Building to Extract: Architecture and Natural Resources (ARCH 1901): Logging & Timber

The photos in this book reveal one aspect of our increasingly devastated Earth: the clearcutting of the forests of North America. From Prince William Sound in Alaska to the red hills of Georgia, from Nova Scotia to the high mountains of New Mexico, the industrial, extractive logging industry, encouraged and subsidized by federal and provincial governments, has stripped ancient trees from the soil through the timber extractive process called clearcutting -- either leaving regions deforested or creating tree plantations that do not resemble natural forests. - (from the introduction)

An unprecedented logging theft of Mother Nature from the 1880s to the 1940s completely changed the wooded landscape in the northern Great Lakes region of America as well as the society and ecology forevermore. In this time of empire building, logging towns grew like weeds around sawmills and often died when the last tree was cut. The people living there called it "cut and run." This fascinating book presents true-life photographic images of the loggers and the people they touched. Here we see the lumberjacks and river pigs who began the work, railroad loggers who extended the range and types of logs available, and a close-up look at one town in the wilderness. With hard work written across their faces, these men and women who dedicated their lives to the logging industry earn the respect of today's readers through the dynamic photographs and poignant stories related here. To build American towns, they toiled to make the lumber available; they succeeded and became legendary.