In 2002, roundwood output from Arkansas forests totaled 680 million cubic feet. Mill byproducts generated from primary manufacturers were 326 million cubic feet. Almost all plant residues were used primarily for fuel and fiber products. Saw logs were the leading roundwood product at 342 million cubic feet; pulpwood ranked second at 213 million cubic feet; and veneer logs were third at 94 million cubic feet. The number of primary processing plants was 288 in 2002. Receipts for those mills totaled 721 million cubic feet.
A history of logging in the Arkansas and Oklahoma Ouachita Mountains from 1900 to 1950 not only examines man's interaction with a major forest resource but also looks at the effects of the forests' depletion on the people and towns that made their livelihood from the mills. Reprint.
In Southern Timberman, Archer H. Mayor traces the legacy of William Buchanan and the companies he owned along the borders of Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas, from his first lumber mill in the early 1880s to the sale of the last company in 1979. Like many self-made men, Buchanan was known for both his compassion and his relentlessness. To the hundreds of workers who lived in his company-built mill towns, “Old Man” Buchanan was a caring father figure. To his business associates, he was a strong-willed profiteer--a God-fearing, “cut-out-and-get-out” lumberman whose crews laid waste to thousands of acres of virgin pineland. Whatever his tactics, William Buchanan had a gift for making money. By the time he died in 1923, he was one of the wealthiest men in the South. Southern Timberman is also the story of a strong, volatile family who fought--sometimes among themselves--to preserve that fortune. Tracing the growth of Buchanan’s ventures from the first acre of virgin pine to the charged atmosphere of the corporate boardroom, Mayor paints a compelling family portrait set against the background of America’s oil and timber industries.
In Arkansas and the New South, 1874-1929 Carl Moneyhon examines the struggle of Arkansas's people to enter the economic and social mainstreams of the nation in the years from the end of Reconstruction to the beginning of the Great Depression. Economic changes brought about by development of the timber industry, exploitation of the rich coal fields in the western part of the state, discovery of petroleum, and building of manufacturing industries transformed social institutions and fostered a demographic shift from rural to urban settings.
This elegantly written narrative traces Arkansas's evolution from a primarily rural society in the early 1900s to its expanding manufacturing economy and its growing prosperity and parity with the rest of the nation. Ben Johnson explores the influence of federal-state relations, beginning with the New Deal programs of President Franklin Roosevelt and continuing through the administrations of native son Bill Clinton. With particular sensitivity, he examines organized labor in the timber industry and in row crop agriculture; school desegregation, "white flight," and the private academy movement in the delta region; the growth of Wal-Mart and the poultry industry in the northwest section of the state; and the expansion of outdoor recreation and tourism as lakes were constructed and game populations rejuvenated. This book is particularly impressive for the breadth of its scope. Johnson offers detailed information on women, music and literature, organized religion, environmental trends, and other important cultural influences. Third in the popular Histories of Arkansas series, Arkansas in Modern America extends the narrative into the contemporary era with a format aimed at students and general readers. This important book will set the standard, for years to come, for analysis and interpretation of Arkansas's place in the twentieth century.
