Imagining the Cutover Timberlands of Minnesota and Louisiana, 1900–40

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the lumber industry in northern Minnesota and western Louisiana transformed vast swaths of forested land into lumber products for burgeoning capitalist markets across the United States.  In ecological terms, the process of logging in the region entailed not only the destruction of old growth pine forests, but the creation of a new (albeit severely degraded) space: the cutover.  By the early twentieth century these lands – marshy, rocky, and now riddled with tree stumps and debris – presented serious economic problems for lumber companies themselves, in the form of tax burdens and the risk of spreading fires to still valuable timbered lands.

Lumber companies and boosters promoted the climate and ecology of these regions as ideal for small farms operated by “men of modest means.” This image reflected a mix of ideas about nature, climate, and Jeffersonian independence (alongside a desire to turn a profit). By the late 1920s, the dream of these cutover boosters resulted in a landscape of impoverished residents and abandoned farms across the former lumber regions of both states. When, during the 1930s, New Deal planners examined the cutover and evaluated its climate and ecology they saw its future in radically different terms than boosters had. These spaces, they argued, should be removed from agricultural development and reforested under public control. Ultimately, this case demonstrates that the ways societies think about climate and ecology are always situated in particular political-economic contexts. Examining how societies interpret particular environmental conditions is a critical part of integrating climate history with political and social history.