<\/p>\n
During the first half of this century, three products of Maine agriculture were widely known in the markets of the world. They were potatoes, canned corn and blueberries. Travelers told us that, while the Standard Oil can was the commonest American object allover the world, it was possible to buy Maine potatoes in France or Italy, Maine canned corn in Cairo or Hong Kong, and Maine canned blueberries in Barcelona or Constantinople.<\/p>\n
By 1960 these commodities had begun to suffer decline. Potatoes came to be grown allover the United States, and while Maine seed potatoes -were still demanded in the South, table potatoes from Idaho and California took over much of the Maine market. Most of the several hundred corn factories in Maine were closed. Only the blueberry market had remained fairly firm.<\/p>\n
However, the fact is that agriculture was never Maine’s leading economic resource. Our rocky land could never compete with the rich, black soil of the prairies, once settlements had extended to and beyond the Mississippi. Maine’s great natural resource has been its trees. Even as we now approach the end of the 20th century, more than 90 percent of all Maine is covered by forest.<\/p>\n
It thus seems appropriate that we devote today’s program to Maine’s forest industry.<\/p>\n
Before Maine became a separate state in 1820, Massachusetts had granted or sold large tracts of Maine land. Entire townships of 36 square miles were granted to groups of private proprietors, who assumed the obligation of securing settlers. and in many cases later incorporating the place into an organized town. Such was the case of six Boston residents, who in 1761 bought from the Proprietors of the Kennebec Purchase land on both sides of the Kennebec that eventually became the towns of Winslow and Waterville. Sometimes one man alone owned a whole township. Such was the case of one of the Kennebec proprietors, Florentius Vassall,who created the town of Vassalboro, which originally included what is now the town of Sidney on the west side of the river.<\/p>\n
To encourage education, Massachusetts gave to academies and colleges many acres of Maine land. Before 1820, only a few of those schools were situated in Maine itself; they were in old Massachusetts. The largest beneficiary was Harvard, which before 1820 had become possessed of more than 100,000 acres of Maine land. In 1815 the Massachusetts legislature granted to the Maine Literary and Theological Institution, that later became Colby College, a township of land above Bangor on the Penobscot. The largest sale of Maine lands to anyone person was made in 1793 when William Bingham, a wealthy Philadelphian financier, got
\npossession of more than two million acres in one gigantic deal. General Henry Knox, George Washington’s artillery commander and later his Secretary of War, had married into the wealthy Waldo family and had thus
\nbecome owner of a large tract of the Waldo lands in what are now Waldo and Knox counties. Always greedy for more land, Knox made a contract with the Massachusetts government to buy two large lots, each of about
\na million acres, both outside what was then the settled area of Maine.<\/p>\n
Getting into financial difficulties, Knox sold his claim to William Bingham for twelve cents an acre. Knox really made money on the deal because he had paid only ten cents. Bingham planned to sell the land in surveyed settlers’ lots, and he hoped to get an average of 50 cents an acre. His plan to get settlers was not successful. There was still much land available for settlement nearer the Maine seaports.<\/p>\n
When Bingham’s daughter married into a family more wealthy than his own, the Barings of London, Bingham sold to his son-in-law, Alexander Baring, all rights to his Maine lands. That son-in-law was raised to the peerage as Lord Ashburton, and was the man who, with Daniel Webster, negotiated the treaty that settled the boundary dispute between Maine and Canada. When Bingham died in 1804, the Barings had already made
\nnumerous sales and leases of the land for timber rights. The prosperity of the two million acres lay, not in its land for settlers, but in its trees.<\/p>\n
It was a long time before all the Bingham lands were sold to private interests. The final sale was made as late as 1946. The total area of Maine, as fixed by the Webster-Ashburton treaty, is 18,132,830 acres. When Maine became a separate state in 1820, the unsold, wild, public lands amounted to 16,436,000 acres, divided equally between Maine and Massachusetts. So Maine got at that time 8,218,000 acres of public land. Between 1820 and 1875 Maine granted to colleges and academies 108,179 acres, and sold to private parties 1,103,450 acres.<\/p>\n
