The increased activity of economic life in the late 19th and early 20th centuries favored the development of the woodworking industry, whose production volumes reached 830 thousand rubles in 1913. According to this indicator, the Tobolsk province ranked first in Western Siberia. Timber was widely used in the construction of railways, as a raw material for the manufacturing industry, and as fuel. At the end of the 19th century, the first shipments of Siberian timber abroad began. They turned out to be so successful that within a few years the Tyumen timber industry region was among the largest suppliers of timber to the world market.

In 1913, there were 9 factory-type sawmills in the Tobolsk province. The largest in Western Siberia was the Kyrkalov brothers timber mill in Tyumen, which employed 120 hired workers, and the annual output reached 380 thousand rubles. The Tyumen plants Kurbatov and Heirs and E. K. Vardropper were slightly inferior to it. They were used for sawing timber, planks, sleepers, and joinery. There were also quite large manufacturing enterprises. Such was I. A. Noskov’s carpentry establishment in Tyumen, which had about 300 employees in 1911.

In 1904, Ural entrepreneurs Vorozhtsov and Loginov opened a match factory in Tyumen. It had 12 workshops, including box-gluing, slitting, plywood, dipping, locksmith, typesetting and others. The factory’s equipment was purchased in Berlin. It was one of the largest enterprises of this profile outside the Urals. If in 1908 the factory produced about 300,000 matches, then in 1913 it produced almost 600,000. In terms of quality, they were not inferior to the products of the best enterprises in Russia, for which the factory owners were awarded special medals five times. In addition to large woodworking enterprises in the Tobolsk province, there were many small ones. They were used to make sledges, carts, barrels, chests and other timber products. In 1913, 11 thousand carts and sleds, about 100 thousand barrels, etc. were produced in the region.

The production of tar and resin developed in the northern taiga regions of the province. Old pine stumps, the so-called osmol, served as the raw material in smoldering.

Most of the investments directed into the economy of the region during the Soviet period were concentrated in the logging and woodworking industries. In 1937, 1,056 thousand cubic meters of commercial timber were harvested and exported. The Tyumen Forest was well known outside the country.

The forestry and woodworking industries occupied an important place in the industrial structure of the region. It accounted for 17% of fixed assets in 1950. Since 1948, the forestry industry has systematically implemented the plans. This was largely achieved through the labor of special settlers and collective farmers. The state forced collective farms to provide labor and transport for logging. Collective farms were even required to provide fodder for horses sent to perform this duty. Hay had to be transported hundreds of kilometers away, which completely ruined the already impoverished village. After the war, new territories were allocated for logging. The Kalym, Karbansky, Krasnoleninsky, Urmanny forestry enterprises, Tobolsk and Khanty-Mansiysk rafting offices are being created. The Labytnangi-Seida railway was built for the removal of timber by prisoners.

In 1960−1964, large timber farms were built along the Ivdel-Ob railway. This made it possible to increase timber harvesting from 4.2 million cubic meters in 1960 to 7.1 million cubic meters in 1963. At the same time, the use of forest resources was often ill-conceived, irrational, without taking into account the environmental consequences of large-scale development of the Tyumen region. The centuries-old taiga was cut down, drilling rigs were installed on fish-rich taiga rivers and lakes.