“The Trail of the Sawmill,” editorial, Boston Transcript, Wednesday, July 20, 1892
By the late 1890s, J.E. Henry & Sons had taken all available timber from the valley and the town disappeared. The company moved next to Lincoln and repeated the process, moving deeper into the forest and higher into the mountains.
In the wake of such extensive cutting, forest fires were inevitable. The mountain forests appeared in danger of annihilation. What could be done to save them? How could the seemingly competing goals of logging interests and conservationists be reconciled? As New England essayist Bradford Torrey asked, “Who thinks of sympathizing with a tree?”