THE MONT ALTO FOREST 113 



One of the most interesting of these cases is at Berea College, 

 Berea, Kentucky. This institution, organized for an ideal and sit- 

 uated in the foothills of the Cumberland Mountains, possesses a 

 6ooo-acre tract known as the Fay Forest Reserve. This area is 

 managed on a commercial basis, supplying lumber, posts, telephone 

 and light poles and railroad ties. Within it are quarries from 

 which sand, gravel, stone and pulverized limestone are marketed. 

 The United States Forest Service through its Appalachian Forest 

 Experiment Station, is cooperating to make the tract an experi- 

 mental centre, demonstrating to the people of the mountain regions 

 the value of conserving and carefully utilizing their forest resources. 



The Fay Forest Reserve is carried on the books of the College 

 as an asset valued at $57,997. Besides returning a varying but 

 substantial income to the institution, it provides employment to many 

 Berea students, who in 1923 earned 62.3 per cent, of their actual 

 school expenses. While Berea does not as yet give organized forestry 

 instruction, it is planned to use the forest tract as a basis of study 

 and research, applying it to the question of the farm woodlot. 



THE MONT ALTO FOREST 



In 1902 Dr. J. T. Rothrock, then Commissioner of Forestry 

 of Pennsylvania, purchased from the Mont Alto Iron Company 

 an area of 23,000 acres for about $80,000. This area had been 

 devastated by the ax to supply timber and wood for charcoal to be 

 used in the iron smelting furnaces of the vicinity. It had also been 

 swept by costly fires. Mr. George H. Wirt was put in charge 

 of the area with instructions to establish a forest nursery. 



In the intervening years the area was managed with a view to the 

 future. Fifteen miles of roads costing about $2000 a mile were 

 built into the forest to aid fire protection. Two steel fire towers 

 and one wooden one and 1 1 miles of telephone system were installed. 

 Protection increased and fire losses decreased. A tuberculosis sana- 

 torium was established in the area and gradually expanded, restoring 

 health to hundreds. A game and fish preserve was created, pro- 

 viding propagation and refuge. The area became a recreational 

 goal, and the water resources of the growing industrial town of 

 Waynesboro were purified and protected. In 1923 the forest gave 

 employment to 30 men, with a payroll of over $30,000. 



