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An astonishing 75,000,000 board feet of timber lying on the ground—this was the aftermath of the Great Hurricane of 1938 in Rhode Island. The federal government estimated that from this disaster 40 to 60 million harvestable board feet could be salvaged. In twenty-four hours, billions of board feet of timber were devastated in New England.

Large trees downed by the Great Hurricane of 1938 on the grounds of the Newport Casino (Providence Public Library Digital Collections)

The massive storm created a nightmare situation. The fallen trees made the greatest forest fire menace in the history of the state.

Removal of the trees safely required skilled lumbermen who understood the dangers of cutting in the massive “windfalls” where trees were literally wrapped around one another in gigantic tangles. Removing the cut logs from the huge piles of branches, tops, and massive stumps thrown up with giant boulders still buried in the dirt around the roots was another nightmarish safety issue.

A valiant effort to help Rhode Island woodlot owners achieve some return for their timber losses demanded a coordinated plan for financing, manufacturing and marketing. Here, the Federal Government stepped in, at the instigation of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

In the months following the hurricane, the United States Forest Service shipped teams of foresters from all over the country into New England to assess the damage and aid the New Englanders in their recovery efforts. Headquartered in Boston, these teams toured the areas devastated by the storm with state foresters and fire wardens and formulated plans for salvaging the timber and mitigating the forest fire danger, as well as teaching new forest fire fighting skills to New England firemen.

One of the first Federal programs created was the Northeast Timber Salvage Administration, under which the Rhode Island Timber Salvage Administration directed by Kenson J. Hemlick, worked. The first job of this group was to establish the terms of salvage and these, as quoted from the Providence Journal edition of January 29, 1939, “Fighting to Salvage the Timber the Hurricane Felled” were:

“Under the plan worked out by Federal authorities, owners of the fallen timber will receive, upon delivery to designated collection bases, an amount which will give them from $4 to upwards of $5 per 1000 board feet “stumpage” (the price which a private firm will pay to harvest timber from a given land base). They also will receive what the Federal authorities believe to be a fair allowance for the cost of cutting, skidding, hauling and other necessary operations.

“The plan first broached allowed them 80 percent of the fixed price of their lumber in one lump sum, and the remaining 20 percent and a share in whatever profits might eventually accrue from sale of the lumber, later.

“Under an amended plan, however, they now may receive 90 percent of the valuation in one payment and forfeit any right to further payment, the Government keeping the remaining 10 percent for cost of financing, marketing and other costs accruing. A majority of the owners have signified their preference for the 90 percent plan.”

The sale of all timber accrued by the Federal government in this manner was handled by the Federal Surplus Commodities Corporation. The two-page Agreement specifically barred any potential graft by stating: “#8. No Member or Delegate to Congress, or resident Commissioner, shall be admitted to any share or part of this agreement or to any benefit that may arise thereupon.” A provision we could use today, perhaps?

A classic scene of tangled woods in Rhode Island around a rock (Providence Public Library Digital Collections)

Before the Federal plan could commence, storage locations for the timber had to be procured. Storage was not merely a location where the logs could be piled. Logs left on the ground would soon begin to rot. In the case of pine, the pine bug would attack even logs stored off the ground on skidways. For most softwoods, water storage was the answer; accordingly, area ponds were engaged for this use. For instance, one of the first was the Byron Carr Pond just outside of Summit in western Coventry. The pond was estimated to be capable of holding several million feet of logs, brought from area woodlands.

It was estimated that Coventry and West Greenwich would provide more salvaged lumber than any other two towns in the state. Hazard Pond at Wixaboxet was another storage facility. Burrillville was ranked after the previous two towns, with 14,000,000 board feet of pine lumber, with Griffith Pond in Harrisville and Ross Pond near Bridgeton handling the storage.

A publication of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service Forest Products Laboratory, issued on November 1, 1938, and titled Pertinent Facts on Salvage of New England Timber, offered details for successful water storage. Shallow water submersion was recommended, as the recovery costs of deep-water submersion could be prohibitive. The recommended depth of water was four to five feet. And small ponds could be overfilled, which caused most of the logs to sink. An acre of pond four feet deep could hold about 500,000 feet of logs. In larger ponds, where this method would not work, cribs could be constructed to hold the logs.

Floating logs in booms protected the wood that is submerged. An acre of boom space would accommodate from 80,000 feet of eight-inch logs to 280,000 feet of eighteen-inch logs. Only the portion of the log above the waterline would be unprotected. Accordingly, heavier logs would leave proportionately less exposed wood.

The publication offered invaluable information on storage and treatment of logs intended for poles and piles, railway ties, posts, firewood and pulpwood. It discussed sawing, yard and kiln drying, dimensions, grades and size, sawing equipment, marketing, and much more.

Hardwoods do not warrant water storage, as after a short time, they become waterlogged and sink. Since hardwoods are much heavier, and therefore cost more to haul, wherever possible, the Federal plan provided for portable mills to be established at large stands of hardwoods.

