This chapter focuses on Octave Chanute's growing interest in wood preservation. In 1880, the Department of Forestry statistics forecast that the nation's supply of white pine would be exhausted in eleven years and hardwood within twenty-five. Chanute was arguably the first American to show his concern for preserving natural resources; he demonstrated the commercial feasibility of preserving wood to slow deforestation. Gradually, railroaders recognized the need to make timber last as long as possible and they realized that increasing the life of ties decreased the cost of track repair. Chanute and his partner Joseph Card designed and erected the first large-scale American commercial wood preservation works for the Santa Fe in Las Vegas, New Mexico, in 1885; for the Union Pacific in Laramie, Wyoming, in July 1886; and for the Rock Island and other customers in Chicago in May 1886. These were the first and only works treating ties on a large scale until other American railroads followed more than a decade later.
XVII.—Contributions from the New Mexico biological station.—X. Observations on bees collected at Las Vegas, New Mexico, and in the adjacent mountains. II