“There’s More Trees West of Here.”
American trade, farming, commerce, shipbuilding and industry increased. American forests decreased. But that was OK, there were plenty more just to the west and that’s the way they were headed anyway. “Cut the forest, farm the clearings hard and move further west when the soil plays out” was the model from 1620 to 1891. (It was 1891 when the census showed there was no more frontier in America.) The “move west” model hit the northern forests of the lake states hard. Lots of heavy, hard logging (think Paul Bunyon and Babe the blue ox) and very little regard for what was left behind, which was a lot of slash, limbs, tops, and logs on the ground. This slash became fuel for small fires. Then, on the night of October 8, 1871 a large cyclonic storm hit the area with winds that whipped the many small fires into the Peshtigo Fire, a huge conflagration in northern Wisconsin and Michigan that burned millions of dollars worth of property and timberland and killed between 1200 and 2400 people. The fire burned over 2400 square miles. You may never have heard of the Pesthigo Fire because it happened on the same day as the Great Chicago Fire, started by some woman’s cow kicking over a lantern. The Chicago fire got all the headlines.
The Peshtigo Fire was one of a series of events that were beginning to stir the American conscious about how we were treating our forests, but not too much. America’s western forests were next in line for cutting, after all, that was what we’d always done.
Settling the Plains and West
Before the homesteaders and settlers could move onto the plains five things had to be invented and usable: #1. The steel bottom plow to turn over the thick prairie grass (A fellow named John Deere invented that in 1837, we’re still following around his machinery). #2. The windmill to bring water up from underground. #3. Barbed wire because trees and rocks were not available to make rail and rock fences as has been used in the East. #4. The repeating rifle because homesteads were isolated and firepower was necessary for protection. #5. Railroads to haul the products of farms (cows, corn, wheat, etc.) to Eastern populations and bring manufactured products (kitchen stoves, farm machines, cloth —-) to the farms. When these technological advances were in place, Americans moved onto the plains in huge numbers. Wood was needed for houses and barns, the northern forests around the Great Lakes were cut, the logs floated down the Mississippi to sawmills in Iowa (of all places). Logs were cut into boards, loaded on trains and trees became houses, barns, towns, fence posts, tools, toys, kitchen tables, railroad ties and all the hundreds of other things people need.
As settlement, farming and town building were crossing the plains, an awareness was beginning that some forests and watersheds should be conserved. The impact of logging on the land, the people and forests of northern Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota was awful. But, the dominant thinking was still that there is a lot of forest on the Public Domain and it’s available to go into private ownership, and it did. Much of the land west of the Mississippi became private by the old established ways, the 1862 Homestead Act, timber tracts were purchased, and mining claims taken from the Public Domain.
At this point we need to discuss Public Domain lands. These are lands owned by the government, some acquired by purchase (Louisiana Purchase, Gadstone Purchase, Alaskan Purchase), some by wars (England, Mexico, Native Peoples, Spain), some by treaties with Native Peoples, The Oregon Compromise with England and a few other ways. When the Government acquired land it was administered by the General Land Office (GLO), an agency in the Department of the Interior. The GLO’s job was to sell the land to those who would develop it, adding to the nation’s growth. Homesteaders, subdividers, town planners, miners, ranchers, logging companies, railroads all did their part in building the nation from Public Domain land. But, some Public Domain land was too rocky, too steep, too far, too dry or too wet for anyone to want to own and pay the taxes on it.
As settlers moved west of the Mississippi they faced two big changes; obviously, no forests, the other difference was more subtile, the further west they went the less the annual rainfall, until, west of the 100th Meridian (the north/south line that runs through North Platt, Nebraska south into Texas) there was not enough rain to grow crops. Where there is less than 20 inches of precipitation per year (all of the West), agriculture crops require irrigation, special farming practices and more land to make money farming.
West from the 100th, the plains get dryer so semi-arid west requires a lot more acres to support a cow, a grain crop and a family than east of the 100th meridian The result of the dryness is, the further west people went the more distance between the homesteads, further west, they became ranches and, of course, the towns were further apart. These distances were spanned by railroads. Railroads require big capitol provided by big companies so there had to be big possibilities for future businesses. The thing out there that could provide that big future was big expanses of land -- Public Domain land.
The Railroad companies made a deal with Congress. The government would give the railroad company every other section (640 acres, one mile square) ten to twenty miles wide along every mile of railroad the company built through the Public Domain. (Paul W. Gate, History of Public Land Law Development, p364 - 365). That created a checker board pattern of land ownership on the maps all along the railroad through prairie and forest.
What a deal! The railroad made the land valuable because people and all the things they needed could move to and from the land. Railroad companies sold their land to settlers, town builders and the forests to logging companies. The government’s General Land Office was doing the same thing with their every-other section of Public Domain. Prairie and forests were transferred from Public Domain to private ownership. The combination of natural resources and people working them created an economy of extraction and the railroads took these basic raw materials (wood, beef, wool, minerals) east for manufacture. Trains heading west carried machinery for sawmills, mines and farms, sewing machines, cook stoves, material and everything else people needed.
The railroads were subsidized and Congress made a way to expand America.
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