| Howard
Mason Pines, Ashfield, MA (attached 65kb JPEG) |
es06-@aol.com |
| Dec
06, 2003 13:59 PST |
In an old thread ("William Hull's property") Bob
wrote:
Ents:
Today, Bill Hull, Joel Dumont, my son Rob, Dave Orwig, Dave's
graduate
student Tony from UMASS, and I spent time documenting the Howard
Mason pines. The
property is now owned by the Hull Lumber Company. It was
formerly owned by Peck
Lumber Company. The old pines appear to be between 190 and 240
years of age.
We measured 6 of them in the time we had to spend on site. The
largest pine is
11.7 feet in circumference and a respectable 128.2 feet tall.
Bill estimates
the tree has at least 3,000 board feet in it. I suspect it is
closer to 3,500.
The tallest pine reach's to 131.9 feet and 8.9 feet in
circumference. They are
all charismatic trees. The site has all requisite old growth
characteristics
and Bill Hull is protecting it as a special historical site.
Here's text borrowed from the Hull site
"Old Growth Preserved at Our Sears Meadow Forest
When Hull Forestlands purchased the Sears Meadow Forest in
Ashfield,
Massachusetts, from the former Peck Lumber Company, it soon
realized there was a very
old three-acre stand of eastern hemlock and white pine on the
property. Tall
and stately with deeply furrowed bark, these trees stand
straight and solemn,
their long trunks free of low branches and their canopy
darkening the forest
floor.
Intrigued by the possibility that this could be old growth, HFLP
invited
eastern old growth forest expert Bob Leverett and Harvard
University Forest
Ecologist David Orwig to
measure the trees in the stand. Leverett found pines with
circumferences
ranging from 7.6 to 11.7 feet and heights ranging from 117-
131.9 feet, with an
average of 260 square foot/acre basal area. One of the
biggest pines was
estimated to have 3,500 board feet of volume.
After conducting ring counts, David Orwig estimated one of the
hemlocks could
be as old as 250, while the white pines ranged between 183-217
years in age.
Orwig also found the pines had very good growth early on,
averaging 5-8 rings
per inch. His estimates are conservative, and he feels the trees
could be
much older, but since many were rotten at the core, it was
difficult to get an
accurate core sample. According to Leverett, these trees offer a
glimpse of the
forests of North America prior to settlement by European
colonists. And their
longevity is remarkable as they are as convenient to access as
any old growth
in New England.
HFLP has pledged to protect this stand of old growth and has
placed the
property under conservation restriction with the state of
Massachusetts' Division
of Fisheries and Wildlife."
[Unable to display image]
Tall trees show up well next to open areas.
2001 info:
Name of Tree
Location
Girth Height
Spread
Howard Mason Pine Peck Lumber Co. -Sears Rd
11.7 124.0
38.0
Initially the location of this site confused me as Sears Meadow
proper is
just to the South in Goshen MA. Local history has it that
"in the early 1940's a
P-47 crash-landed at the northern end of Sears Meadow. The pilot
had engine
trouble and picked what seemed to be a meadow from the air, but
was actually a
partially frozen swamp. Rescue equipment came from Westover
Field, and due to a
sudden thaw, took two or three days to salvage the plane, which
had only
minimal damage. Also, nearby, in May of 1942 a Liberator bomber,
flying low in
heavy rain and dense fog, crashed shearing off the tops of pine
trees"...oh oh
there goes the site index.
ES
|
| A
Tale of Centuries: Roadside OG (attached 49kb JPEG) |
es06-@aol.com |
| Dec
10, 2003 12:24 PST |
-
Heres the story of the "Howard Mason" or Hull Old
Growth Pines in Ashfield.
I started digging up old maps, checking records and asking
around but
thankfully the answers soon arrived courtesy of Mary Hull. (see
below)
Hull Forestlands does point out that in the interests of
protecting the site
(and the neighbors) we dont advertise the sites location-so I
for one wont
be calling the Ashfield News etc. I read here in the archives of
a case in
Texas where mindless vandals expressed their sentiments by
cutting down the last Old Growth Long-Leaf Yellow Pines west of
a certain river.
If you'd like to visit the site, Hull Forestlands asks that you
please
contact them first:
For the contact person, use William Boston Hull, (860) 974-0127
and
A Tale of
Centuries: Roadside Old Growth in Western Massachusetts
By Mary Hull
How did a grove of old growth pine and
hemlock growing beside a road in
western Massachusetts manage to escape farmers, loggers, timber
barons, and the
box trade, growing and growing and growing until they were over
two hundred
years old and eleven feet in circumference? Most old
growth is located in
rugged or inaccessible terrain that has helped ensure its
longevity. But this
three-acre grove of eastern white pine and hemlock, part of Hull
Forestlands L.P.’
s larger Sears Meadow Forest, is located by the roadside in
Ashfield,
Massachusetts.
