SITGREAVES NATIONAL FOREST

Nearly four billion feet of standing timber, nearly all ponderosa pine, make the Sitgreaves National Forest very important. Ten sawmills

SITGREAVES NATIONAL

It wouldn't surprise me if some of the tourists coming west into Arizona for the first time and seeing the Petrified Forest National Monument would hold suspicions that was the only kind of trees in Arizona. Even at Holbrook, headquarters of the Sitgreaves National Forest, it would be difficult for newcomers to realize they are only 40 miles from tall timber that could get them hopelessly lost.

There the steady whine from sawmills can be heard day and night, cutting logs from mature trees into lumber for a nation faced with a critical housing shortage.

Perhaps Capt. Lorenzo Sitgreaves, the topographical engineer who in 1851 surveyed a military road across this country now named for him, foresaw that some day this vast expanse of timber would be harnessed to meet the needs of a growing nation.

The Sitgreaves National Forest has a net area slightly over 800,000 acres. Mogollon Rim and the long belt of ponderosa pine that swings down through central Arizona form the shape of this Forest. Its western boundary is common with the Coconino National Forest, and its eastern boundary with the Apache National Forest. From the low-lying piñon-juniper area on the north, the Sitgreaves' land rises southward to its southern boundary along Mogollon Rim. The pine belt, disre-

FOREST

Regarding man-made boundary and natural barrier, goes down past the Rim and into the Fort Apache Indian Reservation.

Putting it in round numbers, there is 3,900,000,000 feet of standing timber on the Sitgreaves. It is nearly all ponderosa pine, the Southwest's most important commercial species.

Within the Forest, ten sawmills are operating at the present time. They cut 29,410,000 board-feet of timber in 1945. Our men cruised the timber, we put it up for sale on competitive bids, we marked the trees and watched them cut according to proper logging practice. We "scaled" the logs (measuring them for board-footage) to make sure the buyer paid the public for everything he got.

This rate of cutting can be continued year after year, indefinitely, because the timber on this Forest is being managed on a sustained-yield basis, in other words, the allowable cut is limited to the average annual growth. On an area to be logged, the trees are not all removed. The ones we mark for cutting make only about 50% of the volume. They are the older, slow growing trees. The young, fast growing trees are left for the next crop. We estimate that after about 40 years the same area can be cut over again.

For the human side of this equation, look at the little Mormon town of Heber. Most of the men living there are employed at the local sawmill. Due to the policy of sustained yield cutting on the Sitgreaves National Forest, Heber need never be a "ghost town." The continuing lumber crop should make employment for generation after generation. On the Sitgreaves National Forest, more than 300 people receive direct employment from the lumber industry. Many others such as storekeepers, auto mechanics and railroad workers, receive employment indirectly because of the lumber industry.

The annual gross income from timber sales on this forest approximates $90,000. Twenty-five percent of this and all other gross receipts for grazing, cordwood and special uses, etc., is paid to the State, to be used for schools and roads. Another 10 per cent is spent on roads and trails in this Forest.

But timber is not the only crop on the Sitgreaves. Over the entire area, sheep and cattle are permitted to graze. There are 12 sheep permits and 82 cattle or horse permits. Under these permits, 23,000 sheep and 6,000 cattle and horses grazed in 1945.

The sheep winter in the Salt River Valley and are herded north in the spring over established driveways to the Sitgreaves, where they graze during the summer on the mountains.

There are numerous small Mormon farming communities on and near the Sitgreaves forest, as well as many stock ranches. From these farming communities and ranches come the cattle that graze on the Forest. Below the timber "crop," there is another crop growing-the grasses, weeds and browse. The cattle and sheep are the means of harvesting this crop, thus providing income for the farmers and ranchers and meat, wool and leather for the nation. The number of livestock grazed is limited to those that can be properly maintained without damage to the range.

The Use of the Forest by domestic livestock began in the 1870's when Mormon colonies came across from Utah in covered wagons, driving cattle and sheep with them. Joseph City, on the Little Colorado River; Snowflake, Showlow, Pinedale and Heber are some of these early settlements. The use by pioneer farmers and settlers was confined to the immediate vicinity of the settlements. But in 1881, with the advent of the Atlantic & Pacific Railroad, settlers came from California and Texas and entered the cattle business. Construction camps and towns on the railroad furnished a market for cattle which prior to this time had been lacking.

