Information for Teachers

This website has been designed to enhance high school level history, economics, geography, and other classes. Below is a set of suggested questions to give your students if you choose to use this website in the classroom or as a homework assignment. If you have any suggestions of assignments for us to include in this section of the website, please let us know!!! You are the people who will be using this material, and your opinion matters to us.

Questions for Part 1--Lumbering Companies and Logging Camps

1. What caused the growth of the hardwood industry in the Southern Appalachians?

2. When was the W.M. Ritter Company organized? In which Southern Appalachian states did the Ritter Company own tree rights?

3. Why does clear-cut timberland in the mountains have a tendency to flood?

4. How was the lumbering industry sometimes considered a "family profession?"

5. What were the homes in a logging camp made of? Why were they made of this?

6. How often did the logging camps move from place to place?

7.What characteristics did mobile logging camps share with the permanent rural communities of the region?

8. Why did the lumber companies feed their employees well?

Questions for Part 2--Harvesting the Hardwoods

1. Why did lumber companies sometimes clear only spots of wood from forests?

2. Who were the first people that the lumber companies sent into the woods?

3. Why did lumber companies only buy the rights to the trees and not the rights to the entire property?

4. What kinds of tools did the loggers use before mechanized equipment, such as chainsaws, became available?

5. Why was it important for the loggers to make the trees fall in specific directions?

6. Which tree common in the Southern Appalachians can often reach the size of the large Douglas firs and redwoods of the Pacific Northwest?

7. Why did the loggers want to have their photographs made next to large trees that they had cut down?

8. When did it become a requirement that logging companies replant the areas that were clear-cut? How was this beneficial to the logging companies?

9. Before mechanized logging , how did the logging companies move the felled trees from the forest to the sawmill?

10. Upon arrival at the sawmill, the logs were deposited in one of two places. What were the names of these palces, and what were the advantages of each?

11. After sawing, why were the stacks of lumber tilted?

12. What are the differences between logging processes of the early 20th Century and the present?

General Definitions from Parts 1 and 2

1. Softwoods

2. Hardwoods

3. clear-cut

4. second-growth forests

5. logging camp

6. dormitory car

7. scrip

8. company store

9. dining car

10. log landing

 

11. skid

12. skid road

13. teamster

14. grabs

15. grab jacks

16. log pond

17. log yard

18. sawmill

19. lumberyard

20. lumber grade

Discussion Questions from Parts 1 and 2

1. Would you enjoy or dislike the life of a logger in a logging camp in the early 20th Century? Explain your answer.

2. In your opinion, what is the most interesting photograph on the website? Be sure to note the collection and number of the photograph. What are some of the details that you found interesting? Why?

3. Why do you think that forest conservation is important? Do you think that conservation, as well as logging, should have limits? Why?

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