What Happened

By 1890, fifty-three years after logging began in forests once predicted to last forever, enough trees were cut in one year along the St. Croix to build 50,000 houses, and hundreds of thousands of people across the Midwest lived in houses made from trees cut in this river valley. Twelve years later, so few large trees remained that logging companies began buying timber rights in western states and shutting down their operations here, and no new trees were planted to replace those that were cut. By 1912, the big pine forests were gone, the wildlife that had lived in the branches and on the ground in the deep shade of the pines had vanished, and many plants and animals were no longer found in this area because the shelter, soil, moisture, and shade conditions of the old-growth white pine forests were gone. The pines here were planted in the 1950's by farmers who hoped to sell them when they grew large enough, and the white pine stand at this spot resulted from the efforts of Rodney and Elaine Olson and their family, who planted white and red pines on their land, many by hand, before selling it to the state of Minnesota in 1975, when it became part of Wild River State Park. These trees will be preserved, but because they grow close together in straight rows, they will never make a natural pine forest like the one that once stretched from here to Canada, and the largest remaining white pines nearby are less than half the size of the trees of the pre-logging era.

Minnesota · United States