North Cascades

MARKETING THE WILDERNESS: DEVELOPMENT OF COMMERCIAL ENTERPRISES

TIMBER RESOURCES: LOGGING

Overview

Timber was recognized at an early date as a valuable resource of the North Cascades. For more than eighty years trees were cut from the forests on both sides of the divide and used in a multitude of ways. But several serious obstacles prevented the widespread exploitation of timber resources in these mountains. Logging never developed into a major industry in today's park and consequently did not have the tremendous economic impact that it has had elsewhere in the Pacific Northwest.

The story of logging in the North Cascades begins far from the present-day boundaries of protected parkland. Dense timber along the shores of Puget Sound was closer to markets, easily accessible, and thus was the first to fall. Enterprising settlers constructed sawmills along the coast, producing much-needed lumber for a California market. By the early 1860s, mills along the waterways of Puget Sound had produced more than 70 million board feet of lumber. [45]

The search for accessible timber stands continued as the lumber industry expanded in the Pacific Northwest and throughout the country. Lumbermen examined navigable waterways, rivers, and sloughs, and felled the marketable timber along their banks. Teams of oxen and horses provided the power to move logs to the shore. The gargantuan old-growth timber was maneuvered down greased skid roads to the water, where the logs were rafted and floated downriver to sawmills. Where the terrain was uncomfortably steep, chutes and flumes were constructed to get the wood out for processing.

Logging on the eastern slope of the North Cascades would not occur until the land became open to settlement in the late 1880s. As early as the 1870s, however, the business of cutting timber was underway along the Skagit River. Once the natural log jams along the lower Skagit were cleared in the late 1870s, logging activity quickly expanded upstream. No longer limited to the shores of Puget Sound, sawmills began to appear inland, along the river. By 1878 the first sawmill in Skagit County had been built. Logging camps were growing in number and a decade later the Skagit News reported sixteen logging camps along the Skagit River, employing 400 men and producing 80 million feet of lumber a year. [46] While some of these camps were temporary, lasting only as long as the timber stand, others developed into small communities and towns centered around a shingle or sawmill. [47]

Harvesting timber was no easy task in the North Cascades. Early loggers armed only with axes felled trees and hauled the wood to water by ox team. Axes gave way to crosscut saws, unwieldy tools with two rows of cutting teeth and designed for use by two people. [48] Improvements in transportation escalated the growth of the commercial logging industry. Steam power replaced the log-hauling animal teams in the 1880s. The newly developed donkey engine, as it was called, did the work of many oxen and horses in bringing the valuable northwest forests to market. [49] The completion of a transcontinental railroad in 1883, the Northern Pacific, allowed spur rail lines to penetrate some of the more accessible forests, guaranteeing that the logged timber would reach a market quickly and efficiently. Shortly after the turn of the twentieth century, the development of the high-lead logging system (a method of dragging logs with one end suspended from a high cable attached to a lead or spar tree) provided a more efficient means of removing timber. [50] Gasoline-powered donkeys were introduced in the 1920s. and the 1930s brought in the gasoline truck, still in use today. [51]

Commercial logging is not permitted within the boundaries of North Cascades National Park. In the Stehekin valley, within Lake Chelan National Recreation Area, the limited cutting of trees by residents for firewood is allowed.