The employees were really nice and gave us a lot of information about the wood industry in West Virginia!
While Debbie, Candee and I were on our tour of West Virginia this past summer, we stopped at a sawmill to get some directions. We were fascinated by the production going on, and spent quite a bit of time talking with some of the employees. The place we stopped at was the Hacker Valley Mill which is a division of Coastal Lumber Company. We would have enjoyed getting a close up look at what was going on, but because of the dangerous saws being used, we weren’t able to do that. However, the employees were kind enough to let us take as many pictures as we wanted to!
Just think, soon this tree I'm sitting on will be transformed into some boards
I think I could drive that...oh wait, maybe I'm too small!
West Virginia is known to have a thriving timbering industry which is a major contributor to West Virginia’s economy due to the production of high value hardwoods. The wood industry is made possible by West Virginia’s 12 million acres of forestland and 75 billion board feet of timber inventory.
West Virginia is one of the top wood producing states and produces more than 700 million board feet of lumber, 770 million square feet of waferboard and 800 million square feet of veneer annually. Half of the harvested wood is from various oak species, but some of the others that are prevalent are hickory, yellow poplar, and red maple among others.
The state is 78 percent forested land which makes it third in the nation. Almost all of the forest land is considered timberland and is available for production, and eighty-seven percent of the forested land is privately owned. Through an analysis done by a federal Forest Analysis and Inventory shows that even though the state’s hardwood forests are increasingly harvested, they are still sustainable which is a good thing for the timbering and forest industry in the state.
There was lots of wood everwhere we looked!
Tags: Polly 2
September 19th, 2010 at 10:09 pm
The forests are sustainable, and the wood industry keeps lots of West Virginians on the job! That sounds like a win/win situation. Still, it’s good to have national and state forests that allow people and animals–especially frogs–to enjoy nature at its finest.
September 24th, 2010 at 7:47 pm
Polly sure does get around!