Forest outings : by thirty foresters

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FOREST OUTINGS

The national forests are the people's soil,
and the crops are theirs."

ST. JOE NATIONAL FOREST, IDAHO.

EST

UTINGS

BY THIRTY FORESTERS

Edited by
RUSSELL LORD

UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
FOREST SERVICE 1940

UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE . 1940

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, Washington, D. C., Price 75 cents, paper; $1.25, buckram

The Authors

L. J. ARNOLD

R. D. BONNET

C. J. BUCK

ALTHEA DOBBINS

WALT L. DUTTON

C. M. GRANGER

R. F. HAMMATT

VERNE L. HARPER

JOHN H. HATTON

B. FRANK HEINTZLEMAN

FLOYD V. HORTON

PAYSON IRWIN

REX KING

ELERS KOCH

WILLIAM KRAMER

R. E. McARDLE
ROBERT MARSHALL
ROBERT S. MONAHAN
T. W. NORCROSS
GEORGE R. PHILLIPS
ROBERT W. PUTNAM
H. L. SHANTZ
BEVIER SHOW
JOHN W. SPENCER
PERRY THOMPSON
A. K. THURMOND, JR.
ERNEST E. WALKER
LYLE F. WATTS
PHILLIP V. WOODHEAD
I. T. YARN ALL

Sketches by Rudolph A. Wendelin

EYE TO THE SKY, FOOT TO EARTH

A Foreword

WHETHER it is a garden, a farm, or a forest, any piece of land yielding
crops may also yield repose and joy. So it is with the millions of acres of
our national forests. The pleasures these forests may give the people is the
theme of this book.

For the first white settlers of America the woods lay just beyond the
fields or out the door. So it was with woods and other natural wild country
all the way to the Pacific. Solitude in a land of marvelous beauty, with
clean and shining rivers and an abundance of wildlife, was our natural
pioneer heritage as we moved west.

Wherever modern men go civilization follows and crowds them. Often
men are driven into unnatural pursuits and actions not good for the land.
This account that 30 foresters have written takes you all over our country
and shows you the natural wealth and beauty which still is ours. But it also
shows many places where men in ignorance, haste, and covetousness have
wronged and hurt their country. We see now that there is a new conquest
to be undertaken, a new kind of pioneering to be done, a healing recon-
struction from the ground up. It would be no true Forest Service pub-
lication if it did not sound this call. The men of this Service have been
preaching and practicing conservation for more than a third of a century.

I sometimes think we need more than ever, now, to refresh our spirits
and renew our aims in the solitude of beautiful natural places. There is a
natural completeness about outdoor occupations which we who have been
forced indoors and penned in cities lack and miss. A man in a desk chair
with his feet on a rug and his eye on a wall or ceiling all day long is a man

VII

VIII A FOREWORD

in some part cut off from real life and the eternal sources of renewal.
There is something strangely restoring about work or play that is done
with an eye to the sky and with foot to earth.

We are many of us cut off now in our present way of life from a direct
and continuous association with the soil and weather of a given country
locality, but I think we are probably forming a stronger feeling for our
country as a whole. We can travel now, fast and far, and we do travel.
Overseas wars will probably impel us to travel in, and to discover, our
own country even more. Millions of us already are finding simple refresh-
ment on these great Federal properties, the national forests. I hope that
millions of other forest guests will come. They may be sure of their
welcome.

HENRY A. WALLACE, Secretary of Agriculture.

Table of Contents

A FOREWORD BY SECRETARY WALLACE VII

ACKNOWLEDGMENT XIII

Part One EYE TO THE SKY, FOOT TO EARTH

Chapter One. YOUR FOREST LAND

The national forests 1 Now consider wildlife 7

Immense and various 2 The main idea 9

Some of the crops 5 For purposes of simple pleasure 1 0

Other forest values 7 New woods and ways 1 3

Chapter Two. AMERICANS NEED OUTINGS

When this land was new 17 "I want out!" 23

The scorn of ease 1 8 Rest and change 25

On thinned soil, healing 19 Refuge 29

Work — and escape 19 Objectives 31

The great outing 20

Chapter Three. GUESTS OF THE FORESTS

Each year they come 37 Anaconda 46

Young couple from Spokane 38 The western Colorado mountains 50

Family and fisherman 40 Most campgrounds 53

A single lady taking notes 43 Others 54

IX

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Part Two KINDS OF OUTINGS

Chapter Four. A BRIEF HISTORY

To seek .lone places 59 State parks 66

Brigham Young's picnic 62 State forests 68

Scattered beginnings 62 Differences 69
Town, county, and city forests 64

Chapter Five. THE WILD

Wilderness trips 73 Off the trail 79

"Primitive America" 74 Up from Wind River 83
Zones of wilderness 78

Chapter Six. CAMPS

By a clear far creek 89 Seeley Lake 101

Hunting camp 92 Developments 104

Dolly Copp Forest Camp 95 The rush outdoors 108

Three parties 98 Questions 110

Summer homes 101 It is planning in part 115

Chapter Seven. WINTER SPORTS

A world-wide drive 117 Downhill trails 127

For sheer sport 119 Warming shelters 128

Uphill 121 Jumps and tows 129

Facilities 123 Life and limb 133

TABLE OF CONTENTS

XI

Part Three

KEEPING THINGS NATURAL

Chapter Eight. TIMBER AND RECREATION

Our country needs timber 137 Priorities

North, South, East, and West 142 Sustained yield

143
145

Chapter Nine. HERDS AND HUMANS

Grass-made meat
Grazing and recreation

151
153

Tamed vs. Wildlife

156

An uneasy feeling

To burn cover is to burn game

Bad luck

Chapter Ten. FIRE

159 Certain idiosyncrasies

164 Reviewing the record

165 "We must educate"

167

172
173

"To rule the mountain"
Clean water
Sludge and poison

Chapter Eleven. WATER

179 Water for pleasure

181 To guard the crests

183 Fire, then flood

184
189
193

Zoo without cages
Decline and restoration
Refuges

Chapter Twelve. GAME

195 Principles of management

201 A migrant yield

204 A conflict of interests

205
208
212

Unforeseen conflicts

Primitive miners

The law of May 10, 1872

Chapter Thirteen. MINERS

215 Fraudulent claims

216 Side shows

217 The present statutes

218
219

222

XII TABLE OF CONTENTS

Part Four WHAT REMAINS?

Chapter Fourteen. NEW LAND: ALASKA

The priceless primitive 227 Forest planning 233

Fish and game 231 Tourists 237

Pleasure grounds 232

Chapter Fifteen. OLD LAND: PUERTO RICO

Puerto Rico 241 The public forests 246

Ponce de Leon 242 The La Mina Recreational Area 247

The land 243 Future use 250

Fiestas 245

Chapter Sixteen. WAYS AND MEANS

Paying guests 253 Acquisition 262

The recreation business 255 Organization camps 263

The ill-to-do 259

Chapter Seventeen. SPACE, SUN, AND AIR

"The expectation" 269 Research 276

Reappraisal 271 The healing forest 279

Reporters' 272 Trees to the people 280

Human conservation 273

BIBLIOGRAPHY 285

APPENDIX

Basic principles 287 Census of big game 291

What to do when lost 288 Number of fires 292

Map facing page 288 Impediments for the ill-to-do 293

National-forest areas 289 Index 295

Acknowledgment

THIS was planned as a book of 32 parts, with each separate part or chapter
signed by its author or authors. The arrangement was found unsuitable.
The problems of using the national forests as places of rest and of human
renewal, and at the same time administering a long-span program of ground-
Jine conservation, are essentially coordinate. All the special fields of interest
overlap and interlink.

It was determined, then, to call in an editor from outside the Forest
Service, to have him travel and live for a while on the national forests, and
then reorganize the manuscript — writing, here and there, his own sequences
of narrative and interpretation — from an outside point of view. This has
been my principal occupation for the past year.

Even were this note of acknowledgment to be extended chapter-length,
it still would fail to give adequate credit, by name, to the many professional
foresters, afield and in Washington, who have written and then have
helped to edit this book. The very men who wrote most of the initial draft,
and who thus would have received the most credit in chapter bylines, were
the first to urge that the chapters be merged, and that the chapter bylines
be killed. Nowhere, I think, except in what we now have in this country of a
college-trained Civil Service, will you find so many skilled and articulate
people willing, even eager, to forego personal credit, to sink their personal
identities in a common effort.

The names of the 30 authors are listed alphabetically. All save 2 are staff
men of the United States Forest Service. Althea Dobbins is a free-lance
writer. The late Robert Marshall, when chief of Recreation and Lands for
the Forest Service, sent her forth to observe forest visitors and report. She
wrote Guests of the Forests, chapter 3. Marshall's personal contributions to
the manuscript include the sweeping inventory of the forests as pleasure
grounds in the first chapter, practically all of the wilderness chapter (5),
and most of the discussion of forest recreation for low-income groups which
now is threaded through the closing chapters.

Bevier Show wrote the concluding sections of chapter 2, Americans Need

XIII

XIV ACKNOWLEDGMENT

Outings, and contributed largely to the ensuing account of a boom in
recreation out from town. Robert Monahan, I. T. Yarnall, and Floyd Hor-
ton drafted the winter sports chapter (7) . Elers Koch made the chief con-
tribution to the chapters considering conflicts between timber management
and public pleasure. The chapter on miners (12) is John Spencer's. Lyle
Watts, H. L. Shantz, and John Hatton made the leading contributions as
to game. All illustrations were selected from the official Forest Service
photograph collection developed from contributions by forester-photogra-
phers throughout the Service.

For editorial aid and guidance I owe grateful acknowledgment to 10 or
more of the authors; but to C. M. Granger, R. F. Hammatt, and A. K.
Thurmond, especially.

R. L.

Thorn Meadow, Harford County, Md.
January 7, 1940.

Part One

EYE TO THE SKY,
FOOT TO EARTH

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What is it worth to this family to have a quiet road up the mountain
and a place within easy-driving distance where they can take it easy?

ISLAND LAKE CAMP,
SHOSHONE NATIONAL FOREST, WYO.

Tour Forest Land

In the administration of the forest reserves it must be clearly borne in mind that all land is
to be devoted to its most productive use for the permanent good of the whole people, and
not for the temporary benefit of individuals or companies. All the resources of forest re-
serves are for use, and this use must be brought about in a thoroughly prompt and business-
like manner, under such restrictions only as will insure the permanence of these resources.
Where conflicting interests must be reconciled the question will always be decided from
the standpoint of the greatest good for the greatest number in the long run.

James Wilson, Secretary of Agriculture, in a letter establishing policy, February 7, 7905.

THE NATIONAL FORESTS of the United States of America embrace
176 million acres. That is nearly one- tenth of all our land. This land belongs
to the people. It is their vast estate, and the United States Forest Service is
charged to administer all its resources and uses in such ways as will increase
the wealth and happiness of the people not only during the present year and
century but also for all time to come.

An acre of land is about the size of a football field — the gridiron, proper.
Our total national population at present stands at around 130 million.
So each citizen's share in our national forest land — if you want to figure it
that way — comes to about an acre and one-third. An acre and one-third
is about as big as a football field, entire, with room for side lines, a press
stand, grandstands, and dressing quarters.

To think of our national forests in terms of per capita shares or tracts, is
invigorating; for all those many acres do, indeed, belong to all the people.
"This land," as William Atherton DuPuy says in his book, The Nation's
Forests (1938), "is ours though we live in a tenement and never see a chip-
munk along a rotting log, or live on the prairie and never hear the wind

I

2 FOREST OUTINGS

sighing through the tall pine trees, or live on a water front where the odor
of fish is more to be expected than that of honeysuckle. . . . Out there in
the forest, along with the land belonging to the rest of the multitude, it is
serving a very important purpose indeed. In fact, it is serving a number of
purposes."

The national forests are the people's soil, and the crops are theirs. And
it is no less stimulating to think of all this sparsely peopled land, the vast
extent and stretch of 176 million acres, as a common heritage, not to be
divided, pieced out in bits, but administered for the general benefit and
pleasure.

This is the Forest Service's job, on 161 different national forests, no two
alike. If all these forests could be grouped at our eastern coast, north-
ward, they would cover all New England, plus all of the Middle Atlantic
States, plus all of North Carolina, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Kentucky.

Actually, our national forests sprawl in scattered stretches from the palms
of Puerto Rico to Alaskan spruce-hemlock, and lie within or across the
borders of 36 different States, in the Territory of Alaska, and Puerto Rico.

IMMENSE AND VARIOUS, rich and poor, these sweeping Federal properties
range from sea level to elevations exceeding 14,000 feet. They include all
kinds of country and all kinds of cover. On some cut-over lands and on
desert or'near-desert stretches, charred stumps or grass, cactus or crouching
shrubs are the only vegetation. Such country does not look like the general
idea of a forest, but it all comes under that sweeping term, and is managed
under long-run principles of restoration and use.

On greater areas the timber is of an infinite variety. The dense, dark
fir-hemlock stands of the Pacific Northwest, the uniform open pine of the
southeastern coastal plain, the varied, colorful mixed pine, fir, and cedar
of the Sierras, the complex hardwoods of the Appalachians, the low chap-
arral of the Southwest, the towering redwoods of the California Coast, the
juniper and pifion woodland of the Great Basin, the hardwood second
growth of the Lake States, the oak-pine forests of the Ozarks — all these and
other distinctive types of cover come within the scope of the term "forest."
So, too, of the open parks within the spruce-lodgepole pine forest of the

YOUR FOREST LAND 3

Rockies, the scattered stunted white-bark and foxtail pine of timber line
in the Cascade and Sierra Ranges, the mountain meadows, the granite
peaks rising like treeless islands set within the forest. The lakes and streams,
too, are a part of the forest. Our national forests, then, are a kind of country
of their own sort, greatly varied, but distinct from developed farm lands and
from an urban environment.

This forest domain is managed under a highly decentralized adminis-
trative scheme, with national headquarters in the Department of Agricul-
ture, in Washington. It is an over-all system of management with each
forest officer, be he ranger, supervisor, or regional forester, singly responsible
for a large stretch of public land. In this system the multiple-use principle
of management is followed, each a-rea producing timber, water, forage,
wildlife, and other forest values, all at the same time, each resource being
developed according to its relative importance. Only a small part of the
national-forest area is devoted exclusively to one single purpose.

Thus the ranger manages his ranger district in a forest. A ranger's
responsibilities in this day of fast and easier transportation may include
500,000 acres or better, a whole forest in itself. A forest supervisor manages
a forest or occasionally a group of forests — like the four national forests of
Florida, with a gross area of 1,600,000 acres. Supervisor headquarters for
these four forests, all lying within the State's boundaries, is at Tallahassee,
Fla. Regional headquarters, supervising the national forests of 10 Southern
States and of Puerto Rico, is in Atlanta, Ga.

There are 10 Forest Service regions, named by geographical divisions and
numbered from 1 to 10; but the 161 national forests are not numbered; they
bear names. And almost innumerable ranger stations, springs, camps,
pleasure grounds, and peaks within the forests bear names, native names
that announce our history and tradition: Big Prairie, Upper Ford, Sun
River, Poncha, Teton Pass, Crested Butte, Horsethief Canyon, Frying Pan,
Bear Ears, Sleepy Cat, Star Valley, Shoshone Canyon, Snake River, Skull
Valley, Tonto Basin, Thunder Mountain, Snake Creek, Joe's Valley,
Granddaddy Lakes, Goosenest, Hayfork, Wind River, Packwood, Deerfield,
Gunflint, Jackson Hole, Little Bayou, Dead Indian — these are but a few of

the names of ranger stations, camps, trails, mountains, creeks, tower look-
outs, and side camps on the Forest Service maps.

As for the forests, their names however prosaically listed make a song or
chant of the past and of the hopes of this country and its people. It is too bad
that Thomas Wolfe, the young American writer who so rejoiced in American
place names and rolled them forth in his novels with such sweep and gusto,
did not come upon a Forest Service directory before he died. Perhaps Pare
Lorentz, who made a poem of American river names in the sound-track
accompaniment of his talking film, The River, will some day make a name
poem of our forests. For even in the plainest prose the names of the national
forests are beautiful. To call but a few:

On the island of Puerto Rico the Caribbean National Forest; the Ocala
and the Choctawhatchee, in Florida. In South Carolina the Francis
Marion. In North Carolina the Nantahala, and in Alabama the Black
Warrior. In Georgia the Chattahoochee, and in Tennessee the Cherokee.
In West Virginia the Monongahela, in Virginia the Jefferson and the George
Washington. In Pennsylvania the Allegheny. And the White Mountain
Forest of New Hampshire, and the Green Mountain Forest of Vermont.

Passing west: The Wayne Purchase Unit of Ohio. In Michigan the
Manistee. In Illinois the Shawnee. The Hawkeye Purchase Unit of Iowa.
In Minnesota the Chippewa, and the Chequamegon in Wisconsin.

Then the Prairie States Forestry Project covering parts of Kansas, Ne-
braska, the Dakotas, Oklahoma, and Texas. The Black Hills and Harney
Forests of South Dakota. The Ouachita and the Ozark of Arkansas.

In the Colorado Rockies the Arapaho, the Grand Mesa, the Gunnison,
the Pike, the San Isabel, the White River, the Uncompahgre. And up in
Wyoming the Bighorn, the Medicine Bow, the Shoshone, the Washakie.

The Apache, the Coronado, the Crook, and the Prescott of Arizona. In
New Mexico the Carson, the Cibola, the Gila, the Lincoln, the Santa Fe.
The Caribou and the Challis, the Payette, the Sawtooth, and the Minidoka
of southern Idaho. In Utah the Fishlake, the Manti, the Uinta, the Powell;
and the Teton in Wyoming.

In Montana the Absaroka, the Beaverhead, the Bitterroot; and the
Deerlodge and the Flathead and the Gallatin. Also in Montana are the

YOUR FOREST LAND 5

Lewis and Clark National Forest and the Custer. In northern Idaho are
the Clearwater, the Coeur D'Alene, the Nezperce, the St. Joe.

Then again over great mountains to the coast. To the south in Cali-
fornia the Angeles, the Cleveland, and Los Padres. More to the north and
inland the Sequoia, the Eldorado, the Klamath, the Shasta, the Tahoe.
In Oregon the Fremont, the Malheur, the Mount Hood, the Rogue River,
the Umatilla. In the State of Washington the Chelan, the Columbia, the
Mount Baker, the Wenatchee, and many others.

Alaska is Region 10. It has two great national forests, the Chugach and
the Tongass, with headquarters at Juneau.

Thus incompletely we have called the roll of our national forests and
are ready now to see what is being done with them.1

SOME OF THE CROPS ... To conserve and increase all the values that any
given piece of land, be it an acre of farm woodland privately owned or a
2-million-acre national forest, may yield, it is generally unnecessary to
withdraw the land entirely from human use. Now and then the Forest
Service takes over a piece of country so completely racked by headlong
private exploitation as to seem for the time being completely useless. The
timber has been hacked to rotting stumps and the land burned over. The
brush cover is gone. The grass is gone. Much of the soil is gone. There is
no game. The streams are foul and muddy. Such scenery as remains cries
to Heaven of heedless greed and ruin.

On such scattered areas there may be nothing to do at first but bar for
a while all further material cropping, let the worn land rest, coax back
vegetation — grass, brush, trees — to resume its ancient work of clothing
wounded earth, healing it, and holding the soil together. Lumbering is out
for years to come. Pasturing is out. Hunting and fishing are out for the
time being. But as the land heals, and takes on something of its former
beauty, certain measured uses may be allowed.

One of the first uses possible may be for human recreation. This worn
area may be nothing much to look at, as yet, but still it may be the most

1 A complete list of such forests, their location, and areas is appended on page 289,
Appendix.

6 FOREST OUTINGS

restful-looking piece of open country for miles around. And it is coming
back; that is something. People will come for picnics, or for an hour or so of
quiet and fresh air. Even a greening, protected strip of cut-over or burnt-out
land in the midst of great areas so laid desolate offers, as it heals, a spot for
human outings and a certain degree of rest and seclusion. But care must
be taken quietly to manage and distribute recreational use so that people,
playing and resting, do not destroy the returning cover.

Most national forest land is now in a far more thrifty and flourishing
condition than are the cut-over areas lately taken over. Most of it can be
used and is used for a number of purposes at a time. The essence of sound
forest management for the long pull is not hoarding, not a grudging with-
holding, but wise use. Most forest or range land rightly managed can be
made to yield useful crops perpetually. Under such a developing system of
management material crops of the national forests returned $4,903,376 to
the Treasury of the United States in the fiscal year 1939. Of this money
$1,215,925 was returned, by law, to the States.

To name all of the forest, range, and desert products which entered into
this reckoning would make a list that would run on for pages, even in the
smallest type. Lumber, of course, stood high on the list, and grass, making
meat through pasturage, returned hundreds of thousands of dollars in
grazing fees. Cord wood for fuel and pulp wood for the making of paper and
of fabrics, choice hardwoods to be sliced into veneers or carved into the
keels of yachts or modeled into airplane propellers, turpentine and naval
stores and valuable plastics and chemicals, Christmas trees, palms for Palm
Sunday, curiously shaped stones from the desert, ferns from the forest floor
to dress up the floral bouquets of matron, working girl, and debutante —
these were among the items useful or ornamental taken and sold from
your national forests last year.

Beyond such items are products whereon it is impossible to set an ade-
quate value in dollars and cents. What value could arbitrarily be assigned
the cold mountain water brought down from high, forested ranges to make
scorched valleys blossom and to make life possible in the towns and cities of
our arid West and Southwest? Snatched from the clouds at the crests, eased
down through canopies of trees and grass, this water is the very lifeblood of

YOUR FOREST LAND 7

that civilization. No one could really put a price tag on this water that would
mean anything.

And how could any price put upon American soil, that well-managed
woodland and grassland binds and withholds from washing and blowing,
from death by erosion, be adequate? For a stabilized topsoil, well-aerated
and rich in organic remains, is the thin film of life by which all men and
civilizations live or die.

OTHER FOREST VALUES defy price analysis. But they are actual values.
They make changes for the better in the ultimate crop of any country. The
ultimate crop is the spirit of the people there.

Here for example is a family — any family — with a home in one of the
desert towns or cities of Arizona or the interior valleys of California. Day-
time summer temperatures here go to 1 20°, and 90° F. or hotter at bedtime is
not altogether unusual at the height of summer. "You can fry eggs on the
bedsprings," the people say.

What is it worth to this family to have a quiet road up the mountain and a
place within easy driving distance where they can take it easy under giant
trees, amid summer temperatures that range from a crisp 60° to a mildly
warming 80° F. at noon, and swim in clean mountain water, and find relief
from the terrific heat? In many places, ranging from humid Puerto Rico to
the western peaks above the great American Dust Bowl, forest recreation
becomes a downright physical necessity for the great mass of the people who
ordinarily cannot afford to buy a change of air, or send the women and
children away for the hot season, as well-to-do people can. And even the
reasonably well-to-do, in such places, are glad to have camps or cottage
permits, let cheaply but with no title, on forest land up the mountain, and
send their families there, and drive up to be with them nights and week ends.

Now CONSIDER WILDLIFE the country over. WThat price good fishing, good
hunting, for food and for sport? What price, for the naturalist or nature
lover, the sight of renewed wild herds of elk and deer and bison and antelope
grazing and roaming, or beavers working? What price a continuing return
of songbirds and game birds to our North American earth and sky?

8 FOREST OUTINGS

The restoration of abounding native stocks of wildlife in the forests, on
upland range, in the water, by the water, and on the water is a most
important part of the multiple-use policy under which the national forests
are operated. In many parts of our country where the game had been
starved and shot almost into extinction, where the waters had been fished
out, and where no birds sang, wildlife is coming back now, and fishing is
getting good again.

Much remains to be done toward a fuller repopulation and a proper pro-
tection of native wildlife. The United States Department of Agriculture is
but one of many agencies, public and private, that are taking the necessary
first steps, more or less together, to restore to the extent possible under
modern conditions the wildlife which was so highly important in America's
past.

Game can come back fast: In some places deer have so multiplied
as to become a sort of animal weed, wandering. They are devouring herbage
and cover, inducing soil erosion, starving to death. Upward of 5 million
deer were abroad in this land at the time of the last governmental wildlife
census covering all lands, in August 1939. In some places the hunting
season and bag limit have been extended, considerably, in order to keep
the deer from wrecking what is left of cover crops and soil.

This fact raises differences of thought and emotion, highly pitched.
Those who delight in the sight of deer, poised, quivering, or leaping for
cover, and press a camera trigger, or make notes, cry protest against car-
nage. Those who tremble with pleasure, or "buck fever," then steady them-
selves, and press gun triggers, respond to instincts no less primitive or deep
seated, differently. The only point to be made here, in opening, is that
both sorts of men, and groups of men, experience at the moment wild deer
are sighted a healing sense of freedom and rapture, a split second of primal
delight. The pressures and constraints of civilization fall from their minds
and backs; they are almost as free, for a few quick breaths, as the deer they
note, photograph, or kill.

The pleasures that the national forests can offer the people are widely
various. They are simple pleasures, in the main. The aim is to keep them
simple, inexpensive, and as nearly as possible accessible to all. There are

YOUR FOREST LAND 9

plenty of complex and clamorous amusements available to most people out-
side the forests. The forests offer a wide variety of retreats from strain and
tension, with a chosen degree of solitude.

THE MAIN IDEA of those who have to plan recreational use for the forests,
is to fit their plan into the guiding policy of multiple-use, and to keep things
natural. That is not as easy as one might think. Millions of Americans have
lately discovered the national forests as a natural retreat and playground.
On summer week ends and holidays, especially, the people in their millions
have learned (as one sardonic western forest officer expressed it) "to take
to the open road in a closed car and return to the breast of Nature and
litter it up with banana peels and beer cans."

This remark may sound a shade inhospitable. Such, really, was not the
mood of this forester, still in his forties. He started work with the Forest
Service at a time when, if a party wanted recreation, they simply went out
into the forest and made a fire and caught some fish, and cooked them, and
slept in a throw-down camp. Then automobiles were invented and were
made cheap, and the thundering human herd on rubber tires entered the
forest to rest and play.

You could not let them make fires now, at random. Many would be
careless, and the fires would spread, destroying timber, destroying cover,
incinerating perhaps ten or a dozen of these carefree forest visitors them-
selves. Fireplaces, camp or picnic tables, pure piped water, and sanitary
toilet facilities had now to be provided; yet things had to be kept natural,
or as natural as possible, lest the visiting throng destroy the very beauty
and simplicity and quietude toward which with a deep and restless yearn-
ing they swarmed.

All this was somewhat bewildering to old-time Forest Service men who
knew about trees and sheep and game and cattle, and knew what to do
about overgrazing, but who had never been trained to handle an overload
of humans, unobtrusively. They have learned. Now they "salt down" as
cattlemen say, attractive and secluded byspaces, so that people will spread
out in their outings, and not stomp the cover bare at some one central
glade. Where denudation of the cover does take place, and soil erosion

10 FOREST OUTINGS

follows, foresters now shut that camp or picnic site off for a while, give it
time to heal, and "rotate" the picnic or camp sites, whenever possible, to
some place else.

Some of the best recreational-use planning has been done not at Wash-
ington, and not at the regional and supervisor offices, but by rangers on
the ground. And many of the best jobs of welcoming people to the forest,
spreading them out, and letting them have a good time in the way of their
own choice, quietly, have been done by sardonic, old-time forest officers
such as the one just quoted.

No one who loves the woods and the lone places can long remain
inhospitable or out of sympathy with people who today throng to the woods,
the shores, the lakes, and the heights of mountains on our national forests.
In somewhat lonely settings these visitors may be embarrassed or awkward,
at first. Certain of them may make a great deal of noise, on their own, and
turn radios on full blast to make themselves feel more at home, and prove
it. But generally the jitterbug phase of their return to nature soon wears
off, and they seek quieter amusements, more on their own. Their need and
hunger for natural things, for simple, earthy, normal satisfactions, is so
urgent, so deep-seated, and so evident, that even when they spit down
canyons in their exuberance and see how much of The Star-Spangled
Banner they can sing before it hits; even when they perform the tenderfoot
trick of rolling great stones down sheer mountainsides, dangerously; even
when they complain that a one-way pack and motor trail to a mountain-
top is out-of-date and should be at least a three-lane highway, paved, oiled,
and sleek, you cannot for long feel cynical about these robust nature
lovers, or remain unfriendly toward even the rowdiest, the noisiest, the
most self-conscious. They are lost children coming home.

But they are often problem children; and the job of planning recrea-
tional use on the public forests and fitting it into other uses is difficult at
times, and always fascinating.

FOR PURPOSES OF SIMPLE PLEASURE the national forests of our States and
territorial possessions offer everything that unsettled land can offer any-
where on earth. They include nearly any combination that can occur in

YOUR FOREST LAND 11

nature from the edge of deserts to loftiest summits of wind-swept rock or
snow. There are the hot, dry woodlands of pinon and juniper which grow
in sun-baked soil and the cool, moist, alpine forests and meadows which
during most of the year are saturated with the snow and rain and mist of
mountaintops. There are the abused cut-over lands purchased by the
Government for the sake of restoring them to productivity, and virgin
forests as untouched by commercial use as before the days of Columbus.
In the Southeast, the Southwest, and the Black Hills, are forests so devoid
of water bodies as to require artificial lakes and reservoirs, and in northern
Minnesota and Wisconsin are forests with so many thousands of lakes that
no one has ever counted them all.

Our forests include waterfalls, dry mesas, and turbulent rivers. They
include timberland, range land, rock land, and desert land, all mixed
together and overlapping in a pattern of endless change. Our national
forests include within their boundaries almost three-quarters of the timber-
land in public ownership. They contain from tens of thousands to millions
of acres of practically every important forest type, including the redwood.

Let us look at a few of them in early summer; for when school lets out,
from then until Labor Day, that is when our forests receive the most visitors.
The "peak load," foresters call it, or the "heaviest use" by pent-up citizens
seeking natural recreation, comes the country over when youngsters are
out of school.

On the upper slopes of the White Mountains in New Hampshire the
red spruce and balsam grow in dense stands and keep the ground cool and
shady even in the hottest weather. The alpine asters and goldenrods, the
Indian pokeweed, the goldthread, and the sphagnum moss are fresh and
untrampled. Through the forests young streams splash wildly over granite
boulders as they tumble on the first leap of their journey to the sea.

In Pennsylvania the foliage of the hemlock-hard v/ood stands is a mixture
of dark-green needles and bright-green leaves. The larger trees display a
pleasing variety of patterns. The hemlocks are brown, with shallow grooves
in their fibrous bark; the maples deeply grooved and tan; the black cherry
trees, red-brown and lustrous, with their horizontal bark scars; the beeches
a smooth, hard grey, spotted with the black conks and healed-over branch

12 FOREST OUTINGS

scars. On the floor of the forest are the twinflower and woodsorrel and lady-
slipper and saxifrage.

The hardwoods in the coves of the southern Appalachians grow higher
than any other hardwoods on the continent. Here the straight boles of the
tulip poplars rise more than 100 feet without limbs and jut up far above the
surrounding oaks. In the small openings of the forest grow dense clumps of
laurel and azalea which in May and June blossom forth in brilliant orange
and pink and cardinal.

Between the innumerable bodies of water which cover northern Minne-
sota are varied forests. The sandy places are clad with white and red pines.
The white pine has short, delicate, light-green needles. The foliage of red pine
is long, coarse, and dark green. As you come off the lakes and start to portage
through these pine forests, the trail leads into an unknown world of exciting
mystery. Spruce and balsam grow in the moister places, and among them
the tundra vegetation of labrador tea and pitcherplant and sheep laurel.
Wherever forests have been burned in the past hundred years you see hill-
sides covered with aspen. These aspens turn a quivering, brilliant yellow in
the fall.

Throughout the interior West, from the Black Hills to the eastern Cas-
cades and from New Mexico to the western foothills of the Sierras, are beau-
tiful forests of ponderosa pine, covering millions of acres. The mature tree
trunks appear almost orange color in the bright sunlight of this western
region. Darker-colored Douglas firs grow among the pines and lend variety
to the landscape, and the ground is gay and bright with green forage. The
forest here is invitingly open and parklike, almost without underbrush.

In northern Idaho, the western white pine dominates the forests. For
more than 175 feet it rises tall and straight, and for half of this reach, or
more, it is free from any branches. Beneath it grow the cedar and hemlock,
dense-crowned trees. The limbs extend almost to the ground and cast a deep
shade on a forest floor carpeted with delicate woodferns, twinflowers, gold-
thread, and wild ginger. Scattered throughout these stands is the western
larch with bark that is sometimes a foot thick, and needles that turn pure
gold when touched by the frost.

All through the Rocky Mountains, from Canada to southern Colorado,

YOUR FOREST LAND 13

the lodgepole pine forests cover millions of acres. These trees are slim and
straight. Often they grow so densely together that you have to fight your
way through them. In mixture with the lodgepole pine you see Douglas fir
and the true fir. The ground cover is of sedges and grasses of many kinds,
together with the bright-blue lupine, brilliant orange tiger lily, and many
other cheerful flowers.

The giant forests of western Washington and Oregon are majestic and
solemn. They are like vast cathedrals, out of doors. Here are lands of per-
petual shadow formed by the dense crowns of Douglas fir and Sitka spruce,
which grow more than 250 feet tall, and of the shorter hemlocks, cedars, and
white firs. Their branches are draped with long, hanging tree moss which
gives to the surroundings a veiled appearance. On the floor of the forest
only the most shade-enduring vegetation can live, but this includes ferns
which frequently grow waist high. Such forests convey the feeling of the
everlastingness of life. Here stand all ages and sizes of trees, from the over-
mature giants, 5, 10, or even 15 feet in diameter, to the current year's
seedling which is less than an inch tall, but sprouts hopefully on the disinte-
grating, moss-covered remains of some ancient specimen that had tumbled
long before Columbus came.

The alpine forests of many high western mountain ranges are lighter,
brighter, and more cheerful. Here the trees are scattered and stunted from a
lifetime of battling against the cold and wind of high altitudes. And strewn
between the throngs of battling trees are alpine meadows, carpeted with
fresh green grass and a gay profusion of many-colored flowers, but recently
born after a hard winter of dormancy under snowdrifts unbelievably deep.

These in general are elder woodlands, our more primitive forests, such
as remain. Recreation on the national forests is by no means confined today
to the primeval setting.

NEW WOODS AND WAYS . . . Millions of acres of vigorously growing
younger stands which have followed fire and logging, millions of acres of
meadows and browse lands where people come for relaxation and adven-
ture, have been opened to the public within the last few years.

New ways of public entry have been opened to old forests, and new.

14 FOREST OUTINGS

These roads have been planned and made to give more comfortable access
to the forests, yet not intrude unduly. They offer to the tourist a great va-
riety of picturesque driving possibilities. The Mount Hood Loop Road in
Oregon, first following along the mighty Columbia River, then swirling
upward to circle this beautiful volcanic summit; the Galena Summit Road
in Idaho, switchbacking up to and down from this lofty pass; the Mogollon
Rim Drive, skirting for miles along the top of massive Arizona Cliffs; the
Evans Notch Road, leading in graceful curves among the rugged hardwood
slopes of the White Mountains — these are a few of the new main roads into
great new forests, or into older forests, tended and renewed. And thousands
of miles of new trails have been built, mainly by CCC boys, into the forests,
for the people's use. They vary from easy footways over level or rolling
country to steep trails scaling rocky summits far above timber line. These
trails are marked with arrow pointers, plainly; back to comfort and civiliza-
tion; on to somewhat lonely natural wonders, beauty spots, or heights.

But you have to make the journey on your own leg and lung power and
learn again in some measure how to take care of yourself in far places, with
no corner drug store near, and with the unpredictable beat of the weather
on you, if you really want to return for a while to nature.

^ *'^*&?3?*> w^^fec - i- «^v^^- ^^^wK9

'tjtAfr.^^K-'-'-w '--T.... -.ii-*. • ."•-. -*. ^.•*a^'"C;: .«*-' ;-"-.,Jr^- ,."'v^*:?,t'.,-

. . . Virgin forests as untouched by commercial
use as before the days of Columbus.

F-321029

COLUMBIA NATIONAL FOREST, WASH.

Americans

Meed Outings

"The New World": at a time of tremendous pressure and distress, that phrase rang
through Europe to lift the hearts of the defeated, restless, and dissatisfied. It aroused hope
of romantic adventure and of sudden riches in gold and furs. But those who came to settle
here found that pioneering must be paid for in sweat, blood, and strange diseases, in the
suffering of long, slow toil.

They paid that price, and the heritage they leave us is rather bitter — a rich land
racked and mismanaged, with huge accumulations of goods and wealth, yet with millions
of our people deprived and helpless. Today we again have a situation like that in Europe
300 or 400 years ago. In some ways I believe it is far more significant. We have millions of
people with good bodies and minds who cannot get jobs. They are just as good people as
those who left Europe for America 300 years ago. They are looking for another new world.

Henry A. Wallace, New Frontiers, 1934.

WHEN THIS LAND WAS NEW7 and open for the taking, the amount of
work that had to be done barehanded or with the rudest of tools was
staggering. Need never drove harder than on the first English seeding-
ground of occupation. "He that will not work shall not eat," wrote Capt.
John Smith in that fearful "starving time" at Jamestown; and it is recorded
that toil remained a virtue of necessity during those first winters on Massa-
chusetts and Virginia shores.

But something far more enduring than driving physical need entered
into the minds and hearts of these new American inhabitants. For here were
people seeking freedom, and this gave a spiritual lift and push to the march
of occupation, exalting it. Here vast wealth lay almost at the door of every
settler, wealth in the raw. The extent of it seemed endless. The race was to

'7

18 FOREST OUTINGS

the strong. And although the price was toil, the reward of toil was the
prospect of independence, freedom — the right to stand on your own legs
on your land, owned free and clear; the right to look all men who differed
with you in the eye, and tell them where to go.

That was the dream. But with so much virgin country to be developed,
and so few hands to do the work, idleness seemed sinful. It was only by the
hardest of labors, long endured, that a man without capital, and his wife
and children, could stand free. So pioneer Americans all but deified constant
toil as a means of freedom, as a means of attaining security and dignity;
and they lived, in the main, scorning ease.

THE SCORN OF EASE was never as intense southward, in all likelihood, as it
was among stern and rock-bound Pilgrims facing west. Nor did natural
circumstances in the South enforce, until many years had passed, the thrift
and care which we associate with New England. New England soil, as one
student of geography and its relation to history has in effect observed, was
only to be taken and held by patient husbandry; but the warmer and more
opulent South lay open to ravishment right away.

Tobacco, soon introduced there, brought money rolling in from over-
seas. It multiplied negro slavery, but it lightened the lot of the white
proprietors. Tobacco was a cash crop, but it was a clean-tilled row crop
that punished land. Washington ordered tobacco off the soil of Mount
Vernon when he saw what it was doing to his fields. Chop, crop, and get on
West continued, however, in the face of his warnings, and Jefferson's,
and Patrick Henry's. For many years it remained the prevailing mode of
development and progress.

Cotton also levelled great forests, ripped up pleasant grasslands, and
assumed an all but absolute sovereignty over some of the best land in the
United States. It was also a cash crop, and year after year cotton also
exposed Southerners' land to the weather, let the weather whip their film
of sustenance, their topsoil, out from under them. So year after year the
fields of our southern coastal slopes ran off into the Atlantic Ocean.

This set going a definite human drain. The South, by fairly constant
emigration, has contributed flesh, blood, and many of its more adven-

AMERICANS NEED OUTINGS 19

turous human spirits to the North and West. This drain has accelerated in
recent years. Gerald Johnson, interpreting statistical tables compiled
by Howard Odum of the University of North Carolina, estimates that the
exodus of Southerners, considered in point of quantity alone, has exceeded 3%
million; and that to rear, school, and then lose this many men and women
to other parts of our country, cost Southerners at least 17% billion dollars.

ON THINNED SOIL, HEALING, the South is now coming back. Safer meth-
ods of cultivation are developing fast, and being adopted. Healing pine
and hardwood are being permitted and encouraged to reforest the worst-
torn, cropped-out areas. Second-growth and some surviving virgin timber
are being brought under management and cropped with a view to perma-
nent security, pleasure, and gain.

Grassland is coming back, too, but on the most-eroded areas forests
must be the mainstay for centuries to come. For although nearly all the
topsoil there is gone, there are many trees which can feed on subsoil and
flourish. And trees bring up through their roots and trunks and limbs and
foliage mineral and organic nutrients that are below the reach of lesser
plants, slowly rebuilding topsoil with the years. Within the present century
more than 1 1 millions of acres of national forests have been established in
the South alone, and the State forests there now exceed 254,000 acres.

The South is coming back; but you will find little of the lavish old
plantation atmosphere, the gay outdoor court life, or the soirees which
attended King Cotton at the height of his reign. For the New South is a
land of hard work and of rather grim and steadfast purposes. Most of its
people are engaged in the tiring, unromantic business of actual long-time
reconstruction from the ground up. The tourist business brings in money,
and so is welcome. But the thud of the tractor, the plod of working gangs
and work mules, the rising whir of new and diversified factories, and of a
great woods industry — these are sounds that seem more important to the
South than banjo music now.

WORK — AND ESCAPE ... It is a common observation among the people
of older countries that Americans work like mad, play like mad, and do

20 FOREST OUTINGS

not know the value of leisure. There is some truth to that. Surely we work
like mad, many of us, and take a strange, perverted pride in it. The remark
of a farm wife, "Overwork is the most dangerous form of American in-
temperance," suggests habits certainly not confined to excesses of weary,
stumbling toil afield. Great executives and lesser ambitious officers and
clerks of our greatest city business firms send out for a sandwich and milk
shake, then nibble at their desks as they dictate, push buttons, grab at
phones, bark, and display — in excessive and sometimes hysterical form all
day long and after the electric lights are lit — good old 100-percent pioneer
American drive, pep, and spizzerinctum.

Then these businessmen clump wearily to their feet, all possibility of
a sane and collected judgment long since dulled. No hay hand bragging at
the fifth beer of inhuman feats of overexertion under the blazing sun of a
Montana harvest is prouder than the wan slave of business, be he the
president of the company or a file clerk, who is the last man out of such an
office for the day. The last man out turns out the lights. That is his privilege,
and an omen.

And not unusually these hired men crawl home through traffic by car,
bus, or subway laden with bulging brief cases and portfolio; more work.
They snap at their dinners and their families and perform further lonely
prodigies of toil. And when such excesses drive them, as happens fairly
often, to alcoholic frivolities, to the divorce courts, and to the waiting rooms
of highly specialized doctors, these tired businessmen are very sorry and
somber about it. Then, if they are wise, the doctors advise them to seek
escape, to take to the woods, to strike out into the wilderness and get away
from it all.

THE GREAT OUTING . . . The days of our pioneering are not ended.
But our simple and brutal concepts of pioneering are changing. We no longer
look at it as altogether doleful or as a matter for long-faced lamentation.
Why should we, for in a manner of speaking the whole American settlement
from coast to coast was an adventure, a grandiose outing, a burst of escape
from overcrowded, overdriven civilizations that were not working any too
well in Europe.

AMERICANS NEED OUTINGS 21

It was rough work, especially hard on the women, who like things
convenient, orderly, dainty. But in most males there is a rough streak.
They find relief in rough clothes, rough food, rough ways; in telling rude
jokes, and letting the whiskers grow; in pigging it, as campers say, with an
unabashed and primitive abandon. And such a life seems all the more
satisfying to rude males if it is spiced with danger enough to permit a
certain amount of strut and heroics. There is evidence that a great many of
our American male progenitors and not a few of their women had in their
more exalted moments a grand time. The life was hard, but you felt that
you were doing something special on your own power; and it kept you
out of doors.

Our frontier forebears had so much of nature all around them, and
hammering at them, that they did not go into rhapsodies at sunsets. They
made no undying lyrics, as did pale Shelley confined in London recalling
the flight of a lark. They did not sentimentalize or often speak of such beauty
and wonder, any more than most forest workers and farmers do today.
But the woods and unspoiled natural places lay just beyond their fields or
over their doorsills, and their work was generally such as took them out-
doors alone through all the changing seasons.

They were there on business, but even if the work and their conscience
drove them, the virgin beauty and wonder surrounded them and worked
its spell. They were there on their own, as the saying goes, and they could
imagine themselves free. The men who conquered the wilderness did not
hate it. Outdoor escape was inseparably a part of their pioneering. We
who follow come honestly by our love and yearning for outdoor recreation.
The wide outdoors is in our blood, and we need the healing shelter of
woodland.

Any open country will do for an outing. But in our forest land there
remains something virile, yet mysterious, something that exerts a special
pull upon a people still steeped in pioneer traditions. In woodland we still
feel a bracing sense of uncertainty, a hint of danger. Actually it does not
require a two-gun man or an athlete to sojourn in the forest. Yet a man
goes into deep woods with some hesitation as to his ability to cope with what
he may find there, whereas even a billionaire centenarian confidently

F- 3501 62

Men seek escape. They yearn to get away from it all.

WISEMAN'S VIEW PISGAH NATIONAL FOREST, N. c.

AMERICANS NEED OUTINGS 23

totters out on a golf course. To Americans the forests mean adventure.
In many places, the forests still are primitive enough to provide adventure,
and this adds to the charm.

In a personal letter, Rex King, of the Forest Service, at work in the
Southwest, lately sought to express in words the compulsion which led
him years ago to leave New York, his native city, and take work in a
natural wilderness. "As a boy," he recalls, "there was a sort of legend, a
promised land, that we used to hear of, we fellows who lived in New York.
It was 'The North Woods.' I don't remember that anyone ever stopped
to wonder just where the North Woods was located, but it was somewhere
a long way off. It was a place where there were lots of trees and rivers and
lakes, where one could live a long time without seeing people, and there
were many birds and animals. We were old enough to know that there
were no longer any Indians abroad — that there were no dangerous animals,
but there was still the expectancy of adventure. Even today that term
'North Woods' brings to my mind something which I have never found in
reality, although I have looked for it pretty well over the United States.

"It seems to have meant something of a remnant of those things which
our ancestors had experienced — breadth, freedom, great spaces, fragrant
air, clear water, and perhaps just lonesomeness."

"I WANT OUT" is a Pennsylvania-German expression that is also heard
occasionally in parts of Ohio, Indiana, and other States settled by pioneers
who came in from Pennsylvania over the Cumberland Gap. They use it as
a definite literal statement of purpose, to bus conductors, for instance.
Also, upon occasion, they say, "I want up," "I want down," and "I want
in." But: "I want out," is the sentence which rings now with its stark direct-
ness and urgency in the mind of anyone considering the growing pains of
demand upon forest recreational resources in the United States.

There are times when we all want out, and times when the fret and
strain of modern life are such that this want becomes no mere whim, but
a dominating necessity. We all rebel at times against the regimentation
that commerce and fashion and custom, far more than our Government,
impose. And if our inherited sense of personal rebellion can be diverted and

24 FOREST OUTINGS

soothed by wearing a dirty shirt, tramping lonely trails, and going without
shaving or tinting our fingernails for a day or so — well, that would seem a
rather harmless way of trying to get another revolution out of our systems.

Modern life and urban life in particular enforces insistent and ines-
capable discipline upon the individual. Social customs, job, family, the
group, and the church all demand compliance to codes. Many of these rules
are irksome. Some of them run counter to human nature. Often man is
forced into a pattern of behavior that makes him an indistinguishable mem-
ber of a band. This may tend in the course of time to subdue his pride and
his sense of importance.

A man must learn to live with himself before living with others. He
feels that this loss of the sense of an individual significance is not good,
either for himself or for society, and he gropes for means to recapture what
he has lost.

Many forms of urban entertainment enable a man "to get out of him-
self," and often they allow him to identify himself vicariously, by feats of
personal imagination, with heroic or striking and successful personalities.
The theatre, the movie, athletic sports and spectacles, romantic novels,
and group organizations momentarily may restore his esteem of himself.
But vicarious participation in the triumphs of others cannot for most natures
forever be a substitute for active participation and actual personal triumphs.

So there are a large group of games and activities possible in urban
environment designed to give modern man a chance to excel in himself.
He may play at golf, at tennis, at cards, at squash, at swimming and fancy
diving. But in all these pursuits, he is hopelessly outclassed by the publicized
expert.

The more active of all such games afford needed physical exercise, and
a momentary psychic relief. But there remains still the need to get out of
the city, to "fall out" of ranks, as army sergeants command, if only for a
day or two, or even for an hour's drive in the car. The urgency of this need
is evident to anyone who has to drive in week-end traffic around our greater
cities. Even where the gas fumes, billboards, and hot-dog stands are thickest,
the people in their millions seek a change of scene and air. Modern man
most desperately seeks escape. He drives hard, when no policeman is near,

AMERICANS NEED OUTINGS 25

to get out of his daily routine; he will break speed laws and jump red lights
to recapture the chance to relax. And in city and country alike people have
need of variety, of mixing work and play, of seeing and doing new things,
of gratifying curiosity, of personal adventure.

REST AND CHANGE . . . Physicians, psychiatrists, and others dealing with
human ills generally recognize this. "Rest and change" was perhaps the
most frequent prescription of wise family doctors, general practitioners,
years before they or their patients learned to speak in terms of psychiatry.
And even now when we have a whole new set of words to describe physical
and mental fatigue and spiritual exhaustion, the cure in many cases is just
as simple. And each year the cure becomes more nearly impossible for many
poor and driven people.

When body and mind are run-down to the verge of prostration, when
nothing as yet is organically wrong with that mind or body, the most skilled
and candid of physicians recognize that they can do little for the patient
beyond inducing a slackening of tension and activity, then aiding or allowing
Nature to heal the hurt. "Rest and change" is still a standing prescription,
and "Try and get it!" remains a common American response.

It is generally true that Americans, rich and poor, are learning to be
their own doctors in this particular, so far as they may. As naturally as
ailing or wounded animals crawl off from the pack to recover, we are learn-
ing to quit wounding environments for the time and to seek such relaxation
and change as our means allow. To a considerable number of Americans
not very rich, a summer vacation on farms taking boarders, or at "camps"
with names like Kare-Free1 in the Catskills, allow for a while a slowed-
down tempo, a chance to rest and recover.

Ocean or lake beaches nearer to great cities and the job receive enor-
mous crowds of young and old. This is emphatically true of New York's

1 The imagined but factually accurate scene of Arthur Kober's beautiful and tender
comedy, "Having Wonderful Time." Kare-Free has a high-powered recreational director
and frequent dances and vaudeville as an extra added attraction; but that is not its main
attraction for the shop girls and garment workers of New York City who come to the
North Woods for a breath of woodland air, rest and romance, year after year.

What the national forests have to offer, above all else,
is space — space and stillness.

BLUE PARADISE LAKE,
GALLATIN NATIONAL FOREST, MONT.

27

commercial playgrounds during the hottest weather, from Independence
Day to Labor Day. During heat waves the beach at Coney Island photo-
graphed from a 'plane resembles nothing so much as a vast anthill swarm-
ing. In point of recreational use this beach probably carries the heaviest load
in the Nation.

Local police complain that the thousands of tottering children custom-
arily taken up as lost, and at nightfall generally reclaimed by their parents,
were not really lost at all, but were mainly turned loose to be lost for the
day by overdriven parents. The New York papers customarily carry air
photos of the thickest of these heat-wave swarms in the Sunday rotogravure
sections, and no news account by a trained metropolitan reporter omits as a
sort of key to the extent of the exodus the number of "lost" children picked
up and tended for the day by the Coney Island police.

It is plain that such mass outings, while valuable, leave something to be
desired. The incessant pressures of urban time schedules, of space restric-
tions, the noise and the huddle of a metropolitan existence still beat at the
mind and cramp the spirit amid these tangled beach throngs. The beach at
Coney Island on a hot Sunday provides air, sun, and ocean enough for all,
but certainly it is not an ideal place to recover a lost sense of personal sig-
nificance or find new elbowroom for the ego. And it is one of the sights of
New York City to see these sunburned, tense, and jaded pleasure seekers
pouring back into town at the end of their day in the open. The poorest of
them pack the tube and subway trains, pushing and stomping. They are
tired to the point where they can almost sleep standing. At the ferries the
automobiles of somewhat more solvent citizens stand jammed in line for
miles, crawling, stopping, waiting; sometimes they have to wait for hours to
get the car on a ferry. Their auto horns keep up a constant caterwauling of
agitation and protest all through the night. There is a great crying of weary
children and a great slapping of weary children for crying.

Now these people know from experience, most of them, what their day
at the shore will cost them in money and in discomfort, but they keep on
going again and again. Nothing could more plainly testify that outdoor
recreation is a driving human need. These driven people are simply trying
to get all they can of it within their means and scope.

28 FOREST OUTINGS

With the need as it is, with great public pleasure grounds open to the
people, it becomes a matter of common-sense policy to see that public recrea-
tional facilities do not simply duplicate existing commercial facilities, but
provide values that a private resort, be it Coney Island or Newport, gener-
ally cannot provide. This is especially true of recreation on the national
forests.

What the national forests have to offer, above all else, is space — space
and stillness. Rich people can buy this, in some measure. But only the very
favored few are in a position to buy themselves enough of it in the form of
suburban or country estates, country club privileges, membership in exclu-
sive shore communities, and so on. Only about 1 percent of our city people,
at most, are rich enough to buy enough space and stillness to satisfy that
need in themselves, their families, and their friends. If this is a reasonable
estimate, it follows that 99 percent of the outdoor recreation problem of
our city people cannot be solved by the individual efforts of the persons
immediately concerned.

Outdoor recreation for urban populations has become, then, a problem
that seldom, if ever, can be expected to solve itself. Only 1 percent of ocean
and Great Lake shores, for instance, remains open to the public.

The need for public playgrounds — using the term in the larger sense-
has been recognized in this country since the early settlers began to build up
city communities. The public "common" so characteristic of New England
cities was one of our earliest gestures in recognition of the need for setting
aside ample space for simple recreation. City parks were another step
toward sustaining simple natural values out of doors. It is now the recog-
nized job of many a city government to provide play space for its citizens.
It is held a matter of civic pride that such playgrounds should so far as
possible preserve beautiful natural settings. And of late, with continually
greater willingness, Government is accepting the task of devising and
furnishing effective outlets for the innate craving of its citizens for outdoor
exercise, relaxation, and refreshment. The job of general recreation is
gradually being accorded the same basic importance as that of general
education. It has become a public responsibility, recognized alike by
county, State, and Federal Governments.

AMERICANS NEED OUTINGS 29

REFUGE is provided for fish and game; why not for people? Refugees from
the strains, the disillusionments, and the personal indignities imposed by a
regimented commercial order of life in cities, towns, and on farms are
seeking by the millions the healing refuge of our remaining undeveloped
places. The people are thronging upon the more than 15 million acres in
State parks, forests, or forest parks; upon 9% million acres of national
parks; upon 176 million acres of national forests, the country over. Condi-
tions, circumstances, and opportunities are so various among these public
properties that different types of administration seem wise and necessary,
and increased demands raise questions of recreation administration which
concern State foresters, members of the National Park Service, and the
United States Forest Service alike.

The results most likely to follow, were the process allowed to increase
and accelerate absolutely undirected and ungoverned, would be simply an
old story repeated. Rushing, seeking to get away from it all, people tend
to take it all back with them, and so clutter up, maim, or destroy the natural
beauty, quietude, and freedom they impulsively seek.

In a manner of speaking, then, the problem comprises the whole prob-
lem of civilization. Here are a people sick at heart in the main of jungle
drumbeat to swingtime poured into their homes, day and night, under
guise of recreation over that magical modern instrument of instant com-
munication, the radio. We are sick of noise, bewilderment, confusion; of
the imitative, step-it-up technique by which so many of our magazines,
talking pictures, tabloids, comic strips, books, and advertisements seek
to divert and comfort us. So we pack the car, pile in the family, hit out for
the woods — with a pile of magazines on the back seat, and the radio blaring
full tilt.

Society may move to restore what it has destroyed or maimed. But to
impose strict supervision upon Americans seeking national-forest outings—
to herd them, however tactfully — is to thwart the very spirit of the adven-
ture, to slap down any developing spirit of rest and sense of freedom. The
wish and impulse of the Forest Service is simply to turn all these millions
of forest visitors loose, to govern or regiment them not at all. But experience
shows that on more heavily used recreation areas some rules are necessary.

-.11***

Refuge is provided for fish and game; why not for people?

SELWAY-BITTERROOT WILDERNESS AREA,
LOLO NATIONAL FOREST, IDAHO.

AMERICANS NEED OUTINGS 31

It is quite a problem. Even so, when it conies to national-forest recreation
the Jeffersonian tenet that "the best government is the least government"
still stands.

OBJECTIVES . . . The first objective is to provide a natural and simple
environment. This calls for such simple and human administration as will
encourage individual enjoyment of the forms of recreation natural to the
forest; as will maintain as much as possible of the native simplicity of the
forest; as will avoid man-made refinements not required for the protection
of the health, safety, and reasonable convenience of users, or for the pro-
tection of the forest property.

A second objective of national-forest policy is to provide graded steps
through which the individual may progressively educate himself from en-
joyment of mass forms of forest recreation toward the capacity to enjoy those
demanding greater skill, more self-reliance, and a true love of the wild. Most
men or women previously unacquainted with the forest in its natural state
would experience discomfort and fear, and might even be in serious danger
if moved in a single step from the accustomed city to the unaccustomed
wilderness. But if progressively they may experience the urbanized forest
park, the large forest campground, the small camping group, the overnight or
week-end hike, and so gain a sense of confidence in their own resourcefulness
and lose the fear of wild country, then the final step is simple and natural.

A third major objective is protection of the resource against the added
hazards introduced by recreational use. Protection of forest land involves
not only extension of the customary protective machinery against fire and
other enemies of the forest, but also the institution of administrative measures
needed to prevent the destruction of recreational values.

The values to be defended are not only quantitative values, such as size
and density of timber stands; but qualitative also. Each forest type has its
individual scenic possibilities, variety of vegetation, contrasts between open
and closed forests, patterns of color, ever-varying natural composition of
the scene. These combine to produce a composite quality, ranging from the
uninteresting and monotonous to the wild and majestic, and all in basic
contrast to the environment in which most people live.

The first objective is to provide a natural and simple environment.

CLEAR SPRINGS RECREATIONAL AREA,
HOMOCHITTO NATIONAL FOREST, MISS.

AMERICANS NEED OUTINGS 33

And there are other aspects of the forest even less obvious, little known,
but vastly important. Viewed at a given moment in its natural state, any
forest appears fixed, unchanging, static. But the status of the moment is
the end result of an age-long conflict of each class, type, species, and indi-
vidual form of vegetation with the whole environment of soil, temperature,
moisture; of each species and individual with the exact environment of
particular spots in the whole; between neighboring individuals to capture
growing space, light, moisture; between every rooted tree or plant and such
parasitic and destructive biotic forms as fungi, mistletoe, and insects that
draw life from the life of the plant; and finally with the catastrophic forces —
lightning, wind, fire, flood — that may annihilate individuals, species, or
whole forest societies.

This process of struggle and competition is never ceasing, though usu-
ally invisible. It is as fervently and ruthlessly fought as the most savage of
human wars. In it, individuals, species, and whole forest societies win or
lose often on relatively trivial and insignificant changes in the alignment
of forces. Slightly more or less moisture, an increase of tree-killing insects,
the deposition of silt by a flood; any one or all of these may have a decisive
effect on the changing tides of battle. Inwardly the forest is powerfully
dynamic, never static.

Modern man in general is a timid adventurer outside of his accustomed
haunts. The very young may hunt or elude wild Indians in city parks in
fearless imitation of grown-up Indian fighters, but the great number of
adults who lack any personal experience in the friendly forest of today have
a deeply founded suspicion based upon the forest's ancient hostility to man.
The only way in which these inexperienced urbanites may overcome this
suspicion and learn the values native to the forest, a feeling of safety in it, a
capacity to enjoy it, is by gradual adventuring for pleasure.

As the frontiers pushed westward, as the forest was subjugated, as order,
safety, and the rule of law were established, as men escaped from the never-
ending labor of the pioneer and acquired leisure and means, forest recrea-
tion began its growth. First, hunting and fishing for sport rather than
sustenance. Later, the festival, the camping party, the picnic as a brief
escape from the congestion of the city or the chores of the farm. Still later,

34 FOREST OUTINGS

mountain climbing as a sport, nature study, and winter sports; and last of
all, enjoyment of the wilderness — from which America had so recently been
wrought.

Today, Americans in general exhibit a restless interest in forest hunting,
fishing, camping, picnicking, mountain climbing, hiking, nonprofessional
study of wildlife and geology, nonprofessional collecting, riding, swimming,
boating, exploring the wilderness, cross-country skiing, snowshoeing, and
auto touring.

The range of the list suggests that no one of these diversions is in any
real sense in competition with the other. The dyed-in-the-wool deep-sea
fisherman may well have a lofty scorn for those anglers whose delight is to
beguile 10-inch trout from a willow-shaded brook. The devotee of ocean
swimming quite possibly regards the wilderness lover as mildly, if harm-
lessly, insane. The confirmed deer hunter, accustomed to arduous work in
following his favorite sport, may recognize with broad charity but little
interest that the, to him, passive and purposeless sport of boating does have
an appeal to many.

Yet all these forms of recreation, when practiced in the forest, have
common characteristics. Like the forest, they are in sharp outward contrast
to the usual environments of life — as different from them as the electric
stove in the steam-heated city apartment is from the open campfire at the
edge of the lake. They have the inner aspect of naturalness, freshness, sim-
plicity, cleanliness, and a more or less primitive quality, in equally sharp
contrast to the artificiality, monotony, elaborateness, and sophistication of
the city.

