 91. Appleyard, W. T. Smith Lumber Company, 252–56, 259.

Notes to Pages 117–127

313

92. Appleyard, Helping to Build America, 116–17. 93. H. H. Folk, “Logging in the South,” paper read at fourteenth annual convention of South­ern Lumber Manufacturers Association, reported in South­ern Lumber­ man (February 1, 1904), 13; Massey, “History of the Lumber Industry,” 55; Burdette, “The South­ern Forests: 1850–1930,” 27. 94. Massey, “History of the Lumber Industry,” 56. 95. Weston, “History of Forestry,” 83–86; Horn, Fascinating Lumber Business, 123–26; Fickle, Mississippi Forests and Forestry, 70. 96. Massey, “History of the Lumber Industry,” 57–58; Nollie W. Hickman, “Logging and Rafting Timber in South Mississippi, 1840–1910,” Journal of Mississippi History, Vol. 19 (July 1957), 157–58; Fickle, Mississippi Forests and Forestry, 69–70; Taylor, “Lure of Longleaf Pine,” 35; Appleyard, W. T. Smith Lumber Company, 72. 97. R. C. Wakefield (interview by Emmett Thompson, February 15, 1999, copy in Ala­bama Forestry Association Records), 12–13. 98. F. E. “Buck” Stabler (interview by Emmett Thompson, March 2, 1999, copy in Ala­bama Forestry Association Records), 13–14. 99. Robert M. Nonnemacher (interview by Emmett Thompson and Warren Flick, Oc­to­ber 6, 1998, copy in Ala­bama Forestry Association Records), 3. 100. Massey, “History of the Lumber Industry,” 138–42; Taylor, “Lure of Longleaf Pine,” 38–39. For a modern description of accidents caused by saws in the mills see Sam Duvall, “Forest’s View of Sawmilling,” Ala­bama Forests, Vol. 48, No. 2 (Spring 2004), 7–9. 101. Mayor, South­ern Timberman, 43. 102. Louis Zadnichek II, introduction in Lawson, Logging Railroads of Ala­ bama, v–vi. 103. Massey, “History of the Lumber Industry,” 59–60; Appleyard, W. T. Smith Lumber Company, 72, 74–75. 104. Appleyard, W. T. Smith Lumber Company, 90. 105. Massey, “History of the Lumber Industry,” 103–4, 119–20; Taylor, “Sawmills in the Piney Woods,” 45–46. 106. Taylor, “Sawmills in the Piney Woods,” 29–30, 34. 107. Reeves and Harrigan, “Scotch Lumber Company History,” 13. 108. Baggett, Kaul Lumber Company, 1. 109. Ibid., 1–2. 110. Billy Bond interview, 11. 111. Massey, “History of the Lumber Industry,” 60–61. 112. Reeves and Harrigan, “Scotch Lumber Company History,” 25. 113. Massey, “History of the Lumber Industry,” 61–62; Louis Zadnichek II, introduction in Lawson, Logging Railroads of Ala­bama, vi. 114. Reeves and Harrigan, “Scotch Lumber Company History,” 19–20. 115. Oden, “South­ern Pulp and Paper Industry,” 304–5. 116. Robert M. Nonnemacher interview, 6; Oden, “South­ern Pulp and Paper Industry,” 304–6. 117. Oden, “South­ern Pulp and Paper Industry,” 52–54, 67–68, 75, 80–81.

314 Notes to Pages 128–137 118. Jack O. Cantrell, “Pulpwood Procurement Practices in the South” (Master of Forestry thesis, Syracuse University, 1968), 60, 66. 119. Oden, “South­ern Pulp and Paper Industry,” 96. 120. Ibid., 378. 121. Robert M. Nonnemacher interview, 26. 122. Oden, “South­ern Pulp and Paper Industry,” 379. 123. Ibid., 395–96. 124. Ibid., 396, 399–402. 125. Ibid., 379–80, 407–8, 416–17. 126. Ibid., 409. 127. Ibid., 380–82. 128. Ibid., 382; see Stephen H. Norwood, “Bogalusa Burning: The War against Biracial Unionism in the Deep South, 1919,” The Journal of South­ern History, Vol. 63, No. 3 (August 1997), 591–628. 129. Oden, “South­ern Pulp and Paper Industry,” 382–83. 130. Herbert Northrup, The Negro in the Paper Industry (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1969), 38–39, quoted in Oden, “South­ern Pulp and Paper Industry,” 410–11. 131. Oden, “South­ern Pulp and Paper Industry,” 418–20, 436. 132. Ibid., 384–86. 133. Ibid., 386–87. 134. Ibid., 577, 581. 135. Oden, “South­ern Pulp and Paper Industry,” 380–82; Angus Gardner (interview by Emmett Thompson, March 3, 1999, copy in Ala­bama Forestry Association Records), 16–17. 136. Ibid., 18–19. 137. Oden, “South­ern Pulp and Paper Industry,” 388–90. 138. Ibid., 421–24. See Norwood, “Bogalusa Burning.” 139. Oden, “South­ern Pulp and Paper Industry,” 436–42, 443–49. 140. Dick Mordecai (interview by Emmett Thompson, Janu­ary 26, 1999, copy in Ala­bama Forestry Association Records), 17.

Chapter 4 Epigraph. The setting for Faulkner’s sawmill town was, of course, in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, which is based on the author’s home county of Lafayette, Mississippi. By 1960 “Lafayette County . . . has staked a claim to being the most forestry-­minded county in the U.S.A. . . . Oxford, the county seat, advertises itself as the ‘Reforestation Capital of the World!’” V. B. MacNaughton, “For Land’s Sake,” Ameri­can Forests (Janu­ary 1960), 34–35, 46–48. 1. H. H. Chapman, “Why the Town of McNary Moved: A Tragedy of the South­ ern Pines and a Parallel Which Carries Its Own Lesson,” Ameri­can Forestry, Vol. 30 (Oc­to­ber 1924), 589.

Notes to Pages 137–148

315

2. “The Lumber Industry Speaks,” Journal of Forestry, Vol. 27 (No­vem­ber 1929), 759. 3. Maunder, Voices from the South, 97. 4. Reynolds and Person, Lumber Cut, 21–23. 5. William B. Greeley, “The Business of Growing Trees,” in A Decade of Service: Official Report of the Tenth Annual Meeting of . . . the South­ern Pine Association . . . March 24 and 25, 1925, South­ern Pine Association Records (Louisiana State University Archives, Baton Rouge), 69; Thomas R. Cox, “The Stewardship of Private Forests: The Evolution of a Concept in the United States, 1864–1950,” Journal of Forest History, Vol. 25 (Oc­to­ber 1981), 192; William B. Robbins, Lumberjacks and Legis­ lators: Po­liti­cal Economy of the U.S. Lumber Industry, 1890–1941 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1982), 10–12, 17. In 1910, R. S. Kellogg of the US Forest Service said, “The conservationist is no idle theorist. He believes in use, but not in abuse. Granted that the forest must be made of the greatest possible use, but that this use must not be destructive, that we may cut the trees from year to year, but that the forest must exist forever.” R. S. Kellogg, “Perpetuating the Timber Resources of the South,” Ameri­can Forestry, Vol. 16 (Janu­ary 1910), 6. For a brief overview of the background and development of these pioneering efforts see Henry Clepper, “Industrial Forestry in the South,” Forest Farmer (June 1969), 12–14; and John C. Barber, “Forestry in the Midsouth,” Journal of Forestry, Vol. 74 (August 1976), 505–11. For an overview of the management of industrial forests in the United States during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, see Michael Williams, “Industrial Impacts on the Forests of the United States, 1860–1920,” Journal of Forest History (July 1987), 108–21. 6. J. H. Foster, “Preliminary Examination of the Forest Conditions of Ala­bama” (unpublished report in records of Ala­bama Forestry Association), 1–2. The story is that John H. Foster was “personally sent” to Ala­bama by Gifford Pinchot. He was probably the first professional forester to study Ala­bama’s forests and was the first of several Yale foresters who played important roles in Ala­bama’s forest history. Forests at the Crossroads: Ala­bama’s Forest Assessment and Resource Strategy (Montgomery: Ala­bama Forestry Commission, 2010), 1. 7. Foster, “Preliminary Examination,” 3. 8. Ibid., 10–12, 15. 9. Ibid., 16–19. 10. Ibid., 20–22. 11. Ibid., 23–32. 12. Ibid., 35–36. 13. Ibid., 42–48. 14. Ibid., 48–54. 15. Ibid., 55–59. 16. Ibid., 61–62. 17. Ibid., 62–68. 18. Ibid., 72. 19. Ibid., 73–74.

316 Notes to Pages 148–155 20. Ibid., 71. 21. Ibid., 80. 22. Ibid., 80–81, 84. Foster recommended hiring a state forester, adopting a fire control program, developing a one-­million-­acre forest reserve, and enacting laws to control hogs and other forms of forest waste and destruction. Forests at the Cross­ roads, 1. 23. Defebaugh, History of the Lumber Industry, 395. 24. Ibid., 397. 25. Ibid., 397–98. 26. L. K. Pomeroy, “Applications of German Forestry to Conditions in the South,” Journal of Forestry, Vol. 30 (Janu­ary 1935), 16–19; Warren B. Bullock, “Paper and Pulp Mills’ Industrial Forestry Program, History and Enormous Progress,” South­ern Pulp and Paper Manufacturer (Janu­ary 11, 1960), 46. See also James G. Lewis, “‘Trained by Ameri­cans in Ameri­can Ways’: The Establishment of Forestry Education in the United States, 1885–1911” (unpublished PhD dissertation, Florida State University, 2001). 27. Maunder, Voices from the South, 1–3. 28. Henry Clepper, Professional Forestry in the United States (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press for Resources for the Future, 1971), 14–15; Cox, Maxwell, Thomas, and Malone, This Well-­Wooded Land, 144–46. 29. Cox, “Stewardship of Private Forests,” 188. 30. Cox, This Well-­Wooded Land, 184; Fickle, New South, 249–50. See also Martin Nelson McGeary, Gifford Pinchot, Forester-­Politician (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1960); and Char Miller, Gifford Pinchot and the Making of Modern En­ vironmentalism (Wash­ing­ton, DC: Island Press/Shearwater Books, 2001). 31. Fred Gragg (interview by Emmett Thompson, No­vem­ber 24, 1998, copy in Ala­bama Forestry Association Records). 32. Maunder, Voices from the South, 4–5. For an overview of the development of forestry on private lands, in­clud­ing industrial forests, see Cox, “Stewardship of Private Forests,” 188–96. The observations of a famous forester regarding the development of industrial forestry are in David T. Mason, “Changing Economic Conditions and Forest Practices on Privately Owned Lands,” Journal of Forestry (No­vem­ber 1953), 803–8. 33. A. E. Wackerman, “Sustained Yield Forestry in the South­ern Pine Region,” Journal of Forestry, Vol. 33 (March 1935), 231–36. Wackerman provides an excellent brief description of the development of sustained yield operations in the south­ern lumber industry. 34. Maunder, Voices from the South, 7. 35. Clark, Greening, 10–11, 39–40. 36. Maunder, Voices from the South, 41. 37. Clepper, “Industrial Forestry in the South,” 13. 38. Maunder, Voices from the South, 224. 39. Roy R. White, “Austin Cary, the Father of South­ern Forestry,” Forest History,

Notes to Pages 155–161

317

Vol. 5 (Spring 1961), 3–4. See also Roy Ring White, “Austin Cary and Forestry in the South” (unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Florida, 1960). 40. Maunder, Voices from the South, 41. 41. Ibid., 123–24. 42. Heyward, “History of Industrial Forestry,” 28. 43. Maunder, Voices from the South, 4. 44. Ibid., 5. 45. Clepper, Professional Forestry, 244–45. 46. Heyward, “History of Industrial Forestry,” 33. 47. Maunder, Voices from the South, 125–27. 48. Elwood R. Maunder and Elwood L. Demmon, “An Interview with Reuben B. Robertson: Trailblazing in the South­ern Paper Industry,” Forest History (Spring 1961), 7. 49. Robert K. Winters (ed.), Fifty Years of Forestry in the U.S.A. (Wash­ing­ton, DC: Society of Ameri­can Foresters, 1950), 3. 50. Cox, This Well-­Wooded Land, 194. See also “State Forestry in the South,” For­ est History (Oc­to­ber 1972), 50–53. 51. Steen, U.S. Forest Service, 173. 52. Winters, Fifty Years of Forestry, 4–5, 7; Clepper, Professional Forestry, 31–38, 124–26. See also Lewis, “Trained by Ameri­cans.” 53. Clepper, Professional Forestry, 28. 54. Winters, Fifty Years of Forestry, 9–12. 55. Clepper, Professional Forestry, 207–8. The Journal of Forestry publishes reports on the enrollments and number of graduates of forestry schools in the United States. These reports and earlier summary compilations cover the period since 1900. For representative examples see Cedric H. Guise, “Statistics from Schools of Forestry for 1939: Degrees Granted and Enrollments,” Journal of Forestry, Vol. 38 (March 1940), 241– 46; Cedric H. Guise, “Statistics from Schools of Forestry for 1945: Degrees Granted and Enrollments,” Journal of Forestry, Vol. 44 (February 1946), 110–14; Gordon D. Marckworth, “Statistics from Schools of Forestry for 1954: Degrees Granted and Enrollments,” Journal of Forestry, Vol. 53 (April 1955), 256–61; Gordon D. Marckworth, “Statistics from Schools of Forestry for 1965: Degrees Granted and Enrollments,” Journal of Forestry, Vol. 64 (March 1966), 178–84; and Ronald R. Christensen, “Forestry School Enrollment and Degrees Granted, 1971–1981,” Journal of Forestry, Vol. 81 (Oc­to­ber 1983), 660–62. 56. Clepper, Professional Forestry, 202. For an International Paper Company official’s view of the development of industrial forestry in the South see J. E. McCaffrey, “Progress in Industrial Forestry,” Journal of Forestry, Vol. 40 (February 1942), 89–92. 57. Fickle, New South, 242–43. 58. Proceedings of the Second South­ern Forestry Congress (Durham, NC: Seeman Printery, 1920), 70. 59. Hayward, “Industrial Forestry in the South,” 15. 60. Quoted in Clark, Greening, 55.

