Appalachian Forest Experiment Station, 1921-1934

INTRODUCTION

The American forest has been likened to the goose that laid the golden eggs. This fairy tale reference applies in more ways than one. The nation's lumbermen, responding to the demands of the unenlightened public, once tried hard to kill the goose in order to extract all the eggs at once. There was a dismal dawning, however, and we realized the folly of hoping for eggs from a dead goose. By slow degrees we reached another conclusion: that a forest, like a goose or any other living thing, must be fed, nursed and shielded from wanton injury if its yield of wealth is to continue indefinitely.

By painful experience, through many trials, tribulations and political tea-pot storms, we arrived at this truth which was self-evident all the time. And in this story is the story of the U.S. Forest Service.

Appearing late, developing slowly, this new federal function at last thrust ahead with startling speed. An idea's time had come. Yearly it gains more importance in the eyes of the people, and fast friends have been made with the once hostile and rapacious elements that opposed it.

So the time came for a gradual transition from the original and largely empirical methods to ones based on a scientific and minutely detailed procedure.

Planned were experimental studies of every fact and factor working for or against the successful preservation, renewal and use of the forest in all its aspects--as a source of lumber and wood products of every kind; as a stabilizer or our climate and our water resources; as a protecting covering for the soil as a sanctuary for various species of a diminishing wildlife; as a livelihood for millions, and not the least, as a recreational refuge for other millions. For the exclusive pursuit of this work, which touches the very roots of the national welfare, a new section of the U.S. Forest Service was created. It was known as the Branch of Research, with general headquarters in Washington, but it had field units placed in widely separated points in the nation.

One of the units was the Appalachian Forest Experiment Station, which was one of the first to be established under the new thought--a thought predicated on the fundamental truth that any relationship, whether between man and man, or between man and nature, must be reciprocal, a matter of give and take, if it is to be mutually beneficial.

The Appalachian Forest Experiment Station--now part of the Southern Research Station--dates back to the summer of 1921. As its original name intimates, it was primarily founded to operate within the belt of hardwoods and pines which is characteristic of the world's oldest mountain range. Quite logically--since the city was an important hub in the 1920s, and remains so--the headquarters was established at Asheville, North Carolina.

However, its research, activities and influence extend not only throughout the mountain ranges--whose importance as watersheds equals their majesty--but also into the piedmonts and coastal plains of the states within its territory. During the year of its existence the station has indeed grown from the proverbial acorn into one of those sturdy oaks typical of the original forest. So the time seems ripe for a brief but detailed summary of what the station is, how it works, what it means to the national economy. The story is one of the substitution of a policy of planned cooperation for one of happy-go-lucky muddling through. For the furtherance of understanding, this study must necessarily trace some of the early efforts to establish a research and experiment branch by the government as required by the growing multiplicity of forest needs.

The first forest experiment station was founded in 1908 on the Coconino Plateau in Arizona. By 1913 five more had been established in the six western administrative jurisdictions. All were local in their scope and too isolated in their locations. They were not sufficiently equipped for modern methods of study. Although they accomplished much against high odds, the need of a more effective apparatus was soon realized. In 1915 Col. Henry S. Graves, who had succeeded Gifford Pinchot as Forester, merged all such activities into a new and distinct unit called the Branch of Research.

Two regional centers of research were established in 1921, and one of these was the Appalachian Forest Experiment Station.

Many factors were taken into account in the establishment of the Appalachian station. The primary consideration was the unique range of vegetation in these mountains. Dr. Isaiah Bowman, in his monumental "Forest Physiography", said that the most notable qualities of the Appalachian Mountains are "their great height and ruggedness, their great a real extent, and their dense and valuable forests."

Another prominent geographer, Robert Marshall, defines the "superlative characteristics" of the Great Smokies: "Most rugged eastern mountain range; largest virgin timber tract in east..."

The descriptions are apt, but short of a telling description. The Southern Appalachians must be regarded as one of our most interesting natural features. Geologically these mountains are among the oldest in the world, if not the oldest of all, as some authorities claim. They lack the alpine grandeur of the Rockies and the Cascades, but they have instead a serene beauty of their own, less overwhelming, yet no less impressive. Although including some forty peaks known to be more than 6,000 feet high, they are as a rule forest-clad to the very top, with only occasional outcroppings of bare rock. Even the treeless knobs known as "balds" have a rich covering of other vegetation. Looking abroad from one of those open spaces, you have spread before you a vast green sea, from which the crests rise like ocean waves after a storm. Yet you find among their generally rounded contours fantastic formations like Hawk's Bill Mountain and Table Rock, opposite the famous Linville Gorge, which suggest the configurations of the Black Hills. There are few lakes, but streams abound, and frequently these plunge into waterfalls whose charm is not often surpassed anywhere. It is a country so rich in superb views that their very abundance prevents any one among them from receiving the concentrated public recognition that it deserves.

The varied flora in this region has drawn enthusiastic comment from one student after another, and among the trees you find specimens which remind you that the ridges silhouetted against the far horizon were mountains when inland America still rested beneath the ancient waters. While this region shows its most protopian features in Western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee, it also extends from central Alabama into south Pennsylvania, and covers more than 78 million acres. Lumbering on a large scale did not begin in this territory until the present century, so comparatively large areas have been permitted to retain a virgin growth.

When the movement for building a system of national parks had begun in the late 1800s in the west, it was expected that persons familiar with the mountain district of the southeast would push to have it added to "our national gallery of scenic masterpieces."

A North Carolina Methodist preacher, the Rev. C.D. Smith of Macon County, first gave this idea exposure in the Waynesville newspaper in the early 1880s. Shortly afterwards a Boston physician, Dr. Henry O. Macy--impressed by the health-giving properties of the mountain--advanced the same idea. It was inevitable that the idea should take root in Asheville, already the chief urban center of the eastern Appalachian slopes. Among those who took up the challenge and fanned it into wide public sentiment were Col. Allan T. Davidson, Rutherford P. Hayes, Dr. Chase P. Ambler, George H. Smathers, Capt. Thomas W. Patton, Cope Elias, Charles A. Webb, George S. Powell and Dr. Carl A. Schenck.

Nothing definite was done until 1899, when Secretary of State William R. Day of Ohio was on a fishing trip on the streams of Western North Carolina and became interested. He suggested the formation of an organization which might bring the problem to the attention of Congress.

