Appalachia tree trivia (what we once had here in the East)   Greentr-@aol.com   Nov 29, 2003 11:20 PST  Just a little reminder of why we bother... "A wilderness of great extent, presenting the virgin face of nature, unchanged by human cultivation or art, is certainly one of the most sublime terrestrial objects which the Creator ever presented to the view of man........." Joseph Doddridge West Virginia, 1824 On November 4, 1770, while traveling along the Kanawa River he wrote in his journal, "Just as we came to the hills, we met with a Sycamore.....of a most extraordinary size, it measuring three feet from the ground, forty-five feet round, lacking two inches; and not fifty yards from it was another, thirty-one feet round." George Washington "best growth of hemlock occurred along Cranberry, Williams, and Gauley rivers, where the trees grew to 6 to 7 feet in diameter" WV "The largest tree logged in the State of West Virginia, near Lead Mine, Tucker County, 1913. This white oak, as large as any California Sequoia, was probably well over 1,000 years old. It measured 13 feet in diameter 16 feet from the base, and 10 feet in diameter 31 feet from the base" "The typical poplar attained a height of 120 to 140 feet, and a diameter of 7 to 9 feet, with a distance to the first limb of 80 feet. Several poplars 10 and 11 feet in diameter were located by loggers and cut down. Large poplars were not isolated freaks in the original forest. They often occurred in nearly pure stands. This large yellow poplar cut in 1913 on Green Mountain, Tucker County, by the Otter Creek Boom and Lumber Co. at Hambleton, filled an entire logging train and furnished 12,469 board feet of lumber" "total lumber cut in West Virginia between 1870 and 1920 was more than 30 billion board feet...amount walkway 13 feet wide and 2 inches thick the average distance to the moon." "Fine groves of trees appear, not choked with briers or bushes and undergrowth, but growing at intervals as if planted by the hand of man, so that you can drive a four horse carriage, wherever you choose, through the midst of the trees" (Andrews, Matthews Page, History of Maryland, 1929). "late as 1897 Gifford Pinchot found in Pennsylvania specimens 120 feet in height and 13 feet in diameter breast-high, with an estimated age of 500 years." (American Chestnut) "average size of a chestnut tree in 1900 was 5 feet in diameter and more than 100 feet tall." Dr. Joe James "one chestnut had a documented diameter of 17 feet" (TACF) "We killed in the journey 13 buffaloes, 8 elks, 53 bears, 20 deers, 4 wild geese, about 150 turkeys, besides small game." This quote from the journals of Dr. Thomas Walker, leader of a 1750 surveying party through Southwestern Virginia 1936, much wealth was extracted from these lands. However, in the process, the old growth Appalachian Forests of Virginia were almost completely cut out, and wild game populations were decimated. Repeated wildfires swept the area and the clearing of steep mountain land for farming and grazing led to severe erosion and increased flooding. Widespread, indiscriminate logging also added its toll. As a result, by the early 1900s, much of the higher elevation mountains and ridges in southwestern Virginia had been transformed into the lands nobody wanted. (The Lands Nobody Wanted, Conservation Foundation Report, 1977) As early as 1901, James Wilson, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, recommended establishing a Forest Preserve in the Southern Appalachians: "These are the heaviest and most beautiful hardwood forests of the continent. In them, species from East and West, from North and South, mingle in a growth of unparalleled richness and variety. They contain many species of first commercial value and furnish important supplies which cannot be obtained from any other region... The preservation of these forests is imperative...Their management under practical and conservative forestry will sustain and increase the resources of this region and of the Nation at large." RC   Home