All these things belong to the forest. They are in tone with it and insepa-
rable from it. They remove man from the dominance of artificial patterns
and schedules and bring relaxation and leisure. There he need encounter
no time clocks to punch, no trains to catch, no jostling, no elbowing, no
narrow walls and fetid air, no split-second dashing from one pressure task
to the next. Forest outings offer full play for a while to any choice of occu-
pation. Humans may seek adventure in their own way and on their own
terms — hunt, shin up a mountain, or loaf — and thereby capture a sense of
freedom personally. They are removed from the necessity to meet business

AMERICANS NEED OUTINGS 35

engagements, to keep books, to write letters, to tend a machine, to keep
house. They can live for the moment on their own. They can wear the
clothes of their choice, eat when they please, loaf or work, go exploring, or
go to sleep, undisturbed. They may catch the largest fish, build the best
campfire, bake the tastiest Dutch-oven bread, climb the highest mountain,
or discover the most breath-taking view. They have the chance to regain
physical and mental tone; to achieve satisfying, wholly personal proof
of their abilities and prowess; to recapture a sense of their own personal
significance, and to rest.

Men take their vacations far from home where the trout jump
and the mountain trails lead away to the peaks above timber line.

PACKWOOD LAKE, COLUMBIA NATIONAL FOREST, WASH.

Guests of the Forests

. . . There is nothing so much alive and yet so quiet as a woodland; and a pair of people,

swinging past in canoes, feel very small and bustling by comparison.

I wish our way had always lain among woods. Trees are the most civil society.

Robert Louis Stevenson, An Inland Voyage

EACH YEAR THEY COME, more and more of them, seeking the lost far
places where time is stilled and care forgotten in the long stillness. In our
West you will most often find them and most widely scattered; for the
West is closer, both in point of time and miles, to its natural outdoor sources
than is most of the East.

Outdoor recreation — "going up the mountain"-— is a recognized
natural part of the general life out there. From the country of the
Rockies to the Pacific Ocean there is scarcely a town that does not lie
within rather easy driving distance of a national park or forest. Families
can pack the youngsters into a car and drive out to the nearest camp-
ground for a picnic supper. The men fish or play or loaf and the children
swim or romp while the shadows grow long. Then when night falls and
the stars come out, they gather around the campfire and sing or play games
or talk until it is time to go home.

In the West they know better than easterners know, as a rule, how to
take care of themselves in the open. They are closer to the time when
they had to, on their own. But East or West, wherever you find them, they
are pretty much the same people that you meet next door, across the
street, or anywhere in this country that you travel.

37

38 FOREST OUTINGS

From out on the sweltering plains of the Rocky Mountain front come
dusty farmers driving a hundred miles or more with a tent strapped on
the back of the car. They climb to the cool greenness of the Black Hills or
the wind-swept slopes of the Big Horns and spend the week end or perhaps
just Sunday. Sunburnt farmers of the Idaho wheatfields and sturdy mill
hands take to the hills with their families, club members pack up for a
Sunday outing in the forests where they practice their hobby and play
games and take life easy. Store hands and drug clerks, firemen, and police-
men go into the woods where the nights are cool.

Men take their vacations far from home where the trout jump and the
mountain trails lead away to the peaks above timber line. Families drive
from Denver west over the divides to the spruce-rimmed lakes high on
the mesa country. If time is short, they will drive all night with the chil-
dren asleep in the back seat. Adventurers pitch camp and pack into the
wilderness where only a trail or a blaze shows the path of man.

Youngsters working early or late shifts at the mills get to the nearest lake to
swim and laze in the sun. Small boys pack a bit of canvas and a few cans of
beans and eagerly make their way to the nearest water hole where they fish
and swim and explore to their heart's content.

To go as a forest guest, yourself, with a car or pack train and tentage; to
see and talk with many different people out there enjoying themselves; to
forget, or to forget to mention official connection and interest in the spec-
tacle— that is the only way really to understand what forest recreation is in
this modern time and age. The notes which follow were so obtained. They
are sketches of actual people— candid shots of camper guests at actual sites
on national-forest land.

YOUNG COUPLE FROM SPOKANE . . . Here the northern Rockies stretch
like long fingers into northern Idaho. Between the tree-covered slopes of these
ranges lies Priest Lake, 20 miles long, on the Kaniksu National Forest.
Only one shore of this lake is accessible by road and on this side lie the free
campgrounds where this young couple from Spokane were spending their 2
weeks' vacation.

All afternoon they lay stretched out on the wide white beach in the heat of

GUESTS OF THE FORESTS 39

a July sun. Their bodies were tanned, their eyes shaded with dark glasses,
their elbows propped upon towels as they read. They had a little wire-haired
terrier named Susan. Every now and then Susan besought attention. The
man would rise and throw a stick out in the water for her to chase. His name
was Ralph. He was an engineer. His wife, Ann, worked in a Spokane library
and they were taking their vacations together.

Ann stretched lazily and sat up. She brushed the sand off her bathing
suit and threw a pebble at her husband.

"What say to taking a plunge and then making tracks for supper? I'm
hungry." She looked out over the lake. It lay clear and rippling. The far
shore hung in a blue haze with the mountains rising deeper blue beyond.
Voices floated up from the resort down the beach, and far out over the water
a mo tor boat droned.

Ralph sat up. "Gee, but I'll hate to leave this place and go back to
work. What's the idea of working, anyway, when you can live like this?"
he said.

They swam far out, then back.

"Beat you up the bank," she called as she ran up the path to their tent.
Ralph laughed and picked up the things on the beach. The shadows
stretched out to the water but the sand still felt warm He could just see
the ridge of the tent between the scrub growth and firs at the top of
the bank.

They ate on the rough log table. The smoke of the supper fire curled
lazily up through the trees. After they had washed the dishes they went
for a walk on the beach. The lake was quiet with early evening stillness.
The mountains were purple now, rising peak on peak into the blue. The
moon came up, painting the world with silver.

They swam again, lazily breaking the path of the moon. When they
came in, Ralph built a fire of driftwood on the beach and toasted marsh-
mallows. Ann was sleepy. She lay wrapped in a blanket with her head on
Ralph's lap, watching the flames, and Susan, the dog, curled up by her
knees. Once in a great while a car shuttled down the camp road behind
them. Little waves lapped on their boat drawn up on the beach, and the
wood fire crackled. "It sure is nice here," he said.

40 FOREST OUTINGS

FAMILY AND FISHERMAN ... As you drive south in the lower western
corner of Montana, the country changes from the wide flat brown valleys
between steep black mountains around Bozeman to the choppy, green-
timbered country of the Gallatin National Forest. A campground lies
just off the road, deep in the mountain crotch cut by the tumbling Gallatin
River. Here the sun comes late in the morning and drops early over the
Spanish Peaks which rise to 10,000 feet, 11,000 on the west. It is an open
grassy place, fringed with bushes and tall spruces and firs.

Two brown tents were pitched under the trees by the stream at one
end. It was cool and quiet under the trees. The early afternoon sun made
gold splashes on the pine needles on the ground, and the tops of the spruces
showed silvery against the brilliant china blue and white sky.

Down at the other end of the campground stood another tent half in
the sun, half in the trees. Here the bank was open, grass covered, and the
river flattened out, running shallow over the rocks.

Two little girls sat playing on the bank. Nancy, the smaller, sat with
her chubby short legs stuck out in front of her. Her bright-pink bathing
suit was smudged in front where she occasionally wiped her hands. With
one little finger she traced the slow path of a beetle in the dirt. Every now
and then Joan covered it with dust and Nancy gurgled, watching the bug's
frantic efforts to throw it off. Their neatly combed heads, each with a little
hair ribbon, were bent in earnest observation. A few feet off their mother,
Mrs. Walters, sat on a log sunning herself. Her full, plain face was flushed.
Gingerly she felt her shoulders.

"Joan," she called, "Will you come put some of this sun-tan oil on my
back?"

The child hopped up and went over to her mother. At the camp table
nearby Ed. Walters relaxed in the shade, a magazine propped up in front
of him, a half-amused smile on his lips.

"There, that's enough." His wife took the bottle and screwed the top
on thoughtfully.

"Swell article you oughta read in here," he told her. She smiled absent-
mindedly and went toward the tent.

"What you up to now?" he asked.

GUESTS OF THE FORESTS 41

"We've got to have some meat for supper and I thought I'd send
Mama a card. It's Saturday already, we've been here almost a week and I
haven't written her once. How would you like some more of that ham-
burger for supper?"

"Yea, sure. Anything you get's okeh." He squinted his eyes at Nancy
sitting in the bright sunlight. She looked up at him and dimpled. He went
over and picked her up.

"You're a cute one," he said. "And you're gonna be 4 years old to-
morrow. Hurray!" He set her down inside the tent.

"Someone needing a dress, mother, and maybe a clean face."

Now it was late afternoon, towards dusk. A fisherman moved up-
stream until he stood opposite them. He was a tall man, strong, lithe.
His body leaned against the swiftly moving water. Walters and his chil-
dren sat carefully on the edge of the bank on the grass watching absorbedly.

The fisherman worked easily. While they watched, he caught two fish.
Each time he looked over at them sitting on the bank and waved. The
children clapped their hands and hunched their shoulders. Then he lost
his fly, so he ran in his reel and came over.

"Hello. My name's Carlson, Chris Carlson." He shook hands with
Walters.

"How's that?" He showed the children the dozen trout in his basket.

"Me, I'm not much good at this fish catching myself," Walters said,
and laughed apologetically. "You must be an expert."

Chris replied in a soft drawling voice. "Well, soon as spring comes
along I git the itch so bad I can't set still. So I hit the road. I've fished
pret' near everything 'tween here and Vegas."

"As a matter of fact," he went on, "my dad taught me to fish when
I was a kid of 4 an' I've jest been fishin' ever since. Been up and down this
stream 'bout 4 years now."

"You're lucky to be able to take so much time doing it," Walters said.

Chris scratched a match on the table and lit a cigarette. "Sellin'," he
replied, looking over the match at Walters, his blue eyes steady, narrowed
against the smoke. "Sellin' ladies' dresses and men's and ladies' suits.

42 FOREST OUTINGS

The trouble with us guys," he said, getting up, "is that as soon as we git
some dough we jest have to lay off an' go fishin' or somethin' like that.
We'd make more money than anyone else if we jest kept sellin'."

He hitched up his pants. "We've camped right down there; friend of
mine an' his wife an' another guy. Those other two tents are ours." He
pointed down the campground. 'Come down an' see us," he said.

Chris sauntered down towards his camp. He remembered his fish and
cut through to the shore. Down on the rocks another fisherman was clean-
ing his catch. He looked up when Chris walked toward him.

"Hello, there, you bum. Any luck?"

Chris showed him the 12 rainbows.

"Good. They'll be better eating than some of these. Let's get supper."
He leaned over and picked up the fish.

Chris laughed and climbed up the bank. The other followed and they
went along the path to their camp.

The sun had gone down but it was still light. After supper Chris took
his rod and basket and went off to the stream. Up in the bend there was a
place where the water ran deeper and quieter. Slowly he walked out. Nice,
that first feel of water pushing on your legs; oughta get some good ones here.

Now down the river a woman has ceased for a while a visit with these
friendly forest neighbors and herself was fishing fast water. The clouds were
saffron colored, smoky on the edges. The water was black save where it
caught the light of the sky and turned to liquid mercury and gold running
on the surface. She liked this, being alone out here. She cast and recast far
out over the water, smooth save where the eddies caught it and sucked it
down in little swirls.

She felt the line tighten, then the reel sang out. The silver arc of a rainbow
flashed. She played with it, bringing it in closer with each run and leaned
down, scooping the trout in her net. Carefully she removed the hook and
dropped the fish in the basket. Again the line whipped out and nicked the
water. Slowly she took up the slack as it floated back toward her. Suddenly
it stiffened. She braced herself quickly and let the reel spin.

GUESTS OF THE FORESTS 43

"Gosh," she muttered, working hard to bring the fish in closer.

It was abreast of her now. She only could see it when it broke the water,
leaping and bucking. The line pulled too taut. She let it out a bit, and the
fish ran hard for the far shore. Suddenly the line went limp. All fishermen
know that feeling, but she kept hoping as she wound in. Only the frayed
leader swung out of the water, and somewhere among the dark rocks a
rainbow nursed the fly.

She caught three more and then her luck ran out. The light was going
over the mountains. You could hardly see the edges of the streams. Every-
thing had grown fuzzy in the half light. She wound in the reel and snapped
the lock. Then she picked her way across the stream. Down by the Walters'
site she could see the council fire going and the children dancing around it
and singing. Some of their friends had come out from Bozeman for the
evening. She went over and joined the party; and the next day moved on.

A SINGLE LADY TAKING NOTES, she traveled on alone; and later, despairing
of conveying direct human impressions without candid and forthright use
of the first person singular, she wrote as a forest reporter to her Chief in
Washington :

You know the St. Joe Forest of Northern Idaho. The camp sites run
along one side of a broad grass field and the river swings out on the far side
close to the trees. This has become a favorite picnic place for the farmers
nearby and the mill hands of the Potlatch Lumber Company. About 30 log
tables and stoves are scattered irregularly in the cool shade under the pines.
I pitched camp here Saturday evening. The only other campers were a
family from Potlatch at a site nearby.

Sunday I woke slowly. The sun was up and the mosquitoes were buzz-
ing. I heard the deep rolling laughter of sturdy men and intermittent thuds
of heavy objects dropping on the duff. I opened my eyes and looked around.
My watch said only 5 o'clock. Not far away stood a big open truck and men,
most of them very young, were unloading ice cream and beer kegs. Others
were driving stakes.

"Look there, those folks may wanna sleep," one of them said. "Too bad.
Guess they just can't!"

44 FOREST OUTINGS

Low voices and laughter. They surely were enjoying being up at this early
hour. They lit a fire in the camp stove near me and put on big kettles to boil.
Sleep was impossible so I lazily watched them and looked up through the
trees at the sky. Then I got up.

I went over to investigate the possibilities of getting some breakfast
cooked on the crowded stove. I was met with great friendliness and the
offer of anything they had.

"Don't know whether you like liquor or not, lady, but here's some if you
care to sample it." One of them proffered a bottle. I politely refused and
cooked my oatmeal and cocoa while they moved around me.

"We're putting up stands to hand out this beer and stuff at, an' there'll
be hot dogs and sandwiches. Don't forget it, if you git hungry," one offered.

"You know the Potlatch Lumber Company?" another asked.

I nodded.

"Well, that's us. That is, the mill is divided up into divisions accordin'
to what the work is an' there's a safety contest. Whatever division doesn't
have an accident for 2 months gits 25 bucks. Us an' another division have
gone 2 months now and we're just clubbin' together so's to have more stuff.
Our families'll come out here for the day."

Another truck came in and stopped a way off. That was the other division.
They started doing the same things that the first one had. They were all
very friendly. I was just about to put on the eggs when I was confronted
with a strawberry ice-cream cone. It was impossible in the face of such
hospitality to refuse. They would not take no for an answer.

"Anything we have that you'd like, be sure an' ask fur it."

One of the men looked up from his work at me.

"You know, it's nice here. We play softball on the field out there."

More cars started to come. All day the cattle-guards at the entrance rang
and the dust rose over the meadow until it hung like a yellow mist in the sun-
light. The woods were alive with people. The kids started eating the minute
they got there and ran circles around the picnickers. As the sun grew hot,
people broke away and went swimming down the river.

They shifted about. Little groups formed here and there, then broke up
and new groups formed. They walked about in two's and three's under the

GUESTS OF THE FORESTS 45

trees in the filtered sunshine, eating, talking, laughing noisily. The thick
layer of pine needles muted footfalls. In three or four places men played
horseshoes, slow and easy, punctuated with ribald jests.

"Hello, sister," I was greeted as I sat down on a log and watched a game.

"Lo."

"Your buddy left you all alone?"

I grinned, but decided not to say anything. He soon went ambling off
with a pretty high school girl who blinked her eyes at him. People came and
watched the game, then moved on. Adolescents moved about self-consciously
on their long, young legs.

After lunch some of the energetic youths of my prebreakfast acquaintance
organized games. They had prizes and they went around trying to herd
everyone out on the field. Full of food and lazy in the midday heat, they were
sluggish.

"Come on, everybody."

"Come on out to the field; we're gonna have some races."

"Here's your chance to show how good you are."

They drifted slowly out into the white sunlight. Already an improvised
game of softball was going on in one corner.

There were relay races for 7- to 10-year-olds, boys, then girls. There were
races for the older ones. There were three-legged races. There was a race for
the women to sew buttons on the men's shirts. The final event was an old-
fashioned tug-of-war, which nearly ended in a fight.

A lot of them went swimming again. The general tempo quieted down,
fatigue encroached. The chocolate-smeared children were hauled off by their
parents, some crying. Many were already asleep on the ground. Others
flopped down where they were. Their limp, shapeless figures sprawled in
the sun with the abandon of the sleeper. The sharp clink of horseshoes on
metal stake rang under the trees.

As the sun tipped the trees in the west the campground came to life. The
children woke up and started careening around. People got up stiffly from the
ground. They stood around and yawned, slowly orienting themselves.

One by one cars started leaving for home. As the shadows grew long across
the field, the crowd flattened out. People moved through the trees, wearily

46 FOREST OUTINGS

picking up scattered belongings. Slowly the dust settled in the twilight.
Smoke rose from supper fires where some had decided to stay longer. Some-
one built a fire in the council ring. They sat around it and sang in the gather-
ing darkness.

ANACONDA, the copper town, lies in a burnt, sweltering valley. The rows of
paintless little houses that creep up the hill to the mill belie the bright
activity of the main street. Towering over the city stands the giant smelter
smokestack, belching yellow smoke over the bare, brown hills nearby.
Saturday afternoon the streets are full of cars and people streaming down
the hill from the mill. The air is hot and smells of acrid fumes from the
plant.

Twenty miles to the west lies the Deerlodge National Forest, with
Echo Lake and the cool recesses of the forest to which these people can
escape. Many families drive out for picnicking and camping, but the
majority of users are the young people who run up there for some fun and
privacy in the out of doors.

The campground road makes a loop on the hill, circled by camp sites.
There are more than a dozen sites here and they were almost filled. Sun-
light was caught in the treetops, throwing green into the water. At one
of the camp sites two girls, both young, had a fire going and some cooking
pans standing by. They wore bathing suits. Their names, they said, were
Jen and Sue. They were getting supper for "a coupla fellows," Jim and
Bill, who were going to drive up to Deerlodge after their day's work in
Anaconda. A third girl, named Bett, had brought Jen and Sue up in her
car and was swimming. But Bett would be back. Harry, her fellow, was
coming too.

"That's them," said Jen. A very old car, minus fenders, top, and
rear seat, stalled at the bottom of the hill, by the lake. Two of the men got
out and "rocked" her. "You have to do that; the starter just gets on dead
center, or something, Jim says," said Jen.

The old car roared into life. The two men who had rocked her — as
one would rock a cradle if the cradle were big as a car and had rusty
springs — piled in. Youth came roaring and snorting into camp to join the

GUESTS OF THE FORESTS 47

ladies. They drew up with a flourish, slammed on brakes, slid a little, and
Jim, at the wheel, shouted:

"Get a load of that! Jen's picked a nutsy place right by the water.
What ya cookin'?" He pushed an old slouch hat to the back of his head.
Then, "Hi ya, gals! How ya fixed?" he drawled.

Jen looked up from the fire and grinned.

"Lo," she replied dispassionately and pushed brown curls out of her
eyes.

"Where's Bett?" the biggest man of the three asked mildly. This was
Harry.

"Swimming," said Sue. "See you there," said Harry. The men chugged
the car over to the Boy Scout shack down the beach, to dress.

"Let's go," said Jen, "We can cook after dark." Leaving the fire to
burn itself out on the open hearth and the half-cooked grub to cool, we
went down to the swimming pier.

Bett was there. I was introduced. We sat and talked until the men came.

The purr of a motorboat drifted across the lake. We lay in our bathing
suits on the dock. Bett complained:

"Gee, those kids are taking a long time."

Sue grunted and turned over. "These boards are gettin' into my bones.
Wish they'd hurry."

Jen squinted her little nose and looked up at the sun. "Jim was cute
last night, wasn't he?"

Sue cocked an eye up at her. "Thinkin' of marryin' him?"

"Naw, I'm not that crazy about any of the kids in town." She care-
fully observed a long crimson fingernail. "After school this year ma says
I kin go to Salt Lake City an' learn to be a nurse. Then I dunno what'll
happen." She sat down on the edge of the dock and put on her bathing
cap. "I'm goin' in. Who's comin'?"

But then the men arrived. "Hi ya, kid!" . . . "Hello, there you mer-
maids!" . . . "Hello, yerself, an' what time do you think it is, anyway?"

"Well, here we are. Hold everything!"

"What a bunch of palookas," said Jen, scornfully, and yelped as Jim
pinched her, then giggled and dove. He dove after her.

48 FOREST OUTINGS

But I was the first one in. Six is company, seven a crowd. I figured that
I had gone at this point as far as is proper in examination of the recrea-
tional attitudes of such decent, friendly, and bewildered youngsters. "See
you later," I called and swam back to my camp.

The other two couples took quite a while at their kidding, rough-
housing, and loud talk before they too plunged into the stilled expanse of
that beautiful lake and swam together quietly.

Next day was Sunday. Outside the girls' tent Jen, the first one up,
gave a final stir to a smoldering can of beans, then stuck her head into the
tent and hollered:

"Hey! the fellas want us to eat with 'em. Let's take the beans and
tomatoes up. They got coffee."

She struggled with her straight hair in the small hand mirror.

"Nuts! Why wasn't I born with curly hair?" She put on a sweater.
"Those guys oughta be dressed by now. Let's go up."

Sue got up sleepily and started to dress. "Me'n Bill had another battle
last night," she said.

"What's eatin' Bill, anyway?" asked Jen. "Can't he stand his job?"

"Oh, the job's okeh. But it ain't getting us anywhere."

"You're telling me!" said Jen. "Come on; let's eat."

They swam again, twice, and hiked that day. The camp was full now.
Every overnight site and every picnic table was taken. Night came on.
The holiday crowd grew quiet, each little group busy around its own
stove. Occasionally the rhythmic crack of a wood chopper snapped through
the dusk. Then the stars came out and the boys and girls drifted down to
the council fireplace on the beach.

Bill and Jim carried in driftwood.

"Say, Harry, this stuff's wet. Git that can of kerosene we washed the
engine in. That'll make it go."

"Okeh. C'mon, Bett. Let's go." Bett leaped to her feet. She started. He
rose and followed. Cries from the crowd at the council fire. One man cried,
"Take it away, sister!"

Jen spoke more sternly: "Listen, you! Don't go into any clinches. We
want that juice here before we freeze."

GUESTS OF THE FORESTS 49

Everybody laughed. Bett looked up at Bill. The firelight accented the
hollows at her cheekbones, the hollows under her eyes, marks of long hours
at the mill. She cocked a saucy brow and winked. "Don't worry. We'll get
your old kerosene."

Laughter rang out. They soon were back. The fire leaped high. Other
campers drifted down to the warmth of the fire and the people.

Bill still was moody. He kept jumping up from Sue's side and piling more
wood on the fire. Sue's eyes followed his every movement. She sought to
reclaim him:

"Guess what, Bill?"

"What?"

"We brought the vie!"

"Say, that's somethin'. That's what we'll do. After this, we'll take it
over to the Boy Scouts' shack and dance."

She nodded.

Someone started to sing: "I've been working on the railroad, all the live-
long day." . . . Most of them took up the song. But Bill was silent and so
was Sue. They sat on logs up front in the small council-fire amphitheater,
close to the fire. The fire cast yellow light inside the foremost ring and a deep
leaping shadow back from there. The families withdrew as the evening
deepened. Children grew cold and cried to be taken in. Parents grew cold
and were glad to creep under wool and canvas with their young. Only four
of us, blanketed like Indians, remained at the council fire when Sue and
Bill left it.

"Well, what are we sittin' here for?" Bill asked abruptly.

Sue put her hand on his arm. She told him in a whisper to "remember
what we said."

He muttered something.

"Bill, don't be like that! Look, I got to finish school! I got to!
This one year more and it'll be all over and then I'll get a job and we'll be
all set."

"Sure, I know. You're all right, kid !" he said.

"Come on. Let's go in, Bill. It's cold out here. Come on. Let's go in and
dance."

50 FOREST OUTINGS

THE WESTERN Colorado mountains push up between the clear spruce-
rimmed lakes of the White River National Forest. A single road runs deep
into the forest and dead-ends at Trappers' Lake. The road ends in a big
turn-around ringed with camp sites.

I parked the car and got out. It was Sunday of Labor Day week end.
There were many other cars parked here and all of the prepared camp sites
were taken except one. I must have stood there looking around quite
awhile when I was hailed:

"Hey there, young lady, kin I help you?"

I turned. An old-timer stood scratching his tousled white head and
smiling. I walked over to where he stood.

"Can't make up my mind where to hang my tent."

He rubbed his hand down his bristly chin. "You be goin' to have
trouble gittin' dry wood too. Hev ya got any with you?"

I shook my head.

"Well, I tell you what. See, I'm cookin' for these two guys from
Denver. They're off fishin' now. You eat supper with us, then you won'
have to think about wood. How's that?"

"Just the three of you?"

"Yep, an' don' worry about the other two; they'd be glad to hev you."

"Fine! I'll put the tent up over across the road there."

"Yeah, you do thet now, an' you come back when you're finished."

I put up the tent and got my bed out. The ground was covered with
pine needles and my boots made little circles of water where I stepped.
When I was finished, I went across the road to Steve, the old-timer.

"Here, Miss, will you stir this while I go git some more wood?"

People were still coming down the road from the lake. One couple, a
man and his wife, stopped and talked to Steve about fishing.

"Nice folks," he said, coming back with the wood. "An ole fireman an'
his wife from Salida, up here for a vacation."

We sat down at the table to peel potatoes. Steve went on. "He's got
diabetes an's gotta be mighty careful. You oughta take a look at their tent,
Miss. Nice little stove, big double bed, an' even a lantern. Snug as any-
thing. They're not like those two camped down there next to you," he

GUESTS OF THE FORESTS 51

pointed. "I've been watchin' 'em an' they don' never seem to say much to
each other. Jist act glum."

Every now and then someone coming back from the lake passed in the
dusk and called "hello" to Steve. He got up and put the potatoes on the fire.

"Those guys oughta be comin' back soon. One of 'em's got a lot of
money, Barney we call 'im. Al, the other one's jist a friend of his. They like
to git away, but they don' like the dirty work so I come along an' pitch
camp an' cook for 'em. You'll like Barney."

We could see the flickering light of the other fires around. A tall,
heavy man pushed into the circle of light around our fire. It was Barney,
and Al, slight and wiry, followed. They grinned at me and kidded Steve.
Barney sat his big frame down on the bench and sighed; he was tired. He
pulled his long rubber boots off slowly and his eyes twinkled at me across
the fire. They hadn't had much luck fishing and were thinking of leaving
in the morning.

"Thick as thieves up the stream at the head of the lake," said Al."Catchin'
each other's lines instead of fish."

I tried to find out what business Barney was in but he kidded me, saying
that he was a sheepherder. I asked him how he liked roughing it in the woods.

"It's all right. This campin' racket, comin' out here 'n' sleeping, cold 'n'
gettin' wet; just a way of gettin' a change. That's all it is. It's just something
different."

Steve scowled over his coffee cup. "No life for an old guy like me, goin'
on 74."

Barney smiled. "Not like the good old days when you were running the
crack trains out of Denver, eh, Steve? He was the best engineer on the line,
Miss."

"But we didn' have it soft like this when I was young. We took a train
or a stage as far as it would go an' then packed in, where there weren't any
dudes muckin' aroun'."

We washed up and the men sat around and smoked and talked awhile.
Then Barney and Al went up to their tent to bed. Steve and I moved over
and sat on some big logs by the fire. It was colder and quiet except for the
wind in the pine tops and the stream falling close by.

oughta take a look at their tent . . . Mice little stove,
big double bed, an} even a lantern. Snug as anything.

LEWIS AND CLARK NATIONAL FOREST, MONT.

GUESTS OF THE FORESTS 53

"Nice, settin' aroun' a fire, ain't it?" He grinned at me and rubbed his
hands near the blaze. "I like havin' women aroun', too. Gives ya nice feelin'.
Lonely settin' aroun' alone." He looked through the branches up at the
stars. They fascinated him. He talked awhile about the universes of stars
beyond those we could see, about how there must be some plan for them all
and how it gave him a religion. I asked him about Barney.

"Naw, he ain't no sheepherder. Never teched a sheep in his life, don'
think. He's in business, made a pile of money. He's got what it takes to make
the women look at him, too. Some guy. He's been married twice."

I felt sleepy and got up to go. He said to be sure and come over and use his
fire again in the morning. I thanked him and left, feeling my way around the
puddles in the road in the dark. The bed was warm and the night lay heavy
and still.

MOST national-forest campgrounds are off the beaten track, deep in the
mountains, but some lie close to the highways where the stream curves away
or the road dips in a glade. These are unlike the other campgrounds. Here
life is transient. This is but a brief stop on the way and one does not often
get acquainted with one's neighbors. People slam in at 5 in the evening,
pitch camp, eat and turn in, and are off pounding the roads at the crack of
dawn.

There are a few like this on the road from Cody into Yellowstone
National Park. I stopped at Pahaska campground, which lies in a bend of
the north fork of the Shoshone. Cotton clouds towed their lumbering
shadows over the mountains and all day the long yellow sightseeing buses
from Cody churned the dust in their roaring climb.

The long strip of camp sites was deserted when I got there at 10:30 in
the morning, except for a couple of temporarily abandoned trailers that
looked like chickens standing on one leg with their eyes shut. The tall
cottonwoods were silver in the sunlight.

Lunch time came and^ cars started dropping out of the stream on the
road, dropping down .to the quiet eddy of the campground — cars from
Wyoming, cars from South Dakota, cars from Ohio, Nebraska, California.
Another trailer came in. The people sat in tight little groups. If there were

54 FOREST OUTINGS

children, some of them wandered over to the water, but the minute lunch
was over, they were whisked away in the car, back on the road; and once
again I had the place to myself.

During the afternoon the owners of the deserted trailers came back.
They had been sightseeing in the park. They sat around and talked and
rested. They were at home on the road — time was their privilege.

From about 5 on, every now and then a car turned off the road and
slipped down to the campground. Quickly they would pitch camp and eat
supper. They were tired and quiet. A young German boy and girl from
Boston camped on one side of me. They wore heavy boots and their bare,
knobby knees stuck out under their shorts. On the other side were two
couples from Ohio. They rolled out their blankets on the ground. If it
had rained, they would have slept in their car. But it didn't rain although
the lightning played in the mountains. Instead, the moon came out and
made patterns under the trees and just before I fell asleep, I saw another
car come in. The occupants ate quickly in the glare of their headlights,
quietly, and turned in.

When I woke next morning, it was very early. The sun had not yet
reached the valley. The mist spiraled over the stream. The Ohio people
were leaving. The running engine of their car had wakened me. Others
were stirring. I lay lazily, half awake, watching them pack up and leave.
By 9:30 only the trailers were left and the German boy and girl. They were
busy writing postcards on their log table. Then they left, too.

From coast to coast there are thousands like these, on the go. Some like
to keep moving, they are restless; but there are others, too, who like to run
away and be quiet in some bit of high, timbered land near the sky.

OTHERS . . . And so they come, these guests of our forests, in their thou-
sands and hundreds of thousands, and rest for awhile, most of them. For-
esters sent afield not assigned especially to explore the joys, the troubles, the
tangled life lines of the forest visitors (as the girl reporter just quoted was)
also hear their stories. Even more than in Pullman smokers, turkish baths,
and beauty parlors, there seems to be something in natural and primitive
surroundings which leads joyous, troubled, or beaten wanderers in the modern

GUESTS OF THE FORESTS 55

wilderness to let down their back hair, as the saying goes, to relax, to impart.

No forester, whatever be his special mission afield — to cruise timber, to
audit staff accounts, to check equipment, to trail wood thieves, firebugs, fake
"miners," game hogs, or to examine the effects of human ministrations upon
returning forest cover — no present-day forester, however specialized his
training and interests, can entirely put out of mind the very human and
pressing problem of natural recreation as he goes about his job today.

This, on the whole, has been an excellent thing for the Forest Service.
Direct contact with the public on outings maintains a direct human
approach. There are instances, even, of some of the most technical of foresters,
out on specialized scientific research, accepting a friendly cup of coffee at a
lone campfire and departing hours afterwards a little embarrassed at the
thought of all they themselves contributed to the campfire confessional.

Part Two

KINDS OF OUTINGS

So for one the wet sail arching through the rainbow round

the bow,
And for one the creak of snowshoes on the crust;

And for one the lakeside lilies where the bull moose waits

the cow,
And for one the mule train coughing in the dust.

Who hath smelt wood smoke at twilight? Who hath heard

the birch log burning?
Who is quick to read the noises of the night?

Let him follow with the others for the Young Men's feet are

turning
To the camps of proved desire and known delight.

Rudyard Kipling,

The Feet of The Young Men,

from Five Nations, 1903

F-27900 A. F-350104

eople can get out into the country now far more easily with 30 or go
horsepower propelling them at the governed pressure of a restless foot.

PIKE NATIONAL FOREST, COLO.
PISGAH NATIONAL FOREST, N. C.

A Brief History

Trees give peace to the souls of men — Nora Wain, Reaching For The Stars, 1939.

TO SEEK LONE PLACES for purposes of meditation or diversion is for the
most part a civilized idea. The idea does not generally occur to most people
of races and nations in the primitive stages of their development, and the
idealistic religious significance which many tribes and races have attached to
trees does not as a rule attend the very first struggling stages of human
history.

Only when life has become more settled, more complex, more ritualized;
only as civilizations ripen do we find record of Confucius writing of China's
spiritual commentaries in the friendly solitude of sacred groves of trees, or of
Una guarding the woods of the Pharaohs and finding solace there.

Primitive man was as much a part of the forest as the trees and grass and
wild animals. He fought the wolf and bear for his life. He captured game
and fish that he might live. From the trees he wrested shelter and fuel. Storms,
flood, and fire threatened his life. He lived precariously in the forest because
he had to.

To medieval and to early modern men of the western world, even after
cities had grown great, the forest was still an unfriendly, threatening back-
ground, an enemy. Deep woods were something to be ventured into, not
enjoyed. Outcasts from society fled to the forest and lived as part of it, as had
primitive man. On the wilderness early mankind depended for necessary
game, fish, and vegetable products. It was mainly a source of primitive sur-
vival to be conquered, not of civilized pleasure, to be conserved.

59

60 FOREST OUTINGS

This modern age was well under way before the forest had been subjugated
enough to make it a place for sport or pleasure. The King's forest, reserved
and protected for the sport of monarch and nobility, was perhaps the ear-
liest scene of forest recreation. But hunting was a distinctive prerogative of
royalty, denied with force and punished by death to the commoner. Hunt-
ing by the nobility was strongly utilitarian, for animal husbandry did not
then produce meat in quantity. Hunting, too, gave a stage, a theatre on
which nobility might display the warrior's virtues. The rituals and forms,
the specialized language, the trappings of the royal hunt in the middle and
early modern ages were, like those of their contemporary institution of
chivalry, designed as a theatrical back drop against which individual prowess
might be paraded. The fair, the festival, the fiesta were the earliest uses of the
forest by the common man for pleasure. Venturing in the mass from the
crowded security of walled city into the spaciousness of the outdoors, the
individual found opportunity with relative safety for outlets denied him in his
accustomed life. The festival was only in part native to the forest, but it is
historically of some importance as the original form of mass recreation out of
doors.

Here in America as the virgin forests were subjugated, as order, safety,
and the rule of law were established, as white men, escaping in some part
from the never-ending labor of the pioneer, acquired means and leisure,
natural outdoor recreation began to exert appeal. First came hunting and
fishing for sport rather than sustenance; and later, the festival, the camping
party, the picnic as a brief escape from the congestion of the city or the
endless chores of the farms.

The Indians really had a fairly satisfying American civilization working
long before we came. It grew variously and slowly from this soil and
weather. It included (among the Iroquois) such devices as women's suffrage
and a league to enforce peace. These first Americans worshipped the
omnipotence of natural forces and were governed by natural laws. Their
widely various systems of government were never completely worked out
or final. In many ways the discipline and punishments imposed were
savage and unreasonable. But what of ours?

Wild Indians, as we call them, did not have to drive themselves hard

A BRIEF HISTORY 61

all day long and beg jobs or stand in line for a hand-out or relief. They did
not have to do such things merely to fill their stomachs, to support their
hearts, to clothe and shelter from the weather themselves and their young.
They had learned as a race long before we came here to carry themselves
with a certain natural freedom, to govern themselves in respect to codes of
individual dignity. It is one of the ironies of American history that the idea
of relaxation, sport, and release from care, along with worship in the open,
was rather widely and generally practiced among the Indians that we whites
set out with such ferocious zeal to dispossess and civilize.

Indians, then, were the first users of our forests and wide spaces for
developing purposes of civilized recreation. Small family groups or even
whole tribes moved from one section of the forests to another with the
seasons to pick berries, to fish, to gather wild rice, or to hunt wild game;
and while they were on such outings they would often combine sports and
diversions with the practical job of getting enough to eat.

Even in recent years on the Columbia National Forest in southern
Washington as many as 1,500 Indians from 9 different tribes have gathered
at the Twin Buttes tribal grounds to pick and dry wild huckleberries and
at the same time enjoy horse racing and other native games. This has been
an annual event "since the days of my grandfather's grandfather," one old
chief said. The Crow Indians hold annual games and conclaves. In the
Southwest, the Indians often have dances and fiestas.

The whites were for the most part a shrewd, dry, earthy, practical
people engaged in soil-bound occupations. For 300 years they pushed
ever westward through forests and over plains and mountains, seeking
new lands, new wealth, new homes. Such pioneer diversions as there were
did not separate people but drew them together. They worked alone.
They had their social fun together. They hunted and fished, not altogether
for pastime but often in deadly earnest for food, and their methods were
more notable for death-dealing than for sporting qualities.

Forest use by the white man for general recreation dates, naturally,
earlier in the East than in the West. By 1803 recreation travel in the forest
areas now embraced in the White Mountain National Forest became so
heavy as to warrant the building of a pleasure resort near Crawford Notch,

62 FOREST OUTINGS

and the first summit house on Mount Washington was erected in 1824. In
those early years of the nineteenth century numerous hiking clubs were
formed in New England. Early records and historical writings of the great
Southwest, of California, and the other Western States tell of many people
seeking relief from the tropical summer heat of the valleys in the adjoining
forests and mountains. There they fished, hunted, or simply rested in the
cool shade of the woods and beside lakes or streams.

BRIGHAM YOUNG'S PIC-NIC . . . Among the more interesting of early
accounts of recreational use is one from the records of the Mormon Church
in Utah. The Mormon pioneers arrived in Salt Lake Valley on July 24,
1 847, and it is recorded in their Journal History, a daily record of their
activities, that on August 21 of that year a party climbed Twin Peaks,
lying between Big and Little Cottonwood Canyons on what is now the
Wasatch National Forest.

Again on July 18, 1856, Brigham Young, president of the Mormon
Church, issued the following invitation, and a copy of it was printed in the
local Deseret News:

Pic-nic Party at the Headwaters of Big Cottonwood

President Brigham Young respectfully invites and family to attend

a Pic-nic Party at the Lake in Big Cottonwood on

THURSDAY, 24th of JULY

You will be required to start from the city very early on Wednesday morning, as no one
will be permitted, after 2 o'clock P. M. on the 23rd, to pass the first mill about 4 miles up
the canyon.

All persons are forbidden to make or kindle fires at any place in the canyon, except on
the campground.

Salt Lake City, July 18, 1856.

Four hundred and fifty people attended this picnic. These records also
note that campfires must be "all well put out" and that special roads were
built to reach the recreational area.

SCATTERED BEGINNINGS of recreational use on lands now embraced in the
national forests had increased considerably by the time the actual setting

A BRIEF HISTORY 63

aside of these forest reservations was begun in 1891. Large areas of western
forest lands in the Rockies, the Sierras, the Cascades and lesser mountain
ranges soon were included in what were then called the forest reserves.
In 1897 laws were passed for their administration. In 1905 they were trans-
ferred from the Department of Interior and placed under jurisdiction of the
Department of Agriculture and provision was made to use the resources
inherent in the lands in accordance with the broadest concept of conserva-
tion— wise use of all the resources in the interests of all the people.

In 1907 the name was changed from "forest reserve" to "national forest."
This was done to avoid any implication that the resources were locked up,
not for use.

Lands immediately adjacent to settlements or within them had been set
aside for the recreation of the people, very much earlier, as far back as
colonial days. The Battery and Bowling Green in New York date from about
1621. Boston Common was bought by the city fathers in 1634. Five parks
were laid out by William Penn in the early days of Philadelphia. The areas
so reserved were for common pasturage, for play, for social gatherings, and
were to be protected against destruction by the selfish few.

It appears then that even under the stern compulsions of our early colonial
days these provisions for play as well as for work held the element of public
responsibility. The subsequent development of municipal, county, State,
and Federal parks and forests throws rich and varied sidelights on our advanc-
ing civilization.

The story of our municipal parks alone is an account of endless brave
attempts to provide rural peace and beauty for city people, of the progressive
development of concentrated mass use, of the progressive urbanization of the
parks into amusement and playground centers, and often of the eventual
overwhelming of the park or forest by the city.

Frederick Law Olmsted, still remembered for his pioneer work in laying
out Central Park in New York City in 1853 and for subsequent work in
other cities, considered that a true park was "a place where the urban inhab-
itants can, to the fullest extent, obtain the genuine recreation coming from
the peaceful enjoyment of an idealized rural landscape in rest-giving con-
trast to their wonted existence amidst the city's turmoil,"

64 FOREST OUTINGS

He did excellent work, but most city parks today must of necessity fail to
meet his definition. The city-park movement has had to concentrate on
children's playgrounds, on neighborhood parks and playfields of rather
ugly facilities, with professional and semiprofessional leadership furnished for
playground games.

This has necessarily changed the character of some of the earlier city parks
planned by Olmsted and other pioneer national planners. If Olmsted could
see Central Park in New York City now on a hot Sunday, the spectacle of our
progress might sadden him.

You cannot bring the country into the city and keep things countrified.
But city people can get out into the country now far more easily with 30 or 90
horsepower propelling them at the governed pressure of a restless foot. So
now the cities are making parks and human refuges out from town. Robert
Moses, of Mayor La Guardia's administration in New York City, fighting to
give the people there a little more natural relief, is fighting for something
really needed.

Reconsider this simple statistic: Only about 1 percent of all our vast ocean
shore line and Great Lakes shore line is publicly owned. All the rest is hedged
with signs, actual or implicit: Keep Out — Or Pay. Much the same thing is
generally true inland, of all the little lake shores, bayous, fishing streams,
and the more accessible pleasure groves surviving.

Denver, Colo. ; Phoenix, Ariz. ; and Fort Worth, Tex., now manage forest
parks for their citizens. Boston, Mass.; Cleveland, Ohio; and 294 other
American municipalities even in 1935, at the last general count available,
reported 514 parks with 129,941 acres outside their city limits.

TOWN, COUNTY, AND CITY FORESTS . . . One of the earliest town forests was
that of Danville, N. H., set aside in 1760, and managed by the parsonage
committee. For a century and a half it has been a successful venture, furnish-
ing both forest products and income. Other New England towns had town
forests; they are a characteristic feature of public forestry in the Northeast,
and the idea has spread somewhat, until now there are some 1,500 com-
munity forests throughout the United States. Usually they are small forests
set aside to protect town water supplies, provide opportunity for construe-

A BRIEF HISTORY 65

tive use of relief labor, furnish fuel wood for the town's relief cases, and
building materials for municipal projects. They are locally important for
recreation as well but are not likely to provide important outing areas for
people living in the greater cities.

Of more recent origin are a number of forest municipal camps on public
lands, often on the national forests. Los Angeles, Berkeley, and Sacramento,
Calif., have established such camps. County parks and forests are a develop-
ment of recent years. As municipalities, even the largest and wealthiest, were
compelled to reach farther and farther to obtain land at an endurable cost,
they ventured more and more into the area of primary concern to county
government, and the park or forest project became naturally a county affair.
There was also the thought that the cost might thus equitably be distributed
among all the people seeking recreation there.

Essex County, N. J., started its system of parks in 1895. A neighboring
county, Hudson, began a similar system in 1902. These were the pioneers.
Farther west Milwaukee County, Wis., started in 1910; Cook and DuPage
Counties, 111., in 1913. The total area in such parks and groves now exceeds
100,000 acres in more than 400 different tracts. And some of the great
cities — those in which the county is overshadowed by the city — have formed
metropolitan district parks. New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, and
Los Angeles, for instance, seek thus to achieve larger units of planning. They
try to protect the spaciousness and natural beauty of the site, but it is uphill
work, in view of the human load which generally must be carried by readily
accessible public woodland.

The effort is to provide, as the Milwaukee County Park Commission states,
a place "to get away from the harshness and crude lines and noises of the town
... to return frequently to the soil again for invigoration and refreshment."

Most of these places are godsends but it is virtually impossible to main-
tain within or at the edge of a great city anything approaching naturalness
and spaciousness. The reasons are plain. Nearness to the city generally
means high-priced land and this means small, pinched-off pleasure grounds.
Pressure of demand means intensive development and this calls for forms
of amusement that will handle large numbers of people to the acre. Devel-
opment creates further use, and here we enter upon a mounting spiral of

66 FOREST OUTINGS

intensification and congestion. The horns of the dilemma are familiar and
evident: First, such parks or forests must generally be readily accessible to
obtain popular political support and to be usable. Second, their very
proximity tends to defeat their stated purpose.

STATE PARKS grew first from a patriotic wish to preserve historical places
of the American Revolution. Washington's headquarters at Newburgh on
the Hudson, acquired in 1849, and Valley Forge were the first State parks
of importance. From the standpoint of forest recreation the Yosemite
Valley and the Mariposa Grove of Big Trees, ceded from the public domain
by act of Congress in 1864, are important. Passed during the throes of the
Civil War, and at a time when the national philosophy was that all the
public domain should be passed to private ownership rapidly and under
the most liberal terms possible, this act provides evidence of a dawning
change of sentiment.

The Yosemite Valley had been discovered by Capt. Joseph Reddeford
Walker in the spring of 1851. The next decade brought growing and none
too scrupulous use, and the location of several private claims in the valley.
It was a jewel of a place, and the desirability of defending it in its own
natural setting for the common enjoyment became plain. In 1864 the efforts
of "various gentlemen of fortune, of taste, of refinement," led Senator
Conness to obtain the act granting the Valley and the Big Trees to the
State of California. These natural wonders were to be managed by a
commission, and the thought was that such beauty should be held and
developed for public use, resort, and recreation, and should be inalienable.

Almost at once the commissioners had trouble. They had trouble getting
funds to care for the growing crowds. The unfortunate results of toll-road
permits which they had to grant because of lack of public money made
more trouble, and the growing encroachments of destructive sheep grazing
on the surrounding unmanaged public domain (the State park was only
56 square miles in area) presented still another problem. John Muir, a
great naturalist, led a movement to create a national park surrounding
Yosemite State Park. Congress did so by an act of October 1, 1890 —
another legal landmark in the conservation movement.

A BRIEF HISTORY 67

All sorts of reasons seem to have entered: The commissioners' head-
aches; the zeal of that prophet of Nature, John Muir; and the thought that
since all America was apparently out to see this lovely piece of primitive
country, and stomp all over it, the whole country, not just California,
ought to take over recreational administration of the area, and foot the bill.

Conflicts in jurisdiction also entered; and the net of it was that in 1905
California re-ceded its State rights as to the Yosemite Valley natural at-
tractions to the care and management of the Federal Government. Mean-
while the original pattern of State parks to preserve historic places was
gradually being extended. Mackinac Island and Fort Mackinac (formerly
Fort Michilimackinac) were set aside in 1885. In 1889 Massachusetts set
aside seven different properties. As early as 1867 New York State moved
to recapture into public ownership and prevent further defacerrient of the
lands adjoining its supreme natural wonder, Niagara Falls. This was
finally accomplished in 1887. The Niagara State Reservation was New
York's first State park. Also, as early as 1873, New York pioneered in the
practice of holding tax-reverted lands for forest and parks. Of the some
1,600,000 acres of land included in State parks in the United States in 1938,
New York had about 189,000 acres. These figures do not include lands in
State forests. In point of vitality, effectiveness, and self-sufficiency, the
State-park movement in New York has been exceptionally successful.

Younger States also have developed effective programs. To the west
it is mainly an intelligent effort to fit State parks and forests into inclusive
principles of democratic use. The California State-park program is a con-
spicuous attempt to fit a State-park system into the whole set-up of public
forests and parks of all kinds, and to make the State parks not only a worthy
system in themselves, but also a working part of the whole system of public
recreational lands.

Most of the other States now have State parks or State forests. They are
of varying types, managed by differing kinds of State agencies. The em-
phasis in most States is toward furnishing reasonably but not closely ac-
cessible opportunities — for city people in particular— to enjoy forest or
beach recreation. But a thinning down of natural qualities by progressive
dilution with mass amusements is nearly everywhere discernible.

68 FOREST OUTINGS

STATE FORESTS are generally more extensive in area and less intensively
developed than State parks, which are usually small protected areas of
natural beauty. Problems of recreational use and resource management in
State forests and national forests are similar.

Public parks, whether local. State, or national, are as a rule devoted
exclusively to recreational use. Commodity utilization of timber, grass,
minerals, game, and water is not allowed. This is the single-use principle.
Public forests, on the other hand, generally allow managed use of commer-
cial timber, forage, water, and mineral resources, with recreation accorded
its proper place. And individual uses, including recreation, are given
exclusive place on limited areas. This is the principle of multiple use.

State forests antedate national forests. In State forests operated for mul-
tiple use there are now some 13% million acres. In the Lakes States, where
large areas of cut-over and once wrecked forest land have been acquired by
the States through tax forfeiture, State forests are especially important.
The New England States, New York, and Pennsylvania are also well repre-
sented with State forests; and in the West — Idaho, Montana, and Washing-
ton have moved toward consolidating through exchange with the Federal
Government the remnants of their grant lands. Nation-wide, almost 750
different State forest units are scattered over 39 States. These units average
much smaller than national forests or national parks do, but many of them
are strategically located close to large population centers.

East and West, to speak generally, State forests receive less attention as
places of recreation than do State parks; but many of the State forests have
high local value as pleasure places. Almost universally the States have
opened these forests and their facilities to the public. Approximately 28
million persons visited these State forests in the last year for which figures
are available, but it seems likely that still heavier loads of forest visitors
will come as time goes on.

Concentrations of people, whether in cities or in open forest country, bring
problems that are not easily solved. As a result of the more intensive recrea-
tional use of the lands under their direction, State foresters find themselves
faced with situations comparable to those on national forests. Even with the
combined efforts of the Civilian Conservation Corps and the State forestry

69

departments, the States have not been able to provide adequate facilities.
The influx of visitors into the State forests has taxed the ingenuity of State
forestry organizations, most of which are small. But most State foresters have
met the challenge to the limit of their resources, and plan a continued
expansion.

DIFFERENCES as to recreational equipment and methods in parks and on
forests, region by region, may be found on examination to arise in part from
varying circumstances- — different kinds of country, cover, soil, weather; but
above all, from different degrees of demand or pressure exerted by the people
on available recreational areas, the per-acre recreational load. The national
forests are a vast stage on which escaping millions seek in their own way to
play their own parts. The national parks are natural galleries around natural
centers of attraction. They surround and preserve something definite for our
people to go to and see. The most gorgeous parts of the Grand Canyon and of
the Yosemite Valley are in national parks. So is the Mammoth Cave of
Kentucky; and in Kentucky, too, a national historical park enshrines a prim-
itive national memorial — the rude log cabin in which Abraham Lincoln was
born.

The genesis of the national-park movement was nonutilitarian and patri-
otic in the highest sense. An exceptional streak of national idealism amid an
age of ruthless raiding led that group of Californians, viewing the Yosemite
and the Big Trees, to realize that the best use of such gems was nonpro-
ductive in the strictly practical sense. It was 26 years, however, before the
Yosemite State Park became a national park ; so most writers on the subject say
that the movement began on March 1, 1872, with an act of Congress creating
a Yellowstone National Park. The pioneers here were the members of the
Webster-Doane expedition of 1870, a most unusual group. They saw in the
Yellowstone a supreme natural wonder which should be kept unimpaired
and unspoiled for public enjoyment — "a public park or pleasuring ground
for the benefit and enjoyment of the people" — and moved toward, "the
preservation from injury and spoliation of all timber, mineral deposits,
natural curiosities and wonders, and for their retention in their natural
condition."

70 FOREST OUTINGS

There are 27 national parks now. They cover some 9% million of our acres.
Beyond that on more than 125 other scattered sites, totalling 11% million
acres, the National Park Service guards and displays archaeological and
historic landmarks like the Aztec Indian ruins, pioneer forts, the Lewis and
Clark caverns in Montana, battlefields, military cemeteries and monu-
ments. It also cares for the beautifully designed and tended parks which
surround the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, the White
House, and Government buildings in Washington, D. C.

In all, the National Park Service, with a permanent, seasonal, and tem-
porary personnel of 3,500, now administers for the public use and pleasure
something under 21 million acres. Public use is heavy; in the 1939 travel
year 15% million persons are reported to have visited all the various units
administered by the Park Service. This may not seem an especially heavy use
until you stop to consider that park crowds tend in the very nature of their
outings to cluster around the more accessible centers of attraction that the
park or the special site displays.

Because no general charge of admission is made, national-forest visitors
are not accurately tallied. On most of the forests the recreational load
is widely dispersed. It is estimated that some 32 million persons visited
or passed through the 176 million acres of national forests in 1938. More
than half of them were simply people driving through on business or pleasure
bent. Nearly half of them were not to the same degree forest transients.
They stopped to picnic, camp, hunt, hike, or simply to rest. As is true in
the parks, these round-number tabulations are made in terms of "visits."
In these numbers the same person may be several times or many times
counted. "Repeaters," the foresters call them, these people who have found
something that they seek out in quiet places and who keep coming back.

With a permanent and seasonal personnel of 5,000, more than 4,600 of
whom work afield, the Forest Service plays willing host to all these millions —
the venturing newcomers young and old, the repeaters, the weather-
hardened veterans of the hunt and of woodlore — dispersed over the greater
part of 176 million acres, from year to year. With the same force the Forest
Service also administers timber, forage, wildlife, and other resources of the
national forests.

Dude ranchers frequently trek their customers
out through wilderness areas.

SPANISH PEAKS WILD AREA,
GALLATIN NATIONAL FOREST, MONT.

The Wild

The wind blew up from the river, fresh and mysterious, against my face. The air was alive
with the faint odor of juniper. Far, far away, beyond the river, beyond the canyons, be-
yond countless miles of mesa, so far away that they were sometimes mountains of earth
and sometimes mountains of an ancient, dried-out moon, rose a snow-covered divide that
seemed to bound the universe. Between me and this dimmest outpost of the senses was not
the faintest trace of the disturbances of man; nothing, in fact, except nature, immensity,
and peace. Robert Marshall, Mature Magazine, April 1937.

WILDERNESS TRIPS provide under conditions of some hardship a return
at once serene and bracing to America's far past. These explorations of the
primitive vary widely in respect to the rigors imposed. Dude ranchers
frequently trek their customers out through wilderness areas nowadays, with
cowboy guides to keep watch upon them with a sort of rough tenderness
and bed them down on inflated, rubber mattresses at night.

But often dude ranch trips, where the dudes are hardier, are very much
tougher than that. The job, indeed, is sometimes to hold down robust busi-
nessmen who want to push over mountains and engage mountain lions
barehanded — to keep them from needless dangers and accidents.

In the summer of 1938 with three companions the late Robert Marshall,
of the United States Forest Service, attempted to climb Mount Doonerak in
Alaska, something no one had ever tried. Much the same unusual weather
that stirred up the New England hurricane was breeding there in the far
Northwest late that August. Rain and flood beat at the party for days and
weeks on end. Mount Doonerak is yet to be climbed. Cast under ice in
the floodwater wreck of a 30-foot open boat, returning, these wilderness ad-

73

74 FOREST OUTINGS

venturers were miraculously lucky to escape with their lives. They sal-
vaged some provisions from the wreckage, made packs, and walked in a
hundred miles or so, over the roughest sort of country, in 3 days. On their
29-day outing they encountered 27 days of rain. Yet all of them swore
they would not have traded those 29 days for a year of humdrum life back
home. Besought by more sheltered spirits to explain the charm of it all,
Marshall issued a personal memorandum, in part as follows:

"Of course, all this is completely useless. No human being except myself
and my partners will be happier nor will the world be a bit better off because
of our exploration and mountaineering. There seems, however, no reason
why we should not be as much entitled to the fun of this exploration as
anyone else. And it is relatively inexpensive. The entire expedition cost less
than the cheapest new car, than a vacation trip to Europe. Consequently, if
the adventure was useless, it was also relatively harmless; but from an emo-
tional standpoint it was the top of the universe!"

The wilderness is vanishing but it has as yet to vanish completely from
the face of this continent, and there is an increasing insistence that the
remaining wilderness be not blindly entered and subjugated to the pur-
suits of civilization, but kept as it is.

When it comes to determining the precise degree in which such areas
should be held inviolate, sentiment varies. In a region where the pioneer
urge to open up new country still burns high, one recent correspondent
argued for a "gradual and measured introduction of roads and resort
facilities" into a number of wilderness areas there. And to this a responding
wilderness enthusiast replied at once in a ringing letter beginning: "There
can be no such thing as a gradual and measured ravishment !"

The extent to which emotions essentially patriotic and in a sense reli-
gious must enter into decision of wilderness use or disuse may be gaged in
some part by reading the "platform" of The Wilderness Society, organized
at Washington, D. C., early in 1935.

"PRIMITIVE AMERICA is vanishing with appalling rapidity. Scarcely a month
passes in which some highway does not invade an area which since the
beginning of time had known only natural modes of travel; or some last

THE WILD 75

remaining virgin timber tract is not shattered by the construction of some
irrigation project into an expanding and contracting mud flat; or some quiet
glade hitherto disturbed only by birds and insects and wind in the trees,
does not bark out the merits of a patented nostrum or the mushiness of
'Cocktails for Two.' Such invasions are progressing everywhere so rapidly
that unless fought as ardently as they are pressed there will soon be nothing
left .of those wilderness characteristics which make undisturbed nature the

*

most glorious experience in the world to many people.

"We recognize frankly that the majority of Americans do not as yet
care for these values of undisturbed nature as much as for mechanically
disturbed nature. We are willing that they should have opened to them the
bulk of the 1,800,000,000 acres of outdoor America, including most of the
superlative scenic features in the country which have already been made
accessible to motorists.

"All we desire to save from invasion is that extremely minor fraction of
outdoor America which yet remains free from mechanical sights and sounds
and smells. We do hold that those few areas which have thus far escaped
man-made influences must be preserved in their natural condition, unless it
can be clearly demonstrated that some other use is of compelling value."

Exclusionists among wilderness lovers would bar "motor roads, radios
except for fire protection, railroads, cog roads, funiculars, cableways, etc."
They would severely limit "graded trails, ski trails, footbridges, cabins
and shelters, sheep and cattle grazing, fences." "Power lines, water-power
developments, irrigation projects, and logging operations" they would
prohibit entirely. "Airplanes, motorboats, telephones, lookout and ranger
cabins should be permitted only when they are necessary for fire protection
or emergency."

As to erosion and insect control, erosion control "should be permitted
in areas where it is necessary to undo the effects of faulty land use"; and
insect control "should be permitted only when it is necessary to save the
wilderness forests from destruction. Endemic insect attacks occurring in
the wilderness should not be disturbed."

But even in this it is evident that some concessions to modern civilization
are contemplated. If wilderness areas bordering civilization are given over

Primitive America is vanishing with appalling rapidity.

MOUNT HOOD NATIONAL FOREST, OREG.

THE WILD 77

entirely to a laissez-faire policy of inaction, with no human intervention,
planning, or management whatsoever, then fire, insect infestation, or
excesses of erosion initiated perhaps by unnatural processes outside the area
may destroy them. The paradox is plain.

A section of the National Resources Board 1934 report on recreational
land use, prepared by the National Park Service, presents with a calculated
breadth and simplicity the present dilemma on the remaining primeval
spots and the larger expanse of wilderness amid our State and national
patchwork of private land, parks, and forest today. Briefly to quote:

"Under the increasing pressure of motor travel, control of road building
becomes an important factor in the preservation of primeval areas. However,
only one motorist in hundreds ventures a mile from his car; the rest are
amply content with the road and the museums, lectures, and pleasures of
developed centers. For the few, the trail and the primeval; for the many,
the points of concentration and comfort.

"By sacrifices of small areas sufficient to house, interest, and entertain
the masses, vast areas are preserved to the student — for today and for gener-
ations to come. However elaborate our road system to the parks and between
them may become, the roads within need be only few. Thus is met the prob-
lem of preserving our national parks while we also use and enjoy them . . .

"Man's success is largely determined by his knowledge and ability to
make use of natural laws. The best places for scientists to learn first hand
of nature's laws are found where nature's laws still operate undisturbed
by man . . . We can afford to be careless with those things which are
easily replaced, but those which can never be replaced must have special
protection and care . . . Fairness to those who have similar rights to ours,
but who will live 100 years from now, demands that we save intact some of
primeval America . . .

"Though in general a hands-off policy will best care for a primeval area,
a management policy to retain the primeval is necessary. It is still a question as to
how far we may safely go in providing artificial protection against fire.1 Fire

1 On a number of scattered wilderness and more developed forest stretches, ranging
from Florida to the Cascades, more fires are set by lightning than from any man-made
cause. Over the country as a whole, however, man causes more forest fires than lightning.

78 FOREST OUTINGS

control nearly always demands additional trails, telephone lines, and look-
out towers. The provision of this equipment furnishes a means of fire pro-
tection but at the same time brings in man-made control as against natural
control."

ZONES OF WILDERNESS ... It was about 15 years ago that the first national
forest wilderness area was set aside. Today, of 70 of the Nation's established
or proposed wilderness areas of 100,000 acres or more, 52 are on the na-
tional forests. And 11 out of 13 of those containing 500,000 acres or more
are entirely or chiefly on national-forest land. Natural conditions here in
many places reasonably compare with general conditions at the time of
the Louisiana Purchase.