But the people who gave birth to the movement knew that it must be more than a local push. A meeting was held at the old Battery Park Hotel on November 22-23, 1899, and it drew a large attendance from seven southeastern states. Sentiment in favor of the project was unanimous, and this was followed by favorable response in the southern press.

The first organization formed was named the Appalachian National Park Association, with George S. Powell as its first president. Dr. Amber, to whom credit is given for subsequent accomplishments of the group, was named secretary. There followed a joint survey by the Bureau of Forestry and the Geological Survey of about 9,600,000 acres of forest land to determine its suitability as a national reserve.

Some years of resistance in congressional circles passed, and by 1905 the American Forestry Association took charge of the entire movement. The resultant expanding agitation led to the passage of the 1911 Weeks Act, under which the government was empowered to acquire private lands as needed for the protection of "the headwaters of navigable streams."

It has been said that the victory was gained by the use of a subterfuge which might not stand a scrutiny by the Supreme Court. But that body has never been called upon for a decision, and the essential wisdom of the act has never been seriously questioned. The fact is, that without extension of government control to the forests on the Atlantic side, American forestry could not have reached its present position.

The first land acquired in 1911 under the new law was a tract of 8,000 acres not far from Asheville. In 1915, 86,700 acres was purchased from the Biltmore Estate, and this was the nucleus of the Pisgah National Forest Reserve. Seven years later the tracts known as the Grandfather, French Broad and Mount Mitchell Divisions were combined with the original reserve under the name of the Pisgah National Forest, with a total of 325,000 acres. On June 30, 1931, the seven national forests of the Southern Appalachians comprised a net area of more than two million acres within the states of Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia.

There was, out of several reasons for the first research headquarters to be located in Asheville, one good one.

When about 1890 the late George W. Vanderbilt gathered up some 200 square miles of land along the French Broad and Swannanoa rivers near Asheville, to form an estate on European models, with a chateau in the French style as its manorial residence, one of his first concerns was the reforestation of tracts which had been stripped of trees without being put to together uses. With the help of the elder Frederick Law Olmstead as landscape architect, he planned a forest that would be both ornamental and useful. For the proper management of this variegated forest, he hired Gifford Pinchot as the first resident forester. When Pinchot resigned in 1895, he was replaced by Dr. Schenck, a young German who had received an excellent theoretical and practical education in his native country. In 1896 he opened the first scientifically conducted forestry school in this country.

Through his experimental work on the estate, through his school and through the influence he wielded far beyond both, Dr. Schenck became one of the founders of modern America forest management and research. And it was through the work done by him and his predecessor that Asheville became known from coast to coast as "the cradle of scientific forestry in America", a point of pilgrimage for native and foreign students and champions of the forest.

So the close proximity of Asheville to the Biltmore Estate, where such rich material was available for immediate study, must be one of the factors resulting in the selection of that city as the headquarters of the Appalachian Forest Experiment Station.

Then, during the first half of 1921, the Forest Service's Branch of Research reorganized its field services. Three of the six experiment stations started between 1908 and 1913 had been discontinued. In the summer of 1921, one of the closed stations was ordered reopened and new ones at New Orleans and Asheville were opened.

The huge demands of the eastern and central states for cheap softwood lumber could only be filled from the southern pine belt, while the Appalachian region held the only large hardwood forests left in any part of the country. However, production of lumber had decreased to an alarming extent during the second decade of the century, and without a renewal of those southern forests the prospects were that the east would have to begin procuring supplies from the far west and its hardwood lumber from abroad--at a higher cost.

THE APPALACHIAN FOREST EXPERIMENT STATION

On July 1, 1921 the Appalachian Forest Experiment Station was born in Asheville. The task of organizing it fell to Earl H. Frothingham, and Iowan who had graduated from the University of Michigan. He had served in the Forest Service for fifteen years as forest assistant, forest examiner and silviculturist. Frothingham had the experience of carrying out a number of preliminary investigations within the district to which he was assigned.

The staff of the new station was to consist of the director and three technical assistants, with a clerk to keep the records. The men selected were Ferdinand W. Haasis, a Yale Forestry School Graduate attached to the Fort Valley Experiment Station in Arizona; and E.F. McCarthy, a nine year faculty member of the New York State College of Forestry, and at the time of his appointment employed as a research specialist by the Dominion of Canada. The clerk was Miss Josephine Laxton of Asheville.

The territory included the entire states of Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia and North Carolina, plus the eastern parts of Kentucky and Tennessee, the northern parts of Alabama and Georgia, and the northwestern corner of South Carolina. It was a territory of more than 120 million acres--mountain, piedmont and coastal plain--more than half of which was covered by widely divergent forests. The instructions of the director provided that the station should "pursue forest investigations on National Forests and on private lands, in cooperation with owners, logging operators, State Foresters and others."

Fortunately, the men to whom fell this rather appalling task were still young -- Frothingham, 40; McCarthy, 36; Haasis and Korstian, 30. The need was great for all their energy and enthusiasm. As the work took shame, they became the four horsemen -- galloping off to the four quarters of the compass while Miss Laxton held the fort.

When Frothingham took charge on July 1, and for a couple of weeks afterwards, it was he and he alone. He occupied a borrowed desk in the offices of the Pisgah National Forest. Two weeks later Haasis and McCarthy reported, and near the end of the month permanent quarters were found on the second floor of a building just taken over by the Asheville Citizen. Three rooms in all. A very small one for the clerk, a somewhat larger one for the director, and a fairly large one for the rest of the staff. No laboratory, no nurseries, no experimental forests, practically no equipment of any kind. The director had an annual appropriation of $17,300--enough for salaries, rent and a moderate amount for traveling expenses.

The fourth member of the technical staff, Korstian, spent that first period at Madison, WI working out plans for close cooperation with the Forest Products Laboratory. By then the initial orientation was under way and the territory had to be reconnoitered. Connections had to be established with the four National Forest Supervisors and the nine State foresters within the region as well as with business organizations having forests that might be used for studies of various kinds. And Washington had to approve a program of suitable investigations.

Each experiment station was more or less autonomous within its own field. So it is, as far as investigations are concerned, but the stations were not allowed to pick each problem to suit itself. It had to function as a vital part of a whole--the work of the Branch of Research--and practically all of it had to be coordinated with similiar work under way at other stations, or by corelated agencies. The "investigative program" of each station had to be fitted into a national program covering the forests of the nation and outer territories.

