How “the lands nobody wanted” became public forests

So how did national, state and county governments come to own the region’s most productive forestlands? Jeffrey Stier, an economist with the Department of Forest Ecology and Management, says the reasons hinge on historical events involving logging shifts, farm problems, and government decisions.

Logging for red and white pine peaked between 1860 and 1910 in the region, according to Stier. After that, the focus of softwood production moved to the South. Following the initial wave of logging in the Lake States, most of the land was sold to settlers as prospective farmland; industry firms held on to some of the prime pine lands.

Because of the region’s relatively poor soils and short growing season, farming proved difficult. The agricultural depression after World War I caused many to abandon farming in the region. To provide services to the remaining farms and homes scattered across these rural counties, local governments raised property taxes. But those tax increases hit the remaining landowners hard.

As the 1920s closed, many farmers abandoned their land rather than pay the taxes, Stier says. Recognizing that they would not be able to harvest wood from their lands for many years, many forest industry owners also abandoned their lands.

“These had become the lands that nobody wanted,” Stier says. “These tax-delinquent lands became the core of public forest holdings in the Lake States. By the time the more recent forest industries began acquiring forestland, most of the better land had moved into public ownership.”