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 Technology & Development Center |
Sixty Years of Innovation and Problem Solving
![[photo] Early-day loggers cutting down a large tree with axes.](images/fig02.jpg)
For the past six decades, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service's Technology and Development program has provided practical solutions to problems identified by employees and cooperators. The program helps the USDA Forest Service manage the Nation's natural resources more efficiently and more safely. The Technology and Development Program relies on two centers, one in Missoula, MT, and the other in San Dimas, CA. Each center works on 80 to 150 projects every year. Most projects are completed within 18 months to 3 years.
Recent projects have:
This variety of projects requires many different talents. The skills of the program's slightly more than 100 employees include engineering, forestry, machine tool operation, metal fabrication, drafting, contract administration, publication design, helicopter rappelling, smokejumping, explosives, recreation management, sociology, global positioning systems, equipment design, textile design, contracting, editing, photography, finance, Web design, safety, statistics, chemical analysis, reforestation, and video production.
Although the centers are funded specifically to solve problems for the USDA Forest Service, their solutions have been widely adopted by other agencies and by private groups in the United States and abroad.
During the late 1940s, USDA Forest Service employees at the Aerial Fire Depot in Missoula, MT, began working on ways to use aircraft more effectively for fighting fires in remote areas.
When regular aircraft patrols detected a forest fire, smokejumpers and cargo were dropped at the fire. The success of these techniques led to the establishment of the Missoula Aerial Equipment Development Center in 1953.
Center employees worked in a variety of locations in Missoula before offices were moved to Fort Missoula during the 1960s.
Also during the 1940s, USDA Forest Service employees were consolidating equipment development activities at the Arcadia Fire Equipment Development Center in Arcadia, CA. The southern California site was selected in 1945 because of frequent fire activity in the area, evolving industrial and academic centers there, and a Forest Service facility the center could move into.
Late in the 1940s, a conference of USDA Forest Service range management administrators and researchers recognized that equipment for range seeding and other improvements needed to be adapted or developed. Range became the second “sponsor” at Arcadia and the center's name was changed to the Arcadia Equipment Development Center.
The centers soon were solving other nationally important natural resource problems for the USDA Forest Service. In 1987, the names of both centers were changed from “Equipment Development Centers” to “Technology and Development Centers” in recognition of their expanded role.
Both centers were scheduled for new facilities during the 1960s. The USDA Forest Service purchased land near the Missoula airport for the new facility in Missoula.
The Arcadia center moved to its new facility at San Dimas, CA, in 1965, but the Missoula facility was not funded. Plans for a new facility were redrafted several times, but funding for construction wasn't available until 2000.
In 2002, the Missoula center moved from seven buildings around Missoula to its new facility near the airport. The new facility includes offices, a chemistry laboratory for analyzing fire retardants, a photo studio, a video editing studio, a textile fabrication shop, an electronics shop, a machine shop, and a large meeting room for training.
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