810 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



destruction of soil capacity? What can 

 be more favorable to those floods that 

 the Weeks Act seeks to prevent? 

 Nothing is more important in the 

 White Mountains than for the Govern- 

 ment to acquire the remaining timber, 

 before it is forever too late. 



Probably some will raise the question, 

 often asked when the Weeks Act was 

 first up for consideration, "Why does 

 not New Hampshire save the White 

 Mountains?" The answer is simple 



Since the Weeks Act was passed 

 logging operations have unfortunately 

 been permitted in a steep valley that 

 forms a part of Franconia Notch. In 

 this valley a destructive fire swept over 

 one of the ridges before any logging 

 operations were undertaken there, mak- 

 ing the ridge permanently barren. We 

 have now the debris where seven million 

 feet of spruce timber have been recently 

 logged off clean. The present prospects 

 of this steep valley are not promising. 







The New Stone Hut of the Appalachian Mountain Club at the Lake of the Clouds, Near the Summit 



of Mount Washington 



and plain. But one of the very many 

 large manufacturing enterprises, and 

 none of the navigation interests, that 

 are affected by the protection of the 

 forests in the White Mountains, are 

 located within the borders of New 

 Hampshire; they are all in other 

 States. New Hampshire has a total 

 population of less than 450,000 persons. 

 These are farming people and small 

 manufacturers, almost wholly without 

 men or families of large means. It is 

 clearly not the duty of these few people 

 to bear the burden of a National 

 Forest. New Hampshire has purchased 

 the Crawford Notch at the cost of 

 vS 100,000. 



New growth on this thin soil will be 

 very slow, even if a fire does not set it 

 back for several hundred years. 



A purchase comprising 35,000 acres 

 has been made on the eastern side of 

 the Carter-Moriah Range in the valley 

 of the Wild River, a beautiful country 

 not much known hitherto because of 

 its comparative inaccessibility. The 

 new roads and trails constructed by the 

 Government for fire protective purposes, 

 are also opening up this region for 

 visitors of the hardy type. Though 

 severely burned in places, the tract 

 contains much valuable timber that will 

 be taken off later by the Government 

 and thus render a partial return at 

 least upon the original outlay. 



