Sawmills do not list lodgepole pine separately in reports of lumber cut, and it is impossible to determine what the annual supply from the species is. It is well known that the quantity made into lumber in Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho is large. Its chief market is among the newly established agricultural communities in those states. They use it for fruit and vegetable shipping boxes, fencing plank, pickets, and plastering lath. Railroads buy half a million lodgepole pine crossties yearly. When creosoted, they resist decay many years. Lodgepole pine has been a tie material since the first railroads entered the region, and while by no means the best, it promises to fill a much more important place in the future than in the past. It is an ideal fence post material as far as size and form are concerned, and with preservative treatment it is bound to attain a high place. It is claimed that treated posts will last twenty years, and that puts them on a par with the cedars. In Colorado and Wyoming much lodgepole was formerly burned for charcoal to supply the furnaces which smelted ore and the blacksmith shops of the region. This is done now less than formerly, since railroad building has made coal and coke accessible. In one respect, lodgepole pine is to the western mountains what loblolly pine is to the flat country of the south Atlantic and other southern states. It is aggressive, and takes possession of vacant ground. Although the wood is not as valuable as loblolly, it is useful, and has an important place to fill in the western country’s development. Its greatest drawback is its exceedingly slow growth. A hundred years is a long time to wait for trees of pole size. Two crops of loblolly sawlogs can be harvested in that time. However, the land on which the lodgepole grows is fit only for timber, and the acreage is so vast that there is enough to grow supplies, even with the wait of a century or two for harvest. The stand has increased enormously within historic time, the same as loblolly, and for a similar reason. Men cleared land in the East, and loblolly took possession; fires destroyed western forests of other species and lodgepole seized and held the burned tracts. If fires cease among the western mountains, as will probably be the case under more efficient methods of patrol, and with stricter enforcement of laws against starting fires, the spread of lodgepole pine will come to a standstill, and existing forests will grow old without much extension of their borders.