Alishan Forestry District

Alishan Forestry District was one of three state-run forestry operations of the Japanese colonial era, alongside Taipingshan and Baxianshan, working the high mountain cypress and Taiwania forests of the Alishan Range in Chiayi. Surveyed from 1899 and abandoned by private enterprise in 1908, the works were taken into state hands in 1910. The 762mm narrow-gauge main line climbs more than 2,000 meters from Chiayi with Z-shaped switchbacks and a spiral around Dulishan (獨立山), reaching Zhaoping in 1914. Timber descended to Beimen, home to a sawmill, log ponds, and the Hinoki-machi (檜町) dormitory district, while the mountain grew a settlement of its own around a shrine and a pagoda built in 1935 to console the spirits of the felled trees. Logging ended in 1978 and tourism took its place; the system was registered in 2019 as Taiwan’s first national-level important cultural landscape.