When the douglas-firs were counted: The beginning of the Forest Survey

Abstract

The wonders which Phil Briegleb remembered from that stint of work - the dark green spill of forest from ridgeline to valley floor, the colonnade of giant boles crowding acre upon acre, the Depression-staving paycheck earned by sizing up this big timber - may have been grand, all right, but no more so than the language which spelled out the project. The Forest Survey was prescribed in Section 9 of the McSweeney-McNary Act. In that 1928 manifesto which blueprinted the Forest Service's system of regional experiment stations and set the directions of federal forestry research, one sentence sweepingly called for "a comprehensive survey of the present and prospective requirements for timber and other forest products in the United States, and of timber supplies, including a determination of the present and potential productivity of forest land therein, and of such other facts as may be necessary in the determination of ways and means to balance the timber budget of the United States."

Citation

Doig, Ivan. 1976. When the douglas-firs were counted: The beginning of the Forest Survey. Journal of Forest History. 20(1): 20-27.