In the Spotlight  News & Features A History of Timbering in
Minnesota By Leif Enger November 16, 1998 Click for audio
RealAudio 2.0 14.4  Part of Our State, Our Forests  There are
few places where you can walk the kind of forests that covered
Northern Minnesota 150 years ago. Giant white pines rose to 200
feet. When Minnesota became a state, more than half its land was
in deep shade.  Though vast, the great North Woods weren't
limitless. By the turn of the century, Minnesota timber was
being marketed from New York to Denver. The expanding frontier
needed wood and 30,000 lumberjacks were doing their best to
supply it. Timber was far and away the biggest industry in the
state, and it changed the very landscape we live in.  THERE'S A
WOODS NORTH OF GRAND RAPIDS called the Lost Forty. In an age
when policy makers argue about whether a tree is "old growth" at
90 years or 120, the Lost Forty is the real thing. It's never
been cut. Some of these white pines are 400 years old. In the
1830s, 3.5 million acres of Minne