A Load of Logs Near Kettle River Landing, Minnesota
In this scene you are near Kettle River, Minnesota, about 50 miles southwest of Duluth. Formerly a large part of the state of Minnesota was covered with rich forests. In the northeastern section were the great pine areas. South of the pine district were the great woods in which were spruce, tamarack, oak, birch, and poplar. The lumbermen were the first to settle in the state, and its early development was due to the lumber industry. Now, however, most of the valuable timber has been cut. But more than one-fifth of the area of the state is still timbered. In 1913 the lumber output of Minnesota amounted to 1,149,704,000 feet. The forests of the United States have been one of our greatest assets. We sometimes think that most of our timber has been removed, but still 1/4 of our country is in woods. Our forests formerly covered about 850,000,000 acres, by far the richest forested areas of any other like size in the world. We are now cutting trees at the rate of three times the annual growth. This means that our forested areas are decreasing very rapidly. Every year we use about 90,000,000 cords of wood for fuel; about 40,000,000,000 board feet of lumber; 450,000,000 board feet for veneer; 135,000,000 ties; 1,500,000,000 staves, to say nothing of the wood used for pulp, mine timbers, excelsior, telegraph and telephone poles, etc. The men here shown have brought down from the hillside a great sled load of logs. Observe the way in which the sled is built. It is made in two sections so that the front runners can be turned to Kettle River and floated to the mill below where they will be sawed into lumber. Keystone ID: 20033 Note: All titles, descriptions, and location coordinates are from the original Keystone Slide documentation as supplied by the Keystone View Company. No text has been edited or changed.