Dale,
About 5 years ago I was at R.B. Winter and I remember the
naturalist
saying that there was no old growth there but that some of the
forest
had recovered to the point that it was "mature second
growth evolving
towards old growth". I think I actually walked the trail
that goes
through the Rapid Run Natural Area. I don't recall seeing
anything too
impressive there. I didn't find out about the stumps of the
supposed 6
foot dbh white pines until later.
I did come
across some impressively
large stumps along the "Moss-hanne Trail" at Black
Moshannon State Park.
I've always wondered if records were kept by the lumber
companies of the
sizes (probably in the form of board feet of lumber from an
individual
tree) of trees cut. Would it be possible to glean actual
measurements of
height and girth of various tree species that were harvested way
back in
the logging era? Or are word of mouth estimates going to be all
we have?
I picked up a couple really interesting publications at the
Pennsylvania
Lumber Museum up in Potter County that had information on
railroad
logging era, including detailed histories of the Goodyear Lumber
Company. There's a photo of a huge hemlock log from about 1906,
said to
be the largest hemlock ever cut up by the sawmills. In the photo
it
looks to be close to 6 foot in diameter. I wonder if there are
any other
historic photos showing how big the biggest of the hemlock and
white
pine were in the original forest of Pennsylvania.
Ernie
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