One of the first projects undertaken by the Appalachian Station was determined in advance as part of a larger study begun by the Forest Service that very year. Known as "the public requirements program", it aimed at the formulation of a set of minimum measures necessary to keep all forest lands productive and to keep the productivity increasing. The study fell into two parts, the first one dealing with measures required to prevent forest lands from becoming unproductive and the second dealing with practices for the further improvement of such land. The new station was expected to conduct this twofold investigation on behalf of its own territory, and it did so with such dispatch that a preliminary report was submitted in January, 1922.

Another project that fell into the lap of the station was a detailed survey of the forest station experiments inaugurated by Pinchot and Schenck on the Biltmore Estate.

Here was a ready-made study with experiments to be undertaken while the definite program could be discussed. But the task was more involved than it appeared. It was not enough to examine and record existing conditions. No matter how thoroughly and minutely the survey. it would mean little unless compared with a series of earlier data. The history of each tree had to be known in order to determine the lessons to be drawn from the particular experiment of which it formed a part. But the creator of that estate had died in 1914. Dr. Schenck, who knew more about the various plantations than any one else, lived in Germany after the first World War. The work on the forests had not been dropped, but the records had been scattered or lost. Maps for the identification of the different plots could not be found, and so on.

Month after month Haasis spent a considerable part of his time on this task, drafting report after report only to find that additional data were needed before his computations and conclusions could assume the degree of correctness demanded of a government bulletin. In fact, his final report of 480 typewritten pages covering 87 separate stands of trees that had been planted 35 years earlier--including 40 different species--was not finished until 1924. These details are given because they illustrate two conditions that are fundamental to effective forest research: namely, permeance of work and continuity of records. Individuals and corporations die, but the government lives on. Privately owned forests change hands, or the owners change their minds, but a government project will be carried on by generation after generation of workers until its purpose is attained.

About that time, the station received its first call for assistance. A number of companies in Virginia and North Carolina were interested in southern white cedar. They were troubled by the usual problem--supply not keeping up with demand.

The tree, known locally as a juniper, grows on coastal swamplands from New England to Mississippi. It is valued because it grows rapidly in areas which are otherwise worthless and yields a light durable wood which can be easily worked with. When the blight began to kill off the chestnuts--heavily used for telegraph and telephone poles, the best substitute was found in the white cedar. Yet foresters had paid scant attention to it, and hardly anything was known about the most favorable conditions for its growth.

And so in response to an urgent demand for more information, Korstian, accompanied by the state foresters of Virginia and North Carolina, set off for that Dismal Swamp. They spent twenty-two dreary November days, toiling long hours under difficult conditions. They were sometimes forced to hack their way through an undergrowth so thick that they could not crawl through it. Among the more conspicuous features of that jungle-like vegetative tangle was a thickstemmed blackberry with spines curving backward like fish-hooks. Enough for the angels to curse, to the foresters it was just another aspect of the job.

While gathering preliminary data on growth rate and speed, reproduction information and how the stands could be improved by thinning, Korstin and his companions were able to establish a few facts of immediate value.

First, that the cedar swamps were useless for agricultural purposes, so that their often proposed draining would be a waste; and secondly, that the white cedar demands a special soil, peat over sand, thus rendering the extension of its range for commercial purposes out of the question; and thirdly, that the seeds of the white cedar, like those of the Douglas fir, remain stored in the soil for a long time--millions to the acre, capable of germination whenever favorable conditions occur. This last discovery caused Korstian to bring back a good-sized package of such seeds, for which he improvised beds in an empty attic with an artificially produced tea-kettle temperature. Thus the station obtained its first nursery, and when too persistent visitors could be dismissed in no other way, they were taken up to the attic. Following that, they were quite happy to get back to the open air.

Later Korstian paid prolonged visits to the cedar swamps of New Jersey, Florida and Mississippi. From each place sample logs were forwarded to the Forest Products Laboratory at Madison for analysis. This is told to highlight certain recurring features of the work done by a station in the Appalachians. One of these is the extent of territory covered and the length of time frequently consumed in the course of a single investigation. Korstian and his collaborators began their work in 1921, but the report embodying the final results of that work was not finished until ten years later--although parts of it were conveyed to the interested industry as quickly as they became available.

Another feature is the amount of cooperation involved in a study. In the case of the white cedar, cooperating were the Appalachian and Southern Forest Experiment Stations; the State Forestry Departments of North Carolina, Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts; the Forest Products Laboratory at Madison, Wisconsin; the Offices of Forest Products and Forest Pathology at Washington; the Bureau of Entomology at Washington; and the forest services of several private companies in Virginia and North Carolina.

The three undertakings so far outlined are fairly typical of the work into which the station was plunged within a few weeks of its birth, but they do not reveal the activities demanded of the small staff. Gradually each member found himself engaged in half a dozen investigations of different kinds, and causes for new ones turned up constantly. Thus, for instance, the monthly report of October, 1921, contained this brief but ominous passage: "At Star Gap, in the Pisgah National Forest, there was found a fungus disease which is apparently chestnut blight." Appearing first in 1904 in New York, the deadly plague had made its way to the Appalachians at last, and to the station this fact alone meant a whole host of serious problems.

A herbarium and a library had to be built up. The station has to be represented at conventions and conferences more or less connected with the forest and what men got from it. In September, 1921, the director took a leading part in the organization of the Appalachian Section of the Society of American Forests, which ever since has been an important factor in the development of forestry within this region. At the same time, he and his associates were repeatedly called on for public addresses...three of them before the station was a month old. And for contributions to newspapers and periodicals. Asheville took a deep interest in the new government agency, and the local press was so eager in its support that the director had to sometimes beg off.

Then visitors began arriving in growing numbers--some from far places like Japan and Queensland. All of these had to be taken through the Biltmore plantations, to which a Japanese professor referred as "one of the historical localities for American forestry."

And during that first year, there remained the basic task of getting familiar with the district and of formulating a definite, sufficiently far-reaching program of investigation that would fit in with the general program of the Board of Research.

The high points of a tentative program won the approval of Washington in February, 1922, and not long afterwards field work began in earnest on several permanent projects--i.e., studies to be continued indefinitely.

During April the first "sample plots" were established in the Pisgah National Forest for a combined study of natural reproduction after cutting and of damage from grazing. It must be said that an experiment station without sample plots is like a ship without a compass.

