ON THE AUTOMOBILE ROAD, WHICH MAKES PISGAH FOREST ONE OF THE MOST ACCESSIBLE MOUNTAIN 



FORESTS IN AMERICA. 



GEO. W. VANDERBILT, PIONEER IN FORESTRY 



By OVERTON WESTFELDT PRICE 



OUR national problem in for- 

 estry depends chiefly upon the 

 care given to private forests. 

 The men in the United States 

 who first applied practical forestry to 

 their holdings were in a very real sense 

 public benefactors ; for they created 

 those object lessons in the methods and 

 the results of forest conservation which 

 were absolutely essential to its wider 

 application to private forest lands. 



First among the pioneers in the prac- 

 tice of forestry on a large scale in 

 America was the late George W. Van- 

 derbilt. It was he, who, nearly twenty- 

 five years ago, purchased a great moun- 

 tain forest tract on the headwaters of 

 the French Broad River and its tribu- 

 taries in Western North Carolina, and 

 acting under the advice of Gifford Pin- 

 chot, then a consulting forester, at once 

 put his forest holdings under conserva- 

 tive management. In those early days 

 420 



it called for a man of much vision and 

 of strong convictions to adopt the prac- 

 tice of forestry. Those were still the 

 days in which forestry was looked upon 

 with indifference by most Americans, 

 and as a chimerical and fantastic theory 

 by not a few. The practical possibili- 

 ties of forest conservation as a sound 

 business investment for the forest 

 owner had gained little hold on the pub- 

 lic mind and it is exceedingly probable 

 that Mr. Vanderbilt acted in the face of 

 the remonstrance of his business advis- 

 ors, when he set out to demonstrate that 

 forestry can be applied successfully to 

 private lands, with benefit both to the 

 community and to the man who owns 

 them in fee simple. 



Two definite and resolute motives 

 actuated Mr. Vanderbilt in adopting 

 forestry and in continuing to practice it 

 unflinchingly on his forest holdings of 

 considerably over one hundred thou- 



