Spruce on the Androscoggin
By "Northeastern Lumberman"
On no river in this country is so large a proportion of spruce cut for the purposes of pulp and paper as on the Androscoggin river in New
Hampshire and Maine. We know of no river upon which so much wood pulp and paper is manufactured each year. This is largely owing to the fact that the yield of the Androscoggin in spruce is very large, not only when considered by the growth per acre, but also by the number of acres. Again, the water powers on the Androscoggin are superior, from the fact that there is a very great fall within a comparatively short distance. Take from Berlin Falls, N. H., down to the mouth of the Androscoggin, we have a series of remarkable water powers. Their value has been much enhanced by the extensive system of storage basins made by the Lewiston corporations, by means of dams in the Rangeley Lakes. So one individual, or perhaps no single manufacturing concern, could afford to make the outlay which has been made at the head waters of the Androscoggin for the storage of
surplus water, which has been made upon this river, but the fact that the large cotton mills at Lewiston secured the outlet of these great takes, and spent their money freely in building dams to facilitate the storage of water, has made every other water power doubly valuable.
In fact, these great storage basins so equalize the supply that the water power is almost as good one month in the year as another, though, of course, there is some falling off in the drought of summer and in the severe colds of winter. No other river in New England has such an
equal flow of water as the Androscoggin. Of course the measure of the value of water power is the average flow each day in the year. The water power which yields 5,000 horse power in the spring, and 2,500 horse power in the summer, can only be valued on the basis of 2,500 horse power, because if the business established at that power requires 5,000 horse power every day in the year, it must be supplemented for several months in the year by an expensive steam plant.
The third annual report of Forest Commissioner Oak of Maine, gives the Androscoggin drainage as considerably smaller than that of the Kennebec, while it is less than half as large as the basin of the Penobscot. The Androscoggin drains in the State of Maine about 2,750 square miles, and in the State of New Hampshire about 850. Of the whole, however, only about 2,200 has to be considered in relation to spruce, for in the southern portion that species can hardly be said to occur as practicable timber. All of the Androscoggin drainage in New Hampshire is or was spruce bearing, while
in Maine the region of its distribution may be bounded roughly by a line beginning in Gilead, where the river finally enters the State, and thence
running northeast up to Phillips, on the Sand river. This line encloses a gross area of about 1,300 square miles.
It is only within forty years that spruce has been cut on the Androscoggin. The length and difficulty of the drive has saved the supply, and kept the river much behind the Kennebec in the utilization of the timber resources. Much cutting up to the present time has been on the New Hampshire
side of the line. That part of the Androscoggin drainage has been comparatively severely cut. It appears that about half the Androscoggin spruce
country is in its original condition, with a considerable portion of the remainder very lightly used. In proportion to its area, the Androscoggin drainage is the most valuable spruce lands in the State of Maine.
Austin Cary says, in the forest commissioner's report, that on the head waters of the Androscoggin is the chosen home of spruce. Continuous with the high land of northern New Hampshire and part of the great White Mountain plateau, the region, in its elevation, is uneven topography and
its climate seems to afford that combination of conditions which ministers to the perfect development of the spruce. No other part of Maine ever had any such spruce stand, and probably no part of New York or New England, as is found in the upper waters of the Androscoggin, especially across northern New Hampshire and the White Mountain region. Only patches of spruce limber elsewhere stand as thick as does almost the whole country in this section. The spruce timber, too, is much of it, of the finest quality and size.
Brunswick, Me., was the center of the early lumber business on the Androscoggin, and much of the early pine cut was sawed there. It was after 1850 that the bulk of the business was shifted up river. About 1852 mills were built at Lewiston, while at the same time the Grand Trunk extended to Berlin, N. H., and mills were located on the falls at that point. In 1852, also, dams were built on the lakes, and drives from the lake region, which up to that time had been small and uncertain, became regular and considerable in amount. All this early lumber, however, was pine. In fact, pine was originally on almost all the drainage mixed with spruce. Spruce, however, through all this upper region, was always the most abundant coniferous timber. From as far up as the lakes no spruce was driven out until the early years of the war, among the [18]60s.
The middle course of the Androscoggin according to Mr. Cary, which has its lower course in the spruce belt, is within the limits of the State of New
Hampshire and much of the cutting up to the present time has been in that State. That portion of the Androscoggin drainage is indeed heavily cut. The hard cutting has extended about up to Parmacheenee Lake, on the Magalloway river. About the Rangeley Lakes light cutting has been going on over accessible lands all the way along for thirty years. The Cupsuptuc and Kennebago, saved by the length and difficulty o the drive, have never been seriously cut into, and are now practically in their primeval condition. South of the lakes, too, considerable country is in the same shape. The Bear, Ellis and Swift rivers are small and quickly flowing streams which it is scarcely possible in their upper portions to drive. The territory about their head waters is virgin land, a part of which, on the advent of logging railway facilities, is just beginning now to be utilized.