Then in May Korstian was called to High Point, N.C. on an errand which did not appear to be within the jurisdiction of the Forest Service, but which was typical of the assistance the Service was ready to offer a legitimate private enterprise. The Southern Furniture Manufacturers Association had entered a protest against certain freight rates held to be discriminatory. Korstian was asked to furnish a scientific basis for their contentions by establishing the exact relationship between the wieght and bulk of certain timbers. With the cooperation of the Forest Products laboratory he did, and subsequently he appeared as one of the principal witnesses when the case was heard before the Interstate Commerce Commission. In the meantime, McCarthy was surveying damage caused by a fire which had burned over 2,200 acres of Unaka National Forest. Haasis, between other jobs, was extending first aid to a number of Asheville residents whose lawn trees had shown signs of infection. Finally, during the same month of May, the station received its first assignment of temporary field assistants, mostly young students who spent their summer months gathering practical experience.

Everything considered, the director was entitled to declare in his report for June, 1922--the end of the first year--that "the station has made an undoubted start; it has already a past." But this expression of satisfaction was followed by a sentence of far greater significance: "Our short contact with the conditions of this region,"he wrote," has been sufficient to show that we have only been scratching the surface of the most awesome assortment of complicated forest problems ever created to try the powers and patience of investigators."

The first year was crucial. It marked the opening of a new departure in research methods. It was also the time of greatest handicap, when the apparatus of investigation had to be assembled piecemeal, and when the station perforce must operate under practically the same conditions as those earlier ones which had been found inadequate to the demands of the task involved. For the service of a far more extensive territory, the staff had been enlarged, but otherwise there was as yet no great difference in equipment. Nevertheless, at the end of one year, the station had proved itself a going concern, capable of handling the work assigned to it, and there was a good reason to assume that, with more ample means at its disposal, it would soon rise to much higher levels of efficiency and usefulness. Perhaps the arrival in July, 1922, of a badly need Ford truck, might be regarded as the first evidence of gradual transition from observation post to forest laboratory. In the course of this transition, the station passed through certain well-defined stages of development.

During the twelve years from July 1, 1922 to June 30, 1934, the station expanded into areas not dreamed of or foreseen when it was first started. At first the average yearly appropriation was less than $20,000. In 1926-1930 rose to $39,000. During the last period, ending June 30, 1934, an annual average of almost $47,000 was supplemented by large allowances from emergency relief funds.

1922-1926

This period left the original staff practically unchanged. Its investigations were confined to a small number of major projects, started or planned during the first year. One important development was the establishment of numerous permanent sample plots--forty of them in ten different locations-- for experiments ranging in planting for reforestation to studies of fire damage on area burned under control.

Of greater significance was the planning and quick official approval of a field station at Bent Creek, about ten miles from Asheville, with an experimental forest of more than 1,000 acres attached to it. The area was extracted from Pisgah National Forest as the most desirable of several inspected sites. A small laboratory building was finished as early as 1925, but the main work did not begin for several years.

Early in this period, the main office of the station was moved to larger quarters in the Medical Building, one block off Pack Square in Asheville.

The main feature of this period, however, was the start of active cooperation with government agencies and various institutions as well as private enterprise with an interest in scientific forest management. An early and mutually educational connection of this typed was made with Champion Paper and Fiber Co. at Canton, N.C., one of the largest pulp mills in the world. Champion had done pioneer work in the field by systematic efforts to manage its large forest holdings on the principle of sustained yield--or the cultivation of a steady and sufficient supply of timber. To this end, the company had placed its timberlands under the supervision of a trained forester, W.J. Damtoft, formerly of the Pisgah National Forest. In 1923 it asked the cooperation of the Appalachian Station in the selection and arrangement of a nursery of its own at that time, the station regarded this offer as a golden opportunity, of which the director was quick to avail himself. Through the subsequent agreement, the station gained access for experimental purposes both to the company's existing seed-beds at Canton and to the subsequently established nursery at Willetts in Jackson County, N.C.--with the right to set aside sample plots at will within the company's plantations. Work of this nature was begun that spring.

About this time, a lasting alliance was forged with the famous Berea College in the southeastern mountain section of Kentucky. By agreement with President W.J. Hutchins, an area of 5,600 acres, containing the largest forest of deciduous trees connected with any educational institution in the south, became the first permanent field center, or sub-station, under the supervision of the Appalachian Station staff for investigative and experimental purposes. The substation at Berea served well because of its location in a distant part of the station territory and because the forest there was typical of the entire district. A similiar cooperation had existed with Biltmore Estate from the start, even though it rested on a different premise. Later similiar but less permanent arrangements for mutual benefit were made with a number of industrial organizations, among which the Richmond Cedar Works, the Camp Manufacturing Co. and the West Virginia Pulp and Paper Co. deserve special mention.

Such cooperation is to show the use for experimental purposes of forest property not controlled by the government. In numerous instances such use was also made of tracts belonging to the National Forests, and to some State Forests. Different in nature was the gradually established relationships with other government agencies.

"Before the age of specialization, all foresters were Foresters," once wrote E.N. Munn, head of the Bureau of Silvics in the Branch of Research. Now they are known by many others titles and may not even be found in the Forest Service, but in other branches of the Department of Agriculture, such as the Bureau of Entomology, the Bureau of Plant Industry, or the Biological Survey. Such agreements with these services meant that specialists in overlapping fields were added to the staff of the station without added expense.

The forest has many enemies, and insects rank second only to fire. But insects are as much a threat to a farm and garden as to the forest. Therefore, the Department of Agriculture maintains a separate branch--the Bureau of Entomology--devoted entirely to the study and combatting of this host of undesirables. Members of this branch are specialists in a double sense, equally familiar with the ways of insects and with the plant growth on which these prey. An ordinary entomologist sees the problems relating to insects merely as problems of his science. But a forest entomologist, to quote E.N. Munn, "has not only a forest training, but also special training in the insect life beneficial of harmful to the forest." He is first of all a forester, as are the forest pathologist and the forest biologist, and in the ultimate aim of his double study, the tree figures more importantly than the insect menacing its life.

In almost every case not immediately cause by insects, the sickening of a tree may be traced to another, far more insidious class of parasites, the fungi. Like the insects which often pave the way for them, the fungi endanger not only the life of the tree, but also the value of its wood to man when it is dead. The chestnut blight, for example, which has all but exterminated one of the most valuable trees of the eastern forest, and which has affected some fifteen billion board feet of lumber in the Southern Appalachians alone, is caused by a fungus so far unconquerable by man. For some time after its death, the wood of the chestnut remained as useful as if the tree had been felled by the axe while in perfect health. But soon the killer is joined by a horde of other parasites and gradually the wood decays. First, the softer sapwood then the harder and more resistant heartwood, until at last what remains is worthless even for the tanner's vat.