Today, too, the Forest Service recognizes some 19 different types of
areas where recreation has dominant or exclusive importance. The first
five and the eighth of these classifications as listed here stress, in varying
degree, the preservation of wilderness values:

A "wilderness area" must be designated by the Secretary of Agriculture,
and must remain content with primitive transportation and habitation. It is
defended against roads, resorts, organization camps, summer homes, and
commercial logging. It may not be modified or eliminated except by order
of the Secretary, and then only after public notice and a 90-day period
within which public hearings shall be held if there is a demand for them.
The smallest area recognized as a forest wilderness is 100,000 acres, and its
boundaries must be at least one-half mile back from any road.

A "wild area" is a small wilderness area of less than 100,000 acres, but
of at least 5,000 acres.

A "virgin area" is 5,000 acres or more on which there has been virtually
no disturbance of the natural vegetation. A "natural area" is set aside to
preserve special botanical values, but is not large enough to qualify as a
virgin area. A "geological area" is set aside to preserve features of the for-
mation and structure of special interest to students. An "archeological area"
is set aside to preserve material evidence of aboriginal American peoples, and
an "historical area" preserves interesting evidences of the life and activities
of people who have lived since the advent of the whites on this continent.

THE WILD 79

A "scenic area" is a spot of extraordinary beauty, requiring special pres-
ervation. All of such spots are relatively small. Forest wildernesses are much
larger.

Because of the necessity of fire control, forest wilderness areas and the
smaller wild areas are equipped with lookout towers and telephone lines.
With the development of radio, telephone systems are becoming less im-
portant. Simple trails are permitted, not differing greatly from the Indian
trails that were the highways of the forest before the white man came. These
are built primarily for fire protection. They also help to bring safely into the
wilderness some who would not otherwise venture that far back.

Here and there sizable areas will in the future be set aside as trailless
wildernesses where those who dare may enjoy the adventure of finding their
own way.

OFF THE TRAIL you are on your own. Goodbye to the endless repetition
which machinery imposes; goodbye to a life where the same events are
certain to be repeated, to the world where you know exactly what lies down
the street or around the corner.

Here is a new world, clean and shining; a new life! Mustering all your
knowledge of woodsmanship, you may be seeking blazes along the dim trail
which winds among the ancient hemlocks and cedars on the slopes of the
Selway Mountains; you may be searching the alpine meadows of the lofty
Absarokas for the old, crumbling cairn which marks the only route of
descent through the encircling rimrock; you may be trying to guess whether
the channel you are following through the dense fir of Lac La Croix is
leading toward your destination or merely to the foot of some dead-end bay;
or you may be climbing some trailless ridge among the Maroon Bells
of Colorado and conjecturing on what world lies beyond the Conti-
nental Divide. Such experiences are dominated by a jaunty feeling
of uncertainty.

The experienced wilderness traveler faces uncertainty calmly, with
confidence and an exultant spirit. He walks alertly, the master of his destiny.
Skillfully he packs his food and bedding on a horse or carries it on his own
strong back. He carries some food, but eats the better by whipping mountain

You are on your own.

MOUNT BAKER NATIONAL FOREST, WASH.

THE WILD 81

waters rich in fish. He can ride or walk 40 miles a day with ease and elation
in his hardihood. He is at home in the wild.

There are certain natures and characters that, however highly developed
and admirable, simply do not rise to the exacting requirements of wilder-
ness conditions. Partly it is the altitude; high elevations exert a depressing
effect on some people. But it is also the endless expanse and grandeur of the
scene. That is often too much for them; it makes them feel like ants crawling,
tiny, insignificant; it depresses a fellow, they say. On a long trip such people
often wearily count the hours and miles. When at length they come
down the last divide, back into civilization, and behold neatly clad sports-
men following little white balls around a beautifully tended golf course,
they all but weep for joy.

There are other people, unused at first to the wilderness, who react
favorably to it; who since their first trip have reentered it, more on their
own. It is simply a question of one man's meat; no ethical or moral judg-
ments enter, and this should be made plain. There are others, even among
foresters, who can make their way to fishing streams and glades no farther
from a highway than to dim the purr of tires and the sound of voices, and
feel or imagine with greater comfort that they are at least a million miles
from everything.

It is really important, for reasons both of public safety and of effective
forest administration, that nothing said here by wilderness lovers be taken
as a dare to urge more forest visitors beyond the trails, beyond their capaci-
ties or tasks as woodsmen and explorers.

"Take it easy. Test yourself," those experienced in the wilderness advise.
See how much of utter isolation you really like, want, and can take. The
old-time frontiersman, you must remember, took all the time he was grow-
ing up to fit himself for long hikes beyond the trails. And even then, many
brave men and women found in untrod lonely spots no necessary satisfac-
tion, and stuck close to the trails.

It is, to speak quite seriously, no fun to be lost in the woods. Some people
who go through the experience and come out of it are never quite the same
afterwards, and even with the entire personnel of the forest out day and
night on search parties, the unprepared wilderness adventurer is not always

82 FOREST OUTINGS

found alive. This is especially true of mountain climbers, and of skiers or
other winter sportsmen, often youngsters, who strike off and attempt slopes
beyond their powers.

For those who are fit, the still new world lies open and offers escape. The
man who fishes one of the remote lakelets of the high Uintas may not catch
any bigger trout or any better fighters than the one who fishes a heavily
stocked river from the highway bridge, but he catches them in an unaltered
setting and this adds to his joy. The man who packs into the heart of the
Gila Wilderness for his hunting may not shoot any bigger deer than the
man who knocks them down from near the highway, but he pursues the
game in a world where he can still feel like a Kit Carson or a Daniel Boone.
The man who climbs the trail up Agness Creek to the crest of the Cascade
Mountains may not see any more jagged peaks than along the Stevens
Pass Highway, but the environment from which he sees them exhibits no
sign of civilization save the dead ashes of a few old campfires and the simple
trail which has changed but little since it was tramped out centuries before
by the feet of Indians.

Time is of no consequence in an environment that has been developing
through an unbroken chain of natural sequences for millions of years. A
man or woman camping among the remote peaks of the High Sierras or
on the source streams of the Flathead River finds no jarring sight or sound,
no discordant clash with instinctive feeling of oneness with eternal and
natural values. Nor does he in that vast Quetico-Superior country that lies
astride the Minnesota-Ontario international boundary. This latter country
has been described as embracing the most usable, beautiful, and primitive
canoe waters left in the United States, with an endless variety of woods,
rocky shores, mountains, and lakes. It is less than 24 hours' travel from
Chicago, less than 12 hours' from Minneapolis. But except for the airplane-
sole rival of the canoe — lakes and rivers provide the main avenues of travel
within the bulk of its millions of acres.

The Quetico-Superior area includes thousands of crystal-clear lakes
and hundreds of miles of forest-fringed streams up which canoes of French
coureurs du bois once knifed their westward way. Here the canoeist-camper,
who has outfitted at a trading post on the fringe of the wilderness, may

THE WILD 83

cruise for weeks through labyrinthian waterways without retracing his
course. Waterfalls will fascinate him. Native game will watch him as he
glides along. Cut off from civilization, he pitches his tent where night over-
takes him . . . cuts his own wood . . . catches fish . . . cooks his own meals
. . . becomes one with nature.

Some 900,000 of these acres within the Superior National Forest have
been formally dedicated by the Forest Service as a primitive or roadless
area. And following years of hard work by the Quetico-Superior Council,
the Quetico-Superior Committee, appointed by the President in 1934,
has recommended creation here of an international wilderness sanctuary
and peace memorial to the Canadians and Americans who fought side
by side in the World War.

To close this chapter with a more definite and personal description of
what men seek beyond the farthest established campsite, the late Robert
Marshall, quoted at the opening of this chapter, wrote the following
account of one of his recent forest wilderness trips :

UP FROM WIND RIVER. — The horses were waiting at Dickenson Park.
Here the dirt road ended. Here the wilderness began. Beyond were the
Wind River Mountains without a single road in an expanse more than
100 miles long and averaging 20 miles wide. It was a primitive land where
all travel was by substantially pioneer methods which were used before
white men had ever invaded this Shoshone country in Wyoming.

We saddled and started climbing through lodgepole pine which made
us duck constantly to avoid being scalped by overhanging branches.
Toward the top of the mountain the pine gave way to spruce and fir,
and a little later we were out on the open divide. To the west lay the
promised land with wild, mysterious summits stretching as far as the eye
could reach along the backbone of the Wind River Range.

Directly below was a basin with 10 fresh-looking lakes surrounded by
dark green timber and backed by rocky peaks. Look as closely as we could,
there was not the slightest evidence of man's activity. We started down
the west slope toward this wilderness basin. At many places the mountain
was so steep we had to lead our horses. One time we got rimrocked and

84 FOREST OUTINGS

had to climb back several hundred feet. That was where Cap took his big
tumble when a ledge split off, but although he was 60 years old, it left
him with no more serious injury than a badly barked shin.

Finally we reached the valley floor. It took only a short time to pitch
camp in a bright meadow, and since the afternoon was still early, we set
out on varying occupations. A couple of fellows sat around the meadow,
loafing and enjoying the sunlight. Four enthusiastic fishermen started to
whip nearby waters which had not been fished for a year.

Meanwhile, I started climbing afoot to the uppermost lake in the basin.
When finally, after skirting two lower lakelets and following a series of
great cascades, I reached this remote water, it seemed as if I were far
beyond the zone of human penetration. There were no faintest sounds,
no dimmest sights, to give even a hint of civilization — just rocky shores
and a scattering of wind-swept trees, and in the background, the pinnacle
of Mount Chauvenet.

We broke camp early next morning and after cutting across country
a short distance, came to a good trail leading southwest. Since we were
the first party of the year to go over the trail, we had to stop frequently to
saw out windfalls. The scenery was unexciting but lovely, with lodgepole
pine and spruce and green grass and many showy flowers of early summer.
Our trail, which had started on a level, began to get steeper. After awhile
we abandoned it and headed our horses up an open slope until finally we
reached the top of a nameless summit. Below us were several snow-fed lakes,
clear and blue and deep. Back of them were the steel-gray summits of the
Continental Divide which cut a sharp line of cleavage against the bright-
blue sky. Northward a spectacular peak seemed to be on the verge of
tumbling over to the east. The ranger said that it was Lizard Head and that
it was so rugged that no one had ever succeeded in climbing it.

We ate our lunch, and then dropped back to the trail which we followed
northward toward the headwaters of Popo Agie Creek. After 10 miles we
reached a large meadow just below the overhanging Lizard Head where
we established camp for the night. At the head of the meadow lay the
Continental Divide — a granite range composed of what seemed unscalable
peaks.

THE WILD 85

Next morning we started up the trailless green slopes from which Lizard
Head rises like a gigantic pillar. We speculated on possible routes of ascent,
but none of us was eager to try them. Halfway to the pass were two deep
lakes entirely surrounded by rock slides. One could hear the continual roar
of water splashing toward them from snowbanks melting rapidly under the
hot July sun. When we looked around we saw, back of us, the jagged skyline
of the Continental Divide.

The climb was steep but not difficult. We had hardly started the descent,
however, when we were in trouble. The ground where the snow had but
recently melted was like quicksand and three of the horses went down in
rapid succession. It was nip and tuck as to whether we would save one of
them, but a couple of our most skillful wranglers calmed him as he lay kick-
ing frantically, and removed the pack.

Grave Lake is the most remote of the larger Wind River lakes. We fol-
lowed a dim trail far back under the Continental Divide in order to reach
its shores, from which we looked through a frame of white-bark pine into a
crazy conglomeration of precipices jutting up at almost every conceivable
angle. Wooded points extended into the lake and divided it into enchanting
bays, while overhanging everything was the feeling of mystery which per-
vades the country at timber line. A sudden thunderstorm, driven across the
lake by a furious wind, added to the feeling of being at the ends of the world.
By the time we had followed the winding trail 5 miles to Washakie Lake,
directly under symmetrical Washakie Peak, the storm had passed. A peculiar
narrow peninsula extends nearly across the lake, dividing it into a main
body of water 2 miles long, and an infinitely placid lagoon. On the latter we
camped and watched the setting sun change the cloud-flecked sky into such
a flaming crimson that it almost seemed alive.

The climb next morning to the Continental Divide was across snow-
banks for half the way, even though it was mid-July. At Washakie Pass we
stopped a moment to breathe, simultaneously, Atlantic and Pacific air. Then
we descended on the west side to a creek with the morbid name of Skull,
where we had our lunch. Thereafter we left the trail and rode our horses over
a couple of mountains in order to obtain a better view of the surrounding
topography and vegetation.

86 FOREST OUTINGS

The camp that night was at a romantic location. In 1 902, when the sheep
were just beginning to penetrate this section of the West, the cattlemen who
had been using that range for years took the law in their own hands. They
captured a couple of sheep owners and tied them to trees. Then they drove
their 2,000 sheep into a corral and slaughtered them before the frantic
sheep owners' eyes. About the time the owners expected to share the fate of
their flocks, they were untied, given swift kicks, and told to leave the country
and never return. The old sheep bones from the massacre of a third of a
century before still lay in the corral.

Next day we rode along just west of the Continental Divide for 25 miles.
It was up one pass and down the other side, and up and down, and up and
down again. We passed a myriad of small lakes sparkling in the intense
sunlight of this high plateau land, 10,000 feet above the sea.

At the third pass of the day some of us left our horses and proceeded to
climb Mount Baldy, from where we looked across to the highest summit in
the Wind River Range. Directly in front of us were a half dozen peaks
towering above 13,000 feet — Gannet, Fremont, Warren, Knife, Sacagawea,
and Helen. They were so massive and substantial it almost seemed as if
they constituted the boundaries of the earth.

We sat quietly, enjoying the view for more than an hour, until the chill
which came with lengthening shadows reminded us what a poor place this
would be to spend the night. We dropped down to a meadow where the
remainder of our party had already established camp and had quickly
caught their limit of trout from a nearby lake which no white man ever
before had fished.

Next morning dawned sorrowfully enough as the last day of the expedi-
tion. I left the other members of the party and set out to walk as far north as
I could that day and still return by dark to the end of civilization. Again,
it was a case of up one pass and down on the other side, all day long over
36 of the most splendid miles a human being could know. There were con-
tinual alpine lakes among the rocks and meadows, continual stunted pine
and spruce and fir. On every side were limitless climbing possibilities, in-
cluding opportunities for that greatest of all mountaineering thrills, a first
ascent.

THE WILD 87

It was peculiarly elating to stride along through the world above the
10,000-foot contour where an energy unknown at ordinary elevations seemed
to be liberated. One felt like keeping on and on forever. However, I had set
Green River Pass as the limit of what I could do and still reach road's end
before dark. As I looked northward from the pass, it was pleasant to realize
that the closest road across the range, after 2 days of steady travel northward,
was yet 50 miles away.

I turned reluctantly and started back. It was just sunset when I reached
the road above Fremont Lake, the outpost of civilization, the end of the
primitive. It tied me into the world of modern life with all the cumulative
marvels built by man's ingenuity from the dawn of time. Yet, as I took one
last look into the Wind River Mountains where we had been buried for 6
glorious days, I had the feeling that all of man's ingenuity could not create
anything to equal the world of the untamed wilderness.

F-238076

There are hillsides which are suited for no forms of intensive use
except summer homes.

PISGAH NATIONAL FOREST, N. G.

During 1938 more than 30 million visits were made to national forests. Excluding sight-
seers and those simply passing through, approximately \^% million of these visits were by
people who stopped on the forests for recreation.

Many forest visitors stop at hotels, summer resorts, and dude ranches. Others go to summer
homes built under special-use permits. But most national -forest visitors head for camp-
grounds equipped with fireplaces, pure water, and simple but sanitary conveniences. There
are now more than 3,500 of these developed campgrounds in the national-forest system.
The CCC has been a big factor in developing campgrounds, and roads and trails leading
to them. Annual Report of the Chief, Forest Service, 1938.

BY A CLEAR FAR CREEK on the Choctawhatchee National Forest in
Florida is a small clearing which seems at first sight to contain nothing
humanly useful. But there is a camp here.

It is a poor but beautiful forest, the Choctawhatchee — pine, scrub oak,
and palmetto growing mainly in deep sand. On occasional strands of ham-
mock land which reach out into the still, bright waters of Choctawhatchee
Bay and its dreaming bayous, there remains good timber — virgin stands of
straight, clear pine, wide-spaced. But most of the forest was pretty badly
cut-over and turpentined-out while in private ownership. Since it became
Government property it is healing, but at the same time it must yield sus-
tenance for a resident or nearby population of some 1,500 persons. At
present it yields a fearfully thin living, largely because of the thinness of
the soil.

It is in dry, not in wet, weather on the Choctawhatchee that your wheels
get to spinning and your car slides and stalls. The soil of Camp Pinchot, the
original ranger station of the forest, for instance, is so coarse and thin, so

90 FOREST OUTINGS

like the beach, that a grass,1 native to the Manchurian Desert, was planted
to provide a binding cover there. The loose-sand roads of the forest are not
certainly passable for cars and for fire-fighting equipment unless clay is
hauled in and mixed with the sand as a binder. At most of the fire towers
and at the present ranger station, there are native-ornamental plantings, and
some of the forest guards have subsistence gardens, to the end that they may
eat. But the gardens and plantings are literally "made," on soil or muck
hauled in by the truckload with CCC labor, and mixed as topsoil with the
sand. A recent survey on the Choctawhatchee Forest shows that the white
man who makes $550 a year there, or the black man who makes $425, makes
more than the average.

All this has a bearing on the recreational facilities we shall find in that
apparently useless clearing on the creekbank when, in a moment, we
return to it. Campgrounds of the Forest Service may seem at first glance
somewhat standardized the country over, but there are endless differences
between them. No two of them are alike, any more than two trees are
alike; for like the trees, national-forest campgrounds are the growth of a
given soil, shaped by the immediate native background, and often modi-
fied in their form and structure by immediate need.

Here on the western Florida Gulf Coast what have the forest dwellers
left by which to live? Timber, yes, and better timber is coming back
under selective management. This takes time, and never again, in all
likelihood, will this stretch of country support so many people as during
the great timber-cutting era here. Naval stores, yes, but except on the
national forest that is a diminished resource, decidedly; and under the
generally prevailing methods of overbleeding the pines, many of the native
turpentine operators are killing off what is left.

Fishing, possibly; the Gulf and bayous are said to be teeming with
fish, but the relatively few residents who follow the water seem to be
getting about all of the small living there is in salt-water fishing for this
forest population now. Sport fishing may be improved, however; lakes
have been stocked. Later, there may be call for guides to take sportsmen

1 Manila grass, %oysia matrella.

CAMPS 91

to these fresh-water lakes, just as there are guides and skippers to take out
Gulf fishing parties in summer weather now.

The more closely you examine the situation, allowing everything possi-
ble in the way of an improvement of agriculture on a sound base, allowing
everything that may soon be expected in the development of forest industries
utilizing wood pulp, the more plainly it appears that the principal usefulness
of this forest for the next many years, and the main support of its people,
will be recreation based on scenic beauty, its generally agreeable climate,
and its game resources. Game, it appears, will be especially important.

There is rather brisk summer-tourist business here now along the
western Florida Gulf Coast. It is mainly an exodus of middle-class people
seeking relief from the dense, humid heat of summer in the interior coun-
try immediately to the north and west. Over on this low shore Gulf breezes
keep moving most of the summer and the summer nights are generally
cool. Visitors attracted by the Gulf winds probably bring more money to
the residents of this forest and of the towns adjoining than all their other
products combined. But such money blows in only during the summer
vacation season, in any quantity; from May to October, in the main.
During the rest of the year most tourists push on southeast to the warmer,
steadier sunshine and the great human swarms of Florida's peninsula beach
resorts: St. Petersburg, Sarasota, Palm Beach, and Miami, particularly.

In point of outdoor sunbaths and the rather gaudy diversions of the
Florida beaches, this more northern and western Gulf Coast country cannot
compete as a winter playground with peninsular Florida as a whole. It
now attracts a sparse scattering of hardier winter refugees from overcon-
gestion and mounting prices on the peninsula; that is about all. And yet
the bayou country of the Choctawhatchee and its environs has, for some,
winter attractions which are incomparable. It has a bracing, swiftly chang-
ing winter climate, springlike to a northerner, much like Maryland's
April and early May. It has openness, and space, and a relative solitude to
offer. To the naturalist it offers for pleasure or study an amazing range of
hardy vegetation, and on both its placid shores and wide, shining waters,
a returning wealth of wildlife.

Wildlife; that is the Choctawhatchee' s great natural crop, and the main

92 FOREST OUTINGS

hope of its residents for the future. The game has been protected, with
short open seasons of specified shooting, mainly in the off-peak season
of vacation usage. Game population is being built up to a point where more
liberal limits, especially in winter, may be allowed. Ducks now are thick
on its bayous, and generally so tame that one can get to within a stone's
throw of them to take their pictures. Deer have increased to a point where
soon a lifting of present limits will be required to sustain a natural balanced
husbandry on this forest. Coveys of quail are multiplying, too; in some
places they are so tame that they can be seen running and darting across
openings, and vying for food with the lean, sharp-snooted razorback hogs
still left to range freely by their owners on this forest and in its adjacent
poverty-stricken towns.

If one is not by nature a hunter (and the man who writes this note of
comment is not), the prospect of the Choctawhatchee becoming soon an
important and fruitful hunting ground, with an augmented income coming
more steadily all year round to its needy forest residents and townsfolk,
will exert no overpowering emotional appeal. One might prefer, emo-
tionally, to keep it as it more or less is, a refuge, forever. But practical
considerations enter and enter most urgently, and it is conceivable that
in many places like this, with schools (especially the schools of the Negro
residents) and hospitals and diets and living standards as they are, hunting
will have to be fostered and encouraged to add to the food supply, but
principally to bring in tourist money. Native stocks of people are more
important to preserve than game. And with proper management, both
kinds of native stocks may be better sustained.

"Look at that," says a forest officer, disgustedly, seeing crude barrels
of naval stores drained from overdriven trees, bumping in big trucks out
of private lands within the forest. "Draining their lifeblood away!" Later,
down on the firm sand of a beautiful point of beach, with woods behind it,
he points with delight to the sharply cut tracks of a big buck; and, "That's
going to be their main living, the folks on this forest!" he says.

HUNTING CAMP . . . It is natural, then, that when foresters on the Choc-
tawhatchee think of recreation, they think first of all in terms of hunting,

CAMPS 93

and it is natural that the first developments toward forest recreation here
were inexpensive, simple hunting shelters. They make them better now than
they did at first. For at first they had no landscape and structural architects
to guide them, no appropriations whatsoever for materials, and no relief
labor to do the work. This shelter in a clearing by the creekbank, just com-
pleted, was planned by a Harvard graduate in landscape architecture,
traveling out from the Tallahassee office over all the Florida forests, and the
local ranger saw to the actual construction of the job. It is a good job.
It fits into the scene so completely that a visitor is well into the clearing
before he sees it. And when he does see it, he feels at once that it is all right
there; it belongs.

Built of native timber by CCC labor, this shelter cost under $50, and
is so well and plainly constructed that the ranger figures there will be no
appreciable depreciation (short of fire or acts of vandalism) in its usefulness
to the public for the next 20 years or so. An adaptation of the Adirondack
type of open-front lean-to (no longer widely favored on most forests with
harsh climates), this low, dark-colored building is just about wide and deep
enough that six tall men may sleep in it if they all manage to turn over at
the same time. Before its open front is a fire mound, hip high, made of
logs and sand. Hunters are encouraged to build their fires on this mound.

The wooden lean-to, a fire mound, a convenient toilet, a shallow-well
pump, a rack of firewood raised from the ground is all there is to this hunt-
ing camp, and it has been getting plenty of use. If more sportsmen show up
than the camp can carry, the others simply make throw-down beds and
build pit fires nearby. This is permitted on the Choctawhatchee by the
simple procedure of getting a campfire permit from the ranger.

There has been some doubt among Florida foresters whether to install at
these small and isolated hunting shelters a combination bulletin board and
folding field desk, an all but standard piece of equipment at larger Forest
Service camps. Experience shows that many passing users of these hunters'
shelters do not like to register. They see some catch in it, or they are not in
the registering mood. They sign fantastic names and enter in the register
remarks often amusing but not always quotable in the presence of ladies.

No sooner were these hunting camps set up, however, in the remoter

94 FOREST OUTINGS

depths of the Florida forests than a secondary use for them developed, as
picnic spots. Floridians are great picnickers. In recognition of this urge the
Service has prepared beautiful and rather modern forest picnic grounds on
all four Florida forests. The one at Little Bayou, near Fort Walton on the
Choctawhatchee, is a natural jewel of a picnic spot, accessible by paved
road, yet removed from traffic, with a multitude of individual sites so scat-
tered as to allow individual or group seclusion. It is rather heavily used in
the hot season. In the summer the hunting camps are not in use, and the
picnic parties make their resolute ways there, plowing surging cars through
the deep sand.

So now at many of these small camps the foresters are also rearing sizable
but inconspicuous rustic shelters, stoutly roofed, but open all around. These
structures, too, are built from the native materials of the forest and designed
in accord with the immediate forest background and need. They serve as
crowd umbrellas. The picnickers take shelter under them during the abrupt
torrential rains. Even a small roof gives women, especially, a measure of
comfort when the sky opens and rivers fall from the heavens with thunder
and lightning whipping and crackling around.

All this is intended seriously to suggest that while equipment and method
must accord with a definite policy of forest recreational management, indi-
vidual adaptations within the limits of policy are permitted and even encour-
aged, region by region, forest by forest, and by camp — afield.2 This is both
necessary and desirable. Every ranger district is different. The ranger there
is expected to know policy, and he is credited also, as he gains experience in
the Service, with a close working knowledge of that soil, its cover, its weather,
and its people. If he proves to lack in any important particular, another
ranger takes his post. And so it is right up through the decentralized admin-
istrative structure of the Forest Service, in respect to recreation manage-
ment, timber management, range management, water management, fire con-
trol, and everything else. The man on the ground is put there to administer
policy, but is given his head as to the details of management, in the main.

In the planning and administration of forest camp sites, the need of a
considerable individual leeway enters constantly. The reasons have already

2 The latest and more concise statement of this policy is appended on page 287, Appendix.

CAMPS 95

been suggested. There are some 3,800 different forest camp sites already es-
tablished on the national forests, and more are being opened fast in response
to need. You have seen in the description just given one of the newest,
the simplest, the least complete in the sand-and-bayou semiwilderness of
western Florida. Have a look now, 1,500 miles or so to the north and east,
at one of the largest, and perhaps the hardest to handle of all the Forest Serv-
ice's free public campgrounds — -Dolly Copp Forest Camp in northern New
Hampshire.

DOLLY COPP FOREST CAMP was a commercial resort of the summer-rooming-
house type long before forest reserves were created, and long before these
were renamed national forests and foresters were charged to administer
them for multiple use. But Dolly Copp knew a hundred years ago what
multiple use was when it came to mountain air and forest recreation, and
getting a living out of that ground at the same time. A pioneer White Moun-
tain woman, she was pioneer also in one of our greatest national industries,
the outdoor recreation business. She was a feminist, too. The story of her
life is an oft-told legend among White Mountain people today and the
facts appear to be well established.

If Mrs. Copp could come back and retrace her way up Pinkham Notch
now, she would marvel at our progress. Hard black roads, beautifully
graded, strike up nearly every major notch in the White Mountain barrier
now. This mountain borderland between Maine and New Hampshire has
become one of the most heavily used resort regions in the world. The White
Mountain National Forest embraces more than 708,000 acres in Maine and
New Hampshire. The 37 State parks and 113 State forest units, ranging in
size from 2 to 6,000 acres, run the total area of publicly administered pleasure
ground in New Hampshire up to more than 775,000 acres.

But this protected and managed acreage, larger than the entire State of
Rhode Island, is by no means a solid, unbroken strip of mountain country.
The State forests and parks, with their 11 developed fresh-water bathing
beaches, their 15 camp sites, their 19 picnic places, are rather widely scat-
tered. And the White Mountain National Forest, with its 17 developed
forest camps and picnic grounds for motor travelers, and its 308 miles of

96 FOREST OUTINGS

scenic highway, protected from billboards and other commercial encroach-
ments, is widely and generally broken into by private holdings.

As you drive up through that gorgeous mountain country now, up
through Franconia Notch, Pinkham Notch, the climbing highways descend
at rather frequent intervals to the aesthetic level of U. S. Highway No. 1,
between the cities of Baltimore and Washington, say — at its worst. Billboards
and hot-dog stands; playful little signs that shriek for you to GO SLOW,
else you miss some of Auntie Bessie's Yum- Yum- Yum Cookin'; wayside
tourist cabins with names like Dew-Kum-Inn, and Little Rhody — there
they are.

Some of the newer cabin camps are quite decent and comely. Some of
the private resorts have manifestly tried to follow the practice of the forest
in keeping signs keyed down to a quiet tone. On stretches of road traversing
private land, here and there, the commercial babble, the blatant aiming at
one's eye, pawing at one's arm and purse, has been individually recognized
as an indecency, in such a site, and has been somewhat moderated. But too
many stretches of mountain road that traverse private land here toward the
most majestic heights of the White Mountains in staid New England, are
rimmed with shouting greed, shameless ballyhoo, and a desperate ugliness
and confusion.

If this were a more cheerful desecration, it might be easier to understand.
But it is, for all its clamor, cheerless, insincere — shame-faced. It is a sad
desecration. Most of the private-resort proprietors, native and transient,
great and small, do not really want to carry on like this in order to make a
living here in the mountains. You can talk with them and find that out,
easily.

Forget it for the moment; put it out of mind. It's too bad that cut-
throat competition and the introduction of more decent standards of out-
door recreation should arouse such fierce growing pains in what begins to
be our greatest industry, but the result in the end may be beneficial, and
the industry will survive. The growth will come from its sounder parts.
The pirates and panderers are killing their part of the game, anyway,
themselves. Americans are rather patient suckers in the mass, but not
eternally so, only for a while.

CAMPS 97

Let us, as many of them are doing, drive on. The car, climbing rapidly
the smooth upswinging road, passes a portal post quietly announcing
reentrance to the White Mountain National Forest. The racket subsides.
Peace falls again on the eye, ear, and spirit. The road climbs smoothly on
now through still woods, clean and beautiful. And it may be that what
you take for primeval forest far extending is really only an undisturbed
roadside or buffer strip. For this national forest, like all 161 of them, is
subject to multiple use. A considerable native population that does not
draw directly on the tourist trade must keep right on making a living here—-
lumbering, woods farming, stacking and shipping pulpwood; or gathering
wild ferns, shipped and stored on ice, to provide a natural frame for the
hothouse flowers which many other workers in the urban floral trade
make a living selling, all through the winter. The products of the national
forests are widely diversified. The problem is to see that one use does not
get in the way of the other and spoil the resource. These roadside or buffer
strips are designed to preserve the scenic value of the resource, and even
to enhance it in places. Here and there where the view is especially gor-
geous, landscape architects have selected and CCC boys have opened
vistas through the woods, and the traveler may look across countless miles
upon great ranges seemingly undisturbed.

The 17 developed camp sites on this forest take various form from the
nature of their location and are of widely varied sizes, according to the
expected use load. Some of them far off the main beaten roads provide
only from 6 to a dozen sets, each secluded from the other, around some
protected water source, with some sort of jointly used toilet facilities,
unobtrusive in design, nearby. A set is a parking place for a car, with
tent room, a large open-air fireplace with a cooking grate, and a combina-
tion outdoor dining- and living-room table, with fixed benches. These
tables vary greatly on both camp and picnic grounds the country over,
and the set or outdoor apartment is variously arranged around them, as
furniture is in rooms of various shapes.

In all, the Forest Service has installed 23,000 overnight camp sets on
its 161 different forests, and 30,000 picnic sets with no special provision
for overnight camping. This sort of camping is more or less only a pro-

98 FOREST OUTINGS

tracted picnic anyway, so it is practical to throw the figures together, and
say that on the 161 national forests there are now some 53,000 free outdoor
recreational sets, not nearly enough to supply the thronging demand.

These 17 national-forest camps in New Hampshire offer 2,000 sets,
between them; and of this number Dolly Copp Forest Camp, alone, has
1,000. Dolly Copp, at the height of its season, is probably the least peaceful
national-forest camp in the whole country, yet people keep flocking there
and liking it more and more. The camp population from June to Septem-
ber runs around 74,000 for the season. The problem of its administra-
tion is fairly comparable with that of the administration of a boom town,
and when the more or less resident throng is swelled by holiday transients,
squirming for a swim or a day's outing, the scene and situation are not
entirely idyllic. Last year's (1938) Labor Day crowd at Dolly Copp
totaled 2,600 — a peak. "It was like Coney Island without the chute the
chutes," says the resident forest guard.

But here as elsewhere, Labor Day usually brings the peak load. There
is no time of the year more gracious and wondrous than the fall months
here in the White Mountains. September and October bring, to be sure,
their bursts of chilly rain, but most of the time the air and sunlight are
sparkling clear, and the colors of the foliage are indescribably beautiful
with the brilliant reds and yellows in the intervales contrasted with the
fresh white snow on the upper slopes. The maximum coloration, in point
of brilliance, comes generally during the first week of October. Special
tours are formed then to view the height of the spectacle. But to many the
best time to be here is after that, with the colors dimming, hazily, and the
tourist-load on these mountains so thinned and scattered as to be hardly
noticeable. There are, moreover, practical considerations to support the
choice of a late-fall vacation. The rates of resorts are generally lower, and
the free camps are uncrowded. In many places they are almost unoccupied
from Labor Day until winter sets in.

THREE PARTIES ... Of the three parties lingering at Dolly Copp Forest
Camp this sharp September evening, one has tentage, one has a combina-
tion tent-and-trailer outfit, and one has it rigged to sleep in the back of the

CAMPS 99

car. The last is unusual, but the practice is increasing. Trailers, too, are
somewhat out of the ordinary at Dolly Copp, and at mountain camps
everywhere; the real trailer swarm is found generally on flatter lands and
along straighter roads, as in Florida. Most forests elsewhere report a general
diminution of trailer outfits during the past few years.

The man with his bed in the back of his car is a retired blacksmith
from New Mexico. He travels alone, and has been traveling so, and camp-
ing, for the better part of 5 years now. A leathery, taciturn, but entirely
friendly citizen, 48 years old, he spends his summers north, in New England
and the north woods of the middle country; generally has a whirl at Florida
and, returning, camps for the late winter and early spring on the desert
of his home State, New Mexico. "I've got a little money in the sock," he
says. "Nobody looks to me for a living. So it just occurred to me that I
didn't have to work any more and could travel around and see the country.
It's a good life. I like it." He carries a small tarpaulin to shelter his dun-
nage, outside the car; and strings this up as a shelter in hot weather. But
his home is the car. Its interior arrangement makes even a Pullman berth
seem wasteful of space. The gun rack, for instance, lets down under the bed
at night; and his whole camp is as neat and handy as a good wife's kitchen.

The tented party is a mother and three sons, aged 8, 11, and 16. They
are from Virginia, and are just completing a swing that took them to the
Southwest, California, the Northwest, and East again by northern routes.

These are rather well-to-do people, one gathers; the mother has traveled
abroad; her accent is cultivated. The boys are all as friendly as can be, but
a certain well-bred aloofness tempers personal disclosures at first. This
diminishes as evening falls and the fire burns higher. Father, you learn, is
at his business back in Richmond. He and Mother wanted their boys to see
their own country, the great West especially, this summer; and this was the
way it could be done. "Really, you know," says the mother, "it's amazing!
One can't imagine! Such size, and vigor, and friendliness, and so inexpen-
sive, if you stay at camps." "A fellow doesn't know what the United States
is until he gets over the mountains," says the 16-year-old son.

The three camping parties are bunched together; their shelters almost
touch, at the very center of great, bare, Dolly Copp Forest Camp. "It's

100 FOREST OUTINGS

friendlier that way," says the stout, earnest woman of 50-odd, traveling
with her 18-year-old boy. "We camped up in the edge of the woods when
we came here. The camp was so full then. But when the crowd went, we
moved down here."

The arrangement of the shelters is rather more than an instinctive huddle.
Such grouping enables these campers to share cooking fires and trade little
chores with each other, daytimes. But at night they make separate fires and
sit apart, as a rule.

This third party, the mother and nearly grown son, are from Los Angeles;
or that, at least, was their last point of fixed abode, while the boy finished
high school there. His father is an Army engineer on duty in China, but
due to retire on retirement pay in the autumn of 1939. The whole family
lived in China for a while, but conditions did not favor that arrangement,
so the boy and his mother returned to the States. He did well in science and
in high-school journalism, and was through with high school at 16, but not
well. "He had grown too fast and burned his nerves, he worked so hard in
school," his mother says. "I was worried about him. And he didn't know
what he wanted to go on and do."

"All I knew was, I wanted to get outdoors and stay out," says the boy.
"And Mother, she likes that, too."

So his mother closed their little curio shop with its gay-colored umbrella,
which is a colorful part of their camp equipment now. She paints and sells
china and small decorations. The boy built a short two-wheeled trailer,
and fixed it skillfully, so that the china and painting materials could be
packed. They took to the road together, 2 years ago last August. They have
been about everywhere in this country since then. The boy has gained 15
pounds, and is strong and self-reliant. He and his mother have camped in for-
ests and parks from the Grand Canyon to Canada, from Florida to Mexico.
The boy had developed a definite talent for sketching. He likes to sketch
wildlife, especially. He knows what he wants to do now— forestry. He and his
mother are stopping at different colleges on this swing, looking them over,
getting ready to set up a home again, where the head of the house will join
them, while the boy goes on through college. They are not quite sure yet what
school it will be. They are going to have another look at various colleges

CAMPS 101

on their way south this year to the Ocala Forest in Florida, where there is
a winter trailer camp.

Having heard all this the forester gives them a note, penciled on a page
from his notebook, to his former university teacher of forest conservation and
agricultural journalism. "You see! I knew you'd find help when the time
came !" the mother exclaims.

SUMMER HOMES . . . Many families who come to the forests for vacations
want greater permanency, greater comfort, and more isolation than camp-
grounds offer. The Forest Service has for years issued permits
giving individuals exclusive temporary rights to build summer homes on
small tracts of public land. The sites, in the main, are carefully selected.
The permittees are required to comply with approved building plans, with
permit conditions, and to see that all developments are suitable to the forest.
Few people can afford a summer home in the forest, and the exclusive use
of land for home sites is not, as a rule, allowed to compete with other forms
of recreational use. Campgrounds, picnic grounds, and other developed areas
for use of the general public usually require fairly level ground, and there
are often hillsides suited for no forms of intensive use except summer
homes.

Holders of summer-home permits are encouraged to form cooperative
associations. These associations, whether in groups or scattered, can provide
community docks, boathouses, water systems, telephone and power services,
and buildings for community meetings, which the individual could not
afford. Permittee cooperatives cooperate in such matters as watchman
services, delivery of supplies, and fire protection. Associations also afford
a medium through which forest users can advise the Forest Service of their
needs and by round-table discussion arrive at an amicable solution of com-
mon problems.

SEELEY LAKE lies 50 miles from Missoula, Mont., in the Lolo National
Forest. It is a small lake, % mile wide and 2 miles long, located in a wide,
timbered valley surrounded by high peaks of the Swan and Mission Moun-
tains. Around this attractive forest lake has grown a recreational center

mar^j.

.W:^&P

mv r

iM

f

People from distant States sometimes come up to the camp
for a day or week's outing in tent or trailer.

F-350569

SEELEY LAKE CAMPGROUND,
LOLO NATIONAL FOREST, MONT.

CAMPS 103

typical of hundreds of others around lakes, along streams, and in forested
valleys on national forests.

Many families, mostly from Missoula, have spent their summers here
for more than 20 years. These people are a representative cross section of
western town doctors, lawyers, university professors, businessmen, and
their wives and children. Perhaps 30 summer cabins, modest structures and
simply furnished, have been built on selected locations near the lake, all
under permit from the Forest Service. As soon as school is out in June, the
people move in and often do not return to the city until the end of vacation.
The youngsters swim, boat, fish, ride, and explore together, while the older
people fish or putter about, or just 'relax. There are no formal social
duties to attend, no obligations to pay, just visit or receive company as
they wish.

On a fine point of land jutting into the lake is a large public camp-
ground set in a forest of old tamaracks. Fireplaces, tables, and benches
are available for picnicking or overnight camping. People from distant
States sometimes come up to the camp for a day or week's outing in tent
or trailer camps; mostly the forest campground serves people from the
nearby valleys. There is an organization camp, used all summer by the
Boy Scouts, Campfire Girls, or other groups. Across the lake is a hotel under
permit from the Forest Service, and at the end of the lake, on private land,
is a store and cabin camp which also provides dancing for those who
desire it.

Some of the summer cottagers keep saddle horses for riding on the
forest roads and over the back-country trails. Occasionally more ambitious
trips are made; once each summer a 2 or 3 weeks' fishing and exploring
expedition is taken into the high peaks of the Mission Mountains or to the
far reaches of the Flathead and Sun River Wilderness Areas. The boys, and
even a few of the girls, learn to throw the diamond hitch and to care for
themselves and their horses on the trail. When the duck season opens in the
fall, several of the cottage owners return to hunt migrating wild fowl on the
string of small lakes extending up the valley. In midwinter, after the snow
is plowed out of the road, gay parties drive up from town for a few days of
skiing and other winter sports.

104 FOREST OUTINGS

DEVELOPMENTS . . . The origin of the national-forest movement in this
country goes back to the third quarter of the nineteenth century. Concern
over destruction of watershed and commercial forest values by uncontrolled,
ruthless private exploitation, and the recognized evils of wholesale, deliber-
ate, and easy passing of the public domain to private ownership, led finally
to passage of the act of March 3, 1891, authorizing that the "President of
the United States may, from time to time, set apart and reserve, ... in
any part of the public lands wholly or in part covered with timber or under-
growth, whether of commercial value or not, as public reservations. . . ."
This act was clarified and amended by the act of June 4, 1897, which gave
a very broad grant of power to the Secretary "to make such rules and regu-
lations and establish such services as will insure the objects of such reserva-
tions, namely to regulate their occupancy and use, and to preserve the
forests thereon from destruction."

Early national-forest objectives and management were necessarily utili-
tarian, attuned to the needs of the time. No one could have foreseen then the
place which recreation was later to take. The western national forests were
established in regions yet in the pioneer state of development. For a good
many years the pressure of work, coupled with slowness of travel and lack
of accessibility, resulted in but a small volume of recreational use, and that
for the most part local.

Some idea of how fast the thing grew may be gained from notes lately
gathered on the Apache National Forest — some 1,700,000 acres of moun-
tains above desert, of which about a million acres are in New Mexico, and
the remainder in Arizona. It is thought that the Coronado Expedition
crossed this forest. Mexican settlement of the country did not begin until
about 1872, and after that there came Mormon pioneering, but hardly
anyone went there for pleasure prior to 1900.

As a national forest, the Apache is 41 years old. There are 350 miles
of trout streams on it, and a considerable abundance of deer, elk, antelopes,
bears, mountain lions, wildcats, squirrels, and turkeys.

Hunters sometimes entered the Apache, but the first recorded tourist
dates from May 1, 1912. Down the road from New Mexico that morning
came a Mr. Baker driving the first automobile ever seen in Springerville.

CAMPS 105

Amid general excitement he purchased gasoline (50 cents a gallon), had
his lunch, inquired of roads, adjusted his duster, and started on his way,
but not before he had signed the register at a local mercantile company.
By 1919, cars were no longer an oddity. More than 6,000 were registered
in Arizona alone, and travelers, the business people reported, "came from
everywhere and were destined for every place." State highway flow maps
indicate that well over 30,000 "foreign" and some 45,000 Arizona cars
pass each year through Springerville now.

Visitors to the Apache Forest exceed 50,000 annually. Of these, some
35,000 are "en routers," passing through. Of the total, about 1 in 10 lingers
long enough to enjoy the scenery, the climate, or the stillness; and slightly
fewer than 1 in 10, around 4,000, stay an average of 7 days, fishing, hunting,
or camping. There are now 17 camp and picnic sites on the forest, 230
miles of forest highway, and another 400 miles of forest development roads.3

What happened on the Apache happened as rapidly, or even more
rapidly, and with much higher concentrations of use, on many other
forests. And as more and more people came, an important change devel-
oped— important from the standpoint of forest administration.

Virgin lands for recreation were no longer near at hand. More and
more people seeking wilderness lands turned toward the national forests
wherein, in many parts of the West, are the only remaining wild areas.
And the character of the forest visitors and their habits changed rapidly.
The capable, resourceful, outdoor-pioneer type soon was outnumbered
by men and women with less woods experience. Accustomed to more
urban surroundings, the newcomers were much less woodswise; they did
not so much delight in roughing it. This change did not take place in 1 or
2 years, but the rate of change was so great and the increase in volume of
use was so large that recreation, as a forest use, began to require special
facilities and assume the status of a major activity on the national forests
much more rapidly than had been anticipated.

3 Forest highways are built primarily for the use of people living in and adjacent to
the national forests, or as part of the general highway system. Forest development roads
are built primarily to facilitate use of the forest resource and for the use of forest adminis-
trative and protective forces.

106 FOREST OUTINGS

Data for the years 1905 to 1914 are not available for all national-forest
regions, but the North Pacific Region in 1909 reported 45,000 recreation
visits to its forests and the Rocky Mountain Region reported 115,000 the
same year. It is interesting to compare these figures with the 1,507,000 and
1,785,000 visits, respectively, made to the same forest areas for recreation
in 1938.

In 1911 Congress passed the Weeks Law which authorized the Secre-
tary of Agriculture to purchase lands necessary to protect the watersheds
of navigable streams. Shortly after that date, the purchase of lands and
the establishment of national-forest areas was initiated in Eastern States
Since these purchase units were close to centers of population, they were
used for recreation from the first.

The early use of the forests in all portions of the country by city people
required some attention by forest officers. Every visitor increased the fire
risk and in areas of concentrated use sanitation soon became a problem. The
policies evolved to safeguard the forests from fire and to protect the public
health were simple — public use of the forest areas was free with the fewest
possible restrictions. Early practices consisted principally of a simple
request: Visitors were asked to "leave a clean camp and a dead fire."

Forest rangers took time to clear inflammable material from around
heavily used camp spots and to build crude rock fireplaces. They erected
toilets and dug garbage pits whenever materials could be obtained. They
developed and fenced sources of water supply for campers. They made and
put up signs to guide people and caution them about care with fire. Con-
gress made no appropriations for such special needs for many years but
ingenious rangers fashioned camp stoves and fireplaces of rock, tin cans,
and scrap iron; tables, toilets, and garbage pit covers were made from
lumber scraps and wooden boxes; and crude signs were painted and dis-
played on rough-hewn shakes. Many of these earlier improvements were
raw looking and some of them were clearly out of place in the forest environ-
ment, but they filled a real need.

At first, most of the field force was beyond its depth on questions of recrea-
tional planning. They needed help by the time the specialists came along.
The demands the field now makes on the specialists' time and energy give

CAMPS 107

constant proof of it. But there are fairly constant and natural differences
between the way a ranger, for instance, looks at a camp or picnic ground and
the way a landscape architect looks at it. This question of swings, sand
boxes, and seesaws for the children is a case in point. These child coops are
ugly; they look out of place in most forest backgrounds; and they are espe-
cially ugly and especially out of place when, as generally happens, the forest
officers install the sort that are made of metal— the standard equipment
seen on so many city playgrounds. But, as the rangers and forest guards
insist, people come to the woods to get some rest, and what rest does a
mother get if she's retrieving her young every whipstitch from running off,
getting lost, and from possible encounters with rattlesnakes and wild
animals?

When a 5-year-old child was lost and killed on a New Mexico forest one
winter, practically every officer on the forest pointed out that this might not
have happened if the children had been given a safe place to play on that
forest site, while their parents rested. All right, then, says the landscape
specialist, have your swings and seesaws if you must. But make them of
native materials, not of galvanized pipe but of timbers. Some forests have
done this, but there is no known way to make such swings as permanently
strong, as little likely to break and hurt somebody after the wear and tear
sets in. And the architect must also consider, the resident foresters point
out, that such swings are often used by boisterous adults, a couple of 200-
pounders at a time, maybe, standing on them, swinging like fury, there
in the woods. So iron-framed swing brackets and chains for rope are still
one of the ugly urban refinements permitted on many forest camp picnic
sites. Playgrounds are set off as remotely as is consistent with safety, however,
and hedged with native vegetation to preserve the forest atmosphere.

Most of the refinements which have been brought into forest recreational
sites and structures are far more comely. There has been a vast improve-
ment in this particular during recent years. Until about 1914, administra-
tion of the recreational use of the national forests had been wholly in the
hands of the field force. The effort was still so small and so scattered that
the need for a national policy was not evident. In 1915 the first preliminary
study was made by a member of the Chief Forester's office. In 1916, Frank

108 FOREST OUTINGS

A. Waugh, professor of landscape architecture of Massachusetts State
College, was retained to make a comprehensive survey and report.

Public demand was analyzed. Plans were made for several important
areas, such as the Mount Hood region in Oregon. In an effort to improve
hunting and fishing, the first game refuges were established, and efforts to
restock fishing streams were launched.

Then came the World War, and all activities not absolutely necessary
to protect the forests from fire and for the production of wood, minerals,
meat, wool, and leather were curtailed. Many foresters enlisted in the
American Expeditionary Forces' forestry regiments and other branches.
For 3 years, which were exceptionally bad forest-fire years, a greatly reduced
field organization did the best it could on our national forests. Little or no
attention was paid to recreation until 1920.

THE RUSH OUTDOORS . . . That was when it really started, after the World
War. Prior to our joining the conflict, the San Francisco Fair of 1915 and
a vigorous promotion of national parks, at their outset, had stirred per-
ceptibly stronger tides of travel westward; but these tides lapsed as eyes
strained eastward and all thoughts turned to the battle fronts overseas.
Then came post-war "normalcy," and the boom. Most people were rela-
tively prosperous. They were restless. Millions of them now had cars and
the rapid extension of highways constantly widened the domestic-travel
horizon.

Curtailed foreign travel also helped to swell the throng. During the
World War and for several years after, pleasure travel to Europe was very
light. Many Americans were for the first time persuaded to look to their
own country for vacation-travel opportunities. And this impulse was
heightened by a vigorous domestic-travel propaganda: "See America
First."

A rather definite measure of the post-war American rush to the open
spaces may be had from national park attendance statistics. The present
park system was consolidated on a Federal basis in 1916. At the outset,
annual attendance ran approximately 350,000. By 1919, it was three-
quarters of a million; by 1921, more than a million. In 1926, it was close

CAMPS 109

to 2 million; by 1932, park attendance exceeded 3 million; and in 1939,
nearly 7 million people visited the national parks. The figures do not, of
course, include the visitors to national monuments, national historical parks,
and other miscellaneous areas administered by the National Park Service.

Comparable figures show that in 22 years, attendance in national parks
increased nearly 20 times while the acreage was not quite doubled. On the
national forests it increased more than 10 times, or from 3 million to 32
million. Apparently the major factors in growth of use in both national
parks and national forests were neither advertising nor provision of facili-
ties— or the absence of either — but rather the enormous expansion of all
forms of travel, based on increased national wealth and leisure and on
autos and good roads.

This mushroom growth in attendance brought consequences and prob-
lems that had not been clearly foreseen. The terrific concentration of use
in such restricted areas as the floor of the Yosemite, on Mount Rainier, and
in upper Geyser Basin in Yellowstone caused serious overuse of camping
areas, extension of roads in a not always successful attempt to spread use,
and the development of grave mass-policing problems.

Foresters have been having the same trouble, but not, generally, as
intensely. With a growth from some 4% million visits in 1924 to 14% million
visits (exclusive of transients and sightseers) in 1938, parts of the forests
have developed centers of very heavy use. Where there has been but a
limited area of usable land near a great city, where only a single mountain
lake is available to a large population, and in comparable cases, concen-
tration problems have developed, differing only in degree from those on
some of the national parks.

The tendency of crowds to attract crowds has not been offset entirely
by attempts to divert them to new areas. The administration of the use
has not been completely simple nor wholly successful.

Public use of national-forest campgrounds has reached such tremendous
proportions in recent years as to create many new administrative problems.
Supervision becomes each year more necessary, not only to prevent misuse,
vandalism, and misconduct, but also to regulate the flow and distribution
of the tide of campers.

110 FOREST OUTINGS

Many people who discover the free camp sites incline to stake claim to
them, in the traditional American manner. They tend to squat on or
occupy campgrounds for unreasonably long periods. The Forest Service
has had to establish time limits on occupancy of camp spots at crowded
areas. But no set limits are enforced until pressure of demand requires it.

The fuel problem becomes each year more troubling. Fuel wood soon
gets scarce around a much-used site. There are still forest areas where
dead limbs and sticks to supply camping requirements may be picked up
by the users. In others, the Forest Service follows the practice of dragging
in fuel logs for campers. It is usually possible to do this with the campground-
maintenance crews, without great expense. Snags and sound down ma-
terial are a nuisance and in places a fire hazard. Their removal for such
use is a sound measure of forest sanitation.

QUESTIONS . . . But often it is hard to find the time or the help. And to
drag in a fuel log for chopping and then put the forest visitors out of mind,
so far as firewood goes, is not always practical. The ax is a tool with which
citizens of our elder and more urban parts, particularly, have lost acquaint-
ance. They make a fine, bold slash (the spirit of the woodsman still lives
in them) but naturally they are inept. It takes time to learn to chop wood
right. City people are likely to hack up their shins, and the cut may be
serious. This is especially true if the ax is chained to a tree with rather a
short tether. No one can really chop wood with a tethered ax. Even
amateurs soon learn to break the chain and some of them take the ax home
with them, as a souvenir, perhaps. The fuel question in forest camps is
really a problem.

Where, for various reasons, no cut wood is provided; where camp sites
heavily used have led to a scarcity; or where free wood, freely cut and served,
has led only to excessive use and thievery, vandalism increases. Only 1 guest
of the forests in 10,000, perhaps, goes in for this sort of personal expression,
but the total damage, the country over, mounts up. For something to burn
in the fire, living trees on the site are hacked down, and tables and benches
and parts of shelters are chopped into firewood and burned. This seems to
happen most often on desert or semidesert camp sites. The policy here is to

CAMPS 111

supervise camp sites more closely (with fixed forest guards, whenever that
is possible), and to encourage the use of portable stoves that burn kerosene
for camp cooking.

Difficulties of making sanitation keep pace with increasing use, on peak-
load holidays especially, have been suggested. The problem is actual, and
not to be dismissed with a snicker. On the heaviest used camps of New
England, chemical toilets are generally preferred, not because they are any
better than flush toilets, but because flush toilets so often literally get jammed
up and overflow during the holiday overload. And at the close of such a
day or days on the most heavily used sites, as has also been indicated, the
job of cleaning up and incinerating the scattered garbage on many a camp
or picnic set is rather like cleaning up a little slum.

Finally, there is the pure-water problem, and the question of opening
more new swimming places. Should this be done? Chlorinated reservoirs are
not as yet necessary at most forest camps, bacterial tests show, but there is a
real prospect that at certain places both drinking and bathing water may
soon have to be chlorinated in order to be safe.

This looks to the future. What of swimming places now? There are
some 70,000 miles of fishing streams on the national forests, with countless
swimming holes. There are countless lakes, bayous, and a considerable
stretch of gulf or ocean shore. Consider the problem of bathing in inland
waters only, for the moment; and consider particularly, the urge of the
people to visit and plunge, in some number, into most of the new ponds,
lakes, and reservoirs being created on the national forests and off of them,
all as a part of a sweeping soil-, water-, and game-conservation program, the
country over.

In dry-land country, where the reservoirs are not as a rule replenished
with running water all year round, this urge to bathe and swim in clear,
deep water seems instinctive, almost frantic; you cannot keep them out of
it. And some of the new lakes and reservoirs into which they plunge so gladly,
in desert New Mexico and Arizona for instance, have a foul, fungous smell
to their stagnant waters in the dry season.

It is natural that eastern, humid forests should welcome swimmers, in
general, and seek to provide dressing quarters and at least a part-time life-

The great mass of them are fine, decent people, enormously grateful
for any little thing that can be done for their safety and comfort.

PINE CREST RESORT, STANISLAUS NATIONAL FOREST, CALIF.

CAMPS 113

guard furnished by the CCC. It is natural that the far western forests
should contribute to any discussion of a general policy on this problem hearty
wishes to keep the facilities as simple as possible.

For see what it involves, anywhere, East or West, the development and
maintenance of some modern equivalent to the old swimming hole in a
public forest: It is not just a matter of keeping the water sanitary. If you
are going to concentrate bathing or swimming at some ordinarily safe place,
rather than let people scatter and try it almost anywhere, you must provide
some decent shelters where men and women may put on their own (or rented
and sterilized) bathing suits; and where they can reassume civilized garb
with a decent degree of supervised separation afterwards. Present appro-
priations do not allow for this at most of the many natural watering places
on our national forests or for trained and watchful lifeguards to rescue people
from drowning.

The easy way, on paper, is simply to close the new watering places to
swimming. But to post signs does not really close these watering places, and
it is a question whether safer places should be posted: Keep Out. The
people, especially the wilder youngsters, don't keep out, and a certain
number of them drown each year.

But this, and many other questions which affect the life, limb, and spirit
of Americans seeking outings must be met. The need behind this increasing
rush into the open is actual and urgent. It must be met, and governed, in
some degree. The hard times which followed the lush times of the early
1920's did not notably reduce the pressure on outdoor recreational sites and
facilities. In many places, where such recreation was cheap or was free, the
load increased. Distressed farmers and tradesmen from the middle country
and High Plains bought more gas from many a filling station on the main
routes to the Rockies and the Coast in the lean early thirties than ever before.

The plain truth is that forest recreational facilities have been extended
under the push of a constant, driving, increasing demand. This has been
done mainly by the willing aid of relief labor. Much has been done but it
falls far short of meeting the peak loads and the immediate prospect of an
increasing human use. The recreational plant or equipment is overextended
in point of existing appropriations and in point of the time required of the

114 FOREST OUTINGS

existing personnel for this one aspect of modern forest management, but it
falls far short of satisfying rapidly growing demand.

Most of the existing campground developments on the national forests
have been made during the 5 years since the CCC and other emergency proj-
ects began in 1933. Here is a short list of the principal installations to date:

Stoves, grates, cooking and heating fireplaces, and barbecue pits . . . 21,196

Campground toilets of all types 7,673

Garbage cans, pits, and trash incinerators 11,255

Campground tables and benches . . . . . 31,603

Springs, wells, reservoirs, and pipe-line systems 2, 859

Amphitheatres (seating capacity 11,565) 46

Campfire circles 1, 783

Buildings and shelters of all kinds 1,093

Automobile parking areas, car capacity 48, 553

At present the total number of developed camp and picnic grounds,
large and small, in all of the national forests is 3,819. These will accom-
modate 240,000 persons at one time, but they do not carry present seasonal
loads, which in the 1938 season amounted to just under 11,000,000 visits.
On Sundays and holidays, many campgrounds are hopelessly overcrowded.

Development of additional campgrounds and the installation of neces-
sary facilities are urgently needed to keep pace with the annual increase
in use. If campground use should double or perhaps treble within the
next 10 years, as now seems probable, either large numbers of campers
will have to be turned away, inadequately served, or the campground-
improvement program must be expanded.

The original charge of the Forest Service was simple and strictly
practical. New needs have arisen to press hard and broaden the concept
of what national forests can and must yield, from the standpoint of "the
greatest good for the greatest number in the long run," on a hard-boiled
and thrifty basis — multiple use.

Our national forests still report to the people largely in terms of cash
income. They are producing units. These increasing recreational tides do
bring in some revenue from charges for special services, but it is the barest
dribble to the forests' funds, direct. Tourists and campers bring money,
and money badly needed in the main, into a multitude of communities
roundabout; but little or nothing that a forest officer can enter on the

CAMPS 115

credit side of his accounts. Recreation falls mainly on the cost side in forest
bookkeeping, and the entire amount available for recreational use on the
whole White Mountain Forest in 1938, for instance, was $25,530.

IT is by no means the general disposition of professional foresters to hold
out their hats for more money to be used for a more elaborate extension
of public recreational structures and facilities. Most of them would rather see
things kept plain. Foresters in general do not yearn to go any deeper into this
socialized recreational business; but the push is on, strongly, plainly, not so
much in lobbies, or in the organs of public opinion, or in Congress and the
State legislatures, as in an actual pressing swarm of the people, themselves.

It is only in part a question of planning and preparing for forest guests
who are coming; it is more immediately a struggle to care for the throng
of guests at hand. To regard wrecked cover distastefully, to push wearily
out night after night hunting lost campers, to observe the nuisances that
occasional parties (even of college youngsters) commit on Government
property and equipment, and to think savage things about "the dear pub-
lic" as foresters occasionally do, solves nothing. These are the people's
forests. They need and have the right to use them for their pleasure. Foresters
make them welcome, and are really glad to have them come.

And not one forest guest in a thousand abuses the privilege wantonly.
The great mass of them are fine, decent people, enormously grateful for
any little thing that can be done for their safety and comfort. Most of them,
as a later chapter will show, fall within the lower income brackets. The
public forests offer the only chance for many of them to get some change
and rest. And it is conceivable that the restoration of health and spirit
which forest outings visibly produce will be worth as much to the Nation
in the end as all the material national-forest crops.

Present facilities are in most places crucially inadequate; and by the
most conservative of forecasts, based on attendance charts, projected
recreational use of the national forests seems certain to double, at least,
within the next 10 years.

It is as if you were in another world — sharp, clean, exciting, robust.

ALTA BASIN, WASATCH NATIONAL FOREST, UTAH

Winter Sports

But, jovial and ruddy as winter sports are, they have a side which is more or less lacking
in the sports of summer . . . They have a lonely side, a still reflective side, which, for
some of us, adds immeasurably to their charm.

Walter Prichard Eaton, Winter Sports Verse, 1919.

A WORLD-WIDE DRIVE to get out and play in the snow first became
evident, social historians may note, in troubled Europe following the shock
and dissolutions of the World War, 1914-1918.

