So many large and valuable trees of so many varieties can be found nowhere else. A Douglas fir growing within the watershed of the Columbia is twelve feet and seven inches in diameter. A single stick 220 feet long and 39 inches in diameter at its base has been cut for a flagpole in Clatsop county. A spruce twenty feet in diameter has been measured. Such immense types are rare, yet in a day's tramp through the Columbia forests one may see many trees upwards of eight feet in diameter. One acre in the Cowlitz river watershed is said to bear twenty-two trees, each eight feet or more at its base. Though no exact measurements can be cited, it is likely that upon different single acres 400,000 feet, board measure, of standing timber may be found. And back among the Cascades, upon one forty-acre tract, are 9,000,000 feet—enough to build a town. Manufactured, this body of timber would be worth $135,000, of which about $100,000 would be paid to labor.
A Carpet of Firs; 300,000 feet, cut on one acre in a Columbia forest.
Along the Columbia you will hear shrill signals of the straining engines that haul these gigantic trees to the rafting grounds. Up and down the broad river ply steamboats trailing huge log-rafts to the mills. Each year the logging railroads push farther back among the mountains, to bring forth lumber for Australia, the Orient, South America, Europe and Africa. Many of our own states, which a few years ago boasted "inexhaustible" forests, now draw from this supply.
Winter in the forest. Mount Hood seen from Government Camp road. Twenty feet of snow.
Since 1905 Washington has been the leading lumber-producing state of the Union, and Oregon has advanced, in one year, from ninth to fourth place. The 1910 production of lumber in these states was 6,182,125,000 feet, or 15.4 per cent. of the total output of the United States. The same states, it is estimated, have 936,800,000,000 feet of standing merchantable timber, or a third of the country's total.
Rangers' Pony Trail in forest of Douglas and Silver Firs.
This is the heritage which the centuries of forest life have bequeathed. Only the usufruct of it is rightfully ours. Even as legal owners, we are nevertheless but trustees of that which was here before the coming of our race, and which should be here in great quantity when our trails have led beyond the range. Our duty is plain. Let us uphold every effort to give meaning and power to the civil laws which say: "Thou shalt not burn;" to the moral laws which say: "Thou shalt not waste." Let us understand and support that spirit of conservation which demands for coming generations the fullest measure of the riches we enjoy. For although the region of the Columbia is the home of the greatest trees, centuries must pass ere the seedlings of to-day will stand matured.