Discover History
Eldorado National Forest
The Eldorado came into being on July 28, 1910 when legislation carved it out of the Stanislaus and Tahoe National Forests.
What is the Forest Service?
The U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service is a Federal agency that manages public lands in national forests and grasslands. The Forest Service is also the largest forestry research organization in the world, and provides technical and financial assistance to state and private forestry agencies. Gifford Pinchot, the first Chief of the Forest Service, summed up the purpose of the Forest Service - "to provide the greatest amount of good for the greatest amount of people in the long run."
When and why was the Forest Service established?
Congress established the Forest Service in 1905 to provide quality water and timber for the Nation's benefit. Over the years, the public has expanded the list of what they want from national forests and grasslands. Congress responded by directing the Forest Service to manage national forests for additional multiple uses and benefits and for the sustained yield of renewable resources such as water, forage, wildlife, wood, and recreation. Multiple use means managing resources under the best combination of uses to benefit the American people while ensuring the productivity of the land and protecting the quality of the environment.
National forests are America's great outdoors. They encompass 193 million acres (approx. 78 million hectares) of land, which is an area equivalent to the size of Texas. National forests provide opportunities for recreation in open spaces and natural environments. With more and more people living in urban areas, national forests are becoming more important and valuable to Americans. People enjoy a wide variety of activities on national forests, including backpacking in remote, unroaded wilderness areas, mastering an all-terrain vehicle over a challenging trail, enjoying the views along a scenic byway, or fishing in a great trout stream, to mention just a few.
Who are the people of the Forest Service?
The Forest Service has a workforce of approximately 30,000 employees that reflects the full range of diversity of the American people. This includes cultural and disciplinary diversity, as well as diversity in skills and abilities. In the summer, the numbers increase to meet additional need for services by the recreating public. If you are a high school or college student, senior citizen, or interested volunteer, there are opportunities for you in the Forest Service.
The United States Forest Service, an agency within the U.S. Department of Agriculture, has existed for more than one hundred years with the express purpose of managing public forests and grasslands. Much can be learned about the changing attitudes of the American people toward nature, natural resources, and each other, by examining the history of the USFS. This website is intended to document some of that long history.
The video “The Greatest Good,” the Forest Service centennial film about the struggle to manage a nation's resources amid global change.
The job of Forest Service managers is to help people share and enjoy the forest, while conserving the environment for generations yet to come. Some activities are compatible. Some are not. You, as a concerned citizen, play a key role. By expressing your views to Forest Service managers, you will help them balance all of these uses and make decisions in the best interest of the forest and the public.
The Forest Service motto, "Caring for the Land and Serving People," captures the spirit of our mission, which we accomplish through five main activities:
- Protection and management of natural resources on National Forest System lands.
- Research on all aspects of forestry, rangeland management, and forest resource utilization.
- Community assistance and cooperation with State and local governments, forest industries, and private landowners to help protect and manage non-Federal forest and associated range and watershed lands to improve conditions in rural areas.
- Achieving and supporting an effective workforce that reflects the full range of diversity of the American people.
- International assistance in formulating policy and coordinating U.S. support for the protection and sound management of the world's forest resources.
How does the Forest Service carry out its activities?
National Forest System
The Forest Service manages public lands, known collectively as the National Forest System, located in 44 States, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. The lands comprise 8.5 percent of the total land area in the United States. The natural resources on these lands are some of the Nation's greatest assets and have major economic, environmental, and social significance for all Americans.
Forest Service Research
The Forest Service provides the scientific and technical knowledge necessary to protect and sustain the Nation's natural resources on all lands, providing benefits to people within the capabilities of the land. Research is conducted through a network of forest and range experiment stations and the Forest Products Laboratory.
State and Private Forestry
The Forest Service cooperates with State and local governments, forest industries, other private landowners and forest users in the management, protection, and development of forest land in non-Federal ownership. Activities include cooperation in urban interface fire management and urban forestry. State and Private Forestry works through the regional offices and through a special Northeastern Area office to provide these services.
Administration
The Forest Service provides leadership, direction, quality assurance, and customer service in carrying out agency business and human resource programs, such as Americorps, Job Corps, the Senior Community Service Employment Program, and the volunteer program. The agency hires, trains, evaluates, and promotes its employees; pays employees and contractors; acquires office space, equipment and supplies; and acquires, supports, and maintains the computer and communications technology needed to ensure efficient and effective operations.
