Giant sierra pines drove the region’s lumber economy
Evidence
Pines cleft the sky; they were massed wherever level ground occurred; they stood over the Truckee at right angles, or lay across it in prostrate grandeur. Their stumps and carcasses were everywhere; and smooth “shoots” on the sierras marked where they were shot down as “felled timber,” to be floated off by the river. To them this wild region owes its scattered population, and the sharp ring of the lumberer’s axe mingles with the cries of wild beasts and the roar of mountain torrents. — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 30
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to the reader’s essay on trees as underused infrastructure/worldbuilding — lumber camps and ‘felled timber’ floated downriver echo the cedar shipbuilding and resource-extraction material in that piece. — connects to: The Truckee River canyon walls tower as fortress-like pine-crowned sierras — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 29
Related
- The Truckee River canyon walls tower as fortress-like pine-crowned sierras (similarity 0.92)
- The high Rocky Mountain forest was untouched by logging in the 1870s. (similarity 0.81)