Wood

The number of saw mills producing lumber in 1860 is an indication of the importance of wood in the United States. The census showed that 19,600 establishments employed 71,000 hands to produce lumber having a value of $91.6 million. During the colonial period and the early days of the republic, sawmills were local enterprises due to the difficulty and expense of transporting timber or lumber any distance. Circumstances had changed by 1860. In relatively new states such as Michigan and Wisconsin, which were being drawn upon as major sources of lumber, larger than average saw mills were being built at the mouths of rivers, and the rivers were used to transport the logs from the timbering sites to the mills.

As reflected in the 1860 census, Pennsylvania produced lumber with the greatest value ($10.7 million), and New York produced the next greatest value ($9.7 million). The lumber industry showed a great deal of variation from state to state in terms of the numbers of mills and hands and the value of product relative to state population. States above the national average included Michigan, Florida, Oregon, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. These states had recently been admitted and were experiencing above average levels of population growth. Two exceptions were the older states, Maine and New Hampshire; both experienced low population growth, were heavily wooded and were probably supplying lumber to the other northeastern states.

States below the national average were older, with lower than average population growth, such as Rhode Island, Maryland, Connecticut, and New Jersey. The exception was Illinois, a recently admitted state that experienced population growth of more than 100 percent, but its value of sawed lumber produced per capita was far below the national average. The reason for this appears to be that by 1860, a substantial lumber market had developed in Chicago, which was the recipient of lumber harvested and sawed in Michigan and Wisconsin for distribution into the plains. Chicago made Illinois a lumber conduit rather than a lumber producer.