I would say "beauty is in the eye of the beholder". A stand on our family farm has yielded hundereds of fence post and shed poles plus produced several thousand dollars in saw logs during the past century. Every few years I follow the practice of dad and granddad by marking trees to sell on the stump. We have built furniture and lined countless closets with lumber from those trees. I planted a few as specimens several years ago on my kids places and people often pay compliments on them now. Every year when I pruned their orchards,I removed lower limbs from cedar. They now have smooth 8-10 foot trunks like pine trees. The key to growing saw logs is to plant amoungest established hardwoods so that they reach for sunlight and shed bottom limbs as they grow. Mom insisted on having a cedar Christmas tree. So there's no confusion,these are Juniperus virginiana,that are abundant in East Texas and commonly called Eastern Red Cedar,Airomatic Cedar,Pencil Cedar and other names. Another native tree that is overlooked in landscaping is Persimmon. They only suffer from one pest(web worm) and grow under conditions many trees can't survive,much less prosper in.