After his service overseas with the A. E. F., Paul couldn’t get back to the States quick enough.  Airplanes were too slow so Paul embarked in his Bark Canoe, the one he used on the Big Onion the year he drove logs upstream.  When be threw the old paddle into high he sure rambled and the sea was covered with dead fish that broke their backs trying to watch him coming and going.

As he shoved off from France, Paul sent a wireless to New York but passed the Statue of Liberty three lengths ahead of the message.  From New York to Westwood he traveled on skis.  When the home folks asked him if the Allegheney Mountains and the Rockies had bothered him, Paul replied, “I didn’t notice any mountains but the trail was a little bumpy in a couple of spots.”

In the forests of the Red River Lumber Company Paul Bunyan can cut his lumber for many future years in the region where Nature found conditions exactly suited to the growth of pine of the finest texture and largest size.

Early in the closing decade of the nineteenth century the Red River people took a long look into the future.  Foreseeing the exhaustion of their Minnesota white pine, which came a quarter of a century later, they set out to find the pine that would take its place.  Their search covered several years and reached all the important stands in the western States.  This was well in advance of the westward movement of the industry and Red River had the pioneer’s opportunity for choice and rejection.

Sugar Pine, “cork pine’s big brother,” is botanically and physically true white pine, with all the family virtues.  It is the largest of all pines.

California Pine is the trade name for pinus ponderosa or western yellow pine from certain regions where conditions of growth have so modified the nature of the wood that it is more like white pine than it is like its botanical brothers that grow elsewhere.  Some say this change is due to volcanic soil.  Whatever the cause, California Pine from Red River’s forest is exceptionally light, brightly colored, soft and even textured and second only to Sugar Pine in size.

Red River “Paul Bunyan’s” California Pine and Sugar Pine meet the strict requirements of trades that have made white pine their standard.  Where freedom from distortion is essential, as for example piano actions, organ pipes, foundry patterns and the best sash and doors, Red River pines are used.  They finish economically with paints, stains and enamels and are highly valued as cores for fine hardwood veneers.  They work easily, smoothly and cleanly with edged tools and do not nail-split.

The durability of these California pines is shown by their sound condition in California buildings that have stood for generations, many of them in regions where climatic conditions are more conducive to decay than in the middle western and eastern states.