A Story to Tell

A Story to Tell. Congaree National Park. , The wood of mature, old-growth bald cypress is naturally resistant to rot from moisture and insects, which made these trees highly desirable and profitable to lumber companies. From 1899 until 1914, loggers from Francis Beidler's Santee River Cypress Lumber Company harvested the majority of old-growth cypress in the Congaree River floodplain. The cypress logs were cut into 16 foot sections and then transported down the Congaree to the company's lumber mill at Ferguson on the banks of the Santee River. There they were turned into a variety of lumber products such as siding, shingles, stair balustrades, and furniture. However, not all of the cypress harvested from the floodplain landscape made it to the mill. Trees that were cut while still green were too heavy to transport and sank to the bottom of waterways like the Congaree. Examples of these "sinkers" can still be found in the park today., The still visible axe marks used to cut the notch on the trunk of this massive bald cypress tree tell us that the tree was cut down here the turn of the 20th century. This section from the base was hollow, making it unsuitable for conversion it to commercial wood products, and it was left where it fell. The log was submerged under Lake Marion in the 1940s, where the properties that made cypress so desirable and profitable for lumber companies helped preserve it for close to a century. Recovered by Santee Debris in 2021, it was donated to he park the following year. Today, this log serves as a symbol of the fate of millions of trees in the Southeast's floodplain forests since he 1890's, with Congaree National Park protecting the largest intact representative of this ecosystem remaining in the United States., [ Right Inset: ] , At the Santee River Cypress Lumber Company's lumber mill at Ferguson, South Carolina (top image) logs from bald cypress and other trees were milled into a variety of wood products, which were then shipped all over the country. This siding shingle (bottom image) was part of a century-old shipment to a house in New Jersey, and is today preserved in the museum collection of Congaree National Park