Talk:West Coast lumber trade

Scope of article.

This is a major time in the history and development of the West Coast. Though the article has been improved recently, the overall tone of the article needs work to include the many aspects of this huge experience in history, including social, demographic, business, and environmental aspects...just to name a few. This is not only about the route to SF or the types of shipping used. Norcalal (talk) 07:56, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Here Come the Brides was a 1960s television series which focused on 1860s Seattle and three brothers who owned a sawmill and occasionally shipped lumber to the Bay area. The title relates to them importing a hundred women from the east coast to improve the male/female of Seattle in an effort to get more workers to remain. I doubt much of the series is factual, but certainly its themes jive with what I dug up on researching Portland's Canyon Road which was a means to expedite the area's ability to get agricultural products to gold rush inflated San Francisco ports. —EncMstr (talk) 18:51, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

So far the text is about the ships with little about the actual trade. The ships are interesting and more important overall than just the lumber trade as some were converted for other use in both world wars. The real story, the lumber trade itself, needs lots of work. A few references I've checked recently related to the ships and shipping have considerable documentation on amounts shipped and markets extending far beyond "San Francisco" with Australia and South Africa being large. I will add some of that, but West Coast people probably have much better local resources. As a note, I will probably move most of the "ship" text for Esther Johnson to a ship page, leaving just a note on that being the last steam lumber schooner (by the way, they did not "sail," built, if I get enough additional documentation to warrant such. Palmeira (talk) 14:40, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Further note on scope: The title can cover two subjects, one broad and one much narrower. Broadly it would cover the West Coast lumber trade that includes the commercial production of West Coast lumber for the world market. Narrowly, it could be constrained to cover only the West Coast lumber market itself, the production in the north, including British Columbia, and shipping south to largely San Francisco. I recommend broad coverage as that is the regional economic and environmental aspect of this trade. That would also include mention of more ship types as international oceanic ships were also modified for this trade. Palmeira (talk) 15:17, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Central California?

Central California was not a chief part of the West Coast Lumber trade. There were significant forests in Santa Cruz, but Santa Cruz is always included in the region of Northern California any way. Please see Central California before re-adding this region, which is a "questionable" region and ill defined at best. If we accept that it exists then so few forests existed on the Monterrey Coast that it was never a significant player, in fact it was inconsequential, in comparison to the many many millions of board feet of lumber from the regions/states north of San Francisco. If we look to the Central Coast it is a bit better, but still redundant as Santa Cruz is, as already stated, in the Northern California region. Norcalal (talk) 18:49, 1 April 2012 (UTC)