A 13o,ooo Acre Tree Farm With A Fifty Year Crop

Reprinted, from Weyerhaeuser News

From the lookout tower perched spraddle-legged 2,W feet atop Minot Peak you can read the perpetuating life of a hundred thousand acres or more and look down through time for the next half century.

If you ask the keen-eyed veteran up there he will tell you that he is more than just spotting the first telltale plumes of fires, started quite likely by the careless match or tossed-away smoke of some law-forgetting mo to ri s t, fisherman or berry-picker. Fires must be kept out, most certainly, but that's not all there is to it. He is acting a living, breathing part of a far-reaching dream that has been forming for years in the studying brains of foresters and lumbermen, a dream that has now taken tangible shape and being.

The Peak knobs up in the middle of the 130,000 galloping acres that are the Clemons Tree Farm. The low-hanging, gray clouds that slide in from the near-by

Pacific kiss these slopes with a bountiful and temperate moisture which, combined with a tree-fertile soil, has made the region one of the most productive forest growing areas man has known.

Here, in Grays Harbor county, Washington, a section famed for its g'reat trees of Douglas Fir, West Coast Hemlock, Sitka Spruce and Western Red Cedara prime brotherhood in the world of lumber-man is making a new compact with Nature. It is a mutual bargain of understanding and co-operation for the prlrpose of growing a never-ending crop of trees for the continuing harvest of lumber, plywood, shingles, pulp and the patiently wrought wonders of the chemist's test tube.

This is a carefully calculated, businesslike, pioneering venture in commercial forest growing by private initiative. It is a 130,000-acre laboratory of facts, rvith size enough to make the enterprise prac- tical, an experiment projected under the exact conditions of Nature, but with the hazzard. of those conditions anticipated and countered by the best that man has been able to conjure out of study and experience.

The hope, naturally, is to make the experiment pay the men who do the labor of harvesting, the community, the American people, and those who put up the money. Here is a wager with Time. The main forest crop on the Clemons Tree Farm is not expected to be in full swing until 1991.

"Give us a piece of ground that's big enough to make a worth-while experiment," the foresters asked. They got 130,000 acres. "Give us a tract that is compact and bounded by Nature's own fire boundaries-the ridges and streams," they said. They got that, too. "Give us land that is unsuited f'or normal agriculture, that can grow trees better than anything else," they asked. This site is ideal. "Give us the right to lay our plans for the complete farm, without respect to the uncompromising straight lines of ownership that lie within," they suggested. They were granted that condition also. "Give us now the means, the money, to go on with the plan."

They have all of these basic things in the Clemons Tree Farm.

From the lookout tower you can see logging outfits still slicing away at the virgin, old growth forest that never knew the axe of man. They have been doing that over the farm now for more than 30 years, snaking out huge logs of sound stuff and at the same time uncovering a vast debris of trees that grew and ripened and rotted to serve no purpose rvhatever. For many a tree the harvest came too late.

You can see also groups of old trees that have been deliberately left here and there for seed.

The Clemons Tree Farm is a farm of the new forest, a forest where trees will grow faster, will waste little or nothing of' their substance in decay, will ripen, it is hoped, to a continuing and practical harvest for the needs of man.

You can see hillsides on the Clemons Tree Farm where young twenty-year-old trees stand thick as the hair on a dog's back. You can see other stands of fifteen years, and ten, and five. You can see other slopes which seem to have no trees at all, but if you get down on the ground and look around between the stumps and the rotting debris and push the ferns away, you can see the little fellows there, like delicate green feathers. Some of those seedlings sprang from seeds fluttering down from the older forest, but many a slope has been given a new start-after repeated fires have blotted out all lifeby patient hand planting with tiny trees grown in nurseries of the Weyerhaeuser , :.,:: Timber Company. ii

You can also see, with distressing frequency, whole slopes that have been blasted black by a withering flame. Life is not good to look at where fire has crackled heavenward in a pall of murk and sparks and left behind naught but a forest graveyard filled 'rvith charred tombstones.

