Published August 1988 — Download PDF of the original newspaper column
Byrd's-Eye View By U.S. Senator Robert C. Byrd Toward a West Virginia Hardwood-Products Industry Since pioneer days, West Virginia has been noted for its abundant forests. In 1870, for example, forests covered 14 million West Virginia acres; seven eighths of our state's surface. Those forests included oaks and poplars; walnut, cherry, and sycamore; ash, chestnut, chestnut oaks, and locusts, as well as white pine, hemlock, and spruces of remarkable size and quality. From the 1870's onward, West Virginia trees were felled and shipped out of state to be converted into fine furniture, houses, wagons, barrels, ship beams, and boundless other wood products. Unfortunately, in all that time, a major wood-products industrial base-furniture, homebuilding elements, and other finished wooden goods did not take shape within our state's borders. After World War I, with West Virginia's primeval forests largely stripped away, the volume of lumber emerging from West Virginia saw mills was greatly reduced from previous years, and again was largely shipped outside the state. But, through scientific reforestation, West Virginia's potential as a growth area for hardwoods is as great now as ever. For that reason, I sponsored and won passage last year of legislation establishing the newly opened Advanced Hardwood Processing and Technical Resource Center at the Forestry Sciences Laboratory at Princeton in Mercer County. My sponsorship of the Advanced Hardwood Processing Center was a logical forward step toward developing West Virginia's hardwood-manufacturing potential. A primary purpose of this center is to help our state to capitalize on one of its most important natural resources, thereby turning West Virginia into a major wood-products manufacturer. The Advanced Hardwood Processing and Technical Resource Center has been envisioned and launched as a joint government-industry effort, with one of its salient functions being to work with private industry to develop high-tech, state-of-the-art, computerized machinery geared to wood-products manufacturing. The success of this center will largely depend on continuing cooperation between the government and private sectors. That cooperation will be well-rewarded, for the growth of a wood-products industrial base in our state can mean more jobs for West Virginia, and the creation of a broad new base to help rejuvenate our state's economy. August 31, 1988