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Show EARLY EFFORTS TO PROTECT PUBLIC TIMBERLANDS 537 of 15 million feet of pine had been plundered from the public lands and because there was no punishment, people had ceased buying timberland. The register's grievance is understandable for his commissions were small.14 A Senator of the United States, writing his reminiscenses in 1915, told of cutting and hauling 150 masts to the Escanaba River in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in 1846 and of driving great quantities of pine down the Escanaba in 1847 for his employer, Sinclair and Wells. A few pages along in his reminiscences he says the land office opened for the first public sale of land in the Upper Peninsula in July 1848. Isaac Stephenson was not tattling on his employers but inadvertently revealed that they had been stealing timber from the public lands at least 2 years before any of the land could be purchased.15 Eleven years before an acre of land had been sold in Minnesota and well before a single survey line had been run on the Wisconsin side of the St. Croix River, two sawmills were erected on the St. Croix and continued to draw their logs from public 14 Harry F. Brown, Register, Green Bay, Oct. 24, 1849, to Justin Butterfield, loc. cit. Logs Scaled at St. Croix (in Board Feet)" 1840__________________________ 5,000,000 1841__________________________ 8,000,000 1842__________________________ 9,000,000 1843__________________________ 10,000,000 1844__________________________ 15,000,000 1845__________________________ 20,000,000 1846__________________________ 40,000,000 1847__________________________ 60,000,000 1848__________________________ 62,000,000 1849__________________________ 75,000,000 1850__________________________ 90,000,000 394,000,000 a Larson, History of the White Pine Industry in Minnesota, p. 25 lands, at least until 1850 when the first public lands were sold.16 We have the number of logs (in board feet) said to have been scaled at the St. Croix boom fram 1840 to 1850. Since loggers took only the best of the white pine in this early period, they may have cut only 4,000 feet to the acre. At this rate, the total stumpage cut from 1840 to 1849 would represent the cutting on 76,000 acres which was no small contribution of the government to the lumber industry.17 The First Timber Agents Meantime, the amount of trespassing on the St. Croix and its tributaries and on other pinery rivers, combined with protests and queries about cutting on public lands, led to the appointment of timber agents to search out instances of trespass and bring the evidence to the attention of the proper government agents for prosecution. It was not a mere accident that a Whig administration, with Thomas Ewing as Secretary of the Interior, led in efforts to suppress trespassing. Ewing had shown himself unfriendly to preemption, seemed anxious to protect the interests of the larger investors in public lands, and was himself somewhat of a speculator, as well as a very able lawyer. 1B Isaac Stephenson, Recollections of a Long Life, 1829-1915 (Chicago, 1915) , pp. 83-89. Sinclair and Wells were respectable Maine lumbermen who hatl transferred their investment and know-how from the woods of Maine to those of Northern Michigan and Wisconsin. 58 Agnes M. Larson, History of the White Pine Industry in Minnesota (Minneapolis, 1949) , much the best history of the lumber industry in any part of the United States, dates the beginning of sawmill operations on the St. Croix in 1839 (p. 15) , and seems to say that the first Minnesota lands were offered in 1848 (p. 290) . There were no recorded sales listed in the annual reports of the Commissioner until 1850, when 1,605 acres were sold and 24,160 acres were entered with land warrants. |