Lumber Industry
Ozarkers have always had to use the products of the land to make a living. The area has an abundance of natural resources, particularly trees. Lumber was second only to farming as the area's most important industry.
As Americans moved from east to west after the Civil War, railroads began to crisscross the country. As more track was laid, more railroad ties were needed to support the tracks. Railroad ties require hard wood that is slow to decay. Lumber from pin oak and white oak trees has those qualities. The Ozarks had an abundant supply of both kinds of trees. Thus, making railroad ties, or tie hacking, as it was called locally, quickly grew into a vital part of the economy.
Tie hacking was hard work. There were no mechanized tools; everything was done with crosscut saws and axes. Trees were felled in the wood, cut into eight-foot sections, and flattened on the sides. The tie-hackers, who usually worked in teams, would then have to haul the ties up and over the Ozarks hills. Many tie-hackers used horses for this, but getting the ties out of the woods was often the hardest part of the job. A good production day was 10-12 ties, which sold from $0.25 to $1.00 each, depending on the going market price.
Dragging the ties through the hollows to hillside yards and then floating them down the river were also difficult and dangerous jobs. At the river bank, the ties were nailed together in rafts called "frogs." As many as 135 ties were strung together and floated down the James River, while rafts consisting of over 1000 ties were floated down the White River. Two men, a steersman and a snubsman, standing on the front and rear of the raft respectively, used long poles to guide the rafts over then swift currents and through the numerous twists and turns of the river. (McGill 93).
By the 1920's the convenience of railroad towns like Reeds Spring and Branson made hillside yards and river rafting a less efficient means of marketing railroad ties. As Robert McGill concludes,
Outside of farming, tie-hacking was the first important industry in the local hills, and hundreds of thousands of ties were floated down river or shipped out via railroad. No effort was ever made to keep an accurate account of the numbers, but the forests of the area were depleted of much of their white oak and post oak. The job, however, was the right one for the people at the time--a hardy people working at a challenging and exhausting job. (93)
Railroads finally arrived in the early 1900s and the tie rafts disappeared. Instead, ties were shipped on the railroad. By the 1920's the price for ties had dropped so low that tie-hackers could no longer make a living and tie hacking died out.
Ozarkers had other uses for their timber, though. In 1908 the American Pencil Company of New York built a pencil factory in Branson. The pencils were made from cedar logs. Cedar was another locally abundant tree. Thousands of cedar logs were cut into rectangular slats measuring 3" x 3" x 8". The slats were then shipped across the country to factories to be made into pencils. Eventually, the supply of cedar trees was exhausted and the American Pencil Company Factory was moved to California.
Timber is still a vital resource in the Ozarks. Many trees are harvested and processed at local sawmills and shipped worldwide. The forests also contribute to the local economy just by their presence. Many tourism dollars are attracted to the Ozarks because of the lush tree growth. Trees are a very important part of the local economy.
Works Consulted
"American Pencil Company Factory, Branson, Mo." Town and Country Shopper's Guide. 1.13 (Aug. 1982).
McGill, Robert. "Hacking Ties." In the Heart of Ozark Mountain Country: A Popular History of Stone and Taney Counties, including Branson, Missouri. Ed. Frank Reuter. Reeds Spring, MO: White Oak Press, 1992, pp. 92-93.
Photograph of pencil factory from Godsey Collection, Lyons Memorial Library, College of the Ozarks
