The Mountaineer 
Volume Six Seattle, Washington Nineteen Thirteen 
THE OLYMPIC NATIONAL FOREST— 
WHAT IT MEANS 
R. L. FROMME, FOREST SUPERVISOR 
. the extreme northwestern corner of the United States, 
surrounded on three sides—west, north, and east—by water, 
is the Olympic Peninsula, the mountainous and heavily tim- 
eAESE bered interior of which has been set aside through the 
wisdom of the National Government as the Olympic National Forest. 
This area was withdrawn from all forms of private acquisition, except- 
ing as permitted under the mining laws and the special homestead act 
of June 11, 1906, which applies to lands more valuable for agricultural 
use than for timber, public use, water-power, and other forest pur- 
poses, by President Cleveland on February 22, 1897. 
For the first few years, this reserve, as it was then called, was, 
like most of the otlier early created forests, handled as a reserve pure 
and simple, very little study or regard being given to the local busi- 
ness interests or to the wisest use of the lands and resources involved. 
Beginning with the spring of 1905, however, when the administration 
of this, along with an aggregate of some 37,000,000 acres of similar 
timber land withdrawals, was turned over by Congress to the Forest 
Service, Department of Agriculture, consistent progress has been made 
in the practical application of the idea of conservation. The Forest 
Service, at that time a small group of technically trained men, who, 
with a knowledge of European methods of forestry, were engaged in 
studying home conditions with a view to a proper scientific application 
of those principles to the forests and timber lands of this country, was 
naturally better fitted than any other branch or division of the Gov- 
ernment to assume control of these “reserves” and to introduce 
rapidly the idea of the greatest use to the largest number. With the 
application of this idea of wise use of the national timber resources, 
it was but a short time until the very inappropriate and misleading 
term of “reserve” was dropped for the adoption of the name national 
forest, which means development and use just as rapidly as local con- 
ditions and needs permit and justify, and in such a manner as to 
prevent waste, attain the greatest benefit for all the people, and make 
such benefits just as far as possible perpetual. 
