Pinchot and the beginnings of the United States Forest Service

If the early history of Seeley Lake is intertwined with the lumber industry, the rise of the United States Forest Service is incontrovertibly intertwined with Seeley Lake and in particular with the Big Blackfoot Timber Sale of 1907-1910. Historian and member of the Camp Paxson Preservation Board Gary Williams has been researching that sale. The Seeley Swan Pathfinder will be bringing some of the interesting bits of information he has discovered about logging in the Seeley Lake area and also about the fledgling U.S. Forest Service.

SEELEY LAKE – This series primarily focuses on timber harvesting in the Missoula county area. But the abuses described in the previous issues of this series [Seeley Swan Pathfinder July 16, 2020; July 30, 2020] – the "rubber forty" encroachment on government forest land, the entryman sale of homesteader lands to timber companies and the clear-cutting of large swaths of forest without regard to future generations – took place nationwide in the late 1800s, especially in the west. Such abuses resulted not only in lawsuits but also in alarm among many that the American forests would be wiped out like the buffalo.

The wealthy Pinchot family had a passionate interest in forest conservation. Eldest son Gifford did postgraduate study at the French National School of Forestry, learning how the French managed their forests.

In 1896 Gifford was appointed to the Forest Commission of the National Academy of Sciences. According to friend and former classmate Henry Graves, Pinchot, "urged the Commission to undertake some real forestry work such as preparation of forest maps, forest description, study of growth, etc. The plan was to spend the summer out in Montana with a forestry expedition doing survey research for the government on public lands."

Pinchot had a great deal of respect for Graves and wanted to include him on the trip as an assistant. The commission was unwilling to provide funding for Graves, so Pinchot took him along at his own expense. Pinchot would later write that Graves' "remarkable capacity for detail and careful and intelligent work was just what was needed to balance my less accurate mental habits."

The commission made plans to begin their forest tour in mid-July of 1896, traveling mostly by railroad or car. Pinchot did not feel such a tour would provide them with the details they needed to make informed decisions about the reserves. Taking Graves with him, Pinchot left several weeks earlier and delved deep into the forests on horseback, or by hiking and backpacking. Because Pinchot was paying, he felt free to include some fishing and hunting along the way. The next article in this series will discuss their travels in Montana in more detail, including a trip from Swan Lake to Drummond, a 52-mile trip which they completed in 26 hours. Pinchot's journal entry reads: "That tramp took us across the divide into the Clearwater drainage, into a superb stand of yellow pine, and into an old cutting of the Big Blackfoot Lumber Company – a power in the land in those days."

At the conclusion of that Montana trip, Pinchot was at variance with the commission's final report that declared the U.S. forest reserves should be preserved and not used for any commercial purposes. Pinchot advocated for limited commercial activities under the watchful eye of a professional forestry service.

According to "From Practical Woodsman to Professional Forester: Henry S. Graves and the Professionalism of Forestry in the United State, 1900-1920": "After Graves and Pinchot experienced forest work first hand in the West, they began to envision the profession of forestry as a management science, one which could integrate industry and bureaucracy seamlessly into the woods."

In 1897, Congress passed the Forest Management Act which clearly stated the forest reserves were to be managed for lumbering, mining and grazing. In 1898, Pinchot was appointed head of the Division of Forestry within the U.S. Department of Agriculture. At that time, the forest reserves were still under the Department of Interior. By 1905, with the strong advocacy of Pinchot family friend Theodore Roosevelt, the forest reserves would be permanently transferred to the Dept. of Agriculture where Pinchot would change the name to the United States Forest Service with himself as chief forester. By 1907, the reserves would be renamed National Forests.

Meanwhile, in 1900 the Pinchot family endowed Yale University with enough money to inaugurate a School of Forestry. Henry Graves became the school's first director. He set to work training a cadre of professional foresters, the type of trained men that he and Gifford Pinchot agreed should undertake management of the forest reserves.

For Pinchot and Graves, according to "Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency," management involved, "...the development of a trained forestry force to control fires, tackle disease problems, and supervise cutting and sales, as well as maintain the integrity of the forests."

As the Yale School of Forestry began to graduate qualified individuals who took up jobs as consulting foresters, lumber manufacturers, government forest examiners, U.S. Forest Service personnel and similar jobs, Graves worked to keep the studies relevant. He set up a Graduate Advisory Board.

The Board sent back their recommendations: "In the judgment of the graduates, the curriculum attempts to cover too much ground at a sacrifice of sufficient drill on the more fundamental subjects. We believe that a relatively large proportion of the time should be given to silviculture [growing and cultivation of trees], lumbering, forest engineering and forest management, including the study of National Forests and other specific problems, [rather than botany or biology]."

At the same time and on the more practical side, the Forest Service began to develop a ranger program. Hiring requirements: applicant must be "thoroughly sound and able-bodied, capable of enduring hardships and of performing severe labor under trying conditions. Invalids seeking light out-of-door employment need not apply. He must be able to build trails and cabins and to pack in provisions without assistance. He must know something of surveying, estimating, and scaling timber, lumbering and the livestock business. Where boats, saddle horses or pack horses are necessary in the performance of their duty, rangers are required to own and maintain them. Experience, not book education, is sought."

In the April 28,1994 issue of the Seeley Swan Pathfinder, Ehlers Koch who served as USFS general inspector in 1905-06, discussed his own hiring in the Missoula area.

He wrote, "The Service wanted men who could ride and shoot and pack a horse and chop a log and run a compass line. These were the things that were put into the examination, and the candidates had to show their ability in the field, as well as write about it. The writer [Koch] held the first ranger and supervisor examinations in Missoula in the spring of 1905.The riding, packing and shooting were done on the flats south of town, for cruising, chopping, and surveying, the class repaired to the timbered areas of Pattee Canyon. A number of supervisors and rangers were selected as a result of these examinations, and the process of organizing the new forests went on rapidly."

This was the situation at the time of the Big Blackfoot Timber Sale.