According to eastern
old growth forest expert Bob Leverett, these
trees, which are as convenient to access as any he knows of in
New England, offer a
glimpse of the forests of North America prior to European
settlement. Tall
and stately with deeply furrowed bark, they stand straight and
solemn, their
long trunks free of low branches, their canopy darkening the
forest floor. Their
longevity is remarkable. The history of these trees and
the land in which
they are rooted provides some clues to their survival. It is a
tale of salutary
neglect, estate squabbles, grand larceny, the economics of
portable sawmills,
and a single-minded obsession with steam.
Two hundred and fifty years
ago, when our oldest tree got its start,
the earliest settlers in Ashfield had been there not quite ten
years. They
gradually cleared the land for agricultural use, and they moved
and piled one stone
at a time, creating the stone walls that demarcate the property
today. To
process all the timber cut by the settlers, sawmills began
operating on local
brooks. By 1750 there were fifteen families and about 100 people
living in
Ashfield, though the population dipped in 1754 when many
settlers abandoned their
homes to fight in the French and Indian War. Wolves ran by the
trunks of our
trees, preying on livestock and avoiding bounty hunters.
Bear still lived in
the area, though their population was dwindling along with the
forest. In
neighboring Goshen the last bear was killed by 1785.
By 1800, the region was even
more open, and a town history observed
that wild turkeys were no longer seen. This is when the
majority of our trees
got their start, seeding in on land that had been cleared.
In the early 1800s a
sawmill began operating at the outlet of the Sears Meadow, just
below our
stand of trees. Over the next few decades, agriculture
began to decline in this
region, where as much as 60 to 80 percent of the land area had
been cleared
for grazing, the planting of crops, and orchards. Wool
was a fairly strong
business in the area, and much land was dedicated for sheep
pasture. But our
trees were allowed to grow. Whether this was because they
provided shade in a
pasture, or simply because they weren’t worth bothering
with, our trees
persisted. By 1850, more of our Sears Meadow trees had
sprouted up.
In 1870, when the land
our trees are rooted in was purchased by Goshen
farmer Rodney Hawks, the youngest trees were in the 50-year
range and were
probably not remarkable in size, while the oldest of the Sears
Meadow trees were
approaching 120 years. And they were desirable species.
White pine is an
easily worked, lightweight wood commonly used, then and now, in
construction
lumber and furniture making. Eastern hemlock, whose bark
contains high
concentrations of tannins, had long been sought after as a
source of tanbark.
This land would remain
with Hawks’s ancestors for the next 125 years,
which would prove to be a lucky break for the trees. Hawks owned
a lot of
timberland and by 1875 he was running a sawmill, one of several
in Goshen, on the
Mill River off of East Street. His daughter, Mary,
married Howard Packard,
whose family ran another of Goshen’s sawmills.
Rodney died in 1895, and his only
child, Mary Hawks Packard, inherited his property and sawmill.
Because her
husband Howard Packard was tax collector in Goshen, he knew
which properties
were tax-delinquent and frequently purchased these at low cost,
adding to the
family’s now considerable land holdings. After
his father-in-law’s death,
Howard Packard dismantled Rodney Hawks’s mill and erected
it beside his home on
Route 9 in Goshen. (This property is still in the
Packard family. If you drive
by the homestead, you can still see some old steam boilers by
the side of the
road-evidence of the family’s long obsession with steam).
The Packard
sons-Waverly, Waldemar, and Ruthven-grew up working alongside
their father at this
mill, which ran on steam generated by the burning of sawdust,
slabs, and
shavings.
The survival of our old
growth is intimately connected with the
personalities of the three Packard brothers, who were named by
their mother for
characters in Scott’s Waverly novels. Legendary
in their hometown, they developed
an early interest in steam and grew up working beside their
father in the
mill, which was at one time the most profitable business in
Goshen. The Packard
brothers also drove Stanley Steamers, cut hay with a homemade
steam-powered
mower, and delivered lumber on a steam wagon. The
oldest, Waverly, born in 1883,
studied for his steam engineer’s license and had moved
away by 1900, working
as an engineer at the state hospital’s power plant and
later as an electrician
for United Electric in Springfield. After Waverly left
home, the other two
brothers never seemed to get along with him.
Forester Howard Mason can
recall Ruthven and Waldemar’s oft-expressed disdain for
the brother who “
deserted the family business and went to work as a steam
engineer in Springfield and
smoked big black ‘seegars.’” As
electricity gradually outmoded the area’s
steam plants, the brothers accumulated a vast collection of
steam boilers and
engines. Apparently making money was never a primary interest
for the
Packards. According to Goshen town history, they kept
accounts on the backs of old
boards that had a habit of disappearing and often failed to cash
checks that had
been written to them.
During World War II, the
Packards set up a portable mill in the woods
on the north side of Sears Road, across the street from the
Sears Meadow tr
ees. You might wonder why, then, didn’t they cut
these large trees that were so
close by? But portable mills, despite their name, were
not all that portable.
Skid distances were short, particularly as horses and oxen were
still being
used. Portable mill operators did not want to go into an
area if there was not
at least 100,000 board feet, preferably 200,000, available.