Children, of course, have always made snow men and coasted, and so
have a few of their elders. But adult winter sports in the past had prin-
cipally to do with going places — sleighing, snowshoeing, climbing moun-
tains, mushing along behind a dog team. The pleasure derived was inci-
dental, a byproduct of the journey, for grown-up people, as a rule.

It becomes almost tiresome now, by spring, the square mileage of
winter-sports pictures that city-pent people see in the papers, and the
acreage of bare skin, of both sexes, displayed in the news pictures, still and
moving, all winter long. Actually not much skiing is done naked, or nearly
naked, except by ardent health fans or for publicity "shots." But the lighter,
less burdensome garments worn now by winter sportsmen and sports-
women,and the way in which they get wind and sun burned in winter, do
suggest an important and healthy advance in civilized living habits.

All this has played a part in the amazing burst of publicity that has
pushed winter sports along so fast, both here and abroad. In some coun-
tries the publicity has been dictatorial in origin, put out by the Strong
Man to advance the general health, ruggedness, and spirit. Here with us
growth in popularity of winter sports has resulted from years of effort by

118 FOREST OUTINGS

officers and members of skiing and other outdoor sportsmen's organizations.
More recently commercial interests have joined in the push. But every-
where the thing has proceeded in the thought that here is something that
millions need and want, and the results have been to the good, in the main.

Much that is filmed and printed of winter sports in this country plays
up naturally from the sports-page angle, professional performances. From
the resort standpoint, there is a tendency also to surround skiing, as golf,
polo, and horseback riding have been surrounded, with an exclusive aura,
to smother its development in snob appeal. This is short-sighted and ridicu-
lous. There is nothing essentially expensive about winter sports — nothing
exclusive.

It is good, this general spurt of escape from the stuffy and weary prison
of overheated houses and head colds by Americans still young, and not so
young. It marks, in a way, a break with the past, this discovery that the
sun shines also in winter and that the most exhilarating of experiences may
be enjoyed in brisk weather, outdoors. For thousands, this discovery has
meant a break in that dulling annual hibernation which even open-country
Americans have tended to indulge in from the first. The speed with which
general participation in winter sports is increasing may be judged from a
pleased announcement by sports tradesmen early in 1939.

In 1935 Americans spent for skis and snowshoes $41 7,000. Last year,
1938, they spent $3,000,000 for skis, $6,000,000 for ski clothes, and $15,000,-
000 for transportation to and lodging at winter playgrounds, private and
public.

From the Appalachians near the Atlantic, across the Lake States,
through the Rockies, and westward to the Cascade Range and the Sierras
above the Pacific, each winter week end now brings a colorful throng of
enthusiasts to white playgrounds. Probably no other form of outdoor rec-
reation offers a wider range of appeal. The small boy with home-made sled
or barrel-stave skis has as much fun as the expert with his carefully chosen
equipment. Not everyone can learn to ski jump, or should try to, but nearly
all can find exhilarating play in simpler ways. There is coasting. Not only
the very young can coast, anyone can; on anything from the short easy slope
where the youngsters slide "belly- buster" to the long steep toboggan run.

WINTER SPORTS 119

There is snowshoeing. On snowshoes one can get off the beaten track and
enjoy the white solitude and the ever-changing sparkle of winter forest land-
scape. The photographer and the wildlife observer may enter new worlds
of beauty walking on "webs." Skating, mountain climbing, cross-country
trips on skis or snowshoes, sleighing, skijoring, rides behind a dog team—
all have a place in winter sports. And the stout, plain, colorful clothes that
have come into use by both men and women for winter sports add vastly
to the vivacity and pleasure of the experience. It is as if you were in another
world — sharp, clean, exciting, robust.

Winter sports have an origin in necessity. Man made the first snowshoes,
skis, and sleds to aid him in needful travel across snow-covered country for
winter food. The use of skis antedates written history. The most primitive
snowshoe was probably woven of reeds. It is thought to have originated in
the Altai Mountains of Central Asia. In the United States the first over-the-
snow travel was on rackets or webs fabricated by the Indians.

Scandinavian settlers in Minnesota seem to have used skis as early as 1 840.
One of the first written descriptions of the use of skis in America, however, is
that of Rev. John L. Dyer, who mentions the use of Norwegian "snowshoes"
from 9 to 11 feet long. He used them to carry the mail in Colorado in 1861
and 1862. A little earlier, about 1856, John A. (Snowshoe) Thompson also
carried the mail by ski from Placerville to Carson Valley in the Sierras.

FOR SHEER SPORT . . . The first American skiers for pleasure only, it seems,
were Norwegians, Finns, and Swedes, who migrated to New England and
the Great Lakes country as woodsmen and found the snow and terrain
suitable for their native sport. This led to organization of the first ski clubs in
the 1880's in New Hampshire and Minnesota. Sondre Nordheim and Turjus
Hemmesveit introduced ski jumping. In about 1890 a ski jump was built at
Frederic, Wis. In 1887 the Ishpeming Ski Club of Michigan organized the
first formal jumping tournament in the United States. The National Ski
Association was organized in 1 904 at Ishpeming, Mich. In the Northeast the
sport was promoted by colleges and outdoor organizations, notably the
Dartmouth Outing Club, as well as through the efforts of resorts featuring
winter sports as a part of an all-year recreation program.

Each week end when snow conditions favored, more people came.

TUCKERMAN RAVINE, MOUNT WASHINGTON,
WHITE MOUNTAIN NATIONAL FOREST, N. H.

WINTER SPORTS 121

As early as 1886 the Appalachian Mountain Club of Boston organized
snowshoe excursions into the White Mountains. This club encouraged snow-
shoeing "not only as an exercise, but more especially as a help in mountain-
eering." Later the Sierra Club in California, the Mazamas in Oregon, the
Mountaineers in Washington, and the Wasatch Mountain Club in Utah,
did the same.

The early Scandinavian-Americans skied as they had at home, standing
straight. They darted down the virgin slopes of this continent erectly with
wings that they carved from the woods on their feet. They started our present
boom of pleasure skiing.

It was an Austrian- American, a later pioneer, still hale and active, who
made the discovery which more than any other so multiplies ski trains, ski
schools, ski trails, and ski sales in this land today. His name is Hannes
Schneider. He got the idea that man can fly better, faster, farther over the
snow if he crouches. He made of skiing a beautiful and exciting art — the
ultimate, probably in point of swift, personally controlled, flying manoeuvers
with no other engine than the human body, and no other control board than
the individual mind and nervous system.

UPHILL . . . By a natural coincidence, most of the developing centers of
skiing and of other winter sports in this country are on or near the national
forests. The first charge of the Forest Service was to protect watersheds, and
this is uphill work. The work of ruling water run-off must start at the moun-
tain crests. If you will turn to the map of the United States (opposite page 288)
which shows the location of the national forests, you will be able roughly to
locate the loftiest parts of the Allegheny barrier, the Continental Divide and
the Coast Range by the general grouping of the national forests there.

The same power that moves the raindrop downward is the propelling
force of thousands of pleasure seekers, winging down mountainsides today.
National forests and winter sports have been a natural combination from
the first. The places most favored are generally the highest, where snow
seasons are long and where there are likely to be more open slopes. Skis and
webs, sleds, and toboggans are no new things to forest officers. They have
used them for timber cruising, and in making wildlife estimates and snow

122 FOREST OUTINGS

surveys, and in other administrative duties ever since the Forest Service was
organized.

And so when the boom in winter sports began, forest officers in general
gladly welcomed returning winter visitors. Here was something a man could
put his heart into more completely than meeting the often querulous com-
plaint of picnickers as to firewood. These youngsters strode forth as if they
owned the earth; they were hard and woodsworthy, most of them. They
asked no odds and uttered no complaints. Here were men, and adventurers.
And it surely livened things up there on the mountain in the wintertime to
have them coming in.

Each week end when snow conditions favored, more people came.
Interest increased. Winter carnivals became popular. These stimulated local
business and encouraged more people to turn out. Soon many came who
lived outside the snow belt. Skiing (cross country, downhill, slalom, and
jumping), ice hockey, tobogganing, snowshoeing, and various combinations
of ice and snow sports were taking thousands up mountains that hitherto
were all but forsaken in winter, by the beginning of the present decade.

The innkeepers rejoiced. Resorts, always handicapped by the brevity of
the summer season in mountainous and northern locations, began no longer
to stand idle all the long months of winter as property depreciation mounted
and taxes continued. Heating systems were enlarged, winter quarters were
remodeled, the lone winter guard was replaced by a- score of employees,
and many a new resort especially designed and operated for winter vaca-
tionists was built in areas favored by a long snow season.

Throughout the country now the approach of cold weather brings to
thousands a lift of the heart, a stir of the energies, more generally associated
with the coming of spring. Outdoor clubs look to the condition of their ski
jumps or install ski tows. Resorts, department stores, railroads, and winter-
sports shows begin building up an early season interest. The young army of
enthusiasts overhaul their equipment and prepare themselves. Many who
were spectators at a winter carnival or on some sports area the year before
enroll in preseason schools and are instructed on so-called dry courses.
Great arguments as to equipment, techniques, and the proper kind of ski
wax arise.

WINTER SPORTS 123

Because of the many different points where winter sportsmen may enter
or leave the forests, and because of the limited personnel available to keep
watch over them, only estimates of the extent of winter use of national forests
now are possible. But winter sports visits exceeded 1 /{ million, most certainly,
in 1938. Nine-tenths of this use was on 50 of the 130 forests. These 50 forests
lie in 5 States, and the distribution of the winter-sports use ran approximately
thus:

On 17 forests in California 639,000 visits; on 7 in Washington 106,000;
on 14 in Colorado 110,000; on 13 in Oregon 140,000; and on 11 forests in
Utah 88,000.

For the West the total reached 1,182,764. New Hampshire's White
Mountain Forest received 69,000 visits. All other national forests, including
those of Alaska, took care of around 43,000 among them. And nearly every-
where, where latitude or altitude permit, there is evidence that winter use
is not only mounting, but soaring.

FACILITIES . . . All this has led to a reenaction, rapidly, of the dilemmas
presented when people first began coming on to the national forests to
picnic and to camp. At first forest officers could say, God bless them, and
leave them alone. Then less skilled vistors came, and in greater numbers;-
and soon they had to consider making some rules and providing facilities.

To plan, rear, and maintain winter-sports facilities sufficient to meet
the demand presents an administrative problem of considerable magnitude.
The first lone winter adventurer gloried in his self-reliance; but an increasing
army of novices congregating in favored areas cannot be allowed to freeze,
get lost, or break their necks, regardless. Fortunately, the sports most enjoyed
by the great mass of winter visitors require only simple facilities, and if
these are wisely planned they do not measurably mar the forest atmosphere.

One essential on a winter-sports area is to get the crowds up the moun-
tain and down again, with reasonable safety, after private means of con-
veyance have gone as far as they can. Formerly, the people came to the
forest in special cars chartered by an outdoor club to be shunted off the
main line at a winter resort. Now week-end or holiday "snow trains," often
running in several sections directly from metropolitan centers, are needed

w^*i|

i^Hfet:

Most winter sports parties

come to the mountain in their own cars.

STANISLAUS NATIONAL FOREST, CALIF.

WINTER SPORTS 125

to get the crowds to the snow country. "Snow buses" and "snow planes"
are more recent developments operating to some extent in both the East
and West.

Most winter sports parties come to the mountain, and part way up the
mountain, in their own cars. This calls for keeping roads up the mountain
open, whatever the weather; for sizable parking places, cleared of snow
accumulations, somewhere near the pleasure slopes and heights; and for
further measures of crowd convenience and sanitation.

The push of late years to extend and maintain national-forest and State
highways for year-round use has been a major influence in extending winter
sports. Foresters selecting winter-sports areas give preference to places
that can be reached over roads that are plowed for other purposes. Where
this can be done, there is no greatly increased cost of maintenance. But the
pressure of demand by winter sportsmen is sometimes such that roads
never before kept open all winter are now snow-plowed regularly, and resi-
dent families who used to be snowed in most of the winter now can run down
into town whenever they please — thanks to the winter sportsmen.

Another development that follows the penetration of active Americans
to mountain playgrounds, over sanded and plowed roads, is a following
throng of motorists, some spectators, others just motoring — driving up the
mountain and down again in winter, as they do in summer, just to be
more or less out of doors and moving. Motoring promises, on some such
forests, to become in point of participating persons, the leading winter
sport there, just as now it is generally the leading summer forest sport.

As the fall winds sharpen on many a forested mountain, the forest guards
set border markers, stakes 20 feet high or higher, to mark the winding
shoulders of tortuous mountain roads. These stakes serve to guide the
tractors that push the snow plows or bulldozers as the snows fall, drift,
and deepen, all winter long. Occasionally a marker is covered entirely,
but 20 feet is generally tall enough to stand above the snow and guide
the plows. By such means the highway to beautiful Timberline Lodge, for
instance, a Forest Service resort on the Mount Hood National Forest in
Oregon, is kept open for winter sportsmen, their followers, and the local
people, all winter long. The construction and year-round maintenance

*.£$*; •*#

be carefully planned and developed,
with many things considered.

DEER PARK SKI AREA,
FORMERLY IN OLYMPIC NATIONAL FOREST, WASH.

WINTER SPORTS 127

of this beautifully graded highway with its wide spaces for turn-off and
for parking, has brought untold pleasure to many thousands of persons.

DOWNHILL TRAILS . . . Skiing is the main sport at Timberline Lodge.
Ski-crowd facilities cost something, too. There must be a diversity of facilities
to meet varying degrees of skill and interest. Pioneer skiers were able to
take things as they found them, in the main. They used logging roads
for downhill runs, and tote roads, horse trails, or hiking trails for cross-
country travel. In the East, carriage roads leading to popular summits
and horse trails constructed to haul material to fire lookouts provided
challenging grades and turns. In the West, naturally open slopes, both
above and below tree line, and areas selectively logged furnished suitable
terrain.

This remains true, of course, of the mountain slopes in many parts of
the West, and artificial improvements there are generally unnecessary.
On the densely forested slopes of the Northeast ski-trail construction and
maintenance is more necessary, expensive, and difficult.

Ski trails must be carefully planned and developed, with many things
considered— logical termini, exposure to wind and sun, the risk of ac-
celerating soil erosion. Beyond that, one must consider the trails; do they
deface the mountain? And beyond that are questions about bridges, warm-
ing shelters, and considerations of sport and safety. What should be the
maximum, minimum, and prevailing grade, the frequency and degree of
turns on trails, and the total length? Here are problems that have to be solved
on no fixed scale, for a novice trail after heavy use and fluctuating tempera-
ture may become difficult to the intermediate skier, and heavy snows may
make an expert trail safe even for .beginners.

Trails "stiff" enough to excite and satisfy the average skier most of the
time, and yet not to break too many bones of beginners — that is the only
possible formula, admittedly inexact, very largely a matter of personal
judgment or opinion. Laying out ski trails, foresters generally temper the
run with constant thought of the novice. There are so many novices and that
number, happily, is increasing all the time.

Cross-country skiing is becoming more popular. Each year there are more

128 FOREST OUTINGS

older skiers whose original interest in competitive skiing turns toward less
arduous forms. Ski touring requires clearly marked routes of varying grade
through areas of scenic interest and shelters in the "high country."

Cross-country skiing without trails on the snow fields and glaciers in the
national forests of the West and of Alaska provides high adventure. But only
a few are up to it. Trails with shelters are sufficiently dangerous for most
people, and especially for those who have passed their physical prime. And
still in increasing numbers unprepared people seek untracked snow in the
high country previously known to them only during summer travel, if then.
With the possibilities of incurring serious injury or meeting sudden storms
in the many truly remote places in the national forests, skiing under such
conditions may become extremely hazardous and must be done at the in-
dividual's risk. This dispersion from concentration areas is a trend of grow-
ing importance. It is hard to say how to handle it. A good many people are
getting hurt, and a few are smashed to death, or frozen.

WARMING SHELTERS are more than a public convenience; they are a neces-
sity. They range from primitive, three-sided lean-tos built primarily for
summer use and providing little more than a windbreak, to Mount Hood's
Timberline Lodge in Oregon where the entire lower floor, known as the
ski lobby, is maintained for the free use of winter-sports visitors. Intermedi-
ate structures are of various sizes and types to meet local needs and are fre-
quently used in other seasons as well. Such buildings are located where they
will give the greatest public service and are designed to harmonize with the
landscape. They are constructed to meet the exacting demands of cold-
weather use and heavy snow load. In some buildings, only shelter, sanita-
tion facilities, and first-aid equipment are provided. The more extensive
structures to furnish other daytime public services, such as refreshments,
are usually operated under special-use permit, frequently issued to a local
nonprofit organization chiefly interested in furnishing such services as a
public convenience.

The problem of furnishing adequate overnight accommodations is being
met, in some part, by arrangements which vary with local circumstances.
In the Eastern forests such accommodations are usually found sufficiently

WINTER SPORTS 129

near at hand on private lands, but in several instances the Forest Service
has built "high country cabins" equipped with stoves, fireplaces, and bunks
for overnight use. In the West, where the distances between winter-sports
centers and communities are greater, some sleeping accommodations have
been provided on national-forest lands.

Public interest requires that the winter-sports areas be adequately supplied
with miscellaneous facilities — directional and informational — and that
entrance signs be adapted to winter conditions. Skiers, particularly, are
interested in the length, grade, classification, and objectives of unfamiliar
trails. Visitors must be warned of general and specific hazards. Snow
gages at various elevations are of special interest. Routes marked for
winter use are needed by snowshoe and mountain-climbing groups. Loop
circuits for dog-sled trips and snow-banked chutes for tobogganing help to
round out any well-developed winter-sports area. Ice-covered lakes and
ponds naturally clear of snow are ideal for skating, but most national
forests are too heavily blanketed with snow to justify the necessary clearing
and scraping. Bobsled runs are not provided by the Forest Service because
of the abnormally high construction and maintenance costs for the relatively
small number who use them.

Skiing, tobogganing, and winter mountaineering must be recognized as
presenting greater risk of accident than most other forms of forest recreation.
At points of greatest danger the Forest Service has installed caches of first-
aid supplies and equipment for public use in case of emergency. On many
forests local chapters of the American Red Cross, winter-sports clubs, and
other groups, such as the National Ski Patrol, have cooperated in furnishing
medical supplies, first-aid treatment, and instruction. Injuries are increasing.
Only complete observance of ski-trail etiquette, a greater interest in con-
trolled skiing, and a widespread recognition by individuals of their personal
limitations and responsibilities will bring about improvement.

JUMPS AND Tows . . . Ski jumps on the national forests vary from natural
"take-offs" formed by wind-blown cornices to major ski jumps with arti-
ficial towers and graded landing hills. The more elaborate jump is usually
constructed and operated by local ski clubs. The Forest Service issues special-

fc

m^ of greater danger the Forest Service has installed caches
of first-aid supplies and equipment for public use in case of emergency.

TUCKERMAN RAVINE,
WHITE MOUNTAIN NATIONAL FOREST, N. H.

WINTER SPORTS 131

use permits when satisfactory sites on privately owned land cannot be found.
This is particularly true in the West where much of the higher land sur-
rounding communities actively interested in this form of winter sports is on
the national forests. In the East, there are generally plenty of natural sites
for ski jumps on privately held land. Nowhere has the Forest Service, itself,
undertaken to develop spectacular ski jumping or to promote tournaments.
Tournaments are all right, but they should be conducted with private
money. The equipment costs too much; it is used too short a time each year;
and the personnel and maintenance cost runs too high to justify the Service
setting up winter-sports hippodromes on its mountain sides.

To keep things simple, and as safe as possible; to give people a chance to
slide and leap and exercise, themselves, rather than simply to stamp, hover
around fires, and watch experts do so — that is the aim and policy. But
people in general in this day of the motor do not like to walk uphill, and the
sport of dashing down the mountain need not always now be paid for by
the toil of trudging up. All the richer resorts have ski tows, and on many
forests, from New Hampshire to Oregon, the not-so-rich are developing and
installing ski tows of their own.

A ski tow, in effect, is a low-slung cable coil turned by a motor. An engine
out of the oldest of cars can keep a simple ski tow going, barring break-
downs. The skiers take hold of the lower sag of the cable, and up the moun-
tain side they go. Some of the ski tow outfits installed by little local sports
clubs on the national forests are as much an expression of native genius
and inventiveness as were the first car trailers. They do not cost much;
they give a great deal of pleasure — both in their construction and in their
use. But it must be admitted that none of them is beautiful, or harmonious
with the forest atmosphere.

The revolving cable loop propelled by a discarded automobile engine
soon becomes, in richer resorts country, an apparatus refined with chair
lifts. It will be interesting to see how long it takes to bring in overstuffed
leather chairs. The present policy of the Forest Service is to permit local
clubs to install simple tow rigs, and some few permits have been issued to
special-use commercial operators who agree to erect their equipment in
inconspicuous locations. As an ingenious and effective supplement for fixed

The skiers take hold of the lower sag of the cable,
and up the mountainside they go.

BERTHOUD PASS,
ARAPAHO NATIONAL FOREST, COLO.

WINTER SPORTS 133

tows, an over-the-snow tractor or "sno-motor," which plods uphill towing a
spacious sled, has been developed and demonstrated by the Forest Service,
and the idea is making headway. These are not permanent installations;
that is another good thing about them. If the particular winter-sports area
under development does not last, the tractors can waddle on to another
area the winter following, and work there. In any event, the rig is free to
get out and do all sorts of useful work elsewhere both during and between
the snow seasons.

LIFE AND LIMB ... As a people, we love speed — thrill, dash, zip. We are
not in general a cautious people. Examine our record as motorists — the
slaughter is awful. In most States you have to be examined and licensed to
drive a car now; but any daring idiot, young or old, can put on a pair of
new skis, be towed to some precipitous mountain height, shut his eyes, take
a dare, and take off.

Deep snow is softer, by far, than a paved highway, and the general con-
centration of ski traffic on our national forests still is such that smash-ups
usually involve only one person at a time. To dare, on one's own power
only, a broken bone or so is not a bad idea, entirely; often it leads to releases
more satisfying and less permanently damaging than sassing the boss and
getting fired.

But forest officers have many other things to do than take down the
mountain the physically wounded who could not wait to learn on practice
slopes and courses; who want to do what the newsreel showed, right away.

"Take it easy, at the start," is an experienced forest officer's advice.
"Feel your way along. Don't take dares — your own, or any one else's —
until you feel sure that you can run the course triumphantly. Get the feel
of the thing gradually. Before you step off cliffs with wings on your feet,
learn how to use those wings. Stay on the practice slopes, away from all the
spectators. Never mind if the boys who have had 2 years of it call them
nursery slopes. It is the second-year crowd who crack up most often and
hardest. Take the counsel of the older skiers. Take it slow and easy at first
and enjoy yourself."

Part Three

KEEPING THINGS NATURAL

The day is almost upon us when canoe travel will consist
in paddling up the noisy wake of a motor launch and por-
taging through the back yard of a summer cottage. When
that day comes canoe travel will be dead, and dead too
will be a part of our Americanism. . . . The day is
almost upon us when a pack train must wind its way up
a gravelled highway and turn out its bell mare in the
pasture of a summer hotel. When that day comes, the
pack train will be dead, the diamond hitch will be merely
a rope and Kit Carson and Jim Bridger will be names in
a history lesson.
Aldo Leopold, in American Forests and Forest Life. October 1925.

There is no compelling ultimate reason why this industry
has to gut its sources, leave them dead.

F— 365172

LAND CUT-OVER UNDER PRIVATE OWNERSHIP,
ST. JOE NATIONAL FOREST, IDAHO.

Timber and Recreation

^^^^

The tree speaks: "Ye who pass and would raise your hand against me, hearken ere you
harm me! I am the heat of your hearth on cold winter nights; the friendly shade screen-
ing you from the summer sun; my fruits are refreshing draughts, quenching your thirst
as you journey on.

"I am the beam that holds your house, the board of your table, the bed on which you lie,
and the timber that builds your boat. I am the handle of your hoe, the door of your home-
stead, the wood of your cradle, and the shell of your coffin. I am the bread of kindness,
and the flower of beauty." From a sign in the park of a European city.

OUR COUNTRY NEEDS TIMBER, even in this age of steel. We need
timber not only for the most obvious uses — for houses, barns, railroad ties,
furniture, boxes, fence posts, firewood; but also for a developing variety
of chemical woods products, thoroughly modern. For plastics, films, lac-
quers, cellophane, newspapers, wrapping paper; for the finest grades of
writing paper, and ammunition; for naval stores, distillates, dyestuffs,
rayons, and for thousands of other products that modern chemistry is
developing from tree cellulose as a base, we are going to need and to use
forests more and more.

When Jamestown was founded, we had about 820 million acres of
forests in the continental United States. We have about 630 million acres
classified as forest land today; of the 176 million acres in national forests,
134 million acres are forest land. Vast as they are, our national forests com-
prise less than one-fourth of the remaining forest land.

The total area classified as forest land, private and public, is bigger than

'37

138 FOREST OUTINGS

all our country east of the Mississippi River. But the Forest Service figures
that nearly 1 acre in 4 — 168 million out of 630 million acres — is useless
as commercial timberland. Thrown together, this 168 million acres
would more than blanket all of Maine plus all of New Hampshire, Vermont,
Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, New
Jersey, Maryland, West Virginia, and Ohio.

Yet often this noncommercial forest land, of which more than 4 acres out
of every 10 is in public ownership, if sensibly handled can serve most use-
fully in protected watersheds to reduce damage by floods and erosion, to
clear up muddy streams, to restore depleted and impaired water resources,
to conserve and multiply remaining wildlife, and to afford recreation.

Hunters go wherever the game can be legally shot. They tramp across
cut-over lands as freely as through unlogged forests, across reforested fields
as readily as over native mountain meadows. Fishermen try their luck in
almost every sizeable stream which has any fish and in all but a few of
the most remote lakes. They, too, generally concentrate especially near
roads and population centers, so that the streams in these vicinities are often
completely fished out. Nevertheless, a-fishing they go wherever there is
water enough to wet their lines.

And so it is, in a measure, with motorists, picnickers, and campers.
The country 'round about may be skinned bare and unattractive. The
forest scene may present no sylvan aspect whatsoever — only denuded
mountainsides and fish-depleted streams left after a recent heavy burn, or
dense dry brush fields, or the clear-cut pulpwood operations of New England,
or the dredged-up wastes in the lower reaches of streams on the Tahoe
and Eldorado National Forests in California. But fishermen come to enjoy
the poor fishing on streams in some of the ugly burns. Energetic walkers
sometimes include the brush fields in cross-country hikes. Hunters look for deer
in the cut-over New England pulp lands, and curious tourists drive the rough
roads by the Tahoe tailings to see how gold is gathered from the leavings.
Such use is welcomed for whatever pleasure it can bring, but it will not
materially affect the land planning of stricken areas now included in the
national forests.

Where there is no timber, recreational use and forest industries naturally

TIMBER AND RECREATION 139

do not conflict. But many restless people throng where timber is best.
There are often roads there, to get the timber out; and these roads get
broader and harder each year, speaking generally, as more and more timber
is moved by truck.

Lumbering operations and recreational use conflict measurably in many
places, and they conflict most seriously in places where it is impossible for
the local people to live without logging and the attendant industries.

Sawmills, planing mills, remanufacturing plants, furniture and other
factories, together with the forests supplying them, had, in "normal" times,
a capital value estimated at 10 billion dollars. The woods industry is pretty
well on its back now, especially at the source of supply. But in 1929 it con-
tributed about 3 billion of the 80-billion-dollar national income, and in
normal times it supports some 6 million people, their homes, churches, and
schools.

There is no compelling ultimate reason why this industry has to gut its
sources, leave them dead. If rather simple sustained-yield measures, plainly
demonstrated on private lands here and there and on the national forests,
were to spread in practice much faster than they are now spreading, there is
no reason why our remaining forests may not provide refillable reservoirs of
materials, employment, and sustenance for more than twice as many people
as they do now.

Such possibilities, and the risk of another final surge of despoliation,
apply especially to the South, where technological imponderables enter fast
into a changing picture. The South, as has been noted, boomed and spread
in the main on cotton. Then healing pine marched into vast washed-out
cotton lands. It used to be thought that the pitch in these southern pines
made them useless for the better grades of paper pulp and for rayon. Thanks
to pioneer researches of the Forest Products Laboratory and to those of a
great Georgian, the late Charles H. Herty, this now appears untrue.

In consequence, new mills and big money are rushing into the South;
and pulpwood towns northward, in Canada and from Maine to the West
Coast, are beginning to feel economic pressure from the South's rapidly
expanding pulp and paper industry.

The southern agrarian poets and writers who worry about the South's

The forest must be cropped rather than mined.

SOUTHERN KRAFT CORPORATION LANDS,
CALHOUN COUNTY, ARK.

TIMBER AND RECREATION 141

commercial eagerness to forget wage standards, which forces chambers of
commerce to forget taxes; to forget almost anything except a dire need to
attract tourists, industries, and pay rolls; and to go industrial full-tilt — these
southern agrarians really have something to worry about in the recent ex-
pansion of the South's paper industry. So have State and Federal forest
administrators, from ranger to Chief of the United States Forest Service,
from fire warden to State forester.

In all the Southern States together, 18 new pulp and paper mills were
established or projected between January 1, 1936, and June 1, 1939. These
made a total of 51. These mills alone may require 4 to 5 million cords of
rough wood annually. But even though annual forest growth in the South
of all species and all sizes exceeds total annual drain by 7 million cords,
the picture is none too rosy. Old-growth and saw-timber stands are in
general understocked. But from analyses made in many forest-survey units
of some 6 to 1 0 million acres each, it is known that forest growing stock in
the South generally can be built up; that annual increment can be doubled,
at least.

Nature, prodigal as she is, must be aided by man before southern
forests as a whole can double their present growth. Fortunately, most of
the things man must do are obvious and rather simple. Adequate fire pro-
tection must be provided. The forest must be cropped rather than mined.
Growing stock must be built up. And these things must be done on all
forest lands, no matter who owns them.

Among the new concerns that have come in so rapidly to take southern
pulpwood some are following admirable forestry methods, but many
others are not. Certain of the larger companies have made hopeful starts
toward sustained-forest use, but others exhibit again, in varying measure,
the same reckless "methods by which so many million acres of forest land
have been laid waste. Unless such companies or corporations, including
sawmills and other forest industries, can be brought to see the waste and
suffering they are creating, and quickly, it may be for great stretches of the
Southland the same old story repeated; and this time it may be an even
sadder story.

If, on the other hand, these industries are developed on the basis of

142 FOREST OUTINGS

sound forest practices, they may prove a continuing support for a much
higher standard of living than now prevails.

NORTH AND SOUTH, EAST AND WEST, national forests must demonstrate the
best ways to recreate a sustained source of income for all those millions of
our people who live by commercial woods products. Human recreation
has to be meshed or fitted in with this and with other forest uses.

With about one-sixth of the commercially useful acreage, the national
forests contain one-third of the Nation's saw timber. The very existence of
many established communities depends now on the assurance of continuing
supplies of this Government timber, which can often be combined with
private timberlands for joint sustained-yield management, to provide
continuing supplies for permanent wood-using industries.

In many such places the claim of the hunter or vacationist, and the claim
of the woods industries upon the national forests clash. Can both interests
be served? In large part, yes; but it takes intelligent planning, sound coor-
dination, and some yielding on both — and all — sides.

Few will claim that timber operations, however judiciously conducted,
enhance woodland charm. The most complete sanctuary inheres in the
natural state. From the far corners of the world people come to see and
absorb the unimaginable majesty of the Pacific groves. A man would be
indeed lacking in sensibility who could stand in the midst of the giant tulip
poplars and white oaks of a virgin Appalachian cove or the towering,
many-centuries-old trees of a primeval Douglas fir forest in Oregon and not
feel it sacrilege to lay ax to a single one of them.

Yet timber is needed; harvest must come, and must inevitably destroy
some of the beauty and interest of the forest. But though the larger and
older trees are taken, all is not lost, by any means. The young forests that
succeed their harvested forebears may also be beautiful. The vigor, the push
of the trees toward the sky, and the promise of things to come may capture
the imagination and enchant the eye.

The actual result is a compromise, some sort of a reconciliation, with
civilization. It may be made a happy compromise. And the commercial
and aesthetic aspects may be in some part segregated, each from each.

TIMBER AND RECREATION 143

PRIORITIES . . . Foresters establish for any given area a planned priority
of use. Here, they say, lumbering shall be the dominant activity; here
lumbering and grazing shall be codominant; and here is where the pleasure
seekers may have first claim. It is all tentative; they know that, but it is
earth-born of need.

The typical national forest is not a solidly timbered area. Topographic
and soil variations break it into a complex pattern of valley, plateau, moun-
taintop, canyon, stream, and lake. The vegetative cover may be heavy tim-
ber, second growth, subalpine or scrub forest, grass, or brush. Within this
pattern, the commercial timber productive area may make up approxi-
mately 50 percent of the whole. This is distributed variously, sometimes in
large solid blocks, but often in belts and stringers up the stream valleys.

The various classes of land are in general so intermingled, as nature has
laid them down, that management must treat them as one harmonious
whole, giving each portion the use or uses which it best serves, whether it
be timber production, grazing, or recreation, or, as is usually the case, a
combination of several uses. No one use can be planned without considera-
tion of the others.

Commercial timber does not on the average occupy more than half of
the national-forest area. The possible conflict between timber cutting and
recreation is at once limited to this extent. Actually the possibility of impor-
tant conflict is much more sharply limited because the heavily concentrated
forms of recreational use of the national forests involve a relatively small
portion of the whole forest area. People drive the roads, fish the streams,
and camp or picnic by the streamside or lakeside. Beyond this concentra-
tion, which is chiefly in the stream valleys, is the more general distribution of
a smaller population of hunters, hikers, horseback riders, and berry pickers.

The important thing at present is to set up the necessary zones for special
treatment. It is easy to cut a 500-year-old tree, but it takes a long time to
restore it. The approximate average life of a coast Douglas fir is 600 years,
a western white pine 350 years, a western larch 500 years, a white oak 350
years, a lodgepole pine 200 years, a ponderosa pine 500 years, a tulip poplar
250 years. The time involved in the life of such trees is so long that it is vital
for ample areas of them to be preserved.

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But though the larger and older trees are taken,
all is not lost, by any means.

SELECTIVE CUTTING IN PONDEROSA PINE STAND,

TIMBER AND RECREATION 145

Much of the feeling which has developed among nature lovers against
timber cutting has been heightened by the pioneer form of timber liquida-
tion on private lands. That, of course, usually is not forestry, practiced as
long-time husbandry, at all.

SUSTAINED YIELD . . . For each type of commercial timber in the national
forests, the Forest Service aims to develop techniques of management which
will serve to renew and reproduce the cut-over stand, and keep it continu-
ously productive. This affords maximum opportunity for employment, and
helps contribute to continuity and stability of dependent communities.
These methods vary, and all problems have not yet been solved. But recrea-
tional values are naturally best preserved by the methods which least dis-
turb the forest cover.

The ponderosa pine type is the most widespread of the important western
timber types. It is normally an uneven-aged forest, and adapts itself to a
system of partial cutting at intervals of 20 to 50 years, each operation taking
out the oldest trees. With the development of truck transportation, the
tendency has been for cutting to become even lighter than in the past, the
first cutting sometimes removing not more than 30 to 40 percent of the
volume, causing very little break in the forest cover and little reduction in
the general recreational value of the forest. This system of cutting is now in
effect over large areas in the national forests.

The west coast Douglas fir type offers a more difficult problem in main-
taining scenic values. The old-growth timber occurs in very heavy stands
and the trees are so large and so old that in the past the usual practice has
been clear cutting, with reseeding accomplished through scattered seed
trees or uncut blocks or strips. Within the last decade, however, powerful
trucks and tractors have made selective logging physically possible. A few
years ago information accumulated by research and administration indi-
cated that, from the standpoint of economics as well as that of silviculture,
it was possible to apply within some of the Douglas fir type a selective system
modified to fit that type. This modified system is now adopted, as far as
conditions and circumstances make it possible, in Douglas fir stands on the
national forests. It is also being tried out on certain private holdings. Modi-

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Artificial planting is a form of timber management
distinctly beneficial to recreational use.

F-1 53336. F-345360

PIKE NATIONAL FOREST, COLO.

TIMBER AND RECREATION 147

fication in past practice also included more effective screening of cut-over
areas by roadside zones and other well-located uncut areas, and where
clear cutting is necessary, a wider distribution of cutting areas.

The lodgepole pine, a predominant type in the Northern and Central
Rocky Mountains, has been managed chiefly by some form of partial cut-
ting. Vast lodgepole areas cut over for railroad ties and mine timbers in the
last 30 years bear evidence that areas logged by forestry methods may still
be green and attractive. Such areas are today commonly used for recreation.

The various hardwood types that occur in the eastern and southern
national forests are generally well adapted to selective cutting, although, as
in all types, there are portions of the stand in which clear cutting may be
the best form of silviculture. Very heavy recreational use takes place on
many hardwood stands that have been selectively logged.

On the other hand, the red spruce and balsam fir forests growing on the
upper slopes of the eastern mountains usually require some form of clear
cutting because any reserved trees of these shallow-rooted species are pecu-
liarly subject to wind-throw. Clear-cut areas in this type are followed by
excellent reproduction, provided fires are kept out, but scenically they are
unattractive until the new stand is well along. Consequently, in the spruce
slope type either recreation values must be sacrificed for considerable
periods or commodity values given up altogether.

Methods of disposing of logging slash have an important bearing on forest
appearance after logging operations. The continuing tendency to reduce
the intensity of cutting on national forests results in a decrease in the amount
of slash.

Artificial planting is a form of timber management distinctly beneficial
to recreational use. Hundreds of thousands of acres of unsightly old burns
have been restored to a green forest cover through national-forest-planting
activities. In 1938 alone, 154,000 acres, an area four times the size of the
District of Columbia, were planted on the national forests.

In various parts of the United States one finds convincing proof that
timber cutting and recreation may go hand in hand. Most of the heavily
used recreational areas of the Lake States have been cut over, but people
there haye made some headway toward restoration in the past few years.

148 FOREST OUTINGS

New England is a region of heavy recreational use. Much of this use is
in areas where the original forest long ago gave way to second- or third-
or fourth-growth stands. There are countless little wood-using plants getting
raw material from the same forests that millions of people frequent for
pleasure. And the reconciliation of the demands of millions of forest visitors
with the harvesting of successive timber crops in northern New Hampshire
is, perhaps, the best example of the multiple-use form of national forest
management. The cut of timber from the White Mountain National Forest
this year will represent about $52,000, of which 25 percent or SI 3, 000 will
be returned, in lieu of taxes, to the counties in which national forest land
is located. The forest has paid more than $192,000 to the States of New
Hampshire and Maine.

Simultaneously, the recreation business has grown to be one of New
Hampshire's most profitable sources of revenue. As early as 1935 returns
reached the impressive total of $75,000,000, of which $18,000,000 is esti-
mated to have come from the White Mountain area.

Thus, public management may reconcile divergent interests and uses and
deliver, from forest and wild lands generally, "the greatest good to the
greatest number of people in the long run."

The ponderosa pine stands in the Black Hills of South Dakota have been
cut by forestry methods for more than 30 years, yet thousands of people
visit this area each summer and delight in the beauty of the growing forest.
The overmature trees are gone, but the many near-mature trees and sap-
lings which have remained after selective logging furnish refreshing shade
and beauty to people from the Great Plains who visit these cut-over forests
for their vacations, and dash out amid lightning bursts, in thundergusts,
to let the spilled, whipped rain beat upon them, a release from drought and
deprivation, a renewal — hope.

There are many who like to see flocks and herds on the open range,
and count it a part of the pleasure of their outing.

BEAR VALLEY,
PAYETTE NATIONAL FOREST, IDAHO.

Herds and Humans

Pastoral pursuits have always constituted one of the principal occupations of the human

race. Early history would be deprived of some of its most interesting chapters if we were to

eliminate from them the many references to flocks and herds and shepherds, and kine or

cattle.

In our own West, and especially in its arid, semiarid, and mountainous portions, grazing

is still and probably always will be of great importance to people who live there.

Here the shepherd and his sheep, his tepee and his faithful dog, and the contented grazing
of well-bred cattle portray important uses of mountain pastures and forest ranges. But
they also provide scenes that lend pleasure and romance to mountain travel.

John H. Hatlon, in an unpublished manuscript.

GRASS-MADE MEAT and wool are part of a great and needed industry
in this country. National-forest land must help to support this industry in
the future, as in the past. The Forest Service began allotting national-forest
ranges, in place of earlier and unorganized use, some 30 years ago. So graz-
ing antedates recreation as a major national-forest use. It is still a major
phase of national-forest use in the West, where large numbers of stockmen
depend on national-forest pasturage for summer range.

More than 1% million cattle and horses and 9 million sheep and goats
find forage for a part of each year on the national forests. Twenty-six
thousand families are directly or indirectly dependent on these ranges for
their livelihood, and on nearby lowland ranges stockmen have invested
about $200,000,000 in ranch properties which would be far less valuable
without national-forest summer range.

Southern and eastern national forests do not occupy an important place

'5*

152 FOREST OUTINGS

in the livestock industry; they are not adapted by nature to the use of
domestic stock on an open-range basis as in the- West. Comparatively few
livestock are permitted on them. So herds and humans rarely get in each
other's way back East, and the same thing holds true over the greater part
of the national-forest area, for less than half the total area is now grazed
by domestic stock.

Moreover, the Forest Service closes entirely to grazing certain virgin,
natural, and other special types of areas having definite recreational appeal;
and of the 14 million acres of wilderness areas, 6 million are not grazed by
domestic livestock or are used so slightly that essentially primitive conditions
of vegetation can easily be maintained.

There are many who like to see flocks and herds on the open range and
count it a part of the pleasure of their outing. To them the sight of a band
of sheep scattered over a distant hillside, or of a lone camp wagon silhouetted
against the evening sky is pleasing. It seems a part of the romance of the
West. The dude ranches, many of which are located in or near the western
national forests, came into existence largely because of this desire of the
vacationist to share in what is left of the picturesque life of the range.

But livestock and forest guests frequently get in each other's way in the
more accessible areas along roads and highways. People seek these spots
for recreation and, as might be expected, find that many of these easily
reached lands have long been grazed. Yet it is often possible to avoid discord
by planning more carefully the developments for recreational use.

For example, if the grazing use of a very large area should be wholly de-
pendent on a relatively small water source, the location of a campground
or group of summer homes around this spring or lake would necessitate
the abandonment of grazing over the entire area. With a little advance
planning, however, the recreational concentration undoubtedly could be
placed elsewhere and the smaller amount of water needed for recreational
use obtained by wells or improvement of springs. Similarly, on many road-
side or near-roadside areas the recreational use often justifies the fencing
of the campground against livestock. The fences are usually hidden so
campers have no feeling of being "shut-in." The cattle-guard entrance is
made to merge attractively into the surrounding scene. Plans must also be

HERDS AND HUMANS 153

made to avoid concentration of hunters around the more important stock-
watering places. "Accessibility" is not a static condition, and sudden changes
in accessibility of national-forest areas through road construction bring with
them an obligation to foresee possible conflicts in land use and to do the
advance planning necessary.

Stock driveways needed to get stock to back country, often through areas
closed to grazing, are sore spots in coordination of forest recreation and
grazing that are not always easily healed. Often these driveways have been
in use several decades. They naturally follow the easiest routes of travel.
The roads built later have in many instances paralleled them. And now
that the campers and tourists are following the roads, the stock driveways,
because of the dust and trampled vegetation for which livestock are re-
sponsible, are destructive to the recreational value of such areas. Whenever
recreation is a sufficiently important land use, one solution to this particular
problem is to change the location of the driveways if at all possible. Where
relocating the driveway is not feasible, recreation must adapt itself to the
situation or be diverted to other areas. In recent years the use of motor-
trucks to move livestock to and from the national-forest ranges has lessened
the driveway problem to some extent, but driveways will probably always
be needed for the movement of livestock to and from roadless areas.

When changes in location of driveways are made, the new routes avoid
stream courses and the regularly used recreational roads and trails. So far
as possible, these new driveways are along ridge tops, where damage to
vegetation is less severe than in the valleys. More than 750 miles of new stock
driveways were constructed by the Forest Service in the 5-year period 1933-
37. The stockmen have been able to use these less convenient driveways, but
such changes are often difficult and frequently very expensive. Further
progress in solving this problem will require patience and understanding on
the part of both the stockmen and the people on pleasure bent.

GRAZING AND RECREATION ... A problem that has appeared in some
places is to provide ample forage for saddle horses and pack stock used on
horseback trips through the mountains. As such trips become more popular,
it will be necessary in certain localities to plan grazing so as to leave more

F-350932

And now that campers and tourists are following the roads,

stock driveways are destructive to the recreational value of such areas.

LOLO NATIONAL FOREST, MONT.

HERDS AND HUMANS 155

feed than has so far been left for visitors' pack and saddle stock. This may
involve changes in grazing allotments, or it may be necessary to defer regular
grazing until after the recreational season.

In contrast to these relatively small areas, there are a few rather large
areas suitable for grazing on which recreational use is so great and so
obviously the pre-eminent land use that grazing of domestic livestock must
be entirely excluded. On the Pike National Forest in Colorado, for
instance, the forests near Colorado Springs are frequented by so many
vacationists that the people alone tend to wear out the grass by "milling
around" over the lower slopes of Pikes Peak. And on Los Padres National
Forest near Los Angeles, so much land is needed for concentrated forest
recreational use that, over large areas, livestock is not grazed.

There are other large areas of "back country" from which small groups
of enthusiastic recreationists sometimes insist that absolutely all grazing of
domestic livestock be excluded, although the number of forest visitors
affected is small. The objections of these small groups are centered not so
much in the physical damage that might be done by livestock, but more
in a strong and very sincere feeling that the primitive qualities of the na-
tional forests are destroyed by the mere presence of sheep and cattle even
though the animals may be miles away and unseen. It would seem, however,
that with the complete absence of livestock from nearly 100,000 acres of
concentrated recreational use, from 6,000,000 out of 14,000,000 acres of
wilderness, and from more than 85,000,000 additional acres, it is not neces-
sary to jeopardize an important industry by entirely excluding grazing from
the less than half of the national forest area which remains.

In the past undesirably heavy concentrations of livestock near routes of
recreational travel have resulted from salting cattle near roads and trails.
This was unobjectionable in the days before the people began to use the
national forests in large numbers. For the most part it has now been elimi-
nated by establishing salting grounds elsewhere.

The bedding of sheep night after night in one place leaves unsightly
scars on the landscape, and depletes the nearby range. And the bedding of
sheep near campgrounds interferes with the fullest enjoyment of camper
guests. These difficulties were anticipated years ago, and on the national

156 FOREST OUTINGS

forests administrative efforts have for years been directed toward eliminat-
ing them. Approved range-management practices prevent the bedding of
sheep near campgrounds and picnic areas, and Forest Service bedding rules
are intended to preserve vegetation by prohibiting the use of the same bed
ground for more than 3 nights. Bedding out — bedding wherever night
overtakes the herd— is a common practice which results in only a 1 -night
use of each bed ground.

Overuse of range by livestock not only interferes with full enjoyment by
forest visitors and detracts from the natural attractiveness of forest land-
scape, but also damages the soil and forage. The practice of the Forest
Service, therefore, is to make such adjustments as are necessary to bring use
of ranges into balance with forage production. Since World War times,
when many forest ranges were stocked beyond capacity in the interests of
maximum meat production, reductions in numbers of stock on national-
forest ranges total 839,000 cattle and 2,854,000 sheep, or 37]/2 percent of
the cattle and 331/2 percent of the sheep previously allowed on national-
forest ranges. Since some of these ranges are still overstocked, further
reductions are necessary.

TAMED vs. WILDLIFE . . . The Forest Service policy is to so restrict grazing
by domestic livestock that enough forage will be left for reasonable numbers
of wildlife, and especially for such big-game animals as deer and elk. But
certain practical difficulties stand in the way. Winter range is a controlling
factor in big-game populations. Many national forests contain no areas
suitable for winter range, or very few. Many winter ranges of former years
have been absorbed in agricultural developments. Big-game animals which
use summer range in the higher portions of the Cascades, the Sierras, and
the Rocky Mountains, for example, are forced by deep snow to seek low-
lying winter ranges outside the national forests. The forage on these lower
ranges is often privately owned and fully utilized by livestock.

Other difficulties include State game laws which do not permit removal
of game in excess of the feed supply; public sentiment unfavorable to the
extension of hunting seasons to serve that purpose; or failure of hunters to
do so in open seasons. Any one of these may allow big-game herds to in-

HERDS AND HUMANS 157

crease beyond the capacity of available ranges, and to starve to death in
alarming numbers. The deer herd of the Kaibab Plateau in Arizona, the
Northern Yellowstone elk herd, and the South Fork herd in the Flathead
National Forest in Montana are notable examples of uncontrolled increase
in herds which, even after exclusion of livestock from large areas, resulted
in destruction of the forage resource and decimation of the animals by
starvation.

The other side of the picture is more encouraging. Because the feeding
habits of the different animals are often such that vegetation left untouched
by one is eaten by another, there is almost always room for a rather large
population of big-game animals on most properly stocked livestock ranges.
Moreover, more than half of the national-forest area is not used by domestic
stock, and these lands provide much feed for wildlife. Included within this
total are some 3,000,000 acres of national-forest lands which might be used
by domestic stock but which have been closed to such use. These special
areas include the more important of the few winter ranges on western
national forests, and some summer ranges that are especially needed by
wildlife.

On the whole, competition between domestic stock and big game for
forage on the national forests is not great. Where such competition does
occur there is only one sensible solution, and that lies in joint action by the
responsible agencies. The Forest Service is responsible for administration
and protection of the land and its resources, while the State game commis-
sions are actively engaged in the administration of the State game laws.
These agencies, acting jointly, and in cooperation with stockmen and
sportsmen, should be able to work out sensible adjustments.

All ease and peace vanished. The holiday was spoiled.

F-238977

HALF MOON FIRE,
FLATHEAD NATIONAL FOREST, MONT.

Fire

More than 72,200 national forest acres were burned over in the calendar year 1937. Some
500 acres burned to every 1,000,000 acres protected. Losses of area have never before
been held to so low a total. But the 1937 fire season from the standpoint of loss of life was
disastrous. . . .

Fifteen heroic CCC boys met horrible deaths in the Blackwater fire. Thirty-eight others
were injured but recovered. The tragedy was due to an unforeseeable combination of
sudden changes of weather which deprived crews of what should normally have been a
nearby safety zone. . . . The 1937 honor roll of men who died on far-flung national forest
fire lines numbers 20. . . . Report of Ferdinand Silcox, Chief of the Forest Service, 1938.

AN UNEASY FEELING hung over the little group of campers in the big
cedar grove on the Priest River of Idaho. It was the first of August. The
forest was tinder dry, and there were disquieting rumors of forest fires off to
the west.

The wind increased and the rumors were confirmed. There came now
a steady patter of twigs and pine needles falling on the tents. The campers
drew together, excitedly talking. One of them pointed to a white cloud
thrust over the timbered ridge to the west. It grew and ballooned into a
cauliflowerlike thunderhead. "Fire!" cried a man, pointing. Other cries
rose: "The Freeman Lake fire has blown up." . . . "Strike tents!" . . .
"Time to get out of here."

Down the road a siren sounded. Three motortrucks loaded with fire
fighters thundered by. Smoke settled into the valley, cutting off all distant
visibility. Ashes swept up by the great heat draft over the ridge commenced
to fall among the cedars. Hastily each family group struck its tents, packed
equipment. All ease and peace vanished. The holiday was spoiled. One
by one, like startled rabbits, cars scampered out of the forest. By nightfall

'59

160 FOREST OUTINGS

the fire had swept across the river and the cedar grove camp was in ashes.

The trees themselves, their cool shade, their beauty, and the carpet of
woodland plants on the ground, and the bird and animal life — all destroyed,
and all in a few hours. Nothing remained save smoldering desolation — the
skeletons of trees standing dead, a tangle of down logs, and the hot sun
beating through to the blackened ground of an open burn. And dust, carbon
dust, billions upon billions of minute floating carbon particles; this is all
that remained of living trees, of vital forest cover. Products that might have
kept unborn generations alive and at ease — dust in the air now, to be dead
for centuries.

It is hard to put into words the premonitions that dampen the everyday
working spirit, or the zest in seizing a carefree day in the open, when a forest
fire gets going, creeping or leaping, anywhere within 10 miles or so. A sort
of stoic panic grips all the people there, working and playing. It disrupts all
planned and purposed work and disrupts outings. The fire may be so far
away that no smoke is smelled or seen, but the telephone lines between the
fire towers buzz; the forest staff is tense, strained; the air is charged with
a sense of insecurity. Small animals and greater forms of forest wildlife
begin to cross the trails and roads leeward. Whether they see such signs of
the fire or not (generally forest visitors do not), a like impulse unsettles the
holiday spirit of forest visitors.

In a bad fire season a pall of smoke settles over the whole country. In
such a season the mountains may not be visible for weeks. All distant views
are cut off; the major pleasure of being in the mountains is destroyed. The
mere report of large fires burning is sufficient to curtail greatly the recrea-
tional travel into the threatened country and often wisely so, for large fires
bring real danger. Through the course of the years many hundreds of people
have suffered terrible death in forests aflame. Campers or travelers do well
to keep out of the woods when large forest fires are burning.

The fire season, or the driest time of the year, comes at different months
on different forests. In Montana, the greatest danger is in midsummer,
when cover is tinderlike and lightning strikes most often. In Florida, the
dry time is usually from February to April, before spring rains have greened
the scrub oaks and the brush and forest ground cover. Foresters have a

FIRE 161

saying that you do not have to consult records to gage the fire hazard on a
given forest. All you have to do is look at the faces and listen to the talk of
the ranger and forest guards. There is truth in this.

The Caribbean National Forest of Puerto Rico has practically no fire
hazard. And of such is the reward for being on a tropical rain forest with
200 inches annual rainfall, foresters say there, relaxed and cheerful. For-
esters working out from Missoula, Mont., seem by comparison in the summer
season, gaunt, tense. There is little laughter among them. "You will not,"
says Evan W. Kelley, once a major in the A. E. F. and now regional forester
in charge of fire control and other Forest Service activities in Montana and
northern Idaho, "find West Slope forest officers gay. We are smothered by
the work, by the menace, in the fire season. To feel it, come live here in the
dry time, with the mountain storms spitting and crackling.

"This season (1938) we had 140 fires going on one 2,000,000-acre area
at once. All of them were started by lightning. No special zones of risk; hits
all over. The lightning starts duff and snag fires, and occasionally in a dry
top of a living tree. Many are hard to find. Not a fire at first, just a creeping
smolder. We've hunted for 4 days to find one, sometimes.

"We send out smoke chasers, working in from section lines, with com-
passes to run down fires reported by the fire towers. We send work crews
out, strip the ground a rod or so apart, hunting the terrain for smoldering
fires, as if we were looking for a lost child.

"And just when you think you've got them all, and can take a Sunday
afternoon off, you get a day of high wind, low humidity, more lightning,
and roaring fires to fight all over the mountains. It's a hard game to beat.
It takes men with nerves of iron and bodies of steel," says Major Kelley,
who adds that when his time comes to retire he is going "to put up a cabin
in a swamp, a big one."

In one particular the fire situation on northwestern dry-land forests is
less nerve racking than the situation on the forests of Florida, Georgia, Mis-
sissippi, and of other far Southern States. There is something impersonal
about defending from destruction woodlands fired by lightning. A man can
be rather fatalistic about it; he can fight and not be angry. In many parts
of the far South, however, and in the most dangerous, the driest season, most

Nothing remained save smoldering desolation — the skeletons
of trees standing dead, a tangle of down logs, and the hot sun
beating through to the blackened ground.

SIUSLAW NATIONAL FOREST, OREG.

FIRE 163

of the forest fires are started, more or less deliberately, by human beings.
The ignorance, the superstition, the voodoo notions which bring on this
deliberate annual destruction of the South's remaining forest resources are
hard to fight, or even to contemplate, calmly.

Anyone who has ever driven in March down through the piney woods,
which make a straggling start on the eastern shore of Maryland, rim the
coastal plain to Florida, and then turn and march west to Texas, will have
seen the thing happening, all along the way. That is when the woods burners,
white and black, go out and set fires.. It is a regular part of their spring work.

Firing "greens up" the grass, the people there say. They say it kills
rattlers, destroys the "germs" of pellagra and of tuberculosis and of infantile
paralysis, rids the woods of chiggers and malaria. Probably, it does none of
these things but the feeling that it does runs deep. What indiscriminate
burning of the forest floor, or open range land, does is to cremate such living
organic matter as remains in the upper topsoil. It burns out part of the
land's richness. It makes the piece of soil less fertile and all the more likely to
wash or blow away. The grass may look green and fresh at first, but its meat-
producing values are not improved. It looks like a nice, clean job, maybe,
for the first week or so, but the resulting growth is sparser, coarser, ranker.

To burn land off, time after time and right and left, is to hurt and per-
haps destroy it. Yet every March as you travel southward in the piney
woods, you see people setting grass fires and woods fires on hundreds and
thousands of acres. Drive at night, and for miles you will see lands ablaze,
untended. Smoke and carbon particles fill the air; the ground flames are as
crawling snakes of fire; and here and there you will see them licking their
way up tree trunks and flaming explosively in the canopy.

All along the way are educational signs placed there by State and
national foresters, patiently reiterating established facts; EVERYONE LOSES

WHEN THE WOODS BURN . . . PREVENT FOREST FIRES IT PAYS. . . .

But still the people go out and set the woods and fields afire.

Partly, it is superstition; and there is a strand of racial memory inter-
twined which makes the thing hard to get at and change, for thus, by fire,
our pioneer forebears cleared their farms from the wilderness, in the main.
There is probably an even further throw-back: Man's instinctive hostility

164 FOREST OUTINGS

to, and dread of, the jungle. There is also the primitive excitement which
kindles in all of us the desire to see flame leap and run. Quite a few farmers
and woodsmen who ordinarily pass as sane, confess to letting a brush fire
get out of hand just to see if they can handle it afterward, just for the
excitement, just for ''the hell of it."

Others argue that to burn off the brush and weeds is to increase the
game crop and the ease of the hunter in getting at it. Burning does make
the forest more open for hunters, but as for increasing game, that is doubtful.

Any forest officer who has fought large fires can tell stories of deer, elk,
and bear, and smaller wild game burned to death in a sudden sweep of
flame, or limping pitifully around the edge of the fire with feet burned and
fur scorched. Such great conflagrations as the big Idaho fires of 1910, sweep-
ing 40 miles in a single day, must have wiped out practically all wildlife,
large and small, over entire river drainages. After such a fire every pool in
the streams is white with the upturned bellies of trout killed by ashes in
the water.

"Fire," says Ira N. Gabrielson, Chief of the United States Biological
Survey, in a special fire prevention number issued by American Forests,
April 1939, "is not a temporary disaster. It burns the crop and it destroys
the ability of the land to produce another.

"In 1937 a total of over 20,000,000 acres of wildlife habitat was blasted,
scorched, and sterilized by forest fires in the United States. The figure does
not include grass fires and marsh burns. If these fires killed only 1 bird or
animal to each acre, that would mean a loss of 20,000,000 living creatures
burned to death or suffocated in 1 year. But to obtain an estimate of the
total loss we must multiply that figure by the number of years that will
elapse before the habitat destroyed in 1937 has been restored and is ready
once more to produce maximum crops of wildlife. . . .

"In all our plans for the conservative management of our lands for
wildlife, we must recognize the fact that whether kindled in ignorance or
maliciously or accidentally, forest fires and grass fires are deadly to wildlife."

To BURN COVER Is To BURN GAME, is a slogan that forest education and
information workers have been considering in an appeal to the sporting

FIRE 165

spirit. It is a true statement, but a little too condensed, too hard to follow,
perhaps, for a really good slogan. IT'S BAD LUCK TO SET THE WOODS AFIRE is
another slogan recently suggested by John P. Shea, a psychologist, speaking
before the Southern Society of Philosophy and Psychology, at Chapel Hill,
N. C. This has possibilities

Dr. Shea has made a special study for the Forest Service of man-made
forest fires the country over. He finds an obscure, deep-seated feeling on
the part of many that to set the woods afire cleans things up for a new
start, puts down diseases and jungle menaces, and in general changes one's
luck. "Popular attitudes, habits, folkways, morals, and resentments," wrote
a reporter for Science Service, compressing the findings, last April, "are
mainly responsible for the burning each year of 'enough timber to build
a row of five-room frame houses 100 feet apart from New York to Atlanta.' "
The investigators (James W. Curtis of Kentucky, and Harold F. Kaufman of
Missouri collaborated) suggest six points of appeal:

1 . Legal. — Stop burning the forests or you will be prosecuted.

2. Economic. — Better forests mean more jobs.

3. Aesthetic. — Why destroy beauty?

4. Sentimental. — Don't destroy the wildwood habitats of birds and

beasts and the outdoor haunts for children.

5. Sports and recreation. — Keep fire out of the forests and enjoy better

hunting, fishing, and recreation.

6. Bad luck. — Finally, inculcate manufactured superstitions to battle

against disastrous ones causing fire setting.

"Could taboos be inculcated?" Dr. Shea asked his colleagues at the
meeting. "Would ballads and folk songs, if such could be made to order,
prove effective in correcting unsocial behavior patterns that are proving
suicidal to the people of the South?"

BAD LUCK it is, indeed, when forests, grassland, or muckbeds burn; and the
bad luck continues for years on end. A whole complex of natural factors is
thrown with each successive burn still further out of joint. When over-
drainage in the Florida Everglades dried muck soil to powder, and the
powder was fired, and a million acres of it burned for weeks on end in the

166 FOREST OUTINGS

spring of 1939, The New York Herald-Tribune dispatched to the scene a
correspondent, John O'Reilly, who sent back an appalling estimate of
disaster, not in terms of persons killed, but in terms of permanent, or an
all-but-permanent, derangement of the natural water system, the soil, the
wildlife, and the human resources. The United States could stand more of
this sort of journalism, and less of the sort which, when great fires blazed on
the mountains above Los Angeles last winter, yielded hardly a headline
east of the Rockies. But when an unimportant tongue of the flame flicked
toward Hollywood, "FILM STARS' HOMES MENACED," the city papers shouted
from coast to coast.