318 Notes to Pages 161–162 61. Fickle, New South, 243, 246–47; Stanley Todd Lowry, “Henry Hardtner, Pioneer in South­ern Forestry: An Analysis of the Economic Bases of His Reforestation Program” (unpublished MA thesis, Louisiana State University, 1956), 57–72. See also E. L. Demmon, “Henry Hardtner,” Journal of Forestry (De­cem­ber 1955), 885–86. Hardt­ner was absolutely right in his recognition of the need to keep hogs out of the pine forests during the early years of growth. However, over the years it became generally recognized that the grazing of cattle, sheep, and hogs in a commercial forest was feasible and desirable if properly managed. As the chief of the Division of Range Management for the US Forest Service put it in the early 1950s,



Range livestock grazing is . . . a mixed blessing in south­ern forests. Grazing reduces the fire hazard and yields cash returns. . . . It has caused damage to tree reproduction mainly from hogs and sheep, and under some circumstances from cattle. . . . Research and experience during recent years have shown that integrated management is necessary. . . . The proper management of livestock is integrated with forest practices. Cattle grazing is preferred and is restricted to late spring and summer use, and numbers must be controlled to prevent damage to pine seedlings and to insure adequate animal nutrition. . . . Grazing use by hogs is not recommended until at least fifteen years after the establishment of a plantation. Walt L. Dutton, “Forest Grazing in the United States,” Journal of Forestry (April 1953), 248–51. See also T. E. Maki and William F. Mann Jr., “Some Effects of Sheep Grazing on Longleaf Pine,” Journal of Forestry (April 1951), 278–81. In his 1884 report Charles S. Sargent commented on the destructive impact of hogs on the forest: “Hogs root up young pines and other plants to feed upon their succulent roots. . . . In this way not only is the permanence of the forest endangered, but in the case of deciduous forests their composition is of­ten seriously affected” (Forests of North America, 492). Ironically, by the turn of the twenty-­first century hogs had again become a problem in Ala­bama and other south­ern states. These were now the descendants of the wild or feral hogs of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as well as Russian hogs introduced by hunters for sport. By 2001 they were well established in at least fifty-­two of Ala­bama’s sixty-­seven counties. See Sam Duvall, “Wild Hogs Create a Mess for Ala­ bama Landowners,” Ala­bama Forests, Vol. 45, No. 4 (Fall 2001), 24–25. 62. Clepper, “Industrial Forestry in the South,” 13. 63. Fickle, New South, 253. Charles Goodyear’s book on Bogalusa mentions Hardtner’s work at Urania but does not discuss Sullivan’s trip to inspect Hardtner’s operations. C. W. Goodyear, Bogalusa Story (Buffalo, NY: privately printed, 1950). 64. Clark, Greening, 57. 65. Clepper, “Industrial Forestry in the South,” 13. 66. Croker, Longleaf Pine, 12. Philip C. Wakeley went to work for the South­ern Forest Experiment Station in 1924 and was assigned to work at Bogalusa, where the station had centered its seed, nursery, and planting research. For his descriptions of

Notes to Pages 162–164

319

the early planting efforts of Great South­ern and of the station see Philip C. Wakeley, “The Ups and Downs of Pioneer Planting Research in Louisiana: Problems in the Design and Analysis of Planting Trials,” Forestry Chronicle, Vol. 43 (June 1967), 135–44. For additional accounts of the Bogalusa story see Paul M. Garrison and Thurman E. Bercaw, “The Gaylord Story,” Part 1, The Forest Farmer (No­vem­ber 1953), 8–9, 19–20, 26; Garrison and Bercaw, “The Gaylord Story,” Part 2, The Forest Farmer (De­cem­ber 1953), 8–9, 18, 20; J. Harold Foil, “The Gaylord Pine Plantation and Forestry Policy,” The Lumberman (April 1950), 89; “The 100 Millionth Tree,” Ameri­can Forests (April 1954), 23; Erle Kauffman, “They Had Faith in the Land,” Ameri­can Forests (March 1950), 6–11; Philip C. Wakeley, “The South’s First BIG Plantation,” Forests and People (Second Quarter, 1973), 26–28, 30–31; P. M. Garrison, “Building an Industry on Cut-­ Over Land,” Journal of Forestry (March 1952), 185–87; and Vertrees Young, “History of Gaylord Plantations,” Unit, No. 43 (July 1952), 19–23. Unit was a publication of the South­ern Pulpwood Conservation Association. 67. Richard C. Allen (interview by James E. Fickle, August 31, 1989, copy in Oral History Collection, University of Memphis). For a brief description of the development of industrial forest management in the South, and particularly the work of the early lumber companies and pulp and paper operations that pioneered the adoption of enlightened practices, see William M. Bailey, “Industry’s Effect on Forest Management,” Proceedings, Society of Ameri­can Foresters Meeting (Wash­ing­ton, DC, 1960). Bailey was an employee of International Paper Company. Other materials dealing with the Crossett story include R. R. Reynolds, “The Crossett Story: The Beginning of Forestry in South­ern Arkansas and North­ern Louisiana,” USDA Forest Service, South­ern Forest Experiment Station, General Technical Report SO-­32 (1980); S. V. Sihvonen, “Utilization—The Key to Better Forestry at Crossett,” Proceedings, Society of Ameri­can Foresters Meeting, “Forestry Faces Forward,” Memphis, TN, 1956, 138–41; James B. Baker, “The Crossett Farm Forestry Forties after 41 Years of Selection Management,” South­ern Journal of Applied Forestry, Vol. 10 (No­vem­ber 1986), 233–37; R. R. Reynolds, “Twenty-­Nine Years of Selection: Timber Management on the Crossett Experimental Forest,” USDA Forest Service, South­ern Forest Experiment Station, Research Paper SO-­40 (1969); R. R. Reynolds, “Eighteen Years of Selection: Timber Management on the Crossett Experimental Forest,” USDA Forest Service, Technical Bulletin No. 1206 (No­vem­ber 1959); and R. R. Reynolds, “Fifteen Years of Management on the Crossett Farm Forestry Forties,” South­ern Forest Experiment Station, Occasional Paper 130 (July 1953). 68. Clepper, “Industrial Forestry in the South,” 13–14. 69. Ibid., 18–19. 70. R. D. Garver, “Selective Logging of South­ern Pine,” South­ern Lumberman (May 1, 1930). 71. Heyward, “History of Industrial Forestry,” 23–24; Art Nelson (interview by Emmett Thompson, June 9, 2000, copy in Ala­bama Forestry Association Records), 3. 72. Clark, “Impact of the Timber Industry,” 162. 73. Heyward, “History of Industrial Forestry,” 29.

320 Notes to Pages 164–176 74. Ibid., 25. 75. Massey, “History of the Lumber Industry,” 23–24. 76. Appleyard, Helping to Build America, 147–51. 77. Scribner, “Short History of Brewton, Ala­bama,” 126. 78. Richard W. Brinker, “New Building—Donor Spotlight: T. R. Miller Mill Company,” Ala­bama Forests, Vol. 46, No. 3 (Summer 2002), 11. 79. Earl M. McGowin interview, in Maunder, James Greeley McGowin, 39. 80. Ibid., 51. 81. Ibid., 38–39. 82. Appleyard, Helping to Build America, 110. 83. Earl M. McGowin interview, in Maunder, James Greeley McGowin, 50. 84. Ibid., 50. 85. Appleyard, Helping to Build America, 177. 86. Ibid., 176. 87. Appleyard, W. T. Smith Lumber Company, 177. 88. Ibid., 178. 89. Earl M. McGowin interview, in Maunder, James Greeley McGowin, 56–57. 90. Ibid., 65. 91. Wilbur B. DeVall, “Auburn’s Forestry Program—Its First Half Century” (available online at http://www.forestry.auburn.edu/alumni/documents/_firsthalf.pdf); Wilbur B. DeVall, “Forestry at Auburn in the Twentieth Century,” Journal of the Ala­ bama Academy of Science (April 1, 2001), 113. 92. B. D. Mayberry, Share the Vision: The History of the Tuskegee University For­ est Resources Program, 1968–1992 (Tuskegee: Tuskegee University and USDA Forest Service, South­ern Region, 1993), 10–25, 65. Additional material from Tuskegee website at http://www.tuskegee.edu. 93. White, “Austin Cary and Forestry in the South,” 4–5. 94. Fred Gragg interview, 23–24, 27. 95. Interview with Stanley F. Horn, Oc­to­ber 20, 1959, cited in Massey, “History of the Lumber Industry,” 24.

Chapter 5 1. Oden, “South­ern Pulp and Paper Industry,” 515. 2. Clark, “Impact of the Timber Industry,” 161. 3. Ibid., 59. 4. “Forty-­Three Years in the Field with the U.S. Forest Service: An Interview with Charles A. Connaughton,” Elwood R. Maunder, April 2, 1975 (Santa Cruz, CA: Forest History Society, 1976). 5. Steer, Lumber Production, 222–24. 6. Sargent, Forests of North America, 491, 493. 7. Clark, “Impact of the Timber Industry,” 161. 8. Tim Jones, “Protecting the Forests from Fire: A Brief History of Wildland Fire

Notes to Pages 177–188

321

Protection in Ala­bama,” Ala­bama’s Treasured Forests, Vol. 25, No. 3 (Fall 2006), 23– 25; Don Burdette, “The South­ern Forests: An Environmental and Economic Success Story,” Ala­bama’s Treasured Forests, Vol. 15, No. 3 (Summer 1996), 14. 9. Jones, “Protecting the Forests,” 23–25; See also Taylor, “Lure of Longleaf Pine,” 3. 10. Robert Pasquill Jr., The Civilian Conservation Corps in Ala­bama, 1933–1942: A Great and Lasting Good (Tuscaloosa: University of Ala­bama Press, 2008), 214–16. 11. Ibid., 59, 67, 81. 12. Jones, “Protecting the Forests,” 23–25. 13. J. M. Stauffer and George Kyle, A History of State Forestry in Ala­bama (origi­ nally issued by Ala­bama Department of Conservation, Division of Forestry, 1963; revised and reprinted by Ala­bama Forestry Commission, 1993), 33; Everett F. Evans and Roy L. Donahue, Our South: Its Resources and Their Use (Austin, TX: Steck Company, 1949), 308–11. 14. Appleyard, W. T. Smith Lumber Company, 77. 15. Stauffer and Kyle, History of State Forestry in Ala­bama, 33; Evans and Donahue, Our South, 308–11. 16. Jones, “Protecting the Forests,” 23–25. 17. Earl M. McGowin, “History of Conservation in Ala­bama,” The Ala­bama Re­ view (Janu­ary 1954), 50–51. 18. “The Ala­bama National Forests,” The Ala­bama His­tori­cal Quarterly, Vol. 14, Nos. 1 and 2 (1952), 49–58; Pasquill, Civilian Conservation Corps, 44, 48. 19. Steer, Lumber Production, 16–18. 20. Ibid., 82–85, 92–93, 102–3, 114–15. 21. J. G. McGowin to S. E. Moreton, May 10, 1932, quoted in Maunder, James Greeley McGowin, 25. 22. Earl M. McGowin interview, in Maunder, James Greeley McGowin, 52. 23. James Greeley McGowin to R. J. McCreary, De­cem­ber 11, 1935, in Maunder, James Greeley McGowin, 127–28. 24. Horn, Fascinating Lumber Business, 54–55. 25. Ibid., 176–77. 26. Ibid., 179–81. 27. Oral history interview with Elwood L. Demmon, February 3, 1959, by Elwood R. Maunder. 28. Harold Hill (interview by Emmett Thompson, No­vem­ber 8, 1999, copy in Ala­ bama Forestry Association Records), 25. 29. Ibid., 25–26. 30. Ibid., 26. 31. Alan Bruce (interview by Emmett Thompson, June 2, 2000, copy in Ala­bama His­tori­cal Society Records), 2–3. 32. F. E. “Buck” Stabler interview, 1–2. 33. Harold Hill interview, 32. 34. Ibid., 28. 35. Ibid., 29–31.

322 Notes to Pages 188–195 36. Heyward, “History of Industrial Forestry,” 26–27. 37. “A Short History of M. C. Dixon Lumber Company, Inc.” (paper in Warren B. Flick Files, Ala­bama Forestry Association, author unknown). 38. Sam Duvall, “Standing on the Shoulders of Giants Always Improves the View,” Ala­bama Forests, Vol. 47, No. 1 (Winter 2003), 8–10. 39. Appleyard, W. T. Smith Lumber Company, 93. 40. Ibid., 103–4. 41. Ibid., 105–7. 42. Sixteenth Census of the United States: 1940. Manufactures 1939, Volume III, Reports for States and Outlying Areas (Wash­ing­ton, DC: Government Printing Office, 1942), 54–57. 43. Evans and Donahue, Our South, 268–269, 299.

Chapter 6 1. Olin Terrill Mouson, “The Social and Economic Implications of Recent Developments within the Wood Pulp and Paper Industry in the South” (unpublished PhD dissertation, University of North Carolina, 1940), 104–13; Oden, “South­ern Pulp and Paper Industry,” passim; International Paper Company, International Paper Company: After Fifty Years (International Paper Company, 1948), 13–14, 65. See also Frank Colburn Bowler, It Began with the Wasps! (New York: Newcomen Society of England, Ameri­can Branch, 1949). For an excellent brief discussion of the origins and technology of papermaking, as well as the development of the industry in the United States until the beginning of the post–World War II era, see Joseph Otto ­Pecenka, “A Financial Analysis of Selected Major Pulp, Paper and Paperboard Producers, 1947– 1964” (unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Illinois, 1967), 16–36. The technology of the kraft pulping process is discussed in Pede J. Kleppe, “The Process of, and Products from, Kraft Pulping of South­ern Pine,” Forest Products Journal, Vol. 20 (May 1970), 50–59. 2. Heyward, “History of Industrial Forestry,” 37. 3. Quoted in Oden, “South­ern Pulp and Paper Industry,” 24. For the early history of the industry in the South also see Mouson, “Social and Economic Implications,” 127–41; and H. J. Malsberger, “Seventy-­Five Year History of the Wood-­Pulp and Paper Industry in the South,” South­ern Lumberman (De­cem­ber 15, 1956), 182– 84. The industry’s origins in Ala­bama are discussed in Harry M. Roller Jr., “The Pulp and Paper Industry in the Southwest Ala­bama Forest Empire,” Journal of the Ala­bama Academy of Science (Janu­ary 1959), 67–72; and Sara Walls and William C. Vail, “45 Years of Papermaking,” Forest Farmer (No­vem­ber 1974), 10–11, 14–16. 4. Burdette, “The South­ern Forests: 1850–1930,” 26. 5. Interview with Clinton H. Coulter in Maunder, Voices from the South, 224. 6. Maunder, Voices from the South, 42, 224; Oden, “South­ern Pulp and Paper Industry,” 120; Forest Farmer (August 1969), 13, clipping in general files, International Paper Company, Dallas, TX. These files were broken up and placed in vari­ous other

Notes to Pages 195–203

323

IP facilities in 1997. The standard source on Herty is Germaine M. Reed, Crusading for Chemistry: The Professional Career of Charles Holmes Herty (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1995). 7. Cowdrey, This Land, This South, 175; Oden, “South­ern Pulp and Paper Industry,” 22–44, 48. 8. Oden, “South­ern Pulp and Paper Industry,” 23–24. 9. Ibid., 25. 10. J. Finley McRae, “Paper Making in Ala­bama” (speech delivered on No­vem­ ber 20, 1956, before the Newcomen Society in North America, Mobile, AL); Oden, “South­ern Pulp and Paper Industry, 1–33; International Paper Company, Interna­ tional Paper Company, 66. For a description of the technology of the vari­ous papermaking processes see Mouson, “Social and Economic Implications,” 114–26. 11. W. L. McHale, “The Paper Industry and the Southland Mill,” Journal of For­ estry, Vol. 50 (July 1952), 536–38. Earlier considerations of the feasibility of making newsprint from south­ern pine included those of the Great South­ern Lumber Company of Bogalusa, Louisiana, during the 1920s. See “Memorandum of Conference Held at Office of Great South­ern Lumber Company . . . New York City, N.Y., Wednesday, Sep­tem­ber 16, 1925” (copy in H. Weston Lumber Company Records, Lumber History Archives, University of Mississippi, Oxford, MS). 12. Oden, “South­ern Pulp and Paper Industry,” 44–46. 13. Ibid., 49–52; International Paper Company, International Paper Company, 65; John C. Witherspoon, “A Wildcat and a Paper Mill: The Story of the Birthplace of IP’s South­ern Kraft Division,” Forests and People (Second Quarter, 1973), 16–17, 38–40; Walls and Vail, “45 Years of Papermaking,” 15. 14. For a brief, lavishly illustrated history of IP’s formative years see International Paper Company, International Paper Company. The story of the firm’s south­ern operations is on pages 63–86. 15. Oden, “South­ern Pulp and Paper Industry,” 73–74. 16. Maunder, Voices from the South, 91–92. 17. Ibid., 92–93. 18. D. B. Fletcher and Jack R. Warner, PROGRESS: Gulf States Paper Corporation, Our First Hundred Years (Tuscaloosa, AL: Gulf States Paper Corporation, 1984), 27, 29, 45. 19. Ibid., 52–54, 57–59, 67, 70, 72. 20. Oden, “South­ern Pulp and Paper Industry,” 23–24, 57–59. 21. Fletcher and Warner, PROGRESS, 78, 84, 101. 22. Ibid., 103. 23. Oden, “South­ern Pulp and Paper Industry,” 90–91, 148. 24. Ibid., 44–46; Evans and Donahue, Our South, 299–300. 25. R. C. Wakefield interview, 8–10, 23, 27–29, 36. 26. Dick Mordecai interview, 3–5. 27. Oden, “South­ern Pulp and Paper Industry,” 570, 516. 28. Ibid., 99–102, 516–17.

