American Tree Farm System turns 70

On June 12, 1941, the nation’s first Tree Farm was dedicated. The 120,000-acre Clemons Tree Farm in Washington, owned by the Weyerhaeuser Timber Company, received that designation with great fanfare—Washington Governor Arthur Langlie and other dignitaries were on hand for the ceremony. From that one property in the Pacific Northwest has grown a movement that…

From Aerologger to "Balloondoggle"

“Recent experiments conducted in the woods of the Great Upper Lumber Company of Scandinavia have demonstrated the permanency of the Aerologger for use in the lumbering operations of this and other planets.” So read the opening sentence of a 1913 article found in the publication Steam Machinery, in which author S. MacHenry described a double-plane…

Happy Birthday, Merle Haggard!

On this day in 1937, country music legend—and close friend of Smokey Bear—Merle Haggard was born in Oildale, California. Merle put his own spin on Smokey’s fire prevention message in this poster by declaring “Keep it Country, Keep it Green!” The poster appeared during the year Smokey turned 50. The Forest Service thoughtfully captioned the…

Houston, We Have Moon Trees

Forty years ago last week, Apollo 14 returned from its nine-day journey to the moon and splashed down safely in the Pacific Ocean. The three-man crew consisted of Commander Alan Shepard, Command Module Pilot Stuart Roosa, and Lunar Module Pilot Edgar Mitchell. The Apollo 14 mission was the third successful moon landing, and is mostly…

Happy Valentine's Day from the Forest History Society!

The 12 Days of Christmas, FHS style

Here at PBBWHQ (Peeling Back the Bark World Headquarters), we’re perfectly giddy with the holiday spirit. The lights are up, the tree is lit, and Alvin J. Huss is watching over us. We’re so caught up in the season that we thought we’d share our version of “The Twelve Days of Christmas” with you. (Some…

New Collection: American Tree Farm System Records

Gifford Pinchot famously wrote in Breaking New Ground, “Forestry is Tree Farming. Forestry is handling trees so that one crop follows another. To grow trees as a crop is Forestry.” While next June marks the official 70th anniversary of the first certified tree farm, the concept of renewable forestry can be traced back to the…

The Great Hurricane of 1938

June marks the official start of the 2010 Atlantic hurricane season, which this year is forecast to be a busy one.  As deadly and destructive storms, hurricanes are also major agents of landscape change and forest disturbance in many parts of the southern and eastern United States.  The Forest History Society library and archival collections…

“Big Blowup” Webpage Marks Centennial of 1910 Fires

On August 20-21, 1910, fires driven by gale-force winds consumed 3 million acres, several towns, and at least 85 lives in the Montana, Idaho, and Washington. Known as either “The Big Blowup” or “The Big Burn,” no other event in U.S. Forest Service history has had a greater impact on the agency. While heroes were…

A Bit of Mirth for Earth Day

With Earth Day fast approaching, we thought it might be helpful to provide links to some of our related materials.  Teachers will want to look at two things.  Our middle school curriculum “If Trees Could Talk” has a module “From Arbor Day to Earth Day.”  Check it out at: https://foresthistory.org/Education/Curriculum/Activity/activ4/activ4.html. Appropriate for both middle school…

FHS Comes Strong on the Weeks Act

Though the centennial of the Weeks Act is next year, the Forest History Society is already fielding queries about it from U.S. Forest Service employees and others whose work and livelihoods have been affected by the landmark legislation. Sponsored by Rep. John Weeks of Massachusetts and passed in 1911, the Weeks Act authorized the federal…

Trucks, Tractors, and Swindle Sticks

Three new photo galleries added to our website today contain more than 250 historic photos illustrating aspects of logging over the past century.  The first gallery, Logging–Scaling, documents the work of scalers in the woods.  A scaler was the person who measured and marked the quality of timber, and estimated the number of board feet…

Coweeta Hydrologic Lab Celebrates 75 Years

In 1934, the Coweeta Experimental Forest was officially established on the Nantahala National Forest.  Occupying nearly 4,000 acres just north of the North Carolina-Georgia border and renamed the Coweeta Hydrologic Laboratory in 1948, the site would prove to be the source of some of the most influential research on forested watersheds done in the world. …

When Timber Engineers Brought Ski Jumping to Chicago

With Chicago’s recent failure to become host city for the 2016 Summer Olympics, we here at Peeling Back the Bark were reminded of a little-known chapter from Chicago’s sports history which can be found in the FHS Archives. Should Chicago have also submitted a bid for the Winter Olympiad? Possibly. We submit for your consideration…

Smokey's Sixty-Five Years of Vigilance

This month marks the birthday of Smokey Bear, who has acted as conservation messenger and protector of America’s forests since August 1944.  As part of a fire prevention campaign, Smokey’s visage on posters, signs, buses, and television commercials has encouraged Americans to complete the phrase, “Only you…” In honor of our anthropomorphic advocate, we’d like…

Birling Down White Water

Prior to the expansion of railroads and later use of trucks, the logging industry relied on river currents to move large amounts of cut timber to sawmills. In October, we highlighted six photo galleries related to various aspects of river log drives. Since this posting, searches for “log drives,” “log drivers,” “moving logs on rivers,”…

Paul Bunyan Defeats Depression?

The William Laughead Papers, introduced in a previous post, continue to delight.  Among the Bunyan-related materials, we found an advertising booklet heralding “Paul Bunyan’s Prosperity Special.” Click to view advertising booklet in its entirety. This pamphlet documents the Red River Lumber Company’s strategy to capitalize on the excitement surrounding the completion of the Western Pacific…

Tall Tales and Lumber Sales

When the Red River Lumber Company installed electrically operated mills in California, logs could be devoured “faster than a small boy devours a cookie.”  At the prospect of keeping the mills supplied with enough lumber to match the incredible processing speed, logging contractors shook their heads and said, “Send for Paul Bunyan.”  Or so claimed…

Bucking, Limbing, and Felling

The six new photo galleries added to our website today feature well over 200 historic photos further documenting the work of loggers in the field.  The first four new galleries relate to the bucking and limbing of cut timber, the process during which loggers removed branches and then sawed the felled trees into fixed-length sections. …

Safety Worst

Each year, the first full week of May marks North American Occupational Safety and Health Week. Created by the American Society of Safety Engineers (ASSE) and the Canadian Society of Safety Engineering (CSSE), along with a partnership with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the week is intended to promote the prevention of workplace…