The important part of the lumberman and the pulp grinder is, of course, the amount of spruce still standing in the Androscoggin basin. Mr. A. Pike, of Berlin, N. H., a well known expert in this business, makes an estimate of the spruce standing in the Androscoggin basin, including pulp stock at and above Berlin Falls, in Maine, 3,000,000,000 feet; below Berlin Falls in Maine, 6,000,000,000 feet; at and above Berlin Falls in New Hampshire, 700,000,000 feet; below Berlin Falls in New Hampshire, 200,000,000 making 900,000,000 feet in New Hampshire, which added to 600,000.000 feet in Maine, makes a total of 4,500,000,000 feet of spruce. These figures are based on an estimated gross area of Androscoggin lands, spruce
bearing, of 1,240 square miles. From which deduct waste burnt within 30 years ago. including old second growth in the settled towns 234 square miles, settled 65 square miles, water area 75 square miles, unproductive mountain land estimated at 15 square miles, gives a total deduction of 410 square miles, leaving a net area spruce producing land of 830 square miles. Mr. Cary estimates the area never cut for spruce about 420 square miles.
During the year 1895, 73,506,000 feet of Androscoggin, spruce logs were used in the saw mills, and 1 As 10 the future of the Androscoggin,
123,000,000 feet were used for pulp and pa- further and more definitely, much depends per. A small portion of this come from the Kennebec, and several millions were brought in from Canada by rail. Perhaps in the neighborhood of Berlin about 10,0000,000 feet were manufactured off the drainage. Since the above estimates were made, additions to mill capacity indicate an increase of consumption of spruce of 40,000,000 feet, 25,000,000 of which is at Berlin Falls, for pulp, the remainder about equally divided between a sawmill at Rumford and a new pulp mill plant at Peterson's Rips in Livermore.
In detail, the consumption of spruce on the Androscoggin river for the year 1895 was about as follows; At Berlin Falls, 40,000,000 feet consumed in lumber, 6o,ooo,000 for pulp and paper; at Gorham, 60,000, 000 for lumber; at Shelburne, 10,000,000 for lumber; at Rumford. 24,000,000 for pulp and paper; at Canton, 2,000,000 for lumber; at Jay and Livermore, 19,000,000 feet for pulp and paper; at Lisbon, about 4,000,000 feet for lumber, and 11,000,000 feet for paper and pulp; at Lewiston, about 6,000,000 feet for lumber, varying with different years; at Brunswick and Topsham, aDout 1,500,000 feet for lumber, and 9,000,000 for pulp and paper. Several Androscoggin pulp mills use a small amount of poplar. Austin Cary reviews the statement which Mr. Pike puts on the Androscoggin drainage in Maine as 3,600,000,000 feet of spruce lumber, and thinks it must be qualified before it can be compared with similar figures from other parts of the State, as Mr. Pike makes the average net stand of the country, leaving out the area which has been cut through, as high as 9,000 feet to the acre.
Mr. Pikes's estimates include trees down to the smallest size cut in the region, the cutting there being, in fact, much closer than that practiced in most other parts of the State. Of the trees cut down, too, the Androscoggin lumbermen are, as a rule, much more economical than others, while
on the average they give their timber probably a somewhat more liberal scale. Mr. Pike's 3,500,000,000 of spruce on the upper waters of the Penobscot or St. John, Mr. Cary thinks, would hardly be set as high as 2,000,000. In other parts of the State it would pass for a varying intermediate amount. Mr. Cary thinks of spruce trees cut for logs sixty per cent, of the whole is utilized on the Penobscot, seventy per cent, on the Kennebec, and eighty-six per cent, on the Androscoggin.
As to the future of the Androscoggin, further and more definitely, much depends on the development of business and the determination of a few men. Mr. Cary thinks the prediction must be made with very large conditions. He admits the Androscoggin mills are highly favored in position, though even now they bring from Canada by rail a portion of their pulp and wood supply. He believes the Androscoggin saw mill and pulp men, however bright the prospect seems now for spruce, will at the end of a very few decades find themselves face to face with a blank wall. This he deduces from the volume of spruce consumption on the Androscoggin, and at the same time the most sweeping and thorough cuttings anywhere practiced and the rapid increase in volume of the pulp and paper business, all elements of the rapid destruction of the forests.
The resources of the Androscoggin are so great and in such compact shape that total extinction is rendered more likely through the lumbermen and the pulp men than on some of the other rivers, where less is known of their resources, and where the growth is spread over a very much larger area, and where logging operations are more scattered, difficult and expensive.