International Forestry
The Forest Service plays a key role in formulating policy and coordinating U.S. support for the protection and sound management of the world's forest resources. It works closely with other agencies such as the Agency for International Development, the U.S. Department of State, and the Environmental Protection Agency, as well as with nonprofit development organizations, wildlife organizations, universities, and international assistance organizations. The Forest Service's international work serves to link people and communities striving to protect and manage forests throughout the world.
Passage of the Federal Forest Reserve Act of 1891 gave the President authority to set aside timberlands from the public domain, but at the time, the purpose of the reserves remained a matter of congressional debate. Roughly, 40 million acres were established as reserves by 1897, the year Congress finally defined the purpose of the reserves ("watershed protection and source of timber supply for the Nation") in the Forest Management ("Organic") Act. The act also gave the Secretary of the Interior authority to regulate occupancy and use within the reserves, develop mineral resources, provide for fire protection, and permit the sale of timber. It was left to the U.S. Army to police Yellowstone Park from the years 1886 to 1918. But beginning with the creation of Yellowstone Park Timberland Reserve on March 30, 1891, supervising the reserves became the responsibility of the Department of the Interior.
Bernhard Fernow is credited with providing the model—adapted from the Prussian system of state forest management—in an 1891 report on how to manage the reserves. The task actually was undertaken by the Department of the Interior until 1905—first by the General Land Office (1891-1901) and then by the Interior Forestry Division (1901-1905) under Filbert Roth (1858-1925), who earlier had worked for the Department of Agriculture under Fernow. The two departments' forestry divisions cooperated on forest reserve programs.
Early custody of the reserves by the General Land Office was based on a hierarchy of State superintendents, reserve supervisors, and rangers who managed districts within the reserves. The key to success of forest reserve management was the ranger.
The word "ranger" was an American variant of the ancient French verb for "rover," introduced to England by the Normans who came with William the Conqueror in 1066. Rangers were the game wardens on the Royal Forests of England and became the foragers/scouts of colonial expeditions in Virginia in 1716. The forestmaster of Prussian forestry became the forest ranger or protector of the reserves after 1891. Beyond this vague notion of protecting the reserves, the actual duties of the first rangers were rather unclear to all concerned.
One of the early rangers was Edward Tyson Allen (1875-1942). He was hired at $50 per month in 1898 by the General Land Office and sent west to Washington State to assume the post of ranger on the Washington Reserve (now the Gifford Pinchot National Forest). After he reported to his supervisor in Tacoma, Allen waited for instructions, only to be told: "That letter [you have] appoints as a forest ranger, doesn't it? It is signed by the Secretary of the Interior, isn't it? Well, you are now a forest ranger-so go out and range!"
Allen helped set the future trend for rangers by departing for his district, buying a horse, and exploring the area until he knew it in detail; he then proceeded to define his job while doing it as he saw fit. Later in 1902, he helped Roth at the Interior Department to prepare a book of regulations that emerged a few years later (1905) as the Forest Service's first Use Book—the regulations and instruction for the use of the national forests (Secretary of Agriculture).
The challenge of the job along with the opportunity to earn a steady income in rural areas of the West appealed to venturesome local men. The first-defined duty of the ranger was to protect the reserve's resources. In 1898, William Kreutzer left ranch work to be appointed an early ranger in Colorado "to protect the public forests from fire or any other means of injury to the timber growing in said reserves," or so his certificate of office stated.
By 1899, the USDA Division of Forestry under Gifford Pinchot was expanding rapidly and because of the lack of professional foresters, student assistants were being hired from the few existing forestry schools, especially Yale. By 1901 the Department of the interior's Division of Forestry and the Department of Agriculture's Bureau of Forestry divided the task of Federal forestry. Interior personnel patrolled the reserves and Agriculture foresters provided technical management plans. The Forest Reserve Manual of 1902 regulated timber use and grazing. The enforcement of grazing regulations was to be a constant Challenge for many rangers.
The job of gaining the cooperation of forest users by earning their respect fell to the district rangers. Accustomed to taking timber and forage from adjacent public lands at will, local forest users did not easily accept regulation. The employment of local men as rangers helped, because these rangers could draw on their common background to explain the need for rules to their friends and neighbors. Knowledge of local customs sometimes extended to local language. The 1906 Use Book section on rangers states that those employed in Arizona and New Mexico should know "enough Spanish to conduct reserve business with Mexicans" [sic].