If there was not
enough desirable timber adjacent to our trees, it may not have
been worth
setting up a mill close enough to process them. The Packards had
nearly 1,000
acres at their disposal, and there were probably more desirable
places for a
sawmill setting. Even if they did intend to one day harvest the
trees, they never
had a chance to get over there. At some point during the
war, most likely
before 1944, the Packard’s portable mill was stolen and
the thief attempted to
peddle it for scrap. Prices for scrap metal were at a
premium during the war.
How they dismantled and moved the mill out from its remote
location is
interesting to think about. As the story goes, the
Packards later found their mill
(or parts of it), but they were unable to prove that it was
theirs. There was
no name or serial number on it. As a result, they never
recovered their mill-
and this may have been another serendipitous event for our
trees.
In early 1944 Mary
Packard passed away without a will, and by state
law, her estate passed in equal shares to her three sons.
They each held a
third interest, and Waverly, who had gone off to Springfield,
wouldn’t let the
other brothers cut any timber on the family land. From
our trees’ perspective,
this was another lucky break. At a time when this grove
was old and large
enough to attract attention, a family quarrel ensured their
survival for another
ten years. The Packard timber kept getting bigger and
bigger, and loggers and
sawmill men began to look longingly at it. Among them was Lumen
Peck, a
legendarily shrewd lumberman and founder of the Peck Lumber
Company (PLC).
When Waverly Packard
died in 1952, his 1/3 interest passed to his wife
Bertha, and Lumen Peck approached her with the intent of
purchasing her
interest. The following year he sent his
forester Howard Mason out to map and
cruise all the Packard land holdings. The Packard land was
almost 1,000 acres
with several million board feet of timber, and it included a
gravel bank located
in the Packard Orchard lot off Goshen’s East Street.
It got so that “
everyone in the country wanted to buy their timber,”
explained Mason. Lumen Peck
was not about to miss out on the opportunity.
In 1955 Waverly’s
wife Bertha deeded her share in the Packard land to
the PLC for $100,000. That same year middle brother
Waldemar Packard died,
passing his interest to his wife Gertrude. Lumen Peck
filed a petition to
partition, which may have forced the hand of the other two
parties, for the
following year, Gertrude and Ruthven conveyed their 2/3 interest
to PLC for $100,000
each- a lot of money in those days.
When the Peck Lumber
Company acquired the Packard forestland in 1955,
their forester Howard Mason recognized that the Sears Meadow
trees were
significant, and he recommended that Peck not cut them.
In addition, many of them
were by this time already in a state of decay, and Howard Mason
suggested they
would serve as a good example of what happened when you let
trees grow too
big. Although Peck had two portable mill
settings on the property at two
different times not far apart, there was never any push to cut
the pines. In 2000
when Hull Forestlands (HFLP) purchased many of the Peck
woodlands, the Sears
Meadow Forest was among them.
Intrigued by the possibility
that this could be old growth, HFLP
invited Bob Leverett to measure the pines in this stand, and he
found circumferences
ranging from 7.6 to 11.7 feet and heights ranging from 117-
131.9 feet, with
an average of 260 square foot/acre basal area. One of
the biggest pines was
estimated to have 3,500 board feet of volume. Ring
counts were conducted by
David Orwig, Forest Ecologist at Harvard University, who
estimated one of the
hemlocks could be as old as 250, while the white pines ranged
between 183-217
years in age. Orwig also found the pines had very good
growth early on,
averaging 5-8 rings per inch. His estimates are conservative,
and Orwig felt the
trees could be much older, but since many were rotten at the
core, it was
difficult to get an accurate core sample.
HFLP has pledged to
protect the stand of old growth and has placed the
property under conservation restriction with the state of
Massachusetts’s
Division of Fisheries and Wildlife.
The Sears Meadow stand
of old growth pine and hemlock has survived to
the present day through chance, serendipity, and stewardship.
Each of the
landowners connected with the property allowed the trees to
continue their
lifecycle without interruption. These stately elders of the
forest are an example of
the natural progression of the forest and a testament to the
idea that wood is
memory. They hold within them the tales of centuries.
Hull Forestlands can be reached at www.hullforest.com
The author gratefully acknowledges the following sources, which
were
consulted for this article:
Anne Sabo Warner, A Bicentennial History: Goshen, Massachusetts
1781-1981.
(Publication of the Goshen Historical Commission) Bloomfield,
Connecticut:
Connecticut Printers, 1980.
Rev. John Lockwood, Western Massachusetts: A History 1636-1925,
2 Vols. New
York: Lewis Historical Publishing Company, 1926.
Hampshire County Registry of Deeds
Edward Foster, “Sawmill Owner is Authority on Steam,”
Northampton Gazette,
September 4, 1963.
Interviews with Howard Mason of Russell, MA, Peck Lumber Company
forester
from 1951-1982
Data gathered by Bob Leverett, eastern old growth forest expert,
and David
Orwig, Forest Ecologist at Harvard University
U.S. Forest Service web site <A HREF="www.usfs.gov">www.usfs.gov</A>
[
Best, Evan Smith
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