OUTDOOR CORNER: MISSOURI FORESTS SEE BOOM TIMES, BUST

Booming lumber business in 1800's left a barren future.

Following the Civil War the country began another expansion. Development needed wood and a bull's-eye was painted on Missouri's forests.

The trouble was getting the timber out. Missouri forest lands were for the most part very remote and hard to reach. Railroads hadn't pushed deep into the region and the small streams could not carry much traffic.

But a small group of Pennsylvania oil men led by J. B. White saw a profit in the quiet pine and hardwood forests of Missouri.

In 1887 they formed the Missouri Lumber and Mining Company and began buying land.

Eventually they purchased more than 300,000 acres in the Ozarks paying on the average of $1.00 per acre. Their trademark product was Beaver Dam Soft Pine sawn from the uncut Shortleaf pine forests.

They bought a sawmill and shipped it by rail to Williamsville in Wayne County. From there it was loaded on wagons and hauled to Grandin in Carter County. Before its days were over, the mill and its complex was one of the largest in the nation.

Woods workers laid hundreds of miles of rails for narrow-gauge railroads to pull the carloads of pine back to the mills. To keep the operation going required 285,000 board feet of timber a day. This equaled 90 train car loads of logs, or an average of 70 acres harvested daily.

The logs were hauled to the mill by rail, wagon or river drives. Horses, mules and oxen skidded logs to loading points. Some camps used more than 200 horses or mules at any one time.

In the woods a typical felling crew earned $1.50 a day. A two-man company felling crew was expected to work 10 hours a day during a six day week. Each two man crew was expected to cut 10,000 board feet of logs a day or no pay was received. All pine 12 inches and up were cut.

The mill whistle blew at 4 a.m. for five minutes to wake the workers. The mill started at 6 a.m. and shut down 11 hours later. Unskilled workers earned $1.50 per day. Skilled labor around $2.50 a day. And contract teamsters who provided their own wagons, tack and teams were paid around $2 for every 1,000 board feet they hauled.

This mill and many like it brought jobs and prosperity to the Ozarks. Company towns brought jobs , schools, social activities and medical facilities to places that lacked many of these things.

The fatal flaw in all of this was the lack of knowledge and concern for the resource that sustained this prosperity.

Missouri lumber production peaked in 1899. By 1906, when national production peaked, the Grandin mill was winding down.

On Sept. 25, 1909 the Grandin Herald lead story printed "the whistle of the Missouri Lumber and Mining Company whistled for the final time."

Left behind were unemployed workers and their families. The best of the forest resource was gone. A living had to be eked out of the barren and rocky hills. Ridgetops were cleared for low-yielding crops and fruit orchards. Free roaming hogs and livestock were turned loose to forage and the woods were burned off to kill pests and try and improve grazing. Tie hacking for 10 cents a tie was a staple for many an Ozark family.

All these practices led to more soil erosion, poorer crops, polluted streams and worse conditions. The boom cycle ended in cycles of bust and more bust.

These acres soon became the lands no one wanted. Cut over, burned over, eroded and wasted. But a light soon began to flicker in the minds of some. There had to be a better way.

Next month: The road to recovery.

Joe Garvey is a district forester for the Missouri Department of Conservation.