Mill disputes amount of merchantable timber

If the early history of Seeley Lake is intertwined with the lumber industry, the rise of the United States Forest Service is incontrovertibly intertwined with Seeley Lake and in particular with the Big Blackfoot Timber Sale of 1907-1910. Historian and member of the Camp Paxson Preservation Board Gary Williams has been researching that sale. The Seeley Swan Pathfinder will be bringing some of the interesting bits of information he has discovered about logging in the Seeley Lake area and also about the fledgling U.S. Forest Service.

SEELEY LAKE – The previous article in this series (Sept.17, 2020) discussed Big Blackfoot Milling Company's complaint they had been shorted one million board feet of lumber by the United States Forest Service during the first year of the 1907 Timber Sale. Big Blackfoot claimed the Forest Service had scaled "a vast amount of unmerchantable timber."

Forest Service Inspector Paul Redington, in his 23-page report compiled after a careful on-site assessment of the situation, wrote the unmerchantable timber left at the site "could by no process of figuring amount to one million board feet." Redington said appropriate scaling and meticulous record keeping on the part of the Forest Service scalers in contrast to improper scaling and deficient record keeping on the part of the company accounted for the inconsistency.

Redington's report dealt at length with the issue of the logs scaled by the Forest Service but rejected by Big Blackfoot. Redington explained to the company's head scaler Mr. Fox that, as was customary, Lumberman Norton would make a final inspection of the site toward the end of the season and would then cull the worthless timber and make allowance in the year's total scale. Redington stated that Fox fully accepted that way of handling it, once he understood the process.

Redington further reported, "We examined a number of logs and the admission was made by him [Fox] that a great deal of the timber culled by the company as worthless should clearly be taken under the terms of the contract."

Another examination of 1,000 logs going through the sluice-way prompted Fox to agree the percentage of worthless timber that had made it to the mill was "so small as to be immaterial."

To further satisfy himself, Redington reported he personally covered one-third of the sale area and scaled 248 rejected logs left on the skid-roads or in the woods. In his opinion, 124 of them "contained so much sound timber that by no construction of the contract could they be classed as unmerchantable." Redington only found 57 logs that could be considered absolute culls. The rest, in his estimation, had 25 to 50 percent sound lumber in them.

Quite possibly, since previously Big Blackfoot had primarily logged on land that it owned, it was their practice to simply discard any logs that would require special handling at the mill. That, however, was not the practice of the newly organized United States Forest Service. Redington pointed out the contract specifically stated the judgment as to what was merchantable timber was left to the discretion of the forest officer, i.e., Ambrose Norton.

Redington wrote, "The contract does not specify any per cent of rot that shall make a log unmerchantable, neither does it say that a log shall not be taken simply because it will not yield the company a handsome profit over the cost of handling it."

According to Redington's calculations, the most generous estimation of the logs felled and then cast aside because of defects could not possibly total more than 71,000 board feet and certainly could never amount to one million.

Another breach of the contract, according to Redington, was the failure of the company's scalers to tally up the wood used in constructing bridges and the logging road. Nor did the Company scalers factor in the amount of wood being used daily for heating and cooking at the headquarters. Redington conservatively estimated a cord of wood a day was required to fuel the cook house, the bunk house and the blacksmith shop. Over a six-month period, the amount totaled approximately 100,000 feet of timber.

After 13 pages, Redington felt he had established what he referred to as five points of "discrepancy in favor of the Government": 1) the Company's failure to keep accurate count of the number of boards felled, 2) incorrect scaling, 3) overrun of the trim allowance, 4) failure to include the timber used for building bridges and skid roads and 5) failure to include lumber used daily throughout the camp.

After praising Norton effusively, Redington conceded to one exception to what he otherwise considered Norton's "reasonable construction of the contract."

Redington wrote, "[Norton] has, however, failed to display any liberality in the matter of scaling unsound timber and on this score the company has reason to complain."

According to Redington, his own figures and those of Norton's scalers were in general agreement on the amount of merchantable lumber in the logs cast aside by the company. In the matter of cull logs, however, Redington rejected considerably more than Norton.

Redington referred to it as "Norton's tendency to go the extreme limit in his valuation of a class of timber on which the Service should show a liberal spirit." The logs Norton culled, Redington said consisted of "only logs that were so worthless that no reasonable man would look at them a second time."

Nonetheless, Redington's reassessment of the number of logs culled by Norton still were so few that they could hardly be considered a major factor in the disputed one million board feet.

Having proven his case and given the Big Blackfoot as much liberality as possible, on page 17 Redington took up a matter "of far more importance than the scaling controversy" – the pitch-swollen end of the larch, or tamarack trees as Redington called them. That issue will be the subject of the next article in this series.

In the final paragraph of his letter, Redington commends Norton for the overall condition of the cutting site, with enough trees left standing that the area still looked pleasant.

Redington wrote, "The brush piling is the best work of its kind that I have seen, and the low stumps are good to look at."