Peeling Back The Bark
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President bans Christmas tree from White House!
By James Lewis on December 1, 2019(First published in 2008, this blog posted was updated in 2012 and, after finding the letters to his sisters on the Theodore Roosevelt Center’s website, again in 2016 and 2019.) Around the internet, there are innumerable articles about how Theodore Roosevelt banned Christmas trees in the White House because of “environmental concerns” only to then…
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“Madam Secretary” and the Gifford Pinchot Connection
By James Lewis on November 21, 2019I’d never seen the TV series Madam Secretary until this week. Now in its sixth season, former secretary of State Elizabeth McCord is president of the United States. The character’s concern about climate change makes it unsurprising to see landscape paintings throughout the offices and private family quarters in the White House. An early scene…
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The Night the Mountain Fell
By James Lewis on August 16, 2019“The night the mountain fell” is how one of the strongest earthquakes to rock the United States was remembered by some survivors. It wasn’t in California, though. It hit Montana. An earthquake with a magnitude of 7.2 centered on the Gallatin National Forest—about 40 miles northwest of Old Faithful Geyser in Yellowstone National Park—struck at…
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When Woodsmen Bested Spacemen
By James Lewis on July 19, 2019Capitalizing on the excitement surrounding the Apollo space program and the first Moon landing on July 20, 1969, the Weyerhaeuser Company published an article in its company magazine that December. “Spacemen become Woodsmen” recounted the visit by four Apollo astronauts to its Millicoma Tree Farm property the previous year for an elk hunting trip. You…
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The Early Career of John S. Holmes, North Carolina’s First State Forester
By Eben Lehman on May 31, 2019John Simcox Holmes—born on this day in 1868—was a pioneer of forestry work in the state of North Carolina. The state’s first professional forester, he was hired in 1909 to survey and protect North Carolina’s forests, though he had little funding or staff with which to do the job. In 1915 he was named as…
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Forest History on the Move: Everett’s Wandering Weyerhaeuser Office
By Eben Lehman on May 10, 2019Twenty-five miles north of Seattle, at the mouth of the Snohomish River, lies the city of Everett, Washington. Officially incorporated on May 4, 1893, the city has seen more than 126 years of growth and development, much of it bolstered by the area’s vast timber resources. In fact, it is impossible to separate Everett’s history…
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Remembering Jerry Williams (1945-2019), Forest Service Historian
By James Lewis on February 12, 2019Gerald W. Williams, a former national historian with the U.S. Forest Service and a Fellow of the Forest History Society, passed away on January 3, 2019. Among the many reasons for naming Jerry a FHS Fellow was his many significant contributions to the U.S. Forest Service History Reference Collection. While government reports and manuals comprised the…
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Dark Days, Then and Now
By Guest Contributor on January 24, 2019In this guest post, renowned fire historian Stephen Pyne reviews the history of wildland fires in the United States and the policies and strategies various agencies continue operating under before offering some recommendations for dealing with the issue. On May 19, 1780, the skies over New England darkened ominously as an immense pall of smoke…
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October 15, 1934: Glued Laminated Timber Comes to America
By Eben Lehman on October 15, 2018On October 15, 1934, workers broke ground for a new school gymnasium in Peshtigo, Wisconsin. To this day, this small city in the far northeast corner of Wisconsin remains best known for being totally consumed by a massive forest fire in 1871. The groundbreaking, while seemingly an unremarkable event, is another turning point in forest…
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New Digital Exhibit: Pioneer Trail Riders of the Wilderness
By Eben Lehman on August 17, 2018Recently FHS staff came across a scrapbook in our collection of American Forestry Association records. Its pages were filled with original photographs and documents from the American Forestry Association’s (AFA) first Trail Ride in July of 1933. The Trail Riders program was run by the AFA for over 50 years, from 1933 through 1988. Originally…
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The Forest Service Faces a Century-old Call for Equality
By James Lewis on May 7, 2018The following opinion piece by FHS historian James Lewis was originally published by High Country News on April 30, 2018, and is republished here in its entirety. The third applicant was “no gentleman,” the U.S. Forest Service ranger wrote to his boss, but would still make a first-class fire lookout on the remote Klamath National…
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A Clear-eyed History of the Redwood Wars: A Review of the Book “Defending Giants”
By James Lewis on March 29, 2018FHS historian James Lewis wrote this review of Defending Giants: The Redwood Wars and the Transformation of American Environmental Politics, by Darren Frederick Speece (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2016) for Western Historical Quarterly. It was published in the October 2017 issue. The tallest species in the world, the redwood tree (sequoia sempervirens) is found in a narrow range…
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“New Faces, Same Old Values”: Revisiting a History of Attitudes Towards Women in the Forest Service
By James Lewis on March 9, 2018In light of the recent news about the systemic and system-wide problem of sexual harassment and misconduct throughout the U.S. Forest Service, and other federal land management agencies, it is useful to have some historical perspective. In short, this is not a recent problem. The following excerpt from my book The Greatest Good and the…
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A Look Back at George Washington’s Birthday Trees
By Eben Lehman on February 22, 2018“Ten million monuments to a great man!” So went the call out from Charles Lathrop Pack and the American Tree Association to the American public. The “great man” was George Washington and the year was 1932 – the bicentennial of Washington’s birth. Mired in the midst of the Great Depression, Americans were nonetheless still in the…
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The Year When Turkeys Were Used to Fight Forest Fires
By Eben Lehman on November 22, 2017There’s no better time than Thanksgiving week to look back at some of forest history’s famous turkeys. While we’ve previously looked at how turkeys changed forest history by upending timber policy in the 1960s, it’s due time to highlight a pair of birds. “Sir Keep Oregon Green” and “Chief No Fire” were two large 40-pound…
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The Most Epic Forest History Road Trip Yet
By James Lewis on November 21, 2017This post was first published in the Spring 2017 issue of Forest History Today, which was produced for the National Park Service’s centennial, as the “History on the Road” column. It’s been adapted for the blog to include more stops at places other than in national parks and seashores. Last fall, I took a leave of absence and…
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Meet a Conservation Character: Rozzie the Rat
By James Lewis on November 6, 2017Everyone knows Smokey Bear, Woodsy Owl, and maybe even Ranger Rick Raccoon. While there are many forest-related fictional characters that long ago fell by the wayside, new ones are appearing all the time. We thought we’d interview the people behind these new characters. In this first installment of our new series “Meet a Conservation Character,” we introduce…
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The Continuing Odyssey of “The Forest Fire” Painting
By James Lewis on September 13, 2017The saga of how one of the most famous paintings of a forest fire was created and what happened to it resembles at times an international spy thriller. An article in Forest History Today (“Untamed Art,” Fall 2008) by historian Stephen J. Pyne tracked that mystery but had no ending because no one could say…
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Reclaiming Henry David Thoreau, Forest Historian
By James Lewis on July 12, 2017Crayon portrait of Henry David Thoreau, 1854. (public domain) The bicentennial of the birth of Henry David Thoreau this month comes at an auspicious time. Given the political climate we live in, his essay “Civil Disobedience” resonates today more than it has in nearly a half-century. I break no new ground in saying that the…
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Collaboration, Inclusivity, and Resilience: Three Birthday Wishes for the Forest Service’s Second Century
By James Lewis on June 30, 2017July 1 marks the anniversary of the U.S. Forest Service’s establishment of the National Forest System in 1907—the day the “federal forest reserves” were renamed “national forests.” Historian Char Miller wants to share his birthday wishes for them. Not every anniversary deserves commemoration. Ordinarily, the 110th birthday of anything would not merit much attention, but…