The most important individual in this operation was the scaler, and the U.S. Forest Service oversaw the scalers working on hurricane salvage. The scaler’s job was to measure the log and determine the number of board feet in it. Since timber owners would be paid based upon the scaler’s figures, the scaler was immensely important. Measurement was hotly debated from the start, until finally settled by Rhode Island Timber Salvage Administration Director Hemlick ruling that the “International Rule” would be used.

The measuring of logs in earlier New England lumbering was done by measuring the diameter of the smaller end of a log and multiplying it by one-half the said diameter for a twelve-foot log. In other words, a twelve-foot log with a small end diameter of twelve inches would yield 72 board feet (12 x 6 = 72).

Even in lumbering, efforts were made to scam the buyer. Logs with rotting centers had their rotten ends disguised by frozen dirt and ice. And these, in addition to short logs and crooked logs, were carefully buried by the loader in the center of the load, hidden by good logs.

The Rhode Island timber owners had a big decision to make. Rhode Island did not enjoy the diversity of species in local forests that northern states did. Softwoods in Rhode Island were almost entirely white pine, and hardwoods were primarily oak. If millions of feet of rough finished pine were dumped onto the market at once, the price would naturally be lowered. If stored and released to market piecemeal, the price would be stabilized.

By January of 1939, the largest lumbering operation in the state was in full swing on the Arnold estate in western Coventry. About 95 percent of the 5,000,000 pine trees planted by Edwin Arnold had blown over. These produced an estimated 8,000,000 board feet of lumber at the end of salvage operations. Under the direction of Henry Arnold, four sawmills were in operation, and they cut about 1,000,000 board feet of lumber by the end of 1938.

In the southern part of the state, former Speaker of the House of Representatives and operator of the Wood River Branch Railway, Roy Rawlings, had cut about 500,000 board feet of lumber by January 1939. He had added a planer and matcher to his mill and was producing novelty siding and other finished lumber, in addition to rough cut.

One large landowner, I. Peace Hazard, of Narragansett, took full advantage of the hurricane results. The February 16, 1939, edition of the Providence Journal contained an article about his mill titled “Lumber Mill Flourishes Clearing Hurricane Havoc.” After the storm, Hazard imported a whole lumbering company to harvest 90,000 board feet of lumber from his estate. Then this became the I. Peace Hazard Lumbering Company of West Kingston, with forest crews from northern New England directed by Hazard’s nephew, Dewitt Burlingame, and a sawmill crew working under his son, William P. Hazard. One of the first outside jobs was to clear the 3,500 acres of trees blown down on land owned by the LaFarge family.

  1. P. Hazard shrewdly made a specialty of sawing oak, as the article stated:

“Mr. Hazard is making a specialty of oak lumber and has supplied this tough wood to ship builders, railroads and bridge builders, who find it difficult to get special size logs from the ordinary stocks of commercial companies.

 One man in Massachusetts ordered a 40-foot oak log, 12 by 20 inches, to use as the principal support of a dam on his estate.”

In addition to expert loggers, Rhode Island desperately needed experienced mill operators. First and foremost was the sawyer. The amount and quality of a mill’s cut depend upon this one worker. The sawyer’s judgment as to how a log was presented to the saw blade governed the number and quality of the resulting boards.

Mathias P. Harpin and Waite Albro, in their book, In the Shadow of the Trees, provides an idea of the skill needed to be a sawyer:

“The most important man was the sawyer, he was the one who made all of the decisions. As soon as a log was rolled off the skids onto the saw carriage, he had to immediately determine how the log could be sawed, giving it the best yield to perhaps fit the orders he was filling. He had to mathematically figure the numbers necessary to achieve this yield. One-quarter inch had to be allowed for each pass of the saw in addition to whatever was needed to be added for the total number of inches of the resultant lumber. Thus, if the sawyer were sawing one-inch boards, each of his preliminary estimates would require an inch and a quarter, with the exception of the last board off, which would only need an inch. So, if he expected to get six one-inch boards from the timber on the carriage (assuming it had already been squared up), he would start with a seven and a quarter inch piece, six one-inch boards, and five passes of the saw. All of this had to be computed in a matter of seconds after the first slab had been removed and the log had been rolled 180 degrees.

 “It was also the sawyer’s job to keep the saw in shape. He had to arrive early to have the saw filed and ready, as well as spending his half-hour lunch break filing again . . . . When the saw blade hit a hidden bit of metal . . . it was his duty to repair the damage as soon as possible.”

Behind the sawyer was the canter, or tail sawyer. Using a cant hook—a short, strong wooden handle with a blunt iron point and a swinging iron half-moon with another blunt point that would lock into the under part of the log as the upper point was dug into the top wood—the canter would manipulate the log onto the saw carriage while it was in motion. The canter needed long experience to develop the skill to accomplish this quickly and safely. His job was to keep the log skids full, position the logs on the saw carriage, and dog them in place. Upon the return of the carriage, he had to reposition the log and re-dog it.

