According to OPB, 1827 saw the first sawmill in the Pacific Northwest. According to John Walkowiak of IDNR, the first sawmill in Iowa was 1831. While the full extent of the involvement of the future Confederate President in the Blackhawk War and Iowa is debatable, it seems that Jefferson Davis was charged with commanding the site of this sawmill in NE Iowa. I can't say either date for the sawmill is too surprising when you think about it. The question for Oregon though was the original outlet. Iowa's original outlet was partly to help provide lumber to the treeless parts of Iowa.
An interesting Oregon outlet was China. In 1833, Oregon began shipping timber to China, which intensified after the First Opium War of the 1840s. The 1850s allowed Oregon to increase production of lumber through the use of steam power. Iowa? That said, according to the timeline by the 1870s, there were 173 sawmills and 138 were powered by water.
The most intriguing timeline events are the 1865 Silverton Fire and the 1868 Elliott State Forest fire. The burning reminded me of the book, The Big Burn, but the Silverton Fire of 1865 and its million acres of burnt timber didn't ring a bell.
Putting the Oregon fires in context, the book Drift Smoke by Strohmaier bookends Silverton with events like the Hinckley Fire in Minnesota that burnt 160,00 acres but killed over 400. The most devastating fire, in terms of land and life lost, seems to be the Miramichi Fire of 1825 in Maine. Over 3,000,000 acres and 300 lives were lost due to the inferno. Yet, the 1871 Peshtigo Wisconsin fire killed over 1,500 people and destroyed over a million acres. There are many books on forest fires, but what about Iowa & Clinton?
I would be curious to see how the fires in Michigan Minnesota, and Wisconsin impacted lumber production in Clinton. Cursory readings make it seem that a fire,a bad drought, or other unforeseen acts wiped out a sawmill.
An odd note on "fires" in Iowa: A Guide to the Hawkeye. Clinton had a unique problem, a sawdust problem. As I've heard in my short time here, the ground in Clinton is literally sawdust, as the mills had nowhere else for it. So, from time to time in the past (and maybe still does), the dust would escape its grave and spontaneously combust when hitting the air.
Then the 1890s saw the passage of the General Revision Act, timber reserves, Organic Act, Forest Reserve Act, and the appointment of Gifford Pinchot. How did this affect Iowa? Well many of my early sources paint the picture that by the time these acts went into full swing, the primacy of Clinton's sawmills were waning, if not flat out done.
So many questions, so little time. Questions like the government's role in the creation of early, or first, sawmills in the territories place the lumber industry and the sawmills in the western expansion of America. People needed housing. My notion of everyone clearing their own timber and building "cabins" is all Lincoln's fault. Who knows where my research will take me next, but I'm excited.
Sources
http://basineducation.uwex.edu/gpsp/Session%203A%20Walkowiak.pdf
http://books.google.com/books?id=DzFToePugBEC&pg=PP5&dq=silverton+fire+oregon+1865&hl=en&sa=X&ei=4lJSUcPcO6nf2QWL7oCIAg&ved=0CDQQ6AEwAQ
http://www.ncrs.fs.fed.us/gla/reports/history.htm
An interesting Oregon outlet was China. In 1833, Oregon began shipping timber to China, which intensified after the First Opium War of the 1840s. The 1850s allowed Oregon to increase production of lumber through the use of steam power. Iowa? That said, according to the timeline by the 1870s, there were 173 sawmills and 138 were powered by water.
The most intriguing timeline events are the 1865 Silverton Fire and the 1868 Elliott State Forest fire. The burning reminded me of the book, The Big Burn, but the Silverton Fire of 1865 and its million acres of burnt timber didn't ring a bell.
Putting the Oregon fires in context, the book Drift Smoke by Strohmaier bookends Silverton with events like the Hinckley Fire in Minnesota that burnt 160,00 acres but killed over 400. The most devastating fire, in terms of land and life lost, seems to be the Miramichi Fire of 1825 in Maine. Over 3,000,000 acres and 300 lives were lost due to the inferno. Yet, the 1871 Peshtigo Wisconsin fire killed over 1,500 people and destroyed over a million acres. There are many books on forest fires, but what about Iowa & Clinton?
I would be curious to see how the fires in Michigan Minnesota, and Wisconsin impacted lumber production in Clinton. Cursory readings make it seem that a fire,a bad drought, or other unforeseen acts wiped out a sawmill.
An odd note on "fires" in Iowa: A Guide to the Hawkeye. Clinton had a unique problem, a sawdust problem. As I've heard in my short time here, the ground in Clinton is literally sawdust, as the mills had nowhere else for it. So, from time to time in the past (and maybe still does), the dust would escape its grave and spontaneously combust when hitting the air.
Then the 1890s saw the passage of the General Revision Act, timber reserves, Organic Act, Forest Reserve Act, and the appointment of Gifford Pinchot. How did this affect Iowa? Well many of my early sources paint the picture that by the time these acts went into full swing, the primacy of Clinton's sawmills were waning, if not flat out done.
So many questions, so little time. Questions like the government's role in the creation of early, or first, sawmills in the territories place the lumber industry and the sawmills in the western expansion of America. People needed housing. My notion of everyone clearing their own timber and building "cabins" is all Lincoln's fault. Who knows where my research will take me next, but I'm excited.
Sources
http://basineducation.uwex.edu/gpsp/Session%203A%20Walkowiak.pdf
http://books.google.com/books?id=DzFToePugBEC&pg=PP5&dq=silverton+fire+oregon+1865&hl=en&sa=X&ei=4lJSUcPcO6nf2QWL7oCIAg&ved=0CDQQ6AEwAQ
http://www.ncrs.fs.fed.us/gla/reports/history.htm
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