My Mississippi Manifest Destiny: Logging

One thing surprised me during my Mississippi--there's a significant logging industry there. Since many environmentalist include the timber industry among their long list of enemies, tree harvesting is forced to exist as a dirty little secret of the Magnolia State.

To be fair, some environmentalists are realists, and some timber industry officials do care about nature, which led to the formation of the Forest Stewardship Council in 1993, a group dedicated to promoting sustainable and economically logging practices. There are Mississippi FSC members, and one certified forest.

Mississippi is a heavily forested state, and logging there makes more sense than it does in colder and dryer Montana, another important logging state. Trees grow faster in Mississippi.

Tree harvesting is performed in all parts of the state, but most of logging sites I saw were in the northeastern part of the state. The pictures in this post, however, were taken on the Natchez Trace Parkway, roughly halfway between Tupelo and Jackson. This was the only logging activity I came across on the Trace.

I saw many trucks loaded with logs throughout my May Mississippi travels. The railcar in the bottom picture was taken in Vicksburg.

Next: Natchez

Previous My Mississippi Manifest Destiny posts:

The Natchez Trace Part Four, Ghost Town
The Natchez Trace Part Three
The Natchez Trace Part Two, Indian Mounds
The Natchez Trace Part One
$aving$ in Tupelo
Where Elvis bought his first guitar
Elvis Presley's birthplace
The Battle of Tupelo
Corinth
Shiloh Part Four
Shiloh Part Three
Shiloh Part Two
Shiloh Part One
Carl Perkins
The Varsity Theatre in Martin, Tennessee
Lincoln and Kentucky
Metropolis

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