Timber History and Trends

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Timber History

Timber mills and operations had been in existence throughout the Sierra before the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Creek in 1848. But the subsequent Gold Rush of 1849 fueled a migration of individuals to California and timber needs grew dramatically. Sierra timber operators were initially hampered by the difficulty and expense of transporting their product to the growing cities of San Francisco and Sacramento. At the time, most timber was sold at the local mining camps and towns.

Ten years later, in 1859, discovery of silver at the legendary Comstock Lode on the eastern escarpment of the Sierra Nevada sent them scrambling back over the Sierra. The ensuing silver boom helped jumpstart the timber industry in the Lake Tahoe region.

A square-set timbering technique used to bolster the ceiling of underground tunnel was a favored practice on the Comstock Lode. The sheer size of the silver strike and the technique required massive amounts of timber.

Timber was needed and the Lake Tahoe basin seemed to contain unlimited supplies. Mills on the lake’s eastern shore collected timber from the entire basin. By combination of narrow-gauge railways and a flume that dropped 3,000 vertical feet to the Carson Valley, the mines were supplied and the potential for timber in the Sierra was realized. The Tahoe mill’s produced an estimated 70 million board feet annually through the 1870s.

The Central Pacific Railroad, the nation’s first transcontinental railroad, bisected the Sierra Nevada at Donner Pass in the late 1860s. Completed in 1869, the Central Pacific was a major consumer of Sierra timber for the Sierra portion of the railroad during construction as well as across Nevada’s Great Basin. The Pacific Railroad Act of 1862 authorized a land grant to the railroads based on a checkerboard pattern for ten miles on each side of the track. This was later increased to 20 miles. The Central Pacific Railroad used these tracts of land to gather timber for their operations. Constructing the railroad’ssnow sheds near Donner Pass required 300 million board feet and an additional 20 million board feet were required annually for repairs.

The most significant logging areas were in the foothills of Nevada and Sierra Counties and portions of Placer County as well as in the major mining districts stretching from Placerville in El Dorado County south to Mariposa County.

In 1891, the Forest Reserve Act established the ability to remove forest tracts from the public domain. The forest reserves were renamed national forests in 1907. In the Sierra Nevada, these reserves were eventually organized into eight national forests: Plumas, Tahoe, Eldorado, Stanislaus, Sierra, Sequoia, and parts of the Humboldt-Toiyabe and Inyo.

Trends affecting Timber Industry

Urban and suburban sprawl directly converts forestland to other uses, which fragments important wildlife habitat, impairs watershed function, heightens possibility of catastrophic wildfire, and limits management possibilities for tree farmers and ranchers. Worst of all, the economic power of real estate development exerts a constant pressure on forest owners to convert their land to other uses, usually residential.

While real estate markets pull forests into urbanization, regulations are increasingly pushing landowners toward the same result. Timber harvest regulations were originally intended to prevent bad forest management. Unfortunately, the ever-increasing administrative burdens and harvest restrictions of these regulations have added substantial costs to the already shaky economics of owning forestland.

The combination of rapid urban growth, increasing regulation and low economic returns is leading many forest landowners in the forest-urban interface to choose to subdivide and develop their lands. Curiously, once forests are converted to urban and suburban uses, many of the regulations no longer apply. The environment so vigorously protected in the working forests is permanently degraded through urbanization.