Black Hills Forestry by John F. Freeman

Author:John F. Freeman [Freeman, John F.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781607322993
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
Published: 2015-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Figure 7.5. Smokey Bear poster, 1950s. Courtesy, Black Hills National Forest Collection, Leland D. Case Library for Western Historical Studies, Black Hills State University, Spearfish, SD.

Shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor, a Japanese submarine off the California coast fired shells that landed near Los Padres National Forest, which drove the Forest Service to inaugurate a nationwide forest fire prevention campaign. The Walt Disney Company volunteered Bambi as the campaign’s symbol; after a year’s trial, the Forest Service and the Advertising Council decided in favor of Smokey Bear, in honor of a popular New York City assistant fire chief named Smokey Joe Martin. Adding a note of sentimentality to the campaign, in 1950 firefighters cleaning up a major fire in the Lincoln National Forest in New Mexico found a 5-pound black bear cub with singed paws clinging to a blackened tree. They rescued the cub and sent it to the National Zoo in Washington, DC, where for fifteen years the cub served as the living symbol of the fire prevention campaign. Beyond that, the Smokey Bear campaign had a significant, perhaps unintended long-term impact on the Forest Service. Historian Samuel Hays has expressed the insight that, over time, Smokey Bear and his “friends” expanded the American public’s view of the forest and its values and encouraged citizens to take a closer look at the management of the national forests.46

During the postwar period, meanwhile, successive national administrations pressed for the very highest levels of production on public lands. With the lifting of price controls, the price of lumber from the Black Hills rose by 25 percent; the price of standing timber rose from seven dollars per 1,000 board feet in 1945 to thirteen dollars per 1,000 board feet in 1952. Some timber operators in the Black Hills complained that the Forest Service had raised its appraisals; but Carl Newport, a timber industry advocate, found that average bids for timber sales actually exceeded appraised values. In addition, to compensate for market fluctuations, he noted that the Forest Service had instituted a procedure for adjusting prices over the period of long-term sales.47

With economic diversification and expansion occurring during and after the war, timber no longer remained the predominant industry in the Black Hills, except around Custer, Hill City, and Pringle. Homestake Mining Company remained a major employer around Deadwood, but Warren-Lamb Lumber Company had pretty much ceased operations, in part because of competition from more nimble operators such as the Minnesota-based Buckingham Trucking Company. To avoid sending empty trucks eastbound from Rapid City, Buckingham purchased rough lumber from small operators, collected and stored that lumber in its concentration yard, and shipped from that facility as trucks became available and demand warranted.48

Beginning with the administration of President Harry S. Truman, postwar appropriations greatly increased for construction of US Forest Service roads, specifically to access more timber more efficiently. At the same time, better roads attracted recreational visitors, not all of whom either understood or valued the utility of timber production. More roads left some longtime residents with the feeling that their backyards were being destroyed.

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