Research, Promotion and Conservation Are Aims of California Redwood Association

,THE California Redwood Associa- I tion, as an incorporated entity, was six years old when the CALIFORNIA LUMBER MERCHANT was born in 7922. The magazine has watched and reported as the six-year-old changed and matured over the forty vears since.

The Association was an- outgrowth of an informal grouping of redwood mills to build and exhibit a redwood home at the l915 Panama-Pacific International in San Francisco. Redwood was also well represented at the Chicago World's' Fair in 1893; there was a trade association of redwood mills at least as far back as 1871. By then lumbermen had been harvesting the redwood forests for almost a halfcentury.

It was not until the Twentieth Century that the redwood mills began to tnink seriously of managed forests and tree farming to insure a redwood harvest perpetually. When the CALIFORNIA LUMBER MERCHANT first appeared in 1922, the industry was reforesting by planting seedlings on logged-over land. This was a costly process, with rather meager results. Nearly a quarter of a million dollars was expended on this experiment.

In the next decade. however. tractor logging replaced the destructive steam logging with heavy yarders and skidders. Tractor logging made selective harvesting feasible.

Selective Harvesting

With selective harvesting, redwood foresters can encourage natural forestation from residual trees. The residual trees provide seed for new trees and grow at an accelerated pace. Sub-marginal trees attain harvest size rapidly as the forests are selec,tively thinned. This type of selective harvest, combined with re-seeding or planting seedlings in the few instances that this seems to be the only means of maintaining land as producing forest, is now the accepted reforestation method of Redwood Region foresters. It promises to keep the redwood forests producing fine lumber forever.

The

CALIFORNIA

Lumber

MERCHANT has seen change and growth in the promotion methods of the California Redwood Association as well as in forestry. During the 1920's the emphasis was on yard grades. It was in these years that CRA entered into an irnposing advertising campaign in shelter and architectural magazines, using proportionately more space advertising than in other periods.

In the thirties the CRA became the redwood lumber code agency under the famed Blue Eagle of NRA. An intensive promotion campaign for structural redwood led to the use of redwood for highway bridges and other engineering uses. Since these were select all-heart timbers. thev are much in demand today by architects and landscape architects. The end of the decade saw a return to advertising to the home market.

The forties, of course, saw redwood's main market becoming the armed services. The use of redwood as cushioning underdecks for the Navy's mighty aircraft carriers was one of the outstanding contributions of redwood to the war effort.

Today's Job

The war was followed by the sellers' market, which, as it slackened, led to a re-evaluation of the California Redrn'ood Association's promotion function.

As its member mills view the Association job now, it is to perform those research, promotional, and conseryation functions which are more efficiently done as a group than individually. In recent years, the Association has concentrated on the specifier, the architect or builder, in its promotion efforts.

For a short period, the CRA took some of the emphasis off oromotion to specifiers in order to devbte effort to the education of redwood wholesalers and retailers. A series of wholesalers' conferences were held in various oarts of the United States, at which the Association's functions were explained, and wholesalers were urged to take advantage of CRA services.

The education program for wholesalers and retailers continues, through sales bulletins and the CRA-sponsored correspondence course,

LUMBER TECHNOLOGY FOR THE SALESMEN; but once more the Association is spending most of its effort on speclhefs.

Ifowever, product research and market research continue, as the CRA works to find new uses for redwood. new methods of promoting and selling redwood, and new redwood market areas.

Long Range View

The Association is taking a longer range view of its functions, also, working with its member mills to prepare broad promotion programs for periods greater than the next year.

Thus, the Promotion, Research and Conservation Divisions of the Califor- nia Redwood Association, working with their counterparts in the milli making up the Association, work toward a more constant market for a never-ending supply of fine redwood lumber from perpetual forests.

A Pound of lUlillwork qnd n Quqrt of fYlilk Pleqse!

Lee Fielden, owner of Lee's Grocery, 1434 Main Street, Rohnerville, California, is now stocking a line of plumbing and builders hardware and he expects to soon add millwork and building materials to his "you name it, we've got it" operation. Open seven days a week, Lee's Grocery is rapidly becoming headquarters for the local hungry do-it-yourselfers.