Peeling Back The Bark

  • Pauline Bunyans and WWII Victory Lumber

    By Eben Lehman on March 12, 2024

    World War II created a shortage of workers along with a national need to produce lumber for military efforts. During the war, Weyerhaeuser News, the lumber company’s magazine, ran features highlighting the work done by the women who took over for the men who were called to serve. The 1942 issue of Weyerhaeuser News (see…

  • Remembering Estella Leopold
    and Her Defense of the Eocene

    By Guest Contributor on March 1, 2024

    Environmental historian Char Miller has shared his reflections on the conservation work of Estella Bergere Leopold, the prominent paleoecologist and conservationist, who died on February 25, 2024, at age 97. Some 34 million years ago, a butterfly died. It was a nymphalid, today the largest family of butterflies (and perhaps then, too). Paleontologists do not…

  • Life and Lunch: Alfred Eisenstaedt’s Weyerhaeuser Timber Crew Photographs

    By Eben Lehman on February 9, 2024

    In December 1954, Life magazine photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt journeyed into the woods near Snoqualmie Falls, Washington, for an unusual assignment. His subjects were a Weyerhaeuser Timber Company logging crew. But instead of photographing them felling trees, the men would appear in a Life magazine photo essay of Americans doing what millions did everyday—eating lunch. Eisenstaedt…

  • Down on the Bayou: The 1930s Forest Service Photos of Robert K. Winters

    By Eben Lehman on January 11, 2024

    Robert K. Winters (1902-1999) had a long and impactful career in the world of forestry. While he ended his career as a leading figure in international forestry, his early years were spent trudging through the swamps of Louisiana. A selection of photographs taken by Winters during his time surveying the Deep South in the 1930s…

  • When Forester Ray Conarro Moved to Mississippi, Good Things Happened.

    By Guest Contributor on August 31, 2023

    Ray Conarro served as the Forest Supervisor for the National Forests in Mississippi from August 1, 1933–June 30, 1940. This photo appeared in his “Recollections.” Imagine how Ray Conarro (1895–1977) felt when his superiors made him the inaugural supervisor of the Homochitto Purchase Unit in Mississippi—for which no land had yet been purchased. His charge…

  • History in the Making: A Librarian’s Experience at the Inaugural Women’s Forest Congress

    By Lauren Bissonette on January 20, 2023

    The official logo of the Women’s Forest Congress This article will appear in the 2022 issue of Forest History Today. This past October 17, I woke up bright and early to fly to Minnesota. Why was I going there? I’d been before to visit my spouse’s family, but I think the state’s renowned natural splendor and…

  • The Oberlaender Trust and American Forestry

    By Lauren Bissonette on June 27, 2022
  • Wood in the Space Age: Forest Products at the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair

    By Eben Lehman on April 21, 2022

    On April 21, 1962, the Century 21 Exposition (better known as the Seattle World’s Fair) opened to the public. From a vacation home in Florida, President Kennedy pressed a telegraph key to officially start the fair. The Seattle World’s Fair is best remembered for the Space Needle, which became an enduring Seattle landmark, as well…

  • The ‘Ace Photographer’ and Paul Bunyan: Berenice Abbott’s Red River Lumber Company Photos

    By Eben Lehman on April 13, 2022

    In February 1944 a new photograph exhibition opened at a San Francisco gallery, featuring a new set of images by the talented American photographer Berenice Abbott (1898-1991). The location where she had shot was a radical departure for the photographer known for working in urban settings: a lumber mill in a small town in northern…

  • The Bureau of Land Management at Seventy-Five: Who Will Celebrate with Them?

