A Crossbones Journey Through The Uwharrie

My best friend and I rode the Harley-Davidson Crossbones tandem (with a backrest and much better passenger seat than shown) this past weekend down and back from Durham, where we live, to Charlotte to visit mutual friends.

We carved a route down through the central Piedmont region of North Carolina, taking a southern route through Uwharrie National Forest on the way down and returning along the more northerly Uwharrie Scenic Byway, a little more than 300 miles round-trip.

Uwharrie is also the name of a mountain range and we were stunned at the highest crest on that route returning north and east to see a spectacular “Blue Ridge” type view of a mountain range in the direction of Durham.

I think it was probably the ridges of the small Cane Creek Mountain range that runs south and west from Burlington and Graham.  I kick myself for not pulling over to take a photograph but by the time it registered we were in descent.

A little known secret in state tourism promotions which are heavily weighted toward the mountains and beaches is that not only is the central Piedmont the most visited portion of North Carolina, thanks to the draw of cities such as Durham and Charlotte, but it is also incredibly scenic if you stick to state roads and especially scenic byways rather than Interstates. 

The Uwharrie is one of four national forests in North Carolina and at 51,000 acres it is the smallest.  It is an actively managed forest but it also features a primitive area in the northern portion and recreation areas.

It is also being used to reforest 100 acres of longleaf pines each year. According to the new book American Canopy, a huge arc of longleaf forests once covered 140,000 square miles stretching through nine states from southwestern Virginia to Texas, enough to cover every inch of North Carolina three times.

Beginning in the 1880s, this vast forest was “exhausted over the course of ten to twenty years” by northern capitalists.

The devastation of that period led to the establishment of forestry schools such as the first one here in North Carolina at Biltmore near Asheville.  Graduates were eventually hired by timber companies and helped usher in an era of sustainability.

The Uwharrie was purchased by the federal government during the Great Depression and made a national forest by President John F. Kennedy in 1961.  Today, longleaf reforestation already covers 800 acres in the Uwharrie.

But North Carolina’s 1.3 million acres of national forest are about much more than sustainable forestry.  Of the 7.5 million visitors to the forests each year, 48.5% go there to view scenery and 28% drive through them for pleasure, as we did last weekend, thereby adding to the renewable return on investment from these incredible  natural resources.

North Carolina’s current legislature seems bent on sacrificing the state’s natural resources, first turning the scenic roadsides over to outdoor billboard companies for clear cutting at no charge and soon for natural gas fracking.

Hopefully before it is too late North Carolina voters will intervene.

Trees And Patriots

At the time of the Revolutionary War there were still a billion acres of forestland carpeting what would become the United States of America. Symbolically, Patriots met under the “Liberty Tree” in Boston before heading to the docks to witness the original tea party protest.

In 1775, as an anti-Patriot object lesson, the British viciously chopped down the 129-year-old Liberty Tree, making it even more ironic that a modern-day Tea Partier is drawing support from the outdoor billboard industry in an attempt to try to unseat a Hendersonville NC Republican State House member who dares to side with the 9 out of 10 North Carolinians who object to the destruction of any more trees along roadsides.

Fourteen turbulent years after that Liberty Tree was mutilated, North Carolina, where I now live, was finally ratifying the new Constitution of the United States of America and broke off the part west of the Appalachian Mountains in December of 1789 to cede it to the newly created federal government in exchange for covering its Revolutionary War debts.

Six years later that territory was accepted into the Union as the 16th state, Tennessee.  And just less than two hundreds years after the British desecration of the Liberty Tree, North Carolina voters embedded protection of forests and trees into the State Constitution.

Over the last several months, I have taken four different road trips across different parts of Tennessee and among my favorites was a detour off I 40 down to Shiloh, the site of a pivotal Civil War battle in which two future US presidents fought to resolve some unfinished business and preserve the Union.

Four months after that trip, I had another unexpected pleasure as I dropped down from Kentucky along a stretch of I 24 through north central Tennessee and the Land Between The Lakes region on my way back from another 6,000-mile cross-country trip.

Today, North Carolina and Tennessee each retains nearly the same overall tree canopy, 60% to 57% respectively but with 30% more land area, North Carolina has 18.6 million acres of non-urban forestland which is about a third more than Tennessee.

While North Carolina also has 50% more population, the two states  have preserved or reforested virtually the same number of acres of urban trees at 1.4 and 1.3 million respectively.