In Maine’s earliest colonial times, most lumber was cut in small lots by individual owners for their own use. Commercial cutting began with the King’s broad arrow that marked trees to be cut for masts for the British navy and merchant marine. Then, as demand for lumber increased in the Boston market, many shiploads of boards, beams, clapboards, and shingles went out of Maine ports. Bangor was Maine’s largest lumber port. By 1860. in a single year, the number of ships carrying lumber out of Bangor was 3,376. As many as thirty vessels were tied up at Bangor wharves at one time. In 1860 alone, the value of lumber shipped out of Bangor exceeded four million dollars. Before 1850 the process of getting out lumber was primitive. The axe was the principal tool, and the only aid to manual labor were oxen. The lumber was ‘processed by the old up-an-down sawmills that by 1840 were approaching 2000 in Maine alone.<\/p>\n
About 1850 came the cross cut saw in the woods and the circular saw in the mills. Early in the 19th century operators employing many men were getting timber out of the Maine forest. Into many parts of the Bingham Purchase went the big lumber crews soon after Thanksgiving, to stay until the streams were open to permit driving logs to the mills.<\/p>\n
A favorite area for Central Maine operators was called the Sapling, just south of Moosehead Lake. In 1830 William Connor of Fairfield sent into the Sapling forty men and 100 oxen. The Coburns and the Clevelands of Skowhegan also operated in the same region.<\/p>\n
Life in the early lumber camps was rough. The bunks had no springs or mattresses. The quarters always smelled of steaming clothes drying before open fires. While there was some pork and beef the prevailing diet was baked beans. Getting supplies into the camps was difficult. It sometimes took a week to get a load from a populous settlement into a distant camp. Camps were poorly lighted and there were no inside toilets. In many camps conversation at meals was forbidden not only to avoid arguments that led to fights. but also to give the cook and his helper time to wash dishes, clean up and have some sleep before they had to start the morning breakfast long before daylight.<\/p>\n
Hard as was work in the camps. the spring drive was much more dangerous. Getting those long logs down the streams to the mills called for much jumping from log to log, the treacherous breaking of jams and getting logs over steep falls. Many a life was lost on those drives.<\/p>\n
A noted fictional account of Maine lumbering was Holman Day’s ”King Spruce;” but its fictional incidents were often surpassed by those of real life. In the first half of the century. and even later, Maine lumbering was a hazardous occupation. As papermills sprung up in Maine increasing the demand for pulpwood the number of pulp logs on the drives greatly exceeded the long logs. The last drive of long logs down the Kennebec was in 1932; but pulpwood did not leave the river until 1978. Now not a stick of either kind of wood comes down
\nthe major Maine rivers.<\/p>\n
Gradually horses replaced oxen in the woods until in 1911. Alvin Lombard of Waterville invented the caterpillar-tread machine known as the Lombard log-hauler. From that time on the industry became gradually mechanized until in the large operations today there is little use for axe and handsaw.<\/p>\n
Since 1900 most of Maine’s wild land has been transferred from individual owners to the big paper companies. Great Northern was organized in 1899, with its first holdings on the East Branch of the Penobscot. Its land kept expanding until its 2.5 million acres exceeded the size of the Bingham Purchase.<\/p>\n
Into their holdings the Great Northern and other companies built many miles of private roads. Great Northern kept up 12 roads, its longest being 30 miles from Lily Bay to Chesuncook Lake and Ripogenus Dam. The road best known to vacationers is the 12 miles from Greenville to Lily Bay. By 1950, roads maintained by the paper companies exceeded 500 miles.<\/p>\n
Before the pulpwood days, large tracts of Maine forest were owned by small private companies or by individuals. Most prominent in Central Maine were the Coburns of Skowhegan. Eleazer Coburn was a land surveyor who as early as 1830 began to buy timber land. With his two sons, Abner and Philander, he operated the firm of E.Coburn and Sons. After the father’s death, it became the even more famous firm of A. and P. Coburn. Abner became a Governor of Maine.<\/p>\n
In 1960, a total of 13 big companies owned 6,618,000 acres of Maine timber lands. Great Northern had 2,260,000. International Paper owned 850,000, St. Regis 700,000, and Scott 650,000. Yet by 1960 the private owners had by no means disappeared. Large tracts were still in the hands of the Burleigh and the Powers families. Lands were still held by the Coburn heirs, by the estate of Moses Giddings, by the Eaton, Murchie and Hersey interests. In 1960, one woman, Harriet Griswald of Calais, owned a big tract of Maine woods.<\/p>\n
And that is at least a partial account of Maine’s leading natural resource – its trees.<\/p>\n
Year: 1982<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Read the script for “Little Talks” program #1317, Broadcast on June 6, 1982<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":405,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35294,35296],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10138"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/405"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10138\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}