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When gold was discovered in northwest California in 1850, speculators crowded the remote redwood region in search of riches and new lives, and companies harvest
by jph 4y ago
When gold was discovered in northwest California in 1850, speculators crowded the remote redwood region in search of riches and new lives, and companies harvested the trees for booming development.
Mechanized logging was widespread there by the early 1900s, such as with steam winches and steam trains, and gang saws and rotary saws.
Before the Gold Rush, estimates are redwood forest covered more than 2,000,000 acres of the California coast; today, the area has only 133,000 acres.
- hcurtiss 4y agoYes, steam-powered logging was earlier, and yes there was substantial harvest in northern California prior to 1900. But to say that "most of the old-growth forests gone by the turn of the century" is simply untrue. In Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Colorado, and most of the rest of the West, it had only just begun by that time. The big boom came with the world wars and the introduction of diesel powered machinery.