CHAPTER VI 



FOREST RESERVES IN THE APPALACHIAN AND WHITE 



MOUNTAINS 



Few would have been so bold as to predict, when the Forest Reserve 

 Act was passed in 1891, that the government would ever go so far as 

 to buy up denuded timber lands for forest reserves. As has been 

 pointed out, the Forest Reserve Act, which provided only for the 

 retention of forest lands already owned by the government, did not 

 have the support of Congress when it passed;^ and the policy of 

 buying up lands was a step far in advance of this, a step which might 

 well have seemed impossible at the time. Furthermore, as long as the 

 government was selling its valuable timber lands for next to nothing 

 under the Timber and Stone and Cash Sale acts, or giving it away 

 under some of the other land laws, there was little apparent wisdom 

 in buying up worthless timber land, no matter how cheaply it might 

 be obtained. However illogical the idea may seem when viewed in this 

 way, it is nevertheless true that agitation for the purchase of lands 

 for national forests in the Appalachian Mountains arose within less 

 than ten years after the passage of the Forest Reserve Act ; and 

 within a second decade, had resulted in important legislation. 



EARLY AGITATION FOR APPALACHIAN RESERVES 



In November, 1899, the Appalachian National Park Association 

 was organized at Asheville, North Carolina, with members from vari- 

 ous parts of the country; and early in the year 1900, memorials from 

 this association, from the Appalachian Mountain Club of New Eng- 

 land, from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 

 and from the American Forestry Association, were presented in Con- 

 gress, asking that measures be taken for the preservation of the 



1 Cross References, pp. 114-118. 



