And a heads-up - Muir Woods - Park closed November 19-20, 2024 for Fire Management Work
Around 1850, men with axes began cutting down California’s redwoods, the first step in a process that turned the giant trees into houses, railroad ties, cigar boxes and other products. As James Michael Buckley recounts in “City of Wood: San Francisco and the Architecture of the Redwood Lumber Industry,” the harvesting of redwoods indelibly shaped the region. By the late 19th century, he writes, San Francisco was “lined with redwood structures,” many of which were destroyed in fires that followed the 1906 earthquake. The trees, which can live for 2,000 years, “gave their ancient souls to produce wealth for human hands,” and today the vast majority of redwoods that once grew in California are gone.
In a video interview with the Chronicle, the San Francisco historian discusses the industry’s effect on the city, indigenous peoples and the land itself.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: “City of Wood”—the title refers to San Francisco but, figuratively, the surrounding land too?
A: The title is a way to get us thinking about how places are connected across space. As I looked at the lumber industry, it was clear that what was happening in San Francisco affected what was happening on the North Coast, and vice versa.
Q: This was an industry partially driven by men who came for the 1840s Gold Rush but ended up in redwoods.
A: Not everyone did well in the gold fields, so they went into other fields. And some had backgrounds in lumber. They saw the redwoods and said, ‘Holy cow, these are the biggest trees I’ve ever seen, there must be a lot of money to be made here.’ And so they began cutting them down.
Q: Where was most of the logging happening?
A: Originally there were a lot of redwoods around the Bay Area. The redwoods go from Santa Cruz up to the Oregon border, so people cut the Bay Area redwoods first and then spread out further. The redwood lumber industry went from Sonoma up to Del Norte County.
Q: Who owned the land and how was it acquired?
A: A lot of it was basically owned by the federal government, which was trying to get people to buy small plots. Under the Homestead Act, people would get 160 acres on the Great Plains and start planting. But you couldn’t do that with the redwood forest because the trees were so huge, and you needed so much capital to cut them down. Many of the early lumber owners got it through nefarious means. There was a lot of fraud.
Q: This, of course, harmed indigenous people living there.
A: They were not part of the capitalist network that was investing in this. And they had a very different attitude about the natural world. They were living from the land, and the industry was foreign to their approach. They were removed by people who felt they were in the way. There was a lot of killing, a lot of massacres. It’s a horrible story.
Q: And how did the industry shape San Francisco? What was, say, the South of Market neighborhood like in 1900?
A: It was a very busy, crowded neighborhood. You had small homes, businesses, factories. And you had blocks of lumber that were stacked throughout the South of Market. For some of the poorest people, it was the only place they could afford to live.
Q: Why was redwood so sought after by builders and craftsmen?
A: Redwood is pretty resilient. It resists insects. It’s actually somewhat fireproof. It was used in everything from water pipes to railroad ties.
Q: And it has barely any knots, as you explain.
A: It’s incredible. Because they’re so tall, the first branches don’t occur until 100 feet or more above the ground, so you have beautiful, clear wood for much of the tree.
Q: Many of the redwood buildings in San Francisco burned in 1906. How did the industry respond?
A: There was rebuilding in large quantities, so there was a huge demand for lumber, which set off a new wave of activity in the redwood forest. Steam schooners were coming down from Humboldt County bringing this wood all the time. It was a real boom time for the forest industries around 1906.
Q: Can we measure the redwood industry’s impact on nature?
A: There were billions of what we call board feet of lumber in the forests. People just thought, This will go on forever. In the 1880s, California instituted its first board of forestry, but they weren’t that concerned about conservation. They were trying to help figure out how to more efficiently cut the forest. It wasn’t till after the turn of the century that people started saying, ‘You know what, this may not go on forever.’ What we are seeing these days is probably 5 percent of what originally was there in the forest.
Greg