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Originally Posted by odinthor
Hmmmmmm e_r . . . Off the top of my head, I think the problem was that they couldn't depend on obtaining the amount they needed locally. Chapman (the ex-pirate) brought timber down from the local mountains for the beams of the Plaza church, and its pews; and I believe he did the same for whatever wood the mill be helped build at San Gabriel needed; and maybe for the ship he helped build too. But my guess is that the difficulty of obtention, and the uncertainty of the quality of the lumber obtained, made getting the lumber from elsewhere the more prudent choice for big projects, even if it took longer to arrive. Even the famous wooden flagpole for the U.S. Hotel on Main St. was brought down--or indeed floated down, if memory serves--from hmmmmm Oregon I believe.
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I do believe some of the timber used during the early era was locally cut in the San Gabriel Mountains, where conifers are abundant in spots above 3500-4,000 feet in the front range. Of course lugging this timber down to the flatlands would have been a chore, given the lack of roads beyond primitive trails. Like you say, much could have come down from the north on ships, at least after 1870. I don't know if the oak trees or other trees in the lowlands were used much for building, since they tended to be on the small side in most cases, and oak wood is hard and not uniform in texture like conifers tend to be.
The eucalyptus planting boom in the 1880s and after was intended to obtain a local source of timber, but alas, euc wood turned out to be mostly unsuitable for building purposes, or even for RR track ties, since it tended to warp and crack, and was hard to cut. But the eucs made excellent windbreaks and acceptable park and landscape trees tolerant of our dry summers, so they stayed.