Logging

The industry on the other side. Clear-cutting in Humboldt County, Pacific Lumber and the Maxxam takeover, the debt-financed acceleration of the cut, and the mill towns caught in it.

Part of Julia Butterfly Hill

5 moments in this segment.

1. 1915-06-15 - A century of redwood logging. For over a century the giant coast redwoods of Humboldt had been felled; by the 1990s only a small fraction of the original old-growth forest remained.
2. 1946-06-15 - A century of redwood logging. Archival footage of mid-century redwood logging, the industry that had already felled most of the ancient groves.
3. 1985-09-15 - Pacific Lumber & Maxxam. Once a relatively sustainable family firm, the Pacific Lumber Company was bought by Charles Hurwitz’s Maxxam Corporation in 1985 and dramatically accelerated clear-cutting of ancient redwoods to service debt.
4. 1985-09-15 - Maxxam & Charles Hurwitz. The corporate raider whose leveraged buyout of Pacific Lumber drove the accelerated clear-cutting of ancient redwoods.
5. 1989-06-15 - Clear-cutting beside the giants. A NARA photograph: within a mile of magnificent old-growth redwoods, some of the worst clear-cutting in California, the destruction the activists fought.