A journey down the West Branch Susquehanna River traces the history of lumbering in Pennsylvania, from the first small-scale seasonal sawmills of the 1780s, which supplied local needs and shipped wood down rivers and streams as lumber rafts, to the 1830s, when sawmills along the West Branch were supplied by logs or "sticks" floated downriver in rafts or scattered logs in a drive captured by a boom across the river, with the straightest stock used as masts or "spars" in the Chesapeake Bay shipbuilding industry. From 1864 to 1941, logging railroads became the principal means of hauling timber, mostly hemlock used for leather tanning and lumber, and their efficiency nearly cleared Pennsylvania's forests by the 1930s. Decades of forest clearing eroded soil and increased sediment in the West Branch and downstream to the Chesapeake Bay, leading the PA Bureau of Forestry, the U.S. Forest Service, and the Civilian Conservation Corps to play major roles in controlling wildfires, erosion, and depletion of forest resources while restoring and protecting the state's forests. After World War II, new hardwood forests replaced the white pine and hemlock forests, and sustainable forestry practices emerged, helping keep land in forest use, support cleaner rivers and more wildlife, and make Pennsylvania the nation's leading producer of hardwoods while more than half the state remains forested.