"Just brush," it has been the habit of' some to say in times past.

No, not brush ! It wasn't brush but TIME that burned. Ten years over there across the creek. Twenty years on that distant hillside. Five years down there. TIME that meant 1,000 board feet to the acre per year-wages, homes, taxes and dividends of tomorrow.

A new way of think about Trees and Men and Homes is now developing.

"We can't grow trees unless we conquer the fires," protested the foresters. "We must do the fire-fighting job completely. It's the only way we can win. All forest fires start as small fires. We must lick them while they're little !"

So, this year of t94I, f.or the first time in the history of the Douglas Fir region, a complete forest defense program is bei.ng established. It is a system to hold back the worst enemy of the forest and give the young trees a real chance to grow.

To establish such a system the Weyerhaeuser Timber Company is making an initial investment of $1CI,00o. That sum is in addition to approximately $19,000 needed annually to operate the protection system. The Weyerhaeuser Timber Company is staking this amount as a wager on the correctness of a new concept of forest operation although it controls only about half the land in the 130.00Gacre Clemons Tree Farm. The remai.nder belongs to other private owners, the state and the county.

The men of Weyerhaeuser are pitting a modern, mechtnized army against firethe greatest enemy ol the forests. To use military terms, they are basing their strategy on "firepower and mobility." The strategy is: detection, communication, transportation, equipment, ammunition. That last is none other than water-but, rvater when and where it is needed.

There are six lookout towers in the project, five of them built and staffed by Weyerhaeuser. From them every acre of the vast farm can be kept under the scrutiny of alert men. Stringing between the towers and headquarters are 90 miles of telephone line. Backing up this communication system are 16 two-way radio sets, some for the towers and some for the mobile equipment.

The ribbonJike lines you see interlacing the hillsides and the ridges are roads, mostly converted logging grades. They spider out over the whole farm to bring every acre within 1,000 feet of a road, a hose line, and water pumping equipment. They twist around curving hillsides and dart down and up in sharp angles sometimes to cross small canyons, and now and then they tackle a 10 or 15 per cent grade. They are not wide roads-just'one lane, except for turnouts. They are roads which serve their principal use in dry weather-fire weather. But there are 170 miles of travelable road in the Clemons Tree Farm system, most of it capable of taking equipment to any fire at 35 miles an hour or better.

There's an important side story in roads and forest fires. Without roads, a .modern, mechanized fire fighting system would be impossible. Without modern roadmaking machinery no adequate transportation system would be feasible. Commercial forest growing had to wait for the proper stage of development in the mechanical age.

Down at headquarters you can size up the equipment. But, unless it's a wet, fire-free day, you'll find oirly the reserve pieces there. The others will be deployed over the farm near the scenes of potential danger, poised and ready to spring into instant action.

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There are five light patrol trucks, each carrying a 13G gallon tank of water and a live reel of hose, 3Q0 feet of it, in one piece oI solid rubber, an inch in diameteq always hooked up to the water. The patrolman'can dash to a blaze, slap on his brakes, kick over the pur,np control lever, leave his engine running, grab the hose ind get to work. He controls the water at the nozzle end and can play a lively stream for 15 to N minutes. tlpon these men 6rst falls the challenge to the security of the new forest. Upon them rests more than a responsibility for getting to a fire and putting it out quickly. Upon their effectiveness may depend the crystallization of a new concept of tree growing on a perpetual crop basis with private enterprise supplying the initiative and direction.

The heavy work falls to the fighter trucks, of which there are several. These 3-ton moguls have specially designed steel bodies with 5O0-gallon water tanks built into them and space provided for carrying up to 2,000 feet of l/z-inch hose. A pump, operating on a power take-off, can feed streams of water through several hose lines simultaneously, using water drawn either from the tank or from outside sources.