The reports of good range and markets attracted the attention of bigger outfits, and in 1882 the first of many large cattle companies to operate in the vicinity entered the field. One of them, the Aztec Land. and Cattle Company, turned loose 28,000 head of cattle at Holbrook in 1884. This company was better known as "the Hash Knife Outfit" because its brand resembled a side view of the old-fashioned meat-chopper, with its handle at the top and rounded blades below..

Sheep owners also heard the news and came and settled. Some of the large sheep outfits of New Mexico, tempted by the abundance of forage on the range, drove large herds of sheep into the drainages of the Little Colorado. Coming in when the early spring grasses were at their best, they would graze as far as the Mogollon Rim and return across the Little Colorado after the summer rains had again replenished their range.

It is estimated that in 1885 on the ranges in the Little Colorado Basin there were 150,000 cattle and 120,000 sheep. The ensuing struggle for range was disastrous. The fine stand of grass, which was so good that hay-cutting operations are mentioned in early reports, was grazed and trampled to a condition from which it has never recovered. The part of the range which was to become the Sitgreaves National Forest fared somewhat better than other parts of the Little Colorado Basin, but it did did not by any means escape.

This heavy influx of cattle and sheep brought on one of the range wars typical of early western history. "The Pleasant Valley War," between cattle and sheep factions, involved areas now in the Sitgreaves and Tonto national forests. One of the leaders of the Graham faction, Andy Cooper, died with his boots on in Holbrook. His name was said to be an alias because he had left Texas one jump ahead of a murder warrant. Andy and his brother, Sam, died in a gun fight with Sheriff Owens at Holbrook when the sheriff sought to arrest Andy on a charge of stealing horses.

Remember, that range war was from 1887 to 1892. Livestock men were using the old public domain, federally owned but having little or no management. It was un-fenced. Natural resources of the West seemed so limitless that people would have shouted down any Government attempt to manage the range as experience has taught us today. The first "forest reserve" in Arizona, now the Kaibab National Forest, was not established until 1893. Had there been orderly management of the range in 1887, the Pleasant Valley War need never have happened.

Our objectives today in managing the range resources of the Sitgreaves National Forest are to overcome the results of past abuse of the range, to maintain the range and watersheds in good condition, and to harvest the forage "crop" annually in a way that it will contribute to a permanent, profitable livestock industry.

TONTO

NATIONAL FOREST

When Zane Grey wrote his Western novel "Beneath the Tonto Rim," he wrote of a land rich in resources and generous with its wide open spaces, a land where men worked hard but got a joy out of living. He was writing of the Tonto Basin, actually beneath the Mogollon Rim and actually part of the Tonto National Forest.

Here is the largest national forest in the Southwest, one of the largest in the United States. It contains slightly over 2,400,000 acres of semi-desert, foothills and well-timbered mountain country a useful source of water, timber, livestock forage and health-giving recreation.

In the fertile center of Arizona, the Tonto National Forest is within sight of Phoenix and the Salt River agricultural empire. The Forest adjoins the Crook National Forest on the south, Indian reservations on each side, and on the north three more national forests, the Prescott, Coconino and Sitgreaves. Nature supplied the northern boundary, the Mogollon Rim.

When treated right, this is a friendly land, willingly serving man and granting him access to the fountain of outdoor refreshment.

The Tonto forest's hills and mountains hold many attractions for visitors from Salt River Valley, other parts of the State and other states. The Sierra Ancha Mountains and the cool forest area "under the Rim" give haven during the "dog days" of summer. The Mazatzal and the Superstition mountains, not as timbered as the Sierra Anchas, have strong appeal of their own in their wild, scenic beauty. Recreation is yearlong: summer camping in the cool, high elevations; winter picnics in the low country; scenic drives, hiking, big game hunting, fishing in forest streams; "going Western" at a dude ranch, or rusticating in the shade of a big pine tree.

In the southern part of the forest, the forest-