This is the reason why forest pathology falls within the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Plant Industry. A forest pathologist "must have a forestry background with special training in the abnormal physiology of trees and their diseases." He has the status of a "mycologist" because he is an expert in the identification of fungi, but he may also be defined as the general medical practitioner and diagnostician of the forest. In his attitude and mission, as in those of the forest entomologist, the tree plays a larger part than the parasites preying on it, because his ultimate goal is prevention or cure rather than mere diagnosis.

The forest biologists has been described as a "forester with a sound training plus special training in zoology and animal ecology so that he also can contribute to proper silviculture from the standpoint of the forest animal population." What the word ecology implies in this case is coming more and more to the front as we gain a better understanding of the intricate relationships existing between all parts of nature, animate and inanimate. It is the science dealing with the mutual influence which living organisms and their environment exert on each other. As an ecologist, the forest biologist is concerned not only with animals or trees as such, but also with the effect for good or bad they have on each other.

One of the many factors bearing on the normal growth of the forest is a certain equilibrium among its animal inhabitants. If this be upset you cannot foretell what unexpected results may follow. Even notorious bests of prey have a share in maintaining that balance among the various species--mice, squirrels, deer, birds, to name a few--an the forest biologist is the man who tells us what may be killed and what must be spared. He is rather hard to find, they say, but when discovered in government service, he is sorted into another highly important branch of the Department of Agriculture, known as the Biological Survey and having for its task the study, control and conservation of all wild backboned animals except fishes, not only for their own sake, but also with regard to their significance to the farmer, the gardener, the forester, the stock raiser and the hunter.

The deeper meaning of the forest biologist's job was aptly suggested by G.H. Marsh when he wrote that "we can never know how wide a circle of disturbance we produce in the harmonics of nature when we throw the smallest pebble into the ocean of organic being."

Then there is the "weather man", in the layman's eye little concerned with the forest. Yet the data gathered by the Weather Bureau through its various branch offices--one located in Asheville--are important to the forester during two seasons of the year--spring and fall. At those times he is likely to be more preoccupied with fires than with anything else. Dry weather spells "fire weather" and when it is on the way, a timely tip will bring the fire fighting machinery into readiness for emergencies that are certain to arise.

So during 1924-25, cooperation with three of these agencies was established, adding to the effectiveness of the station without making any demands on its badly strained budget. The Bureau of Entomology had been particularly interested from the start, and Dr. F.C. Craighead, chief of the Division of Forest Insects, paid repeated visits to the Bent Creek area during this and following periods. Consequently the entomologists arrived ahead of the rest and the first building erected at Bent Creek was a small "insectary" where they could breed and observe generation after generation of such "public enemies" as the southern pine beetle, which is one of the most destructive insect pests of the region. Among the experts assigned to such duty at an early date was R.A. St. George. Barring an interval of two years, when his place was taken by J.A. Beal, he remained at the station for many years. In July of 1925, Dr. C. J. Humphrey was sent down by the Bureau of Plant Industry to fill the position of forest pathologist. Unfortunately, he resigned a year later.

The desired collaboration with the local office of the Weather Bureau had for its final objective not only occasional advance information, but the creation of a far-reaching and carefully organized fire warning service, the perfection of which must take a long time. As a fact, the permanent service was not instituted until 1932, but the plans for it were started as early as the fall of 1924. Then a cooperative weather station had already been established on Mt. Mitchell, its altitude of 6,700 feet making it the highest east of the Mississippi. Its value to a forested mountain region may be judged by the fact that at times it has registered a minimum temperature 20 degrees lower than that of Asheville, which is only thirty nine miles distant.

This period also witnessed the formation of an Appalachian Forest Reserve Council, to which the Secretary of Agriculture appointed twenty-four men from the states within the station territory, representing public institutions and private enterprises with a definite interest in forestry--state officials, forestry experts, industrialists, railroad men etc. The first meeting was held at Ashevile in February, 1925, when W.D. Tyler of the Clinshfield Coal Corporation, Dante, Va., was elected president and Frothingham secretary. The object of the council was to act in an advisory capacity. They reviewed past work and future plans and suggested new lines of activity. Also they served as a connecting link between the men engaged in technical investigations and public or private groups affected by the results of their work. In general it promoted scientific study of forest conditions and its practical application to forest management within the region. Although the council met only once or twice a year, its criticisms and constructive suggestions, its staunch advocacy of extended facilities, proved helpful in the development of the station, and its recommendations invariably carried a great deal of weight at Washington.

The station in that time progressed markedly along many lines. The actual work achieved, the objects and methods of the research pursued by the staff during this and subsequent periods, must be dealt with in a special chapter. But as an index of the amount of work accomplished may here be mentioned--in six years, members of the technical staff delivered fifty addresses, published eighty-two reports and articles and prepared sixty-eight reports for future publication.

JULY, 1926 - DECEMBER, 1930

In May of 1926 the annual appropriation was raised from $19,600 to $37,450, and the permanent working force was enlarged. Until this point the staff had resembled an army holding a wide front with a thin line. Now the line was being strengthened by one new unit after another, until every gap was filled. The metaphor struck truer as units long under fire were withdrawn and new ones took their place. For these years saw the gradual dispersal of the original group of workers, leaving only the director and the clerk, now rated as a "senior", to act as connecting links between the past and the future. In 1927 McCarthy was made director of the newly formed Central States Forest Experiment Station at Columbus, Ohio. A year later Haasis accepted a professorship of forestry at the University of Idaho. Finally, Korstian left for Duke University at the end of 1930, where he served as director of its 4,000 acre forest. He also served as associate professor of forestry. Seven technical and two clerical members were added to the permanent personnel to fill those vacancies and to meet the constantly rising demands of the station's research programs.

The newcomers were: Dr. Charles R. Hursch, associate forest ecologist and the station's first expert on soil erosion and water flow; L.I. Barrett, associate silviculturist, transferred from the Central States Station; J.H. Buell, I.H. Sims, Arland L. MacKinney, C.A. Abell and Margaret Stoughton, junior foresters; Elisa M. Pearson, junior clerk, and Lillian B. King, stenographer. Miss Stoughton was for years the only woman forester in the service. She later married Abell.

