The wood of canyon live oak is superior to that of any other oak in its range. It is of light brown color, and is tough, strong, stiff, and heavy. The trunks are generally unsuitable for sawlogs, being too short, but when a chance tree is found that may be cut into lumber, it is considered a prize. Trunks are seldom good for more than one sawlog. In that respect this oak may be compared with the southern live oak. The scarcity of good hardwoods on the Pacific coast adds to the value of what may be found there. If the canyon live oak grew in the East, and developed a trunk of the same size and shape as it has in its present home, it would attract no more attention from the users of hardwoods than the live oak in the South attracts now. But place makes great difference. Factories in California do not report the use of much of this oak, yet considerable quantities of it are in service. The most important place found for it is in country and village blacksmith shops, where wagons are repaired. Nearly every piece of wood which goes into a wagon, except the bed, may be this oak. Many persons consider it the best wagon timber on the Pacific coast, and it is particularly valued for tongues, not only for wagons, but for heavy log trucks which are operated by several yoke of oxen. The wood is likewise made into singletrees. It has always been in use in California for pack saddles. That article is small, but many saddles were formerly made, and the pack saddle is still an important article in the mountains. Trains of mules, horses, and burros thread the narrow paths, where wheeled vehicles cannot go, and deliver supplies to camps and mines in remote districts. The pack saddle’s strength is frequently all that intervenes between the load and destruction; for the snapping of a piece of wood may let the pack go over a precipice beyond recovery. The pack trains are slowly passing out of use in the West, as they long ago disappeared from the “bridle paths” of eastern mountains and forests; but they are still to be seen among the fastnesses of the Sierra Nevadas, as in the days when a western poet burst into inspired song of the long pack trains going “Up and down o’er the mountain trail With one horse tied to another’s tail.”