FORESTRY PROGRESS IN NEW HAMPSHIRE 



By W. R. brown 



Secretary of the New Hampshire Forestry Commission 



^i^!;^HE history of the inception and growth of forestry in New Hampshire 

 C^J of the measures and the men behind it, and of its present outlook, may 

 ^^"^ be of general interest because, in a degree, it is typical of the growth 

 throughout the country, and because the state is beloved of many; and of es- 

 pecial interest because of the attention that has been drawn to its remarkable 

 mountain country by the movement for the establishment there of national 

 foi'ests. 



Being naturally a wooded state, with forests that came well down to the 

 shore of the ocean, and possessing an immense power of reproduction, the 

 practice of forestry was not taken up in New Hampshire until after the Civil 

 War. The great number of summer visitors, however, who came for the enjoy- 

 ment of the wonderful scenery; the establishment of large lumber and pulp 

 industries in the north; and the rapid increase of the portable mill, which 

 diminished the stand of splendid pine that grew so abundantly in the middle 

 and southern parts of the state, were the factors which brought the matter 

 into the minds of a few thoughtful men after the state had sold its last timber- 

 lands in 1867. 



One of the New Hampshire men to first conserve and replete was Honor- 

 able Isaac Adams, who, in 1878, planted a tract of forty acres in the town of 

 Moultonboro to white pine in parallel rows four feet apart each way. This 

 plantation may be seen today, although it has suti'ered for need of thinuiug. 



Originally two-thirds of New Hampshire's total area, or 4,000,000 acres, 

 was in timberland, much of it virgin growth, but through the abandonment 

 of old farms and their reversion to sprouts, this has since been increased so 

 that now three-fourths of our state is covered by growth of some kind. The 

 depreciation in the quality of the stand was the cause of chief concern to 

 far-sighted citizens, as cut over lauds replaced old growth, burned areas 

 came up to cherry bushes, and old pastures became improperly seeded. Over 

 the northern section of the state the most characteristic species, spruce and 

 balsam formed vast unsettled forests which covered the mountains almost to 

 their tops, and were treated as unlimited reservoirs by the large lumber and 

 pulp companies and cut without attention to reproduction, while in the south- 

 ern half where deciduous trees were in preponderance, accompanied with the 

 white pine, the country was opened by settlement, with the characteristic 

 v.oodlot left on the farm. Two distinct problems were therefore ofl'ered for 

 the practice of forestry. First, protection against extensive conflagrations in 

 Ihe north calling for a broad policy to protect a lai-ge area, together with the 

 encouragement of a disposition to leave small trees standing; and second, in 

 the south the organization of each separate town to fight local fires, with en- 

 couragement to replant the cleared lot, and perpetuate the rapid growing and 

 profitable white pine. 



Sometime in the seventies the old growth forest in that part of the Ammo- 

 noosuc Valley between the Twin Mountain House and Fabyans, and extending 

 along the road from Fabyans to the Crawford House and westward to the base 



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