324 Notes to Pages 203–208 29. Ibid., 103–4, 518; “Pulping and Non-­Pulping Cordwood Volume in Southwest­ ern Ala­bama Survey Area,” US South­ern Forest Experiment Station, Forest Survey Re­ lease 16 (New Orleans, 1935), 12; Arthur B. Spillers, “Forest Resources of South­east Ala­bama,” US South­ern Forest Experiment Station, Forest Survey Release 47 (New Orleans, 1939), 30; Spillers, “Forest Resources of West Central Ala­bama,” US South­ern Forest Experiment Station, Forest Survey Release 48 (New Orleans, 1940), 29; James W. Cruikshank, “Forest Resources of North Central Ala­bama,” US South­ern Forest Experiment Station, Forest Survey Release 50 (New Orleans, 1940), 33. 30. Fred Gragg interview, 3–5. 31. A. M. Dantzler (interview, July 27, 1973, transcript in Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Jackson, MS). 32. Richard C. Allen interview. 33. Maunder, Voices from the South, 222. 34. Vertrees Young, “Problems and Opportunities Common to the Lumber and Pulp Industries” (typescript of speech delivered at the annual meeting of the South­ern Pine Association, April 5, 1948; copy in South­ern Pine Association Records, Department of Archives and Manuscripts, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA). 35. Maunder, Voices from the South, 141, 144. 36. Ibid., 194. 37. Quoted in Louis T. Stevenson, “South­ern Pulp and Paper Industry—1951 Model,” Thirteenth Annual Review Number (Oc­to­ber 1, 1951), 170. 38. Chapman, “Why McNary Moved,” 589; “The Lumber Industry Speaks,” 759. 39. Maunder, Voices from the South, 97. 40. Arthur W. Nelson Jr. (interview by James E. Fickle, No­vem­ber 8, 1978, copy in Oral History Collection, University of Memphis). 41. Fred Gragg interview. In 1947 the Forestry Department of the South­ern Pine Association reported that “wide variation exists today in the type of cutting practices employed by South­ern Pine manufacturers. Many operators have put into effect conservative cutting practices designed to assure continuous production of timber. Many more, however, are still employing heavy cutting methods giving little consideration to future crops. These conditions apply to practices employed on company-­owned lands as well as on other private holdings.” Memorandum from W. C. Hammerle to H. C. Berckes, Janu­ary 8, 1947. South­ern Pine Association Records, Box 12B. There is a good exposition of Mr. Gragg’s views concerning the contributions of the pulp and paper industry to south­ern forestry and the current status of the industry in F. C. Gragg, “Present and Potential Economics of South­ern Forests,” Proceedings, Society of Ameri­can Foresters Meeting, Oc­to­ber 21–24, 1962 (Wash­ing­ton, DC: Society of Ameri­can Foresters, 1963), 2–5. 42. Richard C. Allen interview. 43. Arthur W. Nelson Jr. interview. 44. Fred Gragg interview. 45. Arthur W. Nelson Jr. interview. 46. Heyward, “History of Industrial Forestry,” 41–43.

Notes to Pages 208–219

325

47. Maunder, Voices from the South, 6–7. 48. Bill Jones, “The Evolution of Forest Certification and ‘Sustainable Forestry,’” Ala­bama’s Treasured Forests, Vol. 26, No. 1 (Spring 2007), 7–8; Heyward, “History of Industrial Forestry,” 41. 49. Fickle, Mississippi Forests and Forestry, 191–92; Heyward, “History of Industrial Forestry,” 47. 50. The South’s Fourth Forest: Alternatives for the Future (Wash­ing­ton, DC: US Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Forest Resource Report No. 24, 1988), 73–74; Fickle, Mississippi Forests and Forestry, 191. 51. Oden, “South­ern Pulp and Paper Industry,” 105–6, 520, 540–41, 557–62. 52. Ibid., 520–23, 534–35. Keville Larson of the Larson and McGowin forest management and consulting firm in Mobile says that since about 1966 Union Camp’s wood supply has increased steadily. Conversation with the author. 53. Jonathan Daniels, The Forest Is the Future (New York: International Paper Company, 1957), 45. 54. Arthur W. Nelson Jr. interview, No­vem­ber 8, 1978. 55. Jeff D. Hughes interview. 56. Richard C. Allen interview. 57. Ibid. 58. Fred Gragg interview. 59. Oden, “South­ern Pulp and Paper Industry,” 102. 60. Ibid., 102–4. 61. Arthur W. Nelson Jr. interview; Maunder, Voices from the South, 128. 62. R. D. Forbes, “Essential Requirements for the Practice of Forestry,” Protec­ tion for Buyers of Pine, Annual Meeting Report of the South­ern Pine Association, 1921 (South­ern Pine Association Records, Box 85B, Special Collections, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA), 155–56. 63. Fred Gragg interview, 9–10. 64. Heyward, “History of Industrial Forestry,” 39, 41; International Paper Company, International Paper Company, 67–68, 70. 65. Art Nelson interview with Emmett Thompson. 66. Alan Bruce interview, 10–11. 67. Oden, “South­ern Pulp and Paper Industry,” 562. 68. Donald E. Davis, Craig E. Colten, Megan Kate Nelson, Barbara L. Allen, and Mikko Saikku, South­ern United States: An Environmental History (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-­CLIO, 2006), 267. 69. Alan Bruce interview, 8–9. 70. Maunder and Demmon, “Interview with Reuben B. Robertson,” 12. Keville Larson says that the Union Camp mill at Prattville cost about $50 million. By the 1980s a similar mill would cost $500 million. 71. Fred Gragg interview. 72. Interview with Robert M. Nonnemacher, August 30, 1989. 73. Fred Gragg interview, 15.

326 Notes to Pages 219–226 74. Ibid., 33–35. 75. Art Nelson interview with Emmett Thompson, 11. Appleyard, W. T. Smith Lumber Company, 248–51. 76. Cantrell, “Pulpwood Procurement Practices,” 60, 66. 77. Oden, “South­ern Pulp and Paper Industry,” 308–16. 78. Heyward, “History of Industrial Forestry,” 52–54, 67–68, 75, 80–81. 79. Ibid., 38–39. 80. “Timber Trends in the United States,” US Forest Service, Forest Resource Re­ port 17 (Wash­ing­ton, DC: Government Printing Office, 1965), 102; South­ern Forest Institute, A Statistical Report on the Pulp and Paper Industry in the South (Atlanta: South­ern Forest Institute, 1969), 2–3; Cantrell, “Pulpwood Procurement Practices,” 33–35. 81. Cantrell, “Pulpwood Procurement Practices,” 42–44, 46, 48, 50–51. See also Warren A. Flick, “The Wood Dealer System in Mississippi,” Journal of Forest History (July 1985). 82. R. C. Wakefield interview, 16. 83. Fred Gragg interview, 44. 84. Robert M. Nonnemacher interview, 4–5. 85. Ibid., 23–24. 86. Dick Mordecai interview, 6. 87. Oden, “South­ern Pulp and Paper Industry,” 76, 91. 88. Ibid., 99. 89. Stauffer and Kyle, History of State Forestry in Ala­bama, 35. 90. James L. Howard, U.S. Timber Production, Trade, Consumption, and Price Sta­ tistics 1965–1994 (Madison, WI: US Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Forest Products Laboratory, 1997), 57. 91. C. Denise Ingram, Peter J. Ince, and Ryan L. Mehlberg, United States Pulp­ wood Receipts: Softwood and Hardwood, Roundwood and Residues, 1950–1996 (Madi­ son, WI: US Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Forest Products Laboratory, 1999), 8.

Chapter 7 1. Clark, Greening, 121, 122. 2. Advertisement from The Saturday Evening Post (August 14, 1948). Personal collection of Keville Larson, Mobile, AL. 3. Appleyard, Helping to Build America, 120, 168–69, 183. 4. Evans and Donahue, Our South, 301–2; Paul H. Lane and Gilbert H. Fechner, Sawed Tie Production in the Tennessee Valley Region (Norris, TN: Tennessee Valley Authority, Division of Forestry Relations, reprinted from Cross Tie Bulletin, De­cem­ ber 1951), 1–21. 5. Robert G. Healy, Competition for Land in the Ameri­can South: Agriculture, Hu­ man Settlement, and the Environment (Wash­ing­ton, DC: Conservation Foundation, 1985), 83.

Notes to Pages 226–234

327

6. Shell, “101 Years and Growing,” 18–19. 7. Ala­bama Forestry Association, Fifty Years on the Cutting Edge: A Tribute to the Men and Women of the Forest Products Industry (Montgomery, AL: Duvall and Associates, 1999), 1, 3. Ala­bama was a little behind neighboring states in forming an association. For example, the Mississippi Forestry Association was organized a decade earlier. 8. Ibid., 5. 9. F. E. “Buck” Stabler interview, 20. 10. R. C. Wakefield interview, 7; Ala­bama Forestry Association, Fifty Years on the Cutting Edge, 6. 11. R. C. Wakefield interview, 7–8. 12. Ala­bama Forestry Association, Fifty Years on the Cutting Edge, 6. 13. Ibid., 8, 10–11; “Log a Load for Kids” (flyer in records of Ala­bama Forestry Association). 14. United States Census of Manufactures 1954: Volume II, Industry Statistics (Wash­ ing­ton, DC: Government Printing Office), 24A-­5–24A-­7. 15. 1963 Census of Manufactures: Volume II, Industry Statistics (Wash­ing­ton, DC: US Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census), 24A-­7–24A-­14, 24B-­5–24B-­7. The statistics continued to reflect growth until the end of the century. 16. Robert M. Nonnemacher interview, 14, 15. 17. Billy Bond interview, 20. 18. “Scotch & Gulf Lumber, LLC,” http://www.hoovers.com/company-­information /cs/company-­profile.Scotch__Gulf_Lumber_LLC.9592bfa034e73c12.html. 19. 1997 Economic Census: Manufacturing, Ala­bama (Wash­ing­ton, DC: US Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, 2000). 20. M. R. Brundage, “Detecting Metal in Logs,” Wood (May 1948); William F. Hyde, David H. Newman, and Barry J. Seldon, The Economic Benefits of Forestry Re­ search (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1992), 31. 21. Brad Smith, John S. Vissage, David R. Darr, and Raymond M. Sheffield, For­ est Resources of the United States, 1997 (St. Paul, MN: US Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, North Central Research Station, 2001), 6. 22. Oden, “South­ern Pulp and Paper Industry,” 144. 23. Ibid., 173–77. 24. F. E. “Buck” Stabler interview, 17–18. 25. Ibid., 18–20. 26. Alan Bruce interview, 11–14. Another factor in the evolving patterns of the industry was the fear of “hostile takeovers.” To avoid this situation, some companies negotiated “friendly takeovers” with other firms. 27. Appleyard, Helping to Build America, 140. 28. Ibid., 146–47. 29. F. E. “Buck” Stabler interview, 5, 10; author’s conversation with Keville Larson of the Mobile forest consulting and management firm Larson and McGowin. 30. F. E. “Buck” Stabler interview, 7–8. 31. Angus Gardner interview, 12–13.

328 Notes to Pages 234–243 32. Harold Hill interview, 18–19. 33. Ibid., 20–21. 34. Oden, “South­ern Pulp and Paper Industry,” 177. 35. Ibid., 140–41, 143, 171–72, 180–81, 186; Billy Bond interview, 4. 36. Billy Bond interview, 20–22. 37. Clark, Greening, 124–25; author’s conversation with Keville Larson of the Mobile forest consulting and management firm Larson and McGowin. 38. Oden, “South­ern Pulp and Paper Industry,” 125–27, 129, 191, 207, 210, ­213–16. 39. Ibid., 125–27, 129. 40. Ibid., 135, 139, 146. 41. Ibid., 149, 151, 155, 164, 169. 42. Ibid., 221–22. 43. Harold Hill interview, 4–5. 44. Alan Bruce interview, 4–6, 12. 45. Oden, “South­ern Pulp and Paper Industry,” 261, 263, 265. 46. Ibid., 266, 269, 272–74, 276, 592, 593, 596. 47. Ibid., 233, 237, 245. 48. Ibid., 246–48, 255, 257–59. 49. Michael J. McQuillen and William P. Garvey, The Best Known Name in Paper: Hammermill, A History of the Company (Erie, PA: Hammermill Paper Company, 1985), 96, 98. The Hammermill executive committee rejected Behrend’s suggestion on the grounds that a move into the South was premature and instead decided to expand the company’s mill at Erie. 50. McQuillen and Garvey, The Best Known Name, 147–48, 150; Billy Bond interview, 7; Harold Hill interview, 3, 24, 45. 51. McQuillen and Garvey, The Best Known Name, 167–68, 205; Harold Hill interview, 24. 52. Billy Bond interview, 4–5. 53. McQuillen and Garvey, The Best Known Name, 173. 54. Billy Bond interview, 8, 19. 55. Robert M. Nonnemacher interview, 31. 56. Clark, Greening, 125. 57. Herbert S. Sternitzke, “Ala­bama Forests,” US South­ern Forest Experiment Station, Resource Bulletin SO-­3 (New Orleans, LA, 1963), 1. 58. Robert M. Nonnemacher interview, 16. 59. Maunder, Voices from the South, 57; author’s conversation with Keville Larson of the Mobile forest consulting and management firm Larson and McGowin. 60. Maunder, Voices from the South, 58. 61. Angus Gardner interview, 11. 62. Maunder and Demmon, “An Interview with Reuben B. Robertson,” 12. The methodology of growing and selling pulpwood in the past and present is described in Flick, “Wood Dealer System,” 131–38; Chris Bolgiano, “From Rags to No. 1: The Pulpwood Market in the 1980s,” Ameri­can Forests (Janu­ary/February 1987), 16–19,

Notes to Pages 244–251

329

57–60; and A. I. Jeffords Jr., “Trends in Pine Pulpwood Marketing in the South,” Jour­ nal of Forestry, Vol. 54 (July 1956), 463–66. 63. Keville Larson, “Consulting Forestry” (unpublished paper in possession of the author). 64. Cantrell, “Pulpwood Procurement Practices,” 60, 66. 65. Conner Bailey, Mark Dubois, and Ben Cashore, “Environmental Impact and Regulation of Ala­bama’s Forest Products Industry” (Forest Policy Center Internal Working Paper Series, No. 103, presented at the 1999 meeting of the Rural Sociological Society, Chicago, August 4–8, 1999), 6. 66. Robert M. Nonnemacher interview, 20–21. 67. Oden, “South­ern Pulp and Paper Industry,” 600. 68. Sam Duvall, “Old Loggers Never Die, They Just Cut Away,” Ameri­can Forests, Vol. 48, No. 3 (Summer 2004), 11. 69. Bailey, Dubois, and Cashore, “Environmental Impact,” 6–7; Burdette, “The South­ern Forests: An Environmental and Economic Success Story,” 15. 70. Reeves and Harrigan, “Scotch Lumber Company History,” 51–52. 71. Oden, “South­ern Pulp and Paper Industry,” 511, 526–27. On the other hand, some experts argue that “uneven-­age” management of south­ern pines has not been particularly successful. 72. Hyde, Newman, and Seldon, Economic Benefits of Forestry Research, 31. 73. Bullock, “Paper and Pulp,” 46, 48, 50. 74. Harry M. Roller Jr., “The Pulp and Paper Industry in the Southwest Ala­bama Forest Empire,” Journal of the Ala­bama Academy of Science (Janu­ary 1959), 70; Healy, Competition for Land, 103; author’s conversation with Keville Larson of the Mobile forest consulting and management firm Larson and McGowin. 75. Ala­bama Forestry Commission, Forest Resource Report for 2002 (Montgomery, AL); J. P. Prestemon and C. R. Abt, South­ern Forest Resource Assessment: Timber Prod­ ucts Supply and Demand (Asheville, NC: US Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, South­ern Research Station, 2002), 304–6. 76. Evans and Donahue, Our South, 255. 77. Burdette, “The South­ern Forests: 1850–1930,” 26. 78. Bullock, “Paper and Pulp,” 46, 48, 50. 79. Charles W. Ralston, “Clearcutting of Public Forests in the South­ern Pine Region,” in Eleanor C. J. Horwitz, Clearcutting: A View from the Top (Wash­ing­ton, DC: Acropolis Books, 1974), 79. 80. Oden, “South­ern Pulp and Paper Industry,” 599. 81. Sam Duvall, “Old Loggers Never Die,” 11. 82. Harold Hill interview, 12. 83. Billy Bond interview, 8. 84. Harold Hill interview, 16–17. 85. Oden, “South­ern Pulp and Paper Industry,” 135, 139, 146. 86. Ibid., 174–75. 87. Ibid., 177, 179–80, 186, 189, 195.

