Journal 40: Ravaged and Restored; The Logging History of Raspberry Mountain

Imagine this, you step out of your cabin one crisp morning, coffee in hand, expecting the familiar scent of pine and the soft whisper of wind through the trees. But instead of towering evergreens, your eyes meet a sea of stumps. Piles of sawdust lie where shadows once fell, and the forest’s green canopy has been replaced by open sky. Hard to imagine, but that nightmare nearly came true. 

It happened nearly 120 years ago on the land that Pinehaven now calls home. One newspaper at the time described it as nothing less than the “wholesale slaughter of timber.”(1) This was the reality here in the late 1800s, when relentless logging and the overharvesting of timber stripped the eastern slope of Raspberry Mountain bare. Some homesteaders, seeing opportunity in the devastation, quickly turned to ranching, grazing cattle on the once-wooded slopes. Without federal intervention and a massive reforestation effort, the forest we know and love today might never have returned.(2) Pinehaven’s towering pines and cool shade are the result of nearly 120 years of healingb and a living reminder of how close we came to losing it all.  

That scene wasn’t just a bad dream, it was history. Raspberry Mountain, towering above Pinehaven’s western edge, was once at the center of a logging boom that transformed the landscape. In the late 19th century, the demand for timber collided with the rugged wilderness of southern Colorado, and for a time, the mountain’s forests became a resource to be harvested rather than a treasure to be preserved. What follows is the story of that era; how it began, the toll it took, and the extraordinary recovery that followed. 

The First Cuts into Raspberry Mountain (1870s – 1880) 

Drawn by the lure of westward expansion and the promise of free land, settlers poured into Colorado’s wild upper Cuchara Valley with grit, determination, and the tools to carve a new life from the untamed wilderness.(3) The wave originally started with a bold idea—the Homestead Act of 1862. This historic initiative was designed to spark westward expansion by offering 160 acres of land to anyone willing to build a life on the American frontier. To earn ownership, settlers had to… 

• Live on the land for at least five years.
• Build a proper home with an enclosed roof, at least one door, and one or more windows. 
• Cultivate part of the land.
• Show proof of their efforts after five years.(4) 

In return, a homesteader would receive a legal deed to call the land their own. By the early 1880s, many tracts of land on the eastern slope of Raspberry Mountain had been claimed.(5) For these pioneers, survival depended on timber. Logs became cabins to shelter families, fence posts to mark claims, barns and sheds to protect livestock, fuel to warm homes through mountain winters, and railroad ties for the steel tracks pushing ever westward. 

Armed with little more than axes and crosscut saws, and relying on horse or ox-drawn wagons, they felled trees in staggering numbers. By the decade’s close, much of the easily reached pine and spruce had vanished. It was cut down or consumed in fires set to clear the slash. Hillsides once shaded by dense forests stood bare, reduced to stump-studded clearings and grassy meadows.(6) When the timber nearest to their homesteads was gone, many settlers shifted to ranching, grazing cattle and sheep on the very ground where towering trees had stood just years before. 

This first wave of logging changed the landscape and laid the groundwork, both literally and economically, for the large-scale timber operations that would follow in the decades ahead.  

The Rise of Sawmills and Mass Logging (1890s – Early 1900s)

By the 1890s, the homesteaders’ axes had already taken their toll on Raspberry Mountain’s eastern slope, but they hadn’t taken it all. Into this partially thinned landscape came the commercial logging crews, eyeing the towering pines and spruces the pioneers had left standing. These were no small-time woodcutters; they arrived with organized crews, heavy equipment, and the know-how to strip the remaining old-growth. Before long, the quiet valleys around Cuchara echoed with the whine of saws and the thud of falling timber. Substantial logging camps dotted the hillsides, and newly built sawmills churned out lumber destined for markets far beyond the valley.(7)

Much of the lumber fed the engines of regional growth, heated homes, was shaped into the countless railroad ties needed to lay each mile of track, or fashioned into sturdy timber props to brace the depths of coal mines. The Denver & Rio Grande Railroad and nearby mining companies were hungry for wood, and this supply met their demand.(8) Instead of seeing the settlers and logging companies as reckless destroyers of the land, it helps to remember that they were responding to the pressing economic needs of their time. The timber they harvested built homes, railroads, and towns; the work they did provided livelihoods and fueled the growth of a young region. They weren’t acting out of malice, but out of the same drive to survive and prosper that shaped many chapters of American history. 