Two representatives of the Bureau of Plant Industry and the Biological Survey were permanently assigned to the station. Dr. Ralph M. Nelson assumed the place of forest pathologist lift open by the resignation of Dr. Humphrey. Later he was transferred to the Forest Service with the rank of silviculturist. As forest biologist, Thomas D. Burleigh filled a previously mentioned requirement by having been trained as both a forester and a biologist.

This period also brought a considerable increase in the number of temporary assistants, whose services during the season of interest activity added greatly to the general capacity of the station. Among them were trained men from other experiment stations, foreign as well as native forestry students in search of practice, and large groups of summer students from the state forestry schools in Iowa and Georgia, with their mentors. It also happened frequently that distinguished visitors, especially those from abroad, joined the field workers in order to study conditions and methods at close quarters. But still the body of work to be done grew more rapidly than the force provided for its handling.

During this period, the station headquarters was moved twice more. First in June of 1928 to seven rooms in the new City Hall of Asheville; and the second time, in December, 1930, to the new Federal Building in the same city, where a suite of thirteen large rooms, including two laboratories, had been reserved for the station and allied agencies. In addition the main office of the Pisgah National Forest, the local offices of the Geological Survey, the Weather Bureau and the North Carolina State Forest Service became its next door neighbors. An important chante in territory covered by the station was noted. Maryland had been assigned to the recently organized Allegheny Forest Experiment Station, the eastern and southern parts of South Carolina were withdrawn from the Southern Station, placing the state in its entirety within the Appalachian territory. This change left the total area as well as the proportion of actual or potential forest lands practically the same as before.

Efforts were made during these years to extend the work beyond the mountain districts, and more particularly to the coastal plains with their large tracts of privately owned and commercially important pine forests. Korstian spent a whole month in the fall of 1927 scouting through these parts of the territory, from Richmond to the South Carolina border. His task was to work out a program of research and to locate promising sites for branch stations. The outcome was a list of problems sufficient to keep the staff busy for ten years, but the other phase of his search brought only new disappointments, although fruitful connections were made with several private companies. Better success attended the efforts of the station in another part of the territory. By agreement with the Georgian State Forest Service and the Georgia Agricultural Experiment Station, the mountain woodlands of the latter institution were made available for a series of cooperative studies of growth and management problems. These were extended to the Cherokee National Forest and led finally to the establishment of the Toccoa Experimental Forest. This period also witnessed the initial steps toward a far-reaching and minutely organized study of the spell pressing problem of soil erosion--a study particularly vital to this region and destined to become one of the major projects on the station program.

Most significant of this period, however, was the official designation and gradual development of the Bent Creek Field Station as an experimental forest.

The reservation of forest lands for the sole use of the field stations or working centers placed at such points is rendered necessary because one of the main requirements for success in work along these intensive lines is freedom from ny kind of interference, human or natural, accidental or intentional. Even the national forests are exposed to hazards which can be largely, if not wholly, eliminated from the more limited area of a specially organized and closely safeguarded experimental forest, where also may be found that guarantee of permanence which is a no less essential requirement. And while the the Berea College Forest already had been accepted as a working center, the tract at Bent Creek was the first one over which the station could exercise complete and exclusive control. It was also the first one to be provided with a properly equipped field laboratory. Its value was enhanced by its proximity to the main office at Asheville.

The search for a suitable site near Asheville had begun two years earlier by the director, assisted by Supervisor Verne Rhoades of the Pisgah National Forest, within whose jurisdiction it would fall. In the spring of 1924 they chose a part of the Bent Creek Valley near the entrance to the forest from the Brevard highway. At that time, the plans were only for a laboratory and a nursery. A preliminary survey was made a year later, and in June, 1925, a tract holding somewhat more than 150 acres was set aside by proceedings as formal as if a treaty between sovereign states were being negotiated. The nature and purpose of the transfer as well as the provisions for future management were set forth in a written agreement signed by Rhoades on behalf of the Pisgah National Forest, by District Forester Evan W. Kelley of the Eastern Region of the Forest Service, and by Frothingham on behalf of the experiment station. During the summer of that year a road was opened in and a first laboratory of very modest proportions was erected with the financial assistance of the Bureau of Entomology. About the same time the original plans were revised to include a much larger tract for use as an experimental forest. In January of 1926, these new plans were approved at Washington and the reserved area finally amounted to 1,100 acres.

The Bent Creek tract was unattractive from a commercial point of view. It had been cut over. Most of the large trees were defective when judged by the standards of lumbermen. Being left with few rivals, they occupied too much space to allow a new generation of sound growth. Trees of desirable species were few, while the less desirable kinds were comparatively numerous. Had the tract been picked with commercial development in view, it would have had to be clear cut for a new start. But its vary defects served partly to render it more desirable for the purpose intended for it. The irregular and inferior nature of the stand literally invited experiments of various sorts--in cutting for reproduction, thinning for improvement, planting, controlled burning etc. The varied character of the land was another attraction, ranging from moist bottoms along the creek to dry slopes of different exposures, with coves between the ridges holding several smaller tributaries of the creek, and with a variance in altitude of more than 1,000 feet between the lowest point near the entrance and the peak of 3,100 feet at the other end, known as Manning Top.

The preparation of an experimental forest for its peculiar use is more elaborate in many ways than that bestowed on a commercial forest, and for good reasons. The problems of common timberlands are numerous enough, but their ultimate objectives are protection, improvement and profitable utilization. The experiment forest, however, must be regarded as being composed of numerous miniature forests, each one designed to assist in the solution of a specific problem, and the ever-present question is "What is going on where?"

The idea aim is to keep track of every tree, from seedling to veteran; to be certain of its exact location; to learn how it behaves almost from day to day; and importantly, to be shown the reasons for its prosperity or decline.

The external possibility of wholesale destruction by fire explains why the first work of improvement undertaken in the Bent Creek Forest after its transfer was the introduction of a water supply, the building of concrete reservoirs, the laying of pipe lines. At that time and for years afterwards, the site reserved for the field station proper contained only two permanent structures,namely a small insectary and garage, and a frame building designed to serve not only as laboratory but also as bunk and mess for field parties.

