CHAPTER 9 

 FORESTRY IN THE UNITED STATES 



Not to use less but to waste less. Not restriction, but replacement. 

 These should be our goal in forestry. CHARLES LATHROP PACK. 



To the first settler who reached these shores the forests from 

 which he hewed his cabin logs must have seemed without end. 

 Hardwoods and softwoods stretched endlessly back from the 

 Atlantic coast north into Canada and south to the little known 

 Gulf country. The eastern mountains were forest covered. 

 Trees grew down to the very river banks. Trees covered the 

 fertile valleys. They had heard, these early settlers, that on the 

 Pacific coast were tall forests, just as inexhaustible and even 

 more majestic. There was no reason then to suspect that the 

 entire country was not forest-covered from coast to coast and 

 from the Arctic Circle to the Gulf. 



So the first problem of our early pioneers was not to preserve 

 the forests, but to get rid of them in the swiftest way possible. 

 To make room for villages, to let in sunlight for farm crops 

 and to provide pasture lands for horses and cattle. Trees were 

 an obstacle and a menace. Those dark silent forests gave shelter 

 to hostile Indians and to beasts that preyed on the settlers' 

 stock. So, with fire and axe Pilgrims and Puritan Fathers alike 

 forced back the boundary of the forests as rapidly and as far 

 as they were able. 



97 



