First Forests

Land speculation, initiated by northern mining industrialists and timber barons, escalated to new heights in the Southern Appalachians after the Civil War. By the early 1870s, politicians, businessmen, and prominent journalists were promoting the mountain region as a New South Mecca, encouraging northern capitalists to exploit the mountains remaining mineral and timber reserves. Acquisitions by these capitalistsincluded land held previously for speculation, tax-delinquent properties, and mountain lands that local owners believed too hilly to cultivate. These latter properties were generally acquired by skilled land agents, who convinced owners to sell their unused farmland for as little as a dollar per acre, or in few cases, a single hog rifle or shotgun (Eller 1982).

By the mid-1880s, after railroad lines had fully penetrated the mountain interior, much of the southern Appalachians had become the domain of a dozen or so large timber companies, owned almost exclusively by northern or foreign investors. Backed by teams of sawyers, locomotives, railroad lines, and steam-powered sawmills, these industrial loggers soon began removing the biggest and oldest trees from the mountain forests. Virtually no stand of timber was off-limits, including trees old enough to have witnessed the passing of Hernando de Soto in 1540. The timber boom that resulted lasted more than40 years, leaving a legacy of environmental change that is still visible today (Davis 2000).

With the influx of timber and mining companies in the region, speculation on mountain lands affected land pricesand forced many to pay off property taxes that in some communities had gone uncollected since the Civil War. Farmers failing to show proof of ownership could be driven off their land, sometimes at gunpoint by the local sheriff. Removed from their ancestral homes, mountaineers and their families ironically found refuge in the many lumber camps that were increasingly dominating the mountain economy after 1900. These lumber camps provided shelter for the average mountaineer, but seldom paid more than a subsistence wage, which was more often than not dispersed in scripredeemable only at the company store (Eller 1982, Davis 1997).

Forest deadenings, 1900

The environmental effects of large-scale timbering in the mountains were immediately felt. Erosion, fires, and flooding increased significantly, damaging prime cropland along streams and destroying wildlife habitat. As early as 1892, Gifford Pinchot, who had accepted the important task of introducing sustainable forestry practices to the Blue Ridge mountains of north Georgia and western North Carolina, wrote that "if forest management is successful in producing profit off this burned, slashed, and over grazed forest, it will do so on almost any land in this part of the country" (Goodwin nd., p. 1).

The increasing environmental destruction was due not only to the mere cutting of trees but also to the use of new and more technologically efficient logging methods. With the coming of railroads to the remoter sections of the Southern Appalachians, it was no longer necessary for logging operations to be confined to the vicinities of large streams. Narrow-gauge railroads, then called "dummy lines," could now be laid along the contours of steep hillsides once thought inaccessible byloggers (Brown2000).

Alongdummy lines, logs of all sizes could be "skidded" by cable across steep mountain slopes to awaiting railroad cars. The end result was, in effect, a "clearcut," since the skidded logs destroyed everything in their path. The skid trails that remained as a result of these logging activities created such severe erosion that the cut-over landscape often took decades to heal. Accompanying the severe erosion were widespread forest fires, which further denuded mountain slopes and hillsides. No doubt some of the fires were started by local herders, who continued to burn the woods to promote the growth of new browse for cattle and sheep. Many of the fires, however, were the direct result of careless lumbermen who routinely left behind large piles of brush and downed tree tops at logging sites or by wood-fired locomotives that spewed sparks out their great smokestacks (Holmes 1911).

The most controversial and widely debated topics surrounding early industrial logging in the mountainswere soil erosion and flooding. By the early 1880s there wasa consensus among observers that standing timber played an important role in preventing excessive water runoff and the loss of fertile topsoil, especially after heavy rains. By 1900 there could be little doubt that "injudicious lumbering and forest fires" caused widespread loss of forest topsoil, which served as a natural sponge for water during heavy rains. In 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt, who placed the destruction of our Southern Appalachian forests squarely on the shoulders of the logging industry, stated that "the preservation of the mountain forests should no longer be left to the caprice of private capital." (Roosevelt 1901, p. 34).