To show where historic logging activity occurred in relation to Pinehaven’s present-day location, I used AI to retrieve provisional logging/fuel treatment polygons from the U.S. Forest Service’s Hazardous Fuel Treatment Reduction: Polygon (HazFuelTrt_PL) dataset.(9) These polygons were then overlaid onto a current topographic, road, and satellite image of the eastern slope of Raspberry Mountain.(10) The resulting three images demonstrate that Pinehaven lay within the area of active logging, severe deforestation, and subsequent reforestation that took place between 1907 and the present. It’s easy to imagine the scene of hillsides stripped of trees,  logs stacked high, and sawdust drifting through the once-forested draws. 

Reviving Raspberry Mountain (1907–1930s)

By the early 20th century, the unrestrained logging that had ravaged Raspberry Mountain was beginning to fade as a new idea took root—conservation. As early as 1901, local citizens urged the government to protect the forest through intervention.(11) Alarmed by the rapid stripping of the southern Sangre de Cristo range, federal officials established the Las Animas Forest Reserve in 1907 to safeguard the Cuchara Valley(12). A few years later, President Roosevelt incorporated the land and protections into the San Isabel National Forest in 1910.(13) Local boosters hailed the decision, confident it “would end the wholesale slaughter of timber” on Raspberry Mountain and in the surrounding hills.(14) 

With the creation of the Forest Reserve came the first professional rangers and a new era of rules for harvesting timber. Logging didn’t disappear, but the days of unchecked cutting were over. The Forest Service introduced permits and sustainable yield practices, replacing the free-for-all of previous decades with measured, supervised activity. Small timber sales still met local needs, ranchers could secure firewood or fence-post permits, and sawmillers occasionally purchased logs, but the sprawling, uncontrolled logging camps of the past were gone. 

Although large-scale logging was waning, forestry work continued in a different form. The Forest Service began restoring the land, and by 1923 rangers were planting seedlings in a broad reforestation push (“re-timbering”) across the San Isabel National Forest section of the area.(15) In addition, fire prevention and watershed protection became guiding principles, allowing much of the mountain to heal naturally into a dense, second-growth forest. Their mission: re-establish conifer forests on slopes left bare by decades of felling and fire. 

A Forest Regrown and Rewritten (1930’s to Present)

Over the past century, Raspberry Mountain’s eastern slope has undergone a dramatic transformation. Where stump fields dominated in 1900, mid-century visitors found hillsides of young aspens and small evergreens. They were the first wave of forest succession after heavy logging. By the 2000s, these pioneers had given way to dense stands of spruce, fir, and pine, shaped by a century of fire suppression and light logging. Mature, even-aged, and overstocked, many of these trees fell victim to spruce and pine beetle infestations, leaving behind significant deadwood. 

Modern foresters now thin crowded stands and remove beetle-killed trees to reduce wildfire risk, with both private landowners and the Forest Service engaged in fuel reduction. Despite this, the legacy of 19th-century logging, today’s forest differs in composition from the original old-growth, lacking the scattered giant pines of the past. Heavy fuel loads set the stage for the 2018 Spring Creek Fire, which tore through beetle-killed timber and burned much of the area.(16) The fire came close to Pinehaven, but thanks to firefighting efforts, it largely survived, with the forest around them charred, but the communities intact. In the aftermath of the Spring Creek Fire, landowners and the Forest Service have been collaborating on fuel reduction projects to further protect Pinehaven and Cuchara.(17)

Relieved Reflection 

Today, Raspberry Mountain stands cloaked in green once again and is a living testament to resilience, stewardship, and the passage of time. The scars of overcutting and fire remain part of its story, but so too does the triumph of regrowth and renewal. Each pine needle whisper and aspen leaf flutter reminds us that landscapes can heal, communities can adapt, and beauty can return even after the hardest chapters. The forest we walk through today in Pinehaven is not the one the pioneers knew five generations ago. But it is now ours to cherish, protect, and pass on, so that future generations can greet these slopes with the same sense of wonder we feel today.(18)

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Footnotes

Parenthetical numbers in the text (e.g., 5) correspond to the sequentially numbered citations listed below.

1. Nancy Christofferson, “Regional History – Mountain Living,” The World Journal, July 16, 2020, accessed August 14, 2025, https://worldjournalnewspaper.com/regional-history-mountain-living/#:~:text=What%20became%20San%20Isabel%20National,acreage%20was%20reopened%20to%20homesteading.

2. Reforestation initiatives by federal officials in the Las Animas Forest Reserve in 1907 (later incorporated into the San Isabel National Forest) to protect the southern Sangre de Cristo range, including the Cuchara Valley. Nancy Christofferson, “Regional History – Mountain Living,” The World Journal, July 16, 2020, accessed August 15, 2025, https://worldjournalnewspaper.com/regional-history-mountain-living/. 

