\(/hat lts Mightv Timber Stand Means to Future California

By Jack Dionne

I can remember with what amazement plgnty of laymsn-4nd lots of lumbermen as well-listened to me years ago when in almost innumerable public addresses in all parts of the State I called the attention of the people of California- to its forest resources. "This isn't rightfully 'The Golden State' as it is so frequently called," I used to tell them, "because the forests of California have already produced far more wealth than have all the gold mines; and while the gold mines are practically gone, the forests are practically intact."

This wouldn't be a bad time to start recalling that fact to our people. For the time is again at hand when the forests of the state are certain to play a most prominent part in the drama of renewed and restored prosperity. Only one state in the Union, Oregon, has more standing virgin timber than California. And the timber of 'Oregon is being manufa,ctured at a much faster rate than is the timber of California., The day will come when California will be able to claim the foremost place in virgin forest resources, because the very nature of the industry ordains that Oregon shall ,continue to manufacture its native timber, principally Douglas Fir, at a much faster rate than California will cut its Pine and*Redwood.

With the coming of the approaching tide of national prosperity, the California forest products will be subjected to a much stronger demand from the rest of the country than has ever been the case in the past. Most of the forests of California are composed of specialty woods. Sugar Pine, California White Pine, and Redwood, are all specialty woods. While the l'ir forests of the Northwest are used chiefly for general building materials, big timbers, construction lumber of all sizes and ,characters. and for the ordinary building items, the California native woods are geneqally used for more special purposes. We do not make timbers, heavy dimension, or even ordinary construction items as a rule, from any of the major species that compose the great forests of the rJ",:. * wood, here and ,elsewhere. It has marvelous rot-resisting qualities, and is in great demand where su,ch characteristics are demanded. Tanks of every sort, water towers and water ,cooling devices, casket and coffin making, trough building, outside trim to be exposed to the weather, inside trim where variety and ,color is desired, window sash, tubs and other receptacles that must be water-resisting, stadium seats, grandstands and bleachers, billboards and signs, concrete forms, septic tanks, barns, poultry houses, green' houses, fences, gates, irrigation structures, silos, garde4 furniture, pergolas, mudsills, siding, sheathing, shingleq, and hundreds of uses where ordinary softwoods would not answer the purpose because of their lesser resistance to rot and wet. One of the most important growing uses for structual grade Redwood is for highway bridges. Comparable in its characteristics and uses to Red Cypress, Redwood comes every day into greater demand throughout the country.

That is why we import into California from Washington and Oregon great quantities of timbers, planks, boards, lath, etc., made of Douglas Fir (or C)regon Pine as it is commonly called in California) to use for our general construction work: while much of our California Redwood and Pine is shipped beyond the borders of the State. We use these woods largely as specialties in California, just as they do elsEwhere. Our ordinary building material in California is therefore Douglas Fir from the North, while our own California woods are scattered all over the nation and the world to be used for more specialized purposes.

Sugar Pine is a magnificent species of softwood. The texture is very fine, the grain very soft, and the wood lends itself to all of the same purposes that made the old Northern White Pine famous for the past one hundred years; and Sugar Pine has the advantage of being much larger in size than Northern White Pine and therefore capable of producing a much greater percentage of wide boards and planks for speclalty purposes. For pattern stock it has no equal; and innumerable uses to whi'ch a soft, pliable, workable, resinless white pine can be put, furnish a continually widening market for this mighty California tree. And Sugar Pine, like Redwood, grows only in California, practically speaking. A few million over the line to the North, but not enough to mention. *{.*

California's biggest stand of timber is Western Yellow Pine, well known the world over for generations as "California White" Pine. This is a soft, light, wonderfully useful wood; has more uses by far than any of the other California woods. They make it into trim, sash, doors, and a thousand other things, and they ship it all over the countt''

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The best figures available show that California has today approximately:

75 Billion feet of California White Pine.

30 Billion feet of Sugar Pine.

65 Billion feet of Redwood.

36 Billion feet of Douglas Fir.

5O Billion feet of White Fir.

14 Billion feet of Miscellaneous woods.

Total, about 27O Billion feet of virgin timber.

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* * California has only two assets comparable in value to used almost entirely as a premium her timber wealth, narnely, her citizenship and her sun- shine. But no other physical asset is to be compared with her timber. And no other physical thing will contribute more largely to her future greatness. It would be an optimist indeed who would try to convey with plain and unadorned figures what this vast stand of highly desirable timber means to this state in the future. At the present rate of manufacture that timber would last many generations. But even figured at the accelerated rate at which it will naturally be cut as building comes back, and other lumber supplies vanish, it is safe to say that there is one hundred years of maximum lumber manufacture ahead for California.