330 Notes to Pages 252–257 88. Smith, Vissage, Darr, and Sheffield, Forest Resources, 60, 62, 64, 85, 101, 110– 11, 113, 149, 166, 170, 174–75. A new book by the same authors, published in 2004, updates these statistics to 2002. 89. US Census Bureau, Census of Manufactures, Geographic Series 1997; Ala­ bama Forestry Commission, Forest Resource Report for 2002 (Montgomery, AL). 90. Art Nelson interview with Emmett Thompson, 17–18. 91. Beau Brodbeck, “His­tori­cal Review of Sawmills in Ala­bama, Focusing on the Consolidation of Sawmills and the Effects on Employment,” No­vem­ber 24, 2003, http://www.ag.auburn.edu/~bailelc/sawmills.htm, 1; W. F. Cottrell, “Death by Dieselization: A Case Study in the Reaction to Technological Change,” Ameri­can Socio­ logical Review, Vol. 16, 358–65; Sara Lamb, “Sawmills Fall Like So Much Timber in South­ern States,” Mobile Press Register (February 29, 1996). 92. Marion Clawson, “Forests in the Long Sweep of Ameri­can History,” Science, Vol. 204 (June 1979), 1168–174; John E. Alcock to South­ern State Foresters, Janu­ ary 25, 1989, and “Region 8 Marketing Initiative Projects, Status Report, De­cem­ber, 1988,” both in files of US Forest Products Laboratory, Madison, WI. 93. Chadwick Dearing Oliver and Lloyd C. Irland (interview by James E. Fickle, Oc­to­ber 11, 2010, copy in Oral History Collection, University of Memphis). Oliver is Pinchot Professor of Forestry and Environmental Studies in Yale University’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and director of the Global Institute of Sustainable Forestry. Irland is lecturer and senior research scientist at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. Author’s conversation with Keville Larson of the Mobile forest consulting and management firm Larson and McGowin. 94. East, Creek Indian Towns, 148–49. 95. Ted Wegner, “Retooling Agricultural Products for the 90’s” (paper in files of US Forest Products Laboratory, Madison, WI). 96. Sam Duvall, “Is Biomass in Forestry’s Future? Ala­bama Forests, Vol. 49, No. 2 (Spring 2005), 24. 97. Walter E. Cartwright, “Wood Pellets: A New Source of Energy in Ala­bama,” Ala­bama’s Treasured Forests, Vol. 27, No. 3 (Fall 2008), 24–25. There is some disagreement about the carbon sequestration contribution of pellet burning unless the heating efficiency is extremely high. 98. Walter E. Cartwright, “Developing New Markets: Carbon Trading, Biomass, and Ecosys­tem Services,” Ala­bama’s Treasured Forests, Vol. 26, No. 3 (Fall 2007), 18– 20; author’s conversation with Keville Larson of the Mobile forest consulting and management firm Larson and McGowin. 99. Thomas C. Marcin, “Demographic Change: Implications for Forest Management,” Journal of Forestry (No­vem­ber 1993), 44; author’s conversation with Keville Larson of the Mobile forest consulting and management firm Larson and McGowin. 100. John C. Bliss, Erin Clover Kelly, and Jesse Abrams, “Disintegration of the Industrial Forest Estate and the Future of Small-­Scale Forestry in the United States” (Working Paper Number RSP 08-­03, Rural Studies Program, Oregon State University, June 2008), 2.

Notes to Pages 257–265

331

101. Ibid., 3–5. Among the largest sales involving Ala­bama lands were the disposal of 4,579,000 acres by Boise Cascade in Ala­bama and five other states; GMO Renewable Resources’ sale of 174,000 acres in Ala­bama and five other states; Great East­ern Timber Company’s sale of 222,000 acres in Ala­bama and three other states; International Paper Company’s sale of 9,706,350 acres in Ala­bama and ten other states to a number of purchasers, in­clud­ing the Nature Conservancy; MeadWestvaco’s sale of 1,030,000 acres in Ala­bama and five other states; the State Teachers Retirement System of Ohio’s sale of 430,000 acres in Ala­bama and seven other states; TC&I Timber’s sale of 165,000 acres in Ala­bama; and Temple-­Inland’s sale of 1,550,000 acres in Ala­bama and three other states. Ibid., 11. The future prospects of TIMOs and REITs were unclear in the early twenty-­first century. 102. “About Us” (T. R. Miller Mill Company website (http://www.trmillermill.com); Appleyard, Helping to Build America, 2, 141. 103. Ibid., 196–97. 104. Landscapes (July 2009). Quarterly online publication of Westervelt Ecological Services, http://www.wesmitigation.com.

Chapter 8 1. McGowin, “History of Conservation in Ala­bama,” 42. 2. Ibid., 43–44. 3. Ibid., 44. 4. Ibid., 44–46. 5. Ibid., 50–51. 6. Ibid., 47–48. 7. Maunder, Voices from the South, 49–52. 8. Andrew Nix, “Longleaf Pine: Where It Has Gone, How to Get It Back,” Ala­ bama’s Treasured Forests, Vol. 28, No. 3 (Fall 2009), 12–13; Craig Hill, “Sniffing Out and Tracking Down Wildland Arsonists,” Ala­bama’s Treasured Forests, Vol. 28, No. 3 (Fall 2009), 15. 9. Claude Jenkins, “Farm Service Agency Introduces New Initiative to Restore Longleaf Pine Forests,” Ala­bama’s Treasured Forests, Vol. 26, No. 1 (Spring 2007), ­13–14. 10. John P. McGuire, “The Legacy of Smokey’s Message: Problems in Fire-­Starved Longleaf Pine Forests,” Ala­bama’s Treasured Forests, Vol. 26, No. 1 (Spring 2007), ­18–21. 11. Ibid., 17. 12. Lou Hyman, “Uncle Sam Wants You . . . to Plant Trees,” Ala­bama’s Treasured Forests, Vol. 25, No. 3 (Fall 2006), 7–8. 13. Bailey, Dubois, and Cashore, “Environmental Impact,” 2–3. 14. Ibid., 3. 15. Evans and Donahue, Our South, 255. 16. Bailey, Dubois, and Cashore, “Environmental Impact,” 2, 3.

332 Notes to Pages 265–271 17. Ibid., 3. 18. Ibid., 4. 19. Ibid., 5. 20. Lori G. Eckhardt, “Declining Loblolly Pine Stands: Symptoms, Causes, and Management Options,” Ala­bama’s Treasured Forests, Vol. 28, No. 2 (Summer 2009), 10–12. 21. Bailey, Dubois, and Cashore, “Environmental Impact,” 4. 22. Ibid., 5. 23. Ibid., 6. 24. Dick Mordecai interview, 17–18. Some argue that the role of forestry schools in this era became distorted, having their teaching philosophies, ideas, and techniques dictated to them by the agencies they served, in­clud­ing industry, environmental groups, and the Forest Service in efforts to achieve recognition and research funding. Some found the entire process demeaning and bemoaned the shortage of philosophi­ cal, academic foresters like Gifford Pinchot and Henry Graves, who brought varied backgrounds and philosophies to the process of establishing the agenda for forestry in the United States. 25. “Ameri­can Tree Farm System Recognizes Ala­bama’s Forest Stewardship Plans as Meeting Certification Requirements,” Ala­bama’s Treasured Forests, Vol. 28, No. 2 (Summer 2009), 15. 26. Harry Murphy, “His­tori­cal Perspective: Ala­bama State Board of Registration for Foresters” (booklet dated 1998 in Ala­bama Forestry Association Records). 27. Bill Moody, “The Beginnings of TREASURE Forest,” in History of TREASURE Forest (undated booklet produced by Ala­bama Forestry Planning Committee), 2–4. 28. Ibid., 5–6; Robert J. Lentz, “Ala­bama’s TREASURE Forest Goes National,” in History of TREASURE Forest (undated booklet produced by Ala­bama Forestry Planning Committee), 12–17. Information about the program is available online on the Ala­bama TREASURE Forest Association website at http://www.atfa.net. See also “Potential Conflicts between Federal Laws and the Actions of the Ala­bama Treasure Forest Association and the National Network of Private Forest Landowners” (Atlanta, GA: Forest Landowners Association, Sep­tem­ber 4, 2002); Keville Larson, president, Forest Landowners Association; Lee Laechelt, executive vice president, Ala­bama Forest Owners Association; and Billy Humphries, president, Association of Consulting Foresters, to Sonny Calahan, Sep­tem­ber 14, 2001; and “Forest Landowners Association Position Statement to the National Network of Forest Landowners, Adopted Oc­to­ber 26, 2001, by Unanimous Consent of the Forest Landowners Association Board of Directors” (materials in possession of the author). 29. Fickle, Mississippi Forests and Forestry, 253. 30. Ibid.; Herbert A. Knight, “The Pine Decline,” Journal of Forestry, Vol. 85 (Janu­ ary 1987), 25–28; J. L. Landers, D. H. Van Lear, and W. D. Boyer, “The Longleaf Pine Forests in the Southeast: Requiem or Renaissance?” Journal of Forestry, Vol. 93 (1995), 39–44. Some experts argue that Forest Service analysts over the years consistently underestimated the wood production potential of Ameri­can forests. See Clawson,

Notes to Pages 271–279

333

“Forests in the Long Sweep,” 1168–174. A Society of Ameri­can Foresters publication in 2007 showed that the south­ern forested area in 2006 was only slightly smaller than in 1977. Mia Alvarez, The State of America’s Forests (Bethesda, MD: Society of Ameri­ can Foresters, 2007). 31. South’s Fourth Forest, 112, 123, 149–53. It should be noted that reliable forest statistics are of­ten subject to varying interpretations. For a discussion see Keville Larson, “Making Numbers Tell the Truth,” The Consultant (2010), 24–26. 32. Ibid., 5, 201. 33. South’s Fourth Forest, 7–9; Lentz, “Ala­bama’s TREASURE Forest,” 13. 34. Bailey, Dubois, and Cashore, “Environmental Impact,” 1; “Ala­bama Forest Facts” (Ala­bama Forestry Commission, available online at http://www.forestry .alabama.gov, accessed March 25, 2011). 35. Bailey, Dubois, and Cashore, “Environmental Impact,” 7–8. 36. Ibid., 7. 37. Fletcher and Warner, Progress, 166. 38. Ibid., 174–75. 39. Bailey, Dubois, and Cashore, “Environmental Impact,” 8. 40. Ibid., 8–9. 41. Robert W. Hastings, “Is There a Jewel in Your TREASURE Forest?” Ala­bama’s Treasured Forests, Vol. 25, No. 3 (Fall 2006), 20–21. 42. Ibid.; Bailey, Dubois, and Cashore, “Environmental Impact,” 8–9. 43. Ryan Prince, “Ameri­can Black Bear: Where Are They in Ala­bama?” Ala­bama’s Treasured Forests, Vol. 26, No. 2 (Summer 2007), 26–27. 44. Quoted in Corky Pugh, “Game Plentiful Thanks to Efforts of Landowners, State,” Ala­bama Forests, Vol. 46, No. 1 (Winter 2002), 20. 45. Ibid., 20–21. 46. Bailey, Dubois, and Cashore, “Environmental Impact,” 9–10. 47. Ibid., 10–11. 48. See Ala­bama’s Best Management Practices for Forestry (booklet published in 1993 by the Ala­bama Forestry Commission in cooperation with the Ala­bama Department of Environmental Management and the US Environmental Protection Agency; reprinted in 1999). 49. Bailey, Dubois, and Cashore, “Environmental Impact,” 11. 50. Ibid., 12–13. 51. John McMillan, “The Truth about the Environment,” Ala­bama Forests, Vol. 45, No. 4 (Fall 2001), 9. 52. Reeves and Harrigan, “Scotch Lumber Company History,” 50–51, 54. 53. Sam Duvall, “Mead ‘Day in the Forest’ Tour,” Ala­bama Forests, Vol. 45, No. 4 (Fall 2001), 21–22. 54. Fred Gragg interview, 13–14. See also the material in chapter 7 based on ­Keville Larson, “Consulting Forestry” (unpublished paper in possession of the author). 55. Sam Duvall, “IP Wildlife Training Session: Moving Perception Closer to Reality,” Ala­bama Forests, Vol. 45, No. 4 (Fall 2001), 23.

334 Notes to Pages 279–290 56. “Ala­bama State & Private Forestry Fact Sheet” (Ala­bama Forestry Commission and US Forest Service, South­ern Region, February 8, 2007). 57. The material from the Dogwood Alliance is from vari­ous sources, in­clud­ing the organization’s website, http://www.dogwoodalliance.org. 58. Jones, “Evolution of Forest Certification,” 7–8. 59. Jim Jeter, “Sustainable Forestry Initiative,” Ala­bama’s Treasured Forests, Vol. 18, No. 2 (Summer 2009), 14–15. 60. Jones, “Evolution of Forest Certification,” 7–8, 29; Program for the Endorsement of Forest Certification website, http://www.pefc.org/about-­pefc/who-­we-­are /facts-­a-­fig­ures, accessed April 4, 2011. 61. Among the vari­ous sources on the Longleaf Alliance is its website, http:// longleafalliance.org. 62. “Carbon Sequestration,” Ala­bama’s Treasured Forests, Vol. 27, No. 3 (Fall 2008), 10–11, 31; Cartwright, “Developing New Markets,” 18–20. 63. Jim Jeter, “Woody Biomass 101,” Ala­bama’s Treasured Forests, Vol. 29, No. 1 (Spring 2010), 21–23, 30–31. 64. See “Mary Ivy Burks,” Encyclopedia of Ala­bama (online at http://www .encyclopediaofalabama.org). For extensive treatment of the po­liti­cal dimensions of these battles, see John N. Randolph, The Battle for Ala­bama’s Wilderness: Saving the Great Gymnasiums of Nature (Tuscaloosa: University of Ala­bama Press, 2005). 65. Birmingham News (De­cem­ber 28, 2009). 66. Randolph, Battle for Ala­bama’s Wilderness, 221–29. 67. “Forest Products Industry Has Deep South­ern Roots,” Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta EconSouth, Vol. 11, No. 1 (First Quarter, 2009); Andrew J. Hartsell and Tony G. Johnson, Ala­bama’s Forests, 2000, Resource Bulletin SRS-­143 (Asheville, NC: US Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, South­ern Research Station, 2009), 6. 68. Forests at the Crossroads, viii. 69. Ibid., 8, 36–38.