    By Guest Contributor on March 29, 2022

    In 2021, the Bureau of Land Management turned 75 but with little if any fanfare. Historian James R. Skillen, who’s written extensively about the BLM, reflected upon its history. This article appears in the 2021 issue of Forest History Today. July 16, 2021, was the Bureau of Land Management’s seventy-fifth anniversary, but celebration was probably…

  • From the First Tree Farm to the President’s Front Lawn: Remembering the 1961 National Christmas Tree

    By Eben Lehman on December 21, 2021

    The chosen 75-foot Douglas fir on the Clemons Tree Farm. Sixty years ago this month the National Christmas Tree was erected in Washington, DC, on the Ellipse between the White House and the Washington Monument. The annual tradition of a National Christmas Tree dates back to 1923, but from 1954 to 1972, the selected tree…

  • “How Great the Gain!”: Women and the Forest Service

    By James Lewis on August 28, 2021

    This post, coauthored by James G. Lewis of the Forest History Society and Rachel D. Kline of the U.S. Forest Service, was originally published in a special issue of the journal Western Forester on “Women in Forestry” in August 2021. The journal is published by the Society of American Foresters’ Oregon, Washington State, and Alaska…

  • The Great Northwest Log Haul of 1988

    By Eben Lehman on May 13, 2021

    On May 13, 1988, a convoy of trucks more than 12 miles long rolled down U.S. Highway 93 in Montana. Onlookers gawked and cheered as over 300 trucks fully loaded down with logs passed by one by one. This impressive display was actually a unique form of protest by the local logging community. Frustrated by…

  • Black Woman in Green: Excerpts from Gloria Brown’s Memoir

    By Guest Contributor on February 4, 2021

    In 1999, Gloria Brown became the first female African American forest supervisor in the U.S. Forest Service. Gloria cowrote her memoir Black Woman in Green: Gloria Brown and the Unmarked Trail to Forest Service Leadership (Oregon State University Press, 2020) with Donna Sinclair, who shares her reflections on working with Gloria and excerpts from the memoir….

  • How Forest History Can Be Like A Beethoven Symphony

    By James Lewis on January 16, 2021

    This post is adapted from the Editor’s Note in the Spring/Fall 2020 issue of Forest History Today. As I sit here in a medical facility in December, waiting to be called, surrounded by people wearing masks because of the global pandemic, I hear the welcome sound of someone playing a piano. A staffer, dressed head…

  • Harold E. Smith’s Forest Service Christmas Story

    By Guest Contributor on December 11, 2020

    “Harold E. Smith’s Forest Service Christmas Story” is by USDA Forest Service historian Rachel D. Kline. As we approach the holiday season in the Forest Service during this unprecedented time, history shows us that our curtailed holiday activities during a difficult time are not really that unprecedented after all. In fact, there are reminders of…

  • “We Were in Love with the Forest”: Protecting Mexico’s Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve

    By Guest Contributor on November 12, 2020

    This blog post by Ellen Sharp and Will Wright is a working version of an article to be published in the Spring/Fall 2020 issue of our magazine Forest History Today. We are making it available beforehand because of the time sensitivity of the conservation issue it discusses. You can download a draft version of this…

  • The Wood Prince of Bel Air: Building the ‘Strangers When We Meet’ House

    By Eben Lehman on June 4, 2020

    In the summer of 1960, Columbia Pictures released the film Strangers When We Meet. Adapted by Evan Hunter from his novel by the same name, the film’s plot centers around Larry Coe, an architect (played by Kirk Douglas) who is building a home for a Hollywood writer (played by Ernie Kovacs). While designing and building…

  • The Monongahela at 100: How Its Signature Event Changed American Forestry

    By Guest Contributor on April 30, 2020

    The Monongahela National Forest was established on April 28, 1920. Historian Char Miller has adapted a chapter from the book America’s Great National Forests, Wilderness & Grasslands, with photographs by Tim Palmer (Rizzoli, 2016), to mark the centennial.  The banner headline on the front page of the Elkins, West Virginia, newspaper for November 8, 1973,…

  • Carl Schenck and His Life in Lindenfels

    By Guest Contributor on March 25, 2020

    Historian Jameson Karns recently interviewed the two remaining “Schenck boys”—the young boys Carl Alwin Schenck taught and mentored in the aftermath of World War II. They have generously provided hours of interviews for FHS, as well as having donated some of Schenck’s lesson plans, correspondence, love letters, and photos. They provided an intimate look into…

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