By 1905, with the transfer of jurisdiction of the reserves to the Department of Agriculture, the Bureau of Forestry accepted transfer of many of the early Government Land Office field people and mixed them with its own staff, including the numerous student assistants. In 1901, there were 81 student assistants on the 179-member staff of the Bureau of Forestry. The US Forest Service, to its credit, brought out the best in its rangers—many of the eastern “dudes" soon were as adept at western ways as the local rangers, while more than one western-born ranger was promoted to top management. A further factor in selecting rangers in 1905 was the extension of Civil Service authority to the forest reserves.
The US Forest Service—the new name for the former Bureau of Forestry—developed the first exams (written and practical) for rangers by May 1906. The physical standards demanded then would not apply today; early recruitment posters stated bluntly: "invalids need not apply." Rangers were expected to "build trails, ride all day and night, pack, shoot, and fight fire without losing (their heads)." New rangers received a salary varying from $900 to $1,500 per year, out of which they bought a horse, side arms, and clothing, to be the lone steward of several hundred thousand acres.
As described by Robert J. Duhse (1986:7): "The ranger in his district was often the only policeman, fish and game warden, coroner, disaster rescuer, and doctor. He settled disputes between cattle and sheepmen, organized and led fire fighting crews, built roads and trails, negotiated grazing and timber sales contracts, carried out reforestation and disease control projects, and ran surveys." Injury and even death was the fate of more than one early ranger.
It was not until the mid-1930's that the US Forest Service announced it would no longer make appointments at the professional level without a degree in forestry or a related field, a move that ended the era of the self-taught, "rugged outdoorsmen" in the agency. Of course, not all those early rangers were alone; many were married and their wives acted as their husbands' unpaid assistants, performing clerical and technical duties such as tree planting and fire control.
Today the public believes everyone in the US Forest Service uniform is a Ranger. On the Eldoardo National Forest there are four Ranger Districts, each staffed with a District Ranger. As time has progressed the role of the ranger has changed, the ranger may have a staff of 40 and carries a laptop computer instead of a pistol into the field. The challenge of the office is no less, and it may be that some rangers today envy early rangers their solitude and freedom.
(courtesy of the San Bernardino National Forest web site).
There are four levels of national forest offices:
Ranger District
The district ranger and his or her staff may be your first point of contact with the Forest Service. There are more than 600 ranger districts. Each district has a staff of 10 to 100 people. The districts vary in size from 50,000 acres (20,000 hectares) to more than 1 million acres (400,000 hectares). Many on-the-ground activities occur on the ranger districts, including trail construction and maintenance, operation of campgrounds, and management of vegetation and wildlife habitat.
National Forest
There are 155 national forests and 20 grasslands. Each forest is composed of several ranger districts. The person in charge of a national forest is called the forest supervisor. The district rangers from the districts within a forest work for the forest supervisor. The headquarters of a national forest is called the supervisor's office. This level coordinates activities between districts, allocates the budget, and provides technical support to each district.
Region
There are 9 regions, numbered 1 through 10 (Region 7 was eliminated some years ago). The regions are broad geographic areas, usually including several States. The person in charge is called the regional forester. Forest supervisors of the national forests within a region report to the regional forester. The regional office staff coordinates activities between national forests, monitors activities on national forests to ensure quality operations, provides guidance for forest plans, and allocates budgets to the forests.
National Level
This is commonly called the Washington Office. The person who oversees the entire Forest Service is called the Chief. The Chief is a Federal employee who reports to the Under Secretary for Natural Resources and Environment in the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The Chief's staff provides broad policy and direction for the agency, works with the President's Administration to develop a budget to submit to Congress, provides information to Congress on accomplishments, and monitors activities of the agency.
Why are archaeological sites so important?
Archaeological sites are the physical remains of the past that can be studied by archaeologists and other scholars to answer questions about history and prehistory. In many cases they are our only link to understanding our nation’s heritage.
How is the heritage resources on the Forest protected?
Identification and protection of heritage resources is one of the first steps completed whenever a ground disturbing project is proposed on the National Forests. Professional archeologists conduct intensive surveys of the areas and identify areas of historic value. Depending on the quality and size of the find, the area is either nominated for inclusion to the National Register of Historic Places, or simply identified as an area to be protected or avoided during project implementation. In addition, the locations of these archaeological finds are not disclosed to the general public.
Is it legal to remove arrowheads and other artifacts I find on the National Forests?
No. The Antiquities Act of 1906 forbids the disturbance of ruins or archaeological sites on Federal lands without the permission of land-managing agencies.
How can I participate in archaeological and historic preservation projects?
Write to:
Passport in Time Clearinghouse c/o CEHP
P.O. Box 18364
Washington DC 20036
(202) 293-0922