Les Joslin

y 
Author

Les Joslin is a retired U.S. Navy commander; former U.S. Forest Service firefighter, wilderness ranger, and supervisory social scientist; and adjunct instructor

for the College of Forestry, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331.

Cover photo by Tom Iraci.

The Forest Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture is dedicated to the principle of 

multiple use management of the Nation’s forest resources for sustained yields of wood, water,

forage, wildlife, and recreation. Through forestry research, cooperation with the States and 

private forest owners, and management of the National Forests and national grasslands, it

strives—as directed by Congress—to provide increasingly greater service to a growing

Nation.

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disabilities who require alternative means for communication of program information (Braille,

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and TDD).

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Independence Avenue, S.W. Washington, DC 20250-9410 or call (800) 795-3272 (voice) 

or (202) 720-6382 (TDD). USDA is an equal opportunity provider and employer.
Abstract

Joslin, Les. 2007. Ponderosa promise: a history of U.S. Forest Service research 

in central Oregon. Gen. Tech. Rep. PNW-GTR-711. Portland, OR: U.S.

Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station.

121 p.

Research interest in the forests of Oregon and Washington east of the Cascade 

Range can be traced back to 1897, when Fredrick V. Coville of the Division of

Forestry, U.S. Department of Agriculture, reconnoitered the Cascade Range Forest

Reserve to report on forest growth and sheep grazing there in an 1898 report.

Subsequent forest survey in the late 1890s and early 1900s was stimulated by anticipation of the timber boom that would follow arrival of a railroad. In 1908, Gifford

Pinchot’s new Forest Service sent young Thornton Taft Munger to study the

encroachment of lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta Dougl. ex Loud.) on the more

valuable ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa Dougl. ex Laws.) stands. By the end of

the year, Munger was in charge of the North Pacific District’s one-man Section of

Silvics, which evolved to become the Pacific Northwest Forest Experiment Station

in 1924 with him at the helm. The forest research effort east of the Cascade Range

picked up speed with establishment in 1931 of the Pringle Falls Experimental

Forest to research the ecologically and economically viable silvicultural systems

that would convert the stagnant old-growth forests into more-productive secondgrowth forests. During the ensuing six and one-half decades, a small group of

Forest Service researchers and their university counterparts working at the experimental forest and, beginning in 1963, the Bend Silviculture Laboratory, pioneered

and pursued the practical silvicultural research that both led and responded to the

evolution of their science.

Keywords: Pringle Falls, experimental forest, history, ponderosa pine, Bend 

Silviculture Laboratory.

i
ii

Preface

This is the story of the origins, evolution, and contributions of U.S. Department of 

Agriculture Forest Service research in central Oregon at the Pringle Falls Experimental

Forest and the Bend Silviculture Laboratory from 1931 to 1996. It is the story of the people

and places key to the long-term search for knowledge about our resources—in this case, of

the magnificent and valuable ponderosa pine forests and other forests east of the Cascade

Range in Oregon and Washington—that is the very nature of forest science.

This summary history of Forest Service research east of the Cascade Range focused 

on central Oregon reflects the three relatively distinct periods in Forest Service and general

forestry history identified by Duncan and Miner.1 As a unit of the Pacific Northwest

Research Station, the Pringle Falls Experimental Forest from its founding in 1931 until the

end of World War II followed the Station’s lead as it “conducted pioneering research work

on topics that are basic to any planned management” for a National Forest System “still

largely custodial” (see footnote 1). During the second period—the quarter century following

the war, the Deschutes Research Center that evolved into the Bend Silviculture Laboratory

shared a focus on timber production. But, for a variety of reasons, the central Oregon

research effort ultimately failed to transition to the third period that led to research into

whole ecosystems. Although it accomplished some pioneering prescribed burning research

and made other valuable contributions, the Bend Silviculture Laboratory was closed before

it was able to remake itself into a research center that fit the new research direction. 

This project began in spring 1999 when Russ Mitchell suggested to the Pacific

Northwest Research Station history committee that I conduct and transcribe oral history

interviews of three researchers—Walt Dahms, Jim Barrett, and Pat Cochran—long affiliated

with the Pringle Falls Experimental Forest and the Bend Silviculture Laboratory. These

interviews, all in Bend during a week that June, benefited immensely from the participation

and perspectives of Mitchell and fellow retired entomologist Boyd Wickman. So did a

January 2000 interview with Bob Martin. This fourth interview followed by about 2 weeks

the January 13 history committee meeting at which I had the honor of meeting, among 

others, the late Ken Wright.

In April 2002, I was selected to research and write this history. This research involved

another 10 oral histories with research foresters and allied scientists, research technicians,

and others in Bend and other Oregon cities. These were supplemented by lengthy research

visits to the Forestry and Range Sciences Laboratory in LaGrande and the Pacific Northwest

Research Station Headquarters in Portland. As in the case of most research projects, these

interviews and investigations turned up additional leads and sources to track down.

1 Duncan, S.; Miner, C. 2000. Closer to the truth: 75 years of discovery in forest and range research.

Portland, OR: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station. 76 p.
Ponderosa Promise: A History of U.S. Forest Service Research in Central Oregon

Unfortunately, some people who would have been valuable sources of information were

deceased or otherwise not available. The fire at the Bend Silviculture Laboratory in 1974,

with loss of valuable historical files and photographs and a recorded interview with the

forester who had pioneered the Pringle Falls Experimental Forest, hindered the effort as 

did the closing of the lab in 1996 when its records were dispersed to other facilities. My

teaching and seasonal employment imposed time constraints compounded by a surprise

appointment to serve on the Deschutes National Forest staff commencing in September

2003 as I was completing the first draft. The ensuing year was, indeed, a hectic one.

Many challenges confront the researcher and writer of history. Among these—for 

the reader as well as the writer—is that, over the years, names change. The current Pacific

Northwest Research Station is a case in point. Founded in 1925 as the Pacific Northwest

Forest Experiment Station and renamed the Pacific Northwest Forest and Range Experiment

Station in 1936, it was renamed again in 1985 as the Pacific Northwest Research Station.

Similarly, Oregon State University was founded in 1885 as Oregon Agricultural College,

and was named Oregon State College from the 1920s until 1961 when it was renamed

Oregon State University. And, also, the name of The Bend Bulletin changed to The Bulletin.

Foremost among the challenges is the fact that history, by its very nature, is selective

and summary. That is especially the case in a short history such as this. The necessary focus

on identification and interpretation of principal themes and supporting stories and facts 

necessarily excludes some minor themes and details important to some. It is my fervent

hope that this effort does not suffer excessively in that way.

iii
Contents

1 Chapter 1: Sunrise: Research for Timber

Management

13 Chapter 2: Pringle Falls: A Research Forest

14 An Experimental Forest Is Planned

16 The Pringle Falls Experimental Forest Is 

Designated and Developed

17 Physical Infrastructure Development

18 Research Program Development

19 Research Plots Established

27 The Pringle Falls Experimental Forest Area and 

Uses Evolve

28 Lookout Mountain Unit Added

28 Conferences and Meetings Held

29 Research up to World War II

31 Kolbe Leaves and Munger Steps Aside

31 World War II Interrupts Research

32 The Pringle Falls Experimental Forest and the 

Deschutes Research Center

32 Deschutes Research Center Established

37 Round Mountain Experimental Management Block

38 Winds of Change

39 Chapter 3: Bend: A Research Laboratory

40 The Bend Silviculture Laboratory Is Planned, 

Built, Occupied, and Dedicated

42 The Bend Silviculture Laboratory Struggles

44 The Bend Silviculture Laboratory Burns and Is 

Rebuilt

46 The Bend Silviculture Laboratory Perseveres

51 Chapter 4: Pringle Falls and Bend: A Research 

Legacy

51 Walt Dahms: Lodgepole Pine Silviculture

53 Jim Barrett: Ponderosa Pine Silviculture

61 Ken Seidel: Upper Slope Mixed-Conifer

Silviculture

64 Bob Martin and Joan Landsberg: Fire and 

Silviculture

71 Pat Cochran: Soils and Silviculture

77 Ken Wright, Charlie Sartwell, Dick Mason, Boyd 

Wickman, and Russ Mitchell: Insects and 

Silviculture

81 Lew Roth: Pathogens and Silviculture

85 In Other People’s Hands

87 Chapter 5: A New Dawn: Research for Ecosystem

Management

93 Common and Scientific Names

94 Acknowledgments

94 Metric Equivalents

94 References

115 Index

iv
Ponderosa Promise: A History of U.S. Forest Service Research in Central Oregon

John Riis, a young U.S. Forest Service ranger,1 rode “out 

of the smoke and travail” (Riis 1937) of “The Big Blowup” 

of late August 1910, when 3 million acres of Idaho and

Montana forests burned and 78 firefighters perished, toward

a new assignment in Oregon east of the Cascade Range. He

arrived from the Cache National Forest the following spring

in a relatively new land on the cusp of change. This change

would transform Bend, the sleepy new town of 536 souls 

in which he dismounted, into a small but thriving industrial

city of 10 times that number within as many years. And this

change would beget a Forest Service research effort to

understand the forest resource on which central Oregon’s

future would be founded and sustained.

At first disdained by the early explorers and emigrants

who passed through en route to the Willamette Valley, 

central Oregon was wrested from Native Americans after

the Civil War by ranchers who grazed sheep and cattle, 

followed in a few decades by homesteaders and irrigation

farmers. The coming change was based on timber and

transportation, “the two interlocked ingredients of central

Oregon’s developing economic base” that, in the early

decades of the 20th century, “brought wealth to some and

jobs to thousands” (Cogswell 1981).

The timber was ponderosa pine (see “Common and

Scientific Names” section), called western yellow pine until

the early 1930s, “an estimated 26 billion board feet of it, 

in open forests on flat or gently sloping ground, waiting,

seemingly, for someone to come and cut it,” as described 

by historian Philip Cogswell, Jr. (1981).

But getting to the trees was only a relatively easy 

first step; getting the trees—or more precisely the 

lumber made from them—to market was the difficulty. Central Oregon [in 1910] was virtually isolated from the rest of the nation, including other 

parts of Oregon, as far as volume commercial transportation was concerned, and the exploitation of 

Pinus ponderosa would have to wait for a railroad.

Don P. Rea, editor of The Bend Bulletin, had opined in 

1903 that as soon as Bend saw a railroad, it would see “the

logs moving toward the mills at Bend, and thousands of

men . . . working in the mills and in the woods” (Johnson

2003).

1

Chapter 1: Sunrise: Research for Timber Management

Bend, Oregon, in 1910. Deschules County Historical Society photograph.

1 John Riis, one of three sons of Jacob Riis, a famous New York photojournalist and social reformer whom President Theodore Roosevelt called

“one of my truest and closest friends,” served in the Forest Service from

1907 to 1913 and later became a respected Richmond, Virginia, newspaperman.

Deschutes County Historical Society
2

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-711

Anticipation of access to timber markets and acquisition of timber resources, however, didn’t have to wait.

Indeed, 15 years before railroad magnates James J. Hill 

of the Northern Pacific and Great Northern railroads and

Edward H. Harriman of the Union Pacific and Southern

Pacific railroads began their legendary race toward central

Oregon2 (Carlson 2001), their timber industry counterparts

had begun acquiring timber holdings in the region. Although,

in 1893, President Grover Cleveland had included large

tracts of the public domain in the Cascade Range Forest

Reserve, “by the mid-1890s, chunks of what had been public domain timberland were passing into private hands, a

process that would come to a climax a decade later”

(Cogswell 1981).

Some of these public timberlands were obtained legally

by individuals and private companies under laws—including the Homestead Act of 1862, the Timber and Stone Act

of 1878, and later the Forest Homestead Act of 1906. These

acts encouraged Euro-American settlement and development of the West. Some of these lands were later sold to

timber interests. As time passed, and “central Oregon’s 

timber began to look commercially attractive, a timberland

rush broke out in 1902” that led to widespread corruption

and perversion of these laws. With this rush, according to

Cogswell,

droves of “entrymen,” interested not in settling 

and improving but in filing and selling, came to the

region from around the country, many having their 

way paid by the timber interests. At times, with the 

collusion of federal authorities, they conveniently

ignored provisions of the law preventing transfer of

title, turning their acquisitions over to their sponsors 

or other speculators.

This went on “until July 31, 1903, when President 

Theodore Roosevelt withdrew timberlands in the Deschutes

2 Hill’s and Harriman’s parallel efforts to build a railroad to Bend proved

“the last railroad-building race of the wild west.” The often violent race

ended at the Crooked River Canyon where “Hill had purchased the only

feasible place to build a bridge across the chasm, and the Union Pacific

was effectively blocked. An agreement was reached, giving Hill the victory, but allowing Union Pacific trains to use the new bridge” (Carlson

2001).

area from entry under the Timber and Stone Act” (Cogswell

1981).

Then, in 1905, federal forest reserves were transferred

from U.S. Department of the Interior administration to

Gifford Pinchot’s new Forest Service in the U.S. Department

of Agriculture. The reserves were soon renamed and reorganized as national forests. From then on, private timberland acquisition activity in central Oregon “was characterized by efforts of major investors, buying timberland 

wherever the price was acceptable” and, under a land

exchange process worked out by John E. Ryan of the

Deschutes Lumber Company, “blocking up” their holdings

into economically viable units (Cogswell 1981).

Assigned to a district soon to be transferred from the

Cascade National Forest to the Deschutes National Forest,

Ranger Riis witnessed the change wrought by timber and

transportation in central Oregon from the Big River Ranger

Station on the Deschutes River. There, as a district forest

ranger, he was charged with protecting thousands of acres

of that increasingly valuable timber. Writing in 1937, former Ranger Riis indicated that the Forest Service foresaw

the day the vast private timber holdings would have to be

supplemented by national forest timber.

John Riis, Distrist Ranger, Big River 

Ranger District, Deschutes National Forest, 

1911 to 1913. 

Courtesty of

Tom

Jones and Deschules County Historical Society
Ponderosa Promise: A History of U.S. Forest Service Research in Central Oregon

Before the opposing armies racing South [constructing parallel railroads for rival magnates Hill and

Harriman] through the tortuous [Deschutes River]

canyon finally joined forces and a single span of 

shining steel rails linked Bend to the outside world, 

the great lumber interests had turned their eyes to 

the timber in my district. [Riis 1937].

On July 1, 1911, his Big River Ranger District became 

part of the Deschutes National Forest when the headquarters of that forest was moved from Prineville to Bend

(Baker 1950).

Bend was “the Mecca of the Rangers on the

Deschutes” where they went “every now and then to have

horses shod, replenish the larder, or for a few days of detail

in the Supervisor’s office” (Riis 1937). Ranger Riis was in

town on October 4, 1911. It was the day before Railroad

Day, the day James J. Hill would drive the golden spike

marking completion of the Oregon Trunk Railroad route to

central Oregon and the day the first train would arrive in

Bend.

Forest Supervisor J. Roy Harvey had been urging Riis

and his fellow district rangers to get on with their timber

cruising, and Riis had been rounding up a crew. Not wishing to leave town on the eve of the big event, Riis had

countered that the private timber owners “have enough timberland to keep them busy a long time; better timber than

there is in any [national forest] district.”

“Sure, but the railroad’s here and this country is in 

for some tall timber cutting,” the forest supervisor rejoined.

“The Fall River timber [on Riis’ district] is easier to get out

and closer to the railroad than the private holdings. Get

your crew in the field as soon as you can.”

“The railroad had come to Bend at last,” Riis reflected

in 1937. “Another frontier wiped out by the march of

progress.”

Always the railroads came and the country settled 

up. Two-gallon hats gave way to the derby and the

fedora, the rattling stage with its flapping canvas 

side-curtains succumbed to the automobile. Now 

even some of the supervisors were forsaking their 

saddle horses for the little tin roadsters that whirled 

and bumped over the dusty roads and got one there

entirely too soon. 

I had thought I was secure at Big River twentyfive miles from town with the woods and the desert 

barring the outside world. The great inland empire 

that had slept in picturesque peace since the days 

of Lewis and Clark, would soon be overrun by the

drudges of commerce and industry.

It was not difficult to complete my timber cruising crew, and load the chuck wagon for the trip into 

the hills. Getting them out of town was another 

matter. “Tomorrow, sure. But not on Railroad Day”

[Riis 1937].

The train was expected to arrive at noon on October 5, 

but it was about midnight before that “first train into central

Oregon rolled slowly down the track and came to a stop.”

Most of Bend’s townsfolk, a brass band, and Riis met the

train. And the young ranger met a young lady named Ruth

from North Carolina who arrived on that first train and

would someday become his wife. They enjoyed the celebration together. Then, “all too soon the train pulled out for

Portland carrying her away.” It was time to get to work in

the woods.

Ranger Riis and his crew cruised timber on the Big

River Ranger District during the fall of 1911. “With

3

Thornton T. Munger photographed Ranger John Riis on Brown’s

Mountain, Big River Ranger District (as it was called then),

Deschutes National Forest, during the summer of 1912. 

T.T. Munger
4

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-711

November, winter set in just as we finished cruising the

high lands and moved down to the head of Fall River”—

only 2 miles northwest of the site on which the headquarters of the future Pringle Falls Experimental Forest would

be built 20 years later. “In the course of our work,” Riis

wrote in 1937, “we cruised and mapped more than thirtysix square miles of land and added two small lakes to the

map of Oregon, North and South Twin Lake.” And then he

added: “Thornton Munger dropped in to check up on our

work occasionally” (Riis 1937).

Just turned 28, Thornton Taft Munger, who would

become the first director of the Pacific Northwest Forest

Experiment Station in 1924, was by then an old hand in

central Oregon. Munger had completed a master’s degree 

at the Yale Forest School in 1908 and joined the Forest

Service. After 2 months as a forest assistant with Raphael

Zon in the Office of Silvics,3 the research branch in the

Washington, D.C., headquarters referred to then and since

as the Washington Office, he had been sent to central

Oregon to study the encroachment of lodgepole pine on the

more valuable ponderosa pine. This encroachment by the

tree Munger soon called “a practically worthless weed”

(Munger 1914) worried W.H.B. Kent, a western forest

inspector who viewed fire as “an unnatural agency of 

disturbance” (Langston 1995) and who had suggested the

study. Munger traveled by train to Portland and Shaniko,

then by stagecoach via Bend to the hamlet of Rosland near

the present La Pine. Still working under Zon, he spent 11

weeks in September, October, and November roaming 

central Oregon, mostly on horseback, examining lands of

the Deschutes, Cascade, Fremont, Umpqua, and Crater

National Forests and the Klamath Indian Reservation, trying to puzzle out the ecological relationship between the

two pines (Fry 1967; Munger 1946, 1962).

Munger was, in a very real sense, a pioneer. Central

Oregon and its forests weren’t exactly terra incognita in

1908, nor were they especially well known. Peter Skene

Ogden had passed through in 1825 and Nathaniel Wyeth

had camped at Pringle Falls during his winter 1834–35

exploration of the upper Deschutes River country. Fabled

scouts Kit Carson and Billy Chinook had guided Lieutenant

John C. Fremont and his party of U.S. Army Topographic

Engineers through the area in 1843. And in 1855, a decade

before settlement began, scientist and physician Dr. John

Strong Newberry had explored the area with the Pacific

Railroad Survey party led by Lieutenant Henry Larcom

Abbot, another Army engineer. 

In the summer of 1897, a year before Gifford Pinchot

succeeded Bernhard E. Fernow as chief of the Division 

of Forestry in the U.S. Department of Agriculture (Steen

1976), Frederick V. Coville of that Division inspected 

the Cascade Range Forest Reserve. He published Forest

Growth and Sheep Grazing in the Cascade Mountains of

Oregon in 1898 (Coville 1898). Then, while Bend was

being founded, several U.S. Geological Survey investigators reconnoitered the area. Arriving close on Coville’s

heels, John B. Leiberg attributed to fire the “noticeable and

Thornton Munger used his horse for scale when he photographed

ponderosa pine stands during his autumn, 1908, reconnaissance of

central Oregon forests. He took this photograph on the Deschutes

National Forest near Crescent, on October 5, 1908. 

3 Silvics is “the study of the life history and general characteristics of 

forest trees and stands, with particular reference to locality factors, as a

basis for the practice of silviculture.” Silviculture is “generally, the science and art of cultivating (i.e., growing and tending) forest crops, based

on a knowledge of silvics. More particularly, the theory and practice of

controlling the establishment, composition, constitution, and growth of

forests” (Ford-Robertson 1951).

T.T. Munger
Ponderosa Promise: A History of U.S. Forest Service Research in Central Oregon

striking” absence of young growth and underbrush in central Oregon’s ponderosa pine forests. This made it possible,

in colleague H.D. Langille’s words, for “one to ride or even

drive without hindrance” through the forest. “The yellow

pine,” Leiberg concluded, “is by all odds the best fire resisting tree in the sylva of the North Pacific slope” (Lieberg

1900).

In 1903, geologist Israel C. Russell explored the area.

Munger almost certainly had read Russell’s 1905 report. 

In that report, Russell wrote that the “yellow pine forests”

in the “central part of Oregon are not only extensive, but

contain magnificent, well-grown trees, which will be of

great commercial value when railroads . . . bring them within reach of markets.” Russell also observed of the area that

“little seems to be generally known concerning its timber

resources” (Russell 1905). This confirmed that Munger was

a pioneer forester there, and certainly one who agreed with

Russell’s optimistic justification for his being there.

It is fortunate that these great forests have escaped 

the demands of industry so long, as large portions 

of them have now been included in national forest

reserves and can be utilized under the supervision 

of skilled foresters, so that their continuance is 

assured [Russell 1905].

Munger also likely had read Coville’s 1898 observations on “the forest fire evil in the Cascades” and the effect

of fire on “reforestation in certain areas” (Coville 1898) as

well as Leiberg’s conclusion that fires associated with “the

advent of the white man” and his settlements were “more

numerous and devastated much larger areas” (Langille et al.

1903 in Robbins and Wolff 1994) than those burned by

Native Americans.

Munger “studied the composition of the forest” and

“found many places where there had been a ponderosa pine

forest” that he determined “had been killed by repeated

fires and had been replaced by lodgepole pine.” He found

“other places where the lodgepole pine seedlings and the

ponderosa pine seedling were in competition” and where

“the lodgepole seedlings were getting the best of it.”

There was what I called a tension zone, which 

was suitable for both species, and there the lodgepole pine seemed to be gaining ground, I thought 

as a result of repeated fires which are disastrous 

to the ponderosa pine but not to the lodgepole, 

because it is such a prolific reproducer after fires.

There was also a zone that was confined wholly to

lodgepole pine [Fry 1967].

Munger’s peregrinations stimulated the early asking, 

if not the conclusive answering, of the kinds of questions 

he and those soon to work for him researched east of the

Cascades—at the Pringle Falls Experimental Forest and the

Bend Silviculture Laboratory—for decades.

The real questions, of course, were yet to be formulated. And when they were, some of the answers seemed to

prove early foresters’ conviction “that fire should be kept

out of the timber at all times and at all costs” (Coe 1940).

In fact, this fire exclusion became the cause of the increasingly destructive fires and insect populations that plagued

central Oregon’s forests and propelled forest research there

for most of the 20th century. In his 2004 Landscapes in

Conflict, historian William G. Robbins summarized the 

situation as characterized by Dr. Urling Coe, writing in

1940 of his 13 years in Bend that began in 1905, and by

University of Wisconsin professor Nancy Langston, writing

in the 1990s.

Urling Coe, an early Bend physician, remembered 

“an open park-like forest, without any underbrush,”

where lightning-caused fires periodically burned 

“the dead pine needles, cones and twigs that had 

been blown to the ground by the wind.” The result 

was a forest floor clear of debris and destructive 

pine beetles. Coe noted that over centuries of time,

annual fires “had produced the beautiful and open

forests free from dangerous underbrush, and killed 

so many pine beetles that they were held in check.”

Fire shaped the pine forests that Coe so admired, 

and, according to historian-ecologist Nancy 

Langston, “without fires those forests changed into

something utterly different.” When two large mills 

5
6

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-711

. . . began cutting their extensive timber holdings in 

1916 [8 years after Munger’s first visit], the elimination of fire and rapid timber harvests began to 

create a very different forested landscape [Robbins

2004].

