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The City of DuBois
Chapter 1
Page 012
Page 12 LOCATION OF DUBOIS
feet from the stump (about 3 feet above the ground) to the first
limbs, and
having a length of twenty-five to forty feet of top above the limbs.
These pine trees would measure from eighteen inches to six feet in
diameter at the stump; mostly from twenty inches to forty-eight
inches.
Interspersed with the pine was a large growth of hemlock, ranging
one hundred
feet to the top, and some of the trees being four or five feet in
diameter, as
well as oak, ash, maple, cherry, poplar, cucumber, beech and a large
number of
other varieties of woods. The timber stood so thick that the sun did
not
penetrate to the ground at high noon in mid-summer.
In Brady Township but two bare spots were found, viz: the Big Beaver
Meadow, just east of Liberty Boulevard, and the small Beaver Meadow
above Shaft
Number 1.
The pine timber on an average would cut from twenty thousand feet to
thirty thousand feet per acre, and the hemlock cut fifteen thousand
feet to
twenty-five thousand feet per acre, besides the hardwoods One
lumberman claimed
that some acres of the white pine produced as much as one hundred
thousand feet
per acre. (James Mitchell, Rafting on the Susquehanna.)
Records were kept of the quantity of white pine timber cut from
several
acres on the Blanchard Lumber operation on Anderson Creek, showing
the white
pine scaled 115,000 feet per acre. (See letter of George C. Kirk in
Appendix.)
In less than a century and a quarter after this Indian purchase,
this
amazing growth of timber had passed into history, and the people
residing on
the lands denuded of this forest are now shipping their supplies of
lumber from
other states and bringing it largely across the continent from the
Pacific
Coast, where the same destructive methods of lumbering are being
carried on, as
was practiced in Pennsylvania.
It is estimated that probably thirty per cent. of this timber was
cut and
burned in log heaps by the pioneers, to clear the land for
agricultural
purposes. A large amount of the hardwoods and hemlock was destroyed
when the
white pine was cut, and a great deal of hemlock was destroyed by
cutting it for
the bark for tanning purposes. On traveling along the Buffalo,
Rochester &
Pittsburgh Railroad from Rockton to Curwensville, one can see the
waste of
timber by the large quantities of trees left lying on the ground to
rot. If
this is a fair sample of the destruction prevailing throughout the
territory,
it is probable that more than thirty per cent. of the timber was
wasted and
left lying in the woods. During the period of making of square
timber at least
ten per cent. of the white pine, hemlock, and oak floated to market
through the
creeks and rivers of the state was destroyed by hewing the timbers
for rafting
purposes. This part of the lumber was the choice timber, as it was
taken off of
the outer part of the tree.
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