Industrial News

Longleaf Southern Yellow Pine (Pinus palustris) was the predominant forest for 200 miles inland from the Atlantic seaboard. Its growing range extended from Virginia down through the Florida panhandle along the Gulf of Mexico into east Texas. By the early 20th century, the original stands were depleted by more than 95% to near commercial extinction.

The ecosystem of Longleaf Southern Yellow Pine depended on fire as much as the Rainforest depends on rain. It's fire tolerant because of its grass stage (the only pine that has one). The first 3 to 5 years of its life, it looks like a short clump of grass while generating roots. Its bark protects it as it reaches maturity. Natural and man-made fires eliminated competing pines that were less fire tolerant producing pure stands of Longleaf. A mature forest had trees over five hundred years old. The suppression of the natural seasonal fires, and the long growing cycle of Pinus palustris contributed to its decline, as faster growing Southern Yellow Pine was replanted for timber.

Many pre-1930 wood framed commercial buildings used Longleaf Southern Yellow Pine. The original Sears warehouse in Chicago, when dismantled, yielded over 700 trailer loads of timber. As these buildings outlive their usefulness, they offer a chance to reclaim this resource for use as flooring.

Our flooring is produced from timbers holding up bourbon warehouses in Kentucky. Whiskey must be aged for 15 years or more to qualify as bourbon, so your typical distillery required large warehouses designed to hold 800 lb. barrels of whiskey. The timbers were cut in the early 1900’s in one of the last remaining Longleaf Pine mills in America. The Goodyear brothers of Pennsylvania opened the Great Southern Lumber Company in Bogalusa, Louisiana in 1903. At the time, it was the third largest timber mill in the world, producing over one million board feet of Longleaf per day. By the early 1930’s it had exhausted the local stands and was shut down.

Pinus palustris is exclusive to America and is one of the hardest commercially traded pines, nearly as hard as American Cherry.