By Darlene Bush Tucker
News Editor

These days the Louisiana Forest Festival, which got back on track in 1980, salutes Louisiana's timber industry with competitions, exhibits and equipment displays.

But in the event's early days, when festival organizers sought to educate against unwise stewardship of area timberlands, a coon on a log served as the main event.

That's how Joe D. Burns remembers it, and yet he remembers something he liked even better--and that was the people the festival drew.

Burns has been president of Burns Forest Products Inc. near Jonesboro for more than 40 years, his Danville offices having moved only once since 1962, and that was from just across the highway.

But from 1950 to 1962, he was chief forester for Tremont Lumber Co. During roughly the same period, he was a board member for the newly founded Forest Festival.

"We started it, a group of us, as part of the parish fair," he said. "Tremont Lumber gave the property for the fairgrounds shortly after I went to work for them."

He said Ashton Collier, state representative at the time, helped the group secure a grant for the construction of the forestry building, built in the late 1950s.

Burns said the festivals back then were "much fun."

"You take all of those who worked with us and then all the other people there, it was just a good opportunity for us to get together--and yeah, we really enjoyed it."

Among the many people he enjoyed seeing at the festivals were Raiford Roarke, Estes Bozeman, and Ray Chandler, all with Tremont; L.L. Brewton of Brewton Mill; George M. Tannehill with the U.S. Forest Service; Johnny Holmes with Brown Paper Co.; and Bill Postle and Woodrow Holmes with what was then Mansfield Hardwood Lumber Co. "And of course we had a beauty pageant where we elected a queen and a Little Miss Forest--and all that good stuff, like barbecue."

But the biggest draw by far was the coons and the dogs who met up in a grudge match each year, near the fairgrounds forestry building. "They had a pond, and they had that coon-on-a-log event where they let the dogs swim out and fight the coon," Burns said. "I don't know when they did away with that, but soon after, they did away with the pond, too; they broke the dam and let it drain. It wasn't a natural pond; they had just dammed it up in a low spot."

He said the animal fight always drew crowds--"they liked that coon event a lot" --and that gave organizers an audience at which to aim their twin messages: reforestation and the prevention of forest fires. Burns said some landowners and companies were not interested in reforestation back then, and beyond that, commonly burned off forest land on purpose.

"At the festival, they tried to educate the public about the benefits of forests, why you needed to replant trees and why you didn't need to burn them," he said. "People deliberately burned the trees because they wanted to cut the land over so they could grow grass for open grazing because back then, there was no stock law or fence law."

He said "too much of our timberland is still laying out and not being reforested," but noted vast improvement in the state of the forests since the early days of the festival.

People did begin "to listen and catch on," he said, especially when government programs started helping foot the bill for the cost of forest regeneration. Companies became enlightened, too, and began distributing free tree seedlings for people to plant.

"We're seeing the benefits of all that today, not only in Winnfield, but throughout the entire parish and state," Burns said. "Winn Parish has some of the finest timberland in the state, and the harvesting of it supplies the mills around here."

Asked if he favors pines, Burns, in his woodsy Danville office, responded with a smile: "I guess you could say so," and went on to list the five Louisiana natives: longleaf, shortleaf, spruce, slash, and his favorite, the loblolly.

Back