Hampshire and Maine. We know of no river upon which so much wood pulp and paper is manufactured each year. This is largely owing to the fact that the yield of the Androscoggin in spruce is very large, not only when considered by the growth per acre, but also by the number of acres. Again, the water powers on the Androscoggin are superior, from the fact that there is a very great fall within a comparatively short distance. Take from Berlin Falls, N. H., down to the mouth of the Androscoggin, we have a series of remarkable water powers. Their value has been much enhanced by the extensive system of storage basins made by the Lewiston corporations, by means of dams in the Rangeley Lakes. So one individual, or perhaps no single manufacturing concern, could afford to make the outlay which has been made at the head waters of the Androscoggin for the storage of
surplus water, which has been made upon this river, but the fact that the large cotton mills at Lewiston secured the outlet of these great takes, and spent their money freely in building dams to facilitate the storage of water, has made every other water power doubly valuable.
In fact, these great storage basins so equalize the supply that the water power is almost as good one month in the year as another, though, of course, there is some falling off in the drought of summer and in the severe colds of winter. No other river in New England has such an
equal flow of water as the Androscoggin. Of course the measure of the value of water power is the average flow each day in the year. The water power which yields 5,000 horse power in the spring, and 2,500 horse power in the summer, can only be valued on the basis of 2,500 horse power, because if the business established at that power requires 5,000 horse power every day in the year, it must be supplemented for several months in the year by an expensive steam plant.
The third annual report of Forest Commissioner Oak of Maine, gives the Androscoggin drainage as considerably smaller than that of the Kennebec, while it is less than half as large as the basin of the Penobscot. The Androscoggin drains in the State of Maine about 2,750 square miles, and in the State of New Hampshire about 850. Of the whole, however, only about 2,200 has to be considered in relation to spruce, for in the southern portion that species can hardly be said to occur as practicable timber. All of the Androscoggin drainage in New Hampshire is or was spruce bearing, while
in Maine the region of its distribution may be bounded roughly by a line beginning in Gilead, where the river finally enters the State, and thence
running northeast up to Phillips, on the Sand river. This line encloses a gross area of about 1,300 square miles.
It is only within forty years that spruce has been cut on the Androscoggin. The length and difficulty of the drive has saved the supply, and kept the river much behind the Kennebec in the utilization of the timber resources. Much cutting up to the present time has been on the New Hampshire
side of the line. That part of the Androscoggin drainage has been comparatively severely cut. It appears that about half the Androscoggin spruce
country is in its original condition, with a considerable portion of the remainder very lightly used. In proportion to its area, the Androscoggin drainage is the most valuable spruce lands in the State of Maine.
Austin Cary says, in the forest commissioner's report, that on the head waters of the Androscoggin is the chosen home of spruce. Continuous with the high land of northern New Hampshire and part of the great White Mountain plateau, the region, in its elevation, is uneven topography and
its climate seems to afford that combination of conditions which ministers to the perfect development of the spruce. No other part of Maine ever had any such spruce stand, and probably no part of New York or New England, as is found in the upper waters of the Androscoggin, especially across northern New Hampshire and the White Mountain region. Only patches of spruce limber elsewhere stand as thick as does almost the whole country in this section. The spruce timber, too, is much of it, of the finest quality and size.
Brunswick, Me., was the center of the early lumber business on the Androscoggin, and much of the early pine cut was sawed there. It was after 1850 that the bulk of the business was shifted up river. About 1852 mills were built at Lewiston, while at the same time the Grand Trunk extended to Berlin, N. H., and mills were located on the falls at that point. In 1852, also, dams were built on the lakes, and drives from the lake region, which up to that time had been small and uncertain, became regular and considerable in amount. All this early lumber, however, was pine. In fact, pine was originally on almost all the drainage mixed with spruce. Spruce, however, through all this upper region, was always the most abundant coniferous timber. From as far up as the lakes no spruce was driven out until the early years of the war, among the [18]60s.
The middle course of the Androscoggin according to Mr. Cary, which has its lower course in the spruce belt, is within the limits of the State of New
Hampshire and much of the cutting up to the present time has been in that State. That portion of the Androscoggin drainage is indeed heavily cut. The hard cutting has extended about up to Parmacheenee Lake, on the Magalloway river. About the Rangeley Lakes light cutting has been going on over accessible lands all the way along for thirty years. The Cupsuptuc and Kennebago, saved by the length and difficulty o the drive, have never been seriously cut into, and are now practically in their primeval condition. South of the lakes, too, considerable country is in the same shape. The Bear, Ellis and Swift rivers are small and quickly flowing streams which it is scarcely possible in their upper portions to drive. The territory about their head waters is virgin land, a part of which, on the advent of logging railway facilities, is just beginning now to be utilized.
