In 1998, one-sixth of the manufacturing jobs in Arkansas--43,000--were in the forest products sector.
"There were 2,500 companies in the forest products business, and they supported $1.2 billion in payroll, the largest of any manufacturing sector," George Balogh wrote in a history of the industry in Arkansas." Through the 20th century, companies large and small were active across the state. Dierks Forests Inc., purchased by Weyerhaeuser Co. in 1969, had large lumber operations in Mountain Pine and other communities in the Ouachita Mountains. Potlatch had a lumber operation in Warren.
"Anthony Timberlands had a large lumber and forest products operation in Bearden, and Green Bay Packaging had a kraft mill and lumber operations around Morrilton."
There were big paper mills at Camden, Pine Bluff, Crossett, Arkansas City and Ashdown.
Beginning in 2008, the Great Recession hit the timber industry hard as the housing market collapsed in much of the country. Many of the jobs lost then, especially in the south half of Arkansas, never came back. That's the subject of the cover story in today's Perspective section.
Overall, though, the story in Arkansas is this: A once depleted natural resource bounced back to play a major role in the Arkansas economy.
The late John Gray, a former dean of the University of Florida School of Forest Resources, wrote in his history of the Arkansas timber industry: "When settlement began following the War of 1812, 96 percent of the state was forested. It was diverse. In the Delta, the virgin forest consisted of magnificent stands of bottomland oaks, gums, other hardwoods and cypress. In the Gulf Coastal Plain, shortleaf pine and loblolly pine, and mixtures of pine and hardwood, predominated.
"In the Ouachitas, shortleaf pine and pine-hardwood mixtures were found on drier sites with hardwoods in moister, cooler locations. In the Ozarks, oaks, hickories, gums and other upland hardwoods occupied the forest for the most part. Along with land clearing for farms and settlements, there was limited timber harvest for local building, firewood, fence posts and other products for home use."
In south Arkansas, some logs were rafted down the Ouachita River and Bayou Bartholomew to sell to sawmill owners in north Louisiana.
"All this barely made a dent in largely virgin forests," Gray wrote. "The situation changed in the 1880s when the state's rail network was expanded from 800 to 2,200 miles of track. This not only provided access to a much greater proportion of forest but also connected the state to lumber markets in Midwest and Eastern cities.
"Lumber companies from the Great Lakes states and Midwest, backed by Northern capital, moved here, bought up tracts of land, built mills and began large-scale harvesting. From 1879-1909, Arkansas lumber production increased twelve-fold. It was dominated by about two dozen lumber companies. ... In 1909, the lumber industry employed 73 percent of all factory wage earners in Arkansas."
The era known as the Big Cut--which lasted from the railroad expansion years of the 1880s until the 1920s--saw the virgin forests decimated.
"By the end of the 1920s, the initial timber harvesting boom was over," Gray wrote. "Many of the big mills had closed. Small, portable mills moved in to operate on the scattered, small trees left behind. The state's first pulp and paper mill, which opened at Camden in 1928, was also able to use the smaller timber that remained. The first field survey of Arkansas forest conditions, an informal one in 1929, found the situation grim."
Of the 22 million forested acres that remained, 20 million had been cut. Even though 85 percent of the harvested area was seeing some natural reproduction, 70 percent of this land had been severely damaged by fires. In the year of the survey, almost 11,000 fires consumed more than 2 million acres.
"Deliberate burning for a variety of reasons was a strong tradition for rural Arkansans from that period until the end of World War II," Gray wrote. "By 1930, Arkansas forests were devastated. During the 1930s and 1940s, a substantial recovery occurred as a result of several factors. First, not all of the forest products companies that came here during the exploitation era practiced cut out and get out."
Union Sawmill Co. at Huttig, Malvern Lumber Co., International Paper Co. at Camden, Ozan Lumber Co. at Prescott, Ozark-Badger Lumber Co. at Wilmar, Crossett Lumber Co. and Dierks Forests Inc. were among the companies that began practicing sustainable forestry during the 1930s and 1940s. They provided fire protection, saved seed trees that were used to reseed certain areas and utilized selective logging methods.
In the Ouachita National Forest and Ozark National Forest, the U.S. Forest Service also provided fire protection.
The Arkansas Forestry Commission was established during this period with the goal of providing forest protection to all non-federal forests, a goal that was achieved in 1953.
"During the 1930s, the newly established Arkansas Forestry Commission and the two national forests benefited greatly from services provided by the Great Depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps," Gray wrote. "CCC enrollees from 13 camps established in Arkansas helped fight forest fires and built fire lookout towers. In the national forests, they constructed roads, campgrounds, picnic areas and swimming lakes. They planted trees on thousands of acres of eroded highland farms.
"An additional factor that reduced harvesting pressure on recovering forests in the 1930s was a sharp drop in lumber demand. There was also a shift away from the use of wood as a home heating and cooking fuel."
The U.S. Forest Service's Southern Forest Experiment Station conducted a survey of forest conditions from 1947-51. The report, published in 1953, showed that 2.5 million acres of forestland had been lost in the state since 1929. Most of the loss was due to row-crop expansion in the Delta. Yearly pine growth on remaining forests, however, was 13 percent greater than removal. The hardwood growth surplus was a whopping 63 percent. Land lost to fire was down to about 90,000 acres annually.
"The 45 years from 1950 to the mid-1990s were marked by increases in demand for all forest values," Gray wrote. "There was explosive growth in forest-related outdoor recreation, especially on the 19 percent of the total forest in public ownership. From 1948-98, there was an 86 percent increase in hunting licenses and a 132 percent increase in fishing licenses issued by the Arkansas Game & Fish Commission.
"By 1995-96, the national forests were providing almost 4 million recreation visitor days per year. This growth made the appearance of forests--natural beauty or the lack thereof--an important factor. Water use in Arkansas increased by 200 percent over a 20-year period, and that focused attention on the watershed protection effectiveness of forests."
Even as environmental concerns become more important, lumber production in the state increased by 54 percent from 1950-87.
A 1995 survey showed that the annual timber harvest had increased by 72 percent since the 1953 report.
Gray pointed to effective fire protection, a huge investment in tree planting and the virtual elimination of waste in logging as key factors in bringing Arkansas forests back from the brink. Those dark days of the late 1920s had become a distant memory. In fact, the amount of forestland in the state has increased by another 1.6 million acres since 1978.
Arkansas forests now cover 18.9 million acres. That's 56 percent of the state.
Net timber growth exceeds harvest by more than 18 million tons annually. From an economic standpoint, the goal these days isn't more trees. Instead, it's an effort to find more uses for those trees in a state that's growing timber at a far faster rate than it's being harvested.
Rex Nelson is a senior editor at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.