Located within Collier State Park Logging Museum are a number of historical interpretive displays that highlight the rich logging history of this region. This display is the last that visitors encounter while experiencing a self-guided walking tour of logging exhibits. This display's main verbiage reads:
Survival of the Fittest
Modern Logging
Technology of Logging
Engineering took the upper hand in late twentieth century logging. Both machinery and roads reflected the ingenuity and changing times. Powerful caterpillars, skidders, yarders, machines with grapple hooks, helicopter sky cranes, and balloons with "sky hooks" enabled loggers to move trees from canyons and hillsides. New roads with bridges (rather than culverts), heavy gravel or paving, and special grades to prevent erosion were part of logging mandated by state forest practices laws. New machinery worked hand-in-hand with new timberland management.
Loss of Mosaic Forests
Workers, sawmill owners, and corporate investors confronted bad news in the late twentieth century. The mosaic forests-old growth, regenerating trees, and brushfields from fires were nearly all cut. The flow of timber from national forests dropped dramatically because of past harvest rates, set asides of wilderness areas, and impacts of environmental legislation. Protection for fish, birds, mammals, rare and endangered plants, and cultural resources contributed to the decline in logging and lumber manufacturing.
The modern industry seemed a bit like "survival of the fittest."
Those who hoped to survive had to adapt. Engineers tapped new technologies to make sawmills more efficient and to secure maximum yield in wood fiber. Computers calculated lumber sizes and lengths. Lasers guided saws. Special glues laminated chips and other cellulose into fiberboard. Thin veneers, patched for knots,
became plywood and paneling.
Timber companies developed habitat protection plans and set aside protection zones along streams. Reforestation became essential for the company that wanted to have a future. Some saw the logger and mill worker as yet another "obsolete profession."