Exploitation of Timber

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by Honey Mendoza

The first logging done in the Southeast
(Digital photo taken at the
Anchorage Museum of History and Art)

The prospects of the timber industry in Alaska are cloudedbecause of several factors:

The consuming markets available are far away.



The pulp and newsprint needs of the region are already quite adequately supplied by mills along the Pacific Coast.



Shipping and construction costs are quite high.



Costs of equipment, materials,and labor are much higher than they were formerly. Prices fluctuate in the open market.



Many environmentalist have expressed concerns about the ecological effects of clear cutting in national forest.

In 1954, only a small volume of timber was cut.Timber cuttingwas mostly to satisfy local requirements for mine timbers, buildinglumber, dock pilings and timbers, fish trap pilings and packingcases. The annual cut increased when the first big pulp mill openedin 1954. A good supply of timber, water transportation betweenmill and market, as well as inexpensive power, is available. Thededication of the Ketchikan Pulp Company on July 14,1954, markedthe breakthrough of the pulp industry. The mill was built at acost of $52.5 million. Its initial production capacity was 300of tons daily high alpha pulp, which is used in rayon and celluloseacetate. Then it increased to 525 tons.

Battles over wilderness, land used,natural resources, preservation,and exports of timber rage and explode.In 1968, after three yearsof study Rogers C.B. Morton,(secretary of the interior), askedcongress to set aside 83 million of acres of Alaska.In 1968 theforest service made the largest timber sale in the history ofthe Tongass National Forest of Alaska in an area considerablylarger than Rhode Island. "The state of Alaska, only recentlypart of the U.S., may be the last and the best place to preserveand protect the wilderness, forest land, wild steams, rivers,glaciers, and unexplored mountains in all of North America."Alaska appeals to the exploiters as the last big oil boom, mineralpig, and timber cut.

Alaska had cost less than two cents an acre the state covers 365million acres of land much of it is still wilderness. About 1/3of the state is almost flat and low elevation, where the greatrivers turn and loop through tundra and musk egg as through gatheringstrength to the sea. Before the vast land was considered lifeless.In1886, two ships loaded nearly one million broad feet of Alaska'slumber. They were seized at San Francisco for carrying illegallycut unexported timber. The Congress passed a law authorizing theSecretary of the Interior to sell the Alaskan lumber to meet theneeds of the district of Alaska in 1891. Congress wanted to protectthe forests in Alaska from being cut down, like many forests inthe northern part of the United.

States had been cut in the past. The Chugach National Forest wascreated on July 23, 1907. They reserved five million acres andincluded most of the land between the Copper River, the KenaiPeninsula, and the Chugach Mountains.Between 1915 and 1919, untimberedlands along the west side of the Kenai Peninsula and the northshore of Turnagain Arm were eliminated from the reserve.

Hand loggers worked in Tongass National Forest without powertools They cut trees growing close to the shoreline andskinned them into the water.