Like Forest for Pasture: The Saginaw Manistee Lumber Company and U.S. Forest Service Land Exchanges in the Kaibab National Forest, 1899 – 1940

• In Event: Forest Commodification and Protection in the US and India, 17th - 20th Centuries

Abstract

The Saginaw Lumber Company formed in 1870 in Saginaw, Michigan during the height of the Saginaw lumber boom. As the area’s supply of old-growth timber declined in the 1890s, the company searched for new timber resources. In December 1892, the company purchased timber rights from the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad on forest land surrounding Williams, Arizona. In 1899, the Saginaw Lumber Company merged with the Manistee Lumber Company, also of Saginaw Michigan, to become the Saginaw Manistee Lumber Company. The new corporate entity moved its headquarters to Chicago, Illinois and operated a large sawmill operation in Williams. In 1899, the company began a series of land swaps with the Forest Service where it exchanged clear-cut timber land for new tracts of old-growth timber national forest land. The Forest Service, in turn, sold the clear-cut forest land to local ranchers for use in cattle and sheep ranching. This partnership between the company and the U.S. Forest Service ensured a continual supply of old-growth timber to the company for its Arizona operations without incurring the cost of purchasing timber land from private landowners. The land swaps and extraction of large quantities of old-growth timber in the Kaibab National Forest by the company continued through the early 1930s. New Forest Service policies implemented as part of the New Deal focused on resource conservation curtailed the land swap practice. This paper explores how during the first three decades of the twentieth century, corporate interest and Forest Service policy aligned under a shared goal of settlement and development to facilitate comprehensive resource extraction of old-growth timber from the Kaibab National Forest. It also examines how subsequent Forest Service policies focused on conservation came too late to conserve significant amounts of old-growth timber around Williams, Arizona producing significant consequences for the local economy and environment.

Author

• Daniel Milowski, ASU