creative nonfiction, rural life, southern culture, southern writing

How to Get Rich in the South

by rayclifton2 Comments on How to Get Rich in the South

If we look at the history of change in Alabama’s forest, it is useful to think in terms of “eras.” Each era lasted about 80 years. I have covered two of these in previous posts: “the original forest” as described by naturalist William Bartram, and the “settlement era” in which European settlers purchased land and created homestead farms. The next period, which I call the “sawmill era” (1865-1940), had the largest influence on the structure and composition of the forests across the South. The current Alabama forest still reflects what occurred in that era.

Alabama’s landscape at the beginning of the Civil War (1861-1865) was still largely an unbroken patchwork of farms and forest. There were some small sawmills (often called “peckerwood mills”) usually located along creeks and rivers, but they were incapable of processing significant volumes of lumber. Plus, the lack of a transportation infrastructure relegated timber and forest products primarily to local use. Consequently, nothing resembling a large-scale timber industry in the South existed before the Civil War.

At the time, Alabama was an agrarian society consisting of hundreds of small farms and large-acreage cotton plantations. There was some manufacturing across the state, but nothing on the scale of what existed in the North. While we may think the farmers were “dirt poor,” the South had a higher per capita income, even including the slave population, than the industrialized states of the Union. The War changed that as plantation owners and subsistence farmers (supplying most of the soldiers) went from wealth to poverty overnight. Contrast this to the northern states where a well-developed forest products industry supplied lumber, railroad crossties, charcoal, and tannin. Large scale “lumbering” had already occurred over the previous eight decades, particularly in the Lake States. Vast areas of forestland already showed signs of depletion. The combination of an impoverished South, rich in forest, and the industrialized North, rich in capital, was a perfect match.

In his book “How to Get Rich in the South,” A.J. Harrison wrote “The supply of timber in the South is inexhaustible . . . and is being bought in large tracts by lumbermen.”

Inexhaustible.

Wealthy northerner capitalists saw opportunity in Alabama’s stately longleaf pine trees. The northern states needed timber to supply an industrial revolution, and wealthy northern capitalists had a vision and the means to exploit it.

And so, it was. Thousands of acres were bought by “timber barons” from the North. Some were simply speculators, while others would build sawmills mills along the expanded railroad corridors. Homesteaders, now desperate for cash in an economy in ruins, had two options: sell the land and go West, or stay put and sell their trees for whatever they could get.

They did both. Those who sold their land often did so at less than one dollar per acre. Those who chose to stay and keep their farms sold their trees for much less. One example was in the heart of Alabama’s extensive longleaf forest, where records reveal that one timber speculator bought 40-acre parcels of “virgin” longleaf timber for “three sacks of corn, three sides of bacon, ten pounds of tobacco, and 40 pounds of coffee.” If he considered the timber “exceptional” he offered “an extra sack of corn and an additional ten pounds of coffee.”

Once the land and timber was purchased, sawmills were constructed along the railroad corridors. In the next installment, I’ll discuss the particulars and the result: deforestation, the likes of which will never be equaled.

Life in Alabama, nonfiction, rural life, southern culture, southern writing

Woods Someone Owned

by rayclifton6 Comments on Woods Someone Owned

It took a little less than 80 years to transition from Bartram’s idyllic “original” forest, an unbroken landscape of “stately pines” and “lush bottomlands,” to a countryside that bore the marks of European colonial settlement. This change stemmed from a very American idea: that ordinary people could purchase land for themselves, work it with their own two hands, and build enough personal wealth to control their own destinies.

But before the land could be sold, it had to be controlled. Westward expansion into the 14 million acre “Mississippi Territory” followed the defeat of the British and the Creek Indian Nation in 1814. By 1819 Alabama had enough settlers to enter the Union as a state. By 1830 the native tribes were overcome and relocated to “Indian Territory” in present-day Oklahoma.

Back in Alabama, the territorial lands were surveyed into a rectangular grid established by the Government Land Survey System. This allowed land to be broken into parcels or lots which were offered by grant or sale to homesteaders at Government Land Offices.

Under private ownership, the towering longleaf pines and the lush hardwood river bottoms were more often seen as an obstacle than a blessing. Before a farm could be established, trees had to be cut and removed to prepare for homes and crops, and that was no easy task.