The important part of the lumberman and the pulp grinder is, of course, the amount of spruce still standing in the Androscoggin basin. Mr. A. Pike, of Berlin, N. H., a well known expert in this business, makes an estimate of the spruce standing in the Androscoggin basin, including pulp stock at and above Berlin Falls, in Maine, 3,000,000,000 feet; below Berlin Falls in Maine, 6,000,000,000 feet; at and above Berlin Falls in New Hampshire, 700,000,000 feet; below Berlin Falls in New Hampshire, 200,000,000 making 900,000,000 feet in New Hampshire, which added to 600,000.000 feet in Maine, makes a total of 4,500,000,000 feet of spruce. These figures are based on an estimated gross area of Androscoggin lands, spruce
bearing, of 1,240 square miles. From which deduct waste burnt within 30 years ago. including old second growth in the settled towns 234 square miles, settled 65 square miles, water area 75 square miles, unproductive mountain land estimated at 15 square miles, gives a total deduction of 410 square miles, leaving a net area spruce producing land of 830 square miles. Mr. Cary estimates the area never cut for spruce about 420 square miles.
During the year 1895, 73,506,000 feet of Androscoggin, spruce logs were used in the saw mills, and 1 As 10 the future of the Androscoggin,
123,000,000 feet were used for pulp and pa- further and more definitely, much depends per. A small portion of this come from the Kennebec, and several millions were brought in from Canada by rail. Perhaps in the neighborhood of Berlin about 10,0000,000 feet were manufactured off the drainage. Since the above estimates were made, additions to mill capacity indicate an increase of consumption of spruce of 40,000,000 feet, 25,000,000 of which is at Berlin Falls, for pulp, the remainder about equally divided between a sawmill at Rumford and a new pulp mill plant at Peterson's Rips in Livermore.
In detail, the consumption of spruce on the Androscoggin river for the year 1895 was about as follows; At Berlin Falls, 40,000,000 feet consumed in lumber, 6o,ooo,000 for pulp and paper; at Gorham, 60,000, 000 for lumber; at Shelburne, 10,000,000 for lumber; at Rumford. 24,000,000 for pulp and paper; at Canton, 2,000,000 for lumber; at Jay and Livermore, 19,000,000 feet for pulp and paper; at Lisbon, about 4,000,000 feet for lumber, and 11,000,000 feet for paper and pulp; at Lewiston, about 6,000,000 feet for lumber, varying with different years; at Brunswick and Topsham, aDout 1,500,000 feet for lumber, and 9,000,000 for pulp and paper. Several Androscoggin pulp mills use a small amount of poplar. Austin Cary reviews the statement which Mr. Pike puts on the Androscoggin drainage in Maine as 3,600,000,000 feet of spruce lumber, and thinks it must be qualified before it can be compared with similar figures from other parts of the State, as Mr. Pike makes the average net stand of the country, leaving out the area which has been cut through, as high as 9,000 feet to the acre.
Mr. Pikes's estimates include trees down to the smallest size cut in the region, the cutting there being, in fact, much closer than that practiced in most other parts of the State. Of the trees cut down, too, the Androscoggin lumbermen are, as a rule, much more economical than others, while
on the average they give their timber probably a somewhat more liberal scale. Mr. Pike's 3,500,000,000 of spruce on the upper waters of the Penobscot or St. John, Mr. Cary thinks, would hardly be set as high as 2,000,000. In other parts of the State it would pass for a varying intermediate amount. Mr. Cary thinks of spruce trees cut for logs sixty per cent, of the whole is utilized on the Penobscot, seventy per cent, on the Kennebec, and eighty-six per cent, on the Androscoggin.
As to the future of the Androscoggin, further and more definitely, much depends on the development of business and the determination of a few men. Mr. Cary thinks the prediction must be made with very large conditions. He admits the Androscoggin mills are highly favored in position, though even now they bring from Canada by rail a portion of their pulp and wood supply. He believes the Androscoggin saw mill and pulp men, however bright the prospect seems now for spruce, will at the end of a very few decades find themselves face to face with a blank wall. This he deduces from the volume of spruce consumption on the Androscoggin, and at the same time the most sweeping and thorough cuttings anywhere practiced and the rapid increase in volume of the pulp and paper business, all elements of the rapid destruction of the forests.
The resources of the Androscoggin are so great and in such compact shape that total extinction is rendered more likely through the lumbermen and the pulp men than on some of the other rivers, where less is known of their resources, and where the growth is spread over a very much larger area, and where logging operations are more scattered, difficult and expensive.
Article originally published as “Spruce On Androscoggin: A Very Large Proportion Is Cut For The Use Of The Pulp And Paper Industry” in “The Paper and Wood Pulp News” volume 20, February 18, 1897. The Author of this article is known simply as “Northeastern Lumberman.”
