That’s because when this country was still being settled, standing trees were an obstacle in the course of productively developing all this land, which, at the

That’s because when this country was still being settled, standing trees were an obstacle in the course of productively developing all this land, which, at the time, meant mostly agriculture. Before big machines arrived on the scene, getting rid of all of that heavy garbage was a lot of labor, and since there was a lot of trees around, and shipping them far away was way too expensive, there were few buyers, all of which made prices low. When all local trees were cut, land had been developed into farms and towns, and lumber needed to be shipped from further away, prices started going up.