Then there is the bulldozer that can climb on the back of a heavy, semi-trailer truck and ride out to action to do such things as plow a firebreak, plunge down over steep, rough ground that trucks can't get over, scoop out a hole in a creek and put its own pumping equipment on the fire. When there are no fires to engage its services it has a steady flow of jobs such as ripping ties out of old railroad beds, scraping out new roads and firebreaks, deepening water holes and building earthen dams to impound water supplies.

Then, too, there are the lightweight, portable pumps, a score of them, small enough for a man to pack on his back, two-cylindered gasoline motor looking very much like an outboard boat kicker. Set up in an eye twinkling by a creek or water hole, or at a standby tank, they can push 64 gallons a minute straight against a 30Gfoot lift or move water a mile through level hose lines.

But what's equipment other than tools for men to use? When the sun hangs hot and high in a cloudless sky and the fbrest duff crackles under-foot, the 30 men who comprise the standing crew of the fire protection system peer intently across the greening hills that are in their charge, they snifi the air analytically, and move about with the quiet tenseness of a cougar poised for the kill.

The men of Weyerhaeuser, on the fire trucks, in the lookout towers, in the executive offices, are accepting the challenge with a quiet confidence. On their side is plan, organization, modern equipment, and a determination to make the Clemons Tree Farm successfully grow a continuing crop of trees useful to man-even though the harvest lies on the hotizon of Time, perhaps fully a half century away.

T. M. COBB CO. ENLARGES WAREHOUSE

T. M. Cobb Co. recently purchased the building adjoining their warehouse at 5800 Central Avenue, Los Angeles, and are now remodeling it. This will give the warehouse a frontage on Central Avenue of almost 200 feet and will add about 6000 square feet of floor space.

With Back Panel Company

Ray M. Holmes has joined the sales staff of the Back Panel Company, of Los Angeles, and will call on the trade in the metropolitan Los Angeles area. He was formerly with the United States Plywood Corporation.

Sash and Door \(/holesalers Play Golf

Gene DeArmond was the winner of the Hollywood Door Trophy, donated by the West Coast Screen Co., at the Southern California sash and door wholesalers' golf tournament at the Potrero Golf and Country Club, Inglewood, Friday afternoon, September 26.

Frank Rowley and C. O. Magruder were tied for the Caldor trophy, donated by The California Door Company, and will play-off the tie for the trophy.

S. N. Simmons came the nearest to the cup on the fourteenth green in the drive from the tee and won four golf balls.

The door prize,a blue plate mirror cigarette case, donated by Tyre Bros. Glass & Paint Co., was won by Vic Gram.

Jack Dalton, Frank Gehring and Bud Wright won the blind bogey prizes.

Winners of the various other events were presented with golf balls donated by the South Sound Lumber Sales Inc., Red River Lumber Company, Haley Bros., and Pacific Wire Products Co.

Dinner was served in the Club House at 7:ffi p.m. and was followed by the presentation of the prizes by Earl Galbraith, who acted as master of ceremonies.

lfiarshall Deats, Orrin Wright and Earl Galbraith were in charge of the arrangements for the tournament. There was a nice turnout, 50 playing golf and 60 were present for dinner.

F. N. Gibbs Gives Cost to Consumar of

5-Room Bungalow for Years 1920-1941

The comparative cost of lumber for a S-room bungalow as prepared by F. N. Gibbs, Gibbs Lumber Company, Anaheim, Calif., each year since 1920 appears below. Our readers look foreward with interest for this information every year at this time.

Material list contains 9366 f.eet of lumber and cost includes the following:

Rough lumber, Redwood and Fir. ...4077 feet. Fir FloorinC..... 850 feet. Rwd. Novelty Siding. .1500 feet. Cedar

SGNEEN

Named

In the report of October 1 issue of the election of officers of Sacramento Hoo-Hoo Club No. 109, the name was omitted of LeRoy Miller, Burnett & Sons, Sacramento, who was elected vice-president.