In a very real sense, early forestry policies and practices created the problems that early forestry research

would be asked to solve. “Cultural practices—keeping fire

out of the woods and cutting only large-diameter ponderosa pine (“highgrading”)—had consequences for the forest

environment” (Robbins 2004). These consequences, “manifested in accumulated litter and dead and dying trees,

increased stand densities, altered species compositions, and

disruption of historic insect population levels, can be attributed to decades of fire exclusion and past management

activities” (Youngblood and Riegel 2000), Forest Service

scientists who followed Munger’s trail concluded almost 

a century later.

While in central Oregon, Munger was told to report 

to Portland to take charge of a one-man Section of Silvics

at the soon-to-be-created North Pacific District (later the

Pacific Northwest Region) office. On December 1, 1908,

Chief Forester Pinchot had decentralized the Forest Service

and established six district offices, “miniature Washington

Offices” that were renamed regional offices in 1930, in 

the Western United States. District 6 included the states of

Oregon, Washington, and Alaska until 1921 when Alaska

was made District 10. To reach Portland, Munger rode his

horse over 75 miles of icy roads from Klamath Falls to

Medford, sold his companion of 3 months, and caught 

the Southern Pacific train to Portland (Fry 1967, Munger

1962). Munger arrived in Portland on December 1, “just 

as the great migration arrived from Washington to establish

the District 6 office,” and went to work for Fred Ames,

Chief of Silviculture. District Forester E.T. Allen was 33

years old, and most of the staff still in their 20s (Fry 1967,

Munger 1962).

Munger got right to work, and on December 31 submitted his 89-page Report of a Study of the Encroachment of

Lodgepole Pine on Western Yellow Pine on the East Slopes

of the Cascade Mountains in Oregon in which he attributed

the encroachment problem to frequent forest fires (Munger

1908). He repeated his thesis that “this whole transformation in the forest type is due to the increase in the frequency

of forest fires” since Euro-American settlement in the 1914

Proceedings of the Society of American Foresters. There he

outlined what he termed “a logical explanation of how this

process works.” Essentially, the lodgepole pine, more prone

to burn hot and to reproduce after a hot burn than the yellow pine, invades “a land where the latter was adapted to

grow.”

With the advance of the process and an increase in 

` the proportion of lodgepole pine, the fires are more

severe and run more in the crowns, thereby hastening the process just so much by damaging yellow 

pine and promoting lodgepole [Munger 1914].

Among forest management practices that Munger 

recommended to favor yellow pine was “the absolute prevention of forest fires” (Munger 1914). Many years later,

studies by Forest Service soil scientist Robert F. Tarrant

showed that it was soil and surface air temperatures that

were positive factors in lodgepole pine encroachment

(Cowlin 1988). More recently, fire exclusion from this 

forest has proven a grave mistake.

Historically, periodic fires kept many central Oregon ponderosa

pine stands in open, parklike condition, as shown in this early 20th

century photo. 

Van Vleet Collection,

Deschutes County Historical Society
Ponderosa Promise: A History of U.S. Forest Service Research in Central Oregon

“It has since struck me how audacious or naïve it was

for the Washington Office to assign a forest assistant with

no experience, who had not even seen the two species

before, to such a study that now would be assigned only 

to subject specialists with Ph.D.s,” Munger mused in 1962

of his autumn 1908 sojourn (Munger 1962).

Forest Service research in those early days was characterized as a “hit-and-miss” proposition by Ivan Doig

(1977). There was so much to know, and there were so few

foresters and allied scientists with so little time to study and

learn.

Because so little was known, the first questions 

were quite simple: What’s out there? What are the

range and characteristics of the various tree species?

How much timber volume is available? How much 

of it is dead? How does it grow, and how and where

does it grow best? [Duncan and Miner 2000].

It was all new. Sometimes efforts to answer such 

questions hit, sometimes they missed. The “how much” 

and “where” questions were addressed by a research effort

eventually called the Forest Survey. The more esoteric

“how does it grow” and “how and where does it grow best”

questions became the topics of long-term silvicultural

research.

According to the April 7, 1909, issue of The Bend

Bulletin, Munger returned to central Oregon to “conduct

experiments this summer in reforestation in the vicinity 

of Rosland. His task is to learn whether yellow pines will

grow on the lands now covered with a dense growth of

black jack [lodgepole] pines, an inferior variety” (Bend

Bulletin 1909a). “I probably will lay off three plots of about

one acre each, and try three different methods,” Munger

told the paper, perhaps anticipating techniques including

research plots and local Forest Service cooperation

employed a quarter century later at Pringle Falls

Experimental Forest.

One will be to scatter pine seeds broadcast, another

will be to plant seeds with a cornplanter, and on the

other I will plant some yellow pine seedlings from

the government nursery stock. These plots will be

marked so that forest officers will be able to visit 

them from time to time to see what results can be

obtained. The forest rangers in that district will 

assist me in the work.

It will take probably four or five years’ time

before we can arrive at any conclusions as to results,

and I will simply plant the seeds and young trees 

and let nature take her course. There are large areas 

in the region about Crescent lake in northern 

Klamath county which are barren, and the Rosland

experiments will indicate what can be done there as

well, for the soil and conditions are practically the

same [Bend Bulletin 1909b].

Although his forest investigations, as research was 

termed at the time, emphasized Douglas-fir growth and

yield west of the Cascade Range, as reflected in his office’s

first publication (Munger 1911), Munger didn’t ignore 

ponderosa pine. Indeed, even as the Douglas-fir studies 

progressed, his Section of Silvics turned its attention to 

the growth of western yellow pine in 1910, when “two 

three-man crews were in the field under Dean Hugo

Winkenwerder [of the Forest School, University of

Washington] in the Klamath region and George Bright 

[a Wenaha National Forest silviculturist] in the Blue

Mountains. I worked with both crews.”

7

Thornton T. Munger
8

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-711

This pine growth study was continued in 1911 and 

later expanded to cover the silvicultural aspects of 

pine management.

In 1913 I was in on the establishment of three 

15-acre Methods of Cutting plots on the Whitman

National Forest, the first of a large series of plots to

study the silviculture of western yellow pine. These

were laid out by T.J. Starker, E.H. MacDaniels and 

others to show the effects of leaving a 15%, 25%, 

and 35% reserved stand [Munger 1962].

This fieldwork contributed to Munger’s pioneering 

Western Yellow Pine in Oregon published in 1917 (Munger

1917). But knowledge of ponderosa pine ecology and silviculture was in its infancy, and some of the management

policies and practices prescribed, from fire exclusion to frequent light harvests, produced unfortunate results (Langston

1995) that proved the need for long-term research.

But time was short. Forest science was in a race to

catch up with forest industry. It was a race science couldn’t

win, as industry cut a wide swath through what it considered a “one-time crop” without regard for the future. The

anticipated timber boom in central Oregon was at hand. In

1915, two Minnesota-based timber giants announced construction of mills—the Shevlin-Hixon Company in May

and the Brooks-Scanlon Company in August—on the western and eastern banks of the Deschutes River at Bend. To

supply these mills, “Shevlin-Hixon had amassed more than

200,000 acres of prime ponderosa timber; Brooks-Scanlon,

a small but rapidly expanding acreage” (Robbins and Wolf

1994). These mills soon gave birth to the timber-based

economy of central Oregon that arrival of the railroad had

made possible. Among the largest and most modern pine

mills in the country, both cut their first boards in 1916

(Cogswell 1981) and kept cutting as they expanded their

logging and milling capacities. George Palmer Putnam’s

The Bend Bulletin celebrated this development.

The dream, Bend, the sawmill and lumbering center 

of Central Oregon is now an actuality. . . . After 

years of “watchful waiting” by men who were possessed with faith that one day saws would be humming and that vast area of Deschutes timber would 

be manufactured at Bend, they have today to take a 

10-minute walk from the center of town to see that

realization of their dreams [Bend Bulletin 1916].

Before long, each mill employed 600 men and probably twice that number of loggers (Robbins and Wolf 1994),

and each cut more than 200 million board feet a year

Walter J. Perry reviews timber harvest operations done by the

Shevlin-Hixon Company on the Deschutes National Forest, circa

late 1920s.

Walter J. Perry scales a ponderosa log on a ShevlinHixon timber sale outside Bend, Oregon.

Walt Perry

Walt Perry collection
Ponderosa Promise: A History of U.S. Forest Service Research in Central Oregon

(Briegleb 1936). Bend boomed, even as the private timber

resource, on which the boom was based, dwindled.

Within a decade, both companies and many smaller

ones had cut over most of their own central Oregon timberlands and were starting to buy Deschutes National Forest

timber. By the early 1930s, at the height of Bend mill production, the Brooks-Scanlon Company asked the Forest

Service for increased access to national forest timber. Heavy

cutting of private timber had put Bend’s timber-based economy on the brink. That economy looked to the national 

forest for the short-term support it wanted if not for the

long-term stability it needed.

Walter J. Perry, a pioneer Forest Service ranger and

self-trained forester with 8 years of experience at managing

a large ponderosa pine timber sale on the Carson National

Forest in New Mexico, had been transferred to Bend in

1925 to administer these sales. Perry had a timber management ethic that valued the forest and the future (Perry and

Joslin 1999). Although he promoted the process through

which central Oregon’s “sensible operators eventually recognized that sustained-yield operations were necessary for

continuation of their businesses” (Cogswell 1981), Perry

and others knew that most of the scientific and economic

questions on sustainable and profitable ponderosa pine 

forest management were yet to be answered.

The groundwork for answering those questions was

being laid in Washington, D.C., and Portland. As early as

June 1, 1915, the importance of answering such questions

had been recognized when Chief Forester Henry S. Graves

established the Branch of Research in the Washington

Office under the direction of Earle H. Clapp as Assistant

Chief to direct Forest Service research (Cowlin 1988, Geier

1998). Also in 1915, “Munger was made Assistant Chief 

of the Portland Office, Division of Silviculture,” and his

“Section of Silvics ceased to function as such” (Cowlin

1988). The result was Washington Office-District Office

turf wars. While these new organizations worked out their

new “lines of authority and responsibility” for “investigative projects” and “administrative studies” that asked and

answered research questions on fundamental principles and

specific cases, respectively, Munger worked at both. His

attention directed to timber survey and timber sales, he 

continued to supervise administrative studies on the 

national forests even as he pursued the goal of long-range

research that would advance scientific and sustainable 

forest management.

Establishment of the Pacific Northwest Forest Experiment Station on July 1, 1924, made possible by a Federal

Appropriation Act of 1925 allocation of $26,000 for centralized forest research activities, made that latter goal 

9

The giant pine mills of the Shevlin-Hixon Company and the Brooks-Scanlon Company faced each other across the Deschutes River in

Bend for decades after they began operations in 1916.

Van Vleet Collection, Deschutes County Historical Society
10

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-711

of long-range research more attainable. So did clarification of the fact that experiment station directors reported 

to Assistant Forester Clapp in the Branch of Research in

Washington, D.C., not to district foresters responsible for

National Forest System administration. Munger, named

Director, set the utilitarian tone of the Station’s work on

behalf of public and private interests:

We have no time now for research for research’s 

sake; for delving into incidental trifles of mere 

academic interest; for working on questions, the

answers to which have no application in current 

affairs. I believe we have no justification now in 

working with our less important tree species or in 

the non-commercial forest types. For the present 

our major activities must lie in the important timber

belts, where the extensive lumbering operations lie 

and where there are great areas whose future may 

be either devastation or reforestation. The selection 

of projects will depend on their economic importance [Munger 1924 in Geier 1998].

This practical focus on “the important timber belts” 

or “economic importance” boiled down to the Douglas-fir

forests west of the Cascade Range and the ponderosa pine

forests east of the Cascade Range, the Pacific Northwest’s

two major forest types, as the new Station’s research priorities. He urged industry to replace forest exploitation with

“timber farming,” and emphasized growth and yield studies

to increase timber production. “It may be presumptuous 

to say that man can improve on Nature, but he certainly 

can if he goes about it,” Munger told the Pacific Logging

Congress in Portland in October 1924. “Under proper management man can produce more wood per acre than Nature

has in the wild stands” (Munger 1924). The research challenge, as Munger saw it, was to discover the ecologically

and economically viable silvicultural systems that would

convert the stagnant or slow-growing old-growth forests

east and west of the Cascade Range into faster-growing 

and more-productive second-growth forests.

Among the talent transferred to the Station to help

Munger “improve on Nature” were a junior forester named

Richard E. McArdle, a future chief of the Forest Service,

and Robert Marshall, a future leader of the wilderness

movement. Also assigned were Leo A. Isaac, an innovative

Douglas-fir researcher who would take time away from

studies of that species to help found the Pringle Falls

Experimental Forest in 1931, and Edwin L. Mowat, who

eventually would pursue ponderosa pine silviculture at that

experimental forest (Cowlin 1988, Doig 1977).

This 1930 photograph shows Walter J. Perry using an increment

borer to extract tree ring cores, to better understand how central

Oregon’s climate affected tree growth rates. 

Carl B. Neal
11

Ponderosa Promise: A History of U.S. Forest Service Research in Central Oregon

Although the new experiment station’s work continued

to emphasize Douglas-fir growth and yield studies, ponderosa pine was not ignored. On July 1, 1925, Ruthford H.

Westveld, who Munger recalled “came directly to us from

Michigan Agricultural College as a very promising young

forester,” was appointed a junior forester and assigned

“largely to studies of ponderosa pine in central and eastern

Oregon and Washington” (Fry 1967). Ponderosa pine studies were further strengthened in 1928 when Dr. Walter H.

Meyer, a 1922 Yale Forest School graduate with European

training in forest mensuration who joined the Station in

1926, initiated a study of growth and yield of this species.

Ten years later, in 1938, Meyer’s work culminated in publication of Yield of Even-Aged Stands of Ponderosa Pine as

U.S. Department of Agriculture Technical Bulletin No. 630.

This publication stood the test of time so well it was reissued in 1961 with only slight revisions (Meyer 1961).

When, in 1928, Westveld—who had chosen the life of

teaching forestry at Michigan State College over continuing

to eat central Oregon logging camp grub—departed, Ernest

L. Kolbe, who had served on Meyer’s field crew, was 

chosen from the junior forester rolls in July to replace him.

Within 3 years, Kolbe would join Isaac in founding the

Pringle Falls Experimental Forest, and then develop that

facility and its research program. In the meantime, this 

ponderosa pine work strengthened the research program

east of the Cascade Range and to some extent balanced 

the Station’s program (Cowlin 1988).

There were other early forest research efforts in central

Oregon. In 1926, Munger had joined in a long-term genetics study, begun in 1911 and quite sophisticated for its time,

to test the effect of seed origin on the growth of ponderosa

pine in plantations in Arizona, Idaho, Oregon, Washington,

and New Zealand. Recognizing that “regional races” or

strains of ponderosa pine existed, he and others sought

answers to two basic questions they hoped would lead to

ponderosa pine forests with increased growth and yield.

These questions were: Which of these races is best to use 

in artificial reforestation: the local strain, or a more rapidgrowing strain from another region? Are the strains from

4 The Wind River Experimental Forest, formally established in 1913 as the

Wind River Forest Experiment Station, often has been referred to as the

“cradle of forest research in the Pacific Northwest.” A tree nursery was

established there in 1909, and an arboretum in 1913. More recently, the

T.T. Munger Research Natural Area within the experimental forest has

become the focal point for forest canopy research in old-growth forests.

different localities as hardy and resistant to diseases as the

local strains? “To throw light on these questions, . . . in

1926 the seed from ten regional races was sown at the Wind

River Nursery in Washington state, and two years later

plantations from this stock were established in six quite

contrasting sites”4 (Munger 1947). Munger and Westveld,

along with Walt Perry of the Deschutes National Forest,

established one of these plantations about 8 miles south 

of Bend in March 1928. Monitored ever since, notably by

Isaac and then by Forest Service geneticist Roy Silen even

into the 21st century, this plantation and the others have

provided the practical benefits—in this case important

information about ponderosa pine reforestation—that met

Munger’s “research put into use” requirement (Silen 2002).

Freelance research not sponsored by Munger’s office

was also part of the central Oregon scene. Perry, for example, was attracted to the technique of dendrochronology—

using tree rings to date natural phenomena—and applied it

to studies of the region’s climate and geology as well as to

forest management. An article in the May 24, 1930, issue 

of The Oregonian reported the results of his “detailed study

of rings of annual growth” of aged ponderosa pines to

understanding the region’s climate (Portland Oregonian

1930). And, as reported in the April 25, 1962, issue of The

Bend Bulletin: “The late Walter J. Perry, Deschutes

National Forest lumberman, used his increment borer in

dating trees within the cone of Lava Butte and refuted the

belief that the cone was born ‘only yesterday’” (Brogan

1962). This belief was set forth by U.S. Geological Survey

geologist Israel C. Russell, who in 1903 estimated the butte

south of Bend erupted “at least a hundred and probably

more than a hundred and fifty years ago” (Perry and Joslin

1999, Russell 1905). Modern dating techniques indicate the

cone was built about 7,000 years ago.
12

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-711

In general, however, early forest research in central

Oregon languished as a result of its inability to compete

with the Douglas-fir region for research talent and dollars. 

The importance of forest research, long recognized

within the Forest Service, finally was recognized by

Congress when it passed the McSweeny-McNary Act of

1928 called for by Assistant Chief Clapp’s A National Plan

of Forest Research that in 1926 “outlined what he called 

an organic act for Forest Service research” (Steen 1976). A

blueprint for the regional experiment stations, the act

directed the Forest Service to pursue research of “forest

diseases; forest insects; forest animals, birds, and wildlife;

forest fire weather; forest range and watershed; forest products; forest survey; and forest reforestation and economic

studies” (Cowlin 1988). These broad fields of study were

soon reflected in the Station’s evolving organization into

functional sections. On January 30, 1933, a Section of

Silviculture under McArdle was created to better coordinate

and supervise studies in fire, forestation, natural reproduction, management, forest influences, and phenology, among

others. Companion sections were Forest Survey and Forest

Products. Other studies such as economics and land transfers were not yet included in sections (Cowlin 1988).

McArdle’s section included Kolbe and the Pringle Falls

Experimental Forest he was developing in central Oregon to

provide a relatively controlled environment for the scientific

study of ponderosa pine silviculture.
Ponderosa Promise: A History of U.S. Forest Service Research in Central Oregon

The need for a permanent western yellow pine 

research forest—an experimental forest—in central Oregon

was evident to Director Thornton T. Munger and his Pacific

Northwest Forest Experiment Station advisory council.1 The

authority to administratively designate experimental forests

within national forests was provided in Forest Service

Regulation L-20, an agency policy written by Associate

Forester Leon F. Kneipp in July 1929, at the direction of

Chief Forester William B. Greeley (Steen 1976), and

approved by the Secretary of Agriculture.

Once the advisory council’s Committee on Experimental Forests proposed “two experimental forests east of

the Cascades . . . typical of the western yellow pine region

of eastern Washington and eastern Oregon” (Isaac and

Kolbe 1931), designation of the Pringle Falls Experimental

Forest south of Bend on the Deschutes National Forest

came quickly. This first experimental forest in the Pacific

Northwest is representative of the “fairly homogeneous”

ponderosa pine forest that graces the eastern slopes of the

Cascade Range in Oregon from the Warm Springs Indian

Reservation on the north to the California line on the south.

Munger, familiar with the research potential of the

Pringle Falls area from his western yellow pine work,

13

Chapter 2: Pringle Falls: A Research Forest

When Forest Service Chief Robert Y. Stuart approved establishment of the Pringle Falls Experimental Forest in May, 1931, Forest

Service scientists started down the long road toward understanding

the ponderosa pine forests east of the Cascade Range crest. 

1 “Forest research priorities at [the Pacific Northwest Forest Experiment

Station] during the late 1920s were formulated in cooperation with a Forest

Advisory Council appointed by [President] Calvin Coolidge’s Secretary of

Agriculture, William Jardine, and headed by C.S. Chapman, chief forester

for Weyerhauser Timber Co., who was elected at the first meeting of the

council. Thornton Munger served as secretary, and other members of the

council included leaders from the timber industry, public and private professional foresters, faculty from the forestry schools at the state agricultural

colleges of Oregon and Washington, and state and federal foresters” (Geier

1998).

This photo taken in August, 1932, shows Pringle Falls

Experimental Forest from the Fall River Road on the north 

boundary.

E.L. Kolbe
14

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-711

assigned two members of his staff, assistant silviculturist

Leo A. Isaac and junior forester Ernest L. Kolbe, to report

on the proposed Pringle Falls Experimental Forest. The

two, joined by Munger for 3 days and by Forest Supervisor

Carl B. Neal for 1, examined the area in April 1931. All

agreed that the area was “admirably suited for experimental

purposes” (USDA FS 1931a). Isaac and Kolbe’s establishment report, submitted to Munger on May 9, 1931, called

for an experimental forest of 7,520 acres within the

Deschutes National Forest about 30 miles southwest of

Bend.

An Experimental Forest Is Planned

“The Deschutes River,” their report read, “crosses the area 

from north to south.” Pringle Falls, a narrow series of cascades on the Deschutes, was named for Octavius M. Pringle,

who had come to central Oregon from Salem in 1873 or

1874 and settled on a ranch at Powell Butte near Prineville.

In 1902, as allowed by the Timber and Stone Act of 1878,

Pringle had acquired 160 acres at these falls where Native

Americans once caught fish swimming upstream to spawn.

By 1916, the erstwhile town site of Pringle Falls, advertised

as “the most beautiful in Central Oregon,” had been platted

(Hatton 1987, McArthur and McArthur 2003) with a future

as a lumber and hydroelectric center in mind. Fifteen years

later, Isaac and Kolbe reported “the old sawmill, power, and

town site . . . deserted and rapidly going to pieces” and

Pringle’s 160 acres, which had changed ownership, “being

held for prospective power development” (Isaac and Kolbe

1931).

The adjacent proposed experimental forest “lies 18

miles east of the Cascade Summit and about an equal distance west of the Paulina Mountains,” Isaac and Kolbe

reported. “It is 6 miles west of the Oregon Trunk Railroad

and the Dalles-California Highway at a point 3 miles north

of La Pine,” they continued, noting that “the only bridge

across the Deschutes for some miles is in this area.” They

deemed these transportation facilities “adequate in making

the area accessible for fire protection and experimental purposes” as well as “the profitable marketing of the products”

The Deschutes River bisected the Pringle Falls Experimental

Forest. Pringle Falls itself was known to cause log jams in earlyday river drives, as shown in this photo. 

Isaac and Kolbe’s 1931 establishment report called for a 7,450-

acre Pringle Falls Experimental Forest on the Deschutes National

Forest, about 30 miles southwest of Bend.

Paul Hosmer Collection,

courtesy Deschutes County Historical Society
Ponderosa Promise: A History of U.S. Forest Service Research in Central Oregon

that would result from “small cuttings for experimental 

purposes.”

Isaac and Kolbe’s report continued to describe the area

and evaluate its potential for forestry research.

The proposed area is well located in relation to 

its surroundings to make possible its dedication to

research purposes without interference from or to 

the normal management of adjoining public and 

private forest lands. On the north and east is level 

yellow pine timberland, partly private and partly

national forest ownership, which can be logged 

without material interference or demand upon the

experimental forest. On the west is noncommercial

lodgepole type in national forest ownership, and on 

the south is a ridge of hills mostly in private ownership, which presumably will be logged to the south

away from the experimental forest. The wide

Deschutes River bisects the tract and should act as 

a firebreak to isolate each half from fires that might

start on the other half.

This vivid and specific report enabled readers to visualize the proposed experimental forest’s topography, climate,

and resources. “The elevation of the area varies from 4,250

to 5,050 feet,” they reported. “Most of it is comparatively

flat, lying between the 4,250 and 4,350 foot contours except

in the east central portion where Pringle Butte rises to 5,050

feet.” 

The flat land has several levels, which are distinguished by differences in the timber types and 

undergrowth. The lower flats are covered with 

lodgepole pine, which is typical of the cooler soils

throughout the region. All the slopes and higher 

flats are covered with yellow pine, with a little 

admixture of lodgepole on the flats.

The soil is of volcanic origin consisting of 

several feet of pumice and volcanic sand deposited 

on basaltic lava, which outcrops only on the buttes, 

in the river canyon, and occasionally elsewhere.