Surveying and mapping came next. Begun in the spring of 1927, this task was not finished until two years later, and even then the results were regarded as mere preliminaries on which to base more exact and not yet completed operations. It took so much time, partly because the work had to be discontinued during the summer months when the staff was busy with other duties, and partly because it went beyond the requirements of the usual contour map. What was done amounted to a census or inventory showing approximately the total timber contents as well as the extent and location of different forest types. Such a counting of trees on a wooded area of 1,100 acres would probably be held next to impossible by the average man, but the forester achieves it by means of what he calls sample strips.

From the data collected, several maps were made out. One of these showed main topographical features. Another one revealed the extent and location of the various forest types found within the tract.

It has already been pointed out that an experimental forest cannot be treated as a unit, but must be regarded as a collection of miniature forests, each one of which, permanently or temporarily, is subjected to some treatment designed to assist in the solving of one or more forestry problems. So the next thing done was to use the maps as a basis for dividing the forest into twenty-one sections, known as compartments, each of about 50 acres of land. Their boundaries were dictated by topographical conditions. Later they were split up into sub-compartments characterized by different forest types. The compartment lines having been drawn on the map, they were definitely located by a separate survey. Then strips six to eight feet wide were cleared to mark them, and also to assist in preventing fire--whether accidental or set as part of an experiment--from spreading from one compartment to the other. Each one of these was given a number which appeared on cement posts placed in the corners. Numbered iron posts at every angle and blazes on the trees along the cleared strips helped further to mark the boundary lines. Eventually the sub-compartments came to be treated in the same manner. By these measures the forest was made ready for uses that might seem strange to a layman, while to an expert they were practical.

Another part of that preparation was a management plan for each compartment which dovetailed closely with the program of experimental investigations. Some of these might require the temporary destruction of certain parts of the forest by axe or fire. Every measure of this extreme kind, however, would also pave the way for new growth of a more desirable nature. For in the background there loomed the larger vision of a forest run on principles that may serve as a model for the management of all similiarly composed forests within the region.

Different from the Bent Creek development, yet related in purpose, was another movement which took shape during this period. It aimed at the preservation--by joint action of the national forests and the station--of carefully selected "natural areas", varying in size from a dozen to several thousand acres, but having one feature in common, i.e., the typical and prominent character of the forests contained within them. These areas, of which a number have been set a side since then, will be left indefinitely in their natural state. The hands-off policy proclaimed on their behalf goes even beyond the one laid down for the national parks, but is not dictated by spectacular or recreational purposes. The object of such inviolable tracts is, instead, to serve as living illustrations of how forests behave when left to themselves, unspoiled and unimproved by man. Forests of this kind are rare, and in Europe their places have been taken by artificially developed and scientifically maintained timberlands to such an extent that European forestry experts come to this country for the express purpose of studying the standards set by natural forest growth. What it means is that no matter how scientific our methods become, we are likely to go astray if we lose sight entirely of nature's own ways of doing things. While the experimental forests are designed to speed our progress, the natural areas are established as a check on our direction, lest we find one day that we have been progressing backwards.

So the station forged ahead slowly but steadily during these years. And then a great economic crisis brought undreamed hardships to the country at large, but hereto undreamed opportunities to the Forest Service.

JANUARY, 1931 - JUNE, 1934

The events of these four years proved that the forests offered useful employment for an almost unlimited number of men. At the start of this period it appeared that federal relief measures would be unavoidable. The forests controlled by the government were immediately recognized as a means of using such measures to obtain long needed improvements of lasting value. To the men in charge of those forests it meant opportunities beyond their most optimistic hope.

The expert alone cannot bring the forests to the state of sufficient productivity now established as a national ideal. He needs at his command an army of toilers who may know little about trees, but who know well enough how to yield pick and spade and axe. Protection always takes precedence of everything else, and fire is the worst enemy. Effective defense is impossible without roads and firebreaks. Lanes stripped of trees and undergrowth serve as access to every part of a forest and as a way of checking the advance of fires already under way. The extraordinary expenditures made necessary by an extraordinary situation resulted in the federal forests gaining mile upon mile of such safeguards.

The first share of emergency relief funds reached the station in 1931, when a special grant of $31,000 was added to the regular appropriation of more than $45,000. It was promptly applied to Bent Creek, which put it into construction. The year 1932 was one of uncertainty, bringing no more extra funds, and for a time it seemed that work under way might have to be cancelled. But 1933 saw an unprecedented special allotment of $140,000. Of this, about $30,000 could be used for the employment of temporary technical personnel. The remainder went for permanent improvements.

As quickly as feasible, forty men went to work building a four-mile road that traversed the entire length of the Bent Creek forest twice and made it possible for a truck to reach within one-third of a mile of any given point. Soon afterwards contracts were let for field station equal to its many-sided task. Between 1931 and 1933 four laboratories, a bunkhouse, a residence for the ranger, a greenhouse, a larger insectary, two garages, a workshop for the carpentry and blacksmithing, an incinerator and a pumphouse were finished. At the same time water, power and telephone connections were made with Asheville and the station received its first fire truck. Finally, ranger E.M. Manchester was placed in charge of buildings and grounds.

The work passed through three fairly distinct stages:

1) Reconnaissance, or surveys of large areas to ascertain the possibilities of research.

2) Investigation and experiment, marked chiefly by the establishment of sample plots in many different localities for the collection of basicc data.

3) Research in a more restricted sense, depending on the intensive technique of the small specialized plot, the greenhouse and the laboratory.

The earliest part of the station's career was devoted to orientations and preparations coming under the head of reconnaissance. Later its work passed into the second stage, but with an increasing tendency toward emphasis on the third. This emphasis became so pronounced that the implied demand for additional field branches and experimental forests had to be met if the station was to function properly.

Between 1932 and 1934 the long search for tracts meeting that imperative need led to the establishment of three new experimental forests: Coweeta, 4,300 acres on the Nantahala National Forest near Franklin, N.C.; Fernow, of 3,600 acres on the Monongahela National Forest at Parsons, West Virginia; and Toccoa, of 2,300 acres on the Cherokee National Forest, a distance from Blairsville, Georgia.

Fernow has the advantage of close proximity to the large nursery of the Forest Service at Parsons, while Toccoa could continue the cooperation with the Georgia Mountain Experiment Station at Blairsville. Immediate development of these cardinal adjuncts was made possible by the special funds.

During the summer of 1934, crews of F.E.R.A. and CCC workers constructed ten miles of roads, twenty-four miles of trails and sixty-two miles of firebreaks. A dwelling, a bunkhouse, a garage and a woodshed was built for each of the new forests. Surveying and mapping progressed steadily. (A site on the George Washington National Forest near Edinburg, VA, was approved as a working center, but only a number of permanent sample plots were established.)

