BEGINNINGS 

 AND 



ESTABLISHMENT 



Figure 1. — Original gate to Utah Experiment Station, 

 1914. 



The Great Basin Experiment Station has 

 been the headquarters for research on ecology 

 and management of watershed and range- 

 lands, as well as on problems of silviculture, 

 ever since its creation in 1912 by administra- 

 tive decision of Forester Henry S. Graves. The 

 headquarters unit is located in an aspen grove 

 on the west front of the high Wasatch Plateau 

 in Sanpete County in central Utah at an eleva- 

 tion of 8,850 feet. The area of concern has al- 

 ways been broad. Station personnel have in- 

 vestigated and found solutions to special land 

 use problems over a large part of the Great 

 Basin and adjacent upper Colorado River 

 Basin in Utah and Wyoming. The main field 

 laboratory has been in Ephraim Canyon and 

 adjacent drainages on the east side of the 

 Wasatch Plateau. Applications of findings 

 have been used widely in the West. 



The Station has had several official names. 

 It was first called the Utah Experiment Sta- 

 tion (fig. 1). This name was changed to Great 

 Basin Experiment Station in 1918 to end con- 

 fusion with the name of the Experiment Sta- 

 tion of the Utah Agricultural College at 

 Logan. Each of these Stations had been re- 

 ceiving mail addressed to the other. This 

 change of name was justified additionally by 

 being more accurately descriptive of the ex- 

 tensive area the Great Basin Experiment Sta- 

 tion served, which was far beyond the bound- 

 aries of Utah. 1 



When the Intermountain Forest and Range 

 Experiment Station was established on July 1,. 

 1930, the Great Basin Experiment Station be- 

 came a branch of it and was officially desig- 

 nated as the Great Basin Branch Station. C. L. 

 Forsling, the Director of the Station, had pro- 

 posed that the name of the unit be changed 

 instead to the Wasatch Plateau Branch on the 

 bases that (l)the Intermountain Station 

 would absorb the old Experiment Station, 



l The Great Basin Province designated by the U. S. 

 Geological Survey includes most of the western half 

 of Utah, nearly all of Nevada, California east of the 

 summit of the Sierra Nevada, a large area in south- 

 eastern Oregon, and smaller portions of southeastern 

 Idaho and southwestern Wyoming. Its 210,000 square 

 miles include mountains, deserts, dry old lakebeds, a 

 number of gradually receding lakes, of which- the 

 Great Salt Lake is best known, and innumerable fer- 

 tile valleys and plains areas. 