Three years of records from the Fall River Fish 

Hatchery weather station, just 2 miles away, showed Isaac

and Kolbe “an extreme range of -36o[F] to 101o[F], frost

every month of the year, and an annual rainfall of 17.5

inches.” As “precipitation was exceedingly scanty” during

those 3 years, they concluded that the “long term normal

precipitation is undoubtedly over 20 inches a year.”

Observing that poor soil, midsummer frosts, and lack

of available irrigation water rendered the proposed experimental forest and surrounding area of little, if any, value for

agriculture, Isaac and Kolbe concluded: “There is no question but that this area is all ultimate forest land” and not

subject to other uses. The remainder of their report focused

on the area’s timber, grazing, water, wildlife, and recreational values.

Isaac and Kolbe based their assessment of the proposed

experimental forest’s timber resources on type and stand

maps produced during the intensive 1911 and 1914 reconnaissance of the area by Munger, Ranger Riis and his crew,

and others. According to their 1931 report:

The proposed experimental forest includes large 

compact bodies of both western yellow pine and 

lodgepole pine types, and . . . three smaller areas 

classed as sugar pine type. The proportion is approximately 4,640 acres of yellow pine, 2,560 acres 

of lodgepole pine, and 320 acres of sugar pine.

The total amount of timber of each species within the 

proposed boundaries was 55,063 thousand board feet (mbf)

of yellow pine, 6,080 mbf of lodgepole pine, 1,260 mbf of

sugar pine, and 14 mbf of white fir.

They reported “notable variations in the yellow pine 

type with changes of slope and aspect that are conspicuous

by the change in the ground cover” from bitterbrush on the

flats to manzanita, snowbrush, and chinquapin on the

slopes. They attributed similar variations in the lodgepole

pine type to variations in the water table. They also noted

that yellow pine reproduction, scarce on the flats except in

openings, was more abundant on the slopes.

15
16

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-711

Kolbe set about developing the physical infrastructure and

the research program of the new experimental forest. The

Great Depression made both jobs tough.

Kolbe proved more than equal to the job. A 1927 

graduate of the University of Minnesota’s forestry school,

he had earned a master’s degree in forestry at Cornell

University before he joined the Forest Service in 1928

(Society of American Foresters News 1948). As one of

Munger’s junior foresters, he had spent his initial years

with the Station as chief of a party surveying cutover lands

in eastern Oregon and Washington and getting to know

ponderosa pine. He was known as a man who matched his

many words with action (World Forestry Center 1978).

Otherwise, Isaac and Kolbe found grazing “next 

important to timber growing” on the proposed experimental

forest, and that the entire area was “grazed under Forest

Service permit . . . the area east of the Deschutes River by

sheep and the area west of the river by cattle.” They concluded grazing was not detrimental to yellow pine reproduction when properly managed. They determined that

plans for power projects along the river, if implemented,

would “not interfere with the water level on the proposed

experimental area.” And they recognized the inevitability 

of considerable hunting and fishing in the area and the

potential for recreation development on lands along the

river. Since designation and use of the proposed experimental forest would “not interfere to any extent with its present

normal use by the public,” Isaac and Kolbe judged “there is

every reason to believe that a research forest in this vicinity

will be received by all concerned with approval” (Isaac and

Kolbe 1931).

The Pringle Falls Experimental Forest Is 

Designated and Developed

Approval by the Forest Service was swift and sure. Indeed, 

Forest Supervisor Neal in Bend had approved the report on

April 28, before it was submitted to Portland officials on

May 9. Munger signed on May 11, and Regional Forester

C.J. Buck signed on May 12. Then, in Washington, D.C., 

on May 20, 1931, Chief Forester Robert Y. Stuart exercised

the authority vested in him by Regulation L-20 “relating to

the occupancy, use, protection, and administration of the

national forests” to “designate as the Pringle Falls

Experimental Forest the lands described in a report dated

May 9, 1931, by Leo A. Isaac and Ernest L. Kolbe,” and

approved the establishment report (Isaac and Kolbe 1931).

The next step of implementing this designation fell to

Kolbe who, for all practical purposes, founded and developed this first experimental forest in the Pacific Northwest.

While Isaac returned to the western side of the Cascades to

resume the innovative research that made him an internationally recognized authority on Douglas-fir silviculture,

This headquarters building for the Pringle Falls Experimental

Forest was constructed during the summer of 1931 for $450.

USDA Forest Service photograph was taken in October 1931. 

This photo taken in October, 1933, shows the “office cabin” built

at Pringle Falls Experimental Forest during the summer of 1933.

E.L. Kolbe
Ponderosa Promise: A History of U.S. Forest Service Research in Central Oregon

Physical Infrastructure Development 

Despite funding constraints, Kolbe immediately began 

construction of the Pringle Falls Experimental Forest headquarters on the western bank site that his and Isaac’s May 9

establishment report had identified as most suitable. This

site was on the south side of the Wickiup-La Pine Road

(now Forest Road 43), about one-third mile west of the

bridge across the Deschutes River. During the summer of

1931, a headquarters building was constructed for $450

(Cowlin 1988, USDA FS 1931b). Availability of funds and

personnel from New Deal emergency agencies including

the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) soon stimulated

additional construction. This made possible the 1933 construction of an additional office building, a weather and fire

hazard station, a combination workshop-garage-woodshed

building, and a water system “completing for the present

time being the physical plant,” in the words of Acting

Director McArdle (USDA FS 1933a, 1933b). Kolbe reportedly spent “a lot of time after dinner pounding nails [on

these buildings] because he was afraid the CCC guys

weren’t going to finish the job before the snow flew”

(Frewing 2002).

The Emergency Relief Act (ERA) of 1935, another

effort to jump-start the economy, authorized the Works

Progress Administration (WPA) to provide for a broad

range of public works. With these funds, Kolbe put carpenters to work on a residence (now called the cottage) and a

new crew house (now called the administration building).

This latter structure is a two-story wood frame building with

a full basement. Its 1,440-square-foot first floor includes 

a large living room with a stone fireplace, a kitchen, two

bathrooms, and three bedrooms later used as offices, and its

17

This building was originally built as a crew house at Pringle Falls

in 1935. It was later used as the administrative building and is still

in use in 2006. Photo was taken in summer, 1936. 

Carpenters employed under the Emergency Relief Act of 1935

constructed a three-room residence at the Pringle Falls

Experimental Forest headquarters during fall, 1935. 

This November, 1936 photo shows the headquarters at Pringle

Falls Experimental Forest from a viewpoint near the entrance. 

E.L. Kolbe
18

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-711

790-square-foot second floor is a single dormitory sleeping

area. An improved pressure water system supplied water to

all the buildings and to four fire hydrants (USDA FS 1935b,

1936c). Another two-story structure, a 1,260-square-foot

dormitory with a basement, was built in 1939, as were a

720-square-foot combination garage and shop building and

a 288-square-foot gas house. A larger residence planned for

the experimental forest’s director was never built.

These fine improvements notwithstanding, life could

be hard at Pringle Falls Experimental Forest. This was

especially the case when work began during or extended

into the colder months. To open the headquarters in early

April 1935, for example, a project foreman named L.W.

Frost had to break his way through deep snow for 6 miles.

“The purpose of the early opening was to take advantage 

of snow and moisture conditions to burn down pine snags

on a 320-acre demonstration plot” (USDA FS 1935a). The

following January,

an unusually heavy snowfall marooned Junior

Forester Beeman, 20 CCC workers, and Project

Foreman Frost, who were [completing construction 

of the new crew house begun the previous summer].

The telephone line was down, the pantry had few 

provisions, and above all the storm had put a peak 

load on all the local snow plowing equipment. It 

took most of a week to close the station and to return

the men and equipment to the main [CCC] camp 

60 miles from Pringle Falls [USDA FS 1936a].

While working at Pringle Falls, of course, the CCC and 

ERA enrollees lived under canvas in a spike camp.

The rigors of winter dictated the research schedule, too.

“The people who established the first studies out there . . .

worked in the summertime out there at Pringle Falls . . .

and in the wintertime moved back to Portland” (Dahms

1999).

Other improvements completed during the 1930s

included signs that identified and interpreted the Pringle

Falls Experimental Forest and marked its boundaries,

administrative roads and trails, fences, and firebreaks.

Some of those signs and fences identified and enclosed

the two detached natural areas set aside in 1935 after Kolbe

had made the “sufficient detailed examination” needed “to

finally determine the best delineation of the natural areas”

(Isaac and Kolbe 1931). Kolbe’s report recommended “two

detached natural areas of several hundred acres each, one

east of the river characteristic of the ponderosa pine type

with a little of the sugar pine type, and the other west of the

river characteristic of the lodgepole pine flats.” The natural

area would be maintained “as far as possible in its natural

state” (Kolbe 1935). Approval in June 1935 led to establishment in 1936 of the two-unit, 1,160-acre natural area—an

eastern block of 600 acres and a western block of 560

acres—completely within the Pringle Falls Experimental

Forest. Along with another 187 acres added in 1978, these

compose today’s Pringle Falls Research Natural Area

(USDA FS 1978). Such areas preserve natural ecosystems

in an undisturbed state solely for research and education.

This two-unit research natural area has since afforded

unique opportunities for research and education in the 

natural sciences. 

Twenty acres of the old Pringle Falls town site, purchased in 1936 for $1,500 from Henry M. and Alice Parks

of the Poplar Ranch in Fort Rock Basin, rounded out the

headquarters area. Construction of Bonneville Dam on the

Columbia River “had eliminated the need for and appeal 

of small power plants” such as the one contemplated for

Pringle Falls, and the Parks family needed the money to

“weather the miserable 1930s” (Parks 1997). 

Research Program Development

Forestry research, the real work of Pringle Falls 

Experimental Forest, began even as Kolbe was completing

construction of the initial facilities. As early as August

1931, associate silviculturist Walter H. Meyer and Kolbe

“spent a week or so doing [their] first research work on 

this forest with the help of twenty-seven Iowa State Forest

School students who [had] been spending the summer with

Professors Horning and Jeffers on the Deschutes National

Forest.”

This work was of great instructional value to the 

students and practical assistance to us. Land lines 

were rerun and new corners placed. A few sections
Ponderosa Promise: A History of U.S. Forest Service Research in Central Oregon

were type mapped and estimated; twenty acres of 

permanent sample plots were laid out for a study of 

net yield in virgin stands; reproduction counts on a

recent burn were made by the new stocked quadrat

method and by the old method of seedling counts; 

and some permanent reproduction plots were established [USDA FS 1931b].

On August 31, only a little more than 3 months after 

the Pringle Falls Experimental Forest was designated,

Meyer and Kolbe submitted the new experimental forest’s

first research design. The objective was “to determine the

gross increment, the annual and the net increment of virgin

stands of western yellow pine, when fire is kept out”

(Meyer and Kolbe 1931). Both knew that success in such

studies is based, among other things, on a good understanding of the study area.

To help develop that understanding, Kolbe was soon

carrying out “Special Instructions for the Control and

Mapping of the Pringle Falls Experimental Forest” issued

on June 25, 1933, by Regional Forester Buck’s engineering

staff at Munger’s request. The principal objective of this

survey was to produce a topographic map of the area “at a

scale of 8 inches to the mile with a contour interval of 10

feet” and to “set permanent monuments for horizontal and

vertical positions” so that “the location of sample plots,

selective logging areas, planting areas, etc., can be quickly

and accurately marked.” The second objective was “to

cruise the timber and make a type map” as well as “a site

map and a generalized soil map” of the area (Flach 1933).

Kolbe prepared detailed “Special Instructions for Making

an Intensive Reconnaissance of the Pringle Falls

Experimental Forest” (Kolbe 1933a) to carry out this

charge. “The work was done in part during the fall of 1933

and completed early in the summer of 1934 as a Civilian

Conservation Corps project,” supervised by Kolbe and

C.W. Kline. Carried on by “qualified forest engineers and

cruisers assisted by enrollees of the CCC who were trained

on the project to run compass, Abney level, rod and chain,”

the effort achieved the stated “purpose of the reconnaissance . . . to gather sufficient data for the management and

development of this experimental forest” (Kolbe and Frost

1935).

Work also began on the initial studies. Focused primarily on ponderosa pine, the objectives were “to discover by

research and experimentation the methods of silviculture,

protection, and utilization by which the maximum quantity

and best quality of forest resources may be produced”

(Kolbe 1938). True to the “can do” attitude of the early

Forest Service, this first round of studies was installed early

in the game; Kolbe formalized their objectives later. These

objectives evolved to include additional resource management research problems that, given the long-term nature of

forest science, established a pattern for decades of research.

When, in 1938, Kolbe penned a plan, the objectives of this

research were listed as:

(1) To determine best methods of harvesting the 

virgin ponderosa pine stands for most profitable

permanent production.

(2) To develop methods of thinning, pruning, and 

other stand improvement in immature stands 

that are feasible and effective.

(3) To find means of converting the very low 

quality lodgepole stands characteristic of the 

region to a useful forest.

(4) To investigate the effectiveness of various 

methods of protecting forests against fire, 

insects, etc.

(5) To develop methods of range management, in 

relation to silviculture, that will improve the 

forage resources [Kolbe 1938].

Research Plots Established

Permanent experimental plots were numbered as they were 

established. Kolbe laid out these studies knowing full well

that, because of the long-term nature of forestry research,

those who would follow him in decades to come would 

witness and benefit from the ultimate results. Such is the

faith and the fate of the forester. As in the case of facilities

development, the availability of New Deal labor—especially the CCC crews when it came to thinning, pruning,

19
20

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-711

pulling, and grubbing tasks on experimental plots—compensated for severe funding shortages and made installation

of the early studies possible.

The first experimental plots Kolbe established eventually were reflected by the fifth objective on his 1938 list: To

develop methods of range management, in relation to silviculture, that will improve the forage resources.

Grazing influence on ground cover and tree 

reproduction—

Sheep and cattle had grazed the experimental forest for

decades, and the first 10 plots at Pringle Falls were set

aside in 1932 for a study of the effects of grazing on tree

and forage ecology. Five of the ten plots were exclosures,

one each in the various forage subtypes—under pure ponderosa pine, grass under pure lodgepole pine, bitterbrush

under pure lodgepole pine, under a mixture of ponderosa

and lodgepole pines, and in a recent burn in ponderosa pine.

The rest of the experimental forest remained open to sheep

grazing (Kolbe 1938). A year after they were established,

Kolbe’s working plan for these “grazing demonstration

plots” reflected both his keen insight into and meticulous

enthusiasm for forest research needs.

The utilization of the subordinate forest vegetation 

by grazing animals has long been recognized by the

Forest Service to have an important influence on 

the ecological development of certain forest areas. 

In the ponderosa pine type, grazing is a dominant 

factor in forest regeneration and development and

under some conditions an important influence on 

the severity of erosion and forest fires. To utilize 

the beneficial effects of grazing and to prevent 

those effects that are harmful, at least so far as the

desired forest products are concerned, is one of the

phases of the methods-of-cutting study now carried 

on in the ponderosa pine type.

These plots are to serve as a demonstration 

of the effects of grazing and as study areas to determine:

(a) The influence of sheep grazing on the production of bitterbrush (Purshia tridentata) in 

several forest types.

(b) The influence of sheep grazing on the survival 

and growth of young ponderosa pine under 

virgin stand conditions.

(c) The growth and composition of the forest vegetation when left undisturbed and that following 

a severe surface fire.

(d) The growth and survival of ponderosa pine 

reproduction under lodgepole pine when grazed 

and ungrazed.

(e) The mortality, growth and volume of the timber

stands in the forest types that are represented by 

the plots in this project [Kolbe 1933b].

Kolbe’s plan reflected certain practical limitations on 

the research.

The objectives for this study . . . include . . . a rather

detailed study of the grazing problem. Desirable as

such a full study would be, it is recognized that 

funds and time permit doing only a reasonable minimum amount of work. As a result, this plan was 

prepared to conform to the limited funds that are 

available to carry out the work. It is recognized that 

a more detailed study could be made to advantage 

on the plots of this project [Kolbe 1933b].

Recognizing the demonstration value of the research, 

Kolbe located as many of the plots as possible within view

The first 10 research plots at Pringle Falls Experimental Forest

were set aside in 1932 to study the effects of grazing on tree and

forage ecology. Photo shows plot 3. 
Ponderosa Promise: A History of U.S. Forest Service Research in Central Oregon

from the forest roads. A CCC crew fenced the plots in, and

a “Professor Steffen of Washington State College spent the

month of July [1934] in a study of [their] vegetative cover”

(USDA FS 1934). By 1938 “the contrast in vegetation

inside and outside the fence [was] already notable” (Kolbe

1938). Periodic observations of the influence of grazing 

on ground cover and tree reproduction continued into the

1950s when grazing in the area tapered off and “the contrast between plots [was] not as marked . . . as it formerly

was” (Mowat 1954).

The second series of plots, which Kolbe established in

1934, eventually was reflected in the second objective of

“stand improvement” on his 1938 list, but did not relate to

ponderosa pine silviculture.

Thinning experiments in lodgepole pine—

In 1934, perhaps with an eye toward a distant future when

lodgepole pine would have commercial value, plots 11 to

13 were established to explore methods to improve lodgepole pine growth and survival. Two plots were thinned that

year, and the third left as a check plot. At the time of thinning, growth in this immature 55-year-old stand was “about

at a standstill because of insect and disease losses” (Kolbe

1938) on even the best sites. After thinning, diameter

growth was 1.5 to 2.5 times as great as in the check plot.

The most rapid growth was achieved by trees of medium

size (about 7 to 10 inches in diameter at breast height) “that

will live . . . to merchantable size and will become merchantable much sooner than those of unthinned sites.” Even

these short-term results, combined with other data, enabled

Pringle Falls silviculturist Edwin L. Mowat to issue

Preliminary Guides for the Management of Lodgepole

Pine in Oregon and Washington in 1949 (Mowat 1949).

Maintenance and measurement of these plots contributed to

knowledge of lodgepole pine silviculture for several

decades.

Most of the remaining early experimental plots reflected

the Pringle Falls Experimental Forest’s principal purpose

“as a field laboratory for determining the basic facts in the

management of ponderosa pine forests” (USDA FS 1937).

Thinning experiments in ponderosa pine—

The first of three early ponderosa pine thinning studies was

installed in 1934 on plots 14 to 18 in a 49-year-old, evenaged stand on the west slope of Pringle Butte. This study

“afforded a good opportunity to see what cultural treatment

is necessary to improve the growth of overdense, stagnating

thickets, so common in this type” (Kolbe 1938). Plots were

thinned to 7- by 7-foot and 9- by 9-foot spacing or left

unthinned as control plots.

After 15 years, the “average diameter growth for the 

9- by 9-foot spacing was 1.5 inches; for the 7- by 7-foot

21

In 1934, plots were established at Pringle Falls Experimental

Forest to explore thinning methods to improve lodgepole pine

growth and survival. 

The first of three early ponderosa pine thinning studies was

installed in 1934, in plots on the western slope of Pringle Butte.

This photo was taken on May 28, 1937. 
22

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-711

Removal of lodgepole pine overstory to promote 

ponderosa pine growth—

The feasibility of “cutting to convert a borderland type of

lodgepole pine into a ponderosa pine stand” (USDA FS

1937) of greater commercial value was tested on plots 20

and 21 “on the upper benches along the Deschutes River 

. . . where ponderosa pine and lodgepole pine compete for

supremacy.” In 1934, 1-acre plot 20, where “suppressed

ponderosa seedlings [were] found under more rapid-growing but low quality lodgepole . . . was completely cleared of

the lodgepole overstory” by CCC labor “and the ponderosa

pine reproduction was carefully left unmolested.” At the

time of cutting, the lodgepole pine averaged 75 years old,

and the suppressed ponderosa pine seedlings and saplings

averaged 40 years old and only about 18 inches tall, and

very few exceeded 5 feet in height. Control plot 21, left

untreated, was established in 1937 (Mowat 1954).

By 1952, silviculturist Mowat reported the “surviving

ponderosa seedlings on the cleared plot had grown to an

average height of 7.5 feet, compared to 3.3 feet for those

under the lodgepole overstory” on the control plot. Although

response “was not pronounced . . . during the first 6 to 8

years after release,” annual height growth between 1941

and 1948 was “about four times as rapid on the released

seedlings as on the unreleased” (Mowat 1954). As silviculturist Mowat reported in the October 1950 Journal of

Forestry, this experiment “demonstrated that ponderosa

pine reproduction, even though severely suppressed for 40

years or more by an overstory of lodgepole pine, could

recover vigor after overstory removal” (Mowat 1950 in

Youngblood 1995).

Twenty-five years later, silviculturist Walter G. Dahms

reported that the released plot supported a “vigorous” and

“fairly well-spaced” stand of “young-appearing” ponderosa

pines, while the unreleased plot presented a “sharp contrast”

in which “the lodgepole pine overstory still dominates the

stand and the ponderosa pines remain in an inconspicuous

understory position” . . . “The results of this small-scale

study,” Dahms echoed Mowat, “indicate that foresters can

release small ponderosa pines that have been severely suppressed, with confidence that they will respond and attain

spacing, 1.2 inches; for the unthinned, 0.6 inches. Height

growth was about two feet greater on the thinned plots.”

Indeed, “between 1945 and 1949 the 100 largest trees per

acre grew 33 to 67 percent faster in diameter and 15 to 69

percent faster in cubic volume than the unthinned” (Mowat

1954). These and other data helped Mowat conclude that

“proper thinning of dense young stands of ponderosa pine

increases the growth rate of remaining trees and thereby

shortens the time required to grow timber of any desired

size.” Given “the long duration of release effect and the cost

of premerchantable treatment,” Mowat suggested that one

early, fairly radical thinning “when stands are only 2 to 5

feet high” could prove most ecologically and economically

feasible (Mowat 1953). “This publication really opened a

lot of foresters’ eyes to the possibilities of second-growth

stands as old as 50 years,” ponderosa pine silviculturist

James W. Barrett commented in 2003 (Barrett 2003).

Removal of brush to encourage ponderosa pine 

reproduction—

“What effect does a dense cover of manzanita and snowbrush have on the establishment and growth of ponderosa

pine reproduction?” was the research question for another

experiment begun in 1934. Plot 19, a strip 66 feet wide and

1,000 feet long on the south slope of Pringle Butte, was

completely cleared of a dense growth of brush that had

developed following fires in 1919 and 1922. The manzanita

was pulled by hand and the snowbrush was cut off at ground

level or grubbed out by CCC labor. The brush on plot 19a,

a short distance to the west, was left in place.

Fifteen years later, this study showed that “(1) the brush

did not significantly affect the early establishment of pine

seedlings, but (2) it sharply reduced the growth of established seedlings, and (3) manzanita is much more severe in

its affect on growth of pine seedlings than snowbrush.” The

conclusion for forest managers was that “heavy brush competition, especially from manzanita, must be reduced if pine

seedlings are to make satisfactory growth” (Dahms 1950).

These plots later played a role in studies focused on developing chemical controls for brush in ponderosa pine forests.
Ponderosa Promise: A History of U.S. Forest Service Research in Central Oregon

normal growth following a short adjustment period”

(Dahms 1960).

Growth and mortality in natural ponderosa pine 

forests—

Kolbe knew the objective of converting slow-growing natural ponderosa pine forests into fast-growing second-growth

forests had to be based on a sound understanding of both

types, attainable only through long-term research. Toward

this end, “untreated sample areas”—plots 22 and 23, and

later plots 25 to 28 within the research natural area—were

established “for observing and obtaining individual tree

measurements for determining growth, mortality, and yield”

(USDA FS 1937) in natural ponderosa pine forests. These

studies would produce data that could be “compared with

results following various methods of cutting, as on plots 

30 to 36” (Mowat 1954) that would support conversion of

primeval forests to productive and profitable timberlands.

Methods of cutting in ponderosa pine—

“Conversion of the virgin old-growth forest to a managed,

rapidly growing condition” was the principal “everyday job

of forest managers in the pine region” (USDA FS 1948) 

in the 1930s. To accelerate this transition, silviculturists

encouraged new “lighter selection” methods of cutting during the mid-1930s. This was made possible by “the economy and flexibility of tractor logging” (Mowat 1961) and F.

