Father Pierre de Charlevoix, a French priest who floated down the Mississippi River in 1721, passed by the western portion of the future state of Tennessee.
The priest stood in awe of the immense forests he observed on his voyage, and, in his journal, he said that there was “nothing in nature comparable to them.”
As early Tennessee pioneers were constructing Buchanan’s Station several miles south of the present city of Nashville, we are told that they cut down cedar trees more than four feet thick, the nearest limb being 40 feet from the ground.
Tennessee’s magnificent canopied forests had taken thousands of years to develop. Unfortunately, no one alive today will ever see forests comparable to those described by early explorers and settlers, for precious little of these splendid virgin forests exist in our state today. Not a single specimen of the magnificent cedar trees cut down by the settlers at Buchanan’s Station was preserved for future generations to observe and feel the same awe and reverence experienced by early explorers.
The pioneers of an emerging nation initially consumed thousands of acres of these forests for such mundane albeit necessary things as shingles, fence rails and logs for building their small cabins and barns. More acres were cleared for gardens to grow their food and pastures to graze their cattle. The forests suffered even more devastation from the relentless and unceasing demand for firewood to cook food for growing families and to keep them warm during the cold winter months.