Thus the station profited from the emergency measures forced on the nation by the severe economic crisis. For the work described above the station used more than three hundred laborers and a considerable number of temporary technical assistants, all of them operating under the supervision of regular staff members. The advance resulting from the work placed the station on a level which might have taken a decade of normal conditions for its attainment. And the station did a piece of relief work on its own account. During the winter of 1930-1931 certain experiments required the clearing of defective or otherwise undesirable trees from several plots on the Bent Creek Forest. An effort was made to sell the timber on the stump. as prescribed by law, but it was too poor to attract buyers, and it looked as if the station would have to cut it at a loss. But an arrangement was made with the committee in charge of the Community Woodyard in Asheville, which was for unemployed workers. The felled trees brought the woodyard some 800 cords of firewood, which was sold at $5 a cord. The money went to help feed the unemployed, and the necessary cutting was achieved without cost to the station.

Directly or indirectly, the critical character of the time also produced a number of tasks out of the ordinary, having no reference to the schedule of activities previously approved. One of these was the collection of data on various aspects of forest land ownership and forest management within the station territory, for use in the Copeland Report (Senate Document No. 12, 73d Congress). It was a two volume work of nearly 1,700 pages which set forth a comprehensive and far-sighted "national plan for American forestry" and which may well be described as one of the most noteworthy documents in the history of the service. An undertaking of a similiar nature was the preparation here of the first forestry publication connected with Emergency Conservation Work. Entitled "Measures for Stand Improvement in Southern Appalachian Forests", it was prepared by the station's entire staff under the editorial direction of Dr. Charles R. Hursch. It was meant to assist foresters unfamiliar with conditions in this region as part of the ECW program, and to assist in bringing deteriorated or inadequately developed woodlands into better shape for timber production as well as for soil and watershed protection. In addition to presenting the best known methods for such work, this pamphlet of sixty pages contained a large body of data in regard to forest types, forest conditions and the relative desirability of various species of trees within the region. The Station also did its share in the working-out of a set of "woods practice measures" for the truly major Article X of the Lumber Code, relating to "conservation and sustained production of forest resources", a section of the code that carries the promise of a standardized scientific management for the major part of privately owned forests in this country. Finally the staff assisted in training "cultural foremen", that is, men with an elementary conservation work within the Pisgah, Cherokee and Monongahela National Forests.

Another significant step was the study of water flow and soil erosion study begun at Bent Creek and later extended to the new experimental forests. Considering the number of streams and rivers originating within the district, its importance as a source of water power (estimated at a potential capacity of 3 million horsepowers per annum), and the destructive part played by soil erosion in the mountain and piedmont sections, the urgency of such work can hardly be overstated. Inevitably this study came to the forefront among the station projects during this time, and it used an advanced method for the time.

After years of preliminary work--made necessary by the difficulty of obtaining trained observers and further delayed by the lack of funds, the badly needed and keely desired fire-weather forecasting service was started at last in the spring of 1933 by L.T. Pierce, head of the Asheville office of the Weather Bureau. Through fifteen stations within the mountain district containing the Unaka, Nantahala, Pisgah and Cherokee National Forests and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, this service gathers data which are assembled and interpreted in the Asheville office, and from there distributed in various ways to serve depended on close cooperation between the experiment station and the Weather Bureau, for while the meteorological information comes from the latter, the weather conditions most likely to promote fires must be discovered through prolonged investigations.

During this period also the cooperative work in forest entomology, forest pathology and forest biology was not only continued, but largely expanded and intensified by the employment of numbers of temporary assistants, made available by the emergency funds.

For the fiscal year of 1933- 1934, the annual appropriation amounted to $36,186 and the special allotments from emergency relief funds to $140,033, or a total of $176,219, not including what was contributed by the various cooperative agencies.

At the clost of this fiscal year, the permanent regular and cooperative staff consisted of thirteen technical and four clerical members, named and rated:

E.H. Frothingham, director; C.R. Hursh, forest ecologist; R.M. Nelson, silviculturist; L.I. Barrett, associate silviculturist; J.H. Buell, I.H. Sims and A.L. MacKinney, all assistanct silviculturists; C.A. Abell and Margaret S. Abell, junior foresters; E.M. Manchester, forest ranger; Josephine Laxton, chief clerk; Grace M. Foltz, senior clerk; Elisa M. Pearson, clerk; Mary P. Gudger, stenographer; T.D. Burleigh, associate biologist; R.A. St. George, associate entomologist; and L.T. Pierce, assistant meteorologist.

This permanent cadre was assisted by a force of temporary assistants and workmen which had varied in numbers from month to month during the year, but was composed as follows on June 30, 1934:

For research, administration and construction: six techniques, one assistant technician, one foreman of construction and maintenance, two stenographers and 149 laborers, not counting CCC crews.

For entomological work: one field aide, one assistant field aide and one agent.

For pathological work: five technicians and two junior pathologists under direction from Washington.

The headquarters of the station and its cooperating agencies in biology, pathology, and entomology occupied fourteen large rooms, including two laboratories on the second floor of the Federal Building at Asheville.

Four experimental forests, located in as many states and totaling 11,300 acres, were attached to the station for its exclusive use. In addition it had at its disposal two cooperative experimental forests--at Berea and Blairsville. There was also the availability of numerous sample plots on federally and privately owned forests in many parts of the territory.

The Bent Creek Experimental Forest contained seventeen buildings and was equipped with a network of roads, trails, compartment boundaries, pipe lines, telephones lines--representing a total outlay of nearly $30,000.

The new forests had thirteen buildings in all, as well as an impressive network of roads, trails and fire-breaks.

At this time, resources included thirteen trucks; a technical apparatus including instruments of many kinds, from calculating machines to hygrothermographs and potentiometers; a steadily developing arboretum at Bent Creek and a library of about 600 volumes, not counting hundreds of pamphlets and manuscript reports. And the highly specialized character of the library prevents mere numbers from indicating its real value to the work of the station.

After thirteen years of gradually accelerated growth, the station at last found itself in a position to pursue effectively every phase of the work assigned to it for the future protection and promotion of public and private forests within the Southern Appalachian region.

It might be worth remembering what Gifford Pinchot once wrote of the forest:

"Perhaps no other natural agent has done so much for the human race and has been so recklessly used and so little understood."

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