PROGRESS IN FOREST RESERVATION 

 IN PENNSYLVANIA 



BY 

 Dr. J. T. ROTHROCK 



Secretary, Pennsylvania Reservation Commission 



Tp HE first requirement of a State is citizens. Penn- 

 sylvania, acting upon this fundamental principle 

 early, adopted the expedient of selling land at the 

 nominal price of 26 2-3 cents per acre. The State 

 has long since outgrown the necessity of offering such 

 inducements; but the law which authorized the same 

 remains to this day unrepealed. In 1893 the Com- 

 monwealth still owned a few of its many acres, but 

 these could not be located by any State officer and 

 were only discovered when the surveyors, surveying 

 unseated lands, found here and there a tract for which 

 no claimant appeared. 



Actual purchase of land by the States for the pur- 

 pose of creating forest reservations commenced in 

 1896. So apparent had the necessity of such action 

 become that, though the average price paid per acre 

 for the land without timber was greater than the 

 Commonwealth received for the land with all of its 

 wealth of timber upon it, no criticism was evoked. 



To-day Pennsylvania is in actual, or prospective, 

 possession of about 700,000 acres, which has been pur- 

 chased for the specific purpose of creating forest 

 reservations, and thus to restore a normal propor- 

 tionate area of wooded to cleared land. A Department 

 of Forestry exists which ranks in recognized impor- 

 tance with that of Public Instruction, Agriculture, or 

 Internal Affairs. 