Really, a great deal more than film stars' homes was menaced. The entire
life and civilization of that western dry land depends on water. Denuded
slopes do not yield usable water. Burnt-ofT, denuded watersheds become
more menacing there each year.

Literally, and quite obviously, a curse is laid on soil repeatedly burnt
over. Life, along with the soil and cover, becomes each year thinner, less
robust, less rewarding, more hazardous.

There is nothing mysterious or other-worldly about the process. It is
simply that you blast and disturb a natural continuity of growth and renewal—
a marvelously delicate but enduring interplay of living forces which, undis-
turbed, keep a piece of land intact and rich, and the people it supports, secure.

"In a burned woodland," writes Hugh Bennett, Chief of the United
States Soil Conservation Service, contributing to the same symposium, in
American Forests, "the very structure of the soil is changed. Following the
destruction of organic matter and beneficial bacteria by flames, the soft,
crumblike surface that naturally prevails under a leaf mold gradually
gives way to a harder, more compact condition. Pelting rains hasten the
process along. By dislodging tiny soil particles and taking them into suspen-
sion along with charred plant debris, they produce a muddy kind of run-off
that tends to seal over the ground surface and make it almost impervious
to water. Naturally, this compacting action alone means a tremendous
increase in the amount of run-off and the rate of erosion. When it is com-
bined with the demolition of all protecting overgrowth, soil and water
losses may be multiplied several thousand times over."

FIRE 167

Controlled experiments started at Statesville, N. C., several years ago
in a virgin forest area tell a graphic story that "links fire with floods and
soil erosion." Dr. Bennett continues: "The ground cover on one woodland
plat has been burned each year since 1932, with a blow torch; another and
equal plat has been left in its original state. On both plats steel strips coun-
tersunk into the earth collect all run-off in measuring vats down the slope.
After every heavy rain, the vat of the burned plat is heavy with water,
dark with soil. Frequently the other vat is scarcely damp on the bottom.
Over a 6-year period the burned plat has shed almost exactly 100 times
as much water as the plat in virgin woods; soil losses have been more than
800 times as great."

Loss of timber by fire is appalling. The Tillamook fire of August 1933
killed 10% billion board feet of timber. Yet the New England hurricane
felled a total of only 2% to 3 billion feet, of which about '1% billion board
feet was salvageable timber. Tillamook's 10% billion board feet was nearly
3 times the cut of the whole West Coast in that year. The loss was in one of
Oregon's finest timber stands. And, said the late F. A. Silcox, "Six years of
direct employment for 14,000 men (with dependents, 70,000 people) went
up in smoke, with loss of potential lumber values of 275 million dollars.
This burnt timber would have built 1 million small homes."

It is known that, besides damaging mature timber, repeated fires kill
reproduction, prevent certain age classes from reaching maturity, and
result in a forest stand so understocked that it yields far less than it other-
wise might. Bad luck, indeed! For more than 30 years the Forest Service
has been announcing similar findings and warnings, but more progress has
been made, speaking generally, in the technique of fighting forest and brush
fires after they have started than in preventing them.

CERTAIN IDIOSYNCRASIES that still distinguish our pioneer American folk-
lore and behavior in respect to fire and weather were strikingly exhibited
during the fire season in the far South in the spring of 1939. First, of course,
there was the Everglades burn-off, not only of vegetation and game, but of
soil ominously burning, a million acres of rich soil burning, and casting a
pall of soot over protected country 300 or even 400 miles away. This fire

Society may move to restore what it has destroyed or maimed.

TREE PLANTING CREW,
COLUMBIA NATIONAL FOREST, WASH.

FIRE 169

was on private land, for the most part, and there seems little doubt that it
was set deliberately, at the outset, by the hand of man.

Three hundred miles away, by air line, floating particles of the burning
Everglades made fire-tower observation on the Choctawhatchee National
Forest difficult. On some days with a southeast wind, lookout towers were
all but useless. CCC boys were then sent out on patrol through the woods
to look for signs of fire, amid the smoke from the 'glades.

The Choctawhatchee is the national forest mentioned in the opening
section of chapter 6 on camps; and the high fire hazard that obtains in
that part of western Florida, just before it greens up for summer, was also
noted. The ranger and his staff were determined to turn in a good fire
record. On quiet days the ranger slipped out and set test fires in safe places,
then hooked in a "portable" on the telephone line, to note if the towermen
were on their toes. One lookout man who went on serenely describing a long
dream he'd had the night before to another guard by telephone, with the smoke
coming up within 2 miles of his lookout, was relieved at once and replaced
by a man possessed of keener eyes, and not so dreamy. Everyone was alert
now, and the fire organization was functioning with smooth efficiency.

Spring came late in 1939 to western Florida, and woods burners were
somewhat later than usual in firing the woods. Drought burned hard, but
even when fires began to be set outside the protective boundary the ranger,
by great vigilance, managed to hold down losses within the forest borders
to 3 acres. This was a fire started by a careless smoker, but all it took was
3 acres of some 309,000 acres, the forest area; the smallest loss, by far, ever
recorded on the Choctawhatchee, up to mid-March.

Still it stayed dry, and that shroud of Everglade soot continued. Slowly
soot rained down on the baked ground, and coated it. Dogs and other
animals were dyed black to the hocks from the soot on that brittle cover.
Every day the risk and the tension heightened. The ranger, fire dispatcher,
and forest guards virtually gave up sleeping; 4 hours was more than they
got, most nights. They were gaunt-eyed from strain and worry; and the
guards in the towers drawled and swapped yarns no longer, but swore at
each other sharply on the 'phone line connecting their towers to the ranger
station and dispatcher.

170 FOREST OUTINGS

"I got one on 69}£. Look at her! She's a snake in the grass!"

The guard in another tower. "Keep your shirt on; that's a chimney
glow. OF George Pratt's chimney, that's all."

First guard. "I'm gonna report it! Ranger said to report everything!"

Second guard. "Lissen now! Don't give way before the water comes.
Let the ranger lay in tonight. He'll need it. [Pause] They tell me a lookout
over on the De Soto got so worked up he called the dispatcher every time
the moon rose."

First guard. "Ain't it never gonna rain?"

Second guard. "I sure hope that lady brings it!"

Then they laughed. The lady in question provided no end of cackling
talk, and a needed comic relief of some sort, during the 1939 spring fire
season in Florida, with the Everglades burning. She was a rain maker, a
gentle soul beyond her middle years, who employed no apparatus more
elaborate than her own person, and a fixed conviction that if she sat by a
body of water long enough, even in the driest time, she somehow brought
on rain.

She sat there by a lake in the drought, with photographers attending,
and the news of her sitting held almost equal interest, to Floridians, with
the European situation. Indeed, she made more talk than Europe made
there, at the time. But it stayed dry, terribly dry; and every day the woods
burners, seeking to hurry the greening, slipped out and set more fires.
Most of them were set outside of the forest, to be blown in by a strong
northeast wind; but fires were set inside the forest, too. Then came a March
day with a high northeast wind, and no soot. Abruptly the fire dispatcher
at the Jackson Ranger Station had 15 fires on his switchboard all at once;
and in 3 days more than 2,000 acres on the Choctawhatchee Forest burned,
about its annual average.

But now, at length, some rain fell, patchily, throughout Florida and to
the west; not rain enough to put the 'glades fire out, but enough to dampen
things a little, and give the forest guards and fire fighters some measure of
relief. A forest inspector driving west from the Choctawhatchee at this junc-
ture, to have a look at the situation on the De Soto, with headquarters at
Jackson, Miss., read in the paper at Mobile, Ala., midway, that a Florida

FIRE 171

city chamber of commerce was giving the lady rain maker a banquet for
breaking the dry spell.

Next day on the way to Jackson, up through the De Soto National
Forest, rain came so hard and fast that it stopped windshield wipers, halted
most traffic for hours, and put out every outdoor fire for hundreds of miles
around. Roads were washed out, torrents of debris from denuded hillsides
boiled in the bottoms, rivers leaped from their banks; and some 30 miles
southwest of Jackson, floodwater performed a feat of erosion so striking as
to make news in the press throughout the land.

After dark, the middle span of a highway bridge ripped out. A truck
came along doggedly, its headlights dimmed by continuing sheets of rain.
Bluntly it plunged into the boiling, muddy river. The truck driver fought
his way out of the water somehow back to the highway and tried to flag
approaching cars. In all, 14 persons drowned — in 6 cars — from driving off
the broken bridge into the floodwater regardless. Then the truck driver
managed to stop one, and the other cars stopped behind it; and the ghoulish
work of recovering the bodies began, with newsmen there in their numbers,
taking flashlight pictures.

"Yours is a strange and violent country," said a foreign visitor to Jack-
son, reading the papers. In the street people talked low and mournfully,
their heads hanging. And one man, with a cackling humor, half hystericalj
told a group at a street corner, as ambulances streaked by with sirens wailing:
"That lady in Florida had the stuff, all right. And a lot of people said she
was a fake."

Much of this may seem out of order, but nothing in nature is utterly
unrelated; and between forest fires, floods, and further catastrophes the
relationship is pretty thoroughly established. The measures of loss vary
widely, according to climate, and the extent and pitch of the watershed;
but the inevitable relationship between the sort of voodooism that impels
burning, and the sort of voodooism that leads chambers of commerce to
give publicity banquets to rain makers becomes increasingly plain. The result
in many places is a wasting and threatened land, neither pleasant nor
promising to behold. Let us proceed with this inquiry a little further. The
consequences affect forest recreation, most certainly. They bear as well on

172 FOREST OUTINGS

other questions we must face if we are now to keep this land rich, comely,
less worn and ugly; a good and pleasant land on which to make a life, and
living, for all.

REVIEWING THE RECORD of 5 years, 1933-37, inclusive, Roy Headley, Chief
of Fire Control, United States Forest Service, reflects:

"On the average, 172,000 forest fires a year, and 156,000 of these man-
caused! An incredible fact. Everyone studying the subject comes sooner
or later to a state of exasperated wonder.

"Not on the national forests where law enforcement has perhaps been
more systematic, but for the country as a whole, intentional burners have the
discredit of more than 42,000 fires in 1937. Thirteen million of the thirty-
six million acres burned annually are chargeable to these intentional fires.1
The trouble is mostly in the South but no section is wholly free from people
who fire the woods because they want to.

"Intentional burners are not all alike in motive. A large number have
economic reasons for burning. When no feed has been stored to carry cattle
through the lean period of the year, they almost starve before the new grass
comes in the spring. To burn off the old dead grass enables hungry cattle
to get at the new growth a few days sooner. . . .

"Unemployment is responsible for many fires. Despite all precautions to
avoid hiring men to fight fire who may have had anything to do with starting
fires, some men will try this chance to earn a few dollars when no other job
is to be had."

The break-down of forest fire causes for the 5-year period, 1933-37,
Headley continues, runs as shown in table 1 .

TABLE 1.- — Causes of forest fires for the United States as a whole, 7933-37

Per- Number Per- Number

Cause cent of fires Cause cent of fires

Incendiary 24.7 42,377 Unknown 7.2 12,344

Smokers 24.4 41,857 Campers 6.3 10,778

Debris burning 13.7 23,486 Railroads 4.3 7,408

Miscellaneous 8.9 15,292 Lumbering 1.8 3,049

Lightning 8.7 14,932

1 36 million acres is greater than the land area in Maine, New Hampshire, Massa-
chusetts, and Vermont.

FIRE 173

The preceding fire-cause list shows the situation on all our forest land,
public and private, protected and unprotected. On the national forests of
the United States, alone, the incendiary loss is much lower, the loss from
fires started carelessly by smokers is about the same, and the number of
fires set by lightning is, proportionately, much higher. The break-down is
shown in table 2.

TABLE 2. — Fire causes on national forest land, 7933-37 '

Per- Number Per- Number

Cause cent of fires Cause cent of fires

Incendiary 11.9 1,347 Lightning 38.6 4,349

Smokers 22.5 2,533 Campers 8.0 898

Debris burning 10.1 1,137 Railroads 2.1 24

Miscellaneous 5.1 578 Lumbering 1.7 18

i The figures are stated in averages for the 5-year period.

"Because of the pyramiding human use of the woods for recreational and
industrial purposes," Headley concludes, "the need for a powerful counter-
attack is necessary on accidental fires as well as on fires resulting from
thoughtlessness, carelessness, and incendiarism. That our notorious fire-
starting habits can be changed has been demonstrated on some of the older
national forests in the East. Deep-rooted beliefs in woods burning and a
full measure of thoughtlessness and carelessness in dense populations have
been transformed into respect for the forest and effective fire-safety habits.
These pioneering transformations have been slow, . . . but they prove
that a whole nation of communities can be led to appreciate the forests
and to hate fire with an effective hatred."

"WE MUST EDUCATE, we must educate," ran a sentence in the Fifth
McGufTey Readers, "or we perish in our own prosperity! " As a simple
example of elementary adult education seeking to outpace actual catas-
trophe, the present American attack on fire, flood, and soil destruction is
of more than technical interest. Results thus far vary widely, from section
to section. New England has a good fire record, but this was partly the
result of a rather low fire hazard in the past. Driving in the White Moun-
tains you will see tourist after tourist flip a burning cigarette butt out of the
car window, without thought. You see this very rarely in California; for

Visitors are asked to leave a clean camp and a dead fire.

F-233017

TEJANO CANYON CAMPGROUND,
CIBOLA NATIONAL FOREST, N. MEX.

FIRE 175

great fires there, one of which burned a sizable portion of Berkeley, the site
of the State University, have served more than words or placards to make
the people fire conscious. There are now millions of westerners who would
not think of smoking in a car without an ash tray on which to smash out
the stubs or the pipe heel; and to throw a match away without first breaking
it, they say contemptuously, is a "tenderfoot trick."

There is imminent need suddenly to establish just such habit patterns
along the track of the hurricane that swept across New England in Septem-
ber 1938. That blow smashed over some 14,000,000 acres. It left some
2]/2 billion board feet of timber in that part of the country in an indescribable
swirl and tangle of loss and confusion, as wind-thrown timber, drying,
rotting, on the ground.

"The heavy loss of life and the widespread damage to improved prop-
erty," writes Dudley Harmon of the New England Council in American
Forests forest-fire symposion, "claimed first attention. Then came realiza-
tion that New England faced a greater danger from forest fire than at
any time in its past."

It does, indeed; and the overwinter and spring effort to clear roadside
zones, at least, of inflammable slash and debris, wherever the hurricane
hit, has been heroic. Thirty-two CCC camps and WPA crews, aggre-
gating 15,000 men, cutting and piling the down timber and whacking out
safety strips or fire lines through larger areas of windfall. But the job is too
big; it cannot be completed before the fall of 1940, at the earliest, and by
then in only a few New England States. In many places New England's
fire hazard throughout the dry summer and until snow flies again in the late
fall, will be nothing less than terrifying. One live cigarette carelessly flicked
away in New England's Wounded woods for several summers to come may
indeed, as Dudley Harmon says, take hold in tangled, dry debris and kindle
"fires of tremendous intensity, so hot in places that fire fighters could not
approach them; and if there happened to be several weeks of dry weather
followed by high winds, fires might blow from one area of down timber to
another, with imminent danger to all in their paths."

Visitors and hunters have been barred entirely from certain forest areas
of the highest hazard in parts of New England. This will somewhat impede

176 FOREST OUTINGS

recreational use on the forests; and many people will grumble, and some
will break bounds. In all ways possible, however, the public must be warned
and impressed with the danger, for it is literally impossible to change the
fire habits of citizens in a humid area within a month or so; and if fires do
break bounds in that debris, the result, over such ground as the flames
race, could easily be such as would make even the hurricane itself seem a
mild visitation, by comparison.

Foresters and woodsmen frequently argue whether opening up trails and
roads into the woods, for recreational and commercial use, increases the
fire loss, or reduces it. A thoroughgoing analysis of the record, made by
Elers Koch and Lyle F. Watts for this report, shows that opening up forests
generally increases the number of fires, but also greatly facilitates fighting
the fires, putting them out more promptly and effectively, by modern
methods.

On 6 western national forests, all existing records since 1924 indicate
that campers learned to be about twice as careful with their campfires
during the years in question.2 Smokers' fires dropped from 2 to each 10,000
forest visitors to 1 such fire for each 10,000 persons visiting these forests.
In view of the fact that far more people, both men and women, have the
habit of smoking now than had the habit in 1924-27, the first period cov-
ered by this compilation, it appears that the long, slow educational drive
against smokers' fires is taking effect. But it is a discouragingly slow busi-
ness; and so many more people are using the forests now that, while they
take about twice as much care with their smokes as they used to, the total
number of forest fires carelessly started by smokers has actually increased
since 1924.

A complete tabulation of the data is appended on page 292, Appendix.

in Hi!8 »»»

BBS ar.

who came there to do business got there first.

NORTH FORK NOOKSACK RIVER,
MOUNT BAKER NATIONAL FOREST, WASH.

Water

They shall turn the rivers far away; the brooks of defense shall be emptied and dried
up; ... and everything sown by the brooks shall wither. Isaiah 19, 6-7.

"TO RULE THE MOUNTAIN is to rule the river," is a Chinese proverb
more than 40 centuries old. And: "Mountains exhausted of forests are washed
bare by torrents," the ancient Chinese said.

Early in the present century Gifford Pinchot was shown before-and-
after pictures of denudation and erosion in North China. The Chinese knew
enough, it seems, to handle their land wisely; but they had not, as a people
working under various pressures, been able to apply their wisdom. For here
was a painting done in the fifteenth century, and here were photographs of
the same scene taken in the twentieth century, some 500 years later. "The
painting," Walter C. Lowdermilk recalls, "showed a beautiful, populous
and prosperous well- watered valley at the foot of forested mountains." But
he also recalls that "the photographs showed the mountains treeless, glaring,
and sterile; the stream bed empty and dry; boulders and rocks from the
mountains covering the fertile valley lands. The depopulated city had fallen
in ruins."

Gifford Pinchot took the pictures around to the White House and showed
them to Theodore Roosevelt. President Roosevelt illustrated his message to
Congress with those pictures and as a result the United States Forest Service
was established.

Men grown gray in the Service recall that Pinchot, their first chief,
showed the same pictures before congressional committees. Also, to drive
home the role of cover in staying run-off, he carried to the hearings a plank,

J79

180 FOREST OUTINGS

a blanket, and a pitcher of water. Slanting the board, he poured water upon
it, and immediately upon the floor below he had a flood. Then he covered
the board with the blanket and again poured water, and this time the water
soaked in and seeped down slowly.

The new-born Forest Service, dating from 1905, set out to make the
American public erosion conscious at the time when most soil scientists, even
in the Department of Agriculture, refused to believe in the menace or give
credence to the warnings. Hugh Bennett in the Bureau of Soils at the time
(he is Chief of the Soil Conservation Service now) already had raised his
voice, crying warning especially against sheet erosion on farm land. But few
believed him. The loss continued. Sheet erosion strips off tilled topsoil evenly,
grain by grain, layer by layer, stealthily. It may leave no gullies, but it makes
the soil thinner, poorer, all the time. Foresters did not know much about
sheet erosion. It is rare in forests, but plain evidence was available even then
that veritable avalanches of soil-wash and rock-wash from denuded high
plains and mountains were bringing unutterable havoc upon the country
below. So the foresters cried havoc; and with all the force of his vibrant
voice and character, their great friend in the White House, Theodore
Roosevelt, echoed the cry.

"To skin and exhaust the land," he proclaimed in 1907, "will result in
undermining the days of our children, the very prosperity which we ought
by right to hand down to them amplified and developed."

In 1908 President Roosevelt called a conference of Governors at the
White House, to forward conservation. Dr. Thomas C. Chamberlin, a
geologist at the University of Chicago, was there to talk to the governors
and, through the press, to all the people.

"Soil production," he told them, "is very slow. I should be unwilling to
name a mean rate of soil formation greater than 1 foot in 10,000 years. In
the Orient there are large tracts almost absolutely bare of soil, on which
stand ruins implying former flourishing populations. Other long-tilled lands
bear similar testimony. It must be noted that more than loss of fertility is
here menaced. It is the loss of the soil body itself, a loss almost beyond repair.
When our soils are gone, we, too, must go unless we shall find some way to
feed on raw rock, or its equivalent. . . .

WATER 181

"The key lies in due control of the water which falls on each acre . . .
The highest crop values will usually be secured where the soil is made to
absorb as much rainfall and snowfall as practicable. . . . This gives a.
minimum of wash to foul the streams, to spread over the bottom lands, to
choke the reservoirs, to waste the water power, and to bar up the navigable
rivers. The solution of the problem . . . essentially solves the whole train of problems
running from farm to river and from crop production to navigation."

CLEAN WATER has been a primary product of our national forests from the
first. The economic uses of water rising in or flowing from the forests —
water for municipal supplies, irrigation, power, mining — sometimes goes
along harmoniously with use of the same water for recreation, but sometimes
economic and recreation uses clash. Time was, of course, when our mountain
headwaters were untouched by industry. The industrial use of water started
in the bottoms. Then, as water sources became more put upon and injured,
clusters of industrial structures climbed the streams. As these businesses
clambered upstream, water was increasingly diverted, larger and more
sprawling structures arose, and the landscape was altered, sometimes
tragically, over wide areas.

If dams and power sites are designed and conducted by their owners with
some thought of the rights of those who seek values from the forest other
than power or salable products, the necessary conflicts between the indus-
trial use of water and its recreational use are few. But when businessmen
got there first in our industrial era and reared structures starkly utilitarian,
and when they still insist such structures are more beautiful and rewarding
than trees and untrammelled streams, then the conflict between a desire of
business for stripped-down "improvements" and a popular impulse to
return to the shelter of trees still living soon becomes plain.

Many industrial plants now operating on the forests display, in their
clearings, and in the arrangement and architecture of their structures, an
utter and arrogant disregard of good planning, and of decent landscape
principles. Such stark designs may look all right as part of the urban pageant
of man's mighty progress on a wholly denuded mountainside out from, say,
Pittsburgh. But they do not look at all right on our remaining forest land.

182 FOREST OUTINGS

Compromises seem possible, without irrevocable loss. Business pro-
moters, rural and urban, can have their power and products out of many
mountain waters more quietly, without messing up what is left of our
forest background. But first they must slow down a little in their driving
stride, consult their own deepest interests and impulses, and listen to reason.

Business is business. Agreed. But ugliness is needless. It is generally
possible to fit dams, powerhouses, and even transmission lines into the forest
landscape without a widespread effect of disharmony, if care is taken in the
landscaping; and if tree and shrub planting to screen and to tie structures
into the landscape is undertaken immediately following the construction
job. There is seldom need for any forest-industrial development spreading
its structures, its construction scars, and other evidences of its being over a
great acreage. Yet some industrial outfits persist in sprawling out in the
public woods like giants barring use of the woods to the people. And some
big operators persist in practices that are boorish, mean, and stupid.

Conflicts between private business and public pleasures that are the
most difficult to adjust arise, as a rule, in places where exclusive rights or
privileges were granted prior to the establishment of the national forests,
or before the present surge favored simple outdoor recreation. The standard
factory sign, "Keep Out Except on Business," does not appear on national
forest areas so preempted, but the attitude of old-time operators toward the
public who own these preempted parts of national forests remains, all too
often, precisely that; and such operators show it in their operations.

They flood land without bothering to clear it of trees. The snags and
debris under such water render it useless or dangerous for boating or
swimming.

They manipulate actual water — shift actual water levels so abruptly as to
throw out of adjustment natural communities of shore-line life, ranging from
algae to man. And sometimes, in headlong conflict over rights, business
operators have been known to exert such a drain as, in effect, to steal a lake
and all the fish in it. They drain that lake, and all that lives in it and by it,
right off our map and out of our future.

Such rugged practices show signs of abating. Even the most intrenched
and resolute of old-timers are responding somewhat to a public resentment

WATER 183

each year more effectively expressed. Newer companies, out to make power
or plastics or some other product of the woods and streams, incline now to
ask how they can do business there without leaving the scene of their oper-
ations naked and barren.

The more enlightened concerns refrain from so raising or lowering
actual water levels as to flood or drain, unnecessarily, forest pleasure
grounds. And, once company reservoirs are established, they try to main-
tain a pleasant vacation environment by timing the use of water. Often they
find it possible to time the heaviest draw-down with the lightest period of
public recreational use. Thus they avoid revealing unsightly mudflats and
debris-covered shores at the height of the vacation season when most people
seek the woods and shores for beauty and consolation.

Not all companies are so considerate. Many a camping and picnic spot
has been made useless or unattractive just at the time when the people
needed it most. Later, after Labor Day, someone in the powerhouse may
be told to throw the switch and restore the lake when few or none are
there to share it.

SLUDGE AND POISON . . . Sludge from hydraulic and other mining opera-
tions on the forests, and pollution of the waters with manufacturing wastes,
also maim or destroy woodland values. Here, again, the destruction is for
the most part preventable.

Operators under permit in national forests can be required to install
settling basins at their own expense. When operations are situated on
private lands, however, the settling basins, if installed at all, may have to
be constructed by the Government on national forest lands below the point
of water use. Such installations now are made at public expense only if the
recreational values so protected justify, and if no means exist under State
laws or otherwise to enforce some other decent compromise for the moment.

1 1 is generally possible to remove industrial waste, such as the residue of tan-
ning and pulp industries, before discharging waste water into natural streams.
Sewage disposal plants are also practicable. If damaging waste substances
are eliminated from natural streams, the waterways retain their attractive-
ness and safety for camping and swimming, and fish are not poisoned.

184 FOREST OUTINGS

In this day of chemical and engineering enlightenment, mankind does
not have to destroy beauty, poison water, kill fish, and spread disease in
order to have cities and factories. A special report, Water Pollution in the
United States, submitted to the President by the National Resources Co'm-
mittee early in 1939, goes into these troubles, and the necessary cures, in
detail, State by State.

Progress has been made, the committee finds, even since 1910, but, "in
order to abate the most objectional pollution" within the next decade or
two, an expenditure of at least 2 billion dollars will be necessary. Since
most of the pollution comes from municipal sewage and some factory
waste, the responsibility for the expenditure must fall largely on city govern-
ments and private concerns, "supplemented, perhaps," wrote President
F. D. Roosevelt, reviewing the report in a foreword, "by a system of Federal
grants-in-aid and loans organized with due regard for the integrated use of
water resources and for a balanced Federal program for public works of all
types."

Considering the constant contamination of water by towns with inade-
quate sewage systems, and the constant pollution of water by industrial
wastes, the problem of keeping an increasing swarm of picnickers, campers,
and tourists on the national forests from befouling water sources seems
relatively slight.

Signs and instructions that stress the most elementary laws of sanitation,
simple outdoor toilets and incinerators, and an indicated supply of drinking
water known to be safe — these, in most places, are "improvements" enough.
By such simple devices it has thus far been possible to admit millions of
persons to enjoy the national forests with no widespread contamination and
no evidence of serious pollution as yet.

WATER FOR PLEASURE . . . Man's oldest instincts draw him to the seashore,
riverbank, and stream side. Few cities located far from surface water have
grown from camps or settlements. Few campers, now as in the past, choose
sites remote from water, if water is available. The flash and lap and tinkle
of live water in sea or brook adds to the charm and serenity of the site, and
gives the camper more quiet things to do: Fish, swim, boat, wade, or per-

WATER 185

haps just to sit there and gaze into limpid coolness. Of all the recreational
resources of the national forests, water is surely the most valuable.

Of water most of the national forests still have plenty. A glance at a
map of Minnesota and Wisconsin forests, for instance, discloses countless
lakes and a veinlike network of thousands of small streams feeding succes-
sively larger and larger ones to form rivers. So it is even on drier forests
westward. Four of the largest drainage systems of the country originate in
the national forests of Colorado. To the northeast too, countless streams
cascade down the slopes of the White Mountains.

In some of the Central States, in the Black Hills of South Dakota, and
throughout the Southwest in general, natural water is not so abundant,
or such as occurs naturally is not always useful for recreation. It is likely
to be stilled and stagnant. Even where there is some flowing fresh water
as in parts of the South, urban pollution often makes it unusable. Such
forest areas face a real problem in developing and maintaining watering
places for the public use and pleasure.

Then, too, much water on the national forests in general is no longer
freely available to pleasure seekers, and public demand upon it increases
rapidly. To help prevent pollution of drinking water, certain watersheds
have been closed to recreational use. And the demand keeps rising to bar
the general public from easy access to many lakes and streams. Private
ownership of a key tract strategically situated may discourage or even pre-
vent large numbers of people from finding and using for their pleasure the
water and shore sites.

Despite all this, and despite other conflicts between the few and the
many which have been suggested, much good water in the national forests
still is open to the use of the people. And here and there, through recent
land acquisitions and public construction, the amount of clean water useful
for pleasure has been increased.

Some of the forest pools developed cost less than $200. The construction
is simple: A low dam of unobtrusive design, to deepen and perpetuate an
existing swimming hole. To clear snags, rocks, and brush away is some-
times enough. But clay beaches, or silt beaches, are a bit miry. It is hard
to swim and bask and come out clean. With relief labor it is often possible

of unobtrusive design, to deepen and perpetuate
an existing swimming hole.

BLUE BEND FOREST CAMP,
MONONGAHELA NATIONAL FOREST, W. VA.

WATER 187

to truck in some sand, cheaply, and make a small clean beach by a clean
pool or lake in the public forests.

The job becomes more expensive in drier climates where springs must
be found and tapped to augment inflow. Sometimes the compromise works
down to a wading pool for the youngsters. But even that is something to sit
by and enjoy, if you are older, in hot, dry parts of the country.

Under pressure of an all but frantic demand and a quickly increasing
use, many pleasure-water developments at forest camps and picnic spots
have been pushed already beyond simple and sylvan proportions. This
was sufficiently indicated in chapter 6. But no other pleasure development
on the national forests has proved such a boon or aroused such universal
approval, in terms of use, as the creation of lakes and pools in the dry or
lakeless sections.

Consider, for example, a small lake development in a generally lakeless
region: Cave Mountain, on the Jefferson National Forest, in Virginia. It
is a made lake of 7 acres, with a neat, made crescent of sandy beach, and
picnic sets ranged 'round about, under trees. On holidays this simple equip-
ment provides recreation for more than 2,000 visitors. Again:

St. Charles dam in the San Isabel National Forest in southern Colorado
is 90 feet high and 600 feet long. That begins to run into money. But this
dam impounds a lake 35 acres in extent. It makes a forest lake that is avail-
able to a great prairie population and they throng eagerly to relax there
during the long, hot summers.

Tensleep Dam on the Bighorn National Forest in Wyoming is only 26
feet high, but it creates a 274-acre lake in a generally lakeless region.
Bismarck Dam on the Harney National Forest in the Black Hills of South
Dakota produced a lake of 23 acres in a locality where recreational use is
intense and water scarce, either for use or pleasure. Vesuvius Dam on the
Wayne National Forest in southern Ohio, Shores Lake development on
the Ozark National Forest in Arkansas, Pounds Hollow Dam on the
Shawnee National Forest in Illinois — all are new midwestern watering
places of the people.

Here and there, business interests have not only ceased to hinder, but
have stepped in to help keep public watering places and the surrounding

Fire, then flood.

F-361709

BIG CREEK WATERSHED,
CABINET NATIONAL FOREST, IDAHO.

WATER 189

terrain as natural as possible. Thousands, for example, take advantage
during summer heat of improvements developed at Lake Rabun, a large
power lake on the Chattahoochee National Forest in the mountains of
North Georgia. Here, with the cooperation of the power company, an
attractive portion of the shore line has been developed for public use by
the installation of a sand beach, boat dock, diving raft, and other facilities.
The lake, which is 17 miles long, is clean and lovely, suited for purposes of
restful contemplation, or for swimming, or boating, or fishing. Since it is
one lake in a series of four, the water level is maintained without difficulty
during the recreational-use period.

To GUARD THE CRESTS and all the lands below against excessive run-off,
properly managed forest cover offers the best protection known. "It's
almost as if God made trees and brush to do this job!" says a forest officer
who for years has been studying ways to make a far western forest deliver
more gently to parched lowlands the most vital crop of those mountains —
water.

The best sort of forest cover presents successive layers of resistance to
rapid run-off. First, the tree tops: Snow or rain, falling, is detained by the
forest canopy, the roof of foliage. Here some of it clings and drips down
gradually, but some clings so long that the sun sucks it back into the sky.
Water losses upward from snow rapidly melting and evaporating on thick
foliage may be considerable. On certain national-forest watersheds where the
yield of delivered water is of crucial importance, as in Colorado, the char-
acteristic canopy makes a roof so dense that much snow moisture returns
to the clouds without touching the earth. Here systems of cuttings are defi-
nitely planned so as, in effect, to make holes in the forest roof and let more
water directly down into thirsty soil.

Some water, of course, makes its way quietly down the limbs and the
trunks of trees, and enters the ground that way. Other water dripping from
the upper foliage is again detained by underbrush, which drips it in turn
upon the litter and ground cover, the last conserving layer opposed to
rapid run-off of water, and of soil.

In western regions that depend for their very life upon stored water

190 FOREST OUTINGS

brought down from the mountains, snow reports are almost as carefully
followed as are cotton reports in Memphis. "Next summer's rain," the
dry-land people say when they lift their eyes and behold clean snow on the
mountains. Up the mountains, all winter long, rangers are taking snow
samples along trails laid out to touch points of representative precipitation.
They travel on skis or snowshoes and take their samples with the thrust
of a hollow tube. Machines have lately been acquired, on some forests, to
measure and calibrate snowfall more easily, but much of the work still is
done without technological improvements.

In any case, the total snowfall recorded does not, like rainfall, signify
that that much water will be delivered upon thirsting ground for crops,
for industrial use, or for city reservoirs. So much depends on the rate of
thaw in the spring. If the melt is gradual, a big snow crop on the mountains
is a blessed gift. But if the snow crop piles high and the melt comes abruptly,
fiercely, it can play the very devil up there on the mountainsides and below.

"Water-drunk" is another phrase which passes as current, without
need of a fuller explanation, among rural and urban dry-land contenders
for mountain water brought down to dry lands. Water is the lifeblood of
any region, and in sernidesert or desert communities men know that. They
dream of and fight over water rights with a fervor that more sheltered men
in humid climates find hard to understand. The classic fable concerning
Tantalus, who thirsted and could see water but couldn't get at it, has a
special meaning nowadays to many a western American, concerned as to
the continuance of a clean and ample water supply. Lawsuits over water
rights in the general vicinity of Hollywood, for instance, greatly exceed in
number and importance other court battles of the movie stars, but naturally
receive as news much less attention. And it would, when you stop to think
about it, be publicity altogether lacking in glamour.

Before closing this chapter on water, let us turn back briefly to the prob-
lems sketched in the previous chapter— fire. The relation between destruction
of cover and calamitous bursts of run-off becomes each year more shockingly
plain. Consider the reservoir now called Harding, in San Diego County,
Calif. It was constructed in 1900. It did pretty well until 1926. Then fire got
loose and burned off nearly all the cover on its watershed. Torrential rains

WATER 191

cut loose on the debris in February of 1927 and this reservoir all but filled
with silt and boulders within a month.

On New Year's Day, 1934, newspapers the country over cried of ruin in
the pleasant suburban communities of La Crescenta, Verdugo, Montrose,
and La Canada, just north of Los Angeles. Torrents of water, mud, and
boulders swept down from mountains killing 34 people and demolishing
400 homes. The disaster, wrote Charles J. Kraebel, reviewing causes, clearly
indicated a "fatal sequence of mountain-denuding fires followed by rainfall
of great intensity."

The slopes above Pickens Canyon, where some of the worst damage
occurred, had good shrub and chaparral cover until late in 1933. But late
in November, fire destroyed more than 5,000 acres in 3 days. In many places
the fire was so hot as not only to wipe out vegetation but also to consume the
surface litter. It left only a powdery ash. The ground cooled and lay waiting,
utterly defenseless.

Then rains came. On this Verdugo watershed and on nearby similar
watersheds, the Arroyo Seco, San Dimas, and Haines, it started to rain
heavily, and with a remarkable uniformity of precipitation, early in the
morning of December 30. All that day the rain slashed down, all that night,
and all of the day and night following. In the last hour of the "old year" gage
records show precipitation reached the peak. Nearly an inch of rain fell in
that hour. Total rainfall during the 2-day storm ran between 11% and 12%
inches throughout the foothill country just north of Los Angeles.

On the burned-off watershed, Kraebel estimates, floodwater stripped off
and hurled down certainly no less than 50,000 tons of silt, rubble, and
boulders from each square mile. The area in question was of about 19 square
miles, nearly one-third burned over.

Nearby, an unburned 17-square-mile forest area, the San Dimas, lost and
sent down during the same flood only about one-twentieth as much flood-
water, and only about one-tenth of 1 percent as much erosional debris.

The San Dimas is an experimental forest, equipped to measure run-off
under various types of cover and forest management. "Within the forest,"
Kraebel explains, "are six small watersheds, selected for their likeness in
topography and vegetation, and varying in size from 35 to 100 acres. Weirs

The water wiped them out. It wiped out roads, camp sites, resorts.

LYTLE CREEK,
SAN BERNARDINO NATIONAL FOREST, CALIF.

WATER 193

at the canyon mouths automatically record the stream flow while reservoirs
catch the eroded material; recording gages strategically placed measure the
rainfall intensity; and, distributed over the watersheds, more than 100
standard gages serve to secure for each storm the most accurate measure of
precipitation ever attempted in a mountain area."

Established in 1931, and set up to run as a 50-year experiment, this forest
already has evidence to indicate that burned mountainsides can send down
20 times as much floodwater and 1,000 times as much silt and rubble as
unburned mountainsides, properly covered. Ordinarily, research foresters
do not like to announce tentative findings; they prefer to wait and verify. But
the evidence at hand is plain, the situation is crucial, and every year brings
further verification.

FIRE, THEN FLOOD; it happens again and again, and the demolition of
recreational and all other living values is evident. In the same part of
California, repeated fires over a number of years had a devastating effect on
the soil-binding cover in the Tujunga Canyon. A flood burst down this
canyon on March 2, 1938, and wiped out summer homes, built on both pri-
vate land there and on national forest land under special permit, by the
score. This demolition was especially distressing as many of these mountain
cabins, put up in flush times as week-end places, were being occupied full
time by families down on their luck. The water wiped them out. It wiped
out roads, camp sites, resorts. It bit off steel bridges as a man might bite a
doughnut. Recreation has been, in large part, forced out of this and other
accessible "front canyons" now, because of the debris and because, with
cover returning but slowly, there may be a recurrence of smashing floods.

F-255237

The satisfaction of trailing game through the snow-covered forest .

MULE DEER TRACKS,
FREMONT NATIONAL FOREST, OREG.

Game

The kings of England formerly had their forests to hold the king's game for sport or food,
sometimes destroying villages to create or extend them; and I think they were impelled
by a true instinct. Why should not we, who have renounced the king's authority, have
our national preserves, where no villages need be destroyed, in which the bear and panther,
and some even of the hunter race, may still exist, and not be "civilized off the face of the
earth" — our own forests, not to hold the king's game merely, . . . but for inspiration and
our own true recreation? Henry D. Thoreau, The Maine Woods, 1864.

ZOO WITHOUT CAGES . . . The sight of a bear cuffing her cubs
into hiding in the willows, the laugh of a loon on the lake at twilight, the
whistle of the bull elk as he seeks his mate — these and a thousand other
sights and sounds of the wild creatures enhance the charm of the forest.
It is infinitely more pleasant to observe wildlife at large in natural sur-
roundings than cooped or caged. The camera sportsman, the collector, the
fisherman, the hunter, the Boy and Girl Scout, the Campfire Girl, the
naturalist, the camper, and the sightseer — each finds in forest wildlife a
special interest, and often the transition from mere observations to a closer
study gives one a new interest, a new source of enjoyment.

At first we thrill just to hear the slap of the flat, broad tail of the beaver
as he dives from sight. Later, however, when we explore the home and the
dam he has built, we discover that the beaver is a prime conservationist,
storing water for dry periods, and flooding a willow swamp to insure food
for himself. The moose feeds on the forage growth thus stimulated, and the
deer or elk, too, when snow is deep. Noting this, we begin to gain some
understanding of the interdependence of all forest life, animate and inani-
mate.

Initial interest in deer may arise at the sight of them bounding grace-
fully away into a Wisconsin cedar swamp, white flags erect. As interest

195

196 FOREST OUTINGS

grows we find that in winter the deer "yard" in these same swamps. When
the snow deepens, they feed on the reproduction and lower branches of
the trees. If their number becomes excessive, the trees are trimmed as high
as the deer can reach, the future forest is damaged, the deer's own food
supply is destroyed, and with the next hard winter many will starve.

Even the plump and timid rabbit may seriously disturb normal forest
development. On some forest plantations only half of the trees set out have
survived because rabbits have nibbled the tender tops. In such ways as
these, the necessity for maintaining a sane relationship between numbers
of game and their food supply for critical periods is dramatized in the
forest, so that all with eyes may see.

By studying ecology you become more conscious of all the stir and drama
of wildlife. Ecology considers relationships between all things living and
seeking a living naturally. You will learn to look for moose in the willow
bottoms, elk in the meadows, and mule deer in rocky openings. In much
the same way as fishermen know — or think they know — the haunts of trout
in a stream, the nature student learns the haunts of other living creatures.
In many people the love for hunting or fishing as a sport is deeply rooted,
and no other form of outdoor recreation will serve. The flash of a fish as
it jumps for a moth or a fly, the exertion of wading a tumbling stream, the
knowledge of trout feeding habits, the art of casting the line so that the
fly drops on the water in just the right spot, the fight between man and fish
as the line sings and the slim rod bends to the pull — these, as well as the crisp
trout for supper, are the things for which the sportsman strives. The big-
game hunter wants to match his skill and stamina against the cunning,
speed, and acute native sense of the wild things. He wants the satisfaction
of knowing in advance where an elk will pass, of trailing the game through
the snow-covered forest, of placing the shot in a vital spot, and of dressing
out the kill with simple tools.

Not only do our national forests include most of the species usually found
in a wildlife census; they also have many kinds of animals, birds, and fish not
commonly known. The alligator, found in some rivers and bayous on the
Choctawhatchee National Forest in Florida, is a fascinating creature. The
condor, for whose preservation a special sanctuary has been proclaimed on

GAME 197

Los Padres National Forest in California, is an almost extinct species of
American vulture. The white-tailed Kaibab squirrel is found only north of
the Colorado River on or near the Kaibab National Forest and Grand
Canyon National Park in Arizona. The muskellunge, which once was found
quite commonly in the waters of northern Wisconsin and Minnesota, has
disappeared from many lakes but is now being restocked on national forests
by fish planting, mainly in Wisconsin. On the Nantahala National Forest
in North Carolina, and the Cherokee National Forest in Tennessee, and Los
Padres National Forest in California are approximately 650 Russian wild
boars introduced from Europe in 1910.

Among many other species, somewhat less rare but equally interesting,
found on the national forests is the grizzly bear, once quite common in
mountain and foothill areas of the West. This biggest of all bears in the
continental United States has found competition with civilization particu-
larly hard and has been reduced to less than 700 on the national forests.1 It
has disappeared completely from the national forests of South Dakota,
Nevada, California, and Oregon, and is fairly safe from extinction only in
parts of Montana, Idaho, Alaska, and Wyoming.

Moose, the largest of the deer family, has responded to protection fairly
well, and has gradually increased in numbers. This once-plentiful animal,
which usually restricts its range to the vicinity of wet meadows and shallow
lakes and feeds quite largely on acquatic or marsh vegetation, is found on
national forests in Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, and Minnesota. The 1939
census of game on national forests reported more than 6,675 head.

The mountain goat always has sought the rough high mountains for
its home. In spite of the rigorous conditions under which it lives, the moun-
tain goat is steadily increasing. The 12,420 animals reported in the census
are divided among the national forests of 4 States. Washington, Idaho,
and Montana furnish the home for almost all of them, but surprisingly
enough, there are a few in South Dakota, transplanted there years ago.

Bighorn sheep survive under conditions that make increase in numbers a
problem. Fortunately, the present estimated 8,530 are distributed on 55 na-
tional forests. The wide distribution gives assurance against loss by epidemics.
1 NOTE: A wildlife census table is appended on page 291.

You will learn to look for moose in the bottoms.

F-314076

HOODOO LAKE,
LOLO NATIONAL FOREST, IDAHO.

GAME 199

The Roosevelt elk is another interesting species. Its original range
probably covered a considerable part of the dense Pacific Coast forests
and it is now found on 6 national forests in Oregon and in bands of various
sizes in California and Washington, and in Alaska, where it was introduced;
also there is a herd of 700 on Vancouver Island, B. C. Fortunately, this
magnificent elk, with its remarkable protective coloring, is in little danger
of extinction. It is estimated that there are close to 13,000 head at present.

Other big-game animals found more plentifully on national forests are
perhaps as interesting as any of these. To most city folk the sight of a deer
or a black bear is as thrilling as the sight of a moose or mountain goat.
These are present in large numbers on many forests, even though, because
of their natural ability to keep out of sight, they may seldom be seen. At
least one species of deer is found on each of the 161 national forests, elk
are found on 95, antelope on 35, and black or brown bear on 134. The
best available data, admittedly only approximately correct, indicate that
nearly 1,784,000 nonpredators among the big-game animals (deer, elk,
moose, antelope, mountain sheep, mountain goat, and bear) use the
national forests of continental United States for at least part of each year.

The smaller fur bearers are equally interesting. One marvels at the
ingenuity of the beaver in constructing their strong dams. McKinley
Kantor's story of "Bugle Ann" dramatized in motion pictures, depicts a
form of forest recreation that appeals to the many fox hunters who hunt
but do not kill. The sleek, slim body of a mink or a weasel or marten brings
delight at each rare glimpse. The hunt for 'coon in the moonlight is a
sport that appeals to many. Thus, the 1% million fur bearers that inhabit
the national forests are another wildlife resource of major importance to
the forest visitor as well as to the trapper.

The so-called predators, most of which can also be called furbearers, are
of special interest. The coyote slinking from sight into the brush on a hill-
side, or a quick glimpse of a wildcat, or a lynx, or mountain lion, is not soon
to be forgotten. These animals, because they prey on domestic livestock or on
other species of wildlife, are being reduced in numbers; yet they have a very
definite place in game management and none of them should be exter-
minated. The wolves offer a real problem if their extinction is to be prevented.

* -• .<••**"'

^4£ least one species of deer is found on
each of the 161 national forests.

WHITE-TAILED DEER,
OTTAWA NATIONAL FOREST, MICH.

GAME 201

Obviously, they cannot be retained on ranges used by domestic livestock,
but reasonable provision for their preservation elsewhere is desirable.

Upland birds and waterfowl are present in varying numbers according
to locality and environment. The list includes band-tailed pigeons, many
species of ducks and geese, several kinds of quail, mourning doves, several
species of grouse, wild turkeys, and many others less well known to the hunter
or the general public. The songbirds, hawks, owls, several kinds of jays,
herons, the swan, and hundreds of other species inhabit national forests and
deserve full consideration in the plans of management.

The fishing resource of the national forests consists of more than
70,000 miles of fishing streams and many thousands of natural and artificial
lakes. The cold mountain lakes and clear, cold, fast-running streams of the
West; the slower but important fishing streams of the Southern and Central
States; the thousands of lakes and streams of the Lake States; the clear, cool
brooks of New England — all are represented on the national forests. They
provide the necessary habitat for a wide variety of fish and an opportunity
for millions to enjoy themselves.

DECLINE AND RESTORATION . . . Early American explorers and pioneers beheld
a remarkable profusion of wildlife at Plymouth Rock and the other eastern
ports-to-be. As they moved west and settled the Ohio and Mississippi
Valleys, the Lake States, the Great Plains, and California, they found the
same profusion. Only in parts of Utah and Nevada, the heavily timbered
country of north Idaho and eastern Montana, and a few other places was
any scarcity of game noted by the pioneers. Lewis and Clark recorded
surprise at the abundance of wildlife in most of the country crossed by their
expedition from St. Louis to the Pacific. The Hudson's Bay Co., the Astors,
and others built great fortunes from the exploitation of wildlife in the early
days.

But as the frontiers were pushed westward, civilization and settlement
claimed for the plow and for domesticated livestock more and more of the
new land — most of it the choicest range for some species of wildlife. Many
species whose former habitat was on the plains, in low-lying valleys, or in
the foothills were pushed back and yet farther back into higher and more

202 FOREST OUTINGS

inaccessible mountain regions of the West or into rougher or swampier or
less fertile areas of the East. Always it was a retreat.

Fully 75 percent of the deer and elk of the West, in early times, was found
principally on the plains and foothills. Now they roam high mountain
country during part of the year. Bighorn sheep have not always as now
made the high mountain fastness their sole abode. The despised coyote
likewise was once primarily a plains animal. One of the exceptions is the
antelope, which still persists as a plains animal although about one-fourth
of the present population has taken to higher land. Thus during more than
300 years of American exploration and settlement, many big-game species
have gradually been forced from their native range to a somewhat artificial
habitat. Their new homes in the public forests, refuges, and parks or simi-
lar high country may be entirely satisfactory during the summer season,
but they are seriously inadequate when the deep snows of winter cover
the browse and other forage upon which the animals must feed.

In general, big game reached its lowest ebb in the West by the start
of the twentieth century, when the greater number of the national forests
were being created from the remaining public domain. Hunting for food,
market, and economic purposes — clothing, shelter, and articles of trade —
had largely ceased because of the general scarcity of game. Hunting for
recreation, although in many places sharply limited by scarcity of wildlife,
was becoming more popular.

The national-forest ranges at that period were satisfactory during the
greater part of the year for the support of the big-game population at the
time. Late spring, summer, and early fall range was plentiful. Even winter
range, which is the most critical in the year-long cycle, and which generally
was not to be found in the national forests, was usually adequate for the
decreased game population. Only here and there at that time was lack of
winter range serious.

But with more effective protection from hunters and predators estab-
lished cooperatively by State and Federal Governments, and with wildlife
given a definite place in the management of national forests, the numbers
of most species of big game on national forests increased. Coincident with
such increases was the gradual decline of adjacent winter range. Many

GAME 203

valley bottoms were converted into cultivated fields, and the foothills came
to be so completely used and often overgrazed by domestic livestock that
little if any winter feed was left for game. On these unmanaged ranges
outside the national forests, depletion of the forage proceeded rapidly to
a point where the balance between summer and winter range, which with
increases in numbers became more and more essential to wildlife, was
destroyed. Thus, in the West, shortage of winter range in the foothills and
on the adjacent plains — much of the land is held in private ownership —
has become the controlling factor in determining the maximum numbers of
most species of herbivorous game animals.

Reliable data as to the number of game on various western national
forests at the time they were created and for several years thereafter are
not available, but it is known that the game population trend of the first
10 or 15 years on most national forests was definitely upward. Beginning
with 1924, methods used in taking the big-game census were greatly
improved and it is known that, taken altogether, the big-game population
on the western national forests has almost trebled since. In spite of general
open hunting seasons for deer and extensions of hunting season in the elk
country, deer have increased 190 percent and elk have increased almost
160 percent in the last 15 years. Bighorn sheep and grizzly bear are the
only two species that have shown a decrease. These significant over-all
increases on national forests, though made up in some instances of
increases on areas already overstocked, are in sharp contrast to actual
decreases on some other areas, and illustrate how these animals respond to
the better protection and management given them during recent years.

On much national-forest land and in the summer, more big game
than is now present could be cared for. This is especially true in the Ohio
Valley, in the Ozark Mountains of Missouri and Arkansas, and in other
parts of the South.

Overstocking of deer on parts of the Huron and Manistee National
Forests in Michigan; the Nicolet and Chequamegon National Forests in
Wisconsin; the Malheur in Oregon; the Fishlake and Dixie in Utah; the
Allegheny in Pennsylvania; the Pisgah in North Carolina; and the Modoc
and Lassen in California is a result solely of shortage of winter forage.

204 FOREST OUTINGS

Similarly the elk population exceeds the feed supply during the critical
winter periods on parts of the Clearwater National Forest in Idaho; the
Lewis and Clark, Flathead, and Absaroka in Montana; Olympic in Wash-
ington; the Umatilla and Whitman in Oregon; the Teton and Wyoming
in Wyoming; and the Targhee in Idaho. But even if additional areas of
winter range for wild game were acquired, present conditions might easily
be repeated unless a control of the maximum numbers allowed on the
range is maintained. No well-managed domestic herd is allowed to increase
beyond its feed supply, and the same principle is applicable to wild game,
especially to deer and elk.

The first steps to halt the downward trend in numbers of almost all
species of wildlife were the State game laws to establish seasons, fix bag
limits, and provide bounties for the taking of predators, and the creation
of control and law-enforcement bodies under various forms. Another
development was the establishment of refuges and sanctuaries by State and
Federal Governments. Game animals, fur bearers, game birds, and fish
have been transplanted in depleted areas or streams, and the propagation
of planting stock at game farms, fish hatcheries, and rearing ponds has
become an established practice. But perhaps most vital of all has been the
development of a public sentiment favorable to wildlife conservation.

In almost all States containing national forests, resident forest officers
are ex officio State game wardens serving without pay. Even where this
is not the case, it is a recognized duty of every Forest Service officer to
report violations of game laws and assist in law enforcement if such assist-
ance is desired.

REFUGES established by States within national forests in 26 States now total
more than 23 million acres. Federal refuges inside national forests in 13
States and Alaska total nearly 6% million acres, and some 7 million addi-
tional acres of national-forest land are handled as game refuges through
administrative restrictions by the Forest Service. Of this 36% million acres,
less than half is used by domestic livestock. Both within refuges and with-
out, the numbers of domestic livestock and of game have been or should
be adjusted to meet the carrying capacity of the range.

GAME 205

In much the same way, help has been extended in rebuilding the fish
population. With the cooperation of the States and the United States
Bureau of Fisheries, rearing ponds and fish hatcheries have been con-
structed on national forest land. In most instances these are being operated
by the Bureau of Fisheries. Many miles of streams have been developed to
improve the habitat for fish. Lakes have been covered with fish-habitat
surveys and in many instances have been developed. In 1938 the Forest
Service planted more than 180 million fish in national-forest waters, along
with an even greater number planted by States and other agencies.

With the help of other agencies, game has been moved from over-
stocked to understocked range. Deer have been moved from Wisconsin and
Michigan to the Ozark Mountains in Missouri. Beaver have been taken
from Michigan and planted in the streams of southern Illinois. Elk plant-
ings have been made on many national forests, among which are the
Weiser and Cache National Forests in Idaho, the Sitgreaves in Arizona,
the Wasatch and Fishlake in Utah, and nine national forests in Colorado.
Surpluses of mule deer on the Kaibab National Forest of Arizona and
white-tailed deer on the Pisgah National Forest in North Carolina have
been trapped and liberated in other areas where these species had dis-
appeared or were very scarce. Bighorn sheep have been imported from
Canada and turned loose on the national forests of Wyoming. Wild turkeys,
quail, and other game-bird species have been reintroduced on ranges from
which they had disappeared. Such efforts at artificial restocking cannot be
substituted for effective resource management as a method for increasing
wildlife populations, but they do have a place in handling the wildlife
resource.

PRINCIPLES OF MANAGEMENT, in the final analysis, start with and are limited
by the possibilities for managing the wildlife's environment. Too often
wildlife has been thought of as something separate and apart from land,
rather than as one of the crops. Too often, also, public interest and game
laws have centered on maximum numbers, rather than on relating num-
bers to the food supply available for the year-round support of the species.
Thus, temporary increases, rather than sustained annual yields of wildlife

206 FOREST OUTINGS

have been built up, only to be wiped out by an unusually hard winter, by
disease, or by actual destruction of the habitat through too heavy use.

Protection from predators and man, artificial restocking, feeding, and
other similar measures are all important aids to management, but without
a favorable environment wildlife must decline. The planting of millions of
fish in streams and lakes is of little avail if the natural habitat has already
been destroyed by pollution of the waters, by silting over of spawning beds,
or by destruction of the natural food supplies. Pheasants and quail may be
introduced but they will gradually disappear again if food, shelter, and cli-
mate do not meet their needs. Woodpeckers may decrease with the elimination
of dead trees and snags from the forest. Migratory waterfowl may travel
the fly ways unmolested by hunters; but destroy their nesting grounds
by fire or overgrazing, drain the shallow lakes and marshes upon which
they rest or feed, pollute the waters which they use, and their num-
bers will decline. Clearly, environment is the major factor in wildlife
management.

Much of the history of wildlife is a record of temporary relief measures
to correct an abuse without adequately attacking the broad problem. Ex-
perience has taught game administrators that such provisions as the buck
law, game refuges, bag limits, and closed seasons, may be good or bad
depending on the time and place. The bounty system may lead to the
destruction of predators which have a very definite place in management.
All such provisions are merely implements that have been used in an effort
to correct unsatisfactory conditions, and they have been too long regarded
as permanent management practices. The bad condition of many wildlife
ranges today is largely the result of dependence on such corrective measures.
Legal limitations on hunting may result in overstocking and partial destruc-
tion of the habitat; legal stimulus to killing, as exemplified in the bounty
system, may lead towards extermination of the predators and consequent
overstocking of the species on which the predators formerly preyed.

Efforts to remove surplus game by trapping have proved hopelessly
inadequate. Outright slaughter is both abhorrent and ineffective in dealing
with large surpluses. Some progress has been made with regulated kills by
modification of the hunting season, etc., but nowhere yet has the principle

GAME 207

of treating wildlife as a renewable crop to be held to the food capacity of
the "farm" been given full effective use.

Grazing by domestic livestock, production and use of the timber, and
use of the water resources for domestic or industrial purposes, all — on the
national forests — must be coordinated with the needs of wildlife. In some
areas, use of game and domestic livestock compete for earth room and sus-
tenance. In this the national forests of the East are not involved because open-
range grazing by domestic stock is not commonly practiced. Likewise in the
West there are more than 46 million acres of national-forest land which
because of cover types, roughness of topography, lack of forage, lack of water,
or inaccessibility, are not usable by domestic livestock. To this must be added
nearly 6 million acres of usable grazing land set aside in virgin, botanical,
wilderness, and wild areas where domestic livestock are not permitted.
Much of this area is admirably suited to game use.

On lands properly grazed by livestock, there is ordinarily abundant
cover and sufficient forage to maintain a reasonable stocking of wildlife.
Here competition is minimized by the fact that different classes of livestock
and different species of game normally feed on different types of vegetation.
But on areas such as the ranges adjacent to Yellowstone Park, competition
between game and domestic livestock for forage gives rise to sharp con-
flicts. Upon most national forests such problems are not unsurmountable
if the desires and needs of the various interests are given full consideration
and there is maintained a fair attitude of give and take.

Conflicts between wildlife and timber use are relatively easy to solve
once the problem is correctly understood. Although any timberland will
support wildlife of some kind, not all timberlands are suited to the repro-
duction of big game. In places the timber cover is so dense that herbiv-
orous game animals can find little feed. On other areas the cover may
have been completely destroyed by fire, and reforestation by planting may
be required. Here the rabbit population may become so heavy that active
control measures are essential for a few years if the forest is to be restored. In
other instances, the winter deer population may be so heavy in cedar swamps
that the reproduction will all be eaten and both the future forest and the
game-food supply jeopardized. Here again control of numbers is indicated.

208 FOREST OUTINGS

Timber harvesting, on the other hand, if carried on without regard to
the needs of wildlife, may be detrimental to the habitat. On the other
hand, cut-over areas, if properly handled, provide a more favorable food
supply for wildlife than many virgin areas. To assure this, timber-cutting
operations have been modified where necessary to increase the forage sup-
ply. In the eastern national forests, cutting methods have been changed
to favor certain kinds of trees and shrubs that provide food for different
species of wildlife, with good results. Also by leaving a number of hollow
or defective trees, nesting places for birds and homes for squirrels, raccoons,
and so on, have been increased. In artificial-reforestation plans for large
areas, a portion of the area is left unplanted in order to improve the future
habitat for game. Tree and shrub species valuable for game food and cover
are being grown in some forest nurseries for transplanting to favorable
sites to improve the habitat.

Similarly, the needs of wildlife must be considered in any plan to
manipulate water levels or change the use of water on the national forests.
Illustrative of this is the adverse effect on fish population when a sawmill
discharges sawdust into a stream. The raising of water levels by water
storage, as has been stated, may destroy feeding and nesting grounds for
migratory waterfowl. The straightening of a stream channel through a
wet meadow may reduce the cost of construction or maintenance of a road,
but at the same time by more effective drainage it may destroy the habitat
for beaver.

On the other hand, a small dam to raise water levels or create a new
lake may provide just the conditions needed for migratory waterfowl or
form a new habitat for fish. Springs developed primarily for domestic
livestock may at the same time open up new range for big game or upland
birds.

A MIGRANT YIELD, the wildlife crop must be managed as a cooperative
undertaking. Although it is true that wildlife is one product of the forest, it
is not a stationary product. It moves from place to place according to habits
of the individual species. It is on public land today and on private land
tomorrow. Some species summer on the national forests and move to the

GAME 209

adjacent low-lying private land in winter. The migratory fowl may nest in
the Chippewa National Forest in Minnesota, and winter on some private
estate in Florida. Private, county, State, and Federal land may all be used
even by an individual animal.

The multiple-use plan of management in effect on the national forests
recognizes and provides for wildlife as a major resource, in providing for
game range and the improvement of the wildlife food supply and habitat.
Conflicts between wildlife and other forest uses are adjusted in accordance
with social, economic, and biological principles. Provision is made for
temporary or permanent refuges where needed. Surveys and studies are
made to determine carrying capacity of the ranges, the existing population,
and the effect of changes in population on the carrying capacity.

The States, on the other hand, make and administer most of the laws
relating to use and protection of the animals themselves. Migratory water-
fowl is, of course, a partial exception. Among those laws are measures pre-
scribing bag limits, sex or size of game or fish which may be taken, open and
closed seasons for each species, designation of closed areas, bounties to be
paid for taking predatory animals, and many other details.