Conclusion 1. L. Keville Larson, “Ala­bama’s Non-­Industrial Private Forest Owners: A Success Story,” Ala­bama Wildlife (Winter 1991–92), 18.

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340 Bibliography Duvall, Sam. “Wild Hogs Create a Mess for Ala­bama Landowners.” Ala­bama Forests, Vol. 45, No. 4 (Fall 2001). Eckhardt, Lori G., and Roger D. Menard. “Declining Loblolly Pine Stands: Symptoms, Causes, and Management Options.” Ala­bama’s Treasured Forests, Vol. 28, No. 3 (Summer 2009). Fickle, James E., and Donald W. Ellis. “POWs in the Piney Woods: German Prisoners of War in the South­ern Lumber Industry, 1943–1945.” The Journal of South­ern His­ tory, Vol. 56, No. 4 (No­vem­ber 1990). Flick, Warren A. “The Wood Dealer System in Mississippi.” Journal of Forest His­ tory, July 1985. Foil, J. Harold. “The Gaylord Pine Plantation and Forestry Policy.” The Lumberman, April 1950. Folk, H. H. “Logging in the South.” Paper read at fourteenth annual convention of South­ern Lumber Manufacturers Association, reported in South­ern Lumberman, February 1, 1904. Forbes, R. D. “Essential Requirements for the Practice of Forestry.” Protection for Buy­ ers of Pine, Annual Meeting Report of the South­ern Pine Association, 1921, 155–56. South­ern Pine Association Records, Box 85B, Special Collections, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA. “Forest Products Industry Has Deep South­ern Roots.” Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta EconSouth, Vol. 11, No. 1 (First Quarter, 2009). Garrison, P. M. “Building an Industry on Cut-­Over Land.” Journal of Forestry, March 1952, 185–87. Garrison, Paul M., and Thurman E. Bercaw. “The Gaylord Story,” Part 1. The Forest Farmer, No­vem­ber 1953. Garrison, Paul M., and Thurman E. Bercaw. “The Gaylord Story,” Part 2. The Forest Farmer, De­cem­ber 1953. Garver, R. D. “Selective Logging of South­ern Pine.” South­ern Lumberman, May 1, 1930. Gates, Paul Wallace. “Federal Land Policy in the South, 1866–1888.” Journal of South­ ern History, Vol. 6 (August 1940). Gates, Paul Wallace. “The Homestead Law in an Incongruous Land System.” Ameri­ can His­tori­cal Review, Vol. 41 (July 1936). Gates, Paul Wallace. “Private Land Claims in the South.” Journal of South­ern History, Vol. 22 (May 1956). Gragg, F. C. “Present and Potential Economics of South­ern Forests.” Proceedings, So­ ciety of Ameri­can Foresters Meeting, Oc­to­ber 21–24, 1962. Wash­ing­ton, DC: Society of Ameri­can Foresters, 1963. Greeley, William B. “The Business of Growing Trees.” In A Decade of Service: Official Report of the Tenth Annual Meeting of . . . the South­ern Pine Association . . . March 24 and 25, 1925. South­ern Pine Association Records, Louisiana State University Archives, Baton Rouge, LA. Guinn, J. M. K. “Randolph County: The Red Man’s Home, the White Man’s Eden.” The Ala­bama His­tori­cal Quarterly, Vol. 4, No. 3 (Fall 1942).

Bibliography 341 Hamel, Paul B., and Edward R. Buckner. “How Far Could a Squirrel Travel in the Treetops? A Prehistory of the South­ern Forest.” Transactions of the North Ameri­ can Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference, Vol. 63 (1988). Harris, May. “The Robinson Springs Neighborhood.” The Ala­bama His­tori­cal Quar­ terly, Vol. 7, No. 1 (Spring 1945). Hastings, Robert W. “Is There a Jewel in Your TREASURE Forest?” Ala­bama’s Trea­ sured Forests, Vol. 25, No. 3 (Fall 2006). Hickman, Nollie W. “Logging and Rafting Timber in South Mississippi, 1840–1910.” Journal of Mississippi History, Vol. 19 (July 1957). Hill, Craig. “Sniffing Out and Tracking Down Wildland Arsonists.” Ala­bama’s Trea­ sured Forests, Vol. 28, No. 3 (Fall 2009). Hill, Lida Inge. “Ala­bama and Her Resources.” The Ala­bama His­tori­cal Quarterly, Vol. 7, No. 1 (Spring 1945). Hoffman, Paul E. “Introduction: The De Soto Expedition, a Cultural Crossroads.” In Lawrence A. Clayton, Vernon James Knight Jr., and Edward C. Moore, eds., The De Soto Chronicles: The Expedition of Hernando de Soto to North America in 1539–1543. Tuscaloosa: University of Ala­bama Press, 1993. Horn, Stanley F., and Charles W. Crawford. “Perspectives on South­ern Forestry: The South­ern Lumberman, Industrial Forestry, and Trade Associations.” Journal of Forest History, Vol. 21 (Janu­ary 1977). Hyler, John E. “Log Handling, His­tori­cal and Present Skidding Practices.” South­ern Lumberman, De­cem­ber 15, 1956. Hyler, John E. “Log Handling, His­tori­cal and Present Skidding Practices,” South­ern Lumberman, Janu­ary 1, 1957. Hyman, Lou. “Uncle Sam Wants You . . . to Plant Trees.” Ala­bama’s Treasured Forests, Vol. 25, No. 3 (Fall 2006). James, Lee M. “Forest Resources and Major Forest Industries of the South.” In For­ estry in the South, Monograph 1 in “Studies of South­ern Resources” made by the Institute for Research in Social Science, University of North Carolina, for the South­ern Association of Science and Industry. Richmond, VA: Dietz Press, 1948. Jeffords, A. I. Jr. “Trends in Pine Pulpwood Marketing in the South.” Journal of For­ estry, Vol. 54 (July 1956). Jenkins, Claude. “Farm Service Agency Introduces New Initiative to Restore Longleaf Pine Forests.” Ala­bama’s Treasured Forests, Vol. 26, No. 1 (Spring 2007). Jeter, Jim. “Sustainable Forestry Initiative.” Ala­bama’s Treasured Forests, Vol. 18, No. 2 (Summer 2009). Jeter, Jim. “Woody Biomass 101.” Ala­bama’s Treasured Forests, Vol. 29, No. 1 (Spring 2010). Johnson, Arthur Bolling, ed. “Rise and Progress of the Kaul Lumber Company.” Lumber World Review, April 10, 1914. Jones, Bill. “The Evolution of Forest Certification and ‘Sustainable Forestry.’” Ala­ bama’s Treasured Forests, Vol. 26, No. 1 (Spring 2007). Jones, Tim. “Protecting the Forests from Fire: A Brief History of Wildland Fire Protection in Ala­bama.” Ala­bama’s Treasured Forests, Vol. 25, No. 3 (Fall 2006).

342 Bibliography Kauffman, Erle. “They Had Faith in the Land.” Ameri­can Forests, March 1950. Kay, Charles E. “Afterword: False Gods, Ecological Myths, and Biological Reality.” In Charles E. Kay and Randy T. Simmons, eds., Wilderness and Po­liti­cal Ecology: Aborigi­nal Influences and the Original State of Nature. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2002, 238–61. Kay, Charles E. “Are Ecosystems Structured from the Top-­Down or Bottom-­Up: A New Look at an Old Debate.” Wildlife Society Bulletin, Vol. 26, No. 3 (1998). Kellogg, R. S. “Perpetuating the Timber Resources of the South.” Ameri­can Forestry, Vol. 16 (Janu­ary 1910). Kleppe, Pede J. “The Process of, and Products from, Kraft Pulping of South­ern Pine.” Forest Products Journal, Vol. 20 (May 1970). Knight, Herbert A. “The Pine Decline.” Journal of Forestry, Vol. 85 (Janu­ary 1987). Lamb, Sara. “Sawmills Fall Like So Much Timber in South­ern States.” Mobile Press Register, February 29, 1996. Landers, J. L., D. H. Van Lear, and W. D. Boyer. “The Longleaf Pine Forests in the Southeast: Requiem or Renaissance?” Journal of Forestry, Vol. 93 (1995). Larson, L. Keville. “Ala­bama’s Non-­Industrial Private Forest Owners: A Success Story.” Ala­bama Wildlife Federation, Winter 1991–92. Larson, L. Keville. “Making Numbers Tell the Truth.” The Consultant (2010). Lentz, Robert J. “Ala­bama’s TREASURE Forest Goes National.” In History of TREA­ SURE Forest. Undated booklet produced by Ala­bama Forestry Planning Committee. “The Lumber Industry Speaks.” Journal of Forestry, Vol. 27 (No­vem­ber 1929). MacNaughton, V. B. “For Land’s Sake.” Ameri­can Forests, Janu­ary 1960. Maki, T. E., and William F. Mann Jr. “Some Effects of Sheep Grazing on Longleaf Pine.” Journal of Forestry, April 1951. Malsberger, H. J. “Seventy-­Five Year History of the Wood-­Pulp and Paper Industry in the South.” South­ern Lumberman, De­cem­ber 15, 1956. Marcin, Thomas C. “Demographic Change: Implications for Forest Management.” Journal of Forestry, No­vem­ber 1993. Mason, David T. “Changing Economic Conditions and Forest Practices on Privately Owned Lands.” Journal of Forestry, No­vem­ber 1953. Massey, Richard W. Jr. “Logging Railroads in Ala­bama, 1880–1914.” The Ala­bama Review, Janu­ary 1961. Maxwell, Robert S. “The Impact of Forestry on the Gulf South.” Forest History, Vol. 17 (April 1973). McCaffrey, J. E. “Progress in Industrial Forestry.” Journal of Forestry, Vol. 40 (February 1942). McGowin, Earl M. “History of Conservation in Ala­bama.” The Ala­bama Review (Janu­ ary 1954). McGuire, John P. “The Legacy of Smokey’s Message: Problems in Fire-­Starved Longleaf Pine Forests.” Ala­bama’s Treasured Forests, Vol. 26, No. 1 (Spring 2007). McHale, W. L. “The Paper Industry and the Southland Mill.” Journal of Forestry, Vol. 50 (July 1952).

Bibliography 343 McMillan, John. “The Truth about the Environment.” Ala­bama Forests, Vol. 45, No. 4 (Fall 2001). Mitchell, Grace Lewis. “The Mobile and Ohio Railroad in Ante Bellum Times.” The Ala­bama His­tori­cal Quarterly, Vol. 7, No. 1 (Spring 1945). Moody, Bill. “The Beginnings of TREASURE Forest.” In History of TREASURE Forest. Undated booklet produced by Ala­bama Forestry Planning Committee. Murphy, Harry. “His­tori­cal Perspective: Ala­bama State Board of Registration for Foresters.” Booklet dated 1998 in Ala­bama Forestry Association Records. “Naval Stores: One of America’s Oldest Industries.” Forest History Today (1966). Nelson, Milton A. “The Lumber Industry of America.” Ameri­can Monthly Review of Reviews, Vol. 36 (No­vem­ber 1907). Nix, Andrew. “Longleaf Pine: Where It Has Gone, How to Get It Back.” Ala­bama’s Treasured Forests, Vol. 28, No. 3 (Fall 2009). Norwood, Stephen H. “Bogalusa Burning: The War Against Biracial Unionism in the Deep South, 1919.” The Journal of South­ern History, Vol. 63, No. 3 (August 1997). “Park Battles Wild Hog Infestation.” The Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN), Janu­ ary 26, 2010. Peabody, M. B. “125 Years of Sawmilling.” South­ern Lumberman, De­cem­ber 15, 1956. Pomeroy, L. K. “Applications of German Forestry to Conditions in the South.” Jour­ nal of Forestry, Vol. 30 (Janu­ary 1935). Powell, E. A. “Fifty-­Five Years in West Ala­bama.” The Ala­bama His­tori­cal Quarterly, Vol. 4, No. 4 (Winter 1942). Prince, Ryan. “Ameri­can Black Bear: Where Are They in Ala­bama?” Ala­bama’s Trea­ sured Forests, Vol. 26, No. 2 (Summer 2007). Pugh, Corky. “Game Plentiful Thanks to Efforts of Landowners, State.” Ala­bama For­ ests, Vol. 46, No. 1 (Winter 2002). Ralston, Charles W. “Clearcutting of Public Forests in the South­ern Pine Region.” In Eleanor C. J. Horwitz, Clearcutting: A View from the Top. Wash­ing­ton, DC: Acropolis Books, 1974. Ramsey, William L. “‘Something Cloudy in Their Looks’: The Origins of the Yamasee War Reconsidered.” The Journal of Ameri­can History, Vol. 90, No. 1 (June 2003). Roller, Harry M. Jr. “The Pulp and Paper Industry in the Southwest Ala­bama Forest Empire.” Journal of the Ala­bama Academy of Science, Janu­ary 1959. Salisbury, Neal. “The Indians’ Old World: Native Ameri­cans and the Coming of Europeans.” The William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, Vol. 53, No. 3 (July 1966). Scribner, Robert Leslie. “A Short History of Brewton, Ala­bama.” MA thesis, University of Ala­bama, 1935, published in The Ala­bama His­tori­cal Quarterly, Vol. 11, Nos. 1, 2, 3, and 4 (1949). Shell, Dan. “101 Years and Growing: Ala­bama’s Scotch Lumber Co.” Timber Pro­ cessing, February 1989. Sihvonen, S. V. “Utilization—The Key to Better Forestry at Crossett.” Proceedings, So­ ciety of Ameri­can Foresters Meeting, “Forestry Faces Forward,” Memphis, TN, 1956. Silver, James W. “The Hardwood Producers Come of Age.” Journal of South­ern His­ tory, Vol. 23 (No­vem­ber 1957).

344 Bibliography South­ern Lumberman, De­cem­ber 25, 1906. South­ern Lumberman, Oc­to­ber 17, 1908. Srygley, Edgar V. Sr. “Descendants of James Srygley Sr.” Undated, self-­published family story by Filo D. and Fletcher D. Srygley. http://users.ox.ac.uk/~zool0206 /GWSrygley.html (site discontinued). “State Forestry in the South.” Forest History, Oc­to­ber 1972. Stevenson, Louis T. “South­ern Pulp and Paper Industry—1951 Model.” Thirteenth Annual Review Number, Oc­to­ber 1, 1951. “A Study in Expense of Hauling Logs.” South­ern Lumberman, Janu­ary 1, 1904. Tower, J. Allen, and Walter Wolf. “Ethnic Growth in Cullman County, Ala­bama.” Geo­ graphical Review, Vol. 33, No. 2 (April 1943). Wackerman, A. E. “Sustained Yield Forestry in the South­ern Pine Region.” Journal of Forestry, Vol. 33 (March 1935). Wakeley, Philip C. “The South’s First BIG Plantation.” Forests and People, Second Quarter, 1973. Wakeley, Philip C. “The Ups and Downs of Pioneer Planting Research in Louisiana: Problems in the Design and Analysis of Planting Trials.” Forestry Chronicle, Vol. 43 (June 1967). Walls, Sara, and William C. Vail, “45 Years of Papermaking.” Forest Farmer, No­vem­ ber 1974. Weston, J. R. “History of Forestry in Southwest Mississippi.” Unpublished manuscript in Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Jackson, MS. Weston, J. Roland. “Sunken Logs and Logging Brands of the Lower Pearl River Valley.” Journal of Mississippi History, Vol. 5 (April 1943). White, Roy R. “Austin Cary, the Father of South­ern Forestry.” Forest History, Vol. 5 (Spring 1961). Whitten, Joe. “Brief History of Odenville, Ala­bama.” http://www.StClairCountyAl.com. Williams, Michael. “Industrial Impacts on the Forests of the United States, 1860– 1920.” Journal of Forest History, July 1987. Witherspoon, John C. “A Wildcat and a Paper Mill: The Story of the Birthplace of IP’s South­ern Kraft Division.” Forests and People, Second Quarter, 1973. Young, Vertrees. “History of Gaylord Plantations.” Unit, No. 43 (July 1952).