Paul Keen’s tree classification system (see below), which

made silviculturists “more aware of subtle but significant

23

In 1937, plots were set up to test methods of cutting ponderosa

pine. The research goal was to find the best ways “to accelerate

the conversion of the virgin, old-growth forest to a managed, 

rapidly growing condition.” This photo shows plot 30 before any

trees were cut. 

This photo shows plot 30 after large trees were cut. 
24

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-711

variations in the silvicultural characteristics of individual

ponderosa pines” (USDA FS 1948).

Two new methods of cutting—the “thrift selection”

system and the “economic maturity selection” system

(Mowat 1954)—were tested on plots 30 to 36 in 1937. The

seven 60- to 100-acre plots (USDA FS 1948) totaled 510

acres of old-growth ponderosa pine. The timber was sold 

to the Shevlin-Hixon Company and logged with horses 

and trucks (USDA FS 1940) during the summer of 1937

(USDA FS 1938). Under each of the two “light selection”

systems of cutting employed, 20, 40, and 60 percent of the

original volume was removed. “The thrift cutting removed

the trees of poorest vigor and growth” within prescribed

volume removal limits, and “the economic maturity cutting

removed the trees of highest economic maturity, primarily

those of high value and low earning power but including

lower value trees in need of salvage” (USDA FS 1937).

Plot 36 was cut by the 80-percent standard selection

method that prevailed at the time. On all plots, trees at

highest risk of pine beetle mortality were cut (USDA FS

1947a) to salvage timber that otherwise would be lost and

to reduce the likelihood of losses to epidemics (Kolbe and

McKay 1939). Over 20,000 remaining trees on these plots

were tagged and measured and their value and growth rate

studied (USDA FS 1938).

Ten years later, Mowat reported significant increases 

in growth on all logged plots and that “greater growth was

generally produced by heavy than by light reserve volumes

and ‘thrift selection’ resulted in greater growth and lower

mortality than ‘economic selection’.” He also found that

“the 20 percent cutting was as effective in reducing tree

mortality as the heavier cuttings for both ‘economic’ and

‘thrift’ selections” (USDA FS 1938) and that cuts as light 

as 20 percent of the total stand may reduce mortality to

only one-sixth of that occurring in uncut stands (Mowat

1948). Most of the mortality concern related to the western

pine beetle. In 1951, as this study progressed, Dahms—a

statistician as well as a forester—demonstrated in his master of forestry degree thesis that consideration of the size of

treatment areas, the need for treatment replication, and the

use of a covariance analysis could improve the design and

results of this and similar studies (Dahms 1951).

Ponderosa pine tree class and log grade 

demonstration—

Just east of the seven methods-of-cutting plots is plot 37, 

a 7.5-acre area of similar ponderosa pine timber left intact

“to afford a visual demonstration of tree classification and

evaluation in a typical uncut virgin forest” (Munger 1942).

As forester and future Station director Philip A. Briegleb

began the story:

Every forester who works in . . . ponderosa pine. . .

is impressed by the tremendous range in size, quality, age, and thrift of the trees found in the virgin 

This illustration shows the Keen Tree Classification System,

developed by entomologist F. Paul Keen for determining the

susceptibility of ponderosa pines to western pine beetle attack.
Ponderosa Promise: A History of U.S. Forest Service Research in Central Oregon

forest. So great is this variation from tree to tree 

that stand averages mean little to the timber marker 

trying to select trees of high value and insect risk 

for cutting, and at the same time reserve for future 

harvest the trees of low carrying charge and rapid

growth rate [Briegleb 1943].

In an attempt to provide a practical basis for estimating

the mortality probabilities and growth potentialities of individual ponderosa pines, entomologist F. Paul Keen developed the Keen Tree Classification System for determining

the susceptibility of ponderosa pines to western pine beetle

attack. Keen and Kolbe had met in Portland, where their

U.S. Department of Agriculture offices were in the same

federal courthouse building, and became close friends. In

charge of the Bureau of Entomology and Plant Quarantine

unit’s Forest Insect Investigations Laboratory, Keen found

Kolbe’s experimental forest in central Oregon a good place

to work on his ponderosa pine classification system

(Hagenstein 2002). This work revealed that “the trees more

susceptible to [western pine beetle] attack are the weaker,

less vigorous individuals and, to a certain degree, those

more advanced in age.” These are, essentially, the same

trees the forester selects to cut “either for the purpose of

salvaging valuable high-risk trees before they are damaged

by beetle attack or for the silvicultural objective of reducing

mortality and increasing net growth” (Keen 1936). Founded

in entomology, Keen’s classification method was adopted as

a guide for marking trees for selection cutting (Duncan and

Miner 2000) as well as for mortality and growth studies in

the ponderosa pine forests of Oregon and Washington

(Briegleb 1943). Many timber cruisers found carrying a 

pictorial chart of Keen’s classes in the field useful because

“the marking guide for the sale always referred to Keen’s

classes” (Barrett 2003).

Keen installed the plot 37 demonstration himself. On

this plot, according to Munger:

Each ponderosa pine tree over 15 inches in diameter has been given a number painted upon it, 

measured for diameter, classified by the Keen 

system, its class being shown by an embossed 

aluminum tag, and its contents by log grades

estimated.

For each tree its lumber sale value has been 

calculated, and by subtracting the cost of falling, 

bucking, etc., of the tree and the cost of transporting

and milling each log (other than the investment cost 

of roads) the marginal value has been determined.

Each tree has then been given a gross growth 

rate and a mortality rate, appropriate for its class, 

and the net growth computed.

An annual carrying charge upon the capital 

value of the tree of 3 percent is assumed, from 

which is subtracted the net growth percent to give 

the net carrying charge (Munger 1942).

The real value of Keen’s system, as demonstrated on 

this plot, was removal of high-risk trees by logging before

attack by western pine beetle, thus capturing full economic

value. In the process, a stand was made less susceptible to

western pine beetle mortality. It reduced, but not necessarily

prevented, mortality (Wickman 2003). This plot, which

integrated the ecological and economic aspects of ponderosa pine silviculture and on which hundreds of timber

cruisers and log graders have qualified for their jobs,

remains in service as the Pringle Falls Cruising and Log

Grading Plot.

As much as Keen’s system reflected the real and growing relationship between entomology and economics in

ponderosa pine forests east of the Cascade Range, it avoided

a critical issue: the role of fire. As Dr. Urling C. Coe wrote

in 1940:

Keeping the annual ground fires out of the timber 

gave the [western pine] beetle a splendid chance to

increase at an alarming rate. During the past eighteen years the government has spent huge sums 

fighting the beetle, and is spending more and more

each year; but the beetle is thriving as never before

[Coe 1940].

Others shared Coe’s concern. As the Portland Journal 

observed on April 10, 1936:

“The western pine beetle has killed more Ponderosa

Pine in Oregon and Washington in the last five 

25
26

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-711

years than fires and the axes and saws of loggers,”

State Forester J.W. Ferguson said. . . .

“Bark beetle claimed 4,507,000,000 board feet 

of pine in the states of Oregon and Washington 

from 1931, to 1935, inclusive,” C.S. Martin, forest

engineer of the Western Pine Association, wrote

Ferguson. . . . “In the same period the fire loss. . .

has been only 564,585,000 board feet. During the 

past five years the beetles have been killing 

Ponderosa Pine about three times faster than it has

been replaced by growth,” Martin said. “The beetle 

damage in timber killed is about eight times the 

fire loss for any one year. For eighteen years the

Ponderosa Pine stands in Oregon . . . have shown a

steady depletion due to bark beetle damage. For the

greater part of the commercial stands in Oregon, 

this depletion has been at the average of one percent a year. No substantial yield of forest production is possible under such conditions” [Coe 1940].

Although many timbermen saw merit in annual “light 

burning” of ponderosa pine forests to keep pine beetles and

understory fuels under control, Forest Service fire policy

born of the Big Blowup experience would not allow it.2

Keen’s approach to minimizing mortality caused by the

western pine beetle may have been an alternative driven by

that fire-exclusion policy. And, as fuels accumulated as a

result of fire exclusion, the belief expressed by Coe (1940)

“that it is too late to correct the mistake and start burning

the floor of the forest each year” because “the underbrush is

now too heavy” likely discouraged meaningful fire ecology

research for another three decades. 

A final problem area identified in Kolbe’s 1938 list was

reflected in two early ponderosa pine forest protection studies that involved the relationship between snags and fire.

Ponderosa pine snag burning study—

Because “most forest administrators want to get rid of snags

in the easiest and cheapest way. . . to better the chances for

controlling accidental fires,” Kolbe set out to determine the

effectiveness of the “base-fire” method of snag disposal at

low cost. About 200 snags of different sizes and degrees 

of decay “were burned in the spring of 1935 and again in

the fall of 1937. . . on the same 320-acre tract of virgin ponderosa pine forest within the Pringle Falls Experimental

Forest.” This experiment “demonstrated that the time of the

year and the amount of decay at the base of the tree are two

very important factors influencing the method . . . ,” and

that “snags with 50 percent or more decay are most easily

destroyed by the base-fire method” (Kolbe 1939). 

Ponderosa pine snag falling study—

“How long will the average ponderosa pine snag remain 

standing and thus contribute to greater rate of spread and

resistance to control of forest fires? Are there any readily

discernible characteristics that will enable us to predict

which will fall soon and which will stand for a long time?”

These were the questions to be answered on 15-acre plot 

29 installed in 1937. The snags on this plot resulted from 

an August 1926 fire, which burned “an average stand of

mostly mature ponderosa pine growing on a deep pumice

soil,” or from subsequent beetle kill. In a 1949 research note,

Dahms reported that smaller snags tended to fall sooner

than larger snags, and that “fire” snags tended to stand

longer than “insect” snags. He concluded that pine snags on

pumice soils, such as at Pringle Falls Experimental Forest,

“will constitute a fire hazard for a much longer period of

time than has been generally expected” (Dahms 1949).

Other early studies—

A range of other studies in the 1930s developed basic

knowledge of the experimental forest and its environment

essential to research and administration. At a headquarters

weather and fire hazard station, also called Station A, daily

climatic records were kept, and during the fire season, standard fire danger observations were made three times a day.

At three stations, collectively called Station B, daily instrument observations collected data—air temperatures, soil

temperatures at three depths, evaporation, and soil 

2 The consequences of the Big Blowup of 1910 for decades of Forest

Service fire policy are explained in Pyne 2001.
Ponderosa Promise: A History of U.S. Forest Service Research in Central Oregon

moisture—to identify the subtle “controlling environmental

factors” behind the “abrupt, and economically very important, change in forest type . . . from ponderosa pine to

lodgepole pine” in the area. As part of a regionwide study,

phenological observations “of the time of leafing, flowering, and seeding of trees and associated vegetation” made

through the growing season at Station C proved “useful 

in determining the length of the growing season, the 

fire hazard, time for seed collecting and range readiness.”

Entomologists from the Forest Insect Investigations

Laboratory of the Bureau of Entomology and Plant

Quarantine studied “the activity of bark beetles following

the cutting on the thinning plots; it [also used Station E on

the eastern unit of the natural area] as a source for data on

the epidemiology of tree-killing insects” (Kolbe 1938).

“On a favorable situation . . . on the east bank of the

Deschutes River” known as plot 24, “small plantations of

several exotic trees [were] made to determine their possibilities for forest planting in this soil and climate.” Among the

species planted were Scots pine, Corsican pine, Jeffrey

pine, and Japanese black pine. Another and perhaps more

realistic planting study established in the spring of 1938

involved planting 1,100 ponderosa pine seedlings on plot

38 to test “survival and growth of eleven different classes

of nursery stock. . . . All the trees in this planting were

grown from the same seed supply but were differently 

treated in the nursery” (Kolbe 1938).

Sometimes even infrastructure development had

research potential. “In fencing many of the plots,” for

example, “posts . . . given various treatments [were] used and

a record kept of each [so] that information may be collected

on their durability in this soil and climate” (Kolbe 1938).

The Pringle Falls Experimental Forest 

Area and Uses Evolve

Within 5 years of the experimental forest’s designation, 

Kolbe realized that the growing research program would

require more land. Early in September 1936, “Foreman

Frost, Field Assistant McKay, and CCC enrollees began to

map and examine several sections of even-aged ponderosa

27

In June, 1945, Bill Morris recorded weather data at the Pringle

Falls Experimental Forest fire danger station. 

The new Lookout Mountain Unit was added to the original 

Pringle Butte Unit in 1937 to enlarge the Pringle Falls 

Experimental Forest.

Ray M. Fillon
28

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-711

pine a few miles north of the Pringle Falls area, withdrawal

of which for experimental use [was] being considered”

(USDA FS 1936b). “The intensive reconnaissance and mapping of a 3,800-acre tract [was completed and] considered

as an addition to the Pringle Falls Experimental Forest”

(USDA FS 1936c).

Lookout Mountain Unit Added 

The 3,515-acre Lookout Mountain Unit was added in 1937 

to the 7,540-acre Pringle Butte Unit, resulting in a two-unit,

11,055-acre experimental forest with increased research

potential. The new unit was covered largely with evenaged, immature ponderosa pine, most of it either about 50

or about 95 years old.

This addition was followed in 1939 by a memorandum

of agreement on administration responsibilities for the

enlarged Pringle Falls Experimental Forest shared by 

the Director of the Pacific Northwest Forest and Range

Experiment Station (the name had been changed in 1936)

and the Forest Supervisor of the Deschutes National Forest.

The agreement specified that “the experimental forest is 

to be administered cooperatively by the Director of the

Experiment Station and the Supervisor of the Deschutes

National Forest and remains an integral part of the ranger

district in which it is located.” The Experiment Station, of

course, was “responsible for initiating and supervising all

experimental work.” When this work was implemented

through a timber sale, the station director would “determine

the extent, location, and specific practices” required and the

forest supervisor would advertise and administer the sale.

Fire protection remained the responsibility of the forest

supervisor, but “the experimental forest employees [were]

considered an integral part of the [national] forest’s protective force.” National forest and experimental station responsibilities for infrastructure development and maintenance as

well as other functions were specified. Approved by Forest

Supervisor Thomas Burgess on April 25 and by Acting

Director J. Elton Lodewick on April 26, the memorandum

of agreement was signed by Regional Forester Lyle F. Watts

on May 5, 1939 (Watts et al. 1939).

Conferences and Meetings Held

In 1937, the Pringle Falls Experimental Forest came into 

its own as a place for scientific conferences and meetings 

as well as research and university education. In June, about

30 Forest Service silviculturists from western regions and

experiment stations held part of a traveling conference on

ponderosa pine silviculture there. During this conference,

many criticisms of the maturity selection system of harvesting ponderosa pine as “price tag forestry” were hashed out

(Cowlin 1988). 

In October 1937, about 60 foresters and lumbermen

from around the Pacific Northwest attended a pine silviculture and logging economics conference that came to be

known as “the Pringle Falls field meet.” This conference

was sponsored by the Forest Practice Committee of the

Western Pine Association to give timberland owners and

timber operators an opportunity to see and study the results

of the seven methods-of-cutting tests conducted on plots 30

to 36 that summer. According to the Station’s annual report

for 1937, attendees learned the value of light selection cutting favored by Munger: “on the whole the lighter the cut

the better the forestry and the greater the realization per

About 30 Forest Service silviculturists from the Western regions

and experiment stations met in June, 1937, at the Pringle Falls

Experimental Forest during a traveling conference on ponderosa

pine silviculture. Among them were Leo Isaac (bottom row, left),

Ernest Kolbe (top row, second from right), and Paul Keen (top

row, right). 
Ponderosa Promise: A History of U.S. Forest Service Research in Central Oregon

thousand feet” (USDA FS 1938). Only a year before,

Munger had argued that Forest Service silvicultural goals

could “be achieved better by light and frequent cuttings”

recently made “not only possible but apparently more profitable” by the increased flexibility and lower logging costs

afforded by tractors and trucks “than by heavy and infrequent cuttings” required by the economics of railroad logging (Langston 1995). “Keen interest was shown in all

phases of this demonstration and much favorable comment

was given on the importance and significance of the work,”

the report concluded (USDA FS 1938).

Conferences, meetings, and “show me” trips soon

became a Pringle Falls fact of life. A small illustrated publication entitled A Guide to the Pringle Falls Experimental

Forest prepared by Kolbe and published by the Station in

1938 helped make all such gatherings more meaningful. A

successor, Edwin L. Mowat, revised this guide in 1954.

Research up to World War II

Three additional studies, two on the new Lookout Mountain

Unit and one on the Pringle Butte Unit, began in the late

1930s and early 1940s before the experimental forest virtually “closed down” for the duration of World War II. All

studies experimented with thinning and pruning of ponderosa pine.

Thinning ponderosa pine from above—

In 1938, about 40 acres of 95-year-old, even-aged poderosa

pine on the new Lookout Mountain Unit were thinned from

above—the taller, or dominant and codominant, trees representing 20 percent of the original volume were removed,

and the shorter, or intermediate and overtopped, trees were

retained—to test both the practicality of this technique and

its effects on growth and mortality among the remaining

trees. The logs were removed and sawed into lumber by 

the Shevlin-Hixon Company.

Measurements on five thinned plots and two unthinned plots (plots 102 to 108) on the Lookout Mountain Unit

demonstrated the long-term efficacy of thinning from above.

Thirty years later, growth in the thinned plots remained

nearly constant, whereas growth in the unthinned plots

29

A guide to Pringle Falls Experimental Forest, originally published in 1938, proved to be so useful that it was used for

years and a revised edition published in 1954.

These logs from Lookout Mountain Unit thining-from-above study

were loaded on railroad cars at Pringle Falls landing for transportation to the Shevlin-Hixon Company mill in Bend, Oregon. 
30

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-711

declined. Mountain pine beetle mortality in small merchantable trees during those 30 years suggested use of “light

and frequent thinning from below to maintain the productive

capacity of the stand” (Barrett and Newman 1974).

Plot 101 in this thinning area was used in 1939 to test

pruning methods and tools. Long and short pole saws were

found the most efficient of four methods tried (Mowat

1954).

Differential pruning of ponderosa pine—

In 1941, pruning treatments were assigned at random to 384

dominant or codominant ponderosa pine trees in four plots

on the Lookout Mountain Unit. The four treatments were

pruning dead limbs only, and pruning one-fourth, one-half,

and three-fourths of the live crown, to determine the effects

of removing various percentages of live crown on growth,

vigor, and mortality as well as quality of lumber produced

(Mowat 1954). After 5 years, diameter and height measurements demonstrated that “removing only the lower 

one-fourth of the live crown has a negligible effect on

growth” and “pruning of more than one-fourth of the live

crown reduces diameter growth significantly but has little

effect on height growth” (Mowat 1947). After 10 years, it

was apparent that “as much as one-third of the live crown

length of ponderosa pine may be pruned away to increase

production of clear, knot-free wood without significant

reduction in both height and diameter growth,” but that

“more severe pruning may result in an undesirable reduction in both height and diameter growth” (Dahms 1954).

A Civilian Conservation Corps enrollee was using a 14-foot pole

saw for pruning treatments, in this September, 1939 photo. The

research goal was to find the effects of removing various percentages of live crown on the growth, vigor, and mortality of ponderosa pines, as well as effects on wood. 

In the pruning study, the ponderosa pine with the man standing 

on a limb was randomly selected to have three-fourths of its live

crown pruned.
Ponderosa Promise: A History of U.S. Forest Service Research in Central Oregon

Degrees of thinning of ponderosa pine—

Also in 1941, plot 40 on the Pringle Butte Unit was established “to test two degrees of ‘crop tree’ thinning: light

thinning by removing trees with intervening branches, and 

a heavier thinning, which left 3 to 4 feet of open space

around selected crop trees. No thinning was done around a

third series of test trees.” After 10 years, the trees given the

heavier thinning had grown slightly more than the trees

given the light thinning, and the trees given the light thinning had grown slightly more than the trees not thinned.

This type of thinning did not increase height growth

(Mowat 1954).

Kolbe Leaves and Munger Steps Aside

After almost a decade developing the Pringle Falls 

Experimental Forest and its research program—while doing

the same job for the Blue Mountain Experimental Forest 

on the Whitman National Forest in northeastern Oregon and

serving as dendrologist on the Wind River Arboretum in

Washington—Kolbe left the Pacific Northwest Forest and

Range Experiment Station. On April 1, 1940, he transferred

to the California Forest and Range Experiment Station as

project leader of Department of Agriculture flood control

surveys in that state into 1942, and during World War II

served in Los Angeles as an ecologist for the guayule

Emergency Rubber Project. Munger had lost a first-rate

work-horse as well as a talented forester. “The loss of

Kolbe after 12 years of service not only slowed down pine

silviculture studies but also had an impact on other forest

management studies,” Cowlin wrote. “He was always willing to take on additional assignments and tackled the routine and tedious jobs with the same enthusiasm given

major projects.” Kolbe’s departure in 1940 resulted from

what Cowlin termed “fiscal stringencies in regular funds”

(Cowlin 1988). The Station simply could not afford to pay

the talent whose many accomplishments included the

Pringle Falls Experimental Forest and its research program.

Kolbe had been hand picked by Munger for that job. He

served the sometimes difficult-to-work-for Munger, first

indirectly through McArdle as head of the Division of

Forest Management Research and then directly after

McArdle left in 1934 to become dean of the School of

Forestry at the University of Idaho.

As the Experiment Station grew, Munger tired of his

increasing administrative burden and longed to return to

what he called “real research” (Fry 1967).

Munger had retained a direct interest in silvical 

studies undertaken by Isaac and Kolbe from the 

time they commenced their forest research careers

under his immediate direction and tutelage. The 

studies these two men were making were, as a rule,

either ones commenced by Munger or conceived 

and prompted by him. In some cases, he participated with them in report preparation and authorship [Cowlin 1988].

By the spring of 1938, “Munger had decided to relinquish his administrative duties in favor of returning full

time to technical research” (Cowlin 1988). At his request,

Chief Forester Ferdinand A. Silcox relieved him of the

directorship on July 1, 1938, and appointed him to the

Forest Management Research Chief position, left vacant 

by McArdle’s departure 4 years earlier, under new Director

Stephen N. Wyckoff. He was what he called a “real outdoor

researcher” (Fry 1967) again, and able to work more 

closely with Kolbe and the Pringle Falls Experimental

Forest. In less than 2 years, however, Kolbe was transferred

to California. Had he not left in 1940, he almost certainly

would have left in 1942 for wartime service. In 1944, Kolbe

left government service to join the Western Pine Association,

and became chief forester of that industry organization in

1948 (World Forestry Center 1978).

World War II Interrupts Research 

Kolbe wasn’t the only person to leave. After losses to the 

funding shortages of the Depression, World War II siphoned

off many Forest Service personnel, including scientists, 

to military service or war agencies. The war also changed

many Forest Service priorities, including research, to those

supportive of national defense, and put many of its traditional tasks and projects on hold. Many experimental

forests, including those east of the Cascades, were “closed

31
32

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-711

for lack of funds,” and “field work in ponderosa pine was 

at a standstill” by 1944. That summer, however, the Pringle

Falls Experimental Forest was occupied for a month while

Munger, by then 60 years old, and William G. Morris from

the Portland office “made the essential current examinations

on certain plots and performed the necessary maintenance

on the many experimental areas” (USDA FS 1953b).

The Pringle Falls Experimental Forest and 

the Deschutes Research Center

At the end of World War II, the United States entered a 

period of unprecedented growth that increased demand for

natural resources and challenged all facets of Forest Service

research. New assistant chief for research in the Washington

Office Edward I. Kotok set forth a 5-year plan for “orderly

development” of this research effort that, among other

things, called for the regional research stations to establish

new field facilities called research centers. Each of these

centers would cover the research needs of important forest

types and economic units (Steen 1998).

In Portland, Dr. J. Alfred Hall, who succeeded Munger’s

1938 successor Wyckoff as Station director in 1945, carried

out this charge through “action to reshape major elements

of the Station’s program” (Cowlin 1988). Hall developed a

major reorganization plan that Munger later characterized

as “a rather radical field decentralization away from

Portland” (Munger 1955) that was made possible by a substantial increase in funding for 1946. “The essence of the

plan,” as Cowlin explained it, 

was to divide the Station’s territory into several 

homogeneous areal units called research centers, 

based upon geographic distinctions and character 

of the forest resource. The objective of the reorganization was to make the results of research more 

effective through more intensive problem analysis,

more timely establishment of study programs, 

closer relationships between the research worker 

and the physical problem area, and [closing] the 

gap between research and application [Cowlin 

1988].