Tragic floods in West Virginia and Kentucky in 1907stimulated action by the FederalGovernment. After hearing considerable testimony from engineers, industryrepresentatives and conservationists, Congress finally passed the Weeks Act on March 1, 1911, officially authorizing the federal purchase of "forested, cut-over, or denuded lands with the watersheds of navigable streams..." (U.S. Department of Agriculture 1911, p. 1021). Among the first attempted land acquisitions in the Southern Appalachians--indeed the entire United States--were lands in north Georgia, an area that had received considerable attention from Gifford Pinchot and others involved in the forest preservation movement (U.S. Department of Agriculture 1983).

According to government records, one of the first acquisitions in the Southern Appalachians was a 31,000 acre tract sold to the newly created National Forest Service Reservation Commission by the Gennett Brothers of the Gennett Land and Lumber Company of Atlanta, Georgia. The Gennett purchase, was, in fact, the first tract in theUnited Statesto receive formal approval for purchase by the federal agency. The 31,000 acre purchase--which included land in Fannin, Union, Lumpkin, and Gilmer Counties--was officially acquired August 29, 1912 (U.S. Department of Agriculture 1983).

One well-documentedUSDA Forest Service history of the southern mountains, Mountaineers and Rangers, found that the largest tracts were purchased "almost without exception from lumber companies and investment concerns." Of the earlier acquisitions, the report found that "nearly 30 percent of the lands bought in the first five years in north Georgia and western North Carolina were "virgin timber."By law, tracts were located almost exclusively near the headwaters of navigable streams. However, the well-documented report concluded that the majority of the acquired lands, especially in later years, "had been cleared, misused, or at least selectively culled"(Davis 2000, p. 173; U.S. Department of Agriculture 1983, p. 25).

As Forest Service purchase units took shape, boundaries became more formal and individual National Forests were officially declared. In 1916, the Pisgah National Forest, the first in the entire mountain region, was proclaimed. In 1920, four more National Forest boundaries were drawn: the Boone in North Carolina, the Nantahala in North Carolina, northern Georgia, and South Carolina; the Cherokee in Tennessee; and the Unaka in upper east Tennessee, North Carolina, and southwest Virginia. The Chattahoochee and the Sumter National Forests were officially proclaimed in 1936 and the Cumberland in 1937. Of these, only seven remain in the region, as boundaries were eventually redrawn and names officially changed. These national forests now comprise more than 5 million acres, making the USDA Forest Service the largest single landowner in the Southern Appalachians (Davis 2000).

Industrial logging also impacted local residents by seemingly reducing populations of many native plants and animals that mountain families had long depended upon. Indeed, numerous testimonies from mountain residents provide evidence that white-tailed deer, turkeys, black bears and other important game animals significantly decline in number after peak periods of timber operations. Ginseng, goldenseal, mayapple, galax, and other plants seasonally traded at the mountain store for supplies or cash, also saw marked decreases in abundance (Davis 2000).

For many years,mountaineers cut trees or substantially altered forest ecology. Before the advent of full-scale industrial logging, local farmers cut select trees for their own use or for extra cash. Trees might be taken to the numerous local water-driven sash sawmills. However, these mills were able to produce only 2,000 board feet per day, greatly limiting the scale of timber production (Morgan 1988).

The economic and social costs of commercial logging can be inferred from population shifts early in the 20th century. The population of Union County, Georgia, for example, declined as much as 18 percent between 1900 and 1910. In nearby Rabun County, population dropped 12 percent. One local historian attributed the loss to the sale of farms along with their timber by numerous families in the outlying districts of the county (Ritchie 1959).

Asparents found it more and more difficult to acquire new land for their sons and daughters, or to maintain a modicum of productivity on their own lands, they often sold off portions of their property to pay local taxes or they might lease it to younger tenants who would sharecrop the land. By 1910 the average farm size in the mountains had dropped to less than 100 acres. This trend continued for several decades; by 1930 the average farm size in the southern mountains was less than80 acres (U.S. Department of Agriculture 1983).

By the eve of the Second World War, industrial logging and land speculation, along with newly established fence laws and the creation of vast federal forest preserves, had greatly narrowed the range of subsistence possibilities for mountaineer families. On those lands,mountain farmers had not only herded cattle, they also had gathered chestnuts, picked berries, hunted, fished, and dug ginseng and other medicinal plants. To the mountaineers of Southern Appalachia, the surrounding forest was a living matrix of plants, animals--and shared memories.

In the past, when humans and the environment came together in the southern mountains, each influenced the other. In the southern Appalachians, natural history and human history are inexorably intertwined.