Books Ala­bama Forestry Association. Fifty Years on the Cutting Edge: A Tribute to the Men and Women of the Forest Products Industry. Montgomery, AL: Duvall and Associates, 1999. Appleyard, John. Helping to Build America: The T. R. Miller Mill Company, Inc. Story, the First 125 Years, 1872–1997. Brewton, AL: T. R. Miller Mill Co., 1997. Appleyard, John. Lumbering in Northwest Florida and Ala­bama: An Overview of Pen­ sacola’s Great Lumbering Era. Pensacola, FL: Appleyard Agency, 2006. Appleyard, John. The W.  T. Smith Lumber Company: A Chronicle. Pensacola, FL: ­Bodree Printing, 2008.

Bibliography 345 Atkinson, James R. Splendid Land, Splendid People: The Chickasaw Indians to Removal. Tuscaloosa: University of Ala­bama Press, 2004. Axtell, James. The Indians’ New South: Cultural Change in the Colonial Southeast. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1997. Baggett, James L. Kaul Lumber Company, Kaul Land and Lumber Company, Sample Lumber Company: Records, 1836–1966. Birmingham, AL: Birmingham Public Library Press, 1993. Billinger, Robert D. Jr. Nazi POWs in the Tar Heel State. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2008. Blackmon, Douglas A. Slavery by Another Name: The Re-­Enslavement of Black Ameri­ cans from the Civil War to World War II. New York: Anchor Books, 2009, origi­ nally published in 2008 by Doubleday. Bowler, Frank Colburn. It Began with the Wasps! New York: Newcomen Society of England, Ameri­can Branch, 1949. Boyd, James. “Fifty Years in the South­ern Pine Industry.” Manuscript in Forest History Society Archives, Durham, NC. Braund, Kathryn E. Holland. Deerskins and Duffels: The Creek Indian Trade with Anglo-­America, 1685–1815. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993. Brown, Nelson Courtland. Timber Products and Industries. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1937. Bryant, Ralph Clement. Logging: The Principles and General Methods of Operation in the United States. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1923. Butler, Carroll B. Treasures of the Longleaf Pines: Naval Stores, Second Edition. Shalimar, FL: Tarkel, 1998. Clark, Thomas D. The Greening of the South: The Recovery of Land and Forest. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1984. Clepper, Henry. Professional Forestry in the United States. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press for Resources for the Future, 1971. Cowdrey, Albert E. This Land, This South: An Environmental History. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1983. Cox, Thomas R., Robert S. Maxwell, Phillip Drennon Thomas, and Joseph J. Malone. This Well-­Wooded Land: Ameri­cans and Their Forests from Colonial Times to the Present. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1985. Croker, Thomas Caldwell Jr. Longleaf Pine: A History of Man and a Forest. Forestry Report R8-­FR7. Wash­ing­ton, DC: US Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, South­ern Region, 1987. Crosby, Alfred W. Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900– 1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Curtin, Mary Ellen. Black Prisoners and Their World: Ala­bama, 1865–1900. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2000. Daniel, Pete R. The Shadow of Slavery: Peonage in the South, 1901–1969. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1972. Daniels, Jonathan. The Forest Is the Future. New York: International Paper Company, 1957.

346 Bibliography Davis, Donald E., Craig E. Colten, Megan Kate Nelson, Barbara L. Allen, and Mikko Saikku. South­ern United States: An Environmental History. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-­CLIO, 2006. Defebaugh, James Elliott. History of the Lumber Industry of America. Chicago: Ameri­ can Lumberman, 1906. 2 vols. Dick, Everett. The Dixie Frontier: A Social History of the South­ern Frontier from the First Transmontane Beginnings to the Civil War. New York: Capricorn Books, 1964. Originally published in 1948 by Alfred A. Knopf. Dothan Landmarks Foundation. Images of Rail: Railroading around Dothan and the Wiregrass Region. Chicago: Arcadia Publishing, 2004. Drobney, Jeffrey A. Lumbermen and Log Sawyers: Life, Labor and Culture in the North Florida Timber Industry, 1830–1930. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1997. East, Don C. His­tori­cal Analysis of the Creek Indian Hillabee Towns. New York: iUniverse, 2008. Ellison, Rhoda Coleman. Bibb County, Ala­bama: The First Hundred Years, 1818–1918. Tuscaloosa: University of Ala­bama Press, 1984. Evans, Everett F., and Roy L. Donahue. Our South: Its Resources and Their Use. Austin, TX: Steck Company, 1949. Faragher, John Mack, Mari Jo Buhle, Daniel Czitrom, and Susan H. Armitage. Out of Many: A History of the Ameri­can People, Fourth Edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2005. Faulkner, William. Light in August. New York: Modern Library, 1950. Fernow, Bernard E. A Brief History of Forestry. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1907. Fickle, James E. Mississippi Forests and Forestry. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2001. Fickle, James E. The New South and the “New Competition”: Trade Association Devel­ opment in the South­ern Pine Industry. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1980. Fletcher, D. B., and Jack R. Warner. PROGRESS: Gulf States Paper Corporation, Our First Hundred Years. Tuscaloosa, AL: Gulf States Paper Corporation, 1984. Francis, Juanita W. “Baldwin County’s His­tori­cal Forest Industry.” Undated, unpublished manuscript in Warren Flick Files of the Ala­bama Forestry Association. Galloway, Patricia Kay. Choctaw Genesis, 1500–1700. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996. Goodyear, C. W. Bogalusa Story. Buffalo, NY: privately printed, 1950. Green, Lorenzo J., and Carter G. Woodson. The Negro Wage Earner. Wash­ing­ton, DC: Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, 1930. Harper, Roland M. Forests of Ala­bama, Monograph 10, Geological Survey of Ala­bama. University of Ala­bama, 1943. Harper, Roland M. Geological Survey of Ala­bama, Monograph 8, Economic Botany of Ala­bama. University of Ala­bama, 1913. Healy, Robert G. Competition for Land in the Ameri­can South: Agriculture, Human Settlement, and the Environment. Wash­ing­ton, DC: Conservation Foundation, 1985.

Bibliography 347 Heyward, Frank. “History of Industrial Forestry in the South.” Colonel William B. Greeley Lectures in Industrial Forestry, University of Wash­ing­ton College of Forestry (Spring 1958). Hickman, Nollie W. Mississippi Harvest: Lumbering in the Longleaf Pine Belt, 1840– 1915. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1962. Hidy, Ralph W., Ernest Hill, and Allan Nevins. Timber and Men: The Weyerhaeuser Story. New York: Macmillan, 1963. History of TREASURE Forest. Undated booklet produced by Ala­bama Forestry Planning Committee. Horn, Stanley F. This Fascinating Lumber Business. Indianapolis: Bobbs-­Merrill, 1943. Hurt, R. Douglas. Indian Agriculture in America: Prehistory to the Present. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1987. Hyde, William F., David H. Newman, and Barry J. Seldon. The Economic Benefits of Forestry Research. Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1992. International Paper Company. International Paper Company: After Fifty Years. International Paper Company, 1948. Jackson, Harvey H. III. Rivers of History: Life on the Coosa, Tallapoosa, Cahaba, and Ala­bama. Tuscaloosa: University of Ala­bama Press, 1995. Jensen, Vernon H. Lumber and Labor. New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1945. Jordan, Weymouth T. Hugh Davis and His Ala­bama Plantation. Tuscaloosa: University of Ala­bama Press, 1948. Krech, Shepard III. The Ecological Indian: Myth and History. New York: W. W. Norton, 1999. Lawson, Thomas Jr. Logging Railroads of Ala­bama. Birmingham, AL: Cabbage Stack Publishing, 1996. Lillard, Richard G. The Great Forest. New York: Knopf, 1947. Malone, Henry Thompson. Cherokees of the Old South: A People in Transition. ­Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1956. Mann, Charles C. 1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus. New York: Vintage Books, 2006. Maxwell, Robert S., and Robert D. Baker. Sawdust Empire: The Texas Lumber Indus­ try, 1830–1940. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1983. Mayberry, B. D. Share the Vision: The History of the Tuskegee University Forest Re­ sources Program, 1968–1992. Tuskegee, AL: Tuskegee University and USDA Forest Service, South­ern Region, 1993. Mayor, Archer H. South­ern Timberman: The Legacy of William Buchanan. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1988. McGeary, Martin Nelson. Gifford Pinchot, Forester-­Politician. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1960. McLoughlin, William G. Cherokee Renascence. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986. McQuillen, Michael J., and William P. Garvey. The Best Known Name in Paper: Ham­ mermill, A History of the Company. Erie, PA: Hammermill Paper Company, 1985.

348 Bibliography Mies, Willard, Harold Cody, Noel Deking, and Carl Espe. Pulp & Paper 1995 North Ameri­can Factbook. San Francisco: Miller Freeman Books, 1994. Miller, Char. Gifford Pinchot and the Making of Modern Environmentalism. Wash­ing­ ton, DC: Island Press/Shearwater Books, 2001. Myers, John Walter. Opportunities Unlimited: The Story of Our South­ern Forests. Chicago: Illinois Central Railroad, 1950. Northrup, Herbert R., The Negro in the Paper Industry. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1969. Oliver, Chadwick D., and Bruce C. Larson. Forest Stand Dynamics, Updated Edition. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1996. Pasquill, Robert Jr. The Civilian Conservation Corps in Ala­bama, 1933–1942: A Great and Lasting Good. Tuscaloosa: University of Ala­bama Press, 2008. Randolph, John N. The Battle for Ala­bama’s Wilderness: Saving the Great Gymnasiums of Nature. Tuscaloosa: University of Ala­bama Press, 2005. Reed, Germaine M. Crusading for Chemistry: The Professional Career of Charles Holmes Herty. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1995. Reeves, Paige, and Virginia S. Harrigan. “The Scotch Lumber Company History.” Unpublished manuscript in files of Ala­bama Forestry Association, 1988. Robbins, William G. Ameri­can Forestry: A History of National, State, and Private Co­ operation. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1985. Robbins, William G. Lumberjacks and Legislators: Po­liti­cal Economy of the U.S. Lumber Industry, 1890–1941. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1982. Rogers, William Warren, Robert David Ward, Leah Rawlins Atkins, and Wayne Flynt. Ala­bama: The History of a Deep South State. Tuscaloosa: University of Ala­bama Press, 1994. Saikku, Mikko. This Delta, This Land: An Environmental History of the Yazoo-­ Mississippi Floodplain. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2005. The Saw in History (1916), Second Edition. Philadelphia: Henry Disston and Sons, 1916. Smith, Kenneth L. Sawmill: The Story of Cutting the Last Great Virgin Forest East of the Rockies. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1986. Smith, Marvin T. Coosa: The Rise and Fall of a Southeast­ern Mississippian Chiefdom. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000. Spurr, Stephen H., and Burton V. Barnes. Forest Ecology, Second Edition. New York: Ronald Press, 1973. Steen, Harold K. The U.S. Forest Service: A History. Seattle: University of Wash­ing­ ton Press, 1976. Taylor, David Bryan. “The Lure of Longleaf Pine: The Founding of the Alger-­Sullivan Lumber Company 1900–1902; A Case Study of the Establishment of Industrial Logging in the Deep South.” Draft manuscript prepared for the Auburn University School of Forestry and the Ala­bama Forestry Association. Taylor, David Bryan. “Sawmills in the Piney Woods, Development Patterns in the Establishment of the Logging Industry in Ala­bama: A Collection of Four Case

Bibliography 349 Studies from the Founding Period of the Modern Forest Products Industry in the South.” Unpublished manuscript, March 1997. Walker, Lawrence C. The South­ern Forest: A Chronicle. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991. Williams, Michael. Ameri­cans and Their Forests: A His­tori­cal Geography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Willoughby, Lynn. Flowing through Time: A History of the Lower Chattahoochee River. Tuscaloosa: University of Ala­bama Press, 1999. Woodward, C. Vann. Origins of the New South, 1877–1913. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1951.

Theses and Dissertations Cantrell, Jack O. “Pulpwood Procurement Practices in the South.” Master of Forestry thesis, Syracuse University, 1968. Fraunberger, R. C. “Lumber Trade Associations: Their Economic and Social Significance.” MA thesis, Temple University, 1951. Hickman, Nollie Wade. “History of Forest Industries in the Longleaf Pine Belt of East Louisiana and Mississippi, 1840–1915.” Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Texas, 1958. Lewis, James G. “‘Trained by Ameri­cans in Ameri­can Ways’: The Establishment of Forestry Education in the United States, 1885–1911.” Unpublished PhD dissertation, Florida State University, 2001. Lowry, Stanley Todd. “Henry Hardtner, Pioneer in South­ern Forestry: An Analysis of the Economic Bases of His Reforestation Program.” Unpublished MA thesis, Louisiana State University, 1956. Massey, Richard W. Jr. “A History of the Lumber Industry in Ala­bama and West Florida, 1880–1914.” PhD dissertation, Vanderbilt University, 1960. Mouson, Olin Terrill. “The Social and Economic Implications of Recent Developments within the Wood Pulp and Paper Industry in the South.” Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of North Carolina, 1940. Oden, Jack Porter. “Development of the South­ern Pulp and Paper Industry, 1900– 1970.” Unpublished PhD dissertation, Mississippi State University, 1973. Pecenka, Joseph Otto. “A Financial Analysis of Selected Major Pulp, Paper and Paper­ board Producers, 1947–1964.” Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Illinois, 1967. White, Roy Ring. “Austin Cary and Forestry in the South.” PhD dissertation, University of Florida, 1960.

Oral History Interviews Allen, Richard C. Interview by James E. Fickle, August 31, 1989. Copy in Oral History Collection, University of Memphis.