Thus the management of game or fish and of the land or water which
forms their habitat are in part divided. On one hand are restrictive laws
which are essential tools to management, enacted and enforced by the States;
and on the other is the management by the Forest Service of a large part of
the environment so as to give the maximum contribution of wildlife in the
light of other legitimate uses of the land. As part of the management of the
environment it is clear that the Forest Service must retain the right to pro-
tect the property from damage by wildlife.

Under the division of authority, the closest kind of cooperation is indis-
pensable. In certain States there are detailed formal agreements that are,
in effect, cooperative management plans. In other States less formal but
progressively satisfactory arrangements are in effect with the constituted
State authorities. In some States, dependence on inflexible and restrictive
State laws rather than on broad authority vested in a strong responsible
game and fish department makes difficult or virtually impossible any ade-
quate joint approach to wildlife management.

HUNTERS-TRAPPERS
FISHERMEN

YOU ARE ENTERING

KILKENNY WILDLIFE MANAGEMENT AREA

WHITE MOUNTAIN NATIONAL FOREST

SPECIAL REGULATIONS IN EFFECT

STOP AND REAP

6k WILDLIFE
MANAGEMENT AREA

UNITED STATES

DEPT. OF AGRICULTURE

FOREST SERVICE

Service manages a large portion
of this country's wildlife environment.

WHITE MOUNTAIN NATIONAL FOREST, N. H.

GAME 211

But the States and the Forest Service are not the only agencies charged
with responsibility for wildlife. The Biological Survey long has been the
primary Federal research agency in this field. Here again, cooperation is
essential and has been effected. A formal agreement between the Biological
Survey and the Forest Service defines the responsibilities of each in a way
that is mutually satisfactory. Briefly, the Biological Survey is the responsible
wildlife research agency of the Federal Government and advises on ques-
tions related to the research field. The Forest Service is responsible directly
for administration and management of wildlife resources on the national
forests, and advises and assists in the solution of wildlife research problems.

The Bureau of Fisheries likewise shares responsibility. The fullest cooper-
ation has been extended by that Bureau in the development and execution
of plans for improving fish habitats and population. Detailed plans for
fish hatcheries and rearing ponds have been prepared or reviewed. Advice
as to the suitability of streams or lakes for different species of fish has been
given. Also, millions of fish, with the approval of the States involved, have
been turned over to the Forest Service from Bureau of Fisheries hatcheries
for liberation in national-forest waters.

Effective cooperation in common wildlife problems has also been
worked out between the National Park Service and the Forest Service. This
is especially important in the West where many of the national parks either
join or are surrounded by national forests and where complete protection
within the parks may result in building up populations in excess of the
carrying capacity of available winter range. Special mention should be
made of the elk situation surrounding Yellowstone National Park where
the National Park Service, the Forest Service and the Biological Survey,
the States involved, and other interested agencies have sought the solution
of an aggravated winter-range problem through buying up privately
owned winter range, directing hunting during the period of migration
from summer to winter range, and providing hay for the animals when
snow conditions are too unfavorable.

Various semipublic organizations such as the American Wildlife Insti-
tute, the Izaak Walton League, National Association of Audubon Societies,
the hundreds of sportsmen and game associations, and many others have

212 FOREST OUTINGS

shared in the progress. Private landowners often have permitted the use
of their property by wildlife at considerable cost and inconvenience to
themselves. The tremendous increase in public interest in wildlife during
the last 25 years has been reflected in improved legislation, both National
and State, and in increased financial provisions for fish and game manage-
ment and research. There is now general recognition that wildlife, in the
present status of our social, economic, and industrial development, can no
longer shift for itself. It has become a major problem for study and guidance
and organized administration on a common-sense basis.

A CONFLICT OF INTERESTS between sportsmen and those who dislike killing
anything was noted in chapter 1. Much energy and emotion is wasted by
high-pitched contention; much remains to be done to harmonize the atti-
tudes of various wildlife groups. One group places complete reliance on
restrictive legislation; it wants nothing killed and would remove man's
influence entirely from the wildlife picture and restore what they call
Nature's balance. Others confine their interest to special groups such as
songbirds, or hawks and owls, or predators, or some other important
sector of the entire wildlife population, each seeing in the preservation of
its particular interest the solution of the whole problem. Some of these
demand that the rest of the animal kingdom be subservient to the needs of the
class in which they are interested. Certain trout fishermen want all otter and
all fish-eating birds exterminated. There are sportsmen who see only the
game and do not recognize the need of food and cover, and fox hunters who
want no foxes killed no matter how detrimental they are to upland birds.
Much of the difficulty in applying sound principles has come from a
failure of the friends of .wildlife to see eye to eye as to methods. But public
attention now is focused on the problem; more wildlife administrators are
stressing management of the environment; and these things can result only
in fuller public understanding of the problem as a whole. An increasing
and intelligent interest of the millions of forest visitors — sportsmen, campers,
boy and girl adventurers, and picnickers — in the wildlife they see or hear
on a trip to the woods will have a tremendous influence on the wildlife
policies of the future.

7J>: '

Even though compensation might be secured for smelter damage,
this cannot restore the recreational values.

NORTHERN IDAHO.

Miners

"Here are the factories," they say; "here are the mines; here is the water power, and there
stretch the bountiful farms. Is there anything lacking?" . . . The answer, unhappily, is
yes. There is one thing, at least, lacking — and that is character. The system has collapsed
because man worked it greedily. By mortgaging the future he succeeded in getting more,
for a time, than the system could honestly provide . . . Herbert Agar, Land of the Free, 1935.

UNFORESEEN CONFLICTS between mining and other uses of the
national forests have developed. They result partly from uneconomic opera-
tions, but more particularly from fake miners, miners in name only. Under
present mining laws a man may squat on and misuse a piece of land claim-
ing he is going to mine it, and it is often difficult to dislodge him. Then,
too, the land planner has no choice save to regard mining as a prior claim,
regardless of all the other values involved, unless the area is withdrawn by
a special law from mining. The resulting state of affairs is troublesome alike
to the public and to those in the legitimate mining industry who are trying
to do an honest and careful job.

Because of the almost invariable priority accorded mining by law,
national forest lands have suffered unwise and inappropriate use, and
recreational use in many places has been severely thwarted. Very often
land has been claimed or actually obtained under the guise of mining and
so used as to restrict desirable public use. Claims taken up under mining
laws have been developed and used as summer homes on locations badly
needed for public campgrounds. Sometimes the occupancy of such claims
blocks the use of much larger areas of adjacent public land. Again, un-
sightly structures, huge advertising signs, and hot-dog stands have been
erected, changing the character of the environment almost completely.

Mining is a basic industry of great importance. Our history, our western
settlement, is closely linked with the discovery of gold and other minerals.

215

216 FOREST OUTINGS

Many mining operations today are producing wealth to the economic
benefit of the Nation, and serving locally as the backbone of thriving
communities. It is desirable to encourage bona fide and well-ordered
developments of the mineral resources on the public lands. The fraudulent
mining claim is a thorn in the flesh of the legitimate mining industry. It
destroys confidence in mining as an investment and brings legitimate
development into disrepute. Fraudulent claims have been a constant source
of public irritation and annoyance and the industry as a whole gets the
blame.

PRIMITIVE MINERS dug for wealth on this continent before the coming of
the white man. The early Spanish explorers and the Jesuit priests recorded
the use of gold and copper among the Indians. But it was the newcomers—
not the natives — who were gold crazy, hungry and thirsty for gold. Gold
was to be found here easily in the streams and "among the roots of trees,"
wrote Columbus, reporting to the Court of Spain. Gold rushes, almost as
much as soil rushes, helped push and draw succeeding waves of migration
westward.

Such laws and ordinances as there were favored mining and once we
set up a Republic here, that tendency persisted. Our first State and National
mining laws were nothing more than local rules influenced to some extent
by customs harking back to periods of French, English, Spanish, or Mexican
jurisdiction. Essentially, they were little more than codes established by
local usage designed wholly to protect miners' rights in public lands appro-
priated by them and to meet the exigencies of the times. Land in the
mineralized sections of the Western States then had little, if any, recognized
worth other than for mineral values, and the codes or local rules revolved
around protection of mineral mining rights exclusively.

The various early Congresses of the United States enacted legislation
from time to time dealing with mining. The first of these was the Act of May
20, 1785, which set up the rectangular system of land surveys and made
certain provisions dealing with minerals. Various other acts were passed,
but the first general mining act of importance was the act of July 26, 1866,
known as the Lode Law. This was later supplemented by the general law

MINERS 217

of May 10, 1872, which with some modifications and changes is still in
effect today.

THE LAW OF MAY 10, 1872, grants the basic rights to prospect, locate, and
patent mineralized areas on public lands, and applies to national forest lands
as well as to other public lands. In some cases where national forest lands
have been acquired by purchase, exchange, or donation, the mineral rights
have been retained by the original owners. Such mineral rights are private
property and not affected by the general law of 1 872. Many areas of national
forest land have been acquired by purchase or other means in the eastern
United States and the mineral rights included in the transaction. Such
mineral values also do not come under the operation of the Act of 1872, but
are administered under the Act of August 11, 1915, under which the Forest
Service issues permits for mineral extraction. A small charge is made for
such permits and a royalty collected upon the mineral production. Title to
the land does not pass to the miner.

With these exceptions the Act of 1872 governs all metalliferous mineral
exploration and development in the national forests as well as on other pub-
lic land. Placer claims may be located in units of 20 acres each with a maxi-
mum limit of 160 acres to any association or individual. Lode-claim regula-
tions vary somewhat in different mining districts. The maximum limit on
area and the one in most general use restricts lode claims to a tract not
exceeding 600 feet in width and 1,500 feet in length. There is no limit to the
number of lode claims which may be located by any individual. Require-
ments as to mineral discovery are extremely liberal. Claims can be located,
and are often located, with no showing of valid discovery.

The courts have held in essence that a sufficient discovery requires
proving the existence of mineral and evidence showing that a person of
ordinary prudence would be justified in further expenditure of labor and
means. Assessment requirements, as a prerequisite to patent, call for the
expenditure of $500 in labor or improvements for each claim. Annual assess-
ment work is a condition required only for the continued possession of a
claim as against adverse claimants, and failure to do such work is no basis
for the cancellation of the location. Furthermore, Congress has now and

218 FOREST OUTINGS

then passed special acts excusing locators from doing their assessment work
in certain years.

The net of it is that locators can secure control of strategically situated
tracts of public lands and hold them for long periods with little or no showing
of mineral and with scant and often no expenditures for development.
Mineral locators may cut timber from their claims. They may build flumes,
tramways, and other improvements across public lands. They may file on
additional areas of 5 acres for mill sites.

Established in a pioneer time when conditions of living, of commerce,
and of transportation were primitive; and when all development was
hazardous, highly speculative, and attended by definite personal risk; where
mining was the major industry of the West, and other values, particularly
in lands, were relatively unimportant, the mining laws were purposely
framed to encourage the miner and to promote mineral exploration and
development of the mineral-bearing public lands. They served their original
purpose but in some respects they are now out of date.

New uses and new needs for lands have developed which were undreamed
of in the pioneer days and could not have been anticipated. Nowadays
public lands, even though they may contain minerals, may be of much
higher value for other forms of public use.

But under the Act of 1872, minor mineral values and single-purpose use
by an individual can outweigh much higher and far broader uses of public
lands. Nowhere is authority conferred on a public official to give proper
consideration to the multiple-use principle of land management, "For the
greatest good of the greatest number in the long run."

FRAUDULENT CLAIMS . . . Many claims of little and often of no value for
mining have passed out of public control and into the hands of people who
wanted them and have used them for resorts, for store locations, for gas
and oil stations, and the like.

The letter and spirit of the statutes make mineral contests difficult and
expensive. Repeated mineral examinations and careful sampling and
assaying are required. Each case must be completely worked up and com-
petent witnesses secured, and even then the outcome is uncertain. The

MINERS 219

Forest Service files record many contested cases where the administrators
of the law have been unable to prevent passage of title to valuable public
lands despite extremely doubtful mineral showings. In some instances
subsequent events have made the original charge of fraud seem justified.
In many other instances, claims have been initiated in good faith and
carried through to patent and the land afterward used for purposes wholly
foreign to mining. A few examples:

In western Montana a locator put up a disreputable shack along a road-
side and held it as a lode claim. The Forest Service fought this case unsuc-
cessfully for several years. The original locator died and willed the claim to
another party. The second man held up construction of a public highway
and finally secured payment of $300 for a right-of-way through the alleged
claim. Then he abandoned the claim entirely. Some years later (1932) a
third party filed on the identical area. He built a couple of residences and
a dance pavilion. The Forest Service again contested the location, finally
won, and the location was declared invalid. The claimant still refused to
vacate and now the Forest Service has started suit to dispossess him. This
claimant thus far has been able to maintain possession of this tract upon
which no indications of valuable minerals have ever been found.

In Colorado a locator established a night club, cabin resort, and filling
station under cover of a placer claim and for 2 years successfully resisted
all efforts to stop him.

Another Colorado man built a summer residence under guise of a mining
claim and made no effort at all to develop mineral values. He stood on his
rights as a mining locator. It took 3 years of constant effort to clear up the
case.

SIDE SHOWS ... In South Dakota Professor Piccard's famous stratosphere
flight was staged on national-forest land. Five mineral locations were filed
with the intention of charging spectators of the flight for the privilege of
parking upon land covered by the locations. The Forest Service instituted
prompt legal action and defeated the scheme.

At a very fine scenic lake in the State of Washington there are five
resorts operating upon patented lands. These lands went to patent in four

220 FOREST OUTINGS

instances as mill-site claims and in the fifth as a mining claim. In none of
these instances are the areas being used in any way for mining.

In Arizona, a locator took up a claim along a main highway and at-
tempted to operate a commercial campground and a lunchroom. The
Forest Service won the first legal skirmish, but the claimant reoccupied the
land and is now using it for commercial billboard privileges. The Forest
Service is still fighting the case, but the matter has been in dispute for
approximately 12 years. No mineral values have ever been established.

In California, two mining claims are held along the Redwood Highway
and occupied wholly for residential purposes, and the Forest Service is contest-
ing these now. Several similar suits in the same area have already been won.

In Montana, a certain nationally known religious association located
a mill site and lode claim in order to use national-forest land for a summer
camp and to escape paying any fees therefor. After three contest hearings
and two appeals, the church association finally lost the case. This particular
case dragged along for a total of 6 years and put the Government to a great
deal of needless expense.

Many instances are on record in which the initial location of a new
highway across mountainous forests has been immediately followed by the
staking of numerous mineral claims along the right-of-way in efforts to
secure private control of strategic places. Frequently when tunnels, canals,
or water-diversion projects of any consequence have been started, locators
have established mining claims at key spots across the course of the proposed
projects. Many such locators have impeded large public and private develop-
ments of this nature by demanding large sums of money for a right-of-way
across their claims. These extortion attempts have frequently been success-
ful. In other instances, valuable tracts of public timber have been acquired
under the guise of mining claims. Mineral and other springs, caves, geo-
logical formations, bits of unusual scenery, etc., have gone into private hands
in the same manner.

There are dozens of instances where the Forest Service has claimed fraud
and has been defeated. In almost every instance these claims are now used
for gas stations, lunch stands, summer homes, and various other purposes
foreign to mining.

MINERS 221

In the very nature of things a fraudulent claim location in the national
forests is very carefully selected by the locator for the special purpose he
may have in mind, and the type of person who deliberately stakes a fraudu-
lent claim is usually not above employing crooked witnesses and perjuring
himself in an effort to gain his point. As a general rule, such claims when
patented are put to uses which are injurious to planned use of the forest.
In perhaps the majority of cases the improvements are unsightly and
wholly out of place in the forest. Usually, these fraudulent claims not only
spoil the land they embrace, but their use also interferes with proper use
and enjoyment of much of the adjacent public land.

The Forest Service examines and contests all questionable claims as a
matter of course. In the case of out-and-out fraud, where there is no indi-
cation of mineral, the Government has a good but by no means certain
chance of winning its contests. In those cases where there is just enough
mineral showing to raise a technical doubt, the Government has the
difficult and often impossible task of proving the claimant's bad faith.

Present Federal mining statutes permit the locator to do virtually any
manner of work necessary to develop his claim. There is no restriction as
to the use of the surface or surface resources as long as these uses are in
connection with bona fide development of the mineral deposits. Thus,
adequate mineral exploration and development work as a general rule
definitely conflicts with any public recreational use of the same area and
often the conflict extends for long distances from the scene of actual mining
operations.

It is obvious, for example, that the customary digging and tunneling
operations with their accompanying structures and waste dumps mar
natural scenery. Dredging and hydraulic operations completely wreck land
surfaces. The cutting of timber for props, mine sets, and other uses denudes
the surface of the claims. Fumes from smelters usually kill all timber
touched. Even though compensation might be secured for smelter damage,
this cannot restore the recreational values.

Mining improvements, such as power lines, roads, tramways, flumes,
and mill buildings, scar the countryside. Mining roads put through the
back country to reach mining claims can wholly alter the primitive charm

222 FOREST OUTINGS

of large wilderness areas. Mining operations involve the use of water in
many cases, and the pollution of lakes and streams from tailings, sludge,
and chemical mill wastes, often affects entire watersheds and streams for
miles below the mines. Many States have local statutes covering the pollu-
tion problem, but enforcement is usually inadequate and often lacking.

It is obvious that effective and full exploitation of mineral resources
cannot be had without these or similar developments. It is also evident
that in the very nature of things, such developments will hinder, if not
largely prevent, any substantial recreational use of mineralized zones.

THE PRESENT STATUTES deal only with the individual claim and only from
the mineral angle. Higher public values of the claim, both in itself and in
conjunction with adjacent areas, are not recognized. For example, a couple
of miners established a small placer operation on the headwaters of a fine
trout stream. This enterprise produced just enough gold, much less than
wages, to support these men but it threatened to destroy entirely the trout
fishing enjoyed by hundreds. Under the mining laws, the claimants could not
be dispossessed. Finally the fishermen banded together and bought the
miners out.

In another instance some miners established a very doubtful mine back in
a beautiful wilderness area and built a wagon road to the mine. Automobiles
followed and as a result fishing was ruined, the primitive charm of the area
destroyed, and a thriving local industry that handled horseback tourist
travel was crippled. This mine is not a fraudulent enterprise, even though
it has never produced a commercial shipment of ore. Other cases of a
comparable nature are known, many others are impending. There is no
need to recite a long list of similar happenings. The point is that these
illustrations represent mining activities that are not necessarily fraudulent
but, nevertheless, result in decided injury to other public interests.

The development of mining property on which the values are so low
grade as to preclude present economic development but which may inter-
fere with what the public regards as much more important uses, are attract-
ing more and more unfavorable attention.

The tremendously increased interest in outdoor recreation in recent years

MINERS 223

has developed the tourist business into a major industry. Chambers of
commerce, development associations, luncheon clubs, and the like are
deeply interested in the commercial angle of the recreation trade, as pre-
sented by the 30-odd million visits for recreation which are now made to
the national forests each summer. The numerically powerful outdoor organi-
zations, such as mountain clubs and wilderness and nature societies, are also
interested in various phases of recreation and are displaying an increasing
tendency to insist on complete preservation of natural attractions. Several
million fishermen are not interested at all in mining but are keenly alive to
the fishing values which unrestricted mining jeopardizes. All of these groups
are becoming more and more critical of interference through fraudulent or
ill-advised mining.

If all of these interests become united and organized, their impatience
with the present abuses may easily result in too drastic restrictions upon
mining development. The balance of power and of public opinion rests
with the millions of people who do not live in the mining States. There is
definitely a problem here which needs the cooperative and constructive
attention of the mining industry and the responsible public agencies.

Part Four

WHAT REMAINS?

Too long we have reckoned our resources in terms of
illusion. Money, even gold, is but a metrical device. It
is not the substance of wealth. Our capital is the accumu-
lation of material and energy with which we can work.
Soil, water, minerals, vegetation, and animal life — these are
the basis of our existence and the measure of our future.

Paul B. Sears, This Is Our World, 7937.

Often the narrow channels are bordered by towering mountains
of bare rock, worn smooth by glaciation.

PUNCHBOWL COVE AREA OF RUDYERD BAY, BEHM CANAL,

TONGASS NATIONAL FOREST, ALASKA.

Mew Land: Alaska

Were the attractions of this north coast but half known, thousands of lovers of nature's
beauties would come hither every year. Without leaving the steamer from Victoria, one
is moving silently and almost without wave motion through the finest and freshest landscape
poetry on the face of the globe. . . . It is as if a hundred Lake Tahoes were united end to
end. . . . While we sail on and on thoughts loosen and sink off and out of sight, and one
is free from oneself and made captive to fresh wildness and beauty.

John Muir, First journey to Alaska, 1879.

THE PRICELESS PRIMITIVE quality of Alaska and the distinctiveness
of its national forests are Territorial assets of enormous value. Here is a
country almost continental in size, with richness and variety of inspirational
resources, a frontier as yet little changed by man. Its land still lacks settlers.
Its mineral deposits have been only partially developed. Its great river
systems, mountains, volcanoes, tidewater glaciers, and fiords retain their
primitive grandeur. The great conifer forests that clothe the south coast
stand intact. The vast, open woodlands of the Yukon drainage and the far-
northern tundra areas remain in large part unbroken wilderness. Wildlife
is abundant, including the caribou which roams the interior watersheds in
great herds as the bison once roamed the Great Plains. The population,
white, Indian, and Eskimo, barely exceeds 1 person to 10 square miles.1
Alaska is still almost entirely public domain with only 1 percent of its area in
private ownership.

1 The area of Alaska is 586,400 square miles. The population in 1939 is estimated to
be 62,700.

227

228 FOREST OUTINGS

The national forests of Alaska comprise a narrow strip of mainland,
with hundreds of adjacent islands. They extend from the south boundary
of the territory to the town of Seward. By localities the forests cover most
of southeastern Alaska, the Prince William Sound region, and the eastern
part of the Kenai Peninsula. The length of this maritime strip is 800 miles,
but there are so many islands and deeply indented coasts that the shore
line is more than 12,000 miles in extent. The two national forests, the
Tongass and Chugach, cover nearly 21 million acres, about 5% percent
of the total area of the territory. Both mainland and islands have extremely
rugged topography. High mountains rise abruptly from the water's edge.
An intricate network of narrow channels, including many extending far
inland, brings all parts of the region within easy reach of tidewater.

Human occupancy is confined largely to scattered seaport towns.
Except for these towns and isolated canneries, the shore line remains
primitive. So does the back country except for mining operations here
and there. Rough topography makes extensive highway construction
prohibitive; most roads radiate no more than a few miles from the towns.
Less than 1 percent of the total area is suitable for agricultural use.

This southeastern region is nearer the United States than any other
part of Alaska. It is crossed by the main steamer route and is only 2 days
by boat from Seattle. The highly developed salmon-packing industry and
mining activities have made it the most populous part of the Territory.
There are approximately 24,000 residents, white and native. These factors,
combined with its recreational appeal, bring to the national forests more
visitors, both tourists and residents, than to any other part of Alaska.

The Tongass National Forest is a land of waterways, a highly interest-
ing region geographically. It presents the picture of a high, rugged mountain
range that subsided countless centuries ago, partly below the sea; its laby-
rinth of protected waterways were one time valleys of rivers and creeks,
and its islands are the tops of formerly connected mountain ranges. The
famous fiords of Norway, with all their grandeur, hold nothing more
inspiring than those seen in Alaska. Often the narrow channels are bordered
by towering mountains of bare rock, worn smooth by glaciation, so nearly
vertical that the boat cannot land except in a few places.

NEW LAND: ALASKA 229

Going up Tracy Arm, a narrow waterway 20-odd miles long and
often not more than one-fourth of a mile wide, a boat passes icebergs
glistening in the sun. Generally the tops of the bergs are white snow-ice
worn by wave action into caverns and overhanging shelves. The lower
ice is usually a deep, steely, cold blue.

The boat heads, time after time, straight for a rocky cliff, and appar-
ently into a cul de sac. Suddenly a narrow way opens up, almost at a right
angle. The boat turns and goes on. Weaving and dodging icebergs, it
comes without warning to the head of the Arm and there two immense
glaciers rise 250 feet sheer from the water. The boat slows to a crawl through
broken ice, bumping its way through small chunks. Avoiding large bergs,
it approaches a mighty ice cliff. The engine is killed. The boat drifts.
Suddenly the glacier cracks like a pistol shot. Then with a rumbling sound
a hugh piece breaks off and falls into the bay, leaving a streaming trail of
powdery ice, and slowly sinks. A wave breaks, widens, and rocks the boat.
The berg rises slowly from the water, turns, revolves, finally comes to. rest
and floats slowly with tide and current. Wheeling above the water, along
the cavern-filled face of the glacier, is a flock of gulls. A streak appears on
the still, intensely blue water. It is a hair seal swimming with his nose out
of water.

On the return trip one may pass an old Indian and his woman paddling
a dugout canoe, or on a rock point a lone Indian with a rifle — watching.
They are seal hunters. Here in the cleft of a cliff an Indian gathers his
kill — six hair seals. He skins them and lowers hides and bodies with a rope
to his canoe. A bounty of $3 is paid for each seal killed and the salmon are
made safer from destruction. Clothing and moccasins will be made from
the seal hides. The blubber will be dried and stored in gasoline cans against
the cold of winter. He clambers down, carefully loads his skiff, and, disdain-
ing to wave at the visitors, rows away.

Above the forest-rimmed sea lanes are great glaciers. They move slowly
down the valleys of high coastal mountains and drain off ice from the
extensive icefields of their origin. Many glaciers terminate on the ocean
border, with towering fronts from 200 to 300 feet in height and miles in
width. These fronts are daily pushed forward by gravity, only to be under-

230 FOREST OUTINGS

mined by waves, broken down into avalanches of glittering ice that falls
with a thunderous roar and throws spray hundreds of feet high. To geolo-
gists, or to any student of earth's history, these glaciers and the surrounding
lands are doubly fascinating, for they present, in a limited space, a series of
related geologic views leading back from present-day conditions to the
time of the last Ice Age. Nowhere on this continent can glaciers be more
readily visited than on the Alaskan Coast. They can be seen from an ocean
or river steamer, from plane or motorcar, or from foot trails.

Innumerable lakes, carved out of the high gulches of steep mountain
ranges by former glaciers, are sources of vertical waterfalls that also may be
seen along the sea channels. Varied rock formations, extensive zones of
mineralization, volcanic cones, lava flows, and glacier-carved land forms,
all free of vegetation at high elevations, give a further variety to the scene.
The minerals include gold, copper, silver, lead, nickel, and platinum.
Marble and limestone are abundant and here and there, coal.

The native Indians, with their curious totem poles and customs, in-
terest the casual visitor and the student alike. They form the Haida and
Thlinget divisions of their race. Apparently they are more closely related to
Oriental peoples than to American Indians. They occupy the immediate
coast line and live in 15 or more villages of 100 to 500 population. Their
living comes principally from the sea. A few community houses where they
formerly lived still stand. Their outstanding art is the carving of totem
poles which are placed within and in front of their dwellings to exhibit
tribal emblems and perpetuate tribal legends. These Indians also make
beautiful dugout war canoes that carry as many as 50 men. They are
skilled in blanket and basket weaving, in silver engraving, and in the making
of highly ornamental skin clothing. The Forest Service is restoring ancient
totem poles and community houses and compiling family histories. Out
from Ketchikan an entire Indian village will be rebuilt. Indians will do
the work. They are free agents, not wards of the United States, and most
of them make their own living.

The high latitude of this region, its lofty mountains, and the modifying
effect of the Japan current on the temperature of lands near sea level give
great variety to the vegetation. Within a range of several miles and 3,000

NEW LAND: ALASKA 231

or 4,000 feet in elevation, the plants display many types. Many plants at
the shore line are common in the States. Higher, the plant robe is that of
Arctic lands. Lands uncovered by retreating glaciers show the interesting
plant succession employed by nature to reclaim gradually bare land with
an ultimate cover of hemlock and spruce. Retreating glaciers expose
unpetrified wood and plants of interglacial forests which grew thousands
of years ago. Wild flowers grow everywhere in profusion; the green and
white background of forests and snow provides an ideal setting for the vivid
flashes of color.

FISH AND GAME . . . Good trout fishing may be found in the many lakes
and creeks, and the large king or Chinook salmon abounds in sea channels.
To take them with light tackle is real sport. Recently the use of commercial
airplanes, mounted on pontoons, has resulted in fishermen's raids on cer-
tain fresh-water lakes and brought likelihood of depletion. This needs to be
regulated. Such conservation measures as are now applied by the Federal
Bureau of Fisheries to assure perpetuation of salt-water fish should be
applied here.

Alaska is outstanding in the world for its wilderness animals. Game is
food to the Alaskan and fur bearers add to his cash income. But the greatest
value of wildlife to the Territory and to the people of the United States
lies in its attraction for public enjoyment. The principal big-game animals
on the national forests are deer, mountain goats, black, grizzly, and Alaska
brown bears, moose, and mountain sheep.

Among local hunters the deer of southeastern Alaska are the game
most sought, but the sport attracts few nonresidents, possibly because of
the widespread range of deer in the continental United States. The legal
take is unimportant in view of a small human population and a great
number of animals. Killing by isolated residents, the predatory wolf, and
starvation during winters of exceptionally heavy snowfall are the principal
decimating factors. Recent checks indicate a decrease in the number of
deer. More intensive protection is called for, and is being applied.

Mountain goats are abundant but seldom hunted. Their habitat
among the rugged mainland peaks affords ample protection. The black

232 FOREST OUTINGS

bear is everywhere abundant. He is little appreciated as a game animal in
this region and has apparently multiplied greatly in the last 10 years. In
the national-forest region the grizzly is found only on the mainland areas
and more especially at the heads of long fiords and isolated bays. Perpetua-
tion of this species in large numbers is an important feature of Alaska game
administration.

The Alaska brown bear is the largest of the bear family and also the
largest land carnivore on earth. Regarded as one of the outstanding big-
game animals of the world, it attracts the same class of sportsmen who
hunt lions in Africa and tigers in India with camera and gun. A recrea-
tional resource of romantic appeal as well as local economic value, this
game animal appears to be increasing in Alaska. Its range covers at least
one-fifth of the Territory but on the national forests the Alaska brown bear is
confined to three large islands in southeastern Alaska, two islands in Prince
William Sound, to the Kenai Peninsula, and to the outlying Afognak Island.
As the national-forest land is the most accessible of the entire range,
adequate safeguards for the animal are considered doubly important there.

Moose and mountain sheep are found over a large portion of Alaska
but on the national forests they occur only in large numbers on the Kenai
Peninsula. The Alaska species of these animals are especially prized by
big-game enthusiasts and consequently are subject to careful administra-
tion. Like the Alaska brown and grizzly bears, both these species are true
wilderness animals and their perpetuation requires protective measures
against too great a contact with civilization.

PLEASURE GROUNDS . . . The same need exists in Alaska as in the con-
tinental United States for community outdoor play and pleasure. Because
of the steep topography of most coastal town sites, such areas cannot as a
rule be established within town limits but must be placed on adjacent
national forest lands. Attractive national-forest areas have been set aside
for groups of summer-cottage sites and leased to town residents. Camp and
picnic grounds have been developed and fitted with shelters, tables, fire-
places, water systems, and simple play paraphernalia.

Winter sports, especially skiing and skating, are definitely on the up

NEW LAND: ALASKA 233

in Alaska. A number of new play areas have been made accessible recently
by roads and trails. The Forest Service has sought help from organized,
unlimited-membership groups, such as ski clubs, hiking clubs, Scout organi-
zations, and rifle associations to supervise orderly use.

Juneau has the largest gold mines in Alaska and an excellent library
and museum of local history. Here woods trails for hiking lead out of town
and facilities for quiet boating on fresh or salt water are available. Thirty
minutes distant by highway is the Mendenhall Glacier. This ice mass
descends a steep valley 2% miles wide. About 125 years ago, it is evident
by the vegetation, the face of the glacier extended to tidewater. Wild goats
can be seen at times on the grassy upper slopes of ridges flanking this
glacial valley.

Twenty miles south of Juneau by launch is a very active glacier—
Taku, fronting on the sea. Great blocks of ice drop from its mile-wide,
250-foot vertical face at frequent intervals during the day, and in the
form of deep-blue, fantastic-shaped bergs, are carried down the fiord
by the tides. This glacier is steadily advancing its front into the sea
channel; a rare phenomenon, for most tidewater glaciers in Alaska are
now receding.

Tracy Arm, situated 50 miles south of Juneau by launch, is an out-
standing fiord — a clean-cut chasm extending for some 20 miles into an ice-
capped mountain range. In the same locality is Port Snettisham with
three beautiful hanging lakes, all lying 1,000 feet or over above sea level.
Their waters pour into the bay over high waterfalls and multiple
cascades.

Sitka is 50 minutes by airplane from Juneau. For 68 years prior to the
purchase of Alaska by the United States, it was the capital of Russian
America. From Sitka the Russians carried on their extensive sea otter- and
seal-hunting operations, and their attempts to colonize the New World.
Among the interesting relics of their occupation is a cathedral where services
are still conducted for v/hites and Indians holding to old Russian creeds.

FOREST PLANNING ... Of the total national-forest area of approximately
21 million acres only about 7 million acres have timber cover. The remain-

The same need exists in Alaska as in the continental United States
for outdoor play and pleasure.

WARD LAKE RECREATIONAL AREA,
TONGASS NATIONAL FOREST, ALASKA.

NEW LAND: ALASKA 235

ing 14 million acres are made up of muskeg, other open lands within the
timbered zone, brush, grass, barren peaks, snow fields, and ice caps above
timber line. This large untimbered area will be undisturbed by commer-
cial forest activities. Of the total timbered lands, at least one-third is un-
likely ever to be invaded by logging operations because of low commercial
timber values. These low-quality forests are often as pleasing in appear-
ance as commercial stands and are usually important as habitat for game
and fur animals.

The great bulk of the national-forest commercial timber is confined to
a strip from 3 to 5 miles wide along tidewater; but with orderly cutting,
and reproduction of cut-over areas assured by timber-management plans,
forest devastation with huge areas of unsightly brush or barren lands may
be avoided. Lands of unusually high aesthetic and recreational values, in
some cases covering thousands of acres, will be left intact.

Recreational planning on Alaska national forests resolves itself, then,
into first providing for local community recreation. This presents no im-
portant difficulties. A substantial start on a program has already been
made. To prevent conflicts between local outing activities and other national-
forest uses, such as homesteads, fur farms, Indian claims, and logging opera-
tions, suitable lands have been reserved near towns and industrial centers.

The second consideration in recreational planning is coordination of forest
recreation, wildlife management, and the preservation of scenery in localities
where timber cutting is under way. This offers complicated problems that
can be solved only by following definite policies and practices. Areas carry-
ing commercial timber but having scenic and other paramount recreational
values will be withheld from logging operations entirely or subjected only
to such cutting as will not detract materially from the higher value. For
instance along the narrow channels of main steamer routes, a light selective
logging, not greatly altering the appearance of forest cover, may be feasible.

Only about 22 percent of the total forest area has loggable timber. Tim-
ber-management plans prescribe a tree-growth rotation averaging around
85 years, so that, in general, slightly more than 1 percent of the commercial-
timber area will be cut over in any 1 year. No serious conflict need exist
between lumbering and wildlife on the national forests.

236 FOREST OUTINGS

The maintenance of numerous deer involves no difficult problems. The
remote high-country ranging habits of the mountain goat give little chance
of conflict between this animal and resource development. But the large
wilderness animals, mountain sheep, moose, Alaska brown bears, and grizzly
bears, constitute game resources of such dominant interest that special con-
sideration must be given them in plans for land and resource use of every
kind. Management plans of a type now in effect on Admiralty Island for
bear will be established on all commercial timber-management units where
wildlife is important.

The possibilities of a large newsprint production, a potential expansion
of lode mining, fur farming, and other resource uses, will likely lead to
greatly increased commercial developments in Alaska's national-forest re-
gions during the next two decades. But all increase in settlement that can
possibly be foreseen will perhaps leave three-fourths of the total land area
undeveloped. The extensive back areas, so well suited to the frontier type
of recreational use that is characteristically Alaskan, will be largely devoted
to that purpose.

There are as yet few garish and clamorous invasions of the forest calm
in southeast Alaska. Most developments fit into the scene. But to be sure
that nature is not outraged in the coming commercial expansion, careful,
integrated planning is required. The job is being approached from both the
regional and local points of view.

Because of the steepness of the country and the excessive costs of clear-
ing land, large-scale agriculture in southeastern Alaska is unknown. People
do, however, raise vegetables, berries, and gorgeous flowers in small patches
on cultivatable land near the coast.

Home sites are restricted to these better lands and to areas capable of
supporting groups of homes rather than single scattered ones. Town sites
and group home sites are selected and subdivided to concentrate commer-
cial fishermen, miners, lumbermen, and others in properly located and
sizable communities. Already island fox farming with free-running animals is
passing from the picture, and isolated fox-farming families are being con-
centrated on 5-acre tracts along roads near towns where pen-raised fox
farming offers better chances of success. In brief, land-settlement policy on

NEW LAND: ALASKA 237

the national-forest area seeks primarily to avoid isolated settlement. Because
of the adverse effect of isolation on human welfare and the difficulties
of providing essential social facilities, such as mail service, schools, and
roads, to scattered home sites, group settlement is encouraged. This helps
also to safeguard recreational values and encourage wildlife.

A third consideration in forest planning is to provide a complement for,
rather than to duplicate, the pleasures already available to outdoor lovers
in the continental United States. The tourist industry, particularly that
involving stop-over tourists, appears to offer some chance for expansion in
Alaska. This recreational industry and industrial expansion should be
coordinated so that the Territory will derive the economic benefits of both.
It is not believed necessar^ to stifle either in order to have the other. Alaska
has room enough for all.

TOURISTS . . . Visitors to southeastern Alaska must love water and travel
on water. They must be content with much fog and rain; to wait for the
views good weather brings. Extensive land travel for the average visitor is
not practical. Most people seldom get more than a few miles from their boats.
A week of clear weather, without fog or rain, is exceptional. But when good
weather comes, the views of snow-clad mountains, 75 miles of them, are
never to be forgotten.

Alaska is not likely to be called on, in any predictable future, to enter-
tain great multitudes of visitors. No rail or highways connect with the
United States, but airline transport is probable in the near future. Con-
siderable time and expense are involved in reaching Alaska. Travel within
it is mostly by boat and airplane.

More than half of the people who now visit Alaska are on round-trip
pleasure cruises of about 2 weeks, out of Seattle, Wash., and Vancouver,
B. C. As their time ashore is limited to stops of a few hours at principal
coastal towns and other seaside points of interest, caring for their needs on
national-forest lands presents no difficulties.

Some of Alaska's visitors come for extended visits. They usually have a
definite reason for staying over — most frequently, perhaps, because Alaska
has something unusual to offer in their particular field of interest. Many

238 FOREST OUTINGS

want to experience for a while the zest of frontier living. The explorer seeks
to enrich geographic knowledge of this new land. The high mountains and
the unique game animals challenge the mountaineer and the big-game
hunter. The motion-picture and still-camera enthusiasts and the painter
are attracted by the scenery and wildlife. The student and the expert in
natural sciences come to study the native races, wildlife, rocks, glaciers,
volcanoes, northern flora, and many other subjects in this little-explored
land. Such present and prospective visitors are but a small fraction of the
thousands of forest visitors in the States. But they come here thinking, and
what they have to say in their various ways, reflectively, from without, may
make in time a real contribution to land-use planning in Alaska.

If this wilderness land is to be more widely used by the people, better
facilities than now exist must be provided to bring them here and to care
for their wants in town and field. Two bottlenecks now discourage stopover
visitors. The first is insufficient steamship service during the summer season.
The number of round-trip tourists seeking accommodations is so large that
the transportation companies can readily fill their ships to capacity with
this class of travelers. Stopover visitors then have great difficulty in obtaining
return passage unless arrangements are made months ahead and strictly
adhered to. The second serious obstacle is the lack of sufficient first-class
hotel accommodations in many ports near entrances to wilderness areas.
Interrelated, these difficulties will, no doubt, have to be solved together as
parts of the same problem. They are, perhaps, matters that must be left
to private initiative.

The Federal Government is building roads and trails, but more than
that is needed. There should be simple but comfortable lodges adapted
primarily to water trips, transportation from steamship ports to these lodges,
and guide service for the back country. Planned trips for small parties could
be arranged by the operators of these lodges, combining trout fishing, seeing
the Alaska brown bear, clamming, sea fishing, visits to an Indian village,
and to glaciers. Areas of national-forest land suitable for lodges and per-
manent camps can now be leased, provided the facilities are so located and
the business so conducted that the natural beauty of this new land is not
defaced and defiled.

£$

*%*••<*

^6tiC.

"--*.,':^«, ^ ^

ft^ flowering tree giants with tangled tropical undergrowth
ablaze with flaming air plants and wild orchids .

CARIBBEAN NATIONAL FOREST, P. R.

Old Land: Puerto Rico

So it is that the forces that molded the earth have likewise molded humanity. Physiographic
variations of the land have everywhere varied the lives of the inhabitants. And man who
must follow the earth wheresoever it may lead, must bend to the earth's limitations.

J. H. Bradley, Autobiography of Earth, 1935.

PUERTO RICO is an island lying between the Atlantic Ocean and the
Caribbean Sea some 1,100 miles southeast of the tip end of Florida. It is
a small island — 110 miles long and 35 miles wide. By steamer one can reach
Puerto Rico in 4 days from either New York or New Orleans. It is only 7
hours from Miami, Fla., by plane. Whether going by plane or steamer, one
enters the island at San Juan, a city of 140,000.

At the close of the fifteenth century when Columbus landed on this
island he found a few thousand Indians of the Borinquen race. Today there
are 1,800,000 persons occupying a land only two-thirds the size of Connecti-
cut. The island is one of the most densely populated agrarian lands on earth.
Agriculture is the first concern of three-fourths of the people. If the present
rapid increase in population continues, there will be one inhabitant for
every acre by 1945. Then there will be left to provide sustenance less than
half an acre of arable soil for each person.1

Since the first consignment of sugar left the island for Spain in 1533, the
land has suffered. The "jibaros," or subsistence farmers, were early forced

1 There are 16 acres for each person in the United States, 5 of which can be cultivated.

241

242 FOREST OUTINGS

out of the cane lands to steep slopes of the mountainous interior where they
practiced the destructive "conuco" system of clear, plant, and abandon. The
land has been unable to withstand the mining methods practiced for so many
years. And of the forests — also mined- — not enough is left to supply the local
demands for charcoal. Today the soil is, in the main, tired, thin, and poor;
and where the soil is thin and used up, society wilts.

The Puerto Rican is one of the most mixed races on earth, but his envi-
ronment has made him homogeneous. It has helped to subdue the warlike
spirit, antipathies, the lust for gold, and to make these islanders tolerant.
The gregariousness, the simple hospitality, the high-walled plazas are the
growth of a crowded land.

PONCE DE LEON found Puerto Rico a land where "the vine is always fruited
and the weather always fine." He called it the "gate of riches." Dense
forests covered the land, rivers ran clear, and game was plentiful. Today
these forests have disappeared, with the exception of some 15,000 acres of
virgin cover in the Caribbean National Forest. Brush, crop, and pasture
land have taken their place; yet the island is blessed as few countries are
with natural beauty. It is like a pretty peasant girl with the carriage of a
queen and the raiment of a dirty child. It is a land of contrasts.

Since October 18, 1898, when formal possession was assumed, when the
American Flag was raised over fortifications where the emblem of Spain had
flown for nearly four centuries, the new has mingled increasingly with the
old. Oxcarts plodding patiently over modern highways turn aside for high-
speed busses. Radios blare up-to-the-minute news from buildings centuries
old. From the penthouse of a modern, expensive apartment one can look
over an ancient plaza to the thick age-blackened walls of a sixteenth century
Spanish fort. The battlefield where in 1625 the Spanish drove the Dutch
invaders back to their ships is a nine-hole golf course now.

American efficiency was suddenly introduced. A postal system was in-
stalled, freedom of speech restored, a resident police force organized, medieval
methods of punishment abolished, and Spanish currency was replaced by
American money. Free public schools advanced literacy. English was taught
and today many speak it fluently. Public health service and medical centers

OLD LAND: PUERTO RICO 243

reduced the death rate from approximately 37 persons per 1,000 in 1910 to
less than 20 per 1,000 in 1935. The population has doubled in the 40 years
since American occupation.2

The people, as a whole, responded quickly to these improvements and
were awarded American citizenship in 1917. But the injections of modern
civilization have completely modernized neither the land nor the people.
The island still retains innumerable reminders of its four centuries under the
Spanish Flag. Spanish architecture prevails. The ancient military road con-
necting San Juan and Ponce is still the most travelled. Many present-day
farmers still turn their furrows with an ox and a crude plow. The people,
in the main, still cling to folklore and traditions, to the quiet pastoral life
with its swishing machetes and rumbling cane mills, to the warm earth with
its smell of cane fields, citrus groves, and ripening tobacco.

San Juan, the island's capital, does show some exterior signs of American
influence. Thousands of autos with a proportional number of filling stations,
American-style department stores, office buildings, and apartment houses,
indicate the influence of "Yankee ideas." But out on the island, back in the
hills, the people have changed little. Here the forces that have molded
their lives go back beyond the time of American occupation. They are
forces as old as the mountains that divide the island, as old as the rivers and
wind and rain that created the land — a land of extremes.

THE LAND is of mixed volcanic and sedimentary origin. Soil composition
varies by the acre, from the coral sands of the coast to tenacious clays in the
interior. Rock formations range from weather-resisting granites on mountain
tops to soft, yielding limestones on the north-central coast. And each soil
dictates the crop to be grown. Coconuts along the seashore, pineapples and
citrus fruit a little farther inland, sugarcane on the intermediate coastal
plains, tobacco in the high valleys, coffee and bananas, pasture, and brush-
land in the hills proper — thus, generally, the soil determines its crop through-
out the island.

The Cordillera Central Range, rising to 4,400 feet, divides the island

2 This rapid growth has resulted from an increased birth rate as well as a decreased
death rate. Births are 40 per 1,000, more than twice the birth rate of the United States.

244 FOREST OUTINGS

lengthwise, throwing two-thirds of the drainage northward toward the
Atlantic coast and one-third to the south coast into the Caribbean Sea.

The Luquillo Mountains on the east end of this divide stand full in the way
of moisture-laden trade winds. There, on the north slopes of the Caribbean
National Forest, 200 inches of rain falls on an average each year. Many of
the moist winds are swept along the entire north side of the central range and
provide ample water for all. But on the south coast, across the divide, rain-
fall is meager, a scant 20 inches in some localities. There, water has to be
collected in rain barrels, stored in lake reservoirs, or pumped from deep wells
and distributed by irrigation ditches to fields and stock.

Water is life in hot countries, and much water is needed to keep the people
alive. Several large rivers, numerous small streams, and innumerable
rivulets are sufficient while it rains; but when dry weather sets in the steep
slopes run dry. Rivers become trickles over stony beds. The watercourses
play an important part in the life of the people. Roads from the coastal areas
parallel the larger ones and follow the easier topography of their valleys into
the rugged interior. Rivers carry to the sea impurities which would other-
wise be a potential menace to people in times of epidemics. In those same
rivers they wash their clothes, slake their thirst, water their stock.

Visitors consider the climate of Puerto Rico one of its greatest assets.
Year-round temperatures average 76° F. Strong contrasts, marking the
seasons of the North are lacking, yet the climate has little of the monotonous
heat characteristic of a tropical or subtropical country. The variation in
temperature results mainly from differences in elevation, absence of lengthy
wet and dry seasons common in parts of the Tropics, and to the cool trade
winds that bring changes of humidity and billowy clouds.

But occasionally (four times since 1898) a tropical hurricane hits the
island and does tremendous damage. Fortunately few lives are lost, thanks
to advance storm warnings issued by the United States Weather Bureau
and to well-constructed storm shelters. These severe storms influence the
habits and philosophy of the rural Puerto Rican. He dates his birth, mar-
riage, and death by their occurrence. He knows his house and most of his
worldly goods will be destroyed, so he is content with little, to hold his
losses small. And even though he names individual storms for religious

OLD LAND: PUERTO RICO 245

saints, the hurricane is a curse, the name itself coming from the Borinquen
Indian word hurican, meaning "evil spirit."

FIESTAS . . . With such a background of contrasts and extremes working
through the centuries to shape and mold the character of the present-day
Puerto Rican, it is little wonder that he continually seeks a compromise —
a middle ground. But the forces are strong, odds are against him, and, by
and large, he remains very rich or very poor.

Puerto Ricans are pleasure-loving people. The fortunate few may take
their families to the movies, casino, dance places, to the club, to a horse
race, or a baseball game. The country people may indulge in cock fighting,
domino and card playing, or attend a barbecue. Visiting or calling upon
neighbors is a pastime common to all. They are socially inclined, fond of
music, and whenever a group gathers for play or relaxation, a "fiesta" is
in the making. The fiesta is the outstanding form of native recreation.
It is spontaneous and unorganized; the participants take their pleasure as
they do their food, as part of their everyday life.

The average Puerto Rican lives so at elbows with his fellows that the
only forms of recreation ordinarily available are of the passive sort. He
must be an onlooker rather than a participant. Inactively he has his enjoy-
ment and diversion but gains few if any physical benefits. Furthermore,
he is most likely to live in the relatively hot lowlands. Any climatic relief
or change must be found on the island itself. His only resource is to go to the
mountains, where climate and environment unite in offering stimulation.

The plight of two-thirds of the population, the laboring class, whose
average weekly wage in 1937 was $4.76, is today a major problem facing
the insular and Federal Governments. Hunger appears to induce not revolt
but apathy, inertia. But there is a danger of people, whose roots are in the
land, remaining idle during their leisure and holing up in cities too long.
Puerto Rico's high homicide rate is one result. It is imperative then that
since the public forests offer the only conditions permitting real rest and
change, the first objective should be to furnish outdoor recreation of a type
available for the low-income masses. Forest recreation for the masses should
be predicated upon group gatherings — the fiesta moved to the forest.

246 FOREST OUTINGS

THE PUBLIC FORESTS have within their boundaries the finest opportunities
for relief from the crowded lowlands found anywhere on the island. Under
the administration of three agencies, but coordinated by central control,
they cover nearly 85,000 acres.3 With the exception of the insular mangrove
forests on the coasts, these public forest lands are confined to the high
watersheds lying above 1,000 feet elevation.

The national forest, created by Theodore Roosevelt in 1903, includes
lands formerly owned by the Spanish Crown and ceded directly to the
United States Government by the Treaty of Paris. Because of their inac-
cessibility they were not parceled out as land grants but were held in
Crown ownership. These lands were unexploited and thus the only large
stands of virgin forests on the island were unintentionally saved for posterity.

The inaccessibility of the public forest land barred the masses. A rough
and difficult trail did lead to the top of one peak, El Yunque, in the Luquillo
Mountains, but it was used by only a few hardy souls. The national forest,
in the main, remained as remote and untrodden as in the days of Columbus.

Recent development and consequent use of forest lands for purposes of
recreation began when funds and manpower became available through the
CCC and other emergency programs in 1933. The essential first step was
to build motor roads opening up the forest interior. Because of steep slopes,
rock faults, and cliffs, thin mica-filled soils that get as slick as soap when
wet, and the tremendously heavy rainfall, landslides and wash-outs pre-
sented many engineering problems, especially on the new road traversing
the national forest. The supervisor of the Caribbean National Forest directs
the entire program.

That the scenic and climatic advantages of the area opened to the public
by this road justified its construction is evident. In fact, public response
began before the road and recreational development were well under way.
As many as 1,000 persons a day seeking an outing was not unusual. After
5 years of work, the road has finally been connected across the divide. Now
the recreational center is easily accessible to more than a million people

3 The Caribbean National Forest (2 units) contains 24,680 acres; the insular forests (7
districts) 39,600 acres; the Puerto Rican Reconstruction Administration forests (5 units)
20,650 acres; all public forest land on the island amounting to 84,930 acres.

OLD LAND: PUERTO RICO 247

living within 50 miles on both the northern and southern coasts. Much
heavier use may be expected in the future.4

THE LA MINA RECREATIONAL AREA, 500 acres of breathing space in the
Caribbean National Forest, is in a setting to be found nowhere else in the
American Tropics. A combination of breath-taking panoramic views of
palm-covered mountain slopes, timbered ravines, rocky gorges, cliffs, and
waterfalls; giant tree ferns and flowering tree giants with tangled tropical
undergrowth ablaze with flaming air plants and wild orchids; teeming with
chameleons and tiny but vociferous tree frogs; all at 2,000 feet above the hot
lowlands. Here, the air is always crisp and invigorating — a truly air-con-
ditioned tropical forest.

Conditions are ideal for the family group. Rainproof shelters are neces-
sarily provided as protection against the sudden, torrential downpours. The
rain comes down in bucketfuls for several minutes, the storm passes over the
mountain, and the sun comes out. Benches and tables, whipsawed from
native timber, were planned with the fiesta in mind. The favorite holiday
food is roast pig. Barbeque pits have therefore been made available and
charcoal is furnished free.

There are two beautiful swimming pools fed by cool mountain streams.
Well-graded hiking trails lead from the parking areas to outstanding points
of interest and to mountain peaks.5 Comfortable cottages, with nearby
dining-room facilities, are available for persons wanting overnight or week-
end accommodations. People who can afford a longer escape from the heat
of coastal towns can lease cottages from the Forest Service.

Wildlife is sadly lacking throughout the island because of the density of
population, scarcity of forest cover, and the abundance of mongooses and
rats. Hurricanes have also exacted their toll.

But on the public forests, under favorable natural conditions and
protection, game is coming back, especially birds. The Puerto Rican

4 Within a radius of 25 miles are 592,000 people with 262,000 living in cities. Within
50 miles are 1,019,000, of whom 348,000 are urban dwellers.

6 In 1938 more than 10 miles of hiking trails, with observatory towers and trail shelters,
were provided in the La Mina Area alone, and a total of 60 miles in all public forests.

Rainproof shelters are necessarily provided as protection
against the sudden, torrential downpours.

CARIBBEAN NATIONAL FOREST, P. R.

OLD LAND: PUERTO RICO 249

parrot, once believed to be extinct, is becoming increasingly abun-
dant on the national forest. Scale pigeons, tanagers, and several other
species of birds indigenous to Puerto Rico are increasing in numbers. In
the deep forest interiors some boa constrictors may be found. But there
are no poisonous snakes and few obnoxious insects to cause the visitor
concern.

Tropical plants and trees grow in amazing numbers throughout the
national forest. More than 300 tree species, 21 different wild orchids, and 500
varieties of graceful ferns, some growing 30 feet tall, have been identified.
Many others have yet to be named. On the highest mountain slopes in the
Luquillos grow dense dwarf forests. Because of thin soil, excessive moisture,
and exposure to strong winds, the trees are no taller than a man, yet they
are hundreds of years old and identical botanically to giant trees of the same
species on more favorable sites. Many are varieties that exist no other place
in the world. Their trunks and twigs are covered with dripping pendants of
saturated moss.

Other recreational areas are necessary to supplement the La Mina
development, located in the eastern end of the island, if a well-rounded recre-
ation program is to be within reach of the entire population. The Dona
Juana area in the high mountains of the Toro Negro Unit of the Caribbean
National Forest, opens up similar recreational possibilities of benefit to
people living in the central part of the island, especially around Ponce, on
the hot dry southern coast. Roads with connecting trails through the
Maricao Insular Forest, and a modest degree of recreational development,
have opened the scenic and climatic resources of that forest to the people
of Mayaguez and other western towns.6

Some 40 miles west of Puerto Rico, midway to Santo Domingo, is
Mona Island; 14,000 acres of brush-covered limestone, honeycombed with
deep caves and walled by precipitous cliffs 200 feet high. Fishing in the off-
shore waters is said to be the best in the West Indies. Barracuda, tuna, sail-
fish, and king mackerel can be taken by the sportsman. Wild goats inhabit
the limestone cliffs and afford good hunting.

6 There are 688,000 and 602,000 people living within a 25-mile radius of Dona Juana
and Maricao Recreational Areas, respectively.

250 FOREST OUTINGS

FUTURE USE of recreational areas in Puerto Rico will be limited only by
their capacity to handle the crowds. Present facilities are taxed, yet it is
believed that the 55,000 visitors on public forests in 1938 represent only the
beginning of forest use. Ten times more people in proportion to the popu-
lation visit national forests in the States. It is conservative, then, to assume
that within a few years, visits to forest areas in Puerto Rico should become
increasingly popular. Plans call for construction of 18 additional recrea-
tional areas during the next 10 years.

Tourist visits, accelerated by insular government leadership in travel
promotion, should not conflict with normal recreational use. Most tourists
visit the island during the cooler months when local use is at low ebb. There
is every indication that more continentals will visit the island when they
become better acquainted with the pleasures offered and the ease of getting
to the American Tropics, and when more adequate tourist accommodations
are available. Concrete proof of this is given in the first annual report of
the Puerto Rican Institute of Tourism, covering the fiscal year ending
June 30, 1938, which shows that more than 29,000 visitors were attracted
during 1937-38, compared with 14,500 the previous season. An important
byproduct of these visits will be the income derived by the island. The
institute estimates the daily expenditures of cruise passengers at SI 5. On
that basis more than $440,000 was left by the 1937-38 excursionists.

Tourists are entranced when motoring up the newly built forest highway
to the La Mina Recreational Area. Magnificent vistas of mountain and sea
unfold with each turn. Winding through depths of luxuriant tropical forests
the road passes towering cliffs and misty waterfalls. About one in eight
persons using the national forest is from outside the island; practically
every foreign country has been represented.

The paramount objective of the forest program of the insular and
Federal Governments is to develop every acre of public land to its highest
use so the needs and welfare of a majority of the island population will be
served.

Timber production and watershed protection will be the paramount
use of forest land. The aggregate area required to meet the recreational
needs of the people will not cover more than approximately 5 percent of

OLD LAND: PUERTO RICO

the total forest area. But until reforestation has converted the thousands
of acres of idle brush and poor pasture land into timber-producing forests,
recreation on the existing timbered areas will be an important activity.

On few areas under Forest Service supervision is recreation so com-
patible with the major uses of timber production and watershed protection
as in Puerto Rico. For each 1,000-foot rise in elevation the temperature
drops 3° F. Because of this universal fact, practically all recreational develop-
ments are in the high mountain areas. Six or ten degrees cooler makes a
world of difference in the tropics. Above 2,000 feet, where most recreational
areas are located, forest trees are chiefly those of species most valuable for
their soil-holding ability. Commercial stands of timber are, for the most
part, located at lower elevations, and timber cutting will be confined
mostly to forests growing below areas of heavy recreational use. Only 1
species out of 50 of commercial importance, tabonuco, grows in stands
sufficiently dense to justify clear cutting. Logging over most of the forest
will, therefore, be of a highly selective character, and there will be but slight
disturbance of natural environment.

With land so scarce, in Puerto Rico, every acre must count. In addition
to providing breathing space for the masses, the Forest Service must provide
living spaces for hundreds of families who never have owned the land they
tilled nor the crops they raised. This land is now national forest land, but the
people cannot be dispossessed — there is no place for them to go. The land
they occupy is worn thin and in need of rebuilding — of the soil-holding and
building power of forest trees. But the people have to live, to plant crops, to
hold body and soul together.

The Forest Service has therefore established the "parcelero" system, under
which a plot or parcel of denuded public land, some 5 to 10 acres, is allotted
without title to each family. The family worker plants forest seedlings under
careful supervision, and grows his sustenance crops between the rows of grow-
ing trees. After, say 2 years, the tree canopy closes and shades out vegetables.
More tolerant crops, such as coffee and bananas, which provide the family
with food and income, are then substituted. In this way the "parcelero" system
re-creates the forest, builds up worn-out soil, gives human sustenance, and at
the same time imparts hope for the future to each parcel farmer and his family.

«•*#*?*

M,

3E*

/»1

7/*zY z'j vacation time, most organization camps are filled
with under privileged youngsters.

CAMP SEELEY, SAN BERNARDINO NATIONAL FOREST, CALIF.

Ways and Means

If we do not allow a democratic government to do the things which need to be done and
hand down to our children a deteriorated Nation, their legacy will not be a legacy of abun-
dance or even a legacy of poverty amidst plenty, but a legacy of poverty amidst poverty.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, in an address May 22, 1939.

PAYING GUESTS . . . We come now to a difficult question, and deli-
cate. If, as has been here maintained, the final crop of a land is the spirit of
its people, some account must be taken of psychological changes that follow
when a piece of country running short of soil, timber, minerals, and other
natural resources begins more or less frantically to seek transient paying
guests; to sell them space, sun, air, and service.

The changes that follow are no less real because they are for the most
part intangible. A continuing, and at times overwhelming, influx of summer
or seasonal visitors may do more harm than to run up store prices and rents
and raise local standards of living to peaks from which most of the natives
can only stand afar and envy.

A restless tide of relatively rich outsiders, continually ebbing and flowing,
maintaining separate standards as to habitation, costume, and social mores,
may disrupt the spirit of a rural or forest neighborhood, wound local pride,
and in the end demolish native values. However intangible the forces at
work, no discussion of public recreation in a democracy can ignore their
rapid spread.

Walls of pride between pleasure buyers and pleasure vendors seem
especially likely to rise around the private pleasure grounds of very rich

253

254 FOREST OUTINGS

people and their resorts. But much the same thing may happen, in a meas-
ure, even in a forest environment. In A Further Range, a book of poems,
Robert Frost tells in sharp, unforgettable accents of a crude roadside stand
set up by a New England woods farmer trying to earn a little extra money
from the swishing tourist transients:

A roadside stand that too pathetically plead,

It would not be fair to say for a dole of bread,

But for some of the money, the cash, whose flow supports

The flower of cities from sinking and withering faint.

The polished traffic passed with a mind ahead,

Or if ever aside a moment, then out of sorts

At having the landscape marred with the artless paint

Of signs that with N turned wrong and S turned wrong

Offered for sale wild berries in wooden quarts,

Of crooked-neck golden squash with silver warts,

Or beauty rest in a beautiful mountain scene.

You have the money, but if you want to be mean,

Why keep your money (this crossly) and go along.

