Collecting turpentine gum from pine trees, southern United States, circa 1940

About this postcard

A tinted view of an open longleaf pine stand where workers have cut V-shaped boxes and cups into the trunks to catch resin, with barrels, a horse-drawn wagon and a mounted rider on the sandy woods road. The caption names the scene as the turpentine industry of the American South, collecting gum from pine trees. Naval stores work of this kind — boxing and later cupping longleaf and slash pines for crude gum distilled into turpentine and rosin — was a staple of the piney-woods economy from the Carolinas to the Gulf states. The photograph is credited to the U.S. Forest Service.