According to Hall: “Most of the forest management 

research in the Station’s territory had been excellent work

but had been confined to plots—growth and yield and 

spacing and thinning and so on” as at Pringle Falls

Experimental Forest. “The next step,” as Doig put it, “was

to test the results reached in the many studies of small sample plots on timber operations of commercial size” (Doig

1977) within these several “problem areas” or “research

provinces.” Each of these research provinces “was to have 

a local headquarters with a resident technical and clerical

staff” and “one or more experimental forests or ranges”

(Cowlin 1988). These centers would implement an “applied

forest management” concept that would significantly

expand forest management research.

This “center concept” of organization recognized the

need to consolidate the results of past research and expand

the scope of the research program. Hall’s call for “increasing research in methods of intensive management of second

growth and demonstrating these methods at field research

centers” (Cowlin 1988) guided the central Oregon research

program that would expand beyond the Pringle Falls

Experimental Forest and immediately adjacent operations 

to other sites. 

Deschutes Research Center Established

One of Hall’s first two research centers was the Central 

Oregon Research Center, soon renamed the Deschutes

Research Center, established in Bend in the fall of 1946. 

Ed Mowat was put in charge, and Walt Dahms soon joined

him. Mowat, with a 1924 Bachelor of Science degree (B.S.)

in forestry from Oregon State College, had been one of

McArdles’ field assistants in 1924 and then taught forestry

and logging engineering at his alma mater before starting

graduate studies in 1926. After earning a Master of Science

degree (M.S.) from the Yale School of Forestry in 1927, he

had served with the Lake States Forest Experiment Station

and the Intermountain Forest and Range Experiment Station

before taking on World War II timber production projects

(USDA FS 1947b). Dahms, a 1937 forestry graduate of

Washington State College with Prairie States Forestry Project
Ponderosa Promise: A History of U.S. Forest Service Research in Central Oregon

experience, had just rejoined the Forest Service after World

War II service as a naval officer (Dahms 1999).

Both were assigned to the Pringle Falls Experimental

Forest to prepare “for revival of ponderosa pine forest management studies in the spring [of 1947] and . . . necessary 

plot and plant maintenance work” (Cowlin 1988). Mowat

and the leaders of the Station’s other research centers

reported to Philip A. Briegleb who had become Hall’s Chief

of Forest Management Research when Munger retired on

October 31, 1946. Mowat and Dahms shared cramped quarters with Deschutes National Forest personnel in upstairs

offices in the Benson Building at 863 Wall Street, above

Wetle’s Department Store and the Skyline Steakhouse, in

downtown Bend beginning in February 1947. There the

Deschutes Research Center’s offices remained until, in July

1960, the unit moved across the street and around the corner to offices in the O’Kane Building (Brogan 1963) on the

corner of Oregon Avenue and Bond Street.

Establishment of this small center presaged an eventual

emphasis shift in central Oregon forest research from Pringle

Falls and the field to Bend and the laboratory. But that shift

was still in the future, and the studies at Pringle Falls

Experimental Forest that resumed after World War II dominated the central Oregon research scene into the 1950s.

Although the experimental forest remained the

Deschutes Research Center’s principal fieldwork venue,

economic and social factors as well as changes in science

prevented the realization of what one observer termed “the

greater dream” of Pringle Falls Experimental Forest as a

residential research center. That dream included the neverbuilt director’s residence across the Deschutes River from

the main compound. Instead, over the years, the compound

was reduced in size. Some if its buildings were moved for

Deschutes National Forest use at the Crescent Ranger

Station and the China Hat Guard Station. In addition to limited funds and changed needs, the “greater dream” observer

cited a sociological reason for this demise:

Scientists’ wives didn’t want to live out in the boondocks! The access road was very rough, electricity 

was undependable, and so forth. So the staff ended 

up commuting from Bend, and while the commute 

is only sixty miles round trip, after you’ve driven 

that far and worked hard in the woods all day, you’re

pretty tired. So, the [experimental forest compound]

had a limited on-site residency to maintain it, and it

[actually] became burdensome on the research [Roth

2002].

Yet, the Pringle Falls Experimental Forest remained 

a popular facility for meetings as well as a productive facility for research. In July 1947, for example, Secretary of

Agriculture Clinton P. Anderson spent two nights there with

Regional Forester Horace J. “Hoss” Andrews, Director Hall,

and forest industry executives with whom he was touring

the Pacific Northwest. Briegleb and Supervisor Ralph W.

Crawford of the Deschutes National Forest also were present. In addition to various conferences and discussions, the

visit featured a brief tour of part of the experimental forest

and a fishing trip to the Wickiup Reservoir during which

Secretary Anderson caught his limit of trout (USDA FS

1947c).

James E. Sowder joined Mowat and Dahms as leader

of the Deschutes Research Center in 1949. A 1931

University of Idaho forestry graduate, Sowder entered the

Forest Service in 1932. After 3 years with the California

Forest and Range Experiment Station, he transferred to the

U.S. Indian Service (now the Bureau of Indian Affairs) in

33

James E. Sowder became leader of the

Deschutes Research Center in 1949. 
34

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-711

Oregon. Two years later, he returned to the Forest Service

in California to serve on the Tahoe National Forest until

1939 and the Modoc National Forest until June 1943, when

he went on active duty in the U.S. Navy until November

1945. He was back on the Modoc National Forest until 1949

when he was transferred to Bend to lead the research effort

there for a decade (USDA FS 1959a). Mowat remained in

Bend to continue his distinguished career in ponderosa pine

research until retirement in 1963 (USDA FS 1963a). Dahms

spent his entire postwar Forest Service career in Bend in

ponderosa pine and lodgepole pine research before retirement in 1976 (Dahms 1999).

Sowder, Mowat, and Dahms continued the research

program at Pringle Falls Experimental Forest even as they

extended their Deschutes Research Center’s efforts 

beyond the experimental forest’s boundaries. As a PNW

Experiment Station report for 1950 attested: “Ed Mowat

and Walt Dahms moved out in June to Pringle Falls; Mowat

was at Pringle Falls most of the summer, while Dahms went

to the Blue Mountain Experimental Forest on the Whitman

[National Forest] in July” (USDA FS 1951). In May 1951,

Helen Rastovich joined the Center as clerk-stenographer on

transfer from the Deschutes National Forest, and the growing office acquired two additional rooms at the same Wall

Street address. A group called the Deschutes Research

Center Advisory Committee was formed in late 1952

(USDA FS 1954b). As reflected in Mowat’s 1954 A Guide

to the Pringle Falls Experimental Forest, studies of growing timber in the ponderosa pine forests east of the Cascade

Range remained the center’s focus for some time to come.

Soil survey—

After the Pringle Falls Experimental Forest research program resumed, the first soil survey on national forest land

was completed in the fall of 1946. Robert F. Tarrant, a

PNW Experiment Station research scientist just back from

service as a naval officer, and W.J. Leighty, Assistant

Inspector, Bureau of Plant Industry, Soils, and Agricultural

Engineering, “tromped around the central part of the experimental forest,” as Tarrant put it, “and he published a soil

survey” (Tarrant 2002). “The purpose of the work was to

establish soil, site, and type relationships to aid the reforestation program in the pine region.” Leighty’s detailed soil

map covering 4 square miles showed a range of soil conditions considered representative of the Pringle Falls locality,

and additional inspection of soils under lodgepole and ponderosa pine forests was made in the surrounding area. The

survey revealed that

timber type in this area is apparently related to 

soil drainage, throwing doubt on [Munger’s 1908] 

theory that fire has been almost entirely responsible 

for the present distribution of the two species of 

pine. . . . In general, poorly drained soils were found 

to support lodgepole pine stands but not ponderosa.

The well-drained to excessively well-drained soils 

are occupied by ponderosa pine to the exclusion of

lodgepole [Tarrant 1947].

Tarrant’s 1947 research note mentioned Munger’s 1917

“suspicions of such a relationship.”

Intermediate commercial thinning of ponderosa pine—

The first major postwar study at Pringle Falls Experimental

Forest began in 1949 on plots 113 to 118 of the Lookout

Mountain Unit with thinning four of these six 40-acre plots

of 105-year-old, even-aged ponderosa pine stands. The

objective was to determine if such “commercial thinnings

would (1) reduce the stand’s susceptibility to insect attack,

(2) transfer growth to fewer more desirable trees, (3)

improve the stand’s health and vigor, (4) maintain present

high growth rate, (5) increase total yields, (6) do the cutting

at a profit” (Mowat 1954). Logs were selected from dense

and open portions of the stand and cut and milled by the

Brooks-Scanlon Company. This study demonstrated that

close-grown trees produced 18 percent more volume per

acre and a higher grade of lumber than did open-grown

trees; open-grown trees, however, contained more than

twice the board-foot volume per tree. Additional observations, on this and other ponderosa pine cuts, clearly demonstrated that (1) a higher percentage of the better grades of

common lumber can be produced from fully stocked stands

than from more open stands, and (2) even in fully stocked

stands, it is impossible to produce clear lumber during any
Ponderosa Promise: A History of U.S. Forest Service Research in Central Oregon

practical rotation period unless the trees are pruned of their

lower limbs at a relatively early age (Sowder 1953). The

study further indicated that such “commercial thinnings in

even-aged ponderosa pine can be expected to increase total

yields substantially” (USDA FS 1953a) and “can be made

at a profit” (Mowat 1954).

Ponderosa pine sanitation-salvage marking—

“One of the forester’s most urgent jobs is to reduce 

[the waste represented by] timber losses due to bark 

beetles in the ponderosa pine forests of eastern Oregon and

Washington,” Sowder wrote in 1951. He had arrived as two

efforts to test a late-1930s Bureau of Entomology and Plant

Quarantine thesis “that a substantial measure of control of

the western pine beetle, and thus of ponderosa pine timber

losses, could best be accomplished by light selection cuttings designed for that purpose.” Such selection cutting had

become known as “sanitation-salvage cutting” and the

“development of mobile tractor-truck logging” had combined with improved market conditions during the postwar

building boom to make “such cuttings practical and in

many areas highly profitable” (Sowder 1951). And so, in

1949 and 1950, sanitation and salvage cutting was tested 

on the Pringle Butte Unit of the Pringle Falls Experimental

Forest. 

First, in 1949, 50-acre plot 41 “was established to

demonstrate the characteristics of high risk trees; those

which should be marked for removal in a sanitation-salvage

cutting.” Trees on this plot marked for cutting would not be

cut. Instead, the plot would serve “as a check on the success

of salvage-sanitation cutting on nearby areas, and for further

observations and study of the high-risk trees themselves”

(Mowat 1954).

Ponderosa pine sanitation-salvage cutting—

To test the sanitation-salvage cutting system on a commercial scale in the ponderosa pine forests of central Oregon,

the high-risk trees on about 3,500 “nearby” acres were

marked and cut the next year through the normal national

forest timber sale process. “All of the old-growth ponderosa

pine on the Pringle Butte Unit, excepting those areas

already in permanent study plots and the natural area, was

cut over during the fall and winter of 1950. All high-risk

trees were removed along with merchantable dead or dying

trees, and a road system was established” (Mowat 1954).

Sowder concluded that the sanitation-salvage cut accomplished its primary objective of protecting the forest against

beetle-caused timber losses and produced a timber crop in

an economically feasible manner even as it developed a

road system for administrative use and subsequent harvests

and reduced fire danger.

Heavy thinning to favor dominant ponderosa pines—

In 1953, Dahms established a new thinning study on plots

43 to 52 of the Pringle Butte Unit that soon demonstrated

that dominant pole-size 65-year-old ponderosa pines

“respond markedly to complete removal of all adjacent subordinate trees.” Ten years later, Barrett concluded that even

“stands having a good distribution of dominant trees need

not be bypassed culturally because of the belief they are

growing as rapidly as possible.” Rather, “such stands may

be treated to further accelerate growth of the fastest growing trees” and “maintain or stimulate the flow of wood to

market” (Barrett 1963).

35

Ed Mowat checked tree number 52 on plot 51 on September 15,

1953, before the experimental thinning treatment. The study, led

by Walt Dahms, eventually demonstrated that pole-size, 65-yearold ponderosa pines “respond markedly to complete removal of 

all adjacent subordinate trees.” 
36

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-711

One of the Deschutes Research Center’s more significant contributions to the literature of ponderosa pine silviculture appeared in June 1953 when the Station published

Mowat’s summary Thinning Ponderosa Pine in the Pacific

Northwest. Mowat’s paper presented “under one cover the

main findings from a series of 25 thinning plots located 

in many parts of eastern Washington and eastern Oregon”

(USDA FS 1954a) that started as early as 1927 and included plots 14 to 18 established in 1934 at Pringle Falls

Experimental Forest. His analysis, which considered economics as well as ecology, “indicated that practically all

forms and degrees of thinning tested were beneficial . . . ,

and that thinning should be relatively severe when only 

one operation is planned” (Youngblood 1995).

Effects of dwarf mistletoe on ponderosa pine—

Other influences on ponderosa pine silviculture investigated

at Pringle Falls Experimental Forest in the early 1950s

included western dwarf mistletoe (Arceuthobium campylopodum) studies by Dr. Lewis F. Roth, an Oregon State

College professor of plant pathology. A botanist with a

University of Wisconsin doctorate in forest pathology, Roth

had joined the Oregon State College faculty in 1940, served

in World War II as a naval officer, and returned to Oregon

State and plant pathology after the war (Roth 2002).

Sowder and Mowat, concerned there might be a dwarf

mistletoe problem at the experimental forest and in central

Oregon in general, invited him to investigate. 

In the summer of 1952, Roth started “preliminary studies of dwarf mistletoe in ponderosa pine” at Pringle Falls

that indicated that “it may be possible to control mistletoe

indirectly through low-cost silvicultural treatments” but that

further work was needed (USDA FS 1953a). Roth published his early findings of the relationships between dwarf

mistletoe in the crowns of overstory trees and its intensity

and distribution in the surrounding regeneration in 1953

(Roth 1953).

Roth knew he had a thorny, long-term project on his

hands. “You just don’t get the knowledge of what’s going

on [unless you base it on data collected] for a long time,”

he said of forest science, emphasizing the need to “continue

data [collection and analysis] across the life of a forest

stand” (Roth 2002). And so, like other dedicated forest scientists, he spent his professional life on a five-decade quest

that resulted in many important discoveries about dwarf

mistletoe and its control in ponderosa pine forests. His

research, focused on plots 93 to 98 of the Pringle Butte

Unit where he studied propagation mechanics and genetic

resistance, continued into the 21st century.

Other threats to ponderosa pine—

The Deschutes Research Center also looked into ways to

reduce the effects of certain vegetation and wildlife on ponderosa pine growth and yield. A study of the use of chemical herbicides to control manzanita and snowbrush was

started in 1953 on sixty 20-foot-square study plots in the

vicinity of Plot 19 on the Pringle Falls Unit. Four applications of two available chemicals in July and August demonstrated enough effectiveness on some species to justify

planning an expanded program of further tests. In 1957,

tests of chemical repellents identified two deer repellents

that “showed promise” for reducing browsing damage to

ponderosa pine seedlings (Cowlin 1988).

Lodgepole pine studies—

Postwar demand for forest products had increased interest

in lodgepole pine for use as pulp and for manufacture into

fiberboard, and growth studies of the species were given

greater attention (Cowlin 1988). The Experiment Station

published Mowat’s Preliminary Guides for the Management

of Lodgepole Pine in Oregon and Washington in 1949

(Mowat 1949). In 1957, important changes in the Forest

Management Research program resulted in greatly expanded work on lodgepole pine management at the Deschutes

Research Center. A large lodgepole pine pulpwood mill was

built by the Johns Manville Co. near Chiloquin in southcentral Oregon (Cowlin 1988).

Wildlife habitat and range management studies—

Although forest management research dominated the

Deschutes Research Center’s agenda, wildlife habitat and

range management studies were incorporated in 1956 with

the arrival on August 1 of Richard S. Driscoll transferred
Ponderosa Promise: A History of U.S. Forest Service Research in Central Oregon

from the Starkey Experimental Forest and Range in northeastern Oregon. A 1951 range management graduate of

Colorado A&M in Fort Collins (Bend Bulletin 1956),

Driscoll was tasked with “analysis of game habitat problems in central Oregon and [development of] initial plans

for game habitat research needed on forest and range lands”

as well as “range management studies with regard to forage

yields, maintenance of grass stands and invasion of noxious

weeds” in the area (Bend Bulletin 1962a). In 1956 and

1957, this included exploratory studies of chemical repellents to reduce deer browsing of ponderosa pine seedlings

(Cowlin 1988). After working with Driscoll during the summer of 1957 and earning a B.S. in wildlife and range ecology at Oregon State College in 1958, John Edward Dealy

joined Driscoll’s research project (USDA FS 1961).

Driscoll’s and Dealy’s charge to conduct wildlife 

habitat and range management research in eastern Oregon

and Washington occasionally impinged on the Deschutes

Research Center’s primary role of forest management

research because of the relationships between wildlife populations and forest habitats. For example, they were quoted

in The Bend Bulletin on August 2, 1961:

[H]eavy logging enhances production of natural 

deer forages which in turn acts to increase deer 

herd productivity. As the herd increases and without

intensive control, the animals literally eat themselves out of house and home, destroying their 

natural forage plants.

When this happens, they often begin browsing

small trees which seriously affects future wood 

production. Hence, a major need in big-game range

research is to develop methods to maintain or 

increase productivity of grazing lands and devise 

game management practices whereby game production is commensurate with livestock production,

timber growing, watershed management, and outdoor recreation.

As part of the effort to address this issue, the two 

wildlife habitat scientists reported “a token study . . . on

methods to reduce deer browsing damage to ponderosa pine

seedlings.” By 1961, they lamented that “the effects of 

logging or other forest management practices on big-game

ranges [have] not been studied.” They observed:

The whole game management problem needs much

more intensive study. If continued and sustained 

yields of game are to be expected a basis for proper

management of the wildlife resource without detrimental impact to livestock, timber, soil, water, and

recreation values must be developed [Bend Bulletin

1961d].

Round Mountain Experimental Management 

Block

The applied forest management concept, around which the 

Experiment Station’s research centers had been organized in

1946, eventually required testing research conclusions from

37

The Round Mountain Experimental Management Block encompassed national forest land between the Lookout Mountain and

Pringle Butte Units of Pringle Falls Experimental Forest. The

block extended west to Crane Prairie Reservoir.
38

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-711

small sample-plot studies on commercial-size forest operations. To fully implement this concept, the Station would

have to establish new experimental forests or arrange to 

use national forest study tracts dedicated to this purpose

(Cowlin 1988). In 1953, the Deschutes Research Center and

the Deschutes National Forest opted for the latter approach

and planned an experimental management unit adjacent to

the Pringle Falls Experimental Forest to “be used for pilot

plant tests of management practices for ponderosa pine and

lodgepole pine.” These tests would emphasize: “all-aged

versus even-aged silviculture, insect and disease control,

inventory systems and requirements, determination of

allowable cut, age-class control, and the costs and returns

from intensive management” (USDA FS 1954a).

A working agreement for a Round Mountain

Experimental Management Block was drafted, tentative

boundaries were established, and guidelines for the initial

development period were developed (USDA FS 1954b).

Official approval of the 25,400-acre Round Mountain

Experimental Management Block early in 1954 “made 

possible pilot plant tests of management practices for 

ponderosa pine and lodgepole pine” (Cowlin 1988).

Developments during 1955 included sale of 32 million

board feet to salvage dead, dying, and high-risk trees in a

15-percent cut; establishment of a road system on the unit;

procurement of aerial photographs covering the unit at

scales of both 1:20,000 and 1:10,000; and a preliminary

study of inventory and accounting procedures for the unit

made in cooperation with Professor Ray A. Yoder, School

of Forestry, Oregon State College (USDA FS 1956).

Although this experimental management block appeared

briefly on maps, and despite this early activity, its research

potential was never realized on the ground.

Winds of Change

Toward the end of the 1950s, two additional foresters who 

would make their marks on central Oregon silviculture

joined the Deschutes Research Center staff. James W. Barrett

arrived in 1958, followed by Carl M. Berntsen in 1959.

Barrett, who had earned both a B.S. in forest management

and an M.S. in forest management and forest pathology at

Iowa State University, ranched in South Dakota for several

years before joining the Forest Service in 1956 as a

Deschutes National Forest timber cruiser. He began his

research career 2 years later at the Pringle Falls Experimental

Forest, and spent the next 24 years focused on ponderosa

pine propagation (Barrett 1999). Berntsen transferred from

the Willamette Research Center in Corvallis, Oregon, to

take charge of the Deschutes Research Center from Jim

Sowder, who had been transferred to the Lake States 

Forest Experiment Station in St. Paul, Minnesota. A 1950

University of Idaho forestry graduate, Berntsen had just

completed an M.S. degree in forestry at Oregon State

College where, in 1967, he would earn a doctorate (Ph.D.)

(Bernsten 2002).

Almost 15 years after its post-World War II reorganization, Forest Service research faced another profound change

in scope and direction. For the Pacific Northwest Forest 

and Range Experiment Station this meant, among other

things, reorganization from a “research center” concept to 

a “research project” concept. This reorganization would

eventually replace the Deschutes Research Center and its

emphasis on field studies at Pringle Falls Experimental

Forest with a Bend Silviculture Laboratory and a new focus

on laboratory studies. Berntsen was destined to lead this

transition.

Deschutes Research Center staff in 1959. From left to right: 

Dick Driscoll, project leader Jim Sowder, Ed Mowat, clerk-stenographer Helen Rastovich, Jim Barrett, Walt Dahms, and Ed Dealy. 
Ponderosa Promise: A History of U.S. Forest Service Research in Central Oregon

By the end of the 1950s, the research center concept had

“matured” (Cowlin 1988), and the Forest Service research

program was again ripe for change. In the 1960s, its funding increased; “as funding for all American science grew

rapidly to ‘keep ahead of the Russians,’ Forest Service

research expanded accordingly” (Steen 1999). Within a few

years, the Forest Service program “went from a research

center to a project concept” that, according to former

Deputy Chief of the Forest Service Robert E. Buckman,

“streamlined administration and put a lot more emphasis 

on science.” Under the old research center concept: “The

center leader was responsible for everything—community

relations, science, everything” (Steen 1994). Science, it

seemed, had suffered.

This nationwide “turning point in the scope and direction of the Forest Service research program” got a big push

in 1960 when Congress, for the first time, appropriated

funds specifically for construction of research facilities.

This action, according to Cowlin, “signaled the intention to

give forest research scientists the facilities to employ modern technology and equipment in seeking answers to fundamental and complex problems. It marked a shift in major

emphasis from field studies largely empirical in nature to

scientific laboratories where the many facets of complex

forest problems could be investigated in totality” (Cowlin

1988).

“Coincident with [this research facility funding] 

was the development of the Man-in-Job concept” that was

adopted by the Forest Service, and that “meant that a

researcher’s career was dependent on what he produced, not

on his organizational position” (Steen 1994). This concept

permitted a scientist to advance as a scientist instead of

having to become an administrator to advance. It was supported by the Government Employees Training Act of 1958

that encouraged scientists to earn doctorate degrees, and

was intended to upgrade the quality of Forest Service

research (GETA 1958).

This change evolved over a few years. By 1962, the

Pacific Northwest Forest and Range Experiment Station

had reorganized its entire research program into 39 projects.

A single project called the “Silviculture of Interior Conifer

Types” was assigned to the forest management research

staff at the Deschutes Research Center (Cowlin 1988). This

staff and project were soon to be ensconced in a new facility that would be called the Bend Silviculture Laboratory

and would complement the continuing Pringle Falls

Experimental Forest field studies.

Carl M. Berntsen, who became leader of the Deschutes

Research Center on July 1, 1959 (USDA FS 1959b), presided over this change in central Oregon. In theory, the

transition from the research center to the project concept

was intended to streamline administration and emphasize

science. Berntsen’s early years in Bend, however, seem to

have been dominated by administering the planning and

construction of a Bend research laboratory.

According to Berntsen, Senator John Stennis of

Mississippi, a member of the Senate Appropriations

Committee, “was making a strong political push to improve

forest research field laboratory facilities. We took advantage

of the political climate. Bob Chandler, owner-editor of The

Bend Bulletin, led the charge” (Berntsen 2002).

