ATLAS OBSCURA • July 1, 2021
When wars cut off British access to the Baltic region in the 1650s, the king turned in earnest to the forests of the New World. He appointed a surveyor general, who directed laborers to tramp into the woods and mark all trees with a diameter over 24 inches with a “broad arrow,” the official mark to denote the king’s property, made with three blows of a hatchet. No one can say for certain that there are no king pines left anywhere in the Maine woods, but experts are skeptical. “We lost the vast majority of our old forest. We have very little old forest left in Maine at all,” says Berry of the Maine Nature Conservancy. One percent of Maine’s forests are considered old. And of that sliver, only a fraction has never been harvested.