Norton saves the larch

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 – The previous article in this Timber Sale series [Aug. 27, 2020] discussed the contract signed between the Big Blackfoot Milling Company and the two-year-old United States Forest Service. The contract gave broad powers to the "Forest officer," including the responsibility of marking the trees to be cut and determining which trees should not be cut. Ambrose J. Norton was the forest officer appointed for that task. It was Norton who prevented the shorelines of Seeley Lake from being bordered by a ring of giant stumps.

From the beginning, controversy swirled around Norton as overseer of the USFS's first massive timber sale. Norton had no official title beyond "lumberman." Forest Supervisor Page Bunker, headquartered in Kalispell, was his superior and nominally in charge of the timber project.

In correspondence associated with the controversy, Inspector Paul Redington explained, "[Bunker] not having had much practical experience in timber sale work, rightly turned over the conduct of the sale to Norton, who had had considerable practical training back of him, and who was well versed in the methods of the Service."

To remove any question about Norton's position, Redington quoted in his report a portion of a letter Bunker wrote to Norton Oct. 10, 1907, "In our conversation I believe it was understood that you were to have exclusive and sole charge of the local management of this sale. If this has not been clearly understood, let this letter be evidence of your authority to direct all of the local affairs in this sale in so far as they are within the province of the Forest Service. It is my desire to hamper you as little as possible with long-range suggestions."

From the day of his arrival on Aug. 31, 1907, Norton's activities offended the Big Blackfoot contingent. When Norton submitted his first report on the project, he started out, "The control of the sale being transferred to me, I immediately outlined a plan of timber marking which included the exemption of trees somewhat above diameter limits specified in contract, together with a strip of one hundred and fifty feet or more along either side of the main traveled road; and a similar belt along the shores of lakes."

Norton gave four scientific reasons for his decision: the strips of trees would provide seeds for regrowth; they would provide a denser wind-break for younger trees; they would provide a better basis for a future harvest and they would help regulate the flow of streams because they would prevent the soil from eroding.

Norton added an esthetic and philosophical justification: "There is another reason which seems important to me. The strips of timber left along the highways and lakes not only serve as seed-belts and wind-breaks but the latter preserve the natural features of these lakes; which, unmarred in the wildness and beauty of their mountain settings, will become a manifold richer legacy to the pleasure seeker, the ill and the weary of coming generations, then can be measured by mere commercial values of the timber retained."

Big Blackfoot's contention that they should be allowed to log those trees was one of the many complaints that arose in that first year of timber harvesting. Among the men the Forest Service sent to check on the various grievances was Eugene S. Bruce, the same man Chief Forester Gifford Pinchot originally sent to examine the area prior to the sale. Bruce had been a lumberman prior to joining the Forest Service and he understood how the mill owner and the lumberjacks would see Norton's decision to spare the larch.

In the early 1900s, logs were felled during the winter using two-man saws, then piled onto large sleds, stacked in a pyramid maybe seven logs high and pulled by horses across uneven ground to lake landings where they waited for passage down the rivers to the mill. Bruce understood it was a lot easier to fell the trees closest to the lake and tumble them into the water, skipping the stacking and horse transport altogether. Bruce also saw no value in leaving old mature trees along the wagon road, stating, "it does not in any sense of the word beautify this road, over which there is very little travel except with saddle and pack outfits." But Bruce's main argument was that neither the pre-sale negotiations not the timber sale contract contained a provision excluding trees around the lakes or alongside the road.

He sympathized with the Big Blackfoot Company, which he felt had perfectly reasonable expectations that "they were going to get this timber on the 'flat', which is of the best quality of any included in the sale, which can be logged the most cheaply and is, therefore, the most valuable to them, and which was an important factor in determining the stumpage price."

Somehow Norton's scientific-based rationalization, or perhaps his esthetical one, prevailed against both Big Blackfoot and Bruce's objections, because ultimately the old growth larches were spared from the 1907 timber harvest.

Norton poetically ended his report on the Big Blackfoot Timber Sale, "Whispering its story to the winds of the Rockies, as it solemnly awaits the coming of other generations, the stately forest itself must, after all, remain the best witness of its treatment, not alone for the present, but for the ages stretching far beyond the ken of human vision."

Because of Norton's foresight, Seeley Lake proudly holds claim to a larch grove acclaimed as one of the most beautiful in the United States. And an even prouder claim to the largest Western Larch specimen in the world. Affectionately known as Gus, the tree stands in Seeley Lake's Girard Grove – 153 feet tall with a base circumference of 22 feet, 9 inches. Gus is believed to be 1,000 years old.