George W. Vanderbilt, Pioneer in Forestry 



By Overton Westfeldt Price. 



Our national prublem in forestry depends chiefly upon 

 the care given to private forests. The men in the United 

 States who first appHed practical forestry to their hold- 

 ings were in a very real sense public benefactors, for 

 they created those object lessons in the methods and the 

 results of forest conservation which were absolutely es- 

 sential to its wider application to private forest lands. 



First among the pioneers in the practice of forestry 

 on a large scale in America was the late George W. Van- 

 derbilt. It was he who, nearly twenty-five years ago, 

 purchased a great mountain forest tract on the head- 

 waters of the French Broad River and its tributaries in 

 Western North Carolina, and acting under the advice of 

 Gififord Pinchot, tlicn a consulting forester, at once put 

 his forest holdings under conservative management. In 

 those early days it called for a man of much vision and 

 of strong convictions to adopt the practice of forestry. 

 Those were still the days in which forestry was looked 

 upon with indifference by most Americans, and as a 

 chimerical and fantastic theory by not a few. The prac- 

 tical possibilities of forest conservation as a sound busi- 

 ness investment for the forest owner had gained little 

 hold on the public mind and it is exceedingly probable 

 that Mr. Vanderbilt acted in the face of the remon- 

 strance of his business advisers, when he set out to dem- 

 onstrate that forestry can be applied successfully to pri- 

 vate lands, with benefit both to the community and to the 

 man who owns them in fee simple. 



Two definite and resolute motives actuated Mr. \"an- 

 derbilt in adopting forestry and in continuing to prac- 

 tice it unflinchingly on his forest holdings of considerably 

 over one hundred thousand acres, up to the time of his 

 death. The one was the belief, which has been fully 

 justified by the results which he attained, that Western 

 North Carolina with its rich hardwood forests, and its 

 remarkable possibilities for industrial growth, offered an 

 exceptionally favorable opportunity for good returns 

 from timber growing. The other was the conviction that 

 the ownership of forest lands entails certain definite re- 

 sponsibilities to the public ; for Mr. Vanderbilt was one 

 of those who held that the private ownership of any re- 

 source necessary to the general welfare carries with it 

 the moral obligation of faithful stewardship to the 

 public. 



I recall an occasion a few years ago on which I heard 

 Mr. \'anderbilt, usually a man of much reserve, speak 

 out from the heart his admirable conception 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 decision. He faced the alternative 

 of requiring that cutting under this sale should follow 

 the methods of practical forestry, or of waiving all re- 

 strictions 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 adop- 

 tion would probablv result in a much higher price being 

 paid for the timber. 



'T have stuck to forestry from the beginning," said 

 Mr. Vanderbilt warmly, "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. P.ut apart from that, it would be 

 bad citizenship. As I see it, no man is a good citizen who 

 destroys for selfish ends a growing forest." 



Such was the sincerity and the deep sense of obligation 

 to his fellow men which characterized Mr. \'anderb!lt's 

 policy of forest conservation. Pisgah Forest, its moun- 



tain slopes clothed in an unbroken mantle of protective 

 tree growth, is his monument. He transformed it by 

 nearly a quarter of a century's efficient fire protection, 

 from a forest characterized by scanty young growth, thin 

 hunuis covering, and impoverished soil, as the result of 

 injury it had suft'ered in former years from excessive 

 grazing and recurrent fires, to one whose silvicultural 

 condition is probably unequaled elsewhere in the South- 

 ern Appalachians. The forest mould has again accumu- 

 lated, and a young growth of remarkable density has 

 sjirung up under the old trees, and in the rich poplar 

 coves of Pisgah Forest and on its slopes and ridges as 

 well, has taken place with the unbroken years of fire 

 protection, a remarkalilc restoration 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 Alountains on which nature 

 is struggling against the triple combination of fire, un- 

 regulated grazing and destructive lumbering, and then 

 to feast his eyes on the dense and thrifty growth of Pis- 

 gah Forest, with its thickets of hardwood saplings, its 

 deep humus layer, and its rare freedom from disease. 



But Mr. Vanderbilt did not only preserve the product- 

 ive 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 reserve of enthu- 

 siasm, and the vigorous co-operation of a sure-footed 

 mule. For when Mr. Vanderbilt acquired it, Pisgah 

 Forest was a wilderness, and the only means of penetrat- 

 ing 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 network 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 vig- 

 orous policy for giving Pisgah Forest so complete a sys- 

 tem 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 high- 

 est point this road reaches an altitude of five thousand 

 two hundred feet. 



Biltmore Forest, the second large division of Mr. \'an- 

 derbilt's forest holdings, lies on both sides of the French 

 Broad River near Asheville. As the result of its ac- 

 cessibility, 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 done with an eye 

 single to immediate returns and wholly without regard 

 for the safety of the forest, and fires had been permitted 

 to burn unchecked. There had been much injudicious 

 clearing of steep upper slopes, which, after a few years 

 of unprofitable cultivation, were generally abandoned to 

 erosion, which in the loose soil and exceptionally heavy 

 railfall of the region occurs with remarkable rapidity. 

 But here again forest conservation for nearly a quarter 

 of a century has worked a wonderful change. Stock 

 have been wholly excluded from the forest, careful im- 



