THE TALE OF TILLAMOOK
Netboy, Anthony
The Tale of Tillamook By Anthony Netboy THE United States is running short of top-grade timber, those tall, straight, thick knot-free trees out of which the finest boards are made and a nation's...
...Countless deer and other animals were killed...
...The Tillamook represents a different type of problem, in that individual land owners are not closely affected.iiut society itself certainly is...
...Up to now 50 miles of snag corridors and 130 miles of protection roads have been built, and about 50,000 acres have been planted by aerial seeding and hand methods...
...For it is the nation as a whole that stands to gain so much if the Tillamook can once again become the producer of fine lumber and a seat of green loveliness...
...In less than two centuries the world's most extensive forest of virgin timber has been cut down to scattered, stunted remnants, except in the Pacific Northwest and northern California...
...An excellent case study of the limits of state and private possibilities is to be found in Oregon, where much devastated land lies idle...
...Ugly brush and brown fern patches covered the maimed forest...
...Millions of blackened, leafless trees littered the ground, and millions more stood upright, some snags reaching 200 feet...
...osophy that would turn the job over to the states and private interests...
...II Until the last six or seven years, Tillamook was largely neglected, except for the building of through highways from the Willamette Valley to the coast...
...As one crew was pulling its last log to the yarding site, friction from the cable ignited an old dry tree lying on the ground...
...Ideally, the Tillamook is suitable for incorporation into the national forest system...
...Many timber owners and logging outfits were ruined and hundreds of men deprived of their jobs...
...For years there was much talk about what" to do with the colossal Burn...
...Here we can observe one of the more considerable efforts at restoring a vast, abused forest—the Tillamook Burn...
...The fine crop of seedlings that had sprung up in the interim and almost all the seed trees were killed...
...The old burn was thoroughly seared and new areas were invaded by the raging flames...
...With the nation and the world demanding more and more wood, these areas represent a colossal waste, all the more tragic for being needless...
...large-scale state funds weren't available...
...too much for the state...
...The method of aerial seeding—dropping the tiny seeds from helicopters—is still experimental...
...Over the greater part of the Burn the green countryside practically vanished...
...Even if the claims for reforestation made by the state are fully realized, the loss to the nation of this great virgin forest will not be made up for generations...
...In 1948 the Oregon legislature proposed, and the voters approved, an amendment to the state constitution for a $10 million bond issue to restore the Tillamook...
...There was little incentive to head it off...
...In its place was mile upon mile of dead landscape...
...Such tracts will probably never be seen again in the Tillamook...
...Tillamook County is known for two quite different things: it makes the best cheddar cheese on the Pacific Coast and it is the scene of one of America's most disastrous forest fires...
...Millions of acres of land on which luxuriant timber trees could be grown are producing inferior species or scrub...
...Sentiment in Oregon is against federal enterprise, too...
...From it we can see the benefits and ANTHONY NETBOY was formerly associated with the U.S...
...But at present there is little or no chance of its acquisition by the federal government...
...There is no assurance that all of the reforestration will be entirely successful...
...Probably a fifth can be expected to restock naturally...
...But the task is staggering...
...Before the fire blew itself out, thanks to rising humidity and rain, 105,000 acres were devastated...
...Long neglect has made the land less amenable to reforestation than if a comprehensive program had been undertaken soon after the first burn, or even the second...
...Forest Service and as a freelance writer has written frequently on conservation and natural resources...
...As usual, the ground was littered with slashings from felled trees (which are not burned until the fire season is over) and this spark ignited a heap of branches and twigs...
...Since the early years of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Administration, the pace of reforestation of our wood-producing lands has slowed down greatly...
...And then, as if the gods were determined to punish the land which had been so fearfully neglected by the men who owned it, a third conflagration swept through the Tillamook Burn in 1945...
...Here is a problem for all America, and not just the people of Oregon...
...Much land in the Burn, however, is still under private ownership, usually reluctant to reforest non-productive acreage...
...He is co-author (with Bernard Frank) of the book, "Water, Land, and People...
