Minerals and grazing were not the only mountain resources, of course. Everywhere above 5,000 feet grew the conifer forests, and with the valley lands below largely free of usable softwood, a natural market existed. The principal problem was transportation. Trees were available in the mountains almost for the asking, but getting them to market was a difficult proposition. The most accessible timber lands in the future parks' region were on the lower portions of the divide between the Kings and Kaweah rivers. Here, on rolling terrain, grew extensive forests of ponderosa pine. A crude mill may have been operating near the present town of Miramonte, west of Grant Grove, as early as 1856. [27] In 1864, as we have noted, the California Geological Survey found Thomas' Mill operating at Mill Flat Meadow, a site immediately west of Grant Grove that is today flooded by Sequoia Lake. By the late 1860s the Hubbs and Wetherbee Mill was operating on the North Fork of the Tule, in the mountains above Porterville, where again it was possible to get a wagon road into the mountains with only reasonable difficulty. In the Kaweah drainage, where the mountains rose more steeply, not until completion of the Mineral King wagon road did serious logging attempts began. Several small mills had served the mines before the road opened, but 1879 witnessed not only a renewed mining rush but also a rush to appropriate timber lands suddenly made valuable by the construction of the road.

Initially, the impact of these early sawmills on the landscape was quite limited—a natural result of the size of the trees involved and the existing low level of technology. But soon, with rapidly improving steam equipment, the pace of destruction accelerated. In 1874, Hyde's Mill, operating on Redwood Mountain near the western boundary of modern Kings Canyon National Park, managed to cut 2,000,000 board feet, much of it sequoia. Still, the cutover zones which surrounded the noisy mills were no more than localized blemishes on the almost endless forest that grew along the western slope of the southern Sierra. The pace of cutting was still held back by the cost of hauling lumber down from the mountains by wagon. It was often cheaper for valley residents to buy lumber shipped by railroad from farther north. However, because they hated the railroad, with its near monopoly on transportation, valley residents took pride in their local mills, and encouraged the development of additional mountain enterprises. The U.S. Congress also wished to encourage the western lumber industry. The Timber and Stone Act passed in 1878, allowed any citizen to purchase 160 acres of timber land from the government for $2.50 per acre, and many locals took advantage of its generous provisions.