The hurt of the scenery wouldn't be my complaint

So much as the trusting sorrow of what is unsaid:

Here far from the city we make our roadside stand

To ask for some city money to feel in hand

To try if it will not make our being expand,

And give us the life of the moving pictures' promise

That the party in power is said to be keeping from us . .

Sometimes I feel myself I can hardly bear

The thought of so much childish longing in vain,

The sadness that lurks near the open window there,

That waits all day in almost open prayer

For the squeal of brakes, the sound of a stopping car,

Of all the thousand selfish cars that pass,

Just one to inquire what a farmer's prices are.

And one did stop, but only to plow up grass

In using the yard to go back and turn around;

And another to ask the way to where it was bound;

And another to ask could they sell it a gallon of gas

They couldn't (this crossly): they had none, didn't it see?

WAYS AND MEANS 255

Parts of rural New England are now so overrun by summer people who
stay, with few exceptions, apart from the native life that it hardly seems like
rural New England there now, until frost. Good ! you may say; New England
like any other part of our country, can stand an infusion of outside views,
ways, impulses; and the mixture is likely to prove helpful. Perhaps, but
throughout New England in general, as elsewhere, communion between
hosts and paying guests is not invariably as free and friendly as we have
found it, on the whole, at forest camps. Camping out, people get together.
But when money comes into the equation, and the host collects, it's a trade,
and "The guest (or customer) is always right."

The more money involved in the trade, speaking generally, the more
completely and definitely is the class line drawn. In the highest priced resorts
of New England, the southern Alleghenies, in Florida, in the Rockies, and
on the coast and desert, space, sun, and air are sold to the rich in the Euro-
pean manner, with urbane, frock-coated men at desks sending drilled,
uniformed American boys scampering, bowing, to answer bells and say,
"Sir." Most of them do not like the work, but they need the money.

All this may be good business, but it has no place in the public forests.
Forest Service policy has been, and will be, so far as possible, to keep public
recreation inexpensive, democratic, natural. There is real need of this, not
only for the sake of the millions of people who have little or no money to
spend on recreation, but also as an offset to all the unnatural barriers which
rise between Americans when outdoor recreation is bought and sold.

Among the great middle class, renting rooms in tourist homes, sitting on
the porch and talking with their hosts, or visiting around from cabin to cabin
at reasonably priced roadside cabin camps, the situation is, from the stand-
point of a maintained democracy, much healthier. The great and abrupt
expansion of the outdoor recreation business in this country, the growing
habit of "auto-tourism," the jostling together of people from Oregon,
Maine, Maryland, Illinois, Georgia, Florida, and Texas, has probably done
the American spirit of democratic unity a great deal more good than harm.

THE RECREATION BUSINESS . . . Turn now for a little while to trade sta-
tistics, unsatisfying, incomplete, but definite: The American Automobile

256 FOREST OUTINGS

Association is authority for the statement that vacationists traveling in auto-
mobiles spent 4% billion dollars in 1936. Glover and Cornell estimate
tourist expenditures at 5 billion dollars in prosperous years. Weinberger
places the total expenditures for vacation travel in the United States at 2
billion dollars for 1939; and a number of other estimates of outdoor recre-
ational expenditures have been made, most of them around 4 or 5 billion
dollars.

New Mexico estimates that her tourist crop produces more revenue than
does the State's mining, agriculture, or livestock industries. California con-
siders tourist travel next in importance to her great petroleum industry.
In Michigan, tourist money is exceeded only by the money brought in by
automobile makers. In Florida, vacation travelers as a source of revenue
are said to be several times more valuable than the State's entire citrus crop.

For the whole United States, Roger Babson estimates the monetary value
of the tourist business is 11 percent greater than the clothing business, 45
percent greater than the printing and publishing business, 60 percent
greater than the lumber business, 185 percent greater than the banking
business, 222 percent greater than the shoe industry, 518 percent greater
than the cotton crop of 1933, and equal to the giant steel and iron industry.
According to the American Express Company, serving pleasure travel is
edging toward second place among the leading industries of the country.

Just how much of these impressive totals for all forms of outdoor recrea-
tion can be claimed for forest recreation in general or for national-forest
recreation in particular is not exactly known. A single trip often includes
visits to many kinds of recreational areas. The closest possible estimates,
based on all known figures, indicate that for all classes of national forest
visitors, total expenditure was certainly no less than 224 million dollars in
1937. Not included in this total are other local or semilocal expenditures
such as taxes on summer homes, permit fees for summer homes, taxes and
license fees for automobiles and trailers, automobile insurance, winter
sports equipment, and hunting and fishing licenses. Expenditures by tran-
sients numbering 106 million who passed through the national forests on
main highways are not included in this estimate, although it is obvious
that such forest users often stop en route to purchase food, souvenirs, and

WAYS AND MEANS 257

curios. It is probably reasonable to assume that in 1937 national-forest
visitors spent about 250 million dollars on or near the national forests.
This is about 5 percent of all outdoor recreational expenditures, assuming
that the 5-billion-dollar estimate for total expenditures is not too high.

A widely quoted estimate of the American Automobile Association indi-
cates distribution of tourist expenditures as: "Out of each dollar spent,
approximately 20 cents goes toward transportation and a like amount
for accommodations, 25 cents for incidental retail purchases, 21 cents
for food, 8 cents for amusements, and 6 cents for refreshments." Similar
estimates by other agencies indicate about the same general distribution of
expenditures.

These broad estimates fail, however, to emphasize the exceedingly
widespread influence exerted by the visitor's expenditures. Practically every
local business enterprise benefits to some extent. Forest visitors help relieve
local unemployment. They create markets for local farm produce. They are
buyers of the products of what might be called fireside industries, pottery,
bed quilts, homespun cloth, basketry, furniture, rugs, and novelty wooden
toys and souvenirs. The presence of forest visitors stimulates rentals, and
sometimes serves to lighten the local tax burden. And the tourist trade
seems to remain remarkably stable through all kinds of economic weather.
Even in the years immediately following the financial crash of 1929, people
continued to visit the national forests in ever-increasing numbers. There
was, it is true, a marked drop in the number of forest hotel and resort guests
during the deepest depression years, but recovery in this particular has been
surprisingly prompt and the number of campers and picnickers actually
increased throughout these years. It is even possible that the drop in the
hotel and resort business may not indicate a real decrease in number of
visitors so much as a transfer of patronage to less expensive accommoda-
tions. The 9,848 tourist camps reported by the Bureau of the Census in
1935 was almost twice the number reported in 1933.

To sum up: Catering to forest tourists or visitors may not, for reasons
that have been suggested, prove an unmixed benefit to the residents of small
forest communities. Hunting and fishing may be less pleasant or less suc-
cessful for permanent residents. Some of the visitors are noisy and unpleasant.

258 FOREST OUTINGS

Shady dance halls may spring up on private land near the national forests,
and there may be in other ways as well a destruction of solitude and of
cherished, settled qualities.

Scarification of roadside landscapes by shrieking billboards and by
blatantly tasteless structures has been sufficiently emphasized, perhaps, in
previous chapters, especially in the section on camps. On public land
within the national forests this is not permitted. But about one-quarter of
all the land within national-forest borders is private land; and the only
authority forest officers may exert there is by power of persuasion.

A more general display of resentment against roadside desecration has
lately become evident and has produced in many places a remarkably
prompt response. The American Automobile Association, the Garden
Clubs of America, and other organizations in many States have moved to
rid existing highways of billboards and defacing structures, and to keep
new highways free of them.

The public is by no means helpless in such matters. Bidders for public
favor respond at once to expressions of public anger, if it is solidly and
forcibly expressed. A great many of the aesthetic drawbacks and spiritual
losses which follow the tourist swarm are entirely uncalled for. They need
not be suffered if the people of the communities affected will only get
together on the question, take a stand, speak out.

If the visiting tide is decently and sensibly handled, in the light of an
awakened local consciousness, outdoor recreation can be made to con-
tribute substantially to the development of generally better and more per-
manent rural communities. It can lead to an expansion of existing local
businesses with more varied stocks, and to a refreshing pick-up in the pur-
chasing power of local residents. It can lead to better train and bus service,
to improved telephone and mail facilities, to better roads and schools, to
improved medical and dental services. And it can bring rural and urban
peoples together, democratically, decently, to visit with one another, and
weld their spirit as Americans.

It all depends on how it is handled, and that depends, more than
anything else, on resolute local defense of native values, aroused and
expressed in local action.

WAYS AND MEANS 259

THE ILL-TO-DO . . . Love of the deep, far woods, and a desire to find rest
and peace there, is an impulse surpassing class distinctions. The man with a
million-dollar inheritance and the dollar-a-day farm and mill hand may
each find his greatest happiness in the peace of woodland. The major
difference is that the farm and mill hand can seldom afford it.

If it is good for the rich to get a change of scene, and rest, it is also good
for the poor. Unfortunately, the ability to get to the forest bears no relation
to need. The public forests are there, free, open to all. But it takes some
money to get to them, and some more money to subsist during a vacation
there. Not much money; just a little extra money. And not everyone has
that extra money.

Sometimes you will hear a man with a yearly income of as much as
$5,000 remark: "I might be able to afford it, if only I were rich." Actually,
he is very rich compared to the great majority of his fellow men, even in the
United States today. A $5,000 income places him among the top 2% percent
of our population.

Nearly half of the families or independent single individuals in this
country have an income of $1,000 a year, or less. A recent study of the
distribution of consumer income, made by the National Resources Com-
mittee, estimated that some 116 million people living in 29,400,000 family
groups and an additional 9,700,000 men and women living by themselves
constitute the national income-spending units. The total distribution of
the American income ran as follows during 1935-36:

Of 39,058,300 income units in the United States, 47 percent had $1,000
a year, or less; 35 percent had between $1,000 and $2,000; 11 percent had
between $2,000 and $3,000; 4% percent had between $3,000 and $5,000;
and only 2l/2 percent had $5,000 or more a year.1

Nearly half of the consumer units of this country receive, then, an
income of $1,000 or less a year. How much of that can be spared for forest
recreation, or for recreation of any sort? Very little; no more, certainly, than
one-tenth. Studies by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Bureau of Home
Economics, covering the budgets of thousands of families in urban and rural
America, indicate that the average family with an income between $750
1 A more complete tabulation is appended on page 293.

260 FOREST OUTINGS

and $1,000 per year spends only about $20 for all forms of recreation and
$60 for transportation in a year.

Consider what this means in terms of a family of four, the most common
consumer unit. The head of the family generally will have to pay street-
car or bus fare to and from his job. The greater number of working days,
the more fares he will have to pay. The wife will expend at a minimum
several dollars in transportation during the course of a year. The children
may have no private transportation cost getting to school, but they will do
some traveling outside of school hours. When all this is added, it is easy to
see how $60 can be spent for family transportation without leaving any-
thing over for pleasure trips.

Again, the $20 which is the average annual recreation budget has to
be distributed over 365 days. This allows only 5% cents a day for the whole
family's recreation. Even a movie is a strain on such a budget. The normal
cost of stopping in the forest would be prohibitive, even if the cost of reach-
ing the forest did not generally present an almost insuperable obstacle.

That is the first cost of forest recreation — transportation. With four
people in a car, the cost, including gas, oil, maintenance, and depreciation
averages around 6 cents a mile, or \l/2 cents a person per mile. The lowest
railroad coach rate is 2% cents a mile; the average bus rate is 1% cents a
mile. And neither railroad nor bus would generally leave a person precisely
at the picnic ground, campground, or other development that he might
want to visit. Groups may occasionally hire a bus at reduced rates; this is
being done more and more. But by no means now known is it possible to
cut individual transportation costs to the forest much below 1% cents a
mile.

Assuming a transportation charge of 6 cents a mile for a group of four,
a table in the appendix indicates how the population of this country
is distributed with respect to the cost of getting to the nearest national-
forest boundary and back. The national forests are more widely distributed
than any other public lands. But most of them are "far from the madding
crowd" at its thickest, so far that only about one-third of the population
of this country can make the round trip to any national forest for less than
$10; and for another one-third the transportation cost will be more than $20.

WAYS AND MEANS 261

The strain imposed by even a $10 transportation charge upon half of
the country's population, with an income of $1,000 or less a year, has been
noted. The hard fact is, under present conditions, transportation cost
alone bars a large portion of this country's population from using the
national forests for recreation.

For those who can afford to go, what does it cost? Only general esti-
mates are possible. To drive from 15 to 20 miles for a family picnic costs
more nearly $2 than $1 for a family of four. This counts in costs of wear
and tear on the car. Almost the entire cost is for transportation. The cost
of the food would be approximately the same as at home.

For camping, the cost runs a little higher; one has to be equipped with
tents, blankets, mosquito bars, and so on.

What of summer homes, built by special permit on national-forest
lands? Rent for the site is small, but the permittee has to put up the
building. Amortization on the cottage amounts on the average to $70
per year, annual maintenance runs roughly $35, the annual permit fee
averages $15, and taxes probably also average $15. With about 3 weeks
of use for a family of four, a fair average for national-forest summer homes,
this would amount to $1.50 a day for each individual in addition to
transportation. It is a cheap vacation, as vacations go, but far beyond the
means of most Americans. As for private resorts, on or near the forests,
the lowest charge runs around $2 a day for bed and board per person, or $8
a day for a family of four.

Who, then, can and does use the national forests for recreation? More
than 32,000 forest visitors rilled out questionnaires in 1937; and more than
25,000 of them, heads of families or independent individuals, stated their
incomes.

In sum: 18 percent were persons with $1,000 a year, or less; 49 percent
had between $1,000 and $2,000 a year; 22 percent, $2,000-$3,000; 8 percent
$3,000-$5,000; only 3 percent were persons with more than $5,000 a year.2

The figures indicate that moderately poor people make the most use of
the national forests for their ease and pleasure, but that relatively few of the
poorest, who perhaps need it most, are able to do so. It is not the purpose

2 The complete returns are compiled and appended on page 293.

262 • FOREST OUTINGS

here to contend that forest recreation is indispensable for all that great bulk
of our population, nearly half, who have less than $1,000 a year. Multitudes
of people have lived and died without ever getting near the forests. But it
is suggested that if, by either public or private arrangements, ways could
be found to diminish personal costs so that our very poorest people may have
forest vacations, or outings, this might be sound social policy. Cost cutting
may be accomplished in a number of ways: (1) By a reduction in public-
transportation rates; (2) by the establishment of forest camps or parks
nearer great centers of population; and (3) by an increase in the number of
privately supported organization camps.

ACQUISITION by the Government of certain lands now held in private owner-
ship may tend in time to meet greater needs of accessible outdoor recrea-
tion for people of small means. Sometimes only a small obstructing tract
need be acquired in order to throw open fully to the public a much greater
area. Again, units of land large enough to provide something more than
city-park diversions may be taken over and thrown open, fairly near large
centers of population.

For example, in Big Cottonwood, Little Cottonwood, and Mill Creek
canyons on the Wasatch National Forest, only 1 0 to 20 miles from Salt Lake
City, enlargement of the existing forest camp and picnic grounds is not at
present possible because from 60 to 95 per cent of all sites suitable for such
use are privately owned. Acquisition here would give needed outings to addi-
tional thousands at the cost of only a gallon or two of gas.

A like situation prevails in other national forests. On the Angeles and
Los Padres National Forests near Los Angeles, the bulk of the available flat-
land suitable for overnight camp and 1 -day picnic sites is in private ownership
and is held for use as lodges and summer homes. Likewise, in the Sacra-
mento Canyon, where a main highway passes through the heart of the
Shasta National Forest, it has been possible to develop only one campground
for public use because the Government owns no other usable land in the
canyon. So, again, in the Pike and Roosevelt National Forests near Denver,
Colo., the Government at present owns almost no bottom land in the canyons
most suitable for picnicking and camping, and nearest town.

WAYS AND MEANS 263

Similar instances could be cited on many other national forests, some of
them fairly near crowded centers, some remote. The ones to which many
more needy people might travel, if the way were opened, are the ones that
most concern us here.

In a Virginia national forest, where a public campground encircling a
small lake has been opened, the area, easily accessible to a large city, is
already overcrowded. It is impossible to make more space for the public
without acquiring for the public benefit two small tracts of submarginal
farm land in a narrow creek bottom. If the Government could buy those
two farms (totaling only 410 acres), the public could then be given free
access to an entire watershed of more than 5,000 acres.

Often, in addition to barring woodland areas from free public enjoy-
ment, small private holdings, resolutely held, bar public access to the shores
of lakes, to natural winter sports, playgrounds, and to fishing streams. Many
of the sites so pre-empted are not far from crowded cities. It is, indeed,
where the impulse to seize upon private outdoor pleasure grounds is strong-
est that the Government is most likely to be balked in efforts to throw open
for free use wider forest pleasure grounds.

ORGANIZATION CAMPS are the most promising mode of low-cost forest
recreation now developing. Scattered throughout the tens of millions of acres
of national forests are tiny constellations of cabins clustered in friendly
fashion about larger buildings. Sometimes the setting is beside the tumbled,
broken waters of a mountain stream, sometimes on the shore of a quiet
lake or among the big trees of the high country. Flying northward one may
catch glimpses of them over the hundreds of miles of California forests, and
on the slopes of the Cascades. One may come upon them in the Rocky
Mountains, the Ozarks of Missouri, among the new national forests of the
Lake States, or up in New England. Southward, one may pick them out in
the Alleghenies and throughout the Appalachians to the Gulf of Mexico.
If it is vacation time, most of these camps will be filled with youngsters.
To these clustered cabins thousands of boys and girls are brought from cities
and villages by both public and quasi-public organizations and given the
joys of a forest vacation.

264 FOREST OUTINGS

Often such camps are turned over for a part of the season to organiza-
tions of older people, and families come for recreation together. Those built
by cities and restricted in use to the citizens of the municipality usually have
more adults than young people.

Organization camps began very simply with a few sleeping tents and a
mess tent. But tents deteriorate rapidly. In a few years the cost of permanent
buildings can be sunk in canvas with nothing left to show for the expend-
iture. Permanent mess halls were first erected, but soon permanent cabins
were added. With these developments came improvement in water supply
and sanitation. As experience grew, the standard camp plan became the
multiple-building type, consisting of a mess hall and recreation hall, with
sleeping accommodations in bunk houses or cabins. Cabins, however, are
being favored as time goes on. They generally shelter four to six people,
with a cot or bunk and a small chest of drawers for each.

An example of good structures and lay-out is Camp Seeley on the San
Bernardino National Forest about 75 miles from Los Angeles. Under a
special-use permit from the Forest Service, it was built and is operated by
Los Angeles for its citizens. It has been so efficiently operated that in 1936
it furnished vacation opportunities at very low cost to 2,734 individuals for a
total of 20,342 days and made a surplus over operating expenses of SI ,041 .98.

Another example of an organization camp is that operated by the 4-H
Club of Crooked Lake on the Ocala National Forest in Florida. This was
built as a CCC camp, but when the number of camps was reduced, the
Forest Service issued a special-use permit to the 4-H Club, which remodeled
and rebuilt it.

The camps are often on land not owned by the Government. On private
lands within the boundaries of the eastern national forests are hundreds of
organization camps and summer camps for boys and girls, run for profit.

The widely varied organizations that have availed themselves of the
opportunity to establish camps on the national forests fall, roughly, into five
classes:

1 . Municipalities. California is most advanced in developing municipal
vacation camps, with 12 of them now in operation on national forests there.

2. Social nonprofit organizations. By far the largest users of camps in

WAYS AND MEANS 265

national forests. Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Campfire Girls, Young Men's
Christian Association, Young Women's Christian Association, 4-H Clubs,
and the Salvation Army all have camps.

3. Restricted membership clubs and organizations. These include church,
fraternal, and social groups, and farm and labor organizations. Some of
these maintain camps for children or provide low-cost vacations for adults.

4. Hunting and fishing, hiking and skiing clubs — also of restricted
membership — which maintain a simple or sometimes an elaborate lodge
where members may pursue the sport which is the single purpose of the club.

5. Boys' and girls' camps run for profit as business enterprises. At most of
these camps the charges may seem very moderate. The municipal camps
have weekly rates of about $8.50 for children and $10 and $12 for adults.
Camps run by such groups as the Boy Scouts, Y. W. C. A., and 4-H Clubs
charge from $6 to $8. But even this as a vacation expenditure puts the camp
beyond the means, as a rule, of families in the lowest income brackets with
$1,000 a year or less.

At a number of forest camps run for underprivileged children in Florida,
the cost has been reduced by buying a large part of the food through the
Federal Surplus Commodities Corporation. Food cost for each child has
thus at times been brought as low as $2.50 a week. Even here, in order to
give the neediest children their outing, organizations such as Rotary and
Kiwanis have put up the money to pay for the food and to get the children,
by bus, out to the forests and back home.

There are now 548 organization camps on the national forests, and they
are of inestimable value. The camps on the San Bernardino in California
alone gave forest outings for a week to 16,853 boys and girls in 1936. There
has been a tendency lately on the part of labor groups to join in supporting
organization camps for their members and young. But for all the good will
in the world, it stands plain the country over that even organization camps
most carefully planned and economically conducted can seldom stretch
funds far enough, or find money enough, to give forest outings to the
neediest.

We have considered thus far only the need of such outings for the poor but
healthy. The need of making available sun and air in our forests for the poor

266 FOREST OUTINGS

and ailing is one that must also be faced, in time. When poor people face
physical crises, the universe is a cruel machine. They may survive with the
aid of clinics, hospitals, and operating tables, but when the worst is over
they must go back to their homes and to inadequate care at a critical time in
their illness. For people such as these there should in time be developed
camps and retreats where, in the quiet and healing of the forests, health
could be restored. Leased to charitable organizations, welfare associations,
or to public health clinics, such forest retreats would lessen for the poor some
of the horrors of physical disability.

At Deer Lake in the Ocala National Forest in Florida last year an
experiment began. On the shores of this lake with its facilities for bathing,
boating, and fishing is now a camp having a maximum capacity of 140
persons. It was designed by the Forest Service and built as a W. P. A.
project. It has a mess hall, recreation hall, lavatory buildings, 14 squad huts,
and a director's cabin. The buildings are simple and substantial. A 200-foot
well furnishes excellent water. The sanitation equipment is of the best
engineering design.

Open for rental by any civic or nonprofit organization, it has character-
istics which the Forest Service believes should be typical of the organization
camps for low-income groups. Controlled by the Forest Service, a public
agency, and with bookings for the full season allocated among various
organizations, it makes efficient use of the recreational possibilities of an
area rather than limiting the use of the area by giving a special-use permit
to an organization which will use its camp for only a short time each year.
Under Federal control it will be possible to erect more substantial buildings
and influence more effectively the architecture and planning of the lay-out,
thus avoiding the unsightly camps that are likely to result from the efforts
of organizations operating with meager funds. Most important, it seems that
the Government can so construct such camps and turn them over to use by
groups of the people who will use them at much lower vacation rates than
now prevail.

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For the first time in their lives many prairie farm boys
are learning what trees were meant for.

SHELTERBELT ON THE FARM OF
F. M. DOUGHTY, MANGUM, OKLA.

Space, Sun, and Air

All things invite this earth's inhabitants

To rear their lives to an unheard of height,

And meet the expectation of the land. — Henry D. Thoreau.

"THE EXPECTATION of the land!" Writing in 1926, Lewis Mumford
echoed this phrase of Thoreau's, and added, "One comes upon that phrase
or its equivalent in almost every valid piece of early American thought."

It is plain that in recent years our expectation of the land is faltering. In
the same book, The Golden Day,1 Mumford spoke of "the bucolic innocence
of the Eighteenth Century, its belief in a fresh start, and its attempt to achieve
a new culture." Against that belief and hope he posed a picture of destruc-
tion: "The epic march of the covered wagon, leaving behind it deserted
villages, bleak cities, depleted soils, and the sick and exhausted souls that
engraved their epitaphs in Masters' Spoon River Anthology."

Later in his book Mumford declares: "What Thoreau left behind is still
precious. Men may still go out and make over America in the image of
Thoreau. What the pioneer left behind, alas, was only the burden of a
vacant life."

Our early pioneers left us, indeed, much to answer for. But the drubbing
they have been taking from modern American writers lately seems, on the
whole, excessive. If anything at all certain may now be said to come out of
all our talk about the pioneer forebears, their faults and virtues, it is this:

1 Entered, as are all books here noted, in the Bibliography, page 285, Appendix.

269

270 FOREST OUTINGS

Pioneer restlessness, pioneer excessiveness, along with the pioneers' hope "to
rear their lives to an unheard of height" remain surgingly alive on this
land, and in its cities.

"An April restlessness," Bernard DeVoto called it, in 1932, writing
Mark Twain's America. DeVoto is more concerned in displaying the pio-
neers as human than in depicting them as persons of special virtue. The
despoiled resource he most deplores is space, and stillness. The early pioneer,
he writes, "knew solitude and was not frightened by it. Always a mile would
take one into the quiet." And, nobly, in closing, DeVoto describes the great
body of our mainland: . . . "the beauty of the land across which the
journey passed. Whatever else the word 'frontier' means, it has also meant
water flowing in clear rivers, a countryside under clean sun or snow, woods,
prairies, and mountains of simple loveliness. It is not necessary to think the
literature of America a very noble literature in order to recognize the fact
that one of its principal occupations has been the celebration of that beauty.
Layer after layer of experience or frustration may come between but at the
very base of the American mind an undespoiled country lies open in the sun."

To anyone deeply concerned in conserving or restoring that basic
resource, it seems that the most hopeful change thus far has been expressed
less in action than in words. Among historians and economists, Frederick
Jackson Turner, Thorstein Veblen, John Commons, and the Beards, Charles
and Mary, had called the turn by the dawn of this century. This list is far
from complete; it omits many who have done or are doing yeoman writing.
Among the poets, Robert Frost and more lately Archibald MacLeish and
Pare Lorentz, proclaim the wickedness of wounding land, and the human
consequences.

"Build soil !" sings Frost.2 Assembling photographs of washed-out Ameri-
cans, adrift, homeless on land which but a few decades ago seemed wide,
rich, endless, MacLeish makes you hear the people dispossessed murmur-
ing, wondering, all but despairing; "We wonder . . . We don't know . . .
We're asking." 3 Lorentz's film, The River (1938), has been mentioned. His
picture, The Plow That Broke the Plains (1936), was as noteworthy.

2 See: A Further Range, Bibliography, p. 285, Appendix.

3 See: Land of the Free, Bibliography, p. 285, Appendix.

SPACE, SUN, AND AIR 271

REAPPRAISAL of American sources and growth is proceeding now so vigor-
ously that there is perhaps some danger of our falling into hopeless thinking
about ourselves and our country. That would be a natural reaction from
optimistic excesses in the past.

Even so, to all who whack us awake from childish dreams of illimitable
wealth and beauty forever to be grabbed and squandered, thanks. One such
is H. L. Mencken of The Baltimore Sun papers. His journalistic flail went to
work early in the century. His whoops of praise and derision, as a literary
critic, high-lighted talents such as those of Sinclair Lewis, the creator of
Babbitt. Like Mencken, Lewis plays rough with some of our fondest illusions;
but there was a sort of tenderness in Lewis' presentation of this fellow
creature, Babbitt, the pioneer turned timid burgher, fat, pursy, afraid to look
at forces encompassing his spirit, afraid to knock or say his say against them,
afraid to awaken, to shatter the waning dream, to take stock honestly.

Mencken could hardly be called a devotee of the natural order, of woods,
of pastoral scenes, or of country matters generally. He is a born cockney,
little interested in yielding earth. But the roaring courage with which he
spoke out against that in his immediate environment which he found damag-
ing and preposterous set an example now widely followed by editors and col-
umnists; and this has been enormously invigorating, especially in the South.

You see many better- tended areas of woodland and farm land now as you
travel southward than you saw 10 years ago; but the most vigorous portent
of an actual reconstruction is to be seen, in little patches, in the columns of
southern papers. In editorial pieces, in contributed articles, in. letters from
the people, in stray news items, and the work of signed columnists, hammer-
ing away, it is evident thaj; a new leaven is at work. Visitors from without, if at
all polite or prudent, still may hesitate to speak harshly of the southern scene
and prospect. It is now less necessary. The livest minds of the South, academic
and technical, agrarian and industrial, are talking it out, openly, in print.

The very source of most southern writers' strength is a deep attachment
to what is left of the southern pastoral and woodland scene. This somewhat
narrows their general appeal, and southern editors and columnists are
generally not as widely heard as Washington and New York City columnists
are. But no better writing is now being done anywhere in the country than

272 FOREST OUTINGS

in the South — or by writers at the border, facing South. And many of these
writers are moved simply by what they see from day to day all around them
to examine with intense interest all proposals to strengthen and beautify the
South's remaining natural resources from the ground up.

To this end Gerald W. Johnson, Hamilton Owens, and Phillip Wagner,
particularly, contribute to Maryland's Sun papers strong writing, and edi-
torial direction. In North Carolina, on the Raleigh News and Observer,
there is Jonathan Daniels; in South Carolina, on the Columbia State-
Record, James Derieux; in Kentucky, Herbert Agar of the Louisville Cour-
ier; in Alabama, John Temple Graves of the Birmingham Age-Herald.
Many others might be named who, if they write less often about conserva-
tion, know what they are writing about in terms of the land they live on, and
who, when they do write about it, hit hard. For instance, Frederick Sullens,
editor of the Jackson (Mississippi) Daily News since 1905; and in Texas,
Peter Molyneaux of The Texas Weekly.

To the north, there are among many, J. N. Darling and W. W. Way-
mack of the Des Moines Register-Tribune, William Allen White of the Em-
poria Gazette, William T. Evjue of the Madison (Wisconsin) Capital-Times,
Henry J. Haskell of the Kansas City Star. On the west coast, to name but
two, Paul Smith of the San Francisco Chronicle and Richard Neuberger of
the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, stand forth to defend the land from harm.

REPORTERS' books describing, interpreting, both the world scene and
the domestic scene, stand remarkably high on any list of books that Ameri-
cans are reading now, and the same lists carry many a work by statesmen
and scholars who have learned to write with the direct thrust expected of
reporters. It is not strange that men in the Government service, and especially
in the Department of Agriculture, should write continually and with growing
concern of land and tenure problems. By the very nature of their work they
have been for years up against a realization that with the continent
settled, in the main, forests slaughtered, natural beauty and quiet laid to
waste, soils skinned, waters sullied, and water tables sharply altered, basic
conditions can no longer be described as fundamentally sound. But it is
heartening and significant that there should have been so many contribu-

SPACE, SUN, AND AIR 273

tions on the question from writers not in government service, and less
specialized in their interests. To note a few:

In 1935, Herbert Agar's Land of the Free, from which, at the head of
chapter 13, we have quoted; and Paul Sears' Deserts on the March,
described by Hendrik Willem van Loon as a new way of writing history.
In 1936, Stuart Chase's Rich Land, Poor Land; Arthur Raper's Preface to
Peasantry. In 1937 Erskine Caldwell and Margaret Bourke- White published
their terrifying collection of words and photographs, an album of dis-
possessed and hopeless hands and croppers, You Have Seen Their Faces. In
the same year, Gerald Johnson compressed Howard Odum's monumental
Southern Regions of the United States into a brisker, more personal study,
The Wasted Land, and Walter Prescott Webb, author previously of a
great and scholarly analysis, The Great Plains, relaxed into the mood of
an unreconstructed southern agrarian and issued a challenging book-length
pamphlet, Divided We Stand. In the same year, 1937, Paul Sears followed
his Deserts on the March with a broader popularization of ecology, This
is Our World, and in this work extended his previous argument.

The pattern of lichens on rock, Sears says, the grazing habits of elk
in our remaining forests and mountain meadows, and the group behavior
of elks on picnics, and of all other human groups seeking comfort and sus-
tenance, are related growths. In 1938 there came DuPuy's The Nation's
Forests, Lord's Behold Our Land, A Southerner Discovers the South by
Jonathan Daniels, Roads to a New America by David Cushman Coyle, and
Richard Neuberger's Our Promised Land. In 1939 the city reviews were
appraising a variety of basic works on conservation such as Seven Lean Years
by T. J. Woofter, Jr., and Ellen Winston, Romances of the National Parks by
Harlean James, These Are Our Lives by members of the Federal Writers'
Project, George Leighton's brilliant study of Five Cities and their wasting
backgrounds, and, perhaps the most influential tract of all, though it is not
strictly speaking a reporter's book, John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.

HUMAN CONSERVATION . . . There was a time when foresters could not see
the people for the trees. This, perhaps, was a natural tendency at the
beginning of the present century when the American conservation move-

274 FOREST OUTINGS

ment first took form. There seemed to be plenty of room in this country
then. Population pressure upon public parks and forests was not so intense.
The initial cry was to preserve timber, minerals, soil, and water. There was a
tendency to regard forest residents and forest visitors as inconvenient inter-
lopers, probably up to no good. There were old-line foresters who regarded
every forest resident or visitor as a suspected wood thief, firebug, or squatter.
A few early rangers and supervisors, even after 1906, dealt in that spirit with
people trying to make a living in the forest, and with people who came to the
forests on pleasure bent. This was never the idea of Gifford Pinchot, the first
Chief of the Forest Service; nor of any of his successors. As public pressure
on the forests mounted, the number of forest officers concerned only with
trees, never with people, diminished.

Not only in forestry, but on all the fronts of conservation, the narrowly
materialistic view, which seeks to preserve this segment or that of our
national resource and ignores all the other interrelated segments of the life
cycle is on the wane. Unified planning with a view to final values is distinctly
on the up.

Ferdinand Silcox, Chief of the Forest Service from late 1 933 through 1 939,
worked hard to advance, to humanize, and to coordinate land-use planning
throughout our land. His first thought was always of the final crop — the
people. He never visited a forest without asking "Who lives here?" or
"Who uses this forest?"; he always put that first in his inspections.

He is dead now; but his way of looking at land lives on. "Damage to the
land is important only because it damages the lives of people and threatens
the general welfare," said Henry A. Wallace, Secretary of Agriculture,
before the Association of Land Grant Colleges late in 1939. "Saving soil and
forests and water is not an end in itself; it is only a means to the end of better
living and greater security for men and women. Human conservation is our
first and greatest goal."

The year 1940, as this book goes to the printer, is barely a month along;
but the year has brought forth already a number of extraordinary pronounce-
ments as to conservation, in the broadest sense of the word. "I can see,"
writes E. B. White in the February issue of Harper's Magazine, "no reason
for a conservation program if people have lost their knack with earth. I can

SPACE, SUN, AND AIR 275

see no reason for saving the streams to make the power to run the fac-
tories if the resultant industry reduces the status and destroys the heart of
the individual. Such is not conservation, but the most frightful sort of
dissipation."

In the February 1940, Survey-Graphic, Albert Mayer: "If we mean to
gain and to retain healthful living in pleasant communities for ourselves,
our children and our fellow citizens, then we must reckon with the new hot
dog stand suddenly erected and noisily operating in our midst, with the old
swimming hole being polluted by the new factories being built upstream,
with the dust storms making our lives physically impossible. Whether we
live in big cities or in small towns or in the country, we are affected by the
forces of disintegration."

The editors of Fortune, in their Tenth Anniversary Issue (February
1940) sum up: "The U. S. is faced with problems different from those in
almost any country in the world, and these problems have their origins in
plenty. . . . These problems involve the land, the population, the national
income, the distribution of wealth, the reinvestment of income — all of the
headaches of our time. . . .

"The American cannot live effectively and decently without a vision;
when the vision fails his whole system collapses. His new vision, his new
future, his new project will of necessity be different from the old, both inter-
nally and externally. But unless the American is extinct, a project there will
be

"If the dream is reborn, it must have some of the characteristics of
maturity: it must relate the present to the future in a realistic way; it must
demand a certain amount of planning and sacrifice. ... So long as he is an
American, the American will be an idealist. But there is no reason under the
sun why he should always remain a wildman."

Well employed, or out of work, well to do or ill to do; riding high, dead
broke and on the road; or rich enough to pay in terms of a couple of gallons
of gas for a forest outing, we remain, in the main, a people of some spirit.
The spirit of the people is the final crop of any land. The final crop, as well
as the intermediate material crops, and the source — the land itself — need
to be conserved. Viewed thus, recreation on the national forests is no mere

276 FOREST OUTINGS

adjunct to timber and water and soil conservation; it is in itself conservation
designed to preserve and strengthen the American spirit.

Solvent migrants swarm to the forests instinctively every week end of
open weather and, in lesser number, throughout the week. It is as if some-
thing in their blood drove them to burn the roads, get out of civilization,
and then whirl back to civilization again. "Got no new places to go now, so
we just run in circles," growls an old-timer viewing with some distaste a
holiday throng in a western forest camp. "I like the woods, though," he
adds, "Even with a lot of people squealing in 'em, I like the woods!"

RESEARCH must be pushed; research ranging over the fields of economics,
sociology, psychology, aesthetics, botany, ecology, pathology, and forestry;
research to the end that the people may use the forests for recreation per-
manently without hurting the forests and, ultimately, ourselves.

The problems are distinctive and challenging not merely in their com-
plexity but in their diversity. One need is closer counts or more accurate
methods of estimating the number of persons who come to the forests, and
the ability — or inability — of certain trees to stand human society. This
perplexes research foresters, and they have not as yet learned fully what to
do about it. Some of the most decorative trees in dry uplands, particularly,
seem to shrink from the tread and touch of man. For instance:

The aspen, whose groves have always been favored for camping or picnic
grounds, is a thin-barked tree and probably for that reason is very sensitive
to heat injury. Aspen trees have frequently been killed by the heat of camp-
fires at a distance which would have little or no effect upon individuals of
other species hardier in this particular. Other tree species, some of great
beauty, are sensitive to overuse of their immediate environment because their
feeding roots are very close to the surface of the ground. The long-continued
compacting of the soil about such trees, preventing the normal develop-
ment of the feeding rootlets, affecting the normal aeration of the soil, and
probably disturbing the delicate relations between the myriads of soil micro-
organisms, will slowly load the scales against the efforts of the trees to main-
tain themselves in the never-ceasing struggle with their nearby competitors.

Meinecke has shown the effect of soil compacting on the redwood groves

SPACE, SUN, AND AIR 277

of California, and some of the unfortunate effects of overuse of campgrounds.
General evidence indicates that the Colorado blue spruce of the central
Rocky Mountains is also highly susceptible to the type of injury which has
caused damage to the redwood. On the other hand, except at its lower
altitudinal limits where the never-ending struggle is waged between tree
growth and open prairie, ponderosa pine is relatively resistant to the effects
of concentrated occupancy of its environment by man.

These are largely western problems. To the East, the birches suffer from
the obeyed impulse of thousands to peel off' their bark as mementos of a
forest outing. "Give me of your bark, O Birch-tree!" Research to amend
such habits must enter the field of applied psychology, and be grouped,
perhaps, with studies of persuasion in fire prevention such as were noted in
chapter 10.

Physical data as to the effects of new roads, trails, and recreational
structures upon the tree growth and water yield is accumulating, but still
is inadequate. The removal of large quantities of soil where cuts are made on
sloping terrain disturbs and often quite radically changes the movement of
water within the soil. Trees standing above a cut may find themselves with-
out the supply of moisture which they demand and without which they
cannot survive. A fill banking new soil about the base of a tree may result
not only in changes in the soil moisture by alteration of the rate of percola-
tion of surface water, but may also prevent proper aeration of the soil levels
in which the feeding roots of the tree occur. To cut long swaths of timber
through forests of even a moderate degree of density for road construction
may cause profound modifications of the micro-climate to which the tree is
accustomed. Violent changes in the local direction and velocity of air cur-
rents may result, and trees which otherwise might have stood for centuries
may suddenly be blown down.

The precise causes of many such effects are as yet little understood.
Definite studies and analyses will enable the road engineer and forest
administrator to prevent defacement and waste. Obvious causes of deteriora-
tion and destruction, such as mechanical injury, can be controlled by
administrative regulation. But to guard against the more deeply seated
dangers involving slow changes in the relation of each kind of organism to

278 FOREST OUTINGS

the others, changes in that totality of relations which constitutes the ecology
of the forest, is more difficult.

Visibility has long been a subject of Forest Service research. In respect to
the location of fire towers and the maximum extent of the prospect from
towers, especially, striking advances have been made in recent years. One
thing that hand-picked CCC boys and other small, skilled groups of
relief workers have been doing for their country is to map it more graphic-
ally, beautifully, and accurately than ever before. Relief maps, done to
strict scale up and down as well as longitudinally, have been made of some
of the national forests. Such maps serve usefully in administrative planning;
they show the area not as flat and static, but in its actual living dimensions.
They are useful, again, in impressing upon forest visitors the actual lay of
the country. The people remember such maps more vividly, and are guided
by them more helpfully than by flat, gray maps. And in locating or relocat-
ing fire towers, so that almost no spot in the forest remains out of sight from
the guards, these maps have proved most helpful. It is possible on such a
relief map to place a flashlight bulb at height proportional to that of pro-
posed towers, and then by turning the light on, in a dark room, to plat out
in terms of light and shadow the range of visibility from that point.

Invisibility, or a relative invisibility of Forest Service structures set up
for purposes of forest administration and forest recreation, is a newer
research problem in aesthetics and in forest architecture; and ever since
landscape architects were brought to the aid of forest recreation planning
good progress has been made. Once forest administrators, in their innocence,
painted all such structures green. It now becomes evident that against
almost any forest background, with its infinite variety of greens shot through
with light, flat green of any shade stands out in sharp contrast, inharmoni-
ously. The darker the color, generally speaking, the more the structure
seems to sink into the background, unobtrusively, gracefully. Most Forest
Service structures on sites recently developed are painted a chocolate
brown. On desert sites, and on sites intermediate between woods and desert,
other color combinations are tried with varying success. There remains need
for research, along with trial and error afield, in respect to forest and desert
light effects and a harmonious introduction of structures.

SPACE, SUN, AND AIR 279

In the fields of economics and sociology, forest research lags. Of this
most foresters are well aware. "As between the economic benefits which
accrue to a forest or near-forest community when tourists come in numbers,
on the one hand, and between sociological consequences, both beneficial
and harmful, on the other," say the authors of a recent research memo-
randum, "there should be a more accurate means of accounting." But the
difficulties of drawing any such a balance sheet are obvious; for the tourist
money thus brought in is a tangible gain, whereas the disruption of cherished
local values, when such occurs, may be largely intangible.

THE HEALING FOREST . . . There is a saying often exchanged among visitors
to the national forests, a trite saying, possibly, but one that seems to men
whose life work has been forestry, profoundly true. Something like this:
"I like coming up here. It makes a new man of me." To renew a man, or a
woman, worn and weary, to restore them in health and spirit, is the purpose
of forest recreation. And along with a restoration of the spirit goes a restora-
tion, a conservation, of the source.

Surely, in this large sense, forestry is a good calling, a calling in which a
man may work hard and without great riches, yet be proud. Much of it is
inside work, nowadays, paper work; but generally there are outings,
trips on business "for the good of the Service"; and professional foresters
are in general given far more than most men to know the beauty and wonder

(of our land.
The office work may be stuffy, the piles of paper "for immediate atten-
tion" may tower high, the sense of imprisonment in a great stone city may
seem to a range-reared forester at times intolerable; yet there are many
compensations — memories of trips afoot or by horse over lone heights where
the air went to the head like wine; where each day unfolded a new heaven, a
fresher, more beautiful earth.

Our forebears fled an older world. Those were parlous days. So are

(these. But as our forebears had faith, so must we. Faith in America. Faith
in democracy. Faith, too, that our forest lands cannot only create new jobs
but can also make life pleasanter and more secure.

There is reason for this faith. Man's first food is said to have been acorns

280 FOREST OUTINGS

from the Tree of Jove. Three thousand years before Christ was born cedar,
cypress, and pine helped establish the maritime supremacy of an ancient
Mediterranean civilization to which all the world is heir and debtor. Nehe-
miah used timbers for city walls and gates when Jerusalem was rebuilt.
Here in our own land, forests sheltered, fed, and clothed the American
Indian. Larders of Pilgrim Fathers were often stocked with venison and wild
turkey. Tall masts of New England white pine helped a tiny fleet defy the
Mistress of the Seas. Beaver hats and mink coats founded many a for-
tune. And trees helped make log cabins and cradles, towns, telephone lines,
and transcontinental railroads. They were vital to the winning of the West,
and the building of a nation.

"Out of the forests came the might of America — wealth, power, and
men." There is a world of truth in that statement by Jenks Cameron. Our
homes are a crop of the forest. So are our books, our newsprint, our furni-
ture. And in these modern times perfumes, plastics, naval stores, surgical
absorbents, fiber containers, and thousands of everyday things are forest
products. Farm woodlands yield fence posts, maple sugar, pulpwood, mine
props, fuel, and other products that exceed in value the annual crops of rye,
barley, and rice combined. Wages paid workers in the forests and forest
industries support 6 million people. Two million live on wages paid for
transporting and selling products of the forest. Carpenters, furniture mak-
ers, and other artisans of wood support 5 million more. In all, and directly
and indirectly, America's forests provide the necessities of life for nearly
one-tenth of her population.

Besides all these values there are human values. The tempo of our
daily lives has speeded up. Each year we experience less of natural physical
activity and greater mental strain. In bustling office or crowded street we
long for the friendly forest. Woodland recreation fills a definite need in
our lives now, and we plan for it consciously.

TREES TO THE PEOPLE . . . Planned new plantations such as those of the
field windbreaks seem likely, as time goes on, to offer more and more, es-
pecially to dwellers in our great treeless prairie and High Plains country,
places of rest.

SPACE, SUN, AND AIR 281

The prairie-plains area is for the most part gently rolling. It presents to
the outlander a monotonous landscape. Those at home there do not find
the landscape monotonous, but they long for rest from the heat of the sun
and the thrust of progress; for change and rest in a different sort of country,
sheltered by trees.

The need of such change and rest becomes plainly more urgent after one
crosses the "dry line," the 100th meridian roughly bisecting Kansas and
Nebraska. Dust has been blowing here from the southwest and the north-
west, lately. Also, dust has been blowing locally. Heat waves shimmer and
dance over this part of our land in summer. Mirage lakes tantalize the eye
with visions.

The recreational wants of most of the people here, on farms and in
towns, are simple. They lift their eyes to hills far beyond eyesight. They go
for rest and change to wooded mountains, if they can.

To the Black Hills of South Dakota, to the Wichita Mountains of Okla-
homa and the Turtle Mountains of North Dakota, they go for a while, for
outings. Still to the west are always the Rockies, and a great many rather
poor people of the Midland burn gas to get there and rest for a while at those
heights. But most prairie people must seek places for recreation nearer home.
Trees for shade and water for swimming and fishing are the essentials most
in demand. Remnants of the native forest stands and planted groves have
long been utilized as community gathering sites. People frequently drive
many miles to enjoy the company of their neighbors at picnic and rodeo
time in the welcome shade of the friendly trees. Even such elemental essen-
tials are few and far between.

Under the Prairie States Forestry Project, created by executive order of
the President in 1934, large-scale windbreak protective plantings were
established on areas where soil characteristics were suitable and within rain-
fall zones where the annual supply was adequate to support tree growth. The
tree resources of the prairies developed through this cooperatively admin-
istered Prairie States Forestry Project are helping to solve an economic
problem of soil and agricultural stabilization and at the same time are
making recreation spots. In many localities these tree plantings are chang-
ing the whole aspect of the countryside. Trees in long strips of a half mile

282 FOREST OUTINGS

apart break up the wide reaches and temper the winds. Many of the trees,
after 3 years of growth, are over 20 feet tall. Many of them are more than
30 feet tall.

Children from the schools come to the newly planted strips for their
picnics. Farm families are tempted into the open for a watermelon "bust"
in the shade of the trees. Where the strips are close to the farmstead, the
family may take a noontime siesta there. For the first time in their lives
many prairie farm boys are learning what trees were meant for- — sheltering
places to sprawl, rest, or play. Already there are swings for the young on the
limbs of many of these new plantations. These trees are really growing.

When the Prairie States Forestry Project started many Plains residents
said it was foolish, that trees would not grow in those parts. And it remains,
as David Cushman Coyle remarks in his book Roads to a New America,
"a curious fact" that most people who do not live in that part of the country
and see those new trees growing "believe that the shelterbelt was just another
failure."

"If God didn't make any trees in the Plains, how can man put them
there?" they ask. The answer, Coyle continues, "is that a seed cannot grow
in that country because the ground dries farther down than its first-year root
can reach. But if it is started in a nursery and transplanted after its roots are
long enough to reach below the bone-dry surface layer, it will grow. In the
first 3 years, 6,500 miles of shelterbelt were successfully established, but the
Plains need 220,000 miles of it."

To people accustomed to live with trees, the idea may seem ridiculous,
but even at the end of the first 2 years, when most of the plantings did not
stand more than 1 5 feet high, on the average, the Plains people already were
starting to have picnics in that new-made shade. Now with a canopy 30
feet high, and — in many places — higher, recreational use of plantings has
increased; and birds return to add charm and variety to the scene.

On the strips planted under the Prairie States Forestry Project, doves
have been known to nest in trees the year they were set out. Scissor-tailed
fly catchers, quail, prairie chickens, and other indigenous species are now
commonly seen in plantings only 3 years old. This increase in birds has
economic value in insect and weed control. But possibly the value that bird

SPACE, SUN, AND AIR 283

life adds, by bringing animation and change into the lives of prairie people,
is as great; and the whole project, while not designed for recreational pur-
poses, does suggest important possibilities in open-air recreation for low-
income groups. If it is not always possible to bring the people to the forests
it is sometimes possible to bring the trees to the people.

Bibliography

AGAR, HERBERT. Land of the Free. 1935. Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston.

BRADLEY, JOHN H. Autobiography of Earth. 1935. Coward-McCann, Inc., New York.

CALDWELL, ERSKINE, and BOURKE-WHITE, MARGARET. You Have Seen Their Faces. 1937.
The Viking Press, Inc., New York.

CHASE, STUART. Rich Land, Poor Land. 1936. Whittlesey House, McGraw-Hill Book Co.,
Inc., New York.

COYLE, DAVID CUSHMAN. Roads to a New America. 1938. Little, Brown & Co., Boston.

DANIELS, JONATHAN. A Southerner Discovers the South. 1938. The Macmillan Co., New
York.

DEVOTO, BERNARD. Ma/ k Twain's America. 1932. Little, Brown & Co., Boston.
DuPuY, WILLIAM ATHERTON. The Nation's Forests. 1938. The Macmillan Co., New York.
EATON, WALTER P. Winter Sports Verse. 1919. Dodd, Mead & Co., Inc., New York.

FEDERAL WRITERS' PROJECT. These Are Our Lives. 1939. The Univ. of North Carolina
Press, Chapel Hill.

FROST, ROBERT. A Further Range. 1936. Henry Holt & Co., Inc., New York.

HATTON, JOHN H. From an unpublished manuscript.

JAMES, HARLEAN. Romance oj the National Parks. 1939. The Macmillan Co., New York.

JOHNSON, GERALD W. The Wasted Land. 1937. The Univ. of North Carolina Press,
Chapel Hill.

KIPLING, RUDYARD. The Five Nations. 1903. Doubleday, Page & Co., New York.

KOBER, ARTHUR. "Having Wonderful Time." 1937. Random House, Inc., New York.

LEIGHTON, GEORGE. Five Cities. 1939. Harper & Brothers, New York.

LEWIS, SINCLAIR. Babbitt. 1922. Harcourt, Brace & Co., Inc., New York.

LORENTZ, PARE. The Plow That Broke the Plains. 1936. A motion picture.

LORENTZ, PARE. The River. 1938. Stackpole Sons, New York.

LORD, RUSSELL. Behold Our Land. 1938. Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston.

LORD, RUSSELL. To Hold This Soil. 1938. U. S. Department of Agriculture, Soil Con-
servation Service, Misc. Pub. 321, Government Printing Office, Washington.

MACLEISH, ARCHIBALD. Land of the Free. 1938. Harcourt, Brace & Co., Inc., New
York.

MARSHALL, ROBERT. Doonerak or Bust. 1938. (Privately printed by author.) Washington.

285

286 BIBLIOGRAPHY

MUMFORD, LEWIS. The Golden Day. 1926. Boni and Liveright, New York.
NEUBERGER, RICHARD. Our Promised Land. 1938. The Macmillan Co., New York.

ODUM, HOWARD. Southern Regions of the United States. 1936. The Univ. of North Carolina
Press, Chapel Hill.

RAPER, ARTHUR F. Preface to Peasantry. 1936. The Univ. of North Carolina Press,
Chapel Hill.

RORTY, JAMES. Where Life Is Better. 1936. The John Day Book Co., and Reynal &
Hitchcock, New York.

SEARS, PAUL B. Deserts on the Anarch. 1935. The Univ. of Oklahoma Press, Norman.
SEARS, PAUL B. This Is Our World. 1937. The Univ. of Oklahoma Press, Norman.
STEINBECK, JOHN. The Grapes of Wrath. 1939. The Viking Press, Inc., New York.
THOREAU, HENRY D. The Maine Woods. 1864. Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston.

U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE, FOREST SERVICE. Report of the Chief of the Forest
Service. 1938. Government Printing Office, Washington.

WALLACE, HENRY A. New Frontiers. 1934. Reynal & Hitchcock, New York.
WALN, NORA. Reaching for the Stars. 1939. Little, Brown & Co., Boston.

WEBB, WALTER PRESCOTT. Divided We Stand. 1937. Farrar & Rinehart, Inc., New
York.

WOLFE, LINNIE MARSH, editor. John of the Mountains (unpublished journals of John Muir)
1938. Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston.

WOOFTER, T. J., JR., and WINSTON, ELLEN. Seven Lean Tears. 1939. The Univ. of North
Carolina Press, Chapel Hill.

Appendix

BASIC PRINCIPLES

GOVERNING RECREATIONAL MANAGEMENT
ON THE NATIONAL FORESTS

1 . The recreational resources of the national forests will be so managed as to provide
for their fullest use consistent with suitable use of the other national-forest resources under
the multiple-use plan of management. This involves determination of the areas on which
the recreational values are so important as to justify dominant or exclusive consideration;
the areas where recreation and other uses are of approximately equal importance and may
be enjoyed concurrently with relatively minor mutual concessions in management; and the
areas where either recreational values are so small or other uses so important as to call for
subordination of recreational use.

2. Areas of special value for recreation will be identified, protected, and suitably
managed in order to bring about a balanced program providing for all forms of recreation
appropriate in the forest. This will include, at one extreme, adequate provision for such
concentrated use as on campgrounds, picnic grounds, organization camps, resort areas, and
the like; and at the other, setting aside substantial areas where natural conditions will be
retained, including virgin, wild, and wilderness areas.

3. The planning and development of the recreational resource and the necessary adjust-
ments with other uses will be conducted in cooperation with all groups interested in recreation
or other resources. The organization of local and general associations of those interested in
recreation to act in an advisory capacity in national-forest recreation planning will be
encouraged.

4. Priority in the expenditure of Federal funds to care for visitors to the national forests
will be given to those developments which can take care of the most visitors for a given unit
of expenditure. Under this principle the following priority order will usually be recognized:
Campgrounds and picnic grounds, organization camps, resorts. Preference will also be given
to recreational developments which emphasize opportunities for participant rather than
spectator enjoyment of forest-recreation activities.

5. Particular attention will be given to facilities for the use of those in the low-income
groups who can enjoy forest recreation only if its cost is small. This means emphasis on
both camping and picnicking facilities, and organization camps owned by the Government
and made available to those sponsoring vacations for low-income groups.

6. Uses which require exclusive occupancy, such as summer homes and limited-
membership clubs, will be confined to areas not needed by the general public, and will
necessarily have the lowest priority.

7. The Government will install and operate simple, moderate-rate resorts in order to
insure appropriate and timely developments and provision of adequate service at the lowest

287

288 APPENDIX

feasible rates. Where public funds are not available for this purpose, such installations will
be permitted by private enterprise, but under permit requirements which retain government
control of the type of development and the quality and cost of services rendered.

8. The Forest Service will develop or permit the development of such facilities as will
aid in the enjoyment of those types of recreation appropriate to the forest environment.
It will exclude inappropriate developments and especially those which tend to introduce
urbanization into the forest. In all developments the aim will be to have them harmonize
as much as possible with the natural environment.

9. The Government will install or permit installation of facilities only to the extent
required to serve public needs so as to keep to a minimum the introduction of artificial
developments in the forest environment.

10. The recreational developments on the national forests will be managed so as to
complement rather than compete with those available on other public lands in the same
locality. Likewise, duplications will be avoided of developments on private lands which
care adequately for the public needs under conditions and rates comparable to those on the
national forests.

11. The recreational use of the national forests will be handled with the fewest possible
restrictions on users consistent with the protection of the forest against destruction or damage,
the observance of essential sanitary and safety measures, and the prevention of actions by
individuals or groups which would unduly interfere with the enjoyment of others.

12. Charges will not be made for the use of ordinary facilities such as those commonly
provided on campgrounds, picnic grounds, and winter-sports areas, but in general charges
will be made for special facilities.

WHAT TO DO WHEN LOST

Most forests provide maps and folders free, to visitors. You can get them from the forest
guard or ranger. They are good to have, not only as a means of getting oriented, but also
as aids to understanding the country. Most of the maps carry, on their reverse side, concise
local information, and admonitions as to sane forest behavior. This, taken from the back
of a California forest map folder, is the counsel of long experience:

A clear head will find itself. If everyone remembered this, there would be fewer persons
lost in the mountains and forests. Loss of mental control is more serious than lack of food,
water, or clothing. The man who keeps his head has the best chance to come through in
safety.

The following helpful rules are worth remembering:

1. Stop, sit down, and try to figure out where you are. Use your head, not your legs.

2. If caught by night, fog, or a storm, stop at once and make camp in a sheltered spot.
Build a fire in a safe place. Gather plenty of dry fuel.

3. Don't wander about. Travel only downhill. Follow watercourses or ridges.

4. If injured, choose a cleared spot on a promontory and make a signal smoke. The
Forest Service fire lookouts or the observers in an airplane may see your smoke.

APPENDIX

289

5. Don't yell, don't run, don't worry, and DON'T QUIT.

6. A word from the forest ranger to the new camper, hiker, or vacationist:

It is better to carry a clear head on your shoulders than a big pack on your back;
yet in going alone into the mountains it is well to go prepared for any emergency. A fish-
line and a few hooks, matches in a waterproof box, a compass, a little concentrated food,
and a strong knife should always be carried. A gun may help as a signal, seldom for obtain-
ing food. Above all, keep cool, and the chances are you will come out of the woods on your
own feet.

Three quickly repeated and evenly spaced sounds or signals are a standard distress
call on land. Signals may be of any kind, audible or visible — calls, whistles, gunshots,
flashes from searchlights or mirrors, smoke signals, waves of the arms, a piece of clothing
or firebrand, or three small fires evenly spaced. The repetition in threes and the even
spacing distinguishes the distress call.

TABLE A. — National-forest areas in complete Federal ownership

[Acreage as of January 1, 1940]

Forest

Headquarters

Acres

Forest

Headquarters

Acres

Livingston, Mont . .

999, 647

Chippewa

Cass Lake, Minn . .

574, 309

Warren, Pa

434, 451

Chequamegon .

Park Falls, Wis

789, 693

Angeles

Los Angeles, Calif.

643, 738

Choct a w -

Tallahassee, Fla . . .

315,564

Houston, Tex

139, 957

hatchee.

Springerville, Ariz .

1, 569, 089

Chugach

Juneau, Alaska ....

4, 799, 899

Tallahassee Fla . . .

501, 260

Cibola

Albuquerque, N.

1, 641, 829

Arapaho

Idaho Springs,

967, 644

Mex.

Colo

Clark

St. Louis, Mo

803 511

Vernal, Utah

1, 076, 367

Clearwater ....

Orofino, Idaho ....

1, 039, 844

Dillon Mont ....

1 957, 928

Cleveland .....

San Diego, Calif. . .

379, 925

10 710

Cochetopa ....

Salida, Colo

1 173,809

Coconino

Flagstaff, Ariz

1, 725, 867

Jackson, Miss

175,085

Coeur d'Alene .

Coeur d'Alene,

704, 247

Bighorn

Sheridan, Wyo ....

1, 113,667

Idaho.

Hamilton, Mont. . .

1, 900, 814

Columbia

Vancouver, Wash .

1, 254, 499

Black Hills

Deadwood S Dak

655 219

Colville

Republic, Wash . . .

749, 266

Montgomery Ala .

176, 323

Conecuh

Montgomery, Ala .

68, 749

Boise Idaho

1, 287, 486

Coronado

Tucson, Ariz

1, 384, 676

Thompson Falls,

1, 112,492

Croatan

Columbia, S. C . . .

116,716

Crook ....

Safford, Ariz

1 422 777

Logan, Utah

702, 687

Cumberland . . .

Winchester, Ky . . .

420, 883

Rio Piedras P R

20 665

Custer

Billings, Mont

1, 196, 744

Pocatello, Idaho. . .

845, 497

Davy Crockett .

Houston, Tex

160,467

Taos N M^ex

1, 128, 860

Deerlodge

Butte, Mont

1,125,270

Challis

Challis Idaho

2 447 080

Deschutes

Bend, Oreg

1, 431, 707

574 929

De Soto

Jackson, Miss

463, 738

Chelan

Okanogan Wash . .

1,811,777

Dixie

Cedar City, Utah . .

798, 403

Cherokee . .

Cleveland, Tenn . .

536, 541

Eldorado

Placerville, Calif. .

588, 385

290

APPENDIX

TABLE A. — National-forest areas in complete Federal ownership — Continued

[Acreage as of January 1, 19401

Forest

Headquarters

Acres

Forest

Headquarters

Acres

Fishlake

Richfield, Utah . . .

1, 414,418

Minidoka . . .

Burley Idaho

591 295

Flathead

Kalispell, Mont . . .

2, 215,243

Modoc

Alturas, Calif

1 457 265

Francis Marion .

Columbia, S. C. . . .

243, 383

Mono

Reno, Nev

1 262 770

Fremont

Lakeview, Oreg . . .

1, 102 962

M^onongahela

Elkins W Va

802 686

Gallatin

Bozeman, Mont . . .

848, 966

MIontezuma. .