...here little restorative work is being done...
...The Douglas fir which stood on this site in such abundance were the 150-250 foot giants...
...And even here, rapid lumbering, destructive fires, and insect blights are taking a staggering toll of this precious resource...
...The state's plan is laid out on a fifteen year basis, with 1964 as the target for completion...
...and private owners who still held on to their tracts were usually interested only in cutting the salvageable trees and getting out...
...Although 135,000 snags have been felled, these mutilated trees still impede work on thousands of acres...
...The remaining 200,000 acres must be reforested artificially, and this involves considerable men and money...
...Yet who but Uncle Sam could invest the money needed to speed up reforestation and enlarge the protection system on the Tillamook...
...But the county did not have funds to remove the millions of snags...
...short-comings of non-federal efforts to overcome a staggering loss...
...When drouth sears the cattle ranges of Texas the President declares it a disaster area and Congress offers millions of dollars to bail out the stockmen...
...Tillamook county suffered an economic blow from which it has never fully recovered...
...Late in the summer of 1933, when the weather was extremely hot and the Oregon coastal forests tinder dry, the usual order came from the state forestry department to close down logging operations...
...The Tale of Tillamook By Anthony Netboy THE United States is running short of top-grade timber, those tall, straight, thick knot-free trees out of which the finest boards are made and a nation's homes are built...
...We cannot afford to let much of this land lie fallow for generations...
...The state now owns 250,000 acres of the Burn...
...This time the forest burned for weeks...
...Altogether, an area of 360,000 acres (about 560 square miles) had been swept by the three fires, and an estimated 15 billion feet of the choicest timber (valued in 1945 at over $700 million)—enough to build 1,500,000 modest homes—were converted into a jungle of snags...
...Year after year the denuded hillsides were battered by rains and subjected to increasing erosion...
...When the flames died down and the autumnal rains drenched the embers, the losses could be fully counted...
...Gone was the forest primeval, with its swaying firs and hemlocks, clear streams, and sweet smells...
...Thus, the present pace of restoring the Tillamook, even if successful, will leave a large part of the area desolate perhaps for decades...
...Six years later, almost to the day, the second great Tillamook fire broke out, and again the protection system was tragically insufficient...
...In those days protection on private timberland was woefully inadequate and once the blaze had a good start it couldn't be stopped...
...There weren't enough men to fight the inferno, roads and firebreaks were meager, and firefighting equipment was scarce...
...Runoff cut deep gashes in the sloping landscape, creating innumerable waterfalls...
...The federal government's role has dwindled—and may soon be slashed even further under the impetus of a "states-rights" phil...
...Ill There is no question that the state of Oregon is putting forth enormous efforts to restore the Burn, but it isn't enough...
...This means the ground is unprepared for reforestation, which in turn means more manpower and money...
...The surest method of reforestation is hand planting...
...Timber from the Tillamook will be urgently needed by future generations for building homes and other uses...
...County revenues were so diminished, since much of the land became tax delinquent, that school funds had to be curtailed and other services cut...
...And meanwhile we are losing potential wood growth from this area at the rate of over a hundred million board feet annually...
...Federal help is plainly needed...
...Streams were choked with silt and mud, and the barkless snags stood like giant toothpicks gaunt against the sky...
...It takes 150 years for a Douglas fir to make a good sawlog, 75 years to make medium-size lumber logs, and 35-40 years to make railroad-tie size...
...It is axiomatic that a burned forest is susceptible to reburning...
...indeed, there is a strong movement to divest Uncle Sam of the better timber lands he now owns and turn them over to private companies, or to the states which would in turn allow private enterprise to log them freely...
...Thus was the stage set for an unprecedented fire...
...Much of the Burn, abandoned by private owners, came into county (and later state) ownership...
...So Tillamook, that green and lovely county, with its low mountains blanketed with virgin stands of stately Douglas fir, hemlock, and cedar, was swept by a tremendous conflagration...
...Whatever islands of living trees had been left in 1933 went down...
Vol. 17 • October 1953 • No. 10
