The great southern timber forests

When early colonists landed in what would one day become our United States of America they would have seen something almost unbelievable along the shores. They would have seen acre upon acre of trees of many varieties, stands that grew ever denser and larger as they later ventured westward into our beautiful mountains. The trees in our Cumberland Plateau were dense and majestic, and included poplar, walnut, oak and chestnut that towered over the landscape.

By the late 1800’s harvesting these trees became a major industry. These natural resources would be exploited for fuel, building material, ship timber and lumber for export.

The work was hard and dangerous and done by hand. The chief tool was the heavy European felling ax, unimproved until the 18th century. Woodsmen sawed the felled tress on the spot, then dragged the logs with draft animals to rail locations or floated them downstream to a strategically located sawmill. They worked in muddy and grueling conditions, on steep mountain slopes.

The steep mountain terrain and the lack of roads created a challenge that was frequently solved through the use of streams and rivers for transporting long distances. One of the strategies for floating logs downstream involved construction of a splash dam. These dams were usually made using logs, rock and earth and would be located to allow a large body of water to accumulate on the upstream side. In the structure of the dam would be a chute that could be closed to allow water to accumulate, and once this artificial lake was filled with logs could be opened to allow a flood of logs to wash downstream. A significant part of the construction actually took place downstream to remove any obstacles that might create a logjam.

The book Meet Virginias Baby, A Pictorial History of Dickenson County, includes an extensive chapter on the logging industry that began in that county around 1894. Page 119-20 of this wonderful book contains a description of a splash dam built by the Yellow Poplar Lumber Company in 1910 that they claimed was the first of its kind in the world because of its size. “When the dam is filled, water backs up to the junction of Pound River with Russell fork 1,600 feet, up both the streams about one mile, and the Bart’s Lick about 2,000 feet.”

Over a little over six months they put into the dam an estimated 40,000,000 feet of poplar logs, cut from 20,000 acres. To get the timber to the splash dam “they constructed twenty-five miles of steam tram and about nine to ten miles of mule tram-narrow gage line equipped with wooden rails for hauling logs on trucks with mules…”. When this great flood of logs was released it is described that it “shook the hills”.

Wise County companies were equally as busy with this highly profitable industry. For example, the sesquicentennial publication Life in the Coal Camps of Wise County contains information about the McCorkle Lumber Corporation, a company that was logging as early as 1897 in the Stonega area and employed around 100 workers. For the transport of logs they used a dummy line that they ran from the areas they were logging down to a railroad spur. In fact, the coal industry and the lumber industry began their harvesting of our mountain resources side-by-side, with the railroad serving as vital transportation for export outside the area.

It’s hard to imagine a landscape covered in trees that rivaled the majestic redwoods in their size and girth. Long gone now, except for a few isolated protected areas. Now the demands from companies such as builders, seeking wood for construction, and manufacturers, purchasing wood for furniture-making, has spawned the business of tree farms. These are usually fast-growing varieties that are harvested exclusively for commercial use.

But we still see vast local mountains and hillside areas being harvested. The old growth trees are gone but many forests now have poplar and other varieties of a size that can be profitable. What is left behind is barren earth, with only a few scrawny sprouts remaining and the ground littered with deadfall and limbs. Cut across the face of these hillsides will be the scars from modern vehicles that were used for hauling the logs away. Each of our counties has evidence of these modern logging operations, harking back to over 100 years ago when the virgin timber was removed. My hope is that one day these new scars will be improved with the addition of seedlings, planted to spawn a new generation of beautiful trees.

Reference credit goes to the Diamond Jubilee publication Meet Virginia’s Baby, Chapter 9, written by Hampton Osborne, and to the Sesquicentennial publication Life in the Coal Camps of Wise County, copyright 2006, Lonesome Pine Office on Youth.