In front was the surveyor, whose job was to mark each piece of lumber coming off the saw carriage in blue chalk with the board feet. A running tally had to be kept of each piece sawed. In addition, the surveyor had to take all other pieces—slabs, boards, and other lumber pieces—and pile them into their appropriate piles.

A magnificent elm tree on a farm in Johnston, circa 1895. Most elm trees in Rhode Island and the rest of the northeast died in a blight before the Great Hurricane of 1938 (Providence Public Library Digital Collections)

Just prior to the Great Hurricane of 1938, there were probably a dozen portable and stationary sawmills located in Rhode Island. Rhode Island had a few veteran lumbermen who formed the nucleus of gangs of raw recruits to the lumber operation. A few men from Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Maine, and other northern states came to work in Rhode Island, but there were even more downed trees in northern New England than here, so few left home.

 

All of the storage areas in ponds had sawmills located on their banks. These areas and dry storage lots were prime areas where fires could occur. Thus, the Northeastern Timber Salvage Administration required a Sawmill-Lumberyard Fire Plan to be instituted. The Fire Plan was prominently posted and regular drills were held at each location.

The white pine salvaged in Rhode Island from second growth and lower grade virgin timber was primarily used to make boxes and crates. The first grade virgin growth was used extensively in building and millwork. The oak was used for flooring, interior trim, furniture, implements, cooperage, pilings, cross ties, timbers, and motor vehicle parts.

In addition to the lumber, there were a variety of side products. Sawdust piles surrounded each mill, offering a virtually unending supply of animal bedding and packing for ice storage facilities. Piles of slabs could be used for burning or for rough fence boards.

Rhode Island did not get involved in the paper and pulpwood market with their salvage, as at that time, there were no such mills in the state (or Connecticut). In addition, Rhode Island did not produce the species commonly used in these processes. Since Rhode Island salvage timber was primarily oak and white pine, both relatively untried in the pulpwood industry, it was not a promising market.

By the middle of May 1939, there was a charcoal kiln available to western Rhode Islanders, as the State of Connecticut had just erected a kiln at Porter’s Pond in Sterling, just over the Coventry line. This was built under the direction of the Soil Conservation Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Just to the south in Voluntown, very close to the West Greenwich line, were the existing charcoal kilns of David Hadfield. These kiln operations used ash and birch for their charcoal production, providing a market for those species from the blown down trees.

Fear of forest fires in the woods of Rhode Island after the storm was constant. The untouched areas of blowdown and the slash left by the salvage efforts (branches, treetops, etc.) created a situation similar to that in the great forests of the western states. The recruits in the CCC camps (Civilian Conservation Corps) of the Works Progress Administration received forest fire training from the U.S. Forest Service, under the direction of Monterey L. Holst, who had previously been stationed in the Siskiyou National Forest in Oregon. CCC workers assisted in creating water holes and fire trails throughout the state, built Wickaboxet and Tunk Hill fire towers, and removed hazards along roads and trails to prepare for the potential threats of forest fires. Anne C. Allen, Chief of the Cedar Hill Volunteer Fire Department and State District Forest Fire Warden for Kent County (and the author’s mother), and Frederick Martin of the U.S. Forest Service, in charge of the CCC in Rhode Island, prepared the first Forest Fire Control Plan in 1939.

As I wrote in my book, Forest Fire Fighting in Rhode Island, 1900-1970:

“This complete plan for handling any forest fire in the state included instructions for tower observers, general instructions for the central dispatcher, the order for notifying fire crews, a cooperative program of the State Police, the action by the CCC camps in R.I., and the position and function of other agencies – Red Cross, New England Forest Emergency, American Legion, Division of Roads and Bridges, Boy Scouts, the Division of Entomology, and the Salvation Army. This plan was issued and followed annually until 1942.”

Fortunately for Rhode Island, an orderly and comprehensive Federal plan was administered through the Rhode Island Timber Salvage Administration. The January 29, 1939, edition of the Providence Journal provided:

“Owners of some of Rhode Island’s devastated woodland unhesitatingly say that they would have left their timber where it fell and would have made no attempt at salvage had not some coordinated scheme of financing, manufacturing and marketing been evolved.”

The final question remained: How would these millions of board feet of lumber be utilized? On November 14, 1939, a Providence Journal article titled, “N.E. Lumber Sold for $14,000,000,” told of the creation of a thirty-plus member co-operative of wholesalers, started by Herman I. Hymans of Detroit. It was the largest transaction of its kind in U.S. history with the contract signing in Washington, D.C., on November 10, 1939. A total of 600,000,000 board feet of lumber was purchased for $14,000,000, with the co-operative, the Northeastern Timber and Marketing Association, taking possession of the timber at the salvage sites.

It took a second devastating disaster to absorb the remainder of the vast quantity of timber. Within a very few years, the United States entered World War II, with a resulting voracious demand for lumber for all the needs of wartime. From fencing around military bases, boxes for shipping food and supplies, poles for communication lines, to ship building, the war demanded lumber—and the Great Hurricane of 1938 and coordinated governmental efforts provided it!