Fifty Years of Mountain Logging
Commercial logging became widespread in the Smokies around 1880, about fifty years before the establishment of the national park. Loggers using hand tools an animal teams took maple, poplar, cherry, walnut, and other choice woods.
Mechanized logging began in the early 1900s and often included clear cutting of all trees over ten inches in diameter. By the 1940s when the last large tracts had been bought, nearly 65 percent of the forest had been cut.
Logging is prohibited in the park. Today new stands of trees flourish in the logged sections.
Marker is on U.S. 441 near U.S. 441.
Courtesy hmdb.org