Mancos Colo

756 440

George Wash-
ington.
Gila

Harrisonburg, Va . .
Silver City, N.

917,873
2, 393 572

Mount Baker . .
Mount Hood. .
Nantahala . . .

Bellingham, Wash
Portland, Oreg . . .
Franklin, N. C

1, 815, 142
1, 100, 756
326 266

Mex.

Nebraska

Halsey, Nebr . .

206 026

Grand Mesa . . .

Grand Junction,

653, 168

Nevada

Ely, Nev

1 232 646

Colo.

Nezperce

Grangeville,

1 931 124

Green Moun-

Rutland, Vt

160 539

Idaho

tain.

Nicolet

Rhinelander, Wis.

552 874

Gunnison

Gunnison, Colo . . .

1 283 584

Ocala

Tallahassee Fla

316 897

Harney

Custer, S. Dak ....

528, 189

Ochoco

Prineville, Oreg . .

764 040

Hiawatha

Escanaba, Mich . . .

406, 268

Olympic

Olympia, Wash . . .

812 448

Helena

Helena, Mont

894 971

Osceola

Tallahassee Fla

156 182

Holly Springs . .

Jackson, Miss

114 795

Ottawa . . .

Ironwood Mich .

614 869

Holy Cross ....

Glenwood Springs,

1, 086, 352

Ouachita

Hot Springs Na-

1, 473, 487

Homochitto. . . .

Colo.
Jackson, Miss

186 411

Ozark . . .

tional Park, Ark.
Russellville Ark

803 765

Humboldt

Elko, Nev

1,059 865

Payette

Boise, Idaho ....

1 312 423

Huron

East Tawas, Mich .

354, 970

Pike

Colorado Springs,

1 074 014

Idaho

McCall, Idaho

1 784 048

Colo.

Inyo

Bishop, Calif

1, 582 146

Pisgah

Asheville N. C . .

461 113

Jefferson

Roanoke, Va

529 811

Plumas

Quincy, Calif

1 147 854

Kaibab

Williams, Ariz ....

1, 772, 859

Powell

Panguitch, Utah . .

1 032 505

Kaniksu

Sandpoint, Idaho. .

1 162 998

Prescott .

Prescott Ariz

1 265 539

Kisatchie

Alexandria, La ....

501 250

Rio Grande . . .

Monte Vista Colo

1 289 357

Klamath . .

Yreka, Calif

1 509 065

Rogue River

Medford Oreg

905 774

Kootenai

Libby, Mont

1 790 168

Roosevelt

Fort Collins Colo

788 133

La Sal

Moab, Utah

534, 299

Routt

Steamboat Springs,

984 098

Lassen

Susanville, Calif. . .

917,773

Colo.

Lewis and

Great Falls, Mont.

1,814,821

Sabine

Houston, Tex

184 411

Clark.

Salmon

Salmon, Idaho ....

1, 980, 036

Lincoln

Alamogordo, N.

1, 145,878

Sam Houston .

Houston, Tex

159 291

Lolo

Mex.

Missoula, Mont . . .

1, 701, 941

San Bernardino.

San Bernardino,
Calif.

593, 090

Los Padres ....

Santa Barbara,

1, 773, 992

San Isabel

Pueblo, Colo

617 495

Calif.

San Juan

Durango, Colo ....

1, 255 932

Malheur

John Day, Oreg . . .

1, 075, 598

Santa Fe

Santa Fe, N. Mex.

1 233 676

Manistee

Muskegon, Mich . .

238, 796

Sawtooth

Hailey, Idaho

1, 201, 535

Manti

Ephraim, Utah. . . .

728,613

Sequoia

Porterville, Calif. . .

1, 362, 329

Mark Twain . . .

Springfield Mo . . .

364, 070

Shasta

Mount Shasta,

1, 090, 774

Marquette

Escanaba, Mich . . .

248, 725

Calif.

Medicine Bow. .

Laramie, Wyo ....

1, 057, 082

Shawnee

Harrisburg, 111 ....

183, 697

Mendocino . .

Willows, Calif. .

829, 493

Shoshone . .

Codv. Wvo . .

1, 566. 324

APPENDIX

291

TABLE A. — National-forest areas in complete Federal ownership — Continued

[Acreage as of January 1, 1940]

Forest

Headquarters

Acres

Forest

Headquarters

Acres

Sierra

North Fork, Calif. .

1, 516,461

Umpqua

Roseburg, Oreg , . .

984 589

Siskiyou

Grants Pass, Oreg

1 371 819

Uncompahgre

Delta Colo

786 225

Sitgreaves

Holbrook, Ariz ....

801, 735

Wallowa .

Enterprise, Oreg

969 021

Siuslaw

Eugene, Oreg

509, 623

Wasatch

Salt Lake City,

844 731

Snoqualmie. . . .

Seattle, Wash

1, 045, 307

Utah.

Stanislaus

Sonora, Calif

819 988

Washakie

Lander, Wyo . . .

869 702

St. Joe

St. Maries, Idaho . .

789, 646

Weiser

Weiser, Idaho ....

570 289

Sumter

Columbia, S. C . . .

296, 737

Wenatchee ....

Wenatchee, Wash .

961, 375

Superior ....

Duluth, Minn

1, 761, 744

White Moun-

Laconia, N. H . .

704 188

Tahoe

Nevada City, Calif.

676, 992

tain.

Talladega

Montgomery, Ala. .

335, 527

White River. . .

Glenwood Springs,

895, 499

Targhee

St. Anthony, Idaho

1, 367, 841

Colo.

Teton

Jackson, Wyo

1, 800, 636

Whitman

Baker, Oreg

1, 419, 893

Toiyabe

Reno, Nev

2, 152, 231

Willamette. . . .

Eugene, Oreg

1, 646, 562

Tongass

Juneau, Alaska. . . .

16, 044, 100

Wyoming

Kemmerer, Wyo . .

1, 699, 653

2 409 924

Trinity

Weavervillc, Calif.

1, 430, 208

Total acre-

175,232,101

Uinta

Provo, Utah

933, 156

asre.

Umatilla

Pendleton, Oreg. . .

1 ,300, 650

TABLE B. — Census of big game on national forests, January 7, 1939 l

Kind of game

National-forest regions

Northern

Rocky
Mountain

South-
west

Inter-
moun-
tain

Califor-
nia

Pacific
North-
west

Nonpredators
Antelope

Number
1,000

8,000
470
131,000
39, 000
2,500
5,600
1, 100

Number
1, 180

5,820
106
155, 150
30, 900
520
20
3,200

Number
6,700

2,200
4
142,200
5, 100

Number
5,700

4,300
100
195,400
35, 300
2, 500

Number
2,200

10, 800

Number
1,280

13, 150
7
198,290
29, 000

Bear:
Black and brown

Grizzly . .

Deer

317, 500
331

Elk

Mountain goat

1, 500

5,300
40

Mountain sheep (Bighorn)

300

3,500

390
100

65, 300
52, 200
1,434
43

Wild boar

Predators
Coyote

28, 600
3,000
420
41

32, 750
7,290
299
1

33, 570
18,250
875
55

45, 600
10, 700
1,300
65

35, 000
16,240
1,257
145

Bobcat and lynx

Mountain lion

Wolf

1 Alaska is not included in the above census figures.

292

APPENDIX

TABLE B. — Census of big game on national forests, January 1, 1939 — Continued

Kind of game

National-forest regions

North-
east

South-
east

Lake
States

Total

National
forests
on which
found

Nonpredators
Antelope

Number

Number

Number

Number
18, 060

51,255
687
1, 545, 940
139,724
6,678
12,420
8,530
645

Number
35

134
33
158
95
31
30
55
4

Bear:
Black and brown

2, 150

775

4,060

Grizzly

Deer

52, 200
50
10

26, 200

43

328, 000

Elk

Moose

1, 148

Mountain goat

Mountain sheep (Bighorn)

Wild boar . .

545

Total

1,783,939

Predators
Coyote

7,000
2,500

247, 820
129,726
5,589
2,241

Bobcat and lynx

3,610

15, 936
4
441

Mountain lion

Wolf

1,450

Total

385, 376

TABLE C. — Number of fires in the national forests of the six western regions in relation to camper and
smoker fires, and number of recreational users, 1924-36, average annual figures

Period

Fires
from
all
causes
per year

Camper
fires
per year

Campers
and pic-
nickers per
year

Camper
fires per
10,000
campers
and pic-
nickers

Smoker
fires
per year

Recrea-
tional users
per year

Smoker's
fires per
1 0,000 rec-
reational
users

Total
area
burned
over

Area,
size of
fires

Number

Number

Number

Number

Number

Number

Number

Acres

Acres

1924-27

6,355

625

3, 551, 826

1.8

1,004

4, 967, 205

2.0

488, 643

76. 9

1928-32

6,272

674

4, 936, 328

1.4

1,247

7, 532, 826

1.6

475, 077

75.7

1933-37

7,002

643

6, 967, 495

. 9

1,481

14,472,302

1.0

198, 944

28.4

APPENDIX

293

IMPEDIMENTS TO RECREATION FOR THE ILL-TO-DO

TABLE D. — Distribution of income units (families and single individuals} in the continental United

States, by annual income level, 1935-36

Income level

Income units

Cumulative
distribution

$0-$1,000

Number
18,371, 170
13,652,157
4, 392, 423
1,712,658
929, 892

Percent
47
35
11

4/2

2^

Percent
47
82
93

100

$1,000-$2,000

$2,000-53,000

53,000-55,000

$5,000 and over

All income levels

39, 058, 300

100

100

TABLE E. — Amount and percent of population of continental United States in six zones according to the
cost of a round trip to the nearest national forest for a group of four, based on 1930 census

Cost zone

Maximum
round-trip
distance

Population

Cumulative
distribution

$0-55

Miles
83
167
250
333
417

Number
22, 263, 098
19,852,038
20, 896, 973
21, 123, 643
17,071,563
21, 567, 641

Percent
18
16
17
17
14
18

Percent
18
34
51
68
82
100

$5-$10

$10-$15

$15-$20

520-525

$25 and over

Total

•122,774,956

100

100

TABLE F. — Relation of percentage of entire United States population to percentage of national-forest

campers in each income class

Income class

Percentage of
entire United
States popula-
lation i

Percentage of
national-forest
campers 2

Ratio of percent-
age of United
States population
to percentage of
national-forest
campers in each
income class

$0-$1,000

47

18

1 to 0 4

$1,000-52,000

35

49

1 to 1 4

52,000-53,000

11

22

1 to 2. 0

53,000-55,000

4V4

8

1 to 1 8

55,000 plus

21A

3

1 to 1 2

Total

100

100

1 to 1 0

1 Based on figures in Consumers' Incomes in the United States; Their Distributions in 1935-36.

2 Based on 25,486 filled-out questionnaires to heads of families or independent individuals.

Index

Page
Absence of livestock from certain national

forest areas 155

Account that 30 foresters have written. . . . vn

Acknowledgment, by Russell Lord xni

Acquisition of forest land by Government. 262
Acreage —

in national forests 29

in national parks 29, 70

in State parks and forests 29

planted on national forests 147

Act—-
of May 1785, mining 216

of 1864, State park for Yosemite Valley

and Big Trees 66

of July 1866, Lode Law 216

of 1872, creating Yellowstone National

Park 69

of May 1872, grants basic mining rights. 217

of 1 890, Yosemite National Park 66

of March 1891, authorizing timber re-
serves 1 04

of June 1897, amending timber reserve

act 104

of 1 91 1 , Weeks Law 106

of August 1915, permits for mineral

extraction 217

Address, May 22, 1939, by Franklin D.

Roosevelt, quotation from 253

Adirondack type of open-front lean-to .... 93

Admiralty Island, management plans for. 236

Adventuring for pleasure 33

Agar, Herbert:

Land of the Free 215, 273

Louisville Courier, a conservation writer. 272
Agreement:

between Biological Survey and Forest

Service 211

between Bureau of Fisheries and Forest

Service 211

between States and Forest Service 209

Alaska (see also Juneau) —

agriculture in southeastern 236

assets of enormous value in 227

bears in the national forests of 232

big game on national forests of 231

commercial timber in national forests of. 235

deer of southeastern 231

Doonerak Mountain trip 73

Alaska — Continued.

fiords along Tongass National Forest .... 228

fish and game of 231

fox farming in 236

glaciers on the coast of 230

gold mines in 233

Indian seal hunters in 229

Indian village restoration 230

Indians native to 230

journey to, quotation from John Muir . . 227

lakes of 230

moose on the Kenai Peninsula of 232

mountain goats in 231

mountain sheep in the national forest of. . 232

national forests of 228

national-forest visitors in 228

newsprint production possibilities in .... 236

outstanding for wilderness animals 231

pleasure grounds of 232

population of 227

primitive, the priceless 227

Prince William Sound region of 228

recreational developments in 232

recreational planning on national forests

of 235

roads and trails 238

Sitka, former Russian capital 233

timber resources of national forests 235

Tongass National Forest in 228

tourist industry of 237

Tracy Arm, a narrow waterway in 229

vegetation, great variety to 230

visitors to southeastern 237

waterways of the coast 228

winter sports in 232, 233

Alligators on Choctawhatchee National

Forest 1 96

Alpine forests of high western ranges 13

American —
Automobile Association, distribution of

tourist expenditures 257

explorers and wildlife 201

folk-lore in respect to fire 167

Forests and Forest Life, Aldo Leopold in . 135

intemperance, overwork 20

occupation, march of 17

Red Cross 1 29

Wildlife Institute 211

Americans need outings 17

295

296

INDEX

Page

Anaconda, the copper town 46

Apache National Forest —

first tourist on 104

visitors to 105

Appalachian Mountain Club 121

Appalachians, southern hardwoods in the. 12

Appendix 287

"Archeological area" on national forests

defined 78

Area burned, western national forests 292

Areas (see also Archeological, Geological,
Natural, Scenic, Wild, Wilderness,
Virgin, etc.) —

grazed by livestock 1 51, 1 52

in national forests 289

of private land on national forests 258

of special value for recreation 287

stricken, planning for 138

Artificial planting, effect on recreational

use 147

Association —
American Automobile, distribution of

tourist expenditures 257

National Ski 119

Associations, local and general, advise in

national-forest recreation 287

Attractions of the Choctawhatchce bayou

country 91

Audubon Societies, National Association

of 211

Authors of Forest Outings v

Autobiography of Earth, by J. H. Bradley,

quotation from 241

"Auto-tourism" and the spirit of demo-
cratic unity 255

Babson estimates tourist business 256

Bad luck and fires 165

Basic principles of recreational manage-
ment 287

Battery and Bowling Green date from

1621 63

Bear, grizzly, in the West 197

Beaver, a prime conservationist 195

Bedding —

out, a common practice 156

sheep near campgrounds prohibited. ... 155

Bennett, Hugh, on forest fires 166

Bibliography 285

Big game (see also Game) —
forced from native ranges to national

forests 202

increases beyond capacity of ranges. . . 156, 157

Big game — Continued. Page

lowest ebb in 202

seeks low-lying winter ranges 156

species and numbers of, on national

forests 291

Bighorn sheep on 55 national forests 197

Big snow crop, gift or a curse 190

Biological Survey, wildlife research agency

of Federal Government 211

Birds, upland and song, on national forests. 201

Bismarck Dam, Harncy National Forest,

South Dakota 1 87

Black Hills of South Dakota-
sustained yield cutting of timber 148

water in 185

Blackwater fire, the 1937 159

Boars, Russian wild, on certain national

forests 197

Boston Common bought in 1634 63

Bourke-White, Margaret, and Caldwell,

Erskine, You Have Seen Their Faces . . . 273

Bradley, J. H., Autobiography of Earth,

quotation from 241

Buffer strips, roadside 97

Bureau of Fisheries —

cooperation with 205

improves fish habitats and population. . 211

Bureau of Labor Statistics, expenditures by

families 259

Burned —

area, western national forests 292

mountainsides, floodwater and silt run-
off 193

Burning the richness of the land 163

Business —

benefits from visitors' expenditures 257

is business, but ugliness is needless 182

Cabins, high country, for skiers 129

Caches, first-aid, for winter sports 129

Caldwell, Erskine, and Bourke-White,

Margaret, You Have Seen Their Faces . . 273
California (see also Yosemite and specific
subjects) —

tourist travel in 256

Yosemite Valley re-ceded to Federal

Government by 67

Cameron, Jenks, statement by 280

Camp —
and picnic grounds on national forests,

number of 114

at Deer Lake, Ocala National Forest .... 266

by a clear far creek 89

Dolly Copp, in northern New Hampshire . 95

INDEX

297

Camp — Continued. Page

4-H Club, Ocala National Forest 264

Hunting, on the Choctawhatchee Na-
tional Forest 92

Pahaska, on the Shoshone River 53

Pinchot, Choctawhatchee National

Forest 89

plan, multiple-building type of 264

Seeley, good structures and lay-out of . . 264

sets, definition of 97

sites, 3,800 on national forests 95

spots, time limits on occupancy of 110

Campers —

at Dolly Copp on Labor Day 98

fires, number of, in western national for-
ests • 292

learn to be careful 176

on Priest River, Idaho 159

on national forests in relation to United

States population 293

Campgrounds —

additional urgently needed 114

capacity on national forests 114

close to highways 53

developments by CCC 114

differences between 90

effects of overuse of 276, 277

facilities 97, 111, 113, 114

fuel logs for 110

number in the national forests 89

off the beaten track 53

questions concerning management 110

sanitation problems on Ill

sometimes overcrowded 114

use creates problems 109

Camps —
and picnic grounds on White Mountain

Forest 95

boys' and girls' 265

for underprivileged children 265

municipal vacation 264

of hunting, fishing, hiking, skiing clubs . . 265

of nonprofit organizations 264

of restricted membership organizations. . 265
organization, classes and number .... 264, 265

recreation, in Wasatch National Forest . . 262

tourist, reported by Census 257

Canoe travel 135

Caribbean National Forest (see also Puerto
Rico) —

area of 246

Dona Juana recreational area 249

has practically no fire hazard 161

La Mina recreational area 247

Toro Negro recreational unit 249

Page

Carnivals, winter 122

Causes —
and number of fires in western national

forests 292

of forest fires 172

Cave Mountain Lake, Jefferson National

Forest, Virginia 187

ccc-

activities in Puerto Rico 246

Blackwater fire tragedy 1 59

boys map their country 278

boys patrol the woods 169

campground developments by the 114

shelter built by 93

trails built by 14

Census of big game on national forests. ... 291

Central Park laid out in 1853 63

Centuries-old trees, the majesty of 142

Certain idiosyncracies 1 67

Chamberlin, statement by, to Governors. . 180
Chase, Stuart, Rich Land, Poor Land. . . 273
Chief, Forest Service, from the annual re-
port of 89

China, denudation in north 179

Choctawhatchee —

bayou country, attractions of 91

Camp Pinchot on the 89

hunting camp on the 92

resources of the 90-95

wildlife, a great natural crop 91

City-park movement, the 64

City, town, and county forests 64

Civilization has claimed choicest wildlife

range 201

Clean water 181

Climate of Puerto Rico 424

Club-
Appalachian Mountain 121

Dartmouth Outing 119

Ishpeming Ski 119

Mazamas 121

Mountaineers 121

Sierra 121

Wasatch Mountain 121

Clubs, early hiking in New England 62

Commercial timber on national forests,

area of 1 43

Committee, National Resources, estimates

of income distribution 259

"Commons," public, of New England. ... 28
Communities depend on Government

timber 1 42

Community forests, 1,500 in the United

States . . 64

298

INDEX

Competition — Page

among private-resort proprietors 96

between domestic stock and big game ... 1 57

Compromise with civilization 142

Concentrated recreational use —
on Los Padres National Forest, Cali-
fornia 155

provisions for 287

Condors on Los Padres National Forest,
California 196, 197

Coney Island, crowds at 26. 27

Conference of Governors on conservation . . 1 80

Conflict —
between industrial and recreational uses

of water 181

between mining and other uses on na-
tional forests 215

between timber cutting and recreation. . 143
between uses, adjusted on national for-
ests 209

between wildlife and timber use 207

in the forest 33

of interests between sportsmen 212

Confucius, writing in the solitude of trees. . 59

Conservation, human 273

Continental Divide, world beyond 79

Control of water 181

Cooperation —

with groups interested in recreation 287

with stockmen and sportsmen 157

Cooperative wildlife management plans
with States

Cordillera Central Range, Puerto Rico. . .

Coronado Expedition on the Apache
National Forest

Cost-
first, of forest recreation

of using national forests for recreation . . .

Cotton, effect of, on erosion

Counsel of experience when lost

209
243

104

260
261
18
288

Country needs timber 137

County parks and forests, a recent develop-
ment 65

County, town, and city forests 64

Couple from Spokane 38

Coyle, David Cushman:
Remarks on Prairie States Forestry Proj-
ect 282

Roads to a New America 273, 282

Crawford Notch, White Mountain Na-
tional Forest 61

Critics, literary: H. L. Mencken, Sinclair

Lewis 271

Crooked Lake Camp for 4-H Clubs 264

Page

Crop, the ultimate forest 7

Crops, some of the national forest 5

Cross-country skiing 1 27

Crowds at Coney Island 26, 27

Curse on soil repeatedly burned 1 66

Cut-over areas — •

provide food for wildlife 208

recreational, of Lake States 1 47

Cutting vacation costs 262

Dam — •
Bismarck, Harney National Forest, South

Dakota 187

Pounds Hollow, Shawnee National

Forest, Illinois 187

St. Charles, San Isabel National Forest,

Colorado 1 87

Tcnsleep, Bighorn National Forest ,Wyo-

ming 187

Vesuvius, Wayne National Forest, Ohio. 187

Dams —

cost of on national forests 185

for lake developments 186

powerhouses, and transmission lines in

the forest landscape 182

Daniels, Jonathan:

A Southerner Discovers the South 273

Raleigh News and Observer, a conserva-
tion writer on 272

Danville, New Hampshire, town forest. ... 64

Darling, J. N., conservationist on DCS

Moines Register-Tribune 272

Dartmouth Outing Club 119

Decentralized management on national

forests 3

Decline and restoration of wildlife 201

Deer (see also Game, Wildlife) —

five million in this land 8

in a Wisconsin cedar swamp 195

in cut-over pulp lands 1 38

maintenance of, in Alaska 236

of southeastern Alaska 231

on 161 national forests 1 99

on the Choctawhatchee National Forest. 92

overgrazing on the Kaibab 157

overstocking of 203

Deerlodge National Forest, Montana, Echo

Lake on 46

Denudation and erosion in North China. . 179

Denuded mountainsides and1 fish-depleted

streams 138

Derieux, James, Columbia State-Record,

tells about conservation 272

INDEX

299

Page

Desolation following fire 1 60

Developments 104

DeVoto, Bernard:

Depicting the pioneers 270

Mark Twain's America 270

Differences between rangers and landscape

architects 69, 107

Dolly Copp Forest Camp, story of three

parties at 95, 98

Doonerak Mountain, Alaska 73

Douglas fir —

forests of western Washington and

Oregon , 13

type, selective cutting in 145

Downhill trails 127

Dredged-up wastes 1 38

Driveways for stock on national forests.. 153

Drouth and deprivation, release from. ... 148
Dude ranches on national forests. . . Trrrr- 152

Dude ranch trips through wilderness areas . 73
DuPuy, William Atherton, The Nation's

Forests 1, 273

Each year they come 37

Earlier recreational improvements 106

Ease and peace vanish with fire 159

Eaton, Walter Prichard, Winter Sports

Verse 117

Echo Lake, Deerlodge National Forest,

Montana 46

Ecology and the drama of wildlife 196

Elk-
herd, The northern Yellowstone 157

on the Flathead National Forest, Mon-
tana 1 57

populations and feed during winter. . . . 204

Roosevelt, on 6 national forests 199

El Yunque, in the Luquillo Mountains,

Puerto Rico 246

Erosion (see also Floods, Soils, Water) —

effect of cotton on 18

effect of tobacco on 18

flood, and fire 167, 193

from burned mountainsides 193

from mining operations 183

in north China 179

on burned-over soils 166

protection by forests . . . , 189

strips tilled topsoil 180

European city, sign in the park of a 137

Everglades fire in 1939 169

Evjue, William T., Madison Capital-
Times, interprets conservation 272

Page

Expectation of the land 269

Expenditures:
by families, estimate of, by Bureau of

Labor Statistics 259

by national forest visitors 256

Experimental forest, San Dimas, in Cali-
fornia 191

Eye to the Sky, Foot to Earth vii, VIH

Facilities —

appropriate to forest environment 288

campgrounds 97, 111, 113, 114

miscellaneous, for winter-sports areas ... 1 29

winter sports, on national forests 123

Faith in America 279

Fake miners, misuse of national forests by. 215

Family and fisherman 40

Federal Writers Project, These Are Our

Lives 273

Feed for visitors' pack and saddle stock .... 155
Festivals, original form of mass outdoor

recreation , 60

Fiestas 245

Film stars' homes menaced by fire 166

Fire (see also Fires, Forest) —

above Pickens Canyon, California 191

Blackwater, in 1 937 on the Shoshone ... 159

creeping or leaping, disrupts outings. ... 160

damage annually 172

desolation following 1 60

floods and soil erosion 167

hazards in the New England hurricane . 175

in Berkeley, California , 175

in the Everglades, 1939 169

Investigation by Shea in South 165

protection from, on wilderness areas. ... 79

record, 1933-37 172

season varies with climate 160

then flood 193

Tillamook, the 1 67

tower, Choctawhatchee National Forest. 169

Fireplaces and facilities on national forests . 9
Fires —

and bad luck 165

and jungle menaces 165

and the game crop 164

banish ease and peace 1 59

bring real danger 1 60

burning at random, destroy timber. ... 9
causes and number of, in western national

forests 292

causes of forest 172

folklore and behavior respecting 167

300

INDEX

Fires — Continued. Page

in the piney woods 163

in Tujunga Canyon, California 193

kill reproduction 167

lightning, Kelley's comments 161

wilderness, protection against 77

First-aid caches for winter sports 129

Fish (see also Game, Wildlife) —

and game 231

population, rebuilding 205

Fisheries, Bureau of. (See Bureau of Fish-
eries.)

Fisherman and family, story of 40

Fishermen try their luck 138

Fishing —

and hunting as sports 1 96

in the West Indies 249

on Apache National Forest, trout 104

streams and lakes on national forests . . Ill, 201

Flathead National Forest, elk on the 1 57

Flocks and herds on the open range 152

Flood (see also Erosion, Water, Fire) —

caused by clear cutting 179

caused by overgrazing 180

Mississippi, March 1939 171

New Year's Day, 1934, in California. . . 191

on protected watersheds 138

Tujunga Canyon, California 193

Florida (see also Choctawhatchee) —

Everglades afire 165

vacation revenue of 256

Folklore and behavior respecting fire 167

Forage (see also Grazing, Livestock, Range,
Wildlife)—

for horseback trips 153

on the national forests 151

Forebears' attitude toward forests 21

Forest (see also City, County, State, Na-
tional)—

acreage in United States, original, pres-
ent, commercial 1 37

cover resists rapid run-off 189

development roads defined 105

dwellers on western Florida Gulf Coast . . 90

exploitation results 5

fires, causes of 172

fires, started deliberately by human

beings 163

growth in the South 141

management for the long pull 6

noncommercial, use of 1 38

officers are ex officio State game wardens . 204

officers smothered in fire season 161

parks owned by municipalities 64

Forest — Continued. Page

planning 233

ranger's responsibilities 3

ranges, uses of 151

reservations set aside in 1891 63

reserves, name changed in 1 907 63

reserves transferred in 1905 to Depart-
ment of Agriculture 63

the healing 279

types of 2

unfriendly to medieval men 59

visitors and timber crops in New Hamp-
shire 148

wildlife gives new interests 195

Forest products laboratory 139

Forest Service —

and State game commissions 157

bedding rules help preserve vegetation. 155

cooperates with National Park Service. . 211

established 63

manages the wildlife environment ...... 209

personnel „ . 70

policy 1

Forestry as a profession 279

Forests —

adventure to Americans 23

and parks, differences in recreational

methods 69

and parks, State, in New Hampshire .... 95

and parks, State, in Rhode Island 95

and water 179

community, 1,500 in the United States. . 64

for inspiration and recreation 195

guests of the 37

national, acres in 29

offer retreats from strain 9

owned by towns, counties, cities 64

pioneer, 820 million acres of 137

provide necessities for one-tenth of

population 280

State and national, illustrate multiple-
use principle 68

State, characteristics of 68

Foreword, by Henry A. Wallace vn

Fortune, editors of, sum up current prob-
lems 275

Fox farming in Alaska 236

Franconia Notch, highways through 96

Fraudulent mining claims 218

Freeman Lake fire blows up 159

Frontier attitude toward forests 21

Frontiers, New, by Henry A. Wallace. ... 17

Frost, Robert, A Further Range 254

Fuel wood for national forest campgrounds . 110

INDEX

301

Fur bearers (see also Game) — Page

on national forests 1 99

transplanting 206

Gallatin National Forest, campground on . 40
Game (see also Big Game, Fur Bearers, and
species names) —

and food supply relationships 1 96

census of 291

farms, fish hatcheries, and rearing ponds

on national forests 204

habitat, improving future 208

is food to the Alaskan 231

on national forests 195

population trends on western national

forests 203

refuges for, in national forests 204

species found on national forests 1 97

surplus of, trapping 206

the King's 195

transplanting on national forests 204

"Geological area" on national forests de-
fined 78

Glover and Cornell estimate of tourist ex-
penditures 256

Goats, mountain, increasing numbers of. . 197
Golden Day, by Lewis Mumford, quota-
tion from 269

Gold rushes, effect on migration 216

Government acquisition of forest land .... 262

Governors, conference on conservation... 180

Grass-made meat and wool 151

Graves, John Temple, Birmingham Age-
Herald, writes of the land 272

Grazing (see also Forage, Livestock) —

and recreation 153

as a major national-forest use 151

by livestock coordinated with wildlife . . . 207

romantic appeal of 1 52

Great Plains, shade for the people 148

Grizzly bear in the West 1V7

Guests (see also Campers, Tourists, Visit-
ors)—

camper, candid shots of 38

of the forests 37

paying, and the spirit of a forest neighbor-
hood 253

paying, communion with hosts 255

Habitat, improving game 208

Haida Indians of Alaska 230

Harding Reservoir, San Diego County,

California 190

Hardwoods of the southern Appalachians. 12

Page

Hardwood types and selective cutting .... 1 47
Hatton, John H., quotation from an un-
published manuscript 151

Haskell, Henry J., Kansas City Star, tells

about conservation 272

Headley reviews fire record 172

Hemlock-hardwood stands in Pennsyl-
vania 11

Henry, Patrick, warning of 18

Herty, Charles H., research of 139

Highways-
built for people's use 105

ugliness and confusion along 96

Hiking in the forests 79

Historians and economists, Frederick
Jackson Turner, Thorstein Veblen, John
Commons, and the Beards, Charles and

Mary 270

"Historical area" defined 78

History of recreation 59

Homes, summer, limited on national for-
ests 287

Horseback trips 79

Hosts and paying guests, communion be-
tween 255

Human conservation 273

Hunters on cut-over lands 138

Hunting —

and fishing as sports 196

camp on the Choctawhatchee 92

Hurricane in New England, hazards.... 175

Ill-to-do—

impediments to recreation by 293

people and the forest 259

Income —

distribution during 1935-36 259

units, distribution of, in the United

States 293

Incomes of national-forest visitors 261

Independence, the reward of toil 18

Industry, sustained yield by private 139

Indians —

at Twin Buttes tribal grounds 61

civilization of 60

first users of forests for recreation 61

native to Alaska 230

of the Borinquen race 241

on the Columbia National Forest 61

Indian village out from Ketchikan 230

Interests, conflict of 212

Isaiah 19, 6-7, from 179

Ishpeming Ski Club 119

302

INDEX

Page

Izaak Walton League, share in progress. . . 211

James, Harlean, Romances of the National

Parks 273

Jamestown —

founding of 1 37

"starving time" at 17

Jefferson's warnings 18

Jibaros, subsistence farmers of Puerto Rico . 241

Johnson, Gerald W.:

Maryland's Sun papers, writes of the

land 272

The Wasted Land 273

Jumps and tows, ski 129

Juneau (see also Alaska) —

gold mines of 233

Mendenhall Glacier near 233

Taku Glacier, south of 233

Tracy Arm, south of 233

Kaibab deer, overgrazing by 157

Kaibab squirrels in Arizona 197

Kaniksu National Forest, Priest Lake

Camp 38

Kelley reports on R— 1 fire conditions 161

Kenai Peninsula, Alaska 228

Ketchikan, Indian village out from 230

Kinds of outings 57

King, Rex, personal letter by 23

King's forest, scene of recreation 60

Kipling, Rudyard, The Feet of the Young

Men, from The Five Nations 57

Kober, Arthur, Having Wonderful Time . . 25

Laboratory, forest products 139

Labor Day crowd at Dolly Copp Camp-
ground 98

Lady taking notes, a single 43

Lake-
Cave Mountain, in Jefferson National

Forest, Virginia 187

Echo, Deerlodge National Forest, Mon-
tana 46

Priest, Kaniksu National Forest, Idaho. . 38
Rabun, Chattahoochee National Forest,

Georgia 189

Shores, Ozark National Forest, Arkansas. 187
Trappers, White River National Forest,

Colorado 53

Lakes (see also Water) — -

and pools in dry sections 187

water level regulation of 182

La Mina recreational area, Puerto Rico . . 247

Land — Page

area in national forests 1

area of private, in national forests 258

classes and use 143

expectation of the 269

problems of United States, books about . . 269

use priorities 142

when this was new 17

Law. (See Act.)

Lawsuits over water rights 1 90

Leighton, George, Five Cities 273

Leisure, Americans' reaction to 19, 20

Leopold, Aldo, in American Forests and

Forest Life 135

Lewis and Clark and wildlife 201

Lewis, Sinclair, creator of Babbitt 217

Lightning fires in Montana 161

Livestock (see also Forage, Grazing,
Range) —

and forest guests 152

driveways, relocating 153

excluded from large national-forest

areas 155

grazing restricted for wildlife 156

on southern and eastern national foresis. 152

salting, elimination near roads 155

Locations of national forests 289

Lodgepole pine type 147

Lone places for meditation 59

Lookout on the Choctawhatchee 169

Lord, Russell:

Acknowledgment by xin

Behold our Land 273

To Hold This Soil 285

Lorentz, Pare:

The Plow That Broke the Plains 270

The River 270

Los Padres National Forest, private owner-
ship in 262

Lost, what to do when 288

Lowdermilk, statement by 179

Lowest ebb in big game 202

Low-income groups, recreation for 287

Lumbering — •

and recreational conflicts 139

industry, methods of 139

Luquillo Mountains — -

Caribbean National Forest 244

dwarf forests of the . . 249

Mackinac Island, as a State park in 1885. 67

MacLeish, Archibald, Land of the Free. . 270

Maine Woods, The, by Henry D. Thoreau. 195

Majesty of centuries-old trees 142

INDEX

303

Management — Page

as one harmonious whole 143

decentralized on national forests 3

for the long pull 6

of the wildlife environment 212

policy to retain the primeval 77

principles of wildlife 205

Man's first food 279, 280

Map facing p. 288

Maricao Insular Forest of Puerto Rico . . . 249

Mariposa Grove of Big Trees, act of 1 864 . . 66
Mark Twain's America, quotation from, by

Bernard De Voto 270

Marshall, Robert —

attempt to climb Mount Doonerak 73

Doonerak or Bust 285

quotation from, in Nature Magazine. . . 73

Wind River wilderness trip by 83

Mass outings, limitations of 27

Masters' Spoon River Anthology, picture

of destruction from 269

Mayer, Albert, in the survey-graphic .... 275

Mazamas, the 121

McGuffey Readers, reference to 173

Meinecke, E. P., on effect of soil compact-
ing 276

Mencken, H. L., Baltimore Sun, literary

critic 271

Mendenhall Glacier near Juneau 233

Metropolitan district parks 65

Michigan, tourist money in 256

Might of America, statement by Jenks

Cameron 280

Mineral —

claims requirements are liberal 217

contests difficult and expensive 218

production, royalty collected on 217

Miners on national forests 215

Mines in Alaska 233

Mining —

a basic industry 215

activities sometimes injure public in-
terests 222

and other uses, conflicts between 215

before the coming of white men 216

bona fide, encouraged 216

conflict with recreation 215

history 216

improvements scar the countryside 221

industry, importance of 216

laws, higher public values not recognized

by 222

legislation, State and National 216

placer claims 217

Mining — Continued.

priority accorded by law to

sludge destroys woodland values

Modern life —

and overwork

enforces discipline

rest and change from

Molyneaux, Peter, of the Texas Weekly,

on conservation

Mono Island, west of Puerto Rico

Money from national forests returned to

States

Moose, increase in numbers

Mormon Church, accounts of recreational

use by

Mormon pioneers climbed Twin Peaks . . .

Motorists, picnickers, and campers

Motor trucks —

loaded with fire fighters

move livestock

Mountain-denuding fires followed by

heavy rains

Mountaineers Club

Mountain goats, numbers increasing

Mount Doonerak, attempt to climb

Mount Vernon, tobacco fields of

Mount Washington, first summit house,

1824

Moving game from overstocked to under-
stocked ranges

Muir, John:

A great naturalist

First Journey to Alaska, quotation from .
Multiple use — -

management, principle of

new needs and a broader concept of. ...

on White Mountain National Forest. . . .

plan of management on national forests .

policy of Forest Service

policy and recreational use

principle in national forests

Mumford, Lewis, The Golden Day

Municipal forest camps on national for-
ests

Muskellunge on national forests in Wis-
consin-.

Page

. 215

183

19

24
25

272
249

6

197

62

62

138

159
153

191

121

197

73

18

62
205

66

227

3

114

97

209

8

10

68

269

65

197
211

National Association of Audubon Societies.

National Forest (see also specific subjects) —

areas, names, and locations 289

area in the South 19

areas not grazed by livestock. ... 151, 152, 157
campers in relation to United States
population 293

304

INDEX

National Forest — Continued. Page

campgrounds, number of 89

cover, types of 143

crops, some of the 5

movement, origin of and development. . 104

names are beautiful 4

planting activities 147

products of the 6

ranges 151

range use balanced with forage produc-
tion 156

recreational developments complement

others 288

recreational use, few restrictions on 288

regions, the 3

use, growth in 109

visitors in 1938 70

visitors, total expenditures by 256

western, fires, showing number of and

causes 292

wildlife and a wildlife census 196

National Forests, the 1

and parks compared 69

birds in, upland and song 201

multiple-use plan of management on ... 209

names of, areas in, and locations of 289

not solidly timbered 143

offer space and stillness 28

161 all different 2

176 million acres in 137

principles governing recreational man-
agement 287

re-create a source of sustained income. . 142

return $4,903,376 to States in 1 939 6

sustained yield for 145

National parks —

attendance growth 109

centers of attraction 69

system consolidated, 1916 108

National Park Service —

area under administration by 70

Personnel 70

visitors reported by 70

National Resources Board, 1934 Report on

recreational land use 77

National Resources Committee —

estimates of income distribution 259

report on water pollution in the U. S. . . 184

National Ski Association 119

National Ski Patrol 129

"Natural area" on national forests de-
fined 78

Natural conditions on virgin, wild, and

wilderness areas . . 287

Page

Nature lovers oppose timber liquidation. . 145
"Nerves of iron and bodies of steel," Kelley

quotation 161

Neuberger, Richard:

Seattle Post-Intelligencer interprets con-
servation 272

Our Promised Land 273

New England —

fire hazard 175

hurricane damage to 175

New Hampshire's recreation business. ... 148
New land —

Alaska 227

when this was 17

New Mexico's tourist crop 256

Newsprint production possibilities in

Alaska 236

New woods and ways 13

New York Herald-Tribune, record of disas-
ter 166

Niagara State Reservation, New York's

first State park 67

Noncommercial forest land 138

Northern Yellowstone elk herd 157

North Woods, a promised land 23

Notch, Crawford, White Mountain Na-
tional Forest 61

Notes of a single lady 43

Number of fires in western national forests,

and causes of 292

Objectives —

in recreation administration 31

of national forests attuned to needs 104

of the forest program in Puerto Rico .... 250
Ocala National Forest — •

Camp at Deer Lake 266

4-H Club camp 264

Ocean and Great Lakes shores, ownership . 28
Odum, Howard, Southern Regions of the

United States 273

Off the trail 79

Old Land: Puerto Rico 241

Olmsted, planner of Central Park 63

Organization camps (see also Camps) —

five classes of 264, 265

low-cost forest recreation 263

Our country needs timber 1 37

Outdoor recreation, yearning for 21

Outdoors, rush to the 108

Outing, the great 20

INDEX

305

Outings — Page

Americans need 17

for the poor and ailing 265, 266

for the poor but healthy 265

kinds of 57

mass, limitations of 27

Overstocking of deer 203

Overuse of range damages soil and forage. 156

Overwork, an American intemperance ... 20
Owens, Hamilton, of Maryland's Sun

papers, about conservation 272

Paper from southern pine 1 39

"Parcelero" system in Puerto Rico 251

Parks (see also Municipal, City, State,
National) —

early, for recreation 63

national, centers of attraction 69

national, number and area of 29, 70

State, acres in 29

State and National, single-use principle

in 68

State, first of 66

State, land in, 1938 67

Parks and forests, differences in recreational

methods 69

Parlous days 279

Partial cutting of timber in national

forests 145

Pastoral pursuits of the human race 151

Paying guests (see also Guests, Tourists,

Visitors) 253

Peak load of national forest visitors 11

Pennsylvania, hemlock-hardwood stands

in 11

People —

sketches of, while on forest recreation. . 38

throngs of in forests 139

People's forests, soil, and crops 2

Philadelphia, William Penn parks in.... 63

Piccard's stratosphere flight 219

Pickens Canyon, California, fire in 191

Pic-nic, Brigham Young's 62

Picnic grounds at Little Bayou, Chocta-

wha tehee (see also Camps, Campgrounds). 94
Pike National Forest, Colorado —

government land for picnicking in .... 262

vacationists in 155

Pinchot —

camp on the Choctawhatchee 89

Gifford, first Chief of the Forest Serv-
ice 274

Gifford, on denudation and erosion in

North China. . 179

Pine — Page

lodgepole, of Rocky Mountains 12, 13

ponderosa, in west 12

forests in the South 19

western white, in Idaho 12

white and red, of Minnesota 12

Pinkham Notch, highways through 96

Pioneer Americans, attitude on toil 18

Pioneers, faults and virtues of 269

Pioneering, changes in concepts 20

Planning —
for national forest recreational use. . . . 10, 287

in Alaska's national forests 235

to avoid discord 152

Plantations on prairie and High Plains. . . . 280
Planting, artificial, beneficial to recrea-
tional use 1 47

Pleasure grounds 232

Pleasures —

in national forests 8

the national forests offer 10

Plow that Broke the Plains, picture by

Pare Lorentz 270

Poems of Robert Frost 254

Poets, Frost, Robert; MacLeish, Archi-
bald; Lorentz, Pare 270

Policy —

national forest, Wilson letter establishing . 1

recreation, administration of 94

recreational, statement of 287

regarding winter sports facilities 131

Ponce de Leon, discovery of Puerto Rico

by 242

Ponderosa pine —

in the Black Hills 148

timber type 145

Pools and swimming holes 185

Population —
of U. S. in relation to costs of reaching

national forests 293

of U. S. in relation to national forest

campers 293

Port Snettisham, near Tracy Arm 233

Post-war "normalcy" and the boom 108

Potlatch Lumber Company, favorite picnic

place of 43

Power developments and recreation 181

Pounds Hollow Dam, Shawnee National

Forest, Illinois 187

Prairie-Plains area —

recreational needs of 281

shade for people of 148

Prairie States Forestry Project 281

Predators of livestock and other wildlife ... 199

306

INDEX

Page
Priest Lake, Kaniksu National Forest,

Idaho 38

Primeval, management policy to retain ... 77
Primitive —

America 74

man and the forest 59

miners 216

the priceless 227

Prince William Sound, forests in the region

of 228

Principles — •
governing recreational management on

national forests 287

of management in forests and parks. ... 68
of wildlife management and environ-
ment 205

Priorities of use 143

Priority in recreational expenditures on

national forests 287

Private land within national forests, area of. 258
Private ownership of land in Los Padres

National Forest 262

Problems from growth of recreation 1 09

Products from national forests 6

Protected watersheds and flood damage. . . 138

Protection of recreational resource 31

Public—

"commons" of New England 28

defense of native values 258

entry, new ways of 13

forests of Puerto Rico 246

playgrounds, need for 28

sentiment on wildlife conservation 204

pleasure grounds in New, Hampshire ... 95
Puerto Rican Institute of Tourism, from

annual report of 250

Puerto Rican —

a mixed race 242

storms influence the 244

Puerto Rico —

a land of extremes 243

American occupation of 243

CCC activities in 246

climate of 244

contrasts between old and new 242

commercial stands of timber in 250

crop distribution 243

every acre must count in 251

fiesta, for recreation 245

found by Ponce de Leon 242

forest programs objectives 246

hurricanes in , 244

jibaros in 241

Puerto Rico — Continued. Page

La Mina Recreational Area 247

Luquillo Mountains 244

Maricao Insular Forest of 249

objective of the forest program in 250

parcelero system in 251

population of 241 , 243

public forests 246

travel to 241

rainfall of 244

rivers, importance of 244

road construction in 246

recreational areas in 247

San Juan, city of 241

soils of 241

tropical plants and trees in 249

timber production 251

topography of 243

use of recreational areas in 250

Pulp and paper mills, southern 141

Pulpwood towns, economic pressures on . . 139

Questions concerning campground man-
agement 110

Quetico-Superior international wilderness

sanctuary recommended 83

Rabbits, destruction of young trees by. ... 196
Rabun, Lake, Chattahoochee National

Forest 189

Rain —

comes to the DeSoto National Forest. . . 171

maker in Florida 170

Ranches, dude 152

Ranger, forest, responsibilities of 3

Range (see also Forage, Grazing, Live-
stock)—

areas on national forests 155

investments by stockmen 151

use on national forests 156

winter, a controlling factor in big-game

populations 156

Raper, Arthus, Preface to Peasantry 273

Receipts from national forests, 1939 6

Reconstruction in the New South 19

Recreation (see also Hunting, Fishing,
Winter Sports, etc.) —

administration objectives of 31

acquisition of land needed for 262

and modern life 24

and other forest uses 142

a public responsibility 28

areas of special value for 287

areas, rules are necessary on 29

INDEX

307

Recreation — Continued. Page

as a business in New Hampshire 148

beginnings on national forests 61

budget, average annual 260

business, trade statistics 255

conflict with lumbering 143

coordinated with timber cutting 147

costs, a criterion of class distinction 255

costs and appropriations for, on national

forests 115

for low-income groups 287, 293

forms of, common in forest 34

history of 59

and grazing, sore spots in 153

human values of woodland 280

industry, importance of 255

is a driving human need 27

no mere adjunct to water and timber

conservation 275, 276

on national forests, inexpensive, demo-
cratic, natural 255

outdoor, in the West 37

outdoor, yearning for 21

pioneer attitude toward 18

problem is human and pressing 55

problems from growth of 109

sketches of people on 68

urban attitude toward 24

Recreational —

area at Little Bayou, Florida 91

area, typical national forest 95

areas, use of, in Puerto Rico 250

center at Seeley Lake, Montana 101

developments on national forests 287

expenditures, estimates of 256

expenditures, priority of, on national

forests 287

facilities extended under push of de-
mand 113

management on national forests, prin-
ciples governing 287

needs of prairie-plains area 281

planning by forest officers 10

planning for Alaska national forests .... 235

policy of Forest Service 10, 31, 69, 255

resource, protection of 31

revenues from national forests 114

structures, invisibility of 278

use of cutover lands 138

use of national forests grows 109

use in 1891 on national forests 62

use in New England 148

use of national forests in future 115

users and fires in western national forests . 292

Recreational — Continued. Page

values defy price analysis 7

Reduction of livestock on national forest

ranges 156

Refuge from life in cities 29

Refuges —

and sanctuaries, State and Federal 204

for game in national forests 204

Regions, Forest Service 3

Relationship between game and the food

supply 196

Relief labor and forest recreational facili-
ties 113

Report —

National Resources Board, on recrea-
tional use 77

of F. A. Silcox, from the 159

of the Puerto Rican Institute of Tourism,

reference to 250

on Water Pollution in the United States,

by National Resources Committee ... 1 84

recreational, by Frank A. Waugh 108

Reporters describing, interpreting, conser-
vation 272

Research —

lags in forest economics and sociology. . . 279

need for immediate 276

needed on forest and desert light effects. 278

to amend recreational habits 277

Reservoir —

Harding, San Diego County, California. 190

silting of 183

Resorts —

class line drawn in the highest-priced. . . 255

in Florida 91

on private land, charges of 261

private, on national forests 288

government-owned are simple 287

Rest and change, a standing prescription. . 25

Revenue from recreational use on national

forests 114

River, The, film by Pare Lorentz 270

Road (see also Trails) —

Evans Notch in White Mountains 14

Galena Summit in Idaho 14

Mount Hood Loop, pregon 14

planning for recreational use 14

Roadside — •

desecration, resentment against 258

strips preserve scenic value 97

Romance of the West 152

Roosevelt —

elk on 6 national forests 199

Franklin D., in an address, May 22, 1939 . 253

308

INDEX

Roosevelt — Continued. Page
National Forest, Colorado, picnicking

space lacking 262

Theodore, cried havoc 180

Rorty, James, Where Life Is Better 286

Royal hunt, a form of recreation 60

Ruin in La Crescenta, Verdugo, Montrose,

La Canada, California 191

Rules (see also Policies) —

necessary on recreation areas 29

when lost 288

Rush to the outdoors 1 08

Russian wild boars on certain national

forests 1 97

Saddle and pack stock, feed for 155

Salting cattle near roads and trails elimi-
nated 155

San Bernardino National Forest, Camp

Seeley, lay-out of 264

San Dimas experimental forest, California. 191
San Francisco Fair stirred tides of travel

westward 108

Sanitation problem on campgrounds Ill

San Juan, Puerto Rico, a city of 140,000 . . 241

"Scenic area" on national forests defined . . 79

Schneider, Hannes, ski pioneer 121

Sears, Paul:

This is Our World 273

Deserts on the March 273

See America First 108

Selective cutting (see also Timber, Sus-
tained yield) —

hardwood types 1 47

In Douglas fir type 145

Seeley Lake, Lolo National Forest 101

Shasta National Forest, campground for

public use in 262

Shea, fire investigation in South 165

Sheep, bighorn, on 55 national forests. ... 197

Sheet erosion strips tilled topsoil 180

Shelters, warming, for winter sports 128

Shores Lake, Ozark National Forest, Ar-
kansas 187

Side shows 219

Sierra Club of California 121

Sign in the park of a European city 137

Signals, when lost or in distress 289

Single-use principle in national and State

parks 68

Silcox, Ferdinand A. —

excerpts from report by 1 59

late, Chief of the Forest Service 274

on the Tillamook fire 1 67

Single lady taking notes 43

Sitka — Page

by airplane from Juneau 233

spruce forests, western Washington and

Oregon 13

Sketches of people on forest vacations 38

Ski-
cabins in high country 129

jumps and tows 129

lobby, Timberline Lodge 1 38

Patrol, National 129

pioneer, Hannes Schneider 121

slopes, practice 133

tow outfits built by local sports clubs .... 131

trails carefully planned 127

Skiing (see also Winter Sports) —

at Timberline Lodge 127

centers on the national forests 121

cross-country 1 27

hazards of 128

overnight accommodations for 128

Slash after logging operations 1 47

Sludge, effects on woodland values 183

Smelter, damage to timber 221

Smith, Paul, San Francisco Chronicle, con-
servation writer 272

Smoke chasers hunting fires 161

Smokers' fires in western national forests . . 292

Sno-motor developed by Forest Service. . . 133

Snow —

buses, a recent development 125

reports, interest in 1 90

samples of, along trails 1 90

trains to winter sports areas 123

Soil-
healing in the South 19

production is slow 180

woodland binds from erosion 7

Songbirds in national forests 201

South—-
and the healing pine 139

coming back on thinned soil 19

human drain of, to North and West 18,19

national forest acreage in 19

State forest acreage in 19

Southern —

and eastern national forests and the live-
stock industry 152

editors and columnists who write of the

land 271,272

forestry methods 141

pines for paper, pulp, and rayon 139

portent of reconstruction 271

pulp and paper mills 141

Southerners, cost of exodus of 19

INDEX

309

Space — Page

and stillness in national forests 28

Sun, and Air 269

Spanish Peaks, Gallatin National Forest . . 40

Sports. (See Hunting, Fishing, Skiing,
Winter, etc.)

Sportsmen, conflict of interests between . . 212

Spruce and balsam stands in White Moun-
tains 11, 147

St. Charles dam, San Isabel National For-
est, Colorado 187

St. Joe Forest, Northern Idaho 43

State forests —

area in the South 19

characteristics of 68

in 39 States, acres in 68

and parks in Rhode Island 95

State game laws save wildlife 204

State parks —

first of 66

land in, 1938 67

States —

agreements with Forest Service 209

in which there are national forests 2

make and administer wildlife laws 209

receipts from national forests 6

Steinbeck, John, The Grapes of Wrath ... 273

Stevenson, Robert Louis, quotation from

An Inland Voyage 37

Stock driveways on national forests 153

Stockmen —

investment in ranch properties 151

use national forest pasturage 151

Stream pollution 183

Streams, fishing, miles of, on national
forests 111,201

Stricken areas in national forests 1 38

Structures, recreational, invisibility of

Forest Service 278

Studies and analyses needed 277

Sullens, Frederick, The Jackson Daily

News, on conservation 272

Summer homes —

cooperative associations 101

limited in national forests 287

on national forests, cost of 261

on national forests, permits to build. . . . 101

sites, selection of, on national forests. . . 101

Summit House, Mount Washington, 1824. 62

Superstitions and woods fires 163

Supervisor, forest, responsibilities of 3

Sustained yield (see also Timber) —

for national forests 1 45

measures. . 139

Swimming holes — Page

and pools 185

modern equivalent in national forests. . . 113

places, question of opening Ill

Tahoe tailings 138

Taku, glacier south of Juneau 233

Tamed vs. wildlife on national forests. ... 156
Tensleep Dam, Bighorn National Forest,

Wyoming 187

Thinned soil healing, in the South. 19

This Is Our World, by Paul B. Sears, quo-
tation from 225

Thlinget Indians of Alaska 230

Thoreau, Henry D. —

quotation from 269

The Maine Woods 195

Three parties at Dolly Copp Camp 98

Tillamook fire, the 167

Timber —

and recreation 137

cut, White Mountain National Forest . . 1 48
cutting and recreation go hand in hand . . 147
cutting methods provide food for wild-
life 208

invasion by throngs of people 139

is needed ; harvest must come 1 42

liquidation, nature lovers oppose 145

of infinite variety in national forests. ... 2

operations and woodland charm 142

type, ponderosa pine 145

Timberline Lodge, Mount Hood National

Forest 127

Tobacco, effect of, on the land 18

Tongass National Forest, fiords of 228

Totem poles, Forest Service restoring 230

Tourist (see also Camps, Visitors, Recrea-
tion)—
business along the western Florida Gulf

Coast 91

business in New Hampshire 1 48

camps reported by Census, 1933, 1935 . . . 257

crop revenue, New Mexico 256

expenditures (see also Expenditures), esti-
mate by Cornell and Glover 256

money in Michigan 256

travel in California 256

Tourists 237

Town, county, and city forests 64

Tows and jumps, ski 129

Tracy Arm, south of Juneau 233

Trails (see also Roads) —

and roads and fire danger 176

built by CCC 14

downhill 127

ski, carefully planned 127

310

INDEX

Page
Transplanting game animals, fur bearers,

game birds, and fish 204

Transportation costs of forest recreation . . . 260
Trappers' Lake, White River National

Forest, Colorado 50

Trapping surplus game 206

Tree-
growth and water yield, effects of new

roads on 277

of Jove, man's first food from 279, 280

Trees —

harvesting of old 1 42

in long strips, Prairie States Forestry

Project 281, 282

to the people 280

Trips, rigors of wilderness 73

Tropical plants and trees in Puerto Rico. . 249
Trout streams on Apache national forest . . 1 04
Tujunga Canyon, California, fires in the. . 193
Type-
Douglas fir 145

lodgepole pine 1 47

Typical national forest, timber on 143

Unforeseen conflicts 215

United States Department of Agriculture —

Forest Service, report of the Chief, 1938 . 1 59

steps by, to restore wildlife 8

Up from Wind River 83

Upland birds on national forests 201

Use of national forests, growth in 109

Uses of forest ranges 151

Vacations, ways of cutting cost of (see also

Recreation) 262

Values that defy price analysis 7

Vegetation untouched by livestock 157

Vesuvius Dam, Wayne National Forest,

Ohio 187

"Virgin area" on national forests defined . . 78

Virgin areas, provision for 287

Visibility, a subject of Forest Service re-
search 278

Visitors —

character and habits change rapidly. ... 105

expenditures, business benefits from .... 257

hunger for natural things 10

in 1938, on national forests 70

in national forests, 1924 and 1938, com-
pared 109

in State forests 68

increase the fire risk. 106

report, Puerto Rican Institute of Tourism . 250

saddle and pack stock, feed for 155

Visitors — Continued.

sketches of, on forest recreation

the "peak load" of, in national forests. .

to southeastern Alaska

to the Apache National Forest

Visits —

number of, to national forests

recreation, 1909 and 1935 compared. . .

to forest areas in Puerto Rico

Voodoo notions . .

Wagner, Phillip, Maryland's Sun papers,

writes of the land

Walker, Capt. Joseph Reddeford

Wallace, Henry A. —

A Foreword by

New Frontiers

on saving soil and forests

Wain, Nora, Reaching for the Stars

Warming shelters for winter sports

Warnings by Thomas Jefferson and Patrick

Henry

Wasatch Mountain Club

Wasatch National Forest, recreation

camps in

Washington on tobacco at Mount Vernon .
Water (see also Floods, Erosion) —

and forests

a primary product of national forests . . .

for pleasure

in the Black Hills of South Dakota

is the lifeblood of any region

is plentiful, on most national forests ....

problem of providing

rights, lawsuits over

run-off, guarding against excessive

Water levels —

and forest pleasure grounds

and wildlife

Water pollution in the United States, re-
port by National Resources Board

Watersheds —

protected, reduce flood damage

that are closed to recreational use

Waterways for camping and swimming. . .
Waugh, Frank A., recreational survey and

report

Waymack, W. W., Des Moines Register-
Tribune, on conservation

Ways and means

Wealth in the raw, endless

Webb, Walter Prescott: Divided We

Stand, and The Great Plains

Weeks Law, act of 191 1

Weinberger, vacation expenditures, total . .

Page

38

11

273

105

89
106
250
163

272
66

VII

17
274

59
128

18
121

262
18

179
181
184
185
190
185
111
190
189

183
208

184

138
185
183

108

272

253

17

273
106
256

INDEX

311

Page

West, romance of the 152

Western Colorado mountains, White River

National Forest 50

West Indies, fishing in 249

What to do when lost 288

When this land was new 17

White Mountains —

fall months in 98

stands of spruce and balsam in 11

White Mountain National Forest —

camps and picnic grounds in 95

Crawford Notch pleasure resort 61

multiple-use on 97

timber cut from 148

White, E. B., on a conservation program,

in Harper's Magazine 274

White River National Forest, western

Colorado 50

White, William Allen, Emporia Gazette, a

conservation writer 272

Wild, the 73, 79

"Wild area" on national forests defined. . 78

Wild areas, provision for 287

Wilderness —

advice to inexperienced in 81

animals, in Alaska 231

areas on national forests, definition of. . 78

areas, provision for 287

fires, protection against 77

reactions of people to 81

sentiment about 74

traveler faces uncertainty 79

trips, rigors of 73

zones of 78

Wilderness Society, 1935 platform 74

Wildlife (see also Game, Fishing) —

a forest crop 205, 207, 208

and water levels 208

can no longer shift for itself 212

Choctawhatchee's great natural crop. . . 91
cooperation between National Park Serv-
ice and Forest Service 211

comments on, by Lewis and Clark 201

decline and restoration of 201

environment managed by Forest Service . 209 ,2 1 2

in natural surroundings 195

lacking in Puerto Rico 247

management in national forests 202

national forest, and a wildlife census. ... 196

policies of the future 212

refuges and sanctuaries, State and Fed-
eral 204

relief measures, temporary 206

Wildlife— Continued. Page

restoration of, in forests 8

what value of 7

William Penn parks in Philadelphia 63

Wilson, James, letter establishing national-
forest policy 1

Windbreak plantings, Prairie States For-
estry Project 281

Wind River, wilderness trip in 83

Winston, Ellen, and Woofter, T. J., Jr.,

Seven Lean Years 273

Winter carnivals 122

Winter range —

and big-game populations 156

problem, Yellowstone National Park. ... 21 1

the controlling factor in game populations. 203

Winter sports (see also Skiing, Recreation) —

areas, highways to 125

areas, snow trains to 123

facilities on national forests 123

first-aid caches for 129

growth in popularity 117

in Alaska 232, 233

origin of 119

participation increasing 118

snowshoeing 119

unnecessary snob appeal of 118

Wolfe, Linnie Marsh, John of the Moun-
tains 4

Woods fires and superstitions 163

Woods industry —

capital values of 139

conflict with recreation . 139

and employment 139

Woofter, T. Jr., and Winston, Ellen, Seven

Lean Years 273

Work, and escape from it 19

Work, rough, on women 21

Workers in forests and forest industries,

number of 139, 280

World War, effect on recreation 108

Writers about conservation and the land. . 272

Yellowstone National Park, act of 1872. . 69

Young couple from Spokane 38

Young, Brigham, Picnic of 62

Yosemite —

National Park, act of October 1 890 66

Valley, act of 1864 66

Valley re-ceded to Federal Government. 67

Zones —

for special treatment 143

of wilderness 78

Zoo without cages 195

188726—40 — O

IflfifU*