422 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



out from the heart his admirable con- 

 ception of his duty as the owner of 

 Pisgah Forest. The question of the 

 terms on which a pending timber sale 

 should be made, was before him for de- 

 cision. He faced the alternative of re- 

 quiring that cutting under this sale 

 should follow the methods of practical 

 forestry, or of waiving all restrictions 

 looking to the protection of the forest. 

 He was reminded that the latter method 

 would naturally be more attractive to 

 prospective purchasers, and that its 

 adoption would probably result in a 

 much higher price being paid for the 

 timber. 



"I have stuck to forestry from the 

 beginning," said Mr. Vanderbilt 

 w^armly, "and I shall not forsake it now. 

 For me to impair the future usefulness 

 of Pisgah Forest in order to somewhat 

 increase present revenues, would be bad 

 business policy. But apart from that, 

 it would be bad citizenship. As I see 

 it, no man is a good citizen who de- 

 stroys for selfish ends a growing for- 

 est." 



Such was the sincerity and the deep 

 sense of obligation to his fellow men 

 which characterized Mr. Vanderbilt's 

 policy of forest conservation. Pisgah 

 Forest, its mountain slopes clothed in 

 an unbroken mantle of protective tree 

 growth, is his monument. He trans- 

 formed it by nearly a quarter of a cen- 

 tury's efficient fire protection, from a 

 forest characterized by scanty young 

 growth, thin humus covering, and im- 

 poverished soil, as the result of injury 

 it had suffered in former years from 

 excessive grazing and recurrent fires, to 

 one whose silvicultural condition is 

 probably unequaled elsewhere in the 

 Southern Appalachians. The forest 

 mould has again accumulated, and' a 

 young growth of remarkable density 

 has sprung up under the old trees ; and 

 in the rich poplar coves of Pisgah For- 

 est and on its slopes and ridges as well, 

 has taken place with the unbroken years 

 of fire protection, a remarkable restora- 

 tion to primeval forest conditions. 



If a man wants to profit by probably 

 the most forcible object lesson in the 

 results of forest conservation which 

 America contains, he needs only to visit 



one of the many forest tracts of the 

 Southern Mountains on which nature is 

 struggling against the triple combina- 

 tion of fire, unregulated grazing and de- 

 structive lumbering, and then to feast 

 his eyes on the dense and thrifty growth 

 of Pisgah Forest, with its thickets of 

 hardwood saplings, its deep humus 

 layer, and its rare freedom from dis- 

 ease. 



Dut Mr. Vanderbilt did not only pre- 

 serve the productive capacity of Pisgah 

 Forest. He made it, under a broad and 

 careful plan of development, one of the 

 most easily accessible mountain forests 

 in^ the United States. In the old days, 

 an excursion into its recesses entailed 

 for its accomplishment an unfailing re- 

 serve of enthusiasm, and the vigorous 

 cooperation of a sure-footed mule. For 

 when Mr. Vanderbilt acquired it, Pis- 

 gah Forest was a wilderness, and the 

 only means of penetrating it was over a 

 few dim trails occasionally used by the 

 mountaineers, who dug, "sang," grazed 

 cattle, hunted, fished, and possibly 

 "stilled" now and then within its 

 boundaries. Today good roads run up 

 each of the larger valleys, and a net- 

 work of well graded trails leads from 

 them to all parts of the property. The 

 aggregate length of the roads and trails 

 probably exceeds 200 miles. 



The crowning achievement of Mr. 

 Vanderbilt's vigorous policy for giving 

 Pisgah Forest so complete a system of 

 transportation as to make it practically 

 a park, was the construction of sixteen 

 miles of automobile road, which make it 

 possible to reach the heart of the tract 

 in a couple of hours from Asheville, 

 and to enjoy a superb panorama of 

 mountain scenery on the way. At its 

 highest point this road reaches an alti- 

 tude of five thousand two hundred feet. 



Biltmore Forest, the second large di- 

 vision of Mr. Vanderbilt's forest hold- 

 ings, lies on both sides of the French 

 Broad River near Asheville. As the re- 

 sult of its accessibility, it suffered far 

 more severely from destructive logging 

 than did Pisgah Forest at the hands of 

 its former owners, most of them small 

 farmers, who found a ready market in 

 Asheville for firewood, and for saw 

 logs at local mills. Cutting had been 



