Jack Ward Thomas: A Remembrance
On May 26, 2016, Jack Ward Thomas lost his battle with cancer. Thomas started his U.S. Forest Service career as research wildlife biologist in 1966 and ended it in 1996 after serving for three years as...
View ArticleJack Ward Thomas and the Importance of Ethical Leadership
As the president of the Pinchot Institute for Conservation from 1995 to 2016, Alaric Sample worked closely with the U.S. Forest Service leadership, including Jack Ward Thomas, who served as chief from...
View ArticleForgotten Characters from Forest History: Rusty Scrapiron
Everyone knows Smokey Bear, Woodsy Owl, and maybe even Ranger Rick Raccoon, but there are many other forest and forestry-related fictional characters that long ago fell by the wayside. Peeling Back the...
View ArticleA Virtual Tour of New York’s Fernow Forest
If you find yourself in New York’s Adirondack Park, be sure to add a walk through Fernow Forest to the Forest History Bucket List of things to do while there. It’s a nice place to spend an hour or so...
View ArticleThe Gift of the Pisgah National Forest
On October 17, 1916, the Pisgah National Forest was the first national forest established under the Weeks Act of 1911. Written by FHS historian Jamie Lewis, this post was originally published in the...
View ArticlePresident bans Christmas tree from White House!
(First published in 2008, this blog posted was updated in 2012 and, after finding the letters to his sisters on the Theodore Roosevelt Center’s website, again in 2016.) There’s a good deal of...
View ArticleMary Pickford Stars in “Beverly Hills 9021-Oh Holy Night”
Known as “America’s Sweetheart” during the silent film era, Mary Pickford became one of the most powerful women in the history of Hollywood. By 1916, she was earning $10,000 a week plus half the...
View ArticleCelebrating the Unconventional: A Brief History of Women in Hoo-Hoo
The September 1911 issue of The Bulletin, the old monthly journal of the International Concatenated Order of the Hoo-Hoo, had this to say: Not a great many of our members realize that the Concatenated...
View ArticleA Blogpost Unlike Any Other: The Eisenhower Tree, The Masters, and Forest...
As the Master’s Tournament gets underway at Augusta National Golf Club this week, one of the icons of the course again will not be there. The famed Eisenhower Tree suffered extensive damage from an ice...
View ArticleThis Old (White) House: Turning Salvage Wood into Souvenirs
Ninety years ago this spring, a major repair project began on the White House in Washington, DC, that ultimately yielded wooden treasures. Work began in March of 1927 to remove large sections of the...
View ArticleExplosive Truths: A Review of the book Eruption: The Untold Story of Mount...
This is an expanded version of the review of Eruption: The Untold Story of Mount St. Helens, by Steve Olson, which first appeared in the April-May 2017 issue of American Scientist. When I visit...
View ArticleParachuting Into History: Smokejumpers Land In DC For First Time
On this date in 1949, four Forest Service smokejumpers made the first jump east of the Mississippi River and the first parachute jump ever made onto the Washington Ellipse, the oval park between the...
View ArticleCollaboration, Inclusivity, and Resilience: Three Birthday Wishes for the...
July 1 marks the anniversary of the U.S. Forest Service’s establishment of the National Forest System in 1907—the day the “federal forest reserves” were renamed “national forests.” Historian Char...
View ArticleReclaiming Henry David Thoreau, Forest Historian
The bicentennial of the birth of Henry David Thoreau this month comes at an auspicious time. Given the political climate we live in, his essay “Civil Disobedience” resonates today more than it has in...
View ArticleThe Continuing Odyssey of “The Forest Fire” Painting
The saga of how one of the most famous paintings of a forest fire was created and what happened to it resembles at times an international spy thriller. An article in Forest History Today (“Untamed...
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