Over the Bitterroots
A primeval forest, thick with peril and promise, almost defeats the explorers. Today we discover a forest managed for logging, recreation and preservation

By Jolene Krawczak
Photos by Joan Carlin,
The Oregonian

LODGEPOLE PINE
(Pinus contorta)

Then: Green giants filled the forests. Journals make note of evidence of forest fires, some likely set for ceremony, more set by lightning.
Noted and collected: Clark wrote of eight kinds of pine trees when crossing through Montana to Idaho on Sept. 16, 1805.
Now: We still look to trees such as pines to build our homes and furnishings, but forest managers must balance many needs — logging, recreation and wildlife habitat.

OLO, Mont. — Bill Fortner and his brother Dave make lodgepole pine furniture and sell it on the roadside. They cut the wood from friends' property in the nearby mountains, a stone's throw from the Lolo Trail, where Lewis and Clark first saw lodgepole pine.

Lodgepole pine is one of 32 trees Lewis and Clark discovered for science. The explorers' timber discoveries live on in modern applications: They're seen in the wood-frame houses that dot the hills and were the very foundation of surrounding towns, which, like many Western communities, prospered on the strength of the timber industry.

The new trees were of such consequence to the explorers that they took time to note them even during the most difficult stretch of their journey, crossing the Bitterroot Range. On Sept. 16, 1805, the party was lost, braving snow and quickly running out of food as they struggled up treacherous mountains strewn with fallen logs, their horses slipping and falling. "I have been wet and as cold in every part as I ever was in my life. indeed I was at one time fearfull my feet would freeze in the thin Mockirsons which I wore," Clark wrote in his journal. Yet on that same day Clark took the time to note several new species of pine, lodgepole among them.

He couldn't have known how central trees would become to the development of the West.

Just 21 years after the Lewis and Clark expedition, the Northwest's first sawmill was built on the Columbia River near Fort Vancouver. It marked the start of what would become the Northwest's top industry for many decades.

It also would change dramatically the forest landscape and spark the environmental movement that gained momentum in the 1960s. "The environmental movement created an awareness of the entire environment — creatures, plants, fish. They are all related, and if one portion is disturbed, all is disturbed," says Gerald Williams, national historian for the U.S. Forest Service.

That movement helped shape today's version of the new forest, one that accommodates multiple uses, including logging, recreation, wildlife habitat and commercial pursuits, such as the Fortners' roadside business. They make their furniture of standing deadwood, including trees burned in last summer's widespread fires.

Though business has been a little slow lately, Bill Fortner got a boost from a recent interview by Martha Stewart for an upcoming segment on Western art. "We did a project at the new University of Montana coffee shop: 70 pieces — tables, booths," Bill Fortner says. "I was underneath a table, assembling it, when Martha Stewart came up and wanted to talk."

"I said, 'Sure, but you gotta wait 'til I finish putting this table together'."

THE LEGACY GROWS reproduced courtesy of the Oregonian.
These stories originally ran May 24, 2001
© 2001 The Oregonian
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