39

Chapter 3: Bend: A Research Laboratory

Deschutes Research Center staff about 1960. Top row, left to right:

Ed Mowat, Walt Dahms, Ed Dealy, Jim Barrett, and project leader

Carl Berntsen. Bottom row, left to right: forestry technician Clyde

Webb and clerk-stenographer Helen Rastovich. 
40

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-711

The Bend Silviculture Laboratory Is 

Planned, Built, Occupied, and Dedicated

In expectation of research facility construction funds, the 

Experiment Station began to search for a building site. On

the evening of August 3, 1960, the Bend city council, on

recommendation of the city’s planning commission, authorized construction of a Forest Service research center on the

southern flank of Awbrey Butte, an extinct volcano that

dominates Bend’s northwestern skyline. The city had earlier

agreed to donate the property to the Forest Service, and a

deed had been prepared (Bend Bulletin 1960). The site commanded “spectacular views of Bend, the Paulina Mountains

to the south, Pine Mountain to the southwest, parts of the

Cascade skyline to the west” (Hatton 1987). It was a view

to inspire silviculturists: in the foreground, Bend’s two

large mills, both operated by Brooks-Scanlon since 1950,

flanked the Deschutes River; in the background, a landscape clothed by ponderosa pine forests—albeit much cut

over to feed those mills—spread to the horizon.

It was a view that inspired residential development of

Awbrey Butte, too, as well as some citizen opposition to 

the project proposed for a neighborhood zoned for singlefamily dwellings. Berntsen, by then leader of the Deschutes

Research Center for just over a year, and city manager

Walter Thompson managed to assuage this opposition at

that August 3 meeting. As reported in The Bend Bulletin

the following day, Berntsen and Thompson

answered questions . . . on such points as a plot 

plan showing initial construction and subsequent 

development, restrictions which can be legally

enforced, a binding time table and guarantee by the

commission that this will be the highest possible

use of the property.

Additional opposition centered on the city’s donation 

of the land, a citizen “asking why the Forest Service needs

that particular property, when it has a million and a half

acres elsewhere, and why the government couldn’t pay for

it.” To this, “Mayor William Miller said that other cities

would be happy to cooperate to get such a development,

and that it’s important for Bend not to lose it.” Much was

made of the future of the facility, including the plan “to

increase the professional staff to 12 with a full-time payroll

of about 20” within 10 years (Bend Bulletin 1960).

Early in 1961, in Washington, D.C., Senator Maurine

Neuberger of Oregon urged earmarking $150,000 to cover

the project’s first phase: “an office-laboratory building and

equipment” (Bend Bulletin 1961c). Other members of

Oregon’s congressional delegation, most notably Senator

Wayne Morse and Representative Al Ullman, supported her

action (Bend Bulletin 1961a).

A.P. “Benny” DiBenedetto, a Forest Service architect

on the staff of the Division of Engineering, Pacific

Northwest Region, prepared the plans and specifications 

for the facility that would become known as the Bend

Silviculture Laboratory (USDA FS, n.d.) and that, upon

completion, would be featured in the July 1964 issue of

Architectural Record. As that journal interpreted

DiBenedetto’s work, “a non-institutional building appropriate to the neighborhood was achieved” (Architectural

Record 1964).

A basic contract for $183,000 was awarded (USDA

FS, n.d.) and, although construction lagged (Bend Bulletin

1962b), the project was completed on November 22, 1963,

the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Three

days later, after a final inspection, the Forest Service

accepted the structure from the contractor (USDA FS, n.d.).

This rendering shows architect A.P. DiBenedetto’s plan for the

Bend Silviculture Laboratory. 
Ponderosa Promise: A History of U.S. Forest Service Research in Central Oregon

On the morning of November 27, 1963, the Bend

Silviculture Laboratory, constructed at a cost of $222,500,

was placed in use. Berntsen and his small staff of scientists

and technicians personally moved the contents of their

offices from the O’Kane Building in downtown Bend,

where they had been housed since July 1960, to their new

facility on Awbrey Butte. Phil Brogan of The Bend Bulletin

reported that the new facility had been “described as the

finest of its kind in the country, ‘in a scenic setting second

to none” (Brogan 1963). Although work resumed immediately, formal dedication was put off until the following

spring when a library, a greenhouse, and paving would be

complete. 

A supplementary contract for $39,500 to construct the

library, the greenhouse, and to pave the access roads and

parking areas, was awarded in June 1963. This contract 

was funded by the Accelerated Public Works Act of 1962

intended to initiate and accelerate federal, state, and local

public works projects that provided “immediate useful work

for the unemployed and underemployed in labor surplus

areas” (Bend Bulletin 1964b). After completion and final

inspection of this work, the Forest Service accepted the

project from the contractor on February 11, 1964.

Dignitaries from around the Nation, as well as the

Pacific Northwest, gathered in Bend for the Saturday morning, May 2, 1964, dedication of the Bend Silviculture

Laboratory and Bend Chamber of Commerce-sponsored

luncheon at Bend’s fashionable Pine Tavern (Bend Bulletin

1964a). Attendees included about 500 members of the

Society of American Foresters who scheduled a special

Columbia River Section conference in Bend to coincide

with the event (Portland Oregonian 1964a).

Philip A. Briegleb, Director of the Experiment Station 

and President of the Society of American Foresters, served

as master of ceremonies. Senator Wayne Morse gave the

dedicatory address. “Today, we dedicate more than a forest

laboratory,” Oregon’s senior senator told the large crowd.

“We dedicate ourselves to progress—progress through

knowledge, progress through cooperation” (Portland

Oregonian 1964b).

Edward P. Cliff, Chief of the Forest Service, captured

the spirit of the day in a brief speech.

This occasion symbolizes the changes taking place 

in forestry. Two decades ago, ponderosa pine was 

the uncontested king of the timber scene in eastern

Oregon—both in the woods and in lumber mills. 

This magnificent tree is still our most prominent

species, but as more and more of the “back country” 

is made accessible, we encounter more and more 

of the “associated” tree species—lodgepole pine, 

western larch, white fir, Douglas-fir—and we as 

well as the people in the industry are gaining a 

greater appreciation of the value of these species.

41

This photo of the Bend Silviculture Laboratory was taken shortly after its completion and occupation. 
42

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-711

Only ten years ago we were busy getting ponderosa pine regenerated on cutover or denuded land

and sometimes where it had never grown before. 

Now, we are more concerned with growing the 

species or combination of species best adapted to 

the particular site. Our interest is to produce the 

maximum amount of wood for the widening variety 

of products that will probably be in demand in 

future years.

Not too many years ago, our research program 

was based mainly on measuring and observing the 

timber stand and the individual tree. Now we dig 

deeper to learn the underlying principles of tree 

growth as influenced by soils, land form, associated vegetation, and even the air trees “breathe.”

The job of the silviculturist is to produce the 

greatest amount of usable wood on a given tract of

land. But this objective must also be consistent with

other forest land uses. Water yields, recreation use, 

and forage for livestock and wildlife are factors that

frequently require modification of wood production

goals. Occasionally on particular sites one or more 

of these other uses overrides timber in priority and 

thus may call for major adjustment in timber-growing objectives.

One aspect of multiple use is already being 

studied at this laboratory. Scientists from two projects—silviculture and wildlife habitat—have teamed 

up to study production of deer browse as influenced 

by density of the timber stand. We are searching for

that elusive point of compatibility that will lead to

highest possible compatible production of both 

boards and bucks [Cliff 1964].

Thus inspired and charged, the small Bend Silviculture 

Laboratory staff invited its hundreds of guests to tour the

beautifully designed building. Features included eight private offices, each finished in a different species of timber;

three large laboratories—a plant laboratory, a soils laboratory, and a third containing growth chambers in which 

precise climatic conditions could be maintained; a photographic darkroom; separate rooms for radioactive materials

and delicate weighing apparatus; a number of storage

rooms; and a modern greenhouse. There were also a separate library and a beautifully furnished conference room

(Van Wormer 1964).

The Bend Silviculture Laboratory 

Struggles

The research challenges of which Chief Cliff spoke so 

eloquently on that May 2, 1964, day of dedication were not

the only challenges the Bend Silviculture Laboratory faced.

From the day it opened, it suffered from short funds and

small staff. Berntsen and his staff of five—principal silviculturist Walt Dahms and silviculturist Jim Barrett, forestry

technicians Clyde Webb and Lee Baker, and clerk-stenographer-receptionist Helen Rastovich—were only one-third 

of the laboratory’s projected staff and faced what Cowlin

called “a host of problems in need of answers.” Although

the new office and laboratory facilities were “more than

adequate,” the “urgent need was increased personnel”

(Cowlin 1988).

So far, the Bend project to study the silviculture of

interior conifer types had focused on the two principal

species Munger had focused on as early as 1908, lodgepole

pine and ponderosa pine. Cowlin summed up what had

been achieved by the mid-1960s.

Past research in lodgepole pine proved that this

conifer was capable of growth rates comparable to 

its better known associate, ponderosa pine.

Rigidly controlled experiments in stand density

of ponderosa have shown extraordinary diameter 

and height increments of widely spaced saplings. 

If these initial results hold up, production of merchantable wood could increase greatly over that of 

current yield table predictions. This would mean 

a big boost to the timber economy of this forest 

region [Cowlin 1988].

“However,” Cowlin noted, “probably the greatest 

opportunity of the ponderosa pine region for satisfying
Ponderosa Promise: A History of U.S. Forest Service Research in Central Oregon

future demands for wood lies in intensive management of

the mixed species of the interior conifer types. One of the

obvious problems is which species to favor in these forests

involving mixtures of as many as five coniferous species.

Preliminary to such a determination was enlarging silvicultural knowledge of the individual species and the complex

interactions” (Cowlin 1988). This required funds and staff

the laboratory did not have but that Berntsen strove to

acquire as he completed his studies toward a Ph.D. degree

at Oregon State University and his current staff continued

their focus on lodgepole pine and ponderosa pine.

Berntsen appealed for public understanding and support of the new Bend Silviculture Laboratory through the

local media. Just after the facility was dedicated, the JulyAugust 1964 issue of Pine Echoes, the Brooks-Scanlon

Corporation’s house organ, featured a picture story on the

laboratory (Van Wormer 1964). Occasional articles appeared

in The Bulletin, Bend’s daily newspaper. A December 23,

1966, article entitled “Berntsen’s Study Unlocks Secrets of

Pine Production” explained the significance of the project

leader’s doctoral research and dissertation on “Relative

Low Temperature Tolerance of Lodgepole and Ponderosa

Pine Seedlings” conducted at the laboratory to that paper’s

readers.

Berntsen explored the hypothesis that Central

Oregon lodgepole pine occupies suspected frost 

pockets to the exclusion of Ponderosa pine by 

virtue of its tolerance to very low temperatures 

during the seedling emergence period.

Tolerance thresholds to low temperatures for 

both species were determined in a controlled environment chamber [at the laboratory] designed specifically for the study. It had separate controls of 

soil and air temperature.

The study was not confined to the laboratory 

[but] extended to the field, where the occurrence of 

low temperatures was made along a transect starting in a lodgepole pine flat and continuing through 

a lodgepole-Ponderosa transition zone up to a 

Ponderosa timber slope.

The studies indicated that the pattern of distribution of lodgepole and Ponderosa is due in part to 

the greater tolerance of low temperature by lodgepole seedlings over those of the Ponderosa pines 

[Bend Bulletin 1966].

Appealing to the timber town’s interest in propagation 

of lodgepole pine, once “the ‘weed’ tree of the industry—

now . . . a Cinderella pine with pulp and other potentials”

(Bend Bulletin 1966), Berntsen soon made the case for an

improved Bend Silviculture Laboratory in a 1967 article

penned by Phil Brogan (1967). 

In 1967, after 8 years of presiding over the transition

from the research center concept reflected in the Deschutes

Research Center to the research project approach embodied

in the Bend Silviculture Laboratory, the new Dr. Berntsen

was transferred to the position of Assistant Chief, Branch of

Silviculture, Division of Timber Management Research, in

Washington, D.C. Dahms became Bend project leader. In

that same year, funding began to improve, and soil scientist

Dr. Patrick H. Cochran arrived to strengthen the research

team. Two years later, in 1969, Dr. Kenneth W. Seidel

arrived to focus on upper slope mixed-conifer species.

Barrett and these researchers, freed by the man-in-job concept from pressure to become administrators, formed the

core of the laboratory’s research effort during those lean

years. Their work, as well as that of Dahms and other

43

Carl M. Berntsen, project leader, checks experimental pine

seedlings being grown in the greenhouse. 

Brooks-Scanlon Corporation, Pine Echoes.
44

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-711

researchers who joined the Bend Silviculture Laboratory

team later, is summarized in chapter 4.

Dahms and his staff continued the effort to keep the

public informed of their research at the Bend Silviculture

Laboratory and the Pringle Falls Experimental Forest. An

article prepared not by newspaper writers but carrying 

the byline “by the people of the Silviculture Laboratory”

published in the March 15, 1972, issue of The Bulletin surveyed how “Researchers study ecology of trees at Pringle

Falls” in a way that related their research to “producing

successive crops of wood indefinitely” to support the community’s economy (Bend Bulletin 1972).

In addition to its own research staff focused on its

“Silviculture of Interior Conifer Types” project, the Bend

Silviculture Laboratory housed a team of U.S. Department

of the Interior wildlife researchers. Although they were

non-Forest Service tenants, they contributed to the laboratory’s studies. For example, Jay Gashwiler of the Bureau 

of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife—a unit of the U.S. Fish and

Wildlife Service at the time—arrived soon after the laboratory opened to study the relationships of birds to forest and

range habitats. “When baseline populations for various bird

species are established in natural areas, comparisons can be

made concerning the effect of logging, timber management

and brush eradication upon birds,” a 1967 article about

Gashwiler in The Bend Bulletin (Callister 1967) explained.

Such findings help silviculturists and timber managers

adjust policies and practices to preserve wildlife habitat.

Vic Barnes, another Fish and Wildlife Service

researcher, arrived at the Bend Silviculture Laboratory in

1970 to investigate the western pocket gopher (Thomomys

mazama) problem in central Oregon’s pine forests.

According to a 1972 story about Barnes in The Bulletin,

the “gophers kill young pine trees” and “are the number 

one forest problem animal east of the Cascades.” Barnes

pursued this intriguing problem in ponderosa pine silviculture in a small gopher-infested area of the Deschutes

National Forest about 7 miles southwest of Bend and in 

the laboratory. After trapping, assessing, and banding the

gophers, he attached miniature radio transmitters around

their necks, released them on the site, and tracked them

with a radio direction-finder to learn their lifeways. Two

years into this long-term study, Barnes had discovered that

up to 60 percent of freshly planted pine seedlings were

killed by gophers during the winter and had reached some

conclusions. Among these:

“Logging and fires make a bad gopher habitat into 

a good gopher habitat,” Barnes explains. “They’re an

open-area animal.”

He says it seems that habitat control is the best 

answer. “It is more desirable and has more longrange effects than direct control, such as trapping 

and poisoning” [Brickey 1972].

Fish and Wildlife Service researchers continued to 

work at the Bend Silviculture Laboratory well into the

1980s.

The Bend Silviculture Laboratory Burns 

and Is Rebuilt

Just after midnight, at about 12:20 a.m. on January 15, 

1974, Trooper Robert McKethen, Oregon State Police, spotted and reported the blaze on Awbrey Butte. Whipped by a

steady, strong southwesterly wind, the flames had engulfed

the east wing of the Bend Silviculture Laboratory by the

time the Bend Fire Department’s six responding units and

45 firemen arrived. Spontaneous combustion of wood dust,

left in a sander by a worker refinishing floors, ignited the

blaze that destroyed the office wing and library, damaged

the laboratory wing, and singed trees on the structure’s

northeastern side. “The rain helped us,” Bend Fire Chief

Pete Hansen observed. “I don’t know what we would have

done if this had happened in spring or summer” (Tripp

1974a). 

Later that morning, Project Leader Walt Dahms and

grim-faced members of his staff searched the ruins for

research data. “It looks like there’s very little left to salvage,” commented Deschutes National Forest Supervisor

Earl Nichols, after visiting the smoking remains. Nichols

quickly invited Dahms and his crew to locate temporarily 

in his office (USDA FS 1974a). But, as file cabinet drawers
Ponderosa Promise: A History of U.S. Forest Service Research in Central Oregon

were pulled from the burned office wing and moved to the

undamaged greenhouse, the outlook improved. Not as many

records were destroyed as first thought. “Two factors are

involved,” Dahms said. “We had some fireproof files and

we have research data processed on IBM cards in Portland.

The guys were looking at the salvaged stuff and saying,

‘It’s a little smoky, but it’ll work’” (Tripp 1974b). Because

few records were destroyed and much laboratory equipment

was undamaged, the momentum of the Laboratory’s

research program was slowed but not lost (USDA FS

1974b). Temporarily quartered in two trailer-offices, the

staff resumed work.

At the time of the fire, according to Bob Tarrant, then

Experiment Station assistant director, the Bend Silviculture

Laboratory “was a candidate for being shut down.” As far

as the Portland office was concerned, the fire had sealed 

the beleaguered laboratory’s fate. But politics—in the 

form of Representative Al Ullman of Oregon’s Second

Congressional District, which included Bend, and Bend

newspaper publisher and editor Robert W. Chandler—soon

intervened. Tarrant remembered being called from Bend at

7:30 in the morning and told “that the Lab had burned

down overnight. And, as soon as I got through with that

call, Congressman Ullman called me from his office in

Washington to console me in my grief. And he said: ‘I

promise you that, within three months, a rider on a bill I am

writing right now will rebuild that laboratory. Lock, stock,

and barrel. Every stick of wood in it.’ I said: ‘Thank you’

(Tarrant 2002).

A January 18 editorial in The Bend Bulletin urged

Ullman, a member of the House Ways and Means

Committee, to follow through on that promise. “Ullman 

has worked hard to get funding for various other Forest

Service projects, and there’s no reason why he shouldn’t

put the same kind of effort into this one” (Bend Bulletin

1974c). An estimated $500,000 would be needed (Tripp

1974b).

Before long, Experiment Station Director Robert E.

Buckman asked Chief of the Forest Service John S.

McGuire to request reconstruction funds as quickly as 

possible (USDA FS 1974b). Congressman Ullman pressed

on, and on May 17, The Bend Bulletin reported that “a

House-Senate conference committee . . . approved spending

$650,000 to reconstruct the U.S. Forest Service silviculture

laboratory in Bend. Money for the rebuilding is part of a

supplemental appropriations bill which will be sent back to

both houses of Congress for final approval” (Bend Bulletin

1974d). Congress soon came through, and in June, President

Richard M. Nixon approved the appropriation to rebuild the

laboratory (Bend Bulletin 1974b).

The only change in plans between the new buildings

and those that burned was the addition of a 2,000-squarefoot service building near the greenhouse. The reconstruction schedule called for that structure—a combination

garage and shop that also housed a constant-temperature

growth chamber for trees—to be built first, within 90 days

of contract award, to temporarily house the laboratory staff

(Bend Bulletin 1974a). Otherwise, the office-laboratory and

library buildings were duplicates of the burned buildings.

The undamaged foundations and salvageable portions of the

burned structures were incorporated into the new construction (USDA FS 1974c).

Construction was underway by October, and the service building was completed and occupied first. “My first

office was in the shop where there was one little pathway

45

Fire destroyed the Bend Silviculture Laboratory office wing and

library and damaged its laboratory wing during the early morning

hours of January 15, 1974. 
46

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-711

[by] which I could get to the desk,” recalled Dr. Robert E.

Martin, who arrived in June 1975 to replace the retiring

Dahms as project leader. “Everybody else was in mobile

homes out in the driveway while they were rebuilding”

(Martin 2000). Finally, on October 22, 1975, the staff

moved into the new buildings. The next spring, on May 29,

1976, the Bend Silviculture Laboratory celebrated its new

beginning with a luncheon and open house. 

Ironically, the fire that destroyed much of the Bend

Silviculture Laboratory’s facilities bought it a new lease on

life that kept it in operation for another 20 years. 

The Bend Silviculture Laboratory 

Perseveres

Those were 20 years of production and perseverance. For 

most of those years, Bend Silviculture Laboratory research

emphasized wildland fire behavior and fire effects as it 

continued to work on the silviculture, growth, and yield of

principal east-side timber species. By the 1980s, research

funding for the laboratory leveled off, and then declined.

But the laboratory’s small staff of researchers and technicians continued their long-term studies of silviculture east

of the Cascade Range. The contributions of these researchers, some of whom had become identified with their specific projects during the Deschutes Research Center era and

whose professional lives were defined by their specific

projects, are detailed in chapter 4.

In addition to its own research staff focused on its

“Silviculture of Interior Conifer Types” project and the

“tenant” U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service researchers, the

rebuilt Bend Silviculture Laboratory from 1977 housed the

Deschutes National Forest-based Area IV Ecology Team,

one of seven such teams serving Pacific Northwest Region

national forests. Led by Dr. William E. Hopkins, plant ecologist for the Deschutes, Fremont, Ochoco, and Winema

National Forests, this small team concentrated on “initial

classifications and descriptions of natural forest, grassland,

and alpine ecosystems” reflected in a series of plant association handbooks for the managers of those national forests.

Hopkins also led the project in the late 1970s and early

1980s that added additional acreage to the research natural

area system on these four national forests. Over the years, 

Dr. Bob Martin, project leader for the Bend Silviculture

Laboratory, explained research projects to visitors including

Representative Al Ullman (right) at the May 29, 1976 open house. 

Dr. Bill Hopkins led the Deschutes National Forest’s Area IV

ecology team, housed at the Bend Silviculture Laboratory.

Mark Reid
Ponderosa Promise: A History of U.S. Forest Service Research in Central Oregon

a series of assistants—range conservationist Kenneth

Nieman, forester Bernard “Bud” Kovalchik, forest ecologist

Steven Simon, range conservationist Dr. Gregg Riegel, and

soil microbiologist Dr. Matt Busse—served with Hopkins

on many projects (Hopkins 2003). These scientists also 

collaborated with their Bend laboratory colleagues on silvicultural research that would benefit national forest management and on the transfer of research results to managers.

Martin attracted new talent to the Bend Silviculture

Laboratory. In January 1979, he hired Johanna D. “Joan”

Landsberg, a local research chemist, as a temporary physical science technician “to run the chemistry of the samples

brought in from the field” (Landsberg 2002). Although she

had prepared for a career analyzing human food nutrients

with an Oregon State University M.S. degree in food science, Landsberg’s new job at the laboratory involved analyzing plant nutrients. “Many of the laboratory procedures

are the same,” the PNW News observed in a story about her,

“and she likes being in the field as well as in the laboratory” (USDA FS 1982b). A career change soon followed. 

“I realized from chatting with Bob Martin,” Landsberg

recalled, “that I could either be the chemist and stand at 

the lab door and take the samples from whomever brought

them in and hand back numbers to whomever was waiting

for them, or I could be fully involved in the project”

(Landsberg 2002). She decided on the latter course, was

soon appointed a research chemist, and embarked on the

research of the long-term effects of prescribed burning on

nutrients and plant growth that defined her Forest Service

research career.

After more than two decades as an Experiment Station

research entomologist based in Portland and Corvallis, Dr.

Russell G. Mitchell joined the Bend Silviculture Laboratory team in 1980 to work on insect issues associated with

Martin’s prescribed burning studies as well as the laboratory’s other silvicultural studies. Mitchell, who had enjoyed

lectures by Sowder and Mowat during undergraduate field

trips to Pringle Falls Experimental Forest as an Oregon

State College forestry student, earned a B.S. in forest management in 1956. He went on to earn an M.S. in forest

entomology from New York State College of Forestry at

Syracuse in 1957 and a Ph.D. in entomology from Oregon

State University in 1967. He had also worked at the experimental forest as a graduate student. Best known for his

work on the balsam woolly adelgid, Mitchell had worked

throughout the 1970s on the Experiment Station’s insect

collection committee. After 2 short years in Bend, he 

was called to Portland as applications coordinator in the

Station’s insect control program, then returned to Bend in

1985 where he worked on mountain pine beetle, western

pine beetle, western shoot borer, and a pandora moth infestation before he retired in 1991 (Mitchell 2003).

