The Elusive Virgin Tract

[mike_belben]

Yesterday we went to my wifes friends church about 25 minutes and maybe 100 or 200ft lower elevation than where i live.  After services we took all the kids to walk up to a big lookout trail in a forest the church owns which probably brought us back up to my normal 1800 or 2000ft above sea level. 

Fully closed canopy, no stumps. There are 2 man bearhug trees snapped off and slowly decaying, natural openings are the only ones and its obvious this has not been harvested in 200 years if ever. The floor is fully shaded, cool and moist. Cedars interspersed hardwoods which isnt too normal in my area where logging cycles have gone on prematurely for generations.


It was completely, completely different than any forest i have stood in around my area and though all the perimeter edge weeds were the same but the trees looked totally different, including the bark. I could hardly identify anything by the bark like id be able to in a logged woods easily.  I looked super hard for poison ivy among the mess of VA creeper because the friends wanted to be able to ID it.  There was none to be found, despite it being like the state plant of cutover TN.  

The hickory dominance was extreme, especially shagbark. red/white oak were very under represented - hardly any, i dont think i saw any of the usual gum.  Red maple i can usually find with my eyes closed but the few there looked totally foreign.  I think i even saw my first ash and a gigantic dead cottonwood maybe?  Many trees i just couldnt tell because the branches were 100ft up. 


It was really something.   True, a big part of me wanted to cut it down but im awful glad no one else has managed to yet.  I dont think my kids will live long enough to see cutover ground get that way again. When its gone its gone.   

[Texas Ranger]

I cruised and marked a hardwood stand in a river bottom here in Texas that was all hardwood, no softwoods of any nature.  100 foot to the first branches, no brush on the ground and complete shade.  We marked it for a hardwood flooring mill.  They never responded to the bid, so we took our fee and left, last I noticed it was still there, the owners have died but the heir is an "environmental"  type so I suspect it is still there, aging.

Some times it is good to have a failing sale.  That was a beautiful old east Texas bottom hardwood site, not many left.

Edit:  Just went to tax records and google earth, the tract now owned by a RET company and the timber is gone.  History.

[HemlockKing]

 

 We have some old growth protected lands here in NS, they feel completely different to the typical ravenged  forest. Beautiful massive pines and oaks spruce etc, most people would never think NS could produce such landscape. My woodlot has been untouched for around 100 years at least. By the time I'm ready to pass it on maybe it will be close to the old growth that resembles keiji national park. I will haunt whoever cuts down my timber after I'm gone 

[Hilltop366]

Hmmm that looks familiar.



 

Another place that has old growth hemlock is sporting lake, it is between New France and Lake Rossignol, the island on the lake has trees over 6' diameter unfortunately I have not made it there but friends have gone and told me about it. It could be that they are now threatened by the Hemlock Woolly Adelgid, as it is in this end of the province now.

[HemlockKing]

Nice picture! Yes and my
Beloved hemlock! My favourite softwood. Being in a mature hemlock stand is amazing 

[Wudman]

Hemlock here in Virginia is gone compliments of the wooly adelgid.  It is a shame.  I rode up through some of the National Park and George Washington National Forest about a year ago and it was all laying on the ground.  Quite heartbreaking.

Wud

[HemlockKing]

Yep we have it here too apparently. There is lots of hemlock but north or east of me 20 min, none on my land unfortunately except new I planted recently 

[Don P]

There were 2 Carolina Hemlock's amongst the eastern Hemlock here. We noticed over the weekend the last one has succumbed to the adelgid. I'll take the virgin white pine beside it at the same time, its gotta be at least 80  ;D. It sure is easier to be an environmentalist if you don't do anything. I would prefer to see us on something closer to that rotation though.

Something I noticed when looking at the oldest map of this region was the upper piedmont  below me has a good amount of forest now. It was labelled "savannah" with a few scattered lone trees on the old map. The "virgin" forest was removed by humans and managed as an open grassland. We have presently let much of it revert to forest. If old enough I would consider it to be old growth or virgin, but our hand goes back a fair ways in time. That map made me realize its further than I think sometimes.

[Southside]

Don - does that map show this area?  If so do you have a link to it?  I was reading last night that over your way it was bare tundra 8,000 years ago and here was the edge of the mixed hardwood with spruce, fir, etc Richmond and north.  Even said we had moose and elk in this neck of the woods back then.

[Don P]

I'll see if I can find it. Lt Wood's map rings a bell... I think.
Now I'm interested in what you were reading, got a link?
I think it is just west of Richmond was the earliest coal mine in the state but I guess that forest was well before 8,000 years ago.

[Southside]

Your pic gets my pic.... :D

https://www.doe.virginia.gov/instruction/history/virginias-first-people/history/index.shtml

[samandothers]

Thanks for the link.  That was an interesting read.  I noticed the mention of soapstone and it's use.  We used a large piece for a mantle in our home in Floyd area. I previously was being used as a step on a log cabin. 

[grabber green]

Mike ,if you haven't yet ,check out the Joyce Kilmer forest. It's in north carolina but it's not that far from us. 

[Southside]

@Don P I am kinda feeling stood up....   :D

[Tacotodd]

SS you're going to be hurting that tough old Marines feelings  :D

[Machinebuilder]

Mike ,if you haven't yet ,check out the Joyce Kilmer forest. It's in north carolina but it's not that far from us.