A typical homesteader cleared enough trees to build a small cabin and a few outbuildings, as well as clearing areas to grow crops. This was difficult, backbreaking labor. Trees were felled with axes and crosscut saws–called “misery whips” by settlers–and dragged to building sites by oxen, horses, or mules. The clearing and building process was gradual and often took place over several years. Once cleared, settlers planted corn, wheat, and vegetables and sometimes established fruit orchards. Rail fences were made from longleaf pine (or chestnut in the north) to keep free-range livestock out of the crops. The settlers initially relied on wild game as their meat source but soon hogs became the primary source of meat since pork could be preserved by smoking or salting. Once a few families had settled in an area, small communities developed.

The notion that Alabama was dominated by big cotton plantations and slave labor is false. The plantations were mostly prevalent in Alabama’s Black Belt Prairie (where there were few trees) and along major rivers. However, even small homestead farms eventually began producing some cotton by the 1820s. Cotton was a cash crop, and cash was scarce for subsistence farmers. Even though more land was cleared for cotton, the overall effect on the “original forest” was marginal.

Up until the Civil War, few areas of Alabama had anything resembling a large-scale forest products industry. Small sawmills were scattered across the state, usually along major creeks or rivers, but these did not become transformative until after the War. The same small scale held true for other commercial enterprises such as charcoal, turpentine, and crossties for the burgeoning railroad business.

After the Civil War, however, a new era would begin. The forest of Alabama was about to be transformed into a landscape that Bartram could not have imagined.

creative nonfiction, Life in Alabama, nonfiction, southern writing

Woods No One Owned

by rayclifton12 Comments on Woods No One Owned

“At one time in the world there were woods that no one owned,” wrote Cormac McCarthy in Child of God.

If you want to tell a story, start at the beginning. But there is a problem if your tale is about a forest. When exactly was the beginning?

I once attended a lecture on Alabama’s National Forests at which a government forester claimed that the U.S. Forest Service was enacting a management plan to restore public lands to their “original condition.” I raised my hand and asked when the forest was “original.” After a great deal of stuttering and stammering he admitted that what he really meant was before any logging.

That’s a beginning with which we can work. What did Alabama’s forest look like before anyone owned it – before logging?

My best guess is 1775, the year that naturalist William Bartram documented his travel through central and southern parts of the state. Bartram was a true “Renaissance man,” an explorer, botanist, artist, and writer, and his descriptions and drawings of plants and animals are the definitive narrative of the southern landscape before European settlement.

What Bartram described is something vastly different from what exists today.

In what we now call the “Coastal Plain” he found longleaf pine savannas, vast areas occupied by “the stateliest pine trees that can be imagined.” This forest was open and prairie-like, with large, widely spaced trees “standing like columns or pillars,” and a ground cover of grasses, wildflowers, and shrubs. The openness of this forest allowed him to travel through on horseback. He accurately surmised that the longleaf ecosystem was maintained by frequent fires, which occurred both naturally and through intentional actions of the natives.

A reasonable estimate of the longleaf forest in Bartram’s time is 30 million acres. Today there are about three million, and much of that consists of young longleaf plantations. There is a lot of interest in restoring the ecosystem, and public and private agencies offer grants and other funding to encourage landowners to plant longleaf.

Along rivers and creeks, he found something entirely different. Great stands of massive hardwood trees including oak, ash, elm, baldcypress, sweetgum, and southern magnolia. Thick vines grew up into the canopy, and the groundcover consisted of ferns and lush vegetation. He described this forest as “cool, shady, and luxuriant.”

The bottomland forest in Bartram’s time is estimated to have covered six million acres. Today there is about 2.7 million, with most of that having been cut at least once.

Just south of what is now Montgomery, Bartram described something foresters find puzzling – a nine-mile-long stretch of flowering dogwood trees so dense that it was a monoculture, punctuated occasionally by a southern magnolia. The curious thing about that is that dogwood today is found as individual trees scattered across the uplands. What he described does not exist today.

While Bartram did not travel through the hills and valleys of North Alabama, we can surmise what he might have seen from the writings from settlers in the early 1800s. Oak, hickory, American chestnut, hemlock, and various pine species covered this area. Most has since been cut and regenerated several times, and a substantial portion is now in pine plantations. American chestnut, which may have constituted 30% of this upland forest is extinct, killed by a blight over a couple of decades in the early 20th century.

The bottom line: the forests we have today are quite different than the “original.” The terms “virgin forest,” “virgin timber,” or “old-growth timber” simply do not apply in Alabama. Every forested acre that can be logged has been — several times. A tree over 130 years old is rare, and a group of trees that age standing together on an acreage large enough to be considered a forest is non-existent. There are a few exceptions, of course, but they are occupying land that is extremely hard to access – which is why they are still standing. These “patches” of forest exist in areas so steep, narrow, swampy, or rocky that no enterprising timber man ever figured out how to get in to cut them. We have lots of trees, but they are not as old as you might think. Next time I will tell you a little bit about how we got from Bartram’s “original” forest to that we have today.

Photos generated by AI

creative nonfiction, Life in Alabama, rural life, southern culture, southern writing

The State of Forests

by rayclifton8 Comments on The State of Forests

Alabama has trees—so many that most of us who live here hardly notice them.

Auburn University recently hosted a World Cup Soccer “friendly” match between Argentina and Iceland that drew 88,000 fans. Subsequent social media posts from international visitors both amused and honored us. Visiting fans expected the arrogance of American Exceptionalism and gun-slinging violent crime—they said so themselves in numerous on-the-ground interviews. Instead, they found Alabama bursting with friendly, helpful people. They were overwhelmed and delighted with some of the trappings of Southern culture like Buc-ee’s, Waffle House, Ranch Dressing, and … trees.

“Oh, the trees. Everywhere there are trees!”

And that is true. Alabama is about 70% forested. That’s about 23 million acres of trees.

I don’t know about you, but a million of anything is hard for me to visualize. When it comes to land, I can visualize an acre as roughly the size of a football field (real football, not soccer). Twenty-three million football fields is a lot of ground.

The politics of the “green” movement will try to convince you that deforestation is a threat to the planet. It may well be a threat in some areas of the world, but not in Alabama. Would you believe the acreage of forestland here is the same as it was in the early 1900’s? That is astonishing considering the increases in urbanization and industry over these 126 years. Alabama had a population of 1.8 million in 1900, and now stands at 5.2 million, a substantial portion of which resides in a half-dozen cities.

To be fair, the acreage has shifted around. While cities have grown, agriculture continues to decline. The year 1900 was the peak of 100 years of cotton farming in the state. “I wish I was in the land of cotton” used to be a real thing: six million acres of it were planted anywhere it could be planted (and some places it shouldn’t have). There are around 50,000 acres of cotton land today, and “old times here are quite forgotten.”

There’s a reason that cotton is gone. Many have learned just enough history to think it was due to the boll weevil, an insect which is commemorated by a statue in Enterprise (in case you ever want to make a pilgrimage). But the truth of cotton’s decline is much more complex. There were environmental, technological, labor, and political causes, but the biggest factor was that the global market for cotton changed. On the bright side, what was bad for cotton was good for trees, which grow well on lots of soils, even those worn out by continuous cotton cultivation.

I feel certain that if you could travel back to 1900 and tell an old-timer that there would be very few cotton fields in 100 years, he would have laughed you off his porch, because cotton was about all you could see in every direction.

That is the same thing someone would tell you today about Alabama’s abundant forest.

Unless he is paying attention.

creative nonfiction, Life in Alabama

A Walk through the Forest

by rayclifton5 Comments on A Walk through the Forest

I am a professional forester. Or at least I was for about 35 years. Now I am retired, which I suppose has reduced me to amateur status. This happened much earlier than expected, and not by choice. A couple of diseases from a tick bite changed my life, both personally and professionally.

Forestry was a decent way to make a living. I did not get rich, but I am not poor by any means. I met a lot of interesting people and walked through some of the most beautiful places in Alabama. A lot of my time was spent in solitude, which allowed contemplation. But most of the work required a certain amount of haste. Nothing leisurely about it. Not enough time for a sincere appreciation of the sheer wonder of it all. I regret that.

Now that I have more time, a visit to the woods is a rare treat — and almost never made alone.

One thing that has always amazed me is how little people know about forests and forestry. Alabamians especially. The state is about 70% forested, and the associated forest products industry is the second largest in terms of economic activity. But the majority can’t see the forest for the trees.

The Redhead asked me to tell you a little about it, probably so I won’t keep telling her about it. I suspect it will be a long tale, a mixture of fact and opinion. Some parts will hopefully be interesting. Others, maybe not so much. Just skip the boring parts and jump back in later.

I will give you the ending here, at the beginning. The forest landscape is about to undergo an epic change in the South. It will not be caused by any natural disaster, insect, disease, or plague. It will be diminished by a forest product called pulpwood.