But Tennessee just got a much better handle on its urban forest area thanks to a newly released study by the National Forest Service that may also provide some insight to North Carolina.

Tennessee has an estimated 284 million urban trees broken down as follows:

• 66.4% in forest
• 15.5% along streets and other transportation corridors
• 13.2% on residential land
• 7.7% on “other” land uses
• 5% on agricultural lands and
• 2.2% on commercial or industrial lands.

Studies such as this one done by the National Forest Service for Tennessee have yet to measure the greatest value of urban trees which is as an invaluable contribution to sense of place and economic development, both to demand-side tourism and to the more traditional and more land intensive supply-side.

The Tennessee study does benchmark the structural or “replacement value” of the state’s urban trees at $80 billion.  It also measures another $639 million of annual value generated from these urban trees in the form of carbon storage and sequestration, pollution removal and energy reduction.

But it fails to build on the work of other Forest Service researchers who have linked urban trees to better health outcomes, reductions in domestic violence and increased private property values to name a few.

In addition to the blight of outdoor billboards, the threats undermining the value of these trees include disease, poor development practices including those related to parking lots, utility lines and vegetation screens, disrespectful state highway maintenance practices as well as ignorance of this sort of information which is prevalent among local and state elected officials.

As noted so eloquently at the end of an excellent article that appeared last week in Urban Land magazine entitled The Distinctive City, planning veteran Edward T. McMahon asks the question: “Do you want the character of your city to shape the new development, or do you want the new development to shape the character of the city?”

Especially for anyone who views trees only through the lens of dollars and cents, studies by the U.S. Forest Service such as the one documenting the value of urban forests in Tennessee are invaluable.

Mounting Evidence of the Value of Urban Trees

Researchers in the Pacific Northwest have quantified the importance of urban street trees on rental values using Craigslist apartment listings in Portland, Oregon and tree data from Google Earth.

“Each tree on a house’s lot increases monthly rent by $5.62 and a tree in the public right of way increased rent by $21.00.”

One of the researchers, economist Geoffrey Donovan of the U.S. Forest Service had already linked the presence of urban trees to lower crime rates (particularly large, mature trees,) healthier newborns, energy conservation and pollution control as well as an an average $8,900 increase in the sales price for property. Sometimes the benefits accrue even if the trees are next door.

The linkages hold true even when the researchers control for other factors that determine a neighborhood’s desirability. Other researchers with the Federal Highway Administration have also been able to quantify the value of roadside trees along the National Highway System.

Portland, Oregon, where the study was conducted, has a 26% urban tree canopy remaining but hopes to increase it to 33% by planting 415,000 trees.

While some areas of the country strive to increase their urban tree canopy, other areas are seeing significant decreases in theirs. For example, Mecklenburg County, North Carolina including Charlotte, the state’s largest city conducted a study through American Forests to quantify the value of its remaining 51% of urban tree canopy, a full third of which has been lost since 1993.

The tree canopy in Wake County, North Carolina’s second largest and home to the state capital Raleigh has been reduced to 44% tree cover even though its land area is two to three times the size of counties at other points of the broad Research Triangle Area.

Still fifty-one-percent forested and above average for urban areas in North Carolina, nearby Durham County was fortunate to limit loss to its tree canopy to 2% while growing another 20% in population over the past decade.

Making this even more remarkable is the fact that Durham County is the 17th smallest land area in the state, while the 6th most populous. Additionally, Durham County is even more compact because more than a third of the land area has been set aside in low-density watershed even though the County is host to the City of Durham, the fifth most populous urban area.

Indeed, Durham is well deserving of the moniker: “The City of Trees,” a place where activists conduct “Tree Camps” and Duke Professor Will Wilson has published a new primer on urban environments and an Durham Tree Alliance is under development.

Ironically, as North Carolina’s urban cities and counties are catching on to the value of tree canopy, the State General Assembly, under new ownership is apparently eager to reclaim the state’s once-fading reputation as backward by authorizing massive clear cutting along roadsides, not to make what remains of the state’s vaunted scenery more apparent but as a public gratuity to the 8,000 outdoor billboards.

Hopefully, sometime within the next 87 months before the 100th anniversary of his passing, voters of every ideology will rededicate America to a great Republican’s object of deep spiritual significance.