STATE FORESTERS IN MINNESOTA 



By Ovid M. Butler 



Forester, The American Forestry Association 



FORESTERS fromdifferent parts of the United 

 States and Canada invaded the state of Minnesota 

 in August. The occasion was the third annual gathering 

 of the Association of State Foresters. During practically 

 every daylight hour from August 8 to August 14, the 

 members of the party, vi^hich numbered about thirty, were 

 on the move, covering in all some five hundred miles by 

 land and water routes through the northern section of the 

 state. The object of the trip was to acquaint the visit- 

 ing foresters with some of Minnesota's larger forest 

 problems and to show them 

 on the ground the manner 

 in which the state is con- 

 ducting its forest work. 



Assembling at Bemidji, 

 the party was taken by au- 

 tos to Itasca State Park 

 and Forest, "the source of 

 the father of waters," for 

 it is there in the small but 

 beautiful Lake Itasca, 

 which the early Indians 

 knew as Lake La Biche 

 (Elk), that our mightiest 

 of rivers has its beginning. 

 Itasca State Park and For- 

 est embraces 32,000 acres, 

 of which 6,000 are water. 

 It was established in 1891 

 by Congress and the Min- 

 nesota legislature to pro- 

 tect the source of the Mis- 

 sissippi River and to pre- 

 serve a portion of the prim- 

 eval forest along with it? 

 game. Although most of 

 the foresters on the preced- 

 ing day had traveled from 

 Duluth westward half way 

 across the state, their first 

 view of a real virgin forest 

 was when they came to the 

 protected shores of Lake 

 Itasca. This wooded spot, 



which is both a game refuge and a protected forest, was 

 the source of diversified interest to the foresters. Here 

 they beheld the Norway pine in its virgin growth and on 

 other portions of the tract, they were able to observe 

 the luxuriant regrowth which under adequate fire pro- 

 tection is following the cutting of the older timber. For, 

 some of the area has been cut over. It appears that when 

 the legislature "grudgingly and only after a bitter strug- 

 gle," passed the law, creating the park, it refused to ap- 



THE WOODS, ITASCA STATE FOREST, OWNED BY THE PEOPLE 

 OF MINNESOTA. 



propriate money with which to buy the primeval forest. 

 As a result some of the hills around Lake Itasca itself 

 were stripped of their timber before public sentiment be- 

 came sufficiently aroused to force the legislature to make 

 adequate provisions for the protection and management 

 of the forests. 



After traveling mile after mile through barren cut- 

 over and burned-over pine land a prairie of scrub 

 growth and charred snags, to which the traveler sought 

 to close his eyes the effects of forest management and 



fire protection are most 

 striking as one enters 

 Itasca Forest. It is a tract 

 of wild forest, dotted with 

 more than a hundred lakes. 

 Its every acre of land is 

 producing a crop of timber 

 while at the same time it is 

 the haven and breeding 

 place of deer, mink, musk- 

 rat, beaver, porcupine, loon 

 and wild duck. In addi- 

 tion to that, it is rapidy be- 

 coming the chief recrea- 

 tional point of the state for 

 summer tourists, being vis- 

 ited every summer by thou- 

 sands of people, who stay 

 at the great log lodge at 

 the head of Lake Itasca, 

 or camp along the eastern 

 shore where the state has 

 provided camp grounds. 

 Toward the lower end of 

 the lake, the School of 

 Forestry of the state uni- 

 versity has its summer 

 camp and nursery. All in 

 all, it is an object lesson 

 in forest protection which 

 any one whose eye has be- 

 held the seemingly limit- 

 less stretches of cut-over 

 and fire-pocked land which 

 characterizes much of 

 northern Minnesota, can not fail to take to heart. 

 From Itasca Forest, the band of foresters, on the 

 following day, visited the Minnesota National Forest, 

 traveling some fifty miles within its boundaries and ob- 

 serving the extent to which the early cuttings made here 

 under Government regulations have been successful. 

 Where fire has been kept out and seed trees left, luxuriant 

 regrowth was everywhere apparent, the Norway pine re- 

 producing itself, with hardwoods coming in pro],ifially 



