When I lived in Mt. Shasta:

 Most of the time I lived there starting in 1976 and ending the last time in 1992 I had a wood stove wherever I lived mostly because heating with electricity where it's cold enough about 6 months a year to need a heater of some sort made living there more cost effective if you got a wood gathering permit from the forest service (they give you areas where you can gather downed trees (especially during the summer and fall of any year to stock up with firewood for the year.

The primary wood you want to burn is Oak if you can get it.

The wood that will burn up the fastest of all of them is Cedar but it also burns very hot and then it's gone.

Pine is a good wood to burn but it can put pine pitch in your flue and chimney and cause a flue fire. I came home in 1980 from Skiing to a flu fire there in Mt. Shasta with the fire department there on my roof because I hadn't learned about the problem of burning too much pine wood yet.

Then there is Fir that you can burn but they call it "Piss Fir" for a reason because that's what burning it smells like.

So, though Fire burns well you have to deal with how it smells burning.

So, often I would choose to get Cedar and Oak because Oak will coal and burn the longest. However, don't try to cut oak that is dead too long because it will really dull your chain saw. So, oak though it is the best and most long lasting to burn also can be problematic to cut if it is dead.

If you are burning Pine wood regularly (for example Lodgepole pines which are often made available by the forest service in some areas you need to take your tire chains for driving in snow and run a pair of them into your chimney (if this can work where you are) to knock the pine pitch off the inside of your chimney if you are going to burn more pine regularly.

This way you can avoid a flue fire and potentially burning your whole house down.

So, heating with wood is much much less expensive than heating with gas or electricity BUT you have to know what you are doing too not to burn your house down or get a lot of smoke inside your home from having the flue set wrong for how what you are burning is burning long term.

If you live closer to bigger cities often burning wood as your primary heating source isn't allowed. Like for example, Ashland makes you use only wood pellets in a wood stove there for heating (even though people use fireplaces almost everywhere sometimes just to experience being near an open fire inside which is an amazing experience if you haven't done it before. Fireplace fires are very calming and almost hypnotic.

Before people watched TV they watched their fireplace fire or read in front of a fireplace on into the night.