1942: The Second World War
The national demand for lumber spiked drastically amid the Second World War. The United States military used lumber for barracks, warehouses, munitions crates, aircraft hangars, trucks, planes, and much more. Under the pressure to aid in homeland defense, large lumber companies throughout the U.S. compromised previously established timber conservation practices in an effort to produce as many wood products as possible. Northern Arizona in particular was the site of a critical munitions arsenal during World War II.
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[A Blow to the Axis—More Lumber for the Army. World War II Posters. NAID: 513717.]
The Navajo Ordnance Depot just west of Flagstaff was constructed between 1941 and 1942 and served as a storage and shipping warehouse for artillery, explosives, heavy machinery, and ammunition for war in the Pacific Theater. The site was convenient for the depot due to its distance from the west coast and proximity to the transcontinental railroad. Accessibility to sawmills and fresh timber was especially important as lumber was needed to construct the framing for warehouse structures, ammunition storage igloos, and housing for temporary laborers in a short amount of time.
Meanwhile, Fort Valley foresters who did not join the front lines developed campaigns advertising the importance of forest research for the war effort and its interconnectedness with the lumber industry. Because forest research worked toward devising an efficient system of timber regeneration, the research effort promised a store of timber to sustain the national timber demand, which directly contributed to national defense.
The Forest Service worked toward increasing awareness of forest fire prevention amongst the public. Not only were forest fires thought to threaten the nation’s store of merchantable timber, but the smoke from fires illuminated the silhouettes of American Navy boats along the east and west coasts, making them easy targets for Axis U-boats.
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[Loggers do Prevent Fires. 1941-1945. World War II Posters. NAID: 514906.]
Between the 1930s and 1950s, many Southern African American families and individual laborers moved west seeking higher wages and refuge from racial discrimination in the Jim Crow South, an event often termed as the Great Migration. While racial discrimination persisted throughout the nation, subtler forms of segregation and social codes surrounding race existed in northern Arizona. Many of these African American laborers moving to Flagstaff preferred this to the overt racial violence they faced in the southeast.
African American loggers and sawmill workers who previously worked in the woods of Louisiana, Mississippi, and eastern Texas were particularly drawn to similar job opportunities in northern Arizona. Because southeastern forests grew increasingly depleted over centuries of intense commercial logging operations, these southwestern forests stood out as a rich supply of quality timber, promising the need for many skilled hands in the woods and sawmills, and higher wages for the lumbermen. James W. Williams, an African American lumberman who migrated from Mississippi to Flagstaff to log timber in the 1940s recalled making more money in one day in Flagstaff than he did in two weeks working in the Mississippi woods.