3. Act of May 20, 1862 (Homestead Act), Pub. L. No. 37-64, 12 Stat. 392 (1862), Enrolled Acts and Resolutions of Congress, 1789–2011, General Records of the United States Government, Record Group 11, National Archives Building, Washington, DC; National Archives, “Homestead Act (1862),” accessed August 15, 2025, https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/homestead-act. 

4. Homestead Act of 1862, Public Law 37-64, U.S. Statutes at Large, Vol. 12, p. 392 [Available via U.S. National Archives or Library of Congress] 

5. World Journal. “Regional History – Mountain Living.” World Journal, June 29, 2023. Accessed August 15, 2025. https://worldjournalnewspaper.com/regional-history-mountain-living/#:~:text=Stamford%20probably%20wasn%E2%80%99t%20much%2C%20but,to%20sell%20to%20local%20sawmills. 

6. Nancy Christofferson, “Regional History – No Small Potatoes,” World Journal, July 23, 2020, accessed August 15, 2025, https://worldjournalnewspaper.com/regional-history-no-small-potatoes/#:~:text=Sure%2C%20the%20first%20residents%20heavily,with%20those%20destined%20for%20construction. 

7. Nancy Christofferson, “Regional History – No Small Potatoes,” World Journal, July 23, 2020, accessed August 15, 2025, https://worldjournalnewspaper.com/regional-history-no-small-potatoes/#:~:text=Sure%2C%20the%20first%20residents%20heavily,with%20those%20destined%20for%20construction. 

8. Colorado Department of Transportation and South Central Council of Governments, Southern Mountain Loop Planning and Environmental Linkages (PEL) Study: Existing Corridor Conditions Report – Final (December 2019), accessed August 15, 2025, https://www.codot.gov/projects/co-12-sml-pel/reports/sml-pel-exist-cond-report/@@download/file/SML%20PEL.Exist%20Cond%20Report%20Condense.JAM.Final.V2.pdf. 

9. U.S. Forest Service. Hazardous Fuel Treatment Reduction: Polygon (HazFuelTrt_PL). Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW), last updated August 8, 2025. Accessed August 15, 2025. https://data.fs.usda.gov/geodata/edw/datasets.php?xmlKeyword=Hazardous+Fuel+Treatment.  

10. Gene Roncone, request to ChatGPT (OpenAI) to obtain provisional logging/fuels treatment polygons from the U.S. Forest Service’s Hazardous Fuel Treatment Reduction: Polygon (HazFuelTrt_PL) dataset and overlay them onto current topographic, road, and satellite imagery of Raspberry Mountain, August 14, 2025. 

11. Nancy Christofferson, “Regional History – Mountain Living,” *The World Journal*, published July 16, 2020, accessed August 16, 2025, https://worldjournalnewspaper.com/regional-history-mountain-living 

12. Harold K. Steen, The National Forests of the United States: A Chronological Record, 1891–2012 (Durham, NC: Forest History Society, 2013), 37, https://foresthistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/National-Forests-of-the-U.S.pdf. 

13. U.S. Forest Service, “Rocky Mountain Region,” February 25, 2020, National Museum of Forest Service History, accessed August 16, 2025, https://forestservicemuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Rocky-Mountain-Region-Feb25-2020.pdf. 

14.  Nancy Christofferson, “Regional History – Mountain Living,” The World Journal, July 16, 2020, accessed August 15, 2025, https://worldjournalnewspaper.com/regional-history-mountain-living/. 

15. Monument Nursery,” History Colorado, last modified June 12, 1996, para. 3, accessed August 15, 2025, https://www.historycolorado.org/location/monument-nursery. 

16. Spring Creek Fire,” WildfireToday, accessed August 15, 2025, https://wildfiretoday.com/tag/spring-creek-fire/. 

17. Gene & Rhonda Roncone, “Bi-Annual Forest Pick-Up,” *Cabin in the Pines* (blog), May 2025, accessed August 16, 2025, https://cabininthepinescuchara.blogspot.com/2025/05/bi-annual-forest-pick-up.html.

18. Author’s note: In preparing this article, the author used AI-assisted tools for research support, proofreading, fact-checking, and stylistic refinement. The narrative, analysis, and historical interpretations are the author’s own, and responsibility for accuracy rests solely with the author. The blog’s research methodology statement is available at:

https://cabininthepinescuchara.blogspot.com/2019/03/methodology-sources-and-use-of-research.html