With few branches, the tree rarely forms knots or imperfections.
Redwood makes excellent lumber, being resistant to fire, insects, and rot. Smith and Moore, aware of the vast stands of pine, cedar, and redwood that blanketed the western slopes of the high Sierra, began accumulating timberland. He owned mines and ranches and lived in a sumptuous mansion in San Francisco.Īccording to the Timber and Stone Act of 1878, anyone could claim up to 160 acres of timberland in Washington, Oregon, California, or Nevada if he paid $2.50 per acre and swore that he had personally inspected the land. While Smith was a true lumberman, managing and building each new operation, Moore, the majority owner, was a venture capitalist. Moore, prominent San Franciscans who ran sawmills in California and Washington, began buying up property there in the 1880s. The high Sierra Nevada was a wilderness when Hiram C. It also supplied the money and water that turned California’s San Joaquin Valley into a very successful farming area. Built in only 13 months, it was in use from 1890 to 1923 and eventually grew to be the longest in the world, contending with bankruptcy, fire, and death while it permitted the harvest of the world’s largest trees. Most majestic of all the flumes was the Kings River flume in Fresno County, California.
Before today’s heavy-duty trucks and roads, loggers could move this lumber out of the remote backcountry only by constructing gigantic aqueducts designed to float it miles down the sides of mountains. Lumbermen built flumes of epic proportions, using water and gravity to bring some of the nation’s best wood to market. This silly but exhilarating amusement ride once served a greater purpose than mere entertainment. Climbing into long, narrow boats molded and colored to resemble hollowed-out logs, Americans by the thousand ride these liquid roller coasters every summer, letting the splashing water soak them as they fly downward. “RIDE THE LOG FLUME!” CRIES THE AMUSEMENT- park advertisement.
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