Also, while Martin was project leader, forestry technicians Dick Newman and Larry Carpenter joined the staff.

Along with the laboratory’s other technicians, “they did

much of the skillful heavy lifting so essential to the success

of forest science” (Barrett 2003). Michele Penner joined 

the staff as a physical science technician in 1980 (Penner

2003).

Martin’s greatest challenge as program leader was the

Bend Silviculture Laboratory’s meager budget. “We didn’t

get a lot of money,” he explained in 2000. “Everybody saw

47

Joan Landsberg began as a technician at the Bend Silviculture

Laboratory and eventually became a research chemist and project

leader. 

Mark Reid
48

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-711

us in that nice building and thought we were rich. But some

years there was hardly enough money to drive out to the

experimental forest and back.” This poverty required creative scheduling for some experiments, especially those

involving fire. “We always burned on a ‘first forty’ [paid

hours per week] basis, then gave comp time because we

couldn’t afford to pay overtime. Sometimes we had that

first forty in by Wednesday.” On certain experiments,

“We’d burn in the morning or afternoon. Soon as I could

I’d break off some of the people to take the fuel samples in

to weigh for moisture content, then get one of the technicians to go in by midnight, then keep the other one out until

we finished burning out the unit. Then, usually, I would sit

the fire overnight and the other technician would come back

in the morning. That was the only way we could afford to

do it” (Martin 2000).

The funding issue came to a head in February 1982

when it appeared that cuts in the Forest Service’s proposed

1983 budget would reduce staffing of or even close the

Bend Silviculture Laboratory and nine other research laboratories around the country. “It was February 9,” Martin

recalled. Closure seemed imminent. “I was in Corvallis and

got a call that the [Experiment Station] director and deputy

director wanted to talk to me [in Bend] that night. I came

over the pass that night, the fastest I ever came in a snowstorm. They got me in a room, announced they were going

to close the lab, and said everyone should vigorously seek

other employment” (Martin 2000). After the announcement,

Cochran told a reporter from The Oregonian that it was

“business as usual at the lab for right now, but we’re trying

to wrap up research projects rather than plan any new ones”

(Shotwell 1982).

Although the work of Hopkins and his ecology team

was not threatened, closure of the laboratory would force

them to find another work location. The three Fish and

Wildlife Service employees would have to be reassigned.

“The writing on the wall doesn’t look promising for 1983,”

Vic Barnes said. “I can’t find any cause for optimism”

(Bend Bulletin 1982). 

The fact that the Bend laboratory would take the brunt

of the cut for the Experiment Station—it represented 3.5

percent of the Station’s operating body and would absorb

28 percent of the Station’s cut—wasn’t lost on Martin and

his staff. Indeed, after half a year of controversy, Martin

resigned from the Forest Service to accept a professorship

in the Department of Forest and Resource Management 

at the University of California, Berkeley, where he taught

wildland fire management until he retired in 1994.

Ultimately, the decision to close the Bend laboratory

foundered on the fact it would cost more to close it and

move residual personnel and functions to the La Grande

laboratory than to keep it open (Martin 2000). It remained

open for another 14 years.

John Deeming, a research forester at the Experiment

Station in Portland, replaced Martin as Bend Silviculture

Laboratory project leader in September 1983. Martin had

hoped that Deeming, whose Forest Service career had

begun on the fire research staff at the Southern Forest Fire

Laboratory in Macon, Georgia, and had also included a 

stint at the Northern Forest Fire Laboratory in Missoula,

Montana (USDA FS 1983), would continue the Bend laboratory’s prescribed burning research. Arriving in the wake

Research entomologist Dr. Russ Mitchell came to the 

Bend Silviculture Laboratory after working in Portland 

and Corvallis and returned to the laboratory again after an

assignment in Portland. After his retirement, he continued 

to be active as an emeritus scientist. 

Mark Reid
Ponderosa Promise: A History of U.S. Forest Service Research in Central Oregon

of the closure threat, however, Deeming joined an organization where morale was depressed and prospects for the

future seemed dim. Moreover, he arrived with “quite a load

of residual work” in air quality management and fire danger

rating system development—both reflective of his background in meteorology—that, along with keeping the laboratory funded, left little time for extensive involvement in

prescribed burning research. As a result, Deeming gravitated toward administration of a laboratory at which a small

staff of scientists—Cochran, Seidell, and Landsberg—and

technicians pursued their established projects. “I just tried

to keep things moving,” Deeming said of his efforts that

emphasized his priority to protect the Forest Service’s

investment in these long-term studies. As time passed,

morale improved, and productivity reflected in publications

on these studies continued.

Deeming did, however, assist Landsberg with developing replications of the underburning studies she and Martin

had begun south of Bend near Lava Butte on three additional sites. He also planned with Hopkins to reintroduce beneficial effects of fire in the eastern, ponderosa pine portion

of the Pringle Falls Research Natural Area and in ponderosa

pine stands of the Metolius Research Natural Area, also on

the Deschutes National Forest, and in ponderosa pine stands

of the Ochoco Divide Research Natural Area on the Ochoco

National Forest (Deeming 2003).

In 1985, the Bend Silviculture Laboratory’s parent

office in Portland changed its name from Pacific Northwest

Forest and Range Experiment Station to Pacific Northwest

Research Station (USDA FS 1985b). Also that year, 

when the Forest Service began to offer early retirements,

Deeming opted to retire in February 1986. Ken Seidel, by

then a 16.5-year veteran of the laboratory, succeeded

Deeming as project leader of what by then had become

known as the Culture of Eastern Oregon and Washington

Forests Research Unit. More interested in science than

administration, Seidel had several research projects nearing

completion, believed it was not time to start new ones, and

by late 1987 had decided “this seems to be a good time to

leave. I still have some manuscripts to finish up,” he added,

“so I’ll be around for awhile” (USDA FS 1988). Seidel 

continued to write after retirement, and published the last 

of his research as senior author of a research paper on the

influence of cattle grazing and grass seeding on coniferous

regeneration and shelterwood cutting in eastern Oregon in

1990 (Seidel et al. 1990). Joan Landsberg succeeded Seidel

as project leader, and combined administration with her

research and pursuit of a Ph.D. degree in forest ecology.

In 1989, Matt Busse, who had just completed a Ph.D.

in soil microbiology at Oregon State University, arrived at

the Bend laboratory on a postdoctoral fellowship to begin a

20-year study of long-term site productivity in young ponderosa pine stands on the Deschutes National Forest.

The goal was to improve understanding of ponderosa pine ecosystems by monitoring the response 

of these systems to various silvicultural practices, 

including thinning with three levels of usage (no

49

Dr. Matt Busse, soil microbiologist, began his Forest Service

research career at the Bend Silviculture Laboratory on a postdoctoral fellowship.

Mark Reid
50

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-711

removal, bole only, and whole tree), fertilization, 

and three forms of slash treatment (broadcast burning, pile and burning, and crushing). The underlying

scientific question and management concern was

whether different rates of organic matter removal 

significantly alter biological, physical, and chemical processes in ponderosa pine ecosystems

[Youngblood et al. 1994].

In 1992, Busse accepted a Forest Service appointment 

as a soil ecologist to continue this work under the auspices

of the Area IV Ecology Team. By 1995, Busse had produced a manuscript on responses of these stands to various

underburning treatments, Oregon State University cooperator Dave Myrold had produced a manuscript on foliar

nutrient content in response to these treatments, and a third

manuscript on growth response to these treatments had

been planned (Busse 2002).

Despite its fiscal challenges, the Bend Silviculture

Laboratory entered the 1990s as a modern research facility

well equipped to address the forest research questions of

the future. Its recent research in wildland fire behavior, fire

effects, and the effects of timber harvesting on soil properties had left it with two physiology and analytical chemistry

laboratories supplied with state-of-the-art equipment for

both plant physiology and soil biology research

(Youngblood 1993).

At the beginning of the 1990s, the Bend Silviculture

Laboratory had contributed a proud scientific legacy. A

major recent manifestation of this legacy were the contributions of several laboratory members and alumni—Martin,

Deeming, Mitchell, Seidel, and Landsberg—to Natural and

Prescribed Fire in Pacific Northwest Forests, a landmark

work in the field edited by John D. Walstad and Steven R.

Radosevich of the College of Forestry, Oregon State

University, and David V. Sandberg of the Research Station,

and published by Oregon State University Press in 1990.

The previous six decades had produced many others.

Bo Bohannon maintained the Pringle Falls Experimental Forest

and Bend Silviculture Laboratory facilities in the 1980s and early

1990s. 

Mark Reid
Ponderosa Promise: A History of U.S. Forest Service Research in Central Oregon

The major themes of silvicultural research that originated 

in the 1930s at the Pringle Falls Experimental Forest progressed into the 1990s at the Bend Silviculture Laboratory

and became identified with scientists whose research legacies are inextricably linked with their research careers.

Most were Forest Service scientists, but scientists from universities also contributed to this legacy.

Walt Dahms: Lodgepole Pine Silviculture

Walt Dahms, who started at Pringle Falls Experimental 

Forest in December 1946, “got involved in lodgepole pine

for a very long time” (Dahms 1999).

That involvement reflected the Pacific Northwest

(PNW) Forest and Range Experiment Station’s realization

51

that year that “lodgepole pine has passed from the category

of a noncommercial tree to a commercial tree. . . ” Four

decades later, Munger’s “practically worthless weed” of

1914 was “. . .being cut extensively for poles, box shook,

and even for lumber.” Yet, lodgepole pine “silviculture in

this region is practically unexplored” and “knowledge of

management methods is practically nil” (USDA FS 1947a).

The Station’s 1948 annual report touted lodgepole pine as 

a “new pulpwood” (USDA FS 1949).

The silviculture of the lodgepole pine, which “forms

the principal cover type over two million acres in the pine

region [of the Pacific Northwest] and represents a large

wood fiber supply and population support potential”

(USDA FS 1947a), offered a research challenge initially—

but only lightly—addressed by thinning experiments begun

in 1934 at Pringle Falls Experimental Forest where research

had focused on the more valuable ponderosa pine.

Dahms “went at [his lodgepole pine research] in a little

different way than most other people had tried.” His

approach was to determine “how much wood was actually

grown on an acre and on a site,” and then determine—

through analysis of data derived from spacing and levelsof-growing-stock studies—“how much of that can be grown

on trees that really count. Little trees that are not merchantable are not worth anything from a forest management

standpoint. So there were thinning studies and growingstock studies that I was involved in” (Dahms 1999). Thus,

instead of trying “to find plots that represented about full

stocking and build up a yield table,” Dahms “measured volume increment over a ten-year period and then built an

equation” to develop and in 1964 publish Gross and Net

Yield Tables for Lodgepole Pine (Dahms 1964). Dahms’

interest, however, extended to everything that influenced

those growth and yield tables.

Seed production and dissemination data, necessary for

planning natural regeneration of any forest, were an essential aspect of Dahms’ lodgepole pine research. “This kind of

information is especially needed for central Oregon lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta) because, unlike the Rocky

Chapter 4: Pringle Falls and Bend: A Research Legacy

Jim Barrett (shown here) inherited from Ed Mowat and Walt

Dahms the ponderosa pine research that dominated Forest Service

research in central Oregon and defined his career.
52

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-711

Mountain variety, cones are generally not serotinous [i.e.,

they do not remain sealed for several years until heat from 

a fire or other source opens the cone scales] and seeds are

shed within the first year after cone maturation” (Mowat

1960). Furthermore, central Oregon lodgepole pine stands

“are normally regenerated by natural means, usually shelterwood.” A 16-year seed production study “indicated sufficient lodgepole pine seed was produced to provide for

satisfactory natural regeneration during 3 out of 4 years if

other conditions were favorable” (Dahms and Barrett 1975).

Those “other conditions” that affected lodgepole pine

regeneration after logging also were studied. Seed dispersal

“into clearcut patches falls off rapidly as distance from 

timber edge increases. Only 2 or 3 percent of the lodgepole

pole pine seed catch under timber falls at a distance of 2

chains [132 feet] from timber. Furthermore, the tremendous

range in temperature of pumice soil seed beds and the tendency for those extremes to be greater in larger clearcuts

(Cochran 1969a, 1969b) makes natural regeneration of

large openings on pumice flats unlikely” (Dahms and

Barrett 1975). Such findings informed timber harvest planning for natural regeneration.

Not all years are favorable for natural regeneration,

Cochran (1973a) pointed out.

A series of events is necessary. . . . Germination 

must be favored by warm and moist surface soils, 

daily surface temperature variation must be moderate, seedlings must survive summer drought, and 

weather conditions must prevent severe frostheaving the fall after germination and the next 

spring [Dahms and Barrett 1975].

Specific moisture-temperature relationships were 

worked out in seedbeds at the Pringle Falls Experimental

Forest and in growth chambers at the Bend Silviculture

Laboratory (Yates, n.d.). These integrated field and laboratory studies showed “that lodgepole pine seedlings are more

resistant to cold than ponderosa pine” and helped “to

explain why many suspected frost-pocket sites in central

Oregon are occupied exclusively by lodgepole pine.” Such

findings “help forest managers recognize sites that should

be devoted primarily to culture of lodgepole pine” (USDA

FS 1967b). “Furthermore, squirrels and other small mammals cut cones and eat seeds,” and seedlings and saplings

are subject to vegetation competition and mammal depredation. Mortality that results from suppression and insect

infestation is a function of stand density (Dahms and

Barrett 1975).

Dahms’ studies of lodgepole pine growth and yield—

aimed at minimizing mountain pine beetle mortality and

maximizing useful wood production—evolved from the

thinning experiments initiated by Kolbe on the Pringle Falls

Experimental Forest in 1934. The inquiry continued with

levels-of-growing-stock studies installed on the Deschutes

National Forest near Twin Lakes in 1959 and Snow Creek

in 1962. The most recent report issued on these latter studies was published in 2000, a quarter-century after Dahms

retired from the Forest Service, again evidencing the longterm nature of forest research.

Twenty-two years of measurements by Mowat, Barrett,

and Dahms of Kolbe’s 1934 plots showed that “a 55-yearold, fully stocked, even-aged stand of lodgepole pine . . .

responded exceptionally well” to thinning: “diameter

growth was stimulated, mortality was reduced, and stems

grew more rapidly into merchantable size classes” (Barrett

1961 in Youngblood 1995).

From his spacing and levels-of-growing-stock studies

at Twin Lakes and Snow Creek, Dahms recognized that

more definitive “information on variation of productivity

and mortality with thinning levels is necessary to properly

manage lodgepole pine stands. . . . The objective of these

studies . . . [was] to compare mortality, growth-growingstock relations, tree size development, and cumulative

wood production under various regimes” on two representative central Oregon sites. He chose a highly productive

60-acre Twin Lakes stand “composed mostly of lodgepole

pine” and a “pure, 40-acre lodgepole pine stand” of average

productivity at Snow Creek (Cochran and Dahms 2000).

Plots in these natural lodgepole pine stands were repeatedly

thinned to one of five growing-stock levels (GSLs) and

measured at 5-year intervals. As early as 1971, Dahms
Ponderosa Promise: A History of U.S. Forest Service Research in Central Oregon

could report that results from the Twin Lakes study showed

that individual trees developed larger crowns, grew more

rapidly, and added more wood to potentially merchantable

trees at lower stand densities. At the same time, total wood

production as well as evapotranspiration drain on soil moisture was less (Dahms 1971). By 2000, Cochran and Dahms

had identified stand densities attainable through “early

spacing control coupled with later commercial thinnings”

that “should reduce mortality [from mountain pine beetles

and other causes] considerably, allow most of the wood

produced to be captured by merchantable trees,” and result

in stands healthier than unmanaged stands of the same age

that they found “relatively short lived in part because of

[stand density]-tree size-pine beetle relations.” Also,

“[t]hese stands would be more pleasing visually, certain

species of wildlife may benefit, and stand rotation ages 

may be longer” (Cochran and Dahms 2000).

Dahms’ post-retirement production of LPSIM, a simulator of growth and yield of lodgepole pine stands used by

silviculturists throughout central and eastern Oregon and

Washington, further shows the long-term nature of forest

research. It was not until after his 1976 retirement that

availability of the microcomputer allowed Dahms to bring

together information from decades of research to produce

this model. Working as a volunteer, Dahms contributed

hundreds of hours to this accomplishment, and was honored

in 1985 with a certificate of achievement from Chief of the

Forest Service R. Max Peterson (USDA FS 1985a). This

growth-simulation model, “constructed by combining data

from temporary and permanent sample plots . . . is similar

to a conventional yield table with the added capacity for

dealing with the standard-density variable.” Published in

1983, the “simulator runs on a desk-top computer” and

“provides foresters with the capacity to ‘grow’ lodgepole

pine stands starting at three different initial spacings and

with different stand-density regimes” (Dahms 1983).

Jokingly echoing Munger, Dahm’s colleagues used to

call the lodgepole pine “Walt’s weed” (Martin 2000). As a

result of Dahm’s research, the silviculture of the lodgepole

pine, called “the tree of the future” (Hopkins 2003) by ecologist Bill Hopkins, is now well understood.

Jim Barrett: Ponderosa Pine Silviculture

Jim Barrett, who joined the Deschutes Research Center in 

1958, inherited from Ed Mowat and Walt Dahms the ponderosa pine research that dominated Forest Service research

in central Oregon and defined his career for more than three

decades. “The first thing they did was put me in charge of

the Pringle Falls Experimental Forest,” Barrett recalled,

“and I just did everything down there: opened it in the

spring, put it away in the fall, and looked after people who

came down there . . . just like Ed and Walt did before I

came” (Barrett 1999). He also continued the experimental

forest’s development. Roads were part of that job.

Another of Barrett’s initial tasks was to help Mowat

complete the Ponderosa Pine Methods of Cutting study

53

Scientist Jim Barrett measures the diameter of an old-growth 

ponderosa pine. During the 1980s, hard hats became more widely

used in research work than they had been historically. 
54

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-711

begun on plots 30 to 36 of the Pringle Butte Unit in 1937.

Barrett collected the field data, “and Ed worked it up” and

published the findings in 1961 (Mowat 1961). “This work

pointed out several principles for ponderosa pine management, including methods for increasing stand growth by

releasing young trees from overstory and side competition,”

Barrett summarized (Barrett 2003). “I think that’s the last

thing Ed Mowat published,” he mused in 1999 (Barrett

1999).

Even as he managed the experimental forest and 

assisted with other studies, Barrett planned and installed

three long-term ponderosa pine studies—a spacing study

and a mistletoe-tree spacing study on the Pringle Butte 

Unit and a levels-of-growing-stock study on the Lookout

Mountain Unit—that spanned his career.

The spacing study on the Pringle Butte Unit was established to determine the best spacing of ponderosa pine for

maximum wood production and to determine the influence

of shrubs and herbaceous undergrowth on tree growth at

different spacings. Barrett located a 160-acre stand “of oldgrowth ponderosa pine with an average of 20 trees per acre,

a mean tree diameter of 25.6 inches, and an understory of

40- to 70-year-old suppressed ponderosa pine saplings.

Average diameter of the understory trees was 1.0 inch,

average height was 8 feet, and average density was 6,998

stems/acre.” The undergrowth in this stand was mostly

antelope bitterbrush, greenleaf manzanita, snowbrush ceanothus, and scattered grasses. To follow and compare the

development of suppressed ponderosa pine saplings after

overstory removal and thinning, thirty 0.192-acre plots

were installed across the 160-acre site. “Six replications of

five tree spacings were randomly assigned: 6.6 feet (1,000

trees per acre [TPA]), 9.3 feet (500 TPA), 13.2 feet (250

TPA), 18.7 feet (125 TPA), and 26.4 feet (62.5 TPA). Plot

layout and treatment assignment were completed before

overstory removal” (Cochran and Barrett 1999b).

Barrett considered “logging about four million [board]

feet of ponderosa pine [overstory] in order to put the understory into a study . . . kind of a ticklish logging operation.”

The trick, of course, was to “get all those logs off without

destroying the understory so we could thin it out to [the]

different spacings” called for by the study plan. “And so 

we had to write up a special logging contract.” Forester

Bernard G. “Barney” Duberow of the Deschutes National

Forest helped Barrett prepare the sale contract, and the Tite

Knot Pine Mill in Redmond bought the sale (Barrett 1999).

Bend Ranger District foresters helped install the study.

“If it hadn’t been for Barney, I’d have really been in trouble,” Barrett said.

He was really interested in what I was doing, trying

to fall all those trees in a particular direction to preserve those plots. I marked all those trees for directional falling. Had arrows on ‘em. That was sort of

amusing. Some of those loggers would walk up to

those trees, and the profanity that came out of ‘em!

“Who marked that? This is crazy!” I went to John

Munier, bull buck for Barclay Logging, [who 

responded] “Well, it’s going to be very difficult to 

fell some of those trees that way.” And I said: 

“Well, why not climb ‘em and put a choker on ‘em 

and pull ‘em over?” He thought about that for a 

whole day, then he said: “Well, we haven’t got a

climber.” And I said: “Well, I’ll climb ‘em.” I had

done quite a bit, when I was back in Iowa. So they 

got me a climbing rig, and I took those chokers up

there and tied ‘em up about 32 feet. Then they got 

a big long winch line . . . and we pulled ‘em over 

[Barrett 1999].

“Jim worked with those [loggers] and got them interested in it so that they did just a heck of a good job getting

that study installed,” colleague Walt Dahms recalled in

1999. “Could easily have wound up with all the trees

banged up and . . . nothing left” (Dahms 1999) for the

study. And so it was that Barrett supervised the logging

operation as well as the study installation. After the overstory was removed in 1957, the residual ponderosa pine

saplings were thinned to the specified spacings in 1958.

All logging and thinning slash was removed from 

the plots and burned. All understory vegetation was

removed by herbicides or mechanical means in the

spring of 1960 and at successive 3- to 4-year intervals on three replications per tree spacing, randomly
Ponderosa Promise: A History of U.S. Forest Service Research in Central Oregon

chosen in spring 1959, and allowed to develop 

naturally on the three remaining replications

[Cochran and Barrett 1999b].

As he installed this study, Barrett “demonstrated that 

it is possible, by careful overstory removal, to save large

numbers of understory saplings” (Barrett 1960, Cochran

and Barrett 1999b). He concluded that these procedures—

which included identification of skid trails before logging,

directional falling, and the use of central landings—helped

“ensure survival of the advance regeneration, thereby

reducing the time to rotation age by 20 to 50 years because

fill-in planting is not necessary” (Barrett et al. 1976 in

Youngblood 1995). Barrett’s interest in logging to save

ponderosa pine regeneration was reflected in a 1973 case

study of logging procedures that “if applied operationally,

would cost less than regeneration efforts involving a

clearcut harvest, site preparation, and replanting” (Barrett 

et al. 1976 in Youngblood 1995).

Cochran and Barrett summarized the previously published 1960 to 1994 results of this ponderosa pine spacing

study in a 1999 research paper. In terms of the original 

timber production questions asked,

Barrett (1965) found that even though the saplings

were long suppressed, response in diameter growth 

to thinning was immediate. Height growth also

responded to thinning, although [this] response took 

as long as 4 years after thinning to develop (Barrett

1970). Removal of competing understory grasses,

forbs, and shrubs resulted in decreased water

removal from the soil profile during the growing 

season and increased tree growth early in the study

(Barrett 1965, 1970; Barrett and Youngberg 1965).

55

In this spacing study, overstory ponderosa pines were felled in

December 1957 with damage minimized to saplings in the stand.

The residual saplings were thinned to study specifications in 1958. 

Jim Barrett’s ponderosa pine spacing study showed “that even

though the saplings were long-suppressed, response in diameter

growth to thinning was immediate.” He provided cross sections

such as the one shown here as evidence to all who were interested. 

In the second step of the spacing study started in 1957, a cutter

used a chainsaw with a thinning attachment to thin residual 

ponderosa pine saplings to specified spacings. 

Jim

Barrett Jim

Barrett

Les Joslin
56

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-711

Central Oregon Community College] so I could keep the

instrument running,” was not especially impressed with the

results. Nor was Cochran, who took a lot of the measurements. “After we got further along,” Barrett explained,

we realized that this really wasn’t as important as 

we thought, and the most important thing was how

these stands were growing and responding to treatment in volume and height growth and diameter

growth and that sort of thing. So [the neutron probe]

kind of dropped out of the picture. I spent a lot of 

time on that without much reward [Barrett 1999].

