The Unexploited West / A Compilation of all of the authentic information available at the present time as to the Natural Resources of the Unexploited Regions of Northern Canada

by Ernest J. Chambers

Peace River Section.

As to the timber resources of the western or Peace river division of the section under review, Doctor G. M. Dawson, before the Senate committee of 1888, after describing the prairie country, showed that the remainder of the surface was generally occupied by second-growth forest, occasionally dense, but more often composed of aspen, birch and cottonwood, with a greater or less proportion of coniferous trees. Some patches of the original forest, he said, remained, however, particularly in the river valleys, and were composed of much larger trees, chiefly coniferous, among which the spruce was most abundant. Handsome groves of old and large cottonwoods were also to be found in some of the valleys. Where the soil became locally sandy and poor, and more particularly in some of the more elevated parts of the high ridges above described, a thick growth of scrub pine and spruce, in which the individual trees were small, was found, and in swamp regions the tamarack was not wanting, and grew generally intermixed with the spruce.

East of Smoky river, and southward toward the Athabaska, the prairie country was quite insignificant in extent, the region being characterized by second growth forest, which was only beginning to struggle up.

Whatever theory be adopted, and may have been advanced to account for the wide prairies of the western portions of America further to the south, the origin of the prairies of Peace river was sufficiently obvious, Doctor Dawson thought. There could be no doubt that they had been produced and were maintained by fires. The country was naturally a wooded one, and where fires had not run for a few years, young trees began rapidly to spring up. The fires were, of course, ultimately attributable to human agency, and it was probable that before the country was inhabited by the Indians it was everywhere densely forest-clad. That the date of the origin of the chief prairie tracts now found is remote, was clearly evidenced by their present appearance, and more particularly by the fact that they were everywhere scored and rutted with old buffalo tracks, while every suitable locality was pitted with saucer shaped “buffalo wallows.”

The 23rd Base Line between Townships 88 and 89, Range 14,
West of the 6th Meridian.

In its primitive state the surface was probably covered with a dense heavy growth of coniferous trees, principally the spruce (Picea Engelmanni and P. alba), but with scrub pine (Pinus contorta) in some localities, and interspersed with aspen and cottonwood. These forests having been destroyed by fire, a second growth, chiefly of aspen, but with much birch in some places, and almost everywhere a certain proportion of coniferous trees—chiefly spruce—had taken its place. The aspen being a short-lived tree, while the spruce reached a great age and size, the natural course of events, if undisturbed, would lead to the re-establishment of the old spruce forests.

Mr. Charles Mair (“Through the Mackenzie Basin”, p. 91), estimates the prairie areas of upper Peace river at about half a million acres, “with much country in addition, which resembles Dauphin district in Manitoba, covered with willows and the like, which, if they can be pulled out by horse power, as is done there, will not be very expensive to clear.”

Mr. Mair notes a wide and beautiful table-like prairie, begirt with aspens, at Peace point.

Mr. Fred S. Lawrence explained to the Senate committee of 1907 that in the valley of Peace river, the bottoms of the river, the islands—and there are large islands in the river—and the points, are largely covered with a heavy growth of spruce, which grows to a large size. The largest he had ever measured was four feet four inches in diameter. A tree of that kind would carry its trunk well up, clear of branches for forty or fifty feet. Of course that is an unusual size, but timber three feet in diameter is common on the hills, and in the lower part of the bottoms. There is no oak, but there are spruce, birch and poplar. The poplars grow to a large size. The cottonwood often grows to four feet in diameter, and the poplar grows to a diameter of two feet.