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Why National Magazines Spotlight Micanopy
June 5, 1995
One magazine reports serious world news; the other features
beautiful homes. Yet, both chose to spotlight a small Micanopy,
Florida business in their current issues.
The rare heart pine of Goodwin Heart Pine Company is the
cover story of the April issue of Fine Homebuilding, an upscale,
glossy publication. At the other end of the spectrum, the
wood and its romantic history hit page 50 in the May 30, 1994,
issue of U.S. News and World Report.
There’s a good reason for all this interest …
Goodwin Heart Pine is the only company in America, as far
as they can tell, to retrieve from Southern riverbeds, wood
that was cut down at least a hundred years ago by loggers.
The wood is virtually extinct today because high demand for
the hard heart pine in the 1800s and early 1900s caused loggers
to clear-cut 500 acres throughout the South.
“The loggers would float the cut logs down river to
the mills. Some of them would roll off the log raft and sink
to the bottom,” said George Goodwin, president. “We
put on wet suits and carefully retrieve these logs by hand
because the wood is like new and is stunning when milled.”
It is not the first time this specialty company has garnered
national attention. More than five million viewers watched
Goodwin and his crew locate lost heart pine logs a couple
of years ago when Norm Abrams spotlighted him on The New Yankee
Workshop.
Goodwin Heart Pine can be found from Catalina Island to Martha’s
Vineyard, and graces numerous homes and businesses, including
the homes of several celebrities, such as the well-known TV
acting couple featured in the current Fine Homebuilding. The
couple, who asked to remain nameless, selected Goodwin Heart
Pint for their kitchen cabinets.
“This wood is nothing like the yellow pine logged today,”
Goodwin said. “Our logs, many of them 400 and 500 years
old when they were cut down a century ago, are preserved by
the cool river water and lack of oxygen. The heavy, dense
heart remains in perfect condition, unspoiled by saws and
nails.”
The changing ecological balance and clear-cutting of original
growth forests have caused the Longleaf Pine, which Heart
Pine comes from, to pass into extinction. It is available
in limited quantities either by salvaging timbers from old
buildings, cutting down the few trees left, or like the Goodwins
do it … pulling them from riverbeds.
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