FORESTRY IN COLORADO SOME RE- 

 CENT PROGRESS 



BY 

 W. G. M. STONE 



President Colorado State Forestry Association 



TV/HEN Colorado was first settled 

 ** "the woods" were free for all 

 and for forty years our chief interest 

 in forestry appeared to be to destroy, 

 nor did we seem to care particularly 

 how much forest burned. At any rate 

 no direct, rational attempt was made 

 to save the forests. So thoughtless 

 and reckless were we that scarcely less 



against the reserves as anybody, both 

 , in Congress and out, contributing fuel 

 ' to the fire of opposition which, at first, 

 I was never too low to burn, 

 j But the leaven of reform, in the 



public mind, was working, and the 

 ' last two or three years have witnessed 

 I remarkable changes in both public sen- 

 i timent and forestry conditions, so that 



View Showing Result of Repeated Fires in Colorado Forests 



than 25,000 square miles of forests 

 were permitted to be swept from our 

 mountain sides. 



Soon after the passage of the act au- 

 thorizing the forest reserves there were 

 nearly 3,000,000 acres set apart for 

 this purpose. For a decade little was 

 done except to curse the law and curse 

 the reserves. Some of our own sena- 

 tors and congressmen were as bitter 



forestry in Colorado, in the language 

 of Samuel Kirkham, is "marching on- 

 ward with gigantic strides." 



Within two years there have been 

 added to the forest reserves of the 

 state nearly 10,000,000 acres. The 

 State Agricultural Experiment Sta- 

 tion has established forty-nine experi- 

 ments in tree-planting in different 

 parts of the state, employing 30.900 