350 Bibliography Bond, Billy. Interview by Emmett Thompson, February 9, 2000. Copy in Ala­bama Forestry Association Records. Bruce, Alan. Interview by Emmett Thompson, June 2, 2000. Copy in Ala­bama Forestry Association Records. Dantzler, A. M. Interview, July 27, 1973. Transcript in Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Jackson, MS. “Forty-­Three Years in the Field with the U.S. Forest Service: An Interview with Charles A. Connaughton.” By Elwood R. Maunder, April 2, 1975. Santa Cruz, CA: Forest History Society, 1976. Gardner, Angus. Interview by Emmett Thompson, March 3, 1999. Copy in Ala­bama Forestry Association Records. Gragg, Fred. Interview by Emmett Thompson, No­vem­ber 24, 1998. Copy in Ala­bama Forestry Association Records. Hill, Harold. Interview by Emmett Thompson, No­vem­ber 8, 1999. Copy in Ala­bama Forestry Association Records. Hughes, Jeff D. Jr. Interview by James E. Fickle, August 1989. Copy in Oral History Collection, University of Memphis. Maunder, Elwood R., ed. James Greeley McGowin—South Ala­bama Lumberman: The Recollections of His Family. Santa Cruz, CA: Forest History Society, 1977. Maunder, Elwood R. Voices from the South: Recollections of Four Foresters (Santa Cruz, CA: Forest History Society, 1977). Maunder, Elwood R., and Elwood L. Demmon. “An Interview with Reuben B. Robertson: Trailblazing in the South­ern Paper Industry.” Forest History, Spring 1961. Mordecai, Dick. Interview by Emmett Thompson, Janu­ary 26, 1999. Copy in Ala­ bama Forestry Association Records. Nelson, Art. Interview by Emmett Thompson, June 9, 2000. Copy in Ala­bama Forestry Association Records. Nelson, Arthur W. Jr. Interview by James E. Fickle, No­vem­ber 8, 1978. Copy in Oral History Collection, University of Memphis. Nonnemacher, Robert M. Interview by Emmett Thompson and Warren Flick, Oc­to­ ber 6, 1998. Copy in Ala­bama Forestry Association Records. Oliver, Chadwick Dearing, and Lloyd C. Irland. Interview by James E. Fickle, Oc­to­ ber 11, 2010. Copy in Oral History Collection, University of Memphis. Stabler, F. E. “Buck.” Interview by Emmett Thompson, March 2, 1999. Copy in Ala­ bama Forestry Association Records. Wakefield, R. C. Interview by Emmett Thompson, February 15, 1999. Copy in Ala­ bama Forestry Association Records. White, Roy R. The Forest Management Advocate: Frank Heyward Speaks of Austin Cary’s Forestry Crusade in the South. Santa Cruz, CA: Forest History Society, 1971.

Index

Abitibi-­Price, 235 Adair, James, 16 Adams, Boyd, 234 Adams Lumber Company, 234 Ala­bama Agricultural and Conservation Development Commission Program, 264 Ala­bama Best Management Practices (BMPs) for Forestry, 276–77 Ala­bama Department of Environmental Management (ADEM), 276 Ala­bama Environmental Council, 284 Ala­bama Environmental Management Act, 276 Ala­bama Forestry Association (AFA), 226–29 Ala­bama Forestry Commission, 178–80, 252–53, 261–63, 276–77 Ala­bama Kraft Company, 202, 238, 239 Ala­bama Land and Development Company, 62, 77–80 Ala­bama Loggers Council, 228 Ala­bama Pulp and Paper Council, 228 Ala­bama River Company, 218, 235 Alger, Russell A., 64–65 Alger-­Sullivan Lumber Company, 52, 63– 66, 80, 97, 123, 233 Allen, Richard C. “Dick,” 162, 204, 207, 214 Allied Paper Corporation, 238–39 Allison, Evan F., 187, 261, 275 Allison, John, 186

Allison Lumber Company, 169, 185–87, 234, 237 Ameri­can Association for the Advancement of Science, 158 Ameri­can Can Company, 188, 237 Ameri­can Federation of Labor, 131, 132 Ameri­can Forest and Paper Association, 281 Ameri­can Forestry Association, 158 Ameri­can Forestry Congress, 79 Ameri­can Loggers Council, 282 Ameri­can Paper Institute, 132 Ameri­can Plywood Association, 210 Ameri­can Tree Farm System, 268–69, 283 Angus Gardner, 133 Arbor Day, 79 Arentz Brothers, 89 arson: and forest fires, 179, 261, 262; and sawmills, 91, 112 Ashe, W. W., 82, 173 ash trees, 9, 46 Atlantic forest, 45 axmen, 118, 120 Bagdad Land and Lumber Company, 101 Baker , J. M., 32 Baldwin Timber and Naval Store, 81 band saws, 88–92 Barnhart Self Loader, 98 Bartram, William, 20, 22–23, 36 Bateman, Red, 162

352 Index Bay Minette Naval Stores Company, 81 beech trees, 9 Behrend, Ernst, 240 Behrman, Marcus B., 72 Behrman Lumber Company, 60 Belcher, William Elbert, Sr., 61 Bienville, John-­Baptiste Le Moyne de, 16 big wheel carts, 96, 101 biomass production, 283, 292–93 birds, 12, 21, 79, 273–74 black gum trees, 9, 45 Blacksher, D. W., 52, 59–60, 70 Blacksher Brothers, 32, 52, 59–60, 69–70 Blacksher-­Miller Lumber Company, 59– 60, 69, 70 Blow, E. J., 66 Bogalusa Paper Company, 131 Boise Cascade, 257 Bond, Ira, 23–24, 31, 68 Bowaters, 250 Boyd, James, 31 Boykin, Frank W., 235 Bradley, John, 244 Brent, F. C., 69, 70–71 Brooks, John T., 30 Brooks, William, 32 Brown Paper Company (Olinkraft), 133 Bruce, Alan, 187, 188, 217 Bryant, Ralph, 164 building materials, 1–2, 28, 43, 56, 287, 288; and housing market boom, 71, 226 Burks, Mary Ivy, 284 Busch, T. N., 127 Busch combine, 127, 130 Bush, T. G., 32 buttonbush, 9 C. Y. Mayo and Sons, 60 Calcasieu Paper Company, 132 Callahan, John W., 93 caralogs, 96, 101 carbon sequestration, 282–83, 293 Carney, W. M., 58–59 Cary, Austin, 3, 153, 155–56, 162, 165, 288; fire management promoted by, 164, 176, 262, 267

Cedar Creek Company, 60, 69, 79 Cedar Creek Land and Timber, 257–58 Cedar Creek Lumber Company, 70 cedar trees, 9, 141, 144 Champion Paper Company, 195, 238, 239, 243, 250, 252 Chancellor, William, 30 Chapman, Herman Haupt, 3, 137, 153, 162–64, 288; fire management promoted by, 164, 176, 262, 267 cherry trees, 46 Chesapeake Corporation, 250 Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX), 283 Chilton Lumber Company, 32 chip mills, 218 Choctaw Pulp and Paper Company, 236 circular saws, 88–90, 92 Civilian Conservation Corps, 177–78, 181 Clancy, Leon, 233 Clark, Thomas D., 27 Clarke-­McNary Act, 158, 176, 247 Clawson, Marion, 250 Clean Water Act, 258, 276 clear-­cutting, 3, 247, 249–50, 278, 290 Clepper, Henry, 195 climate change, 8–10 Climax locomotives, 101 company stores, 62, 70, 113–14, 124 company towns, 50–51, 65, 111–12, ­123–25 Conecuh National Forest, 181–82 Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), 115, 117 Congress of Racial Equality, 134 Connaughton, Charles A., 173–74 Connaway, William, 30 conservation, 5, 139, 151, 268, 315n5 Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), 262, 263 Container Corporation, 132, 227, 233, 236, 237 convict labor, 107–109, 114 Cooper, Roland, 234 Coosa River Newsprint Company, 201, 231, 236 Coulter, Clinton H., 155, 195 crosscut saws, 97, 118, 119, 120

Index 353 Crossett Lumber Company, 153, 162–65 Crown Zellerbach, 81, 134 Crumpler, Albert, 29 Cullen, Richard J., 197 cut-­out-­and-­get-­out lumbering, 2, 42–43, 152; devastation of, 79, 84, 136–37, 140, 147, 148; and taxation, 76–77 cutover lands: reforestation of, 172–73; sold as farm land, 24, 62, 77–78, 85, 160–61, 180 cypress trees, 45–46, 57; in early twentieth century, 145–48 Cyprus Mines Company, 80 Damtoft, Walter J., 153, 157–58, 205 Danner, A. C., 31 Davis, Hugh, 27 Davis, K. L., 66 Davis, Matthew, 62, 79–80 Dean, Blanche Evans, 284 debarker, 219–20 Defebaugh, James Elliott, 8, 27, 46, 79, 84 Demmon, Elwood L., 155–57, 186, 204– 205, 215 de Soto, Hernando, 10, 13–14 d’Iberville, Pierre Le Moyne, 16 Dick, Everett, 28 Dixie Pellets, 256 Dixon, Charles, 189 Dixon, Donald A., 189 Dixon, Jesse, 189 Dixon, Mack C., 188–89 Dixon, Solon, 189 Dixon Brothers Lumber Company, 189 Dixon Lumber Company, 189 Dogwood Alliance, 280 Donald A. Dixon Lumber Company, 189 Downing, Adrian, 71 Downing, Elisha, 31, 59, 68–70 Downing, Wiley, 68–70 Dyas Naval Stores Company, 81 E. E. Jackson Lumber Company, 32 East­ern Wilderness Act, 284 Eastman-­Gardiner, 76–77 Ecological Society of America, 10–11 Eldredge, Inman F. “Cap,” 156–57, 214; on

decline of mills, 137–38; fire management promoted by, 262; on forestry, 150, 152–56, 208, 211; on pulp and paper industry in South, 86, 198–99, 242–43; on taxation, 76; US Forest Service survey by, 207 elm trees, 9 environmental issues, 5, 248–51, 272–73, 291; and changes in forest composition, 265–67; and large lumber companies, 87–88; legislation addressing, 272, 276–77; responses of forest products industry to, 228–29, 291–92; and wildlife, 79, 267, 269, 273–76 Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), 263 Escambia Experimental Forest, 165–66 E-­Z Opener Bag Company, 199–200 farms: clearing of forests for, 1–2, 9–10, 12, 26–27, 35, 53, 241, 287; cutover lands sold as, 24, 62, 77–78, 85, 160– 61, 180; and livestock grazing in forests, 3, 20, 24, 26, 35, 84, 148, 165–67, 213, 264, 290, 318n61; reforestation of after abandonment, 85, 144, 182, 242, 264, 289 Fernow, Bernhard, 82, 150, 152 Finch, Pruyn and Company, 159 fires: causes of, 179, 180, 261, 262; to clear lands, 10, 26, 84, 287; controlled uses of, 3, 164, 175, 176, 262, 267, 289; destruction of forests from, 142, 145, 146, 148; and longleaf pines, 12, 164, 176–77, 262; in prehistoric forests, 12, 15, 17–18, 287; prevention of, 149, 175–76, 180, 208, 227–28, 261–63; protection from, 178–80, 183, 186, 207, 210, 213, 214, 216, 261 Flick, Warren, 227 Flintkote, 232 Flowers, W. M., 62 Flowers, William Hampton, 107 Folsom, Jim, 234 Forbes, R. D., 215–16 Ford, Henry, 133 Ford Foundation, 132

354 Index Forest Farmers Association (FFA), 210 forest management practices, 150, 152, 159, 211; of lumber companies, 153, 160–69, 185–87, 225, 278; of pulp and paper companies, 4, 204, 210–13, 243, 278, 279 Forest PAC, 228 Forest Products Severance Tax, 261 forestry, 3–5, 149–50, 208, 211, 289; changing roles of, 243–44, 267–68, 278–79, 332n24; in pulp and paper industry, 214–15, 247–48; in United States, 150–60, 288 Forestry Incentives Program, 263 Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), 280, 281 Fort Crawford, 24 Fort Walton Mound site, 10 Foshee, S. J., 59–60, 67, 69–70 Foster, J. H., 139–48, 315n6, 316n22 Fulton Land Company, 73 game protection, 261 gang saws, 29, 31, 59, 63, 88, 91 Gardner, Angus, 234, 243 Gaylord Container Corporation, 134, 199 Georgia-­Pacific Corporation, 257, 286 Gerre Woodlands, 250 Gerry, Eloise, 82 Gilchrist-­Fordney, 76–77 Gjerstad, Dean H., 282 Goodwin, Daniel W., 31 Goodyear, A. Conger, 161, 162 Gosse, Philip Henry, 21, 26–27 Gragg, Fred: on forestry, 171, 203–204, 214–16, 218, 219, 278–79; on pulp and paper industry, 206–207, 221, 230 Gray, John M., 74 Great South­ern Lumber Company, 88, 134, 161; forest management practices of, 152, 153, 162, 164, 165, 169 Greeley, W. B., 77, 164 Green Globes, 281–82 Grist, Benjamin, 38 Grist, James R., 38 Gulf Red Cedar Company, 61 Gulf States Paper Company, 4, 131, 199–

201, 236–38, 258, 273; environmental protection by, 250–51 gum production, 38, 82, 225 Halifax, 250 Hammermill Paper Company, 61, 125, 202, 239, 240–41, 250, 252, 328n50 Hancock Timber Resources Group, 244 Hannon, George R., 73 Hardtner, Henry, 160–61, 164, 165, 318n61 hardwoods, 58, 84; in early twentieth century, 141, 143–47; increase in, 251–52; uses for, 57, 219, 225, 241 Harold Brothers, 60 Harold Mill Company, 112 Harrell, Eli, 30 Harrigan, Billy, 74–75, 123 Harrigan, Dwight, 230 Harrigan, William D., 73–74 Harrigan, William “Will,” 123 Harrigan Lumber Company, 75, 230 Hart, Reuben, 66 Hauss, Edward, 65, 97 Hawkins, Benjamin, 20, 23 Hecker, Frank J., 65 Heisler locomotives, 99–101 Henderson Land & Lumber Company, 108 Henderson Lumber Company, 108 Herrick, Frederick, 73–74 Herty, Charles Holmes, 4, 82, 154–55, 194–96, 289 Heyward, Frank, 215 hickory trees, 9, 46, 141 Hill, Harold, 186–88, 237, 241, 250 Hill, Lister, 235 Hines, Edward, 76 Holarctic realm, 11 Hollingsworth and Whitney Company, 233, 236 Home Turpentine Company, 81 horses, 94, 96 Horseshoe Lumber Company, 61, 108 Horton, John, 30 Hough, Franklin B., 158 Huff, Robert, 246 Huffman, Jacob R., 89 Hughes, Jeff, 81, 214

Index 355 hunting, 17–20, 260, 287 hunting leases, 5, 290

Kronospan U.S., 256 Ku Klux Klan, 132–34

International Paper Company, 80, 129, 194, 196, 199, 201, 232, 233; criticism of, 280; expansion of, 236, 239–40; forest management practices of, 211, 217, 245–46, 279; forestry program of, 214–15; land acquisition policy of, 242; lumbering by, 229–30; mechanization and efficiency of, 127, 130; and mergers, 241, 252; sale of lands by, 257, 286; South­ern Kraft Division of, 4, 85, 131, 133, 197–98; unionization of, 128, 131–33; wood dealers for, 221–22 International Woodworkers of America, 117 Irland, Lloyd C., 253–54 iron mines, 45, 46, 57, 142

L. M. Davis Lumber Company, 32 labor force, 106–7, 110–11; convicts used for, 107–109, 114; immigrants used for, 109; slaves used for, 107; and union activity, 111, 112–13 Lacey, James D., 49 Lambert, Brooks, 165 Landreth, John, 38 Larson and McGowin Forest Service Company, 244 Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), 281 LeMieux, Frank, 165 Leopold, Aldo, 5 Lincecum, Gideon, 25–26 Lindsey, John, 96 Lindsey Log Wagon, 96 “Loggers’ Dreams,” 190 logging camps, 121–23, 125 logging trains, 98–106, 121, 125–26, 310n35 “log rollings,” 26, 27 Longleaf Alliance, 282 Looney, John, 30 Louisiana Central Lumber Company, 164 Louisiana Pacific Corporation, 256 Lovelace Brothers, 60 Lumber Code Authority, 133, 177, 184–85 lumber industry: antitrust investigations of, 54; changes in, 190–91, 244–48; ­cooperation of with pulp and paper industry, 204–205; cutting practices of, 324n41; decline of, 137–38; and exports, 58; forest management practices of, 153, 160–69, 185–87, 225, 278; labor force of, 108, 115; as migratory, 2; in nineteenth century, 45, 46; resurgence of, 42–44, 183–84, 229; and sustained yield management, 55, 80, 162– 63, 166, 185, 253 Lutcher, Henry J., 47

