44 Arnoldia 78/5-6 « October 2021 
to me that we were rapidly getting to the point 
of having too many cooks as far as the North 
American Woods Collection is concerned.”!!8 
The chair of the Gallery of Trees Committee, 
Thornton T. Munger, addressed Oliver shortly 
after the meeting, indicating that the com- 
mittee was “impatient” to understand where 
they stood in relation to Millegan’s plans to 
acquire the collection.!!? Heckman soon wrote 
to Oliver, as well, reinforcing the message of 
progress that had been made toward planning 
for the collection’s move to Portland under the 
assumption that Millegan would cede the col- 
lection. He added, “We thought that if funds 
were assured to cover the costs of transport- 
ing the Collection to Portland and preparing it 
for display, the decisions regarding these other 
matters would be made with reasonable speed. 
This is as far as we can go. The next steps will 
have to be taken in Portland.” !”° 
Millegan subsequently contacted the com- 
mittee to revise his terms for relinquishing his 
claim to the collection, introducing the demand 
that he be allowed “to operate in the exhibit 
area a concession where selected gift and edu- 
cational items in wood could be purchased.” 
The committee’s chair, Munger, was a retired 
forester of long tenure in the U.S. Forest Service 
whose career and research had been devoted 
to developing methods for sustainable forestry 
and conservation. He and the Gallery of Trees 
Committee envisioned a much broader mission 
for the collection, that it would illustrate the 
forest resources of the country for the benefit 
of public education. Neither the committee, 
nor the City of Portland, nor the Hill Family 
Foundation approved of the idea of using the 
collection to support a commercial enterprise, 
which in terms of the proposed new building 
would also be prohibited by city ordinance.'! 
Although the committee was at an impasse as 
the negotiations stretched into April, May, and 
June, Munger had continued to plan as though 
a compromise would eventually be reached.!?” 
After hearing again from Munger following a 
meeting in May, Oliver decided to finally draw 
the matter to a close. He informed Millegan in 
June, “You have repeatedly stated that you were 
interested in acquiring this collection and were 
given several deadlines for the acquisition of 
the collection.... I think we have been exceed- 
ingly patient in waiting for you to fulfill your 
intentions. Therefore, your option to the col- 
lection has been withdrawn and we shall seek 
to dispose of the collection through other chan- 
nels.”!23 Oliver notified Munger of the trans- 
action and renewed his offer to the Gallery of 
Trees Committee, with the only requirement 
being “that we hope it will be exhibited for the 
benefit of the public and will be available to stu- 
dents for study.” He urged that the collection be 
transferred by September 1.!24 The Gallery of 
Trees Committee was relieved, the Hill Family 
Foundation was satisfied, and the City Council 
and Oregon Museum of Science and Industry all 
agreed that the collection would finally belong 
to Portland. 
In the meantime, the Gallery of Trees Com- 
mittee had reached a consensus about the 
location for the new exhibit. Rather than con- 
structing a new building, the Jesup Collection 
could be displayed on the unoccupied second 
story of the old Forestry Building, a stupendous 
log structure that had been built in northwest 
Portland for the Lewis and Clark Centennial 
Exposition of 1905. The main floor was already 
in use as a museum of forestry and the log- 
ging industry, and it was thought that the log 
specimens would complement these exhibits. 
Because the aging balconies required engineer- 
ing changes to accommodate the collection, 
the committee intended to store the collection 
once it arrived in Portland while funding was 
raised for the renovations. !*° 
Just a month after the final July meeting that 
approved of these plans, tragedy swept them 
all aside. A fire started in the office of the For- 
estry Building on the evening of August 17 and 
rapidly spread to the entire structure. The next 
morning, Munger observed the smoldering 
remains, which included the entire contents of 
the city’s forestry museum that he had helped 
to oversee.!2° By 1971, when the new Western 
Forestry Center building opened, the story of 
the calamity in the museum’s own informa- 
tional materials had come to include the Jesup 
Collection and its miraculous escape of this fate 
by having still been in storage in Portland.!?’ 
Twenty years after the fire, the story read: 
“When the old log museum burned in August 
