APPALACHIAN COMEBACK

M. A. MATTOON.

Like a strong backbone, the Appalachians extend southward from New England. They are America's oldest mountains, the home of sturdy people, the sites of some of the newer national forests. How the forests and the people are joined for mutual benefit is the theme of this article.

People first saw the forests in the early days when Britain, Holland, France, and Spain were sending colonists to our eastern seaboard, and intrepid men like Spottswood, Boone, and Sevier, lured by tales of opportunities in the great valley beyond the mountains, scaled the Blue Ridge and beheld range after range, hills and peaks, as far as eye could see. It was the domain of the Cherokee, the Seneca, the Catawba. In the blue haze, the forest stretched unbroken, chiefly hardwood, with great expanses of oak, chestnut, yellow-poplar, cherry, beech, maple, ash, white pine, hemlock, and, at higher elevations, spruce, and fir.

The forests were first used by the men who pushed on through the mountains and into the valley of the Ohio. As the little bands threaded the wilderness trails, some saw their opportunity en route and stayed behind. They made clearings in the rich bottom lands at the forks of streams and reared their families there. Later new homesteads were carved from the wilderness further "up the creek." The population grew, and people tended land, turned out stock, and hunted. Villages grew into towns that were built with wood from the forest. The great poplars, pines, and oaks within easy reach Of mountain watercourses were rafted to distant sawmills for use by the growing Nation outside this fastness.

The big forest still stood in its silent grandeur, however; so far, there had been only a nibbling at its edges or a little hole here and there cleared for pasture or a deadening in which to grow corn for the family at the head of a creek. It was an immensely rich timber world that contained the finest hardwood that ever stood; a country of endless beauty, one in which its isolated folk passed on to their descendants of today words and songs little changed from those of Elizabethan England.

During and after the Civil War, the railroads began to string the little villages together. Railroads crept up the valleys slowly in search of the almost unlimited supplies of coal. Oil brought them into the Pennsylvania highlands. As the little balloon-stacked engines rocked over the slender rails, the whistle warned of approaching doom. With assured rail shipment to the outside, where an expanding Nation demanded and got what it needed, the stage was set for the coming of the big sawmills into the mountains. They came, slowly at first, and then with logging railroads of their own, like locusts. Handsome timber in increasing amounts fell to the ax, but there always seemed to be more. Sawmill towns sprang up in their temporary ugliness, thrived, and vanished as the cutting moved on. Fire raged on the heels of loggers, and devastation over large areas seemed certain. When Europe burst into the horror of warfare in 1914, demands on the forest mounted and reconstruction saw no let-up. So the large sawmills, accompanied by many little sawmills, marched across the face of the remaining Appalachian wilderness, and its big timber disappeared. Today, after the Second World War, a host of little mills is picking up the scraps and eating into thrifty young timber that will be needed in the future.

And the people in this mountain country? Little farms are strung along the stream bottoms and at the heads of the creeks. But the country has changed and young folk like to hear tell of the days that were. Most recognize that an enormous forest restoration task is ahead. Not so many realize that it has already been started.

SHORTLY AFTER THE TURN of the century, a few far-seeing men in New England and the South noticed the disappearing forests, the damage to soil and young timber from fire, the effect on stream flow and the purity of water supplies. They saw that those things were not good. After years of work with an apathetic public, success crowned their efforts, and in 1911 the Congress enacted legislation whereby it became possible for the Federal Government to purchase areas of wild lands on the headwaters of the navigable rivers, and the chain of national forests in the Appalachians was born.

Purchase of land has been going on through the years until now there are about 6 million acres in public ownership under well-organized protection against fire, and managed so that the remaining resources can be conserved, improved, and made to serve the needs of local people in greater abundance.

This, of course, cannot be done in completeness overnight. It is a longtime task that carries over several generations, because recovery of the damaged soil and the regrowth of the forest takes time. But there is much that skilled management can do to guide and aid nature in the restoration process, and even in its depleted condition the forest can contribute useful products by the removal of trees which will improve growing conditions for those left to comprise the new forest. The guiding policy in the management of the timber resource on these national forests, then, is one of improvement, of rebuilding the growing stock, of attaining a maximum production from the soil through wise use.

When the white man first came to this country, the forest was in virgin condition. Decay and mortality in old trees offset growth. Immense wealth was stored in the old timber, but the forest produced little. A productive forest is a growing forest and one in which the trees should be used as they reach maturity. Now that the country is settled and demands for wood increase, the new forest must become a wood-producing factory instead of the immense storehouse of timber first seen by the pioneers.

Forests are restored by growth. If depletion is to be gradually changed to full production, the drain upon the forest must be less than growth. In this process the national forest ranger is guided by the general concept that the trees that offer the best chance for rapid growth and high value shall be allowed to develop fully by removing those that are defective, of poor form, or with other undesirable qualities.

Many species of trees grow in the Appalachian national forests, and it is interesting to trace the uses into which some of them are processed.

The larger pines and hemlocks are turned into lumber that finds its way into farm-building construction and repair nearby. Tops and small trees go into pulpwood. Most of the chestnut is cut into cordwood and trucked to nearby mills that produce tanning extract; the spent chips are made into paper. Hemlock and chestnut oak bark is also a tanning agent. Locust is made into fence posts and some is turned into insulator pins for telephone and telegraph lines. Choice ash goes into ball bats, snow shoes, tennis rackets, and tool handles. The oaks are widely used for flooring, general construction, and furniture. Especially choice logs of the yellow-poplar, oak, beech, birch, and maple are turned for veneer. Dimension stock in great variety is made from most hardwoods. The chief outlet for spruce and fir is in pulpwood.

The raw materials for some of these products are sometimes shipped long distances, but usually the processing plants are within easy trucking distance of the forest by reason of good highways and the development of the forest road system. Many local industries derive a large part of their raw materials from the forests and, by and large, it is the people who live within them or nearby who furnish these raw materials.