MANCHAC, LA. - The bald cypress, Louisiana's state tree, has never been sacred. If anything, using the wood has always been the Louisiana way. But that could change if Gov. Kathleen Blanco decides ...

Terrebonne's vast cypress swamps were entirely "cut over" by the 1930s, and mill towns like Donner virtually vanished. I met a few of the surviving loggers in the early 60s and learned that trees were ...

Bald cypress trees once covered more than a million of acres of Louisiana before the logging boom, which nearly eliminated all of the old-growth cypress. Cypress logging for commercial markets grew to ...

John Manuel starts his workday on the Tchefuncte River, near its mouth at Lake Pontchartrain. It's a cloudless late morning, but as he accelerates past ritzy waterfront properties in Madisonville, the ...