The Forest for the Trees: How Humans Shaped the North Woods

The Forest for the Trees: How Humans Shaped the North Woods by Jeff Forester Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2004; $32.95

On topographic maps of Minnesotas Arrowhead region--a long, flat triangle sandwiched between the northwestern shore of Lake Superior and the Canadian border--the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness looks like a tattered pennant fluttering against a clear blue sky. Its million-plus acres of forestland are so thoroughly perforated with lakes, creeks, and rivers that it's hard to tell whether it is a land sprinkled with lakes or a sea dotted with islands. After Congress passed the Wilderness Act of 1964, Boundary Waters became one of the most popular and treasured backcountry preserves in the lower forty-eight states. On many of its waterways a visitor can paddle a canoe for days without hearing the din of an outboard engine, or even the whisper of another human voice.

Yet Boundary Waters is no virgin territory. After the vast forests of New England, Pennsylvania, and Ohio had been logged, lumbermen set their sights on Minnesota, home of some of the last large stands of unexploited forest east of the Rockies. A century ago, the rhythmic chunking of loggers' axes and the scream of sawmills were as common among the trees and lakes of Minnesota as the call of the loon. On large lakes near major access roads and rail lines, rafts of floating logs often made canoe travel impossible. In summer, logging roads were bulldozed over the rocky terrain, and steamships carried men and supplies to remote forest camps. In winter, teams of horses dragged sledges loaded with cut logs across frozen lakes.
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The mill yard of the Knox Lumber Company, in Winton, stretched for nearly a mile along the shores of Fall Lake. In Ely, now the canoeing capital of the world and a mecca for outdoor adventurers, the steam whistles of lumber nulls regulated the daily routine of townspeople well into the twentieth century. Between 1880 and 1920 alone, more than 2 billion board feet of white pine were shipped out of northern Minnesota to build the towns and cities of the growing nation.

Jeff Forester, a freelance writer and frequent visitor to Boundary Waters, has written a thoughtful history of how the Minnesota backwoods became, for a time, an industrial hub, and was then returned to wilderness. The Forest for the Trees is enriched with the lore of the enterprising woodsmen and lumber barons who developed the rugged area, bringing in roads, rails, and electricity. And its author tells some good yarns about working the timber mills and living in the timber camps, about the rough-and-tumble life of the mill towns, where dozens of whorehouses and saloons offered the main entertainment after hours.

But Forester also outlines the history of social and economic development in this resource-rich region. The pioneering lumbermen, he notes, were independent operators, family men who just wanted to make a comfortable life for themselves and their neighbors. As the pace of cutting increased, however, the northern forest came under the control of such commanding industrialists as Frederick E. Weyerhaeuser, who thought big and who hauled great stands of trees to the lumber yards with giant steam-driven tractors and mile-long trains of flatbed railcars.

By the time of Teddy Roosevelt, industrial laissez-faire policies were being challenged by a growing conservation movement. Properly managed forests, the movement taught, could provide both exploitable harvests and recreational getaways. Yet it was only in the 1960s that wilderness advocates began to widely promote the idea that some land should remain "forever wild," leading to the creation of the Boundary Waters reserve. The concept of untouched wilderness there, however, is being reevaluated. A freak straight-line windstorm caused a massive blowdown of trees in the area in 1999, and the profusion of fallen timber raised fears of a catastrophic firestorm. Eventually the U.S. Forest Service was forced to schedule controlled burns.

Whatever the forest policy these days at Boundary Waters, Forester's book should be required reading for anyone planning an adventure in the Minnesota north woods--or, for that matter, for anyone who wants a better appreciation for the past, present, and future of America's forests.