Jackson, Andrew, 24 Jackson, Jesse, 133 Jackson Lumber Company, 63, 109, 164, 188 James, R. D., 37–38 James River Company, 217, 218, 232, 237 Jay, Andrew, 31, 68 Jennings Naval Stores Company, 81 John Hancock, 232 Johnson, George, 30 Johnson, Rhett, 282 Jones, Calvin, 30 Jones, J. C., 30 Kaul, Hugh, 80, 112 Kaul, John L., 50, 79, 80, 124 Kaul Lumber Company, 3, 50–51, 63, 77, 80, 126; company town of, 123–25; converting waste product into fuel, 91; equipment used by, 97; forest management plans of, 163–65; labor force of, 109, 110; logging trains of, 102, 103, 106; turpentine manufacture by, 82; unionization of, 98, 112–13 Kimberly-­Clark Corporation, 201–202, 231 Kirby Lumber Company, 137 Knights of Labor, 111, 112 Koppers Company, 80, 233 kraft paper, 4, 193–94, 196, 198, 201

M. C. Dixon Lumber Company, 188–89 MacMillan Bloedel, 133, 217–18, 234, 239, 243, 252

356 Index Malbis Plantation Naval Store, 81 Manes, Alex, 74 Mann, William D’Alton, 64–65 maple trees, 9 Marathon South­ern Corporation, 76–77, 234–37, 250 Marsh, George Perkins, 150–51 Masonite, 232 McCaffrey, Joseph E., 214 McCall, E. N., 209 McDonald, T. S., 30 McEwen, George, 30 McGiffert Log Loader, 98, 99 McGowin, Alexander, Jr., 66 McGowin, Alexander, Sr., 66 McGowin, Earl, 226–27; on export of lumber, 58, 67–68; on logging trains, 104; on strikes, 115, 117; on sustainable forestry, 166–67, 169, 190 McGowin, Floyd, Jr., 190 McGowin, J. Greeley, 58, 66, 67, 79, 168, 184–85, 220 McGowin, Joe, 66 McGowin, Julian, 115, 167, 168 McGowin, N. Floyd, 75–77, 79, 80, 115 McGowin, Nicholas Stallworth, 68 McKnight, Sid, 269 McMillan, Ed Leigh, 70, 71–72, 117 McMillan, John, 228–29, 255 McPhaul Turpentine Company, 108 McTaggert, Alexander, 72–73 Mead Corporation, 199, 278 MeadWestvaco, 286 Mendenhall, Thomas, 25, 29, 30–31 metal detectors, 230–31 Miller, George, 71 Miller, John, 71–72 Miller, John R., Sr., 232–33 Miller, T. R., 31, 52, 59–60, 69–71, 111, 112 Mills and Harrison Company, 60 Milner, Caldwell and Flowers Lumber Company, 61, 107 Milner, John T., 107 Mitchell, J. M. “Cap,” 121–22 mitigation banking, 258 Mobile River Sawmill, 233–34

Mohr, Charles, 44–46, 153, 154 Moody, Bill, 269, 276 Moore, E. L., 61 Mordecai, Dick, 134–35, 202, 267–68 Moundville, Ala­bama, 10 Muir, John, 5, 151 mules, 94, 96 muley saws, 88 Nairne, Thomas, 18 National Container Corporation, 132, 199 national parks, 181–82 National Resources Conservation Service, 293 National Wilderness Preservation Sys­ tem, 284 Native Ameri­cans, 1, 10, 15, 17–18, 287 Natural Resources Conservation Service, 263–64 naval stores industry, 2, 35–39, 57, 76, 81–82, 287–88; devastation of forests by, 45, 46, 58, 84, 136–37, 140, 143–45; labor force of, 113–14 Neal, Tom, 71–72 Neal, W. T., 59, 70, 71, 188 Neal Land and Timber Company, 72 Neal Lumbering and Manufacturing Company, 72 Nelson, Arthur W. “Art,” Jr., 206, 207, 213, 215, 216–17, 219 Newport Turpentine and Resin Company, 81 newsprint, 4, 196, 201, 231, 235 Newton, J. O. “Ollie,” 179–80 Nonnemacher, Bob, 119, 127, 128, 218– 19, 221, 229–30, 242, 245–46 North Carolina Pulp and Paper, 250 oak trees, 9, 11, 46, 225, 252; in early twentieth century, 141–44, 147 O.K. Naval Stores Company, 81 Oliver, Chadwick Dearing, 253–54 O’Melia, Virginia, 74–75 oriented strandboard (OSB), 252–53, 256 Owens Naval Stores Company, 81 oxen, 94–96, 97, 101

Index 357 Parker and Lovelace, 60 Parsons and Whittemore, 235 Peagler, Gid, 62 “peckerwood” sawmills, 55, 77, 78, 105, 106, 219–20, 252, 289 Pinchot, Gifford, 149–52, 159, 175–76, 267, 288, 315n6; on conservation, 5, 268 pine, white, 43–44, 48–49 pines, loblolly, 56, 233, 252, 265, 266; in early twentieth century, 141–44, 146 pines, longleaf, 56, 233; in early twentieth century, 141–48; fire as beneficial to, 12, 164, 176–77, 262; reduction of, 265; restoration of, 161, 174, 252, 262– 63, 282, 293 pines, shortleaf, 56, 233, 252; in early twentieth century, 141–44, 146 pines, slash, 252 pines, south­ern, 9, 11; decline of, 80, 271; demand for, 42, 48, 55–56; export of, 56; as major product of lumber industry, 43, 55; manufacture of, 50–51; monopolies in industry of, 52–53; production of in 1920s, 84; regeneration of, 160; as source for pulp, 154–55, 194–96, 289; value of, 49–50 pitch production, 35 pit saws, 28–29 planing mills, 38, 43, 89–90 Plum Creek Timber Company, 257 plywood, 225–26 Pomeroy, L. K., 167, 168, 243 Pomeroy and McGowin Forest Service Company, 3, 188, 244 poplar trees, 46, 141 power loaders, 98 power saws, 119, 122, 127, 190 Prine, Mike, 38 Program for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC), 281 Pruett, Samuel, 30 P & S Naval Stores, 81 pub­lic land sales, 47–49, 51–53 pulp and paper industry, 192–93; and community relations, 213–14; concerns about practices of, 202–204,

223; cooperation of with lumber industry, 204–205; discrimination in, 128, 130–33; emergence of in South, 4, 194–96, 198–99, 201, 203–204, 206–7, 289; fire control by, 213, 214, 216; foresters with, 247–48; forest management practices of, 4, 85–86, 153, 197, 204, 210–13, 216–17, 243, 253; growth of, 231, 235, 237–38, 241–42, 264–65; hardwoods used in, 241; labor force in, 128–30, 134–35; paternalism in, 132; pollution by, 272–73; ringing greater mechanization and efficiency, 126–27; strikes against, 132, 133; studies by, 247; unionization of, 128, 129, 131–34; wood supply for, 220–22, 242–43 Putnam, John, 250 R. G. Peters Lumber Company, 51 Rabon Turpentine Company, 81 railroad companies: forest management practices supported by, 211; promotion of lumber industry by, 103–4, 302n30, 303n34; timber consumed by, 31, 32, 45, 49, 51–52, 56–58, 81, 104–5, 118, 225, 288; timber transported by, 60, 94 railroad logging, 87–88, 91 Ralph Lumber Company, 61–62 Rayonier, 286 Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs), 257 reforestation, 3; of abandoned farms, 85, 144, 182, 242, 264, 289; by lumber companies, 160–62, 164–66; US Forest Service on, 138–39 Regel, 250 Report on the Forests of North America (Sargent), 43–47, 57–58, 175, 318n61 resin production, 35, 38, 83, 84, 113–15 Resource Timber Management, 244 Riverdale Pulp Mill, 241 Roanoke Rapids Manufacturing Company, 196 Robertson, Reuben B., 218, 243 Robinson, George A., 59 Robinson Land and Lumber Company, 59

358 Index Rock Island Paper Mills, 32 Rocky Creek Lumber Company, 103 Rogers, Robert, 30 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 182 Roosevelt, Theodore, 139, 151 Rosasco, Albert, 71 Rosasco, William, 71 Rosasco Brothers Pitch Pine Export Company, 71 Samples Lumber Company, 108 Sargent, Charles S., 104–5; Report on the Forests of North America, 43–47, 57– 58, 175, 318n61 saw filers, 90 sawmills, 3, 28–29, 91; of early settlers, 23–25, 30–32, 35; and large production companies, 55, 92; in nineteenth century, 43; production of, 54–55; on railroad lines, 58, 60–62; as steam powered, 27–28, 38, 62, 88–92, 309n3; in twentieth century, 84–85; wasted product in, 89, 91; as water powered, 2, 28–32, 49, 88; wood supply for, 32, 48, 52 sawyers, 90 Schenck, Carl Alwin, 150–54, 156, 159, 208, 288 scientific resource management, 151 Scotch & Gulf Lumber Company, 230 Scotch Lumber Company, 3, 60, 72–75; company town of, 123; forest management practices of, 187, 278; labor force of, 110; logging camp of, 124, 129; logging crews, 246–47; plywood plant of, 226; transportation of logs by, 98–99 Scott Paper Company, 80, 199, 233–34, 236, 237, 239 Seaboard Lumber Company, 31 Seaboard Manufacturing Company, 63 Seaborn Mound site, 10 Sears, John, 30 segregation, 110, 121, 124–25; in pulp and paper industry, 131–34; in unions, 132–34 selective cutting, 3, 163, 247, 289; by lumber companies, 79–80, 164–65, 188, 261

Shaffer, Simon P., 30 Shay locomotives, 99–101, 102 Sheppard, M. L., 66 Silcox, F. A., 166, 223 Sipsey Wilderness Area, 284, 285 Sizemore, Mary H., 244 Sizemore, William, 244 Sizemore & Sizemore, 244 skidders, 87, 96–97, 127, 310n29 slave labor, 107 Smith, Elijah, 30 Smith, Malcolm, 30 Smith, W. T., 66–67 Smith & Haul, 32 Soil Bank, 263 South­ern Alliance for the Utilization of Biomass, 255 South­ern and Southeast­ern Experiment Stations, 165 South­ern Forest Resource Council, 210 South­ern Hardwood Manufacturers’ Association, 54, 210 South­ern Lumber Company, 164 South­ern Lumber Manufacturers’ Association, 54 South­ern Pine Association, 54, 160, 210 South­ern Pine Lumber Company, 62 South­ern Pulpwood Conservation Association, 204, 210 South­ern States Land and Lumber Company, 59 South­ern Timber Management Service, 244 Southland Mill, 196 “Speeder” loaders, 190 Spurr, Stephen, 8 Srygley, George Wash­ing­ton, 27 St. Joe Paper Company, 132, 237 St. Regis Paper Company, 80, 199, 211, 232, 233, 235–36, 238 Stabler, F. E. “Buck,” 119, 187, 227, 231–32 state parks, 181 steamboats, 33–34 Stephenson, Henry, 108 Stewards for Family Farms, Forests, and Ranches, 275–76 Stimpson, Fred, 275

Index 359 streamside management zones, 228–29, 276–79, 291 Stuart, John, 20 Sullivan, Daniel, 49, 52, 64 Sullivan, Martin, 64 Sullivan, W. L., 161–62, 165 Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI), 280, 281, 291–92 sustained yield management, 55, 80, 162– 63, 166, 185, 253 sweetgum, 9 T. R. Miller Mill Company, 3, 31, 59, 63, 68–72, 257–58, 265; company store of, 113; forest management practices of, 165–66, 188; labor force of, 115; logging trains of, 103; naval stores operation of, 82; strike at, 112, 117; transportation by, 94, 95; union organization at, 117; update of mills of, 225; working with pulp and paper industry, 227, 232–33 Talladega National Forest, 181–83 tar production, 35, 37, 39 taxation, 76–77, 148, 152, 213, 229, 288 Taylor, Frederick Winslow, 97 Tennessee Paper Company, 131 Thompson, Emmett, 252 Thompson Brothers Company, 164 timber bonds, 77 Timber Investment Management Organizations (TIMO s), 257 timber speculation, 48–51, 53 Toller, Brooks, 171 “tractor mills,” 77 tractors, 95, 105, 190 TREASURE Forest, 269–70 tree farms, 208–9 tree genetics, 250 tree-­length logging, 190, 218, 219–20, 244–45, 289–90 tree-­ring analy­sis, 9 trucks, 95, 105, 190 tupelo trees, 145–47 Turkey Creek Turpentine Company, 81 turpentine production, 35–39, 81–82, 116; devastation of forests by, 46, 82, 83, 84,

140, 143, 145, 147, 148; labor force in, 108, 113–15 Tuskegee National Forest, 183 Union Bag, 131, 232 Union Camp Corporation, 202, 211, 241, 252, 325n52, 325n70; expansion of, 237, 239; restoration of cutover lands by, 217, 267–68; and tree genetics, 250; wood dealers for, 222 United Brotherhood of Paper Workers, 131 United Fruit Company, 239 United Paper Workers International, 132–33 Urania Lumber Company, 163, 164; forest management practices of, 152, 153, 160–61, 165, 169 US Forest Service, 332n30; forest management plans of, 163; on reforestation, 138–39; regions defined by, 304n53; on selective cutting, 163; surveys by, 139– 48, 194, 202, 203, 207, 242; on timber growth, 270–71 Vandegrift, Christopher, 27 Vanderbilt, George W., 159 Vredenburgh, Peter, 60 Vredenburgh Lumber Company, 233 Vredenburgh Sawmill Company, 60, 63, 164 W. B. Franklin Company, 60 W. E. Belcher Lumber Company, 61, 125, 240–41 W. G. Mitchell Lumber Company, 60 W. M. Carney Mill Company, 58–59 W. T. Smith Lumber Company, 3, 53, 57, 58, 61, 63, 66–68, 75–76; company stores of, 113; equipment used by, 97, 98, 219; forest management practices of, 166–69, 185, 225; labor force of, 90, 115; lands sold by as farm land, 78; logging camps of, 122; logging trains of, 102, 103–4, 105; transportation used by, 101, 189–90; unionization of, 115, 117 Wackerman, A. E., 153

360 Index Wadsworth, W. W., 31 wagons, 95–96 Wakefield, R. C., 221, 227–28 Wakeley, Philip C., 162, 318n66 Wallace, George, 234, 243 walnut trees, 46 Warner, Herb “H. D.,” 200, 236 Warner, Jack, 236 Warner, Jonathan “Jon” Westervelt, Jr., 251 Warner, Mildred Westervelt, 200–201, 236 water pollution, 276–77 water transportation, 92–94, 95 Watson, Hilton, 226–27 Watts, Lyle F., 205–6 Wausau-­South­ern, 76–77 Weeks Act, 158 Welch, W., 32 Westervelt, Herbert E., 199–201 Westervelt Company, 258 Weyerhaeuser, Frederick, 50 Weyerhaeuser Corporation, 225, 238, 252, 257

Weyerhaeuser Timber Company, 208 Wheeler, Philip, 210 whipsaws, 28–29, 88 White, Zebulon, 210 White Citizens’ Council, 132 wilderness preservation, 284–85 Wildlife Management Areas (WMAs), 275 William B. Bankhead National Forest, 181–82 willow trees, 45 Winter, John C., 32 wood chips, 218–20 wood pellets, 255–56, 330n98 Yellow Pine Manufacturers’ Association, 54 Yellow Pine Paper Mill, 195 yellow pines. See pines, south­ern Young, Vertrees, 205 Zimmerman, Joseph, 72 Zobel, Bruce, 250