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Updated: May 25, 2025
The lodge door was fastened with a rusty padlock, and the place looked ghoulish. I think we were all glad to get out of Tongass, though we received our best welcome there. At any rate, we sat on the beach and got our feet wet and our pockets full of sand waiting for the deliberate but dead-sure boatmen to row us to the ship.
That is what the pilot and I saw while most of the passengers were sleeping. It was the veritable aurora borealis, and that alone were worth the trip to Alaska. One day we came to Fort Tongass a port of entry, and our last port in the great, lone land for all the way down through the British possessions we touch no land until we reach Victoria or Nanaimo.
The land within National Forests may be put to a thousand other uses, from a bee ranch on the Cleveland Forest in southern California to a whaling station on the Tongass Forest in Alaska, all of which means work for him.
Tongass was once a military post, and now has the unmistakable air of a desert island. Some of us were not at all eager to go on shore. You see, we were beginning to get our fill of this monotonous out-of-the-world and out-of-the-way life. Yet Tongass is unique, and certainly has the most interesting collection of totem poles that one is likely to see on the voyage.
At Tongass there is a little curving beach, where the ripples sparkle among the pebbles. Beyond the beach is a strip of green lawn, and at the top of the lawn the old officers' quarters, now falling to decay. For background there are rocks and trees and the sea.
Practically all the timber in that section is controlled by the Government and is within the Tongass National Forest. This means that this important crop will be handled properly. No waste of material will occur. Cutting will be permitted only where the good of the forest justifies such work.
They cover 20,579,740 acres or about 5-1/2 per cent. of the total area of Alaska. The larger of these woodlands, the Tongass National Forest, is estimated to contain 70,000,000,000 board feet of timber ripe for marketing. Stands of 100,000 board feet per acre are not infrequent. This is the Alaskan forest that will some day be shipping large amounts of timber to the States.
Its trees are not so large and the stand of timber only about one-half as heavy as in the Tongass. Experts estimate that it contains 7,000,000,000 board feet of lumber. Western hemlock predominates. There is also much spruce, poplar and birch. Stands of 40,000 to 50,000 feet of lumber an acre are not unusual.
I know not where the Indians had gone, but they were not there save a sick squaw or two. Probably, being fishermen, the tribe had gone out with their canoes, and were now busy with the spoils somewhere among the thousand passages of the archipelago. The totem poles at Tongass are richly carved, brilliantly colored, and grotesque in the extreme.
The timber in the Tongass National Forest runs 60 per cent. western hemlock and 20 per cent. Sitka spruce. The other 20 per cent. consists of western red cedar, yellow cypress, lodge-pole pine, cottonwood and white fir. The yellow cypress is very valuable for cabinet making. All these species except the cedar are suitable for pulp manufacture.
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