I was going to suggest this.
I find it interesting that on a hot summer day you can go there and it is always much cooler.
My favorite way to get there is the Cherohala Skyway, the eastern end is only a couple miles from the parking lot.

[Don P]

@Don P I am kinda feeling stood up....   :D

I've been looking, no joy yet  :P :D

[SwampDonkey]

I had the opportunity to work on a town watershed lot. Was once the town water source. So it was never cut before. Red spruce like white pine, and the maple was 40" across and bigger, even some birdseye in it. Of course those were the dominant ones. The regen underneath was sugar maple and a lot of red spruce. No balsam fir regen, no beech. The only balsam fir was in the gullies with white spruce. She's cut now, not by me, I was doing single tree selection with a horse crew. But guy before and guy after pretty much cut whatever they came to. I arrived mid stream after the town had been harvesting for some time.

Bark on old hardwood is totally different looking.

I called Forestry Canada to come collect red spruce seed. They did, I know the fella that was in charge of the tree improvement work there.

[moodnacreek]

There was a virgin forest here when I was very young. It was cove timber, very tall, hemlock, r.o., w.o., chestnut and tulip. The tulip section was still there in my late teens and tulip tree is the largest tree in NYS. although w. pine can be as large. The owners of this land where well to do and never cut it but when they ran out of money and sold out it got cut and  devided as always happens. It was one of those places where timber would exceed the normal size. An old time sawmill man I learned from owned a wood lot that had a supply of tall 30" + oak, hemlock and w. pine. I always considered this to be early 2nd growth.  That got sold also when old Russ passed.  When you get in the real timber it is a beautiful thing.

[barbender]

There are scattered tracts of old growth (250 year old +) Red and White pine up here. Probably the most well known is the Lost 40, and Itasca State Park (which is where the source of the Mississippi is). Both have pine in excess of 400 years old if I'm not mistaken.

[Don P]

Jim, I haven't found Col Abram Wood's map yet, if that is the one I'm remembering.

Supposedly he was the first white man to explore the New River Valley in the 1650's. The river was named for him at that time

This map is from 1796 and doesn't show "savannah" but seems to be confirming another story I had heard.
Virginia. - David Rumsey Historical Map Collection
Look along the NC border from the west, Holston river, then the Dan river. No New river between them.

My understanding is that the New river was named Wood's river after the Col. Then they lost the river, it appears to still be lost in the map above. When they found the river again, it was a New river. I suspect this map is a good bit older than its publication date suggests.

In the 1750's Dr Thomas Walker (Big Walker mt and the Big Walker tunnel on I-77) explored the New River up to the Greenbrier, so if it was really lost or just lost to some, they had found it again by that point.

Dr Walker is a piece of history. He was Thomas Jefferson's father's physician and a neighboring plantation owner somewhere around Charlottesville (15,000 acres). He shared interest in surveying and the natural sciences with the senior Jefferson. When Jefferson senior died, Doc Walker served as executor of the estate and acted as guardian for young Thomas Jefferson. 

Shortly after Walker's exploration an early group of settlers set up near modern day Alderson WV in 1763. They were all killed by Indians. In 1770 another settlement nearby did make it.

That was a sidetrack  :D
Carry on 

[Southside]

Thanks Don - will go check it out right now.  Lost a whole river, that must sure cause some head scratching.  "I am telling you Martha there was a river here with trout 'This Big' just last week".  "Sure George, were there beavers cutting down cherry trees there too? Lets go, the horse is getting tired".   :D

This is going back 25 years now but just off the shores of Square Lake, T15 R6 in Maine I have seen massive White Pine that still had the remains of the "Kings Broad Arrow" carved into them.  These trees were claimed by the King of England for ship masts for the Royal Navy during the Colonial Era.  So they were massive then, and that was 200 years ago.  Spruce - giant by todays measure - would be felled to act as a landing cushion for the pines, then left on the forest floor.  It was considered patriotic to have wide pine - over 24" wide - in ones home back then, kind of a way to say "stuff it", I cut down your tree, to the King.  

[barbender]

24" wide pine paneling, vertical, like a middle finger?😂

[SwampDonkey]

I've been down in that neck of the woods before, the New River. Buddy of mine lived in Blacksburgh and worked at V. Tech. We did some exploring. I call him the bug picker. :D He was researching the Hemlock woolly adelgid and he worked between there and parts of TN. He's still pick'n bugs, but at Forestry Canada now. He did a stint in Idaho to. ;D The oldest red spruce that have been cored are over 400 years old here in New Brunswick. And those particular ones are not even all that remarkably large compared to the ones that were on this town lot. Spruce was never thrown away here, it is king of the north. Some old photos around with horse drawn sleds in winter full of spruce logs. Course that ain't 18th C or older because then it was all oxen work. ;D But yeah, them pines was ship mast material, not what was common in camps and homesteads. Course, this area around here was only settled after the timber railroads came through. All the white population was on the coast lines. Acadian dikes still down on the Fundy, over 400 years old near Hopewell Cape park.

The Dike Keepers

[Mooseherder]

Our property goes to the eastern base of a place called Moose Mountain.  The west side of Moose Mountain contains a 5-acre stand of old growth spruce. I've met the foresters working for Prentice and Carlisle a couple years ago.  They manage it. It would be nice to check it out. 
I'll ask them to show me if we ever cross paths again.  One of the Foresters pointed out a legacy Maple on our side.  He also found a Moose Antler while we were walking around. 

https://maineanencyclopedia.com/cyr-plantation/