Barrett’s dwarf mistletoe spacing study brought him 

into contact with Oregon State College plant pathologist 

Dr. Lew Roth. “Lew and I became very good friends,”

Barrett recalled in 1999.

I did a lot of my graduate work in pathology, and 

these disease people sort of hang together. We both 

Increased spacing resulted in increased [individual] 

tree growth and decreased stand [volume] growth

(Barrett 1965, 1970, 1973, 1982) [Cochran and 

Barrett 1999b].

Once the trees were “off to a good start, we let the 

[understory] vegetation grow and furnish the necessary

nutrients” that promote tree growth, Barrett explained

(Barrett 2003). This proved a complicated but successful

tradeoff. “[T]he 35-year absence of understory grasses,

forbs, and shrubs produced changes in soil quality . . .

(Busse and others 1996)” that slowed tree growth.

During the last 15 years (1980–94), these differences in stand growth rates between understory 

vegetation treatments disappeared (Busse and others

1996). . . Initial increases in tree growth in the 

absence of understory vegetation were attributed to

greater soil water availability. Subsequent changes 

in soil nutrient content and availability counterbalanced differences in water availability and potentially contributed to similar rates of tree growth at 

comparable densities during the last 15 years of 

measurement (Busse and others 1996) [Cochran and

Barrett 1999b].

Another interesting aspect of Barrett’s ponderosa pine 

spacing studies resulted from an Oregon State University

professor’s interest in the effects of tree spacing and understory vegetation on water use in pumice soils. In pursuit 

of this interest, soil scientist Dr. Chester T. Youngberg

acquired what Barrett called “some really expensive instruments to measure . . . water use . . . in those different spacings” (Barrett 1999). One of these was a neutron probe that

combined barium and radium to produce high-speed neutrons shot out of a tube sunk into the ground at desired

depths. As reported in a contemporary newspaper account:

“Neutrons are slowed as they strike hydrogen atoms in the

soil’s moisture. By bouncing off hydrogen atoms, some of

the neutrons find their way back to the probe device. The

speed and number are recorded and scientists can figure 

the amount of moisture at the given depth” (Stone, n.d.).

Barrett, who “took a whole year of electronics courses [at

Jim Barrett uses the neutron probe to measure soil moisture 

content. The new device turned out to have limited use in forest

research.
Ponderosa Promise: A History of U.S. Forest Service Research in Central Oregon

got interested in mistletoe on Pringle Butte. Lew 

was interested in it long before I came. We got the 

idea that, if we thinned those [dwarf mistletoe 

infested] trees out . . . spaced those trees out . . .

maybe we could outgrow that mistletoe . . . grow a

usable tree . . . cut it as a small log . . . and still get 

something out of the land [Barrett 1999].

In 1985, 3 years after he had retired, Barrett and Roth, 

who had retired from Oregon State University in 1979, 

co-authored two research papers on the response of dwarf

mistletoe-infested ponderosa pine to thinning (Roth and

Barrett 1985). Both studies, based on three decades of data,

found that some sapling-sized ponderosa pine released

through thinning could accelerate growth and virtually

“outgrow that mistletoe” that “remained largely limited to

lower portions of tree crowns.” It was a friendly, if not

easy, collaboration. “When we were writing those two

papers on thinning mistletoe trees, I got to the point where I

called Lew up and said, hey, we’ve got to get this stuff published. And he and his wife came over and stayed at our

place for a whole week, and we just sat there and ground

[those] two papers out” (Barrett 1999).

Barrett’s ponderosa pine studies weren’t limited to the

Pringle Falls Experimental Forest. “There was a big push

on to put [spacing] studies all over the Pacific Northwest,

so we put some in up in Washington, some in eastern

Oregon,” Barrett (1999) recalled. In 1959, Barrett “established a combination pine spacing-growth increment and

forage production study in cooperation with the Washington

Department of Game [in the Methow Valley on the]

Okanogan National Forest to provide some guidelines for

managing these areas” (USDA FS 1962). Barrett reported

20-year results of this study in 1981 (Barrett 1981) and

Cochran and Barrett reported 35-year results in 1998

(Cochran and Barrett 1998). 

“One of the reasons I wanted to open that Lookout

Mountain Unit up was . . . it had a young stand of poles 

up there. . .where I could put in a levels-of-growing-stock

study” (Barrett 1999). The study Barrett installed on the

Lookout Mountain Unit in 1968 was one of six initiated in

the West to determine optimum growing-stock levels in

even-aged ponderosa pine. In addition to the central Oregon

study, there were another in Oregon, two in the Black Hills

of South Dakota, one in northern Arizona, and one in a

plantation on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada in

California.

Implementing a common study plan, “each installation

evaluated growth response to thinning in stand sizes growing on site qualities common to each region” (Barrett

1983). “Each installation [was] scheduled to run for at least

20 years, with measurements at 5-year intervals and thinning at 10-year intervals, if appropriate” (Barrett 1999).

Some of the most productive ponderosa pine stands in central Oregon were composed of densely stocked pole-size

trees, and thinning to appropriate stocking levels could

improve production of marketable wood and reduce mortality caused by mountain pine beetle attack. Barrett tested six

growing-stock levels (GSLs) ranging from basal areas of 30

to 150 square feet per acre. He published the 15-year results

of the Lookout Mountain study in 1983. “Timber stands in

the midrange levels (GSL 80–100 square feet),” this study

concluded, “grew reasonable amounts of wood without serious beetle attack” (Barrett 1983). An associated study

agreed that maintaining ponderosa pine stand vigor through

thinning reduced the risk of mountain pine beetle attacks

(Larsson et al. 1983).

During the mid-1960s, Barrett completed other ponderosa pine studies. In 1966, his A Record of Ponderosa

Pine Seed Flight addressed the question: What is the best

way to clearcut ponderosa pine to ensure natural regeneration? Analysis of wind-disseminated seed fall measured in

1958 on a Pringle Butte Unit tract on which the overstory

had been completely removed found that “ponderosa pine

seed does not disseminate naturally over extensive areas”

(Barrett 1966). Thus: “To ensure adequate stocking from

natural regeneration, clearcuts consisting of small patches

or narrow strips less than 100 meters wide, orientated at

right angles to the prevailing winds, are recommended”

(Youngblood 1995). The seed flight information resulting

from this study, directly applicable to central Oregon 

57
58

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-711

ponderosa pine management, may prove useful elsewhere

to determine how natural seed fall can be used in combination with other cultural measures to promote prompt

restocking of ponderosa pine stands (Barrett 1966).

A related study of the size and frequency of ponderosa

pine and lodgepole pine seed crops, which Barrett coauthored with Dahms in 1975 (Dahms and Barrett 1975),

summarized 22 years of monitoring begun by Mowat and

reported by Dahms in 1963 (Dahms 1963) and Barrett in

1966 (Barrett 1966). This study showed that “size and frequency of seed crops produced by ponderosa and lodgepole

pines contrast sharply,” with lodgepole pines producing

larger and more frequent seed crops than ponderosa pines.

Selection of trees to save as a seed source in a 

shelterwood type cut should logically follow 

nature’s scheme. The largest, most vigorous, fullcrowned dominants are the best genetic base for 

the next crop; and at the same time they are the best

seed producers. . . . Consequently, if a reasonable 

shelterwood consisting of the largest, most vigorous

trees is retained, the bulk of the stand’s seed producing capacity will also be retained in either ponderosa or lodgepole pine stands [Dahms and Barrett

1975].

In 1968, Barrett’s Pruning of Ponderosa Pine . . . 

Effect on Growth updated Dahm’s 1954 results of Mowat’s

1941 differential pruning study on the Lookout Mountain

Unit with recommendations based on 1966 measurements

and results of a similar study in California that “should be

used to sharpen up or modify existing ponderosa pine pruning practices” (Barrett 1968). Barrett devised a response

surface diagram to help foresters make pruning choices

based on variable diameter-growth results of removing various lengths of ponderosa pine crowns. Almost a quartercentury later, Fight et al. (1992) explored the economic 

efficacy of such labor-intensive silvicultural treatments.

In 1978, Barrett published Height Growth and Site

Index Curves for Managed, Even-Aged Stands of Ponderosa

Pine in the Pacific Northwest east of the Cascade Range in

Oregon and Washington “derived from stem analysis data

for 27 plots in Oregon and 3 plots in Washington” (Barrett

1978). The destructive sampling on these plots, Barrett

recalled, involved “a lot of disks and a lot of grunts. . . .

The curves are most appropriate for use in constructing

yield tables for managed, even-aged stands of ponderosa

pine” (Barrett 2003).

In December 1979, the Station published Barrett’s

Silviculture of Ponderosa Pine in the Pacific Northwest:

The State of Our Knowledge as a reference for forest managers (Barrett 1979). Although much of the ponderosa pine

research cited in this publication came from throughout the

Pacific Northwest, a notable portion derived from experiments and observations at the Bend Silviculture Laboratory

and the Pringle Falls Experimental Forest. Indeed, in addition to Barrett, the names of central Oregon researchers—

especially Cochran, Dahms, Dealy, Hopkins, Keen, Martin,

Meyer, Mowat, Roth, Charles Sartwell, and Sowder—

dominate the bibliography.

Significantly, and characteristically, Barrett approached

a key silvicultural and management controversy in a constructive manner.

Rather than professing that even- or uneven-aged 

management is best for ponderosa pine, we should

keep in mind that both methods can be used 

successfully . . . because environmental constraints 

often urge managers of public lands into the unevenaged regime although even-aged is often easier to

implement. Actually, no well-documented research 

in the region shows one form to be superior over 

the other, but mature or larger trees have been 

shown (Barrett 1969) to exert a significant effect on

smaller understory trees in both height and diameter

growth. This seems to indicate that uneven-aged 

pine forests will need to be managed with low 

density to permit younger or smaller trees, which 

ultimately replace the larger ones, to grow at a 

reasonable rate. Uneven-aged management cannot 

be assumed an easy and inexpensive resolution to 

all other resource conflicts within the pine forests. 

To be successful, it will require expertise by the 

silviculturist and possibly expensive stocking-level
Ponderosa Promise: A History of U.S. Forest Service Research in Central Oregon

control throughout all size classes of the structure 

visualized.

The reason that some stands are maintained in

uneven-aged management is simply that the lands 

came that way. An abrupt change to an even-aged

regime . . . would require cutting too many small, 

young trees prematurely. Similarly, many public 

forests were acquired through land exchanges with 

private lumber companies after the merchantable or

high-value trees were harvested. The emerging 

forests were often even aged. Therefore, the management regime on much of the land was decided

many years ago by economics, fire, or other natural

events.

On public lands, the extent of even-aged management is often limited by environmental constraints. On industrial lands, most ponderosa pine

acreages are being converted to even-aged stands 

and intensively managed for the highest possible 

yields [Barrett 1979].

After reviewing what was then known of ponderosa 

pine silviculture in a way useful to forest managers, Barrett

commented on the state of that knowledge and set a course

for future research of the species in terms of multipleuse management in a way that anticipated ecosystem 

management.

A large portion of silvicultural and management

research in ponderosa pine forests has concentrated 

on regeneration, growth, stand development, and 

final harvest. Our knowledge has expanded tremendously in these areas. Little, however, has been 

done to show how different silvicultural systems 

contribute to or detract from various multiple-use

objectives. . . . This knowledge needs to be brought

together . . . for land managers so they may estimate 

the full impact of tradeoffs where one resource may 

be emphasized over another.

Throughout the West is a glaring lack of 

replicated silvicultural systems trials in various 

major habitats of the ponderosa pine type. These 

could be benchmark studies that would serve pine 

managers for many future rotations. Many disciplines—such as management of watersheds, range,

wildlife, timber, landscape, logging, fuels, and prescribed burning—could be included in the undertaking. In addition to providing new information, 

studies of this kind will help to validate present-day

predictions in a multitude of disciplines. Also, they

would provide excellent ground for communicating

with the public on management of renewable 

resources [Barrett 1979].

Barrett singled out “drastic changes in the forest

brought about by human activity” and “updating yield

tables for managed stands of ponderosa pine” as particularly important. With regard to the former, he stressed that

“conversion by fire control of 25 percent of the commercial

forest land east of the Cascades to mixed conifer or some

single species is an alarming prospect to some insect ecologists” that “needs to be critically examined so we do not

create breeding habitat for an undesirable insect.” With

regard to the latter, he noted that forthcoming “yield tables

for managed stands of ponderosa pine . . . will be based on

limited data and will need updating as growth information

becomes available. Even though a change in research

emphasis occurs,” he concluded, “. . . spacing and levelsof-growing-stock studies, established in the 1950s, can 

continue to improve our yield estimates” and “should be

periodically measured, maintained, and reported for several

decades” (Barrett 1979).

“Ponderosa pine stands in the Pacific Northwest grow

under such varied conditions,” Barrett concluded, “that

solving silvicultural problems in this region is a never-ending process that will continue to challenge the ingenuity of

foresters” (Barrett 1979).

Barrett continued solving silvicultural problems in 

ponderosa pine for the remainder of his career. He continued to monitor and measure the Pringle Butte Unit thinning

and the Lookout Mountain Unit levels-of-growing-stock

studies installed early in his research career, and published

results the year he retired (Barrett 1982) and the following

year (Barrett 1983).

59
60

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-711

Retirement didn’t mean the end of Barrett’s productivity. In 1987, Barrett and Donald J. DeMars, a mensurationist at the Forestry Sciences Laboratory in Juneau,

Alaska, published the Ponderosa Pine Managed-Yield

Simulator: PPSIM Users Guide. This “complex simulation

program . . . that estimates volume growth of natural and

managed ponderosa pine in eastern Oregon and Washington”

(DeMars and Barrett 1987) resulted from extensive field

and laboratory work by both scientists and others. “My

technicians and I destructively sampled a lot of tree plots 

of various densities” (Barrett 2003) for some of the data

needed. Other sources of data used “to establish regression

equations for the simulation model” included “natural-stand

data collected in the 1930s (Meyer 1961)” and “remeasured

plot data from stands infested with dwarf mistletoe.” The

product, PPSIM, was

an even-aged stand model that calculates the 

yearly growth of stands, sums yearly growth estimates to obtain total yield for each year, and reports

yield totals per acre for specified report ages. . . . 

The model allows a user to simulate commercial 

thinnings, simulate applications of fertilizer, adjust 

growth (either positive or negative), estimate 

impact of dwarf mistletoe . . . on volume growth, 

and vary rotation length [DeMars and Barrett 1987].

“I published five publications after I retired, on my 

own. I did it through the PNW Station,” Barrett recalled.

Then [retired Bend Silviculture Laboratory principal

research soil scientist] Pat Cochran started in and we coauthored a bunch of them. But he did the majority of the

work. He’d get the paper pretty well along and give it to

me, I’d go over it and suggest a few things and give it back

to him. . . . He was in an ideal situation to take over where 

I left off” (Barrett 1999).

In addition to publishing research results, Barrett was

one of several Bend Silviculture Laboratory scientists who

passed on what he had learned to agency and industry forest

managers and university students during “show me” trips

and classes conducted at the Pringle Falls Experimental

Forest and other field sites. Barrett explained how he

talked to a group of Oregon State University 

forestry students down at Pringle Falls every year, 

and it seemed like I always had trouble getting their

attention. How do I wake these guys up? So I found

and destructively sampled a plot that grew about 

120 trees per acre for 50 years, and cut a fifth-acre 

Jim Barrett explained the ponderosa pine spacing study he installed at Pringle Falls Experimental Forest in 1957 and 1958 to many

groups, including these Bureau of Indian Affairs foresters who visited on May 12, 1966. 

Harold Weaver, USDI Bureau of Indian Affairs
Ponderosa Promise: A History of U.S. Forest Service Research in Central Oregon

plot and took those samples. Then I went to another

plot that had 500 trees per acres, and took more 

samples. Then I laid all these breast-high diameter

disks from [plots of] several different densities out 

on a table. And, of course, where I had fewer trees 

[per acre] I had rings that were wide, and as I got 

closer and closer spacing I got narrower and narrower rings and small diameter trees. And I said:

“There it is. Right there. That’s what’s going to happen.” They actually got interested. Lew Roth came 

up to me afterward and said: “My gosh, you finally

reached those guys!” [Barrett 1999].

One show-me trip appeared to Barrett to have had farreaching consequences. As Barrett told it:

Pat [Cochran] overheard [Brooks-Scanolon 

executive Mike] Hollern say one day when we got 

back from a field trip looking at . . . insects and 

disease and mistletoe and root rot and all those 

other things that can happen . . . “I don’t think we 

want to be in this business.” Just like that. My 

gosh, it wasn’t long before he wasn’t! [Barrett 

1999].

Brooks-Scanlon merged with Diamond International 

in June 1980 and ceased to exist as an independent corporation. A subsidiary and successor, Brooks Resources

Corporation, became central Oregon’s leading real estate

developer.

1

Ken Seidel: Upper Slope Mixed-Conifer 

Silviculture

Dr. Ken Seidel joined the Bend Silviculture Laboratory 

research staff in 1969. A forester with a background in

Forest Service research in Kentucky and Missouri and a

Ph.D. degree in tree physiology from the University of

Missouri, he was assigned responsibility for upper slope

mixed-conifer silviculture. That category comprised all the

“interior conifer type” species “that grow at the higher elevations above the ponderosa pine zone” (Seidel 2002).

Seidel’s early work based at the Bend laboratory coincided

with the Experiment Station’s growing realization that

“Management of upper-slope tree species is becoming

increasingly important” and recognition that “regeneration

is a special problem in these high-elevation timber types”

(USDA FS 1975). Seidel spent almost 20 years, until he

retired in 1988, studying natural regeneration of and conducting thinning, growth and yield, and levels-of-growingstock studies among firs, hemlocks, and larches.

The upper slope mixed-conifer forests of eastern Oregon

and Washington are some of the region’s more productive

forests, and additional information on the growth and yield

of managed stands was needed. True firs are an important

component of these forests. In 1970, Seidel began a study

in a 43-year-old, suppressed, even-aged stand of advanced

grand fir and Shasta red fir regeneration on the Lookout

Mountain Unit of the Pringle Falls Experimental Forest to

obtain data on the growth of these species at several spacings and under a progressive thinning regime. After the

61

Dr. Ken Seidel accepted the research problem of upper-slope

mixed-conifer silviculture. This photo was taken at a 1976 open

house at the Bend Silviculture Laboratory. 

1 When asked in August 2004 about Barrett’s recollection, Brooks

Resources Corporation board chairman Mike Hollern replied: “I have no

recollection of saying that, though it is certainly possible. If I said it, it

would have been in jest. Insects, disease, mistletoe, and root rot had no

bearing on our decision to merge with Diamond.” In a June 1999 oral history interview, Pat Cochran confirmed Barrett’s account of the event with

somewhat different details. At the last stop of the show-me trip, Cochran

recalled, “I happened to walk near a group of Brooks-Scanlon people from

Minneapolis . . . talking among themselves, and they said ‘You know,

there’s just a lot of risk in trying to manage these forests.’And shortly

after that, Brooks-Scanlon sold.”
62

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-711

lodgepole pine overstory was killed with herbicides and left

intact to prevent logging damage to and to provide partial

shade for fir seedlings, seedlings and saplings on 16 small

plots were thinned to various spacings. Seedling and

sapling growth responded immediately to removal of the

overstory, increasing to two to three times the 5-year prerelease rate (Seidel 1977b). Ten years later, Seidel reported:

Diameter growth during the second and third 5-year

periods after release increased significantly over 

that of the first 5 years. Differences in spacing had 

no effect on diameter growth during the first 5 

years, but growth at the wider spacings increased 

considerably during the second and third periods.

Increased growth after release suggested that saving

true fir advance reproduction can be a desirable 

option [Youngblood 1995].

These study results provided forest managers an estimate of the growth rates they could expect after suppressed

true fir sapling stands are released from overstory competition and thinned to various spacings. They also helped

foresters decide whether to save advanced reproduction or

to clearcut and plant and, if they decide on the former, to

plan use of logging methods and slash disposal techniques

that minimize damage to the understory.

Because temperature also affects regeneration, Seidel

reported in Northwest Science in 1974 on results of Bend

Silviculture Laboratory “tests to determine the time-freezing relations causing mortality in 1-week-old (unhardened)

and 6-month-old (hardened) grand fir seedlings. . . Seeds

from Pringle Falls Experimental Forest were collected and

germinated, and seedlings were potted and grown in a

greenhouse” (Seidel 1974). Various exposures of these

seedlings, including exposure to freezing temperatures in a

refrigerated growth chamber, showed that “[a]lthough

unhardened seedlings may easily be killed by a combination of temperature and duration of exposure immediately

after germination, lethal temperatures for hardened

seedlings are rarely met in the field” (Youngblood 1995).

In another study of seedling establishment and survival

in grand fir and mountain hemlock, Seidel and R. Cooley

found that mortality of both species was heavy in a shelterwood cut: 71 percent of the fir and 90 percent of the hemlock died. Regeneration success depended on the number 

of trees left in the shelterwood. As stand density increased,

more seedlings of both species were established and survival of fir improved” (USDA FS 1975).

Seidel occasionally studied the genus Pinus. In 1985,

for example, he published the 10-year results of a ponderosa pine-grand fir spacing study on the Lookout Mountain

Unit that yielded data about growth rates in pure and mixed

stands of those species (Seidel 1985b). In 1986, he published results of a study that tested the tolerance of ponderosa pine, Douglas-fir, grand fir, and Engelmann spruce

for high temperatures (Seidel 1986). The results “could be

used with data on soil surface temperature obtained in

regeneration units to better evaluate causes of seed mortality” (Youngblood 1995). In 1989, he published 20-year

“results of a study comparing productivity of pure and

mixed stands of ponderosa and lodgepole pine at 

several spacings” that provided “information on tradeoffs

between diameter growth and volume yields at various

stand densities” (Youngblood 1995).

As did his colleagues, Seidel pursued research projects

throughout eastern Oregon and Washington. His research 

of regeneration after clearcutting and shelterwood cuttings

in upper slope mixed-conifer types took him to national

forests throughout the region.

His survey of clearcuts in mixed-conifer forests of the

Cascade Range and Blue Mountains of eastern Oregon was

“made to obtain an overview of reforestation status and to

identify key environmental factors influencing regeneration

establishment.” Conducted on “plots [that] were randomly

located in clearcuts harvested during the 1953–1973 period” in several plant communities, the survey

showed that, on the average, clearcuts were adequately reforested with a mixture of advance, 

natural, and planted reproduction. Planted ponderosa pine dominated clearcuts at elevations of less 

than 5,300 feet; and at higher elevations in the

Cascades, considerable amounts of true fir and 
Ponderosa Promise: A History of U.S. Forest Service Research in Central Oregon

mountain hemlock advance reproduction were 

present. Seedling establishment was better on more

northerly aspects while increasing amounts of grass

had a negative effect on stocking (Seidel 1979b).

Seidel’s special interest in shelterwood regeneration 

reflected in a 1979 paper.

A survey of shelterwood cuttings in mixed conifer

forests [on randomly-located plots on Deschutes 

and Winema national forest shelterwood units 

harvested during the 1970–1973 period] showed 

that, on the average, shelterwood units were well

stocked with a mixture of advance, natural subsequent, and planted reproduction of a number of

species. Because of slow invasion by understory 

vegetation, frequent heavy seed crops, and adequate

density of the overstory, natural regeneration was 

prolific on most units. Planting was recommended 

only as a supplemental reforestation method. 

Greater stocking was associated with increasing 

overstory density and more exposed mineral soil; 

and such factors as aspect, slope, and elevation 

had a positive or negative relationship to stocking 

depending on the species and plant community 

[Seidel 1979c].

In 1978, Seidel measured a study begun in 1973 on the 

Crescent Ranger District of the Deschutes National Forest

“to obtain information about natural regeneration using the

shelterwood system in an old-growth mixed-conifer stand.

The aim was to determine the effects of several residual

overstory density levels and several slash treatments on

establishment and growth of the regeneration.” He found

that “natural regeneration [comprising about 85 percent true

fir (grand fir and Shasta red fir) and 