| Bear
Fork, West Virginia |
Fores-@aol.com |
|
Jan
25, 2003 06:28 PST |
Bob:
I have been reading the ENT's e-mails for a few weeks now and
realize that
there has not been much input from the central
Appalachians....West Virginia.
We have been enjoying some of the same cold weather as you
although we
haven't had as much below zero stuff.
If you ever travel through West Virginia, I would like to pass
on an invite
to visit a ten acre patch of virgin old growth forest close to
our camp in
Crummies Creek that is so remote that I need to be guided to the
place....it
was donated to a small college years ago but none of the
forestry professors
have ever been to it as far as I can tell. I am certain that no
one has ever
done any of your "big tree" style of measurements on
the place...I do know
that the first thing you notice from the trail by the area is
that there are
a couple of giant old red oaks that have fallen down in recent
storms that
are over 40" DBH. The yellow poplars tend to be bigger. The
parcel is
located in a deep, north-facing cove and I would expect many of
the trees to
be well over 120' tall. I have never had the opportunity to
really explore
the area myself as every time I have visited the area, I arrived
at quarter
past dark and was only able to walk a short distance before I
could no longer
see.
The virgin stand is located in an area known as Bear Fork and it
was the last
large (10,000+ acres) documented area of virgin forest harvested
in western
WV between 1910 and 1918. Because the area was never settled or
cleared for
agriculture, there are numerous examples of low value culls of
enormous size
still present. At Crummies Creek, our tallest tree was a
shagbark hickory
that was 38" DBH and over 140' tall. It came down in a
landslide about 6
years ago and no longer is alive.
If you are at all interested in reading about "Bear
Fork" I would suggest
that you visit the website for the Hur Herald at http://www.hurherald.com
and go to
the archives and type in Bear Fork. There were a series of about
eight
articles on the place a few years ago and the stories make some
good reading.
Some of the best white oak ever harvested in WV came from there
and it was
almost all used to make oil barrels.
Our own Tree Farm in Crummies Creek was originally a part of the
Bear Fork
tract and is the only place in Calhoun County where there was
ever a railroad
as a narrow gauge railroad was used for the logging. As a rule,
they almost
never built a railroad into an area for timber harvesting unless
they were
taking out more than 20,000 board feet per acre.
For hardwoods, 20MBF/acre sounds very high but other foresters I
know have
inventoried areas of third growth forest in the mountain
counties that are
much higher than that now. Stories of red spruce stands in the
mountains
that consistently contained over 100MBF/acre are well
documented.
Unfortunately, there are less than 50,000 acres of spruce forest
left in the
state out of an original 500,000!
A few years ago, I saw a logger cut some second growth white
pine that he was
unable to sell (white pine tends to be worth very little in
central WV)...the
trees were very tall with an unknown total height but he only
took the trees
down to a 16" tip diameter with most of the trees left in
single logs that
ranged from 105 to 120' in length. Most of it rotted on the road
side and he
finally sawed some of them up at his own small mill because he
was only
offered $100/MBF if he delivered the logs to the only local mill
that would
even saw pine.
Finally, at least in WV, big is definitely not always old. In a
1998 harvest
I marked for an heirship...17 multi generation members of a
family where
everyone had to agree on everything... a red oak tree was
harvested that was
58" DBH, it was perfectly sound and scaled out with over
3,000 board feet in
the butt log and 700+ board feet in the branches...at the stump
which was
nearly 8' in diameter, there were only 120 growth rings.
Because the timber value was running so high at over $4,500 per
acre, I had
to work hard to persuade the family to allow sample areas of the
"big trees"
for future generations of the family to enjoy. I was successful
in my effort
and I was able to leave numerous red oaks and yellow poplar
trees that were
between 40" and 50" DBH as well as several cull white
oak trees that were
between 60" and 70" DBH. The largest shag bark was
about 44" DBH and
chestnut oak trees between 36 and 46" are still on the
site.
There is a very small amount of old growth left in WV and the
state forest
system in WV covers only 46,000 acres out of 12,000,000 acres of
private
forest in the state. Cathedral state park has the last stand of
virgin red
spruce and hemlock and there are a few other notable patches of
big trees
scattered around.
Until I started reading your conversations on sycamore, I never
realized that
the search for big sycamores was so intense. As a historical
note, one of
the most famous sycamores in WV was known as the
"Pringle" tree near
Buckhannon in Upshur County. The tree was very large and hollow
and served
as the home for early settlers.
In certain areas along the Little Kanawha River in the
west-central part of
WV sycamore trees upwards to 60" are very common but they
are relatively
young, generally under 80 years.
Russ Richardson |
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