Its representative uses are for posts, railway ties, pails, sills, cigar boxes, interior finish and cabinet making, but its most general use is in the manufacture of lead pencils, for which its fine, straight grain and soft texture are peculiarly adapted. The farther south cedar is found, the softer and clearer it is. In the North, in ornamental trees, it is very hard, slow-growing, and knotty. It shows but a small percentage of clear lumber. In eastern Tennessee there were considerable quantities of red cedar brake that were for years considered of little value. About the only way the wood was employed a few years ago was in fence rails and posts, fuel, and charcoal. Of late people in localities where cedar grows in any abundance have awakened to its value, and cedar fences are rapidly disappearing, owing to the high prices now paid for the wood, and the excellent demand. On no other southern wood has such depredation been practiced. Because of its lightness and the ease with which it can be worked, it has been used for purposes for which other and less valuable woods were well adapted. On account of its slow growth, its complete exhaustion has often been predicted, but a second growth has appeared which, though much inferior to the virgin timber, can be used in many ways to excellent advantage. Instead of the huge piles of cedar flooring, chest boards, and smooth railings of the old days, one now sees at points of distribution great piles of knotty, rough poles, ten to forty feet long, which years ago would have been discarded. Today they represent bridge piling, the better and smoother among them being used for telephone and telegraph poles.
Middle Tennessee has produced more red cedar than any other part of the United States, but the bulk of production has been confined to a few counties, which produce a higher class and more aromatic variety of wood than that found elsewhere. A century ago these counties abounded in splendid forests of cedar. The early settlers built their cabins of cedar logs, sills, studding, and rafters; their smoke houses were built of them; their barns; even the roofs were shingled with cedar and the rooms and porches floored with the sweet-scented wood. Not many years ago trees three feet or more in diameter were often found, but the days are past when timber like that can be had anywhere.