Page:Report of the Oregon Conservation Commission to the Governor (1908 - 1914).djvu/266

 LOGGED OFF LAND.

The question of subduing such of our logged off land as can be profitably put under cultivation is one receiving each year an increasing amount of attention.

A few years ago the use of such land for grazing purposes was advocated, and as land prices have increased the actual clearing of the land for the raising of field crops has been sparingly taken up.

In the State of Washington, the Southwest Washington Development Association has established a settler's agency, through which owners of logged off land can dispose of their property, under terms favorable to the settler. The movement was started primarily to secure for the State a larger agricultural population and put to useful purpose land which under ordinary circumstances would lie for a long period in a state of non-productiveness.

A periodical devoted to the question of logged off lands is now published in Seattle.

The State Geological Survey of Washington, in cooperation with the Bureau of Soils of the United States Department of Agriculture, has undertaken soil surveys of the logged off lands of Western Washington, beginning with the Puget Sound region. Two reports based on these investigations have already been issued and contain data that should prove invaluable in advancing the reclamation of this class of land.

Here in Oregon the logged off land question has received far less attention than in Washington. Attempts have been made to form an organization for the settling and disposal of logged off lands, and individual companies have offered reasonable terms of purchase to settlers, but lacking the vast area of stump land which our sister state, Washington, possesses, the movement has received no such support as in that state.

The question is, however, each year becoming more important in Oregon, and is one which should be faced and solved along right lines, if these lands are to prove a factor in the agricultural upbuilding of the State.

It is not a local question confined to the Columbia River or Willamette basin, but confronts, or soon will, every timbered county East or West of the Cascade Mountains. Just as it is necessary to so modify our tax and other laws as to allow of holding, after exploitation, the natural forest lands for succeeding crops of timber, so it is the part of wisdom to assist