With The Lumberman's Frontier, Thomas Cox has reconstructed a groundbreaking history that stands apart from all previous studies of American forests.
Forests were ubiquitous in early America, but it was only in selected areas that trees, rather than farming, ranching, or mining, attracted settlement. These areas constitute the lumberman's frontier, which appeared first in northern New England in the seventeenth century, followed by upstate New York, the Allegheny Plateau, the upper Great Lakes states, the Gulf South, and the Far West.
The forest frontiers generated capital and building materials important in the nation's development, but they also left a legacy of environmental problems, class and urban-rural divisions, and economic frictions. The 1930s marked the end of the lumberman's frontier, but these consequences continue to shape attitudes and policies toward forests, most notably the questions “Whose forests are they? ” and “How and by whom should forests be used?”
Drawing upon recent work in social and economic history, as well as a wealth of historical data on forest industries and individuals, The Lumberman s Frontier neither glorifies economic development nor falls into the maw of ecological gloom-and-doom. It puts individual actors at center stage, allowing the points of view of the workers and lumbermen to emerge.
Preface x
Chapter 1 Colonists and Trees: Lumbering before the Lumberman's Frontier 1
Chapter 2 The Lumberman's Frontier Emerges 23
Chapter 3 The Maine Frontier at Floodtide 47
Chapter 4 From Farmer-Loggers to Lumbermen in the Mid-Atlantic States 73
Chapter 5 Lumber and Labor in the Pines: New Patterns of Conflict 101
Chapter 6 New Mills, New Markets 125
Chapter 7 The Pull Flowering 149
Chapter 8 Actions and Reactions 191
Chapter 9 Southern Beginnings 213
Chapter 10 Bonanza Years in the Gulf South 235
Chapter 11 To the Farthest Shore—And Beyond 263
Chapter 12 Into the Mountains 291
Chapter 13 The Final Frontier 331
Epilogue Whose Forests Are They? 363
Notes 377
A Note on Sources 513
Index 519
Map 1 Early Maine-New Hampshire forest frontier 10
Map 2 Downeast in Maine 33
Map 3 Middle Atlantic forests 78
MAP 4 Michigan's Lower Peninsula and its lumber markets 127
Map 5 Wisconsin, Minnesota, and downriver 161
Map 6 Gulf Coast pineries 2l8
Map 7 Bonanza South lumber frontier 241
Map 8 Pacific Coast forest frontier 275
Map 9 Interior Far Western pineries 337
Overview
With The Lumberman's Frontier, Thomas Cox has reconstructed a groundbreaking history that stands apart from all previous studies of American forests.
Forests were ubiquitous in early America, but it was only in selected areas that trees, rather than farming, ranching, or mining, attracted settlement. These areas constitute the lumberman's frontier, which appeared first in northern New England in the seventeenth century, followed by upstate New ...