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large number of permitted cattle* There was a brisk 

 timber sale business for hewed railroad tie timber, 

 and a relatively small quantity of troublesome land 

 such as mining claims and forest homesteads. I could 

 ride horseback across the forest in half a day and 

 the length of it in a day, and yet it had the biggest 

 volume of timber sales in District Two. 



In those days we did not have the critical over 

 grazing problems which arose later on many national 

 forests, but we were mindful of such dangers on the 

 Medicine Bow. We had a grazing ranger who spent all 

 summer on the high sheep ranges seeing that bedding- 

 out rules were observed, land allotment lines honored, 

 and all necessary steps taken by the herders to protect 

 the range. We took similar steps on the cattle ranges 

 with supervision by the district rangers. All was not 

 always serene, however, and we had to get pretty firm 

 at times. 



My predecessor as supervisor, P. S. Lovejoy, had 

 given a great deal of attention to the timber sale 

 business and had developed to a high degree the prac 

 tice of tree selection cutting in the predominantly 

 lodgepole pine stands. In fact some time later when 

 I was invited to the Deerlodge National Forest in 



