local U.S. [f. STUMP sb.1 + -AGE.]
1. The price paid for standing timber; also, a tax charged in some States for the privilege of cutting timber on State lands.
1848. Bartlett, Dict. Amer., 341. Stumpage, the sum paid to owners of land for the privilege of cutting the timber growing thereon. State of Maine.
1860. C. Hallock, in Harper’s Mag., XX. 440. The timber tract is either purchased or a rate of stumpage agreed upon, which is generally from $2 50 to $3 per thousand feet for all timber cut.
1891. E. Roper, By Track & Trail, xxvii. 407. The settlers … have to pay to the Government one cent ‘stumpage’ for every tree cut down.
1902. S. E. White, Blazed Trail, xxv. We must have that pine, even though we pay stumpage on it. Now what would you consider a fair price for it?
2. Standing timber considered with reference to its quantity or marketable value.
1854. Seba Smith, Way down East, 39. To sell stumpage to the loggers for the ensuing winter.
1857. Thoreau, Maine Woods (1894), 164. He it is who … has not bought the stumpage of the township on which it stands.
1894. Q. Rev., July, 185. We assume a pine stumpage of 5,000 feet to the acre.
1902. S. E. White, Blazed Trail, xiv. You owned five million feet of timber, which at the price of stumpage (standing trees) was worth ten thousand dollars.
