J. For. 115(4):322 https://doi.org/10.5849/JOF-2017-050
BOOKS PINCHOT’S OLD TIMERS Gifford Pinchot and the First Foresters. Bibi Gaston. 344 p. $22.95 (paperback). Baked Apple Club Productions, LLC, New Milford, CT. 2016. ISBN: 978-0-9972162-0-2.
F
or American foresters, Gifford Pinchot has near-universal name recognition—we have long touted his role in the establishment of professional forestry in the United States. However, we have said almost nothing about the multitudes of similarly devoted people also hired into the Forest Service during its first years. Although Pinchot may have provided the vision, it was this largely anonymous group of public servants that were the implementing “boots on the ground.” Late in his life, as he assembled the materials for what would become his autobiography Breaking New Ground, Pinchot reached out to these “Old Timers” in a series of open letters. In the end, 226 responded to his call, providing thousands of pages of often painstakingly written, highly personal accounts of early Forest Service life. A grateful Pinchot acknowledged every contribution, and some were incorporated into Breaking New Ground, but most were filed unassumingly away in the National Archives. Enter Bibi Gaston, a landscape architect with experience on multiple Forest Service projects and, as it turned out, a family connection to Pinchot (he was her great grand-uncle, something she did not learn until she was 45 years old). It was while doing some family history research that she came across the Old Timer archives. From these, Gaston selected 27 narratives and composed an essay to accompany each of them, producing a compelling, if occasionally uneven, account of the collective good provided by the Old Timers. In its use of introspective (if biased) first-person memories, Gifford Pinchot and the First Foresters is not a dispassionate academic dissection of these people but rather a personable reflection on a new agency struggling to balance protection and utilization, access and sustainability, and human needs and environmental realities. The Old Timer stories are both recognizable (current Forest Service staff will immediately share some familiarity with the challenges of the early 1900s) and remote, given the uniqueness of managing vast lands carved from the public domain only weeks or months before. However, Gaston’s titling of the book (in part), “the First Foresters,” is somewhat misleading. Although several of the most recognizable contributors, including Earl Frothingham, Thorton T. Munger, and Allen Steele Peck, had received a formal forestry education, most of those featured were not credentialed foresters. Indeed, some of those who had the greatest impact learned the profession through life experiences, their agency colleagues, and onthe-job training (which several Old Timers noted as superb). For example, James W. Girard, a largely self-taught backwoods Tennessean, capitalized on his innate curiosity and quantitative mind to eventually become one of the most recognizable names in forest inventory, rising to the position of Chief of Forest Surveys before his retirement. 322
Journal of Forestry • July 2017
Other nonforester exceptions include the handful of featured female Old Timers, including Agnes Scannell, a young Easterner who boldly sought out opportunities in the agency’s western lands. Although Scannell and other women were limited to jobs as stenographers or fiscal agents, their desire to serve a higher cause and zeal for the Forest Service’s mission represented a vital if largely unknown element of the success of the agency. And the youth of these dedicated public servants! Promotion in the early Forest Service was often very rapid because talent was quickly recognized and rewarded. For instance, Munger went from a fresh-out-of-college entry-level Forest Assistant on July 1, 1908 to the Chief of the (albeit one man) Section of Silvics for the North Pacific District on December 1 of that same year. Regardless of their age, gender, or educational background, the featured Old Timers were so dedicated to the cause of conservation that most endured long hours in (often) hazardous working conditions, isolated duty stations, frequent transfers, and perennially low salaries for the greater good. Almost without exception (and perhaps not a surprise because each had self-selected to participate), the Old Timers expressed deep devotion to Pinchot. These were important qualities in the staffing of the early Forest Service because many were expected to work under circumstances that would give today’s safety officers fits. As an example, only a couple of years after surviving smallpox, contracted while on duty in the mountains of California, Forest Ranger Robert Harvey Abbey hiked miles through the snow to be one of the first witnesses of the devastating initial explosion of Mount Lassen and then guided people for weeks afterwards, dodging falling debris to see the still-erupting volcano. Others may find Gaston’s accompanying essays as intriguing as the Old Timer narratives—personally, I would have preferred more of the Old Timers. To me, additional narratives would have further shown how most of the public land resource issues from the early 1900s still resonate today. This opportunity may yet be realized because Gaston hopes to assemble more stories from these agency pioneers. The Old Timers dealt with many challenges other than forest management, including grazing, water, recreation, energy extraction, and public relations, and they were also confronted by federal bureaucracies, insufficient staffing, and the impacts of resource-consuming fires. Implicit in Gaston’s own personal experiences (e.g., the balance of life and work, the desire to serve an often openly hostile public, and individual reconciliation of the conflicts of resource utilization and protection) are issues that the Old Timers also grappled with. It is in examining these conflicts and sacrifices that Gifford Pinchot and the First Foresters most ably fills a gap in the story of the Forest Service and the American conservation movement—the unheralded contributions of the rank-and-file agency staff. Don C. Bragg (
[email protected]), Research Forester, US Forest Service, Southern Research Station, PO Box 3516 UAM, Monticello, AR 71656.
