So I got to spend a little time tramping around the Piney Woods this weekend and I got to wondering about the historical makeup of most of the forest.

Basically, I know pines would have been the most prevalent type of trees in the area but going back say 100-150 years would the same have been true to the same extent it is today? Meaning, was there more diversity of tree types back before timber companies came in and clear cut places and replanted nothing but pine trees? Or would there have been a lot more hardwoods outside the bottoms, and so forth.

I'm sure there was more diversity but I don't know how much more. The vast majority of virgin timber logging in east TX and western La was pine so it must have been at least similar to today. I believe some of the areas of Kisatchie and Sam Houston National forest have never been logged if you need a visual.

Thanks PineTreeAg for telling us the fate of your evergreen brethren.

Seriously though, I was just wandering about and wondering what it looked like 150 years ago (or longer).

Finn Maccumhail said:

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Thanks PineTreeAg for telling us the fate of your evergreen brethren.

Seriously though, I was just wandering about and wondering what it looked like 150 years ago (or longer).

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150 years ago, much of the upland Southern forest was cleared and converted into cotton fields. Cotton was King back in those days.

A lot of the national forests in Texas were previously cut-over thickets or abandoned farmland that the Feds acquired in the 1930's when landowners couldn't pay their taxes during the Great Depression.

People look at it today (a mature forest) and think it's always been that way, but that's not the case. Mankind has touched and disturbed the landscape for centuries, and Mother Nature heals up relatively quickly if left to itself.

Would love to have seen the woods in those days. As a boy growing up, my grandfather and his friend told me about their grandfather's that arrived in East Texas in the mid 1800's. They were able to ride a horse at a full gallop through the bottoms that they were clearing for cotton and sugar cane.

spud1910 said:

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Would love to have seen the woods in those days. As a boy growing up, my grandfather and his friend told me about their grandfather's that arrived in East Texas in the mid 1800's. They were able to ride a horse at a full gallop through the bottoms that they were clearing for cotton and sugar cane.

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I have read this before that the virgin southern pine forests had trees large enough that there wasn't a lot of underbrush and a man could easily ride a horse through the forests.

Quote:

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A lot of the national forests in Texas were previously cut-over thickets or abandoned farmland that the Feds acquired in the 1930's when landowners couldn't pay their taxes during the Great Depression.

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Most of the land that became southern national forest was cut over timber company land. Once the timber was cut out, the land was worthless to them and was placed on the market.

The problem was that the south was left in an ecological night mare after the timber boom. There were no "best practices" at the time. Silviculture and forestry were in their infancy. Even if the timber companies had been interested in re-planting, the knowledge or the nurseries weren't there. By the time the forest was cut out, not only was one of the largest employment sectors in the South coming to an end, but the south was left without one if its most valuable resources. The surplus of land on the market from the timber companies drove down land values leaving people with their most valuable asset highly diluted in value. All of this was going on during the great depression so people were already in hard times.

The solution was the acquisition of the land by the federal government. All the land was purchased from willing sellers after negotiating a price.
Immediately, the CCC began employing people for the purpose of re-planting under the New Deal. The goal was to create a perpetual and sustainable forest managed for multiple uses, one of which was to provide the nation with a future crop of timber to be harvested. The land became an experimental testing ground for the national forest service to learn and practice new ideas of forestry.

The state of Texas went through a very similar cycle and there are a handful of State Forest that you can visit today as well.

If you want to know more, check the Texas A&M Forest Service's Centennial page. It is a really incredible story.
http://tfsweb.tamu.edu/history/

There are some incredible historical photos of early Texas forest and forestry on that site found here:
https://edocs.tamu.edu/TAMUS-TFS/

Wow! Thanks for posting that link. The pic from ~1910 with the East Texas woods and the man (for perspective) was really cool. I have seen photos from when a large part of Wisconsin was cleared by the lumberjacks (both before and after) and it is amazing how big some of the trees were.