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This story is prettty ironic as this week Pacific Lumber is auctoning off the largest sawmill in the world as they have switched to small logs over the years. The only independent saw mill left here (there were over 500 mills in Humboldt county at one time) is running on logs barged here from Ore, Wash and NEW ZELAND. There are no veneer mills left in Calif as they require large clear logs.

Carry Okie is right about the large timber companys not wanting any timber from the USFS because it makes their trees more valuable.

The photo of the clump of Redwoods in COs post looks just like the trees in my front yard that are doing thousands of dollars damage to the foundation of our home. My grand son and I spent the last two weeks digging up roots and cutting a three foot section out to slow the destruction.

Humboldt County is the number one timber producing county in Calif and our economy has been in the tank since the late 70s.

Siskiyou was also a timber-dependent county. It still has production, but that is mostly coming off of Sierra Pacific private lands in South County. Fruit Growers (Sunkist) has been stopped in their tracks in the west county by spotted owl and salmon rules - so much that they tried to sell their lands and no one would touch them.

The western county is mostly US Forest Service managed lands and nothing of substance has come from them in a decade. There is extreme poverty in these former timber-dependent communities like Happy Camp, which are poised to be torched as a consequence of paralyzing environmental regulation.

This is so ironic as county fathers actually invited and solicited the feds to create national forests in our west county to PROTECT THEM and the VALUABLE TIMBER from forest fires that were occurring at the turn of the century.

I've heard that Bush is blocking Chinese hardwood and feel seflishly lucky. Freegards....

I'm not sure how much the West can help you with hardwood since most of the forest we're talking about are Redwood, Cedar, Fir and Pine--superb building materials, but not great for cabinetry. I'm not aware of any large-scale Oak harvesting. Most Oak and Madrone (there's a wood you won't find in the east!) cutting in my area is done by firewood vendors.

Humboldt County is the number one timber producing county in Calif and our economy has been in the tank since the late 70s.

Over the last six months Sierra Pacific has been completing a private land timber harvest in my area (Nevada County, Sierra Foothills). I see the trucks on my commute. They are pulling some 3 ft. diameter Doug Fir and Redwood mostly. Trucking it 60 miles to a mill in Lincoln.

When I was a kid in this town, there were seven active mills in my immediate surrounds. The loggers took the trucks out before daylight. By 9 at night, you could hear a steady drone of trucks hauling planed lumber down the grade into the Central Valley to market.

The mills put-out a lot of smoke, but they also provided honest work and industry. I have to say, I miss them.