THIS LAND 



Green 

 Fingers 



A woodland revives among the glacier- 

 carved lakes of central New York. 



By Robert H. Mohlenbrock 



In 1891 President Benjamin Har- 

 rison signed legislation authoriz- 

 ing the establishment of national 

 forests in the United States. Since 

 that time, 155 national forests have 

 been designated, scattered within 

 the boundaries of forty-four states, 

 Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. 

 Some of the forests preserve areas in 

 conditions so pristine they compare 

 well with the state of the lands in the 

 national parks. Others encompass 

 land degraded by earlier human oc- 

 cupation, which was then restored 

 through reforestation and good forest 

 management. The most recent mem- 

 ber of the group, added in 1985, is 

 Finger Lakes National Forest, situat- 

 ed on a ridge known as Hector 

 Backbone. The ridge lies between 

 the southern ends of Seneca and 

 Cayuga lakes, the two largest of the 



White trillium 



Finger Lakes in west- 

 central New York. 



The scenic Finger 

 Lakes are named for 

 eleven long, narrow 

 lakes that run roughly 

 north-south along 

 nearly parallel lines. 

 The lakebeds were 

 formed during the past 

 two million years by 

 southward-moving 

 glaciers, some more 

 than two miles thick, 

 which carved deep 

 crevasses into the old 

 valleys of northward- 

 flowing rivers. After 

 the last glaciers began 

 their retreat, about 



19,000 years ago, they left behind the 

 lakes and the elongated ridges, known 

 as drumlins, that separate them (Hec- 

 tor Backbone is one of those drum- 

 lins). The glaciers also left gravel de- 

 posits called moraines at the southern 

 ends of the lakes. 



The region was home to Indians 

 of the Iroquois Confederacy until 

 1779, when they were evicted under 

 orders of General George Washing- 

 ton because four of the six nations in 

 the league had allied themselves with 

 the British. The land that was seized 

 was then allotted to solciiers and vet- 

 erans of the Revolutionary War, as 

 payment for their service. The set- 



Mayapples rouse themselves in early spring 

 beneath young sugar maple trees. 



tiers on Hector Backbone produced 

 hay and small grains, such as buck- 

 wheat, for sale in New York City. 

 But the combination of a poor 

 post— Civil War economy, westward 

 expansion, changing access to mar- 

 kets, and hard-to-work soils led to 

 the abandonment of most farming 

 there in the 1890s and the early 

 decades of the twentieth century. 



In 1 934 the federal government 

 began to acquire land on Hector 

 Backbone and started a program of 

 reforestation and the creation of arti- 

 ficial ponds. Because the owners 

 were under no obligation to sell, the 



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NATURAL HISTORY April 2006 



