UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 



SCHOOL OF FORESTRY 

 AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION 



March 20, 1964 



KELEY 4, CALIFORNIA 



Mrs. Amelia R. Fry 



Regional Cultural History Project 



486 General Library 



Campus 



Dear Mrs. Fry: 



The significance of the proposed project for securing information 

 from certain selected people long associated with the development of 

 the U. S. Forest Service rests on two facts. On the one hand, there are 

 a small number of men still alive whose personal experience and memory 

 covers virtually the entire history of the grovth and development of the 

 Forest Service since 1905. If we are to secure the best possible insights 

 and understanding of the history of the Forest Service as a conservation 

 agency the recollections and mature viewpoints of these men who were 

 associated with the Service throughout their careers would provide unique 

 and invaluable source material. The time remaining during which this 

 information could be collected is obviously limited. A second justification 

 is found in the feet that to date there has been no comprehensive historical 

 evaluation of the role of the Forest Service as a conservation agency. 

 Ise has published a critical history of national Park policy under the 

 sponsorship of Resources for the Future which serves as an initial evalua 

 tion of the National Park Service. About 1920 Ise published a study on 

 forest policy but that is obviously now confined to only a very small 

 part of the significant history. A series offviews such as are suggested 

 in the present proposal could provide both new source material end the 

 inspiration for a critical historical evaluation of the Forest Service. 



The results would be of the greatest importance to the field of 

 forest policy. The Forest Service pioneered bcth the articulation and 

 the implementation of the concepts of sustained yield and multiple use 

 as policies for natural resource management in the U. S. It instituted 

 numerous innovations in the organization and administration of programs 

 of handling federally owned resources. It developed on a large scale 

 new techniques for cooperation with state and local units of government 

 in such matters as fire protection and landowner :\. education. It 

 pioneered in a number of respects in the development of research as a 

 functioning guide to operational policy of the government. Each of the 

 contributions just enumerated are of the greatest possible significance 

 for forest policy and for important implications going far beyond the 

 natural resources field. The project here proposed would .throw much 

 light on the way in which each of the innovations noted above developed 

 and would contribute greatly to our understanding of them. 



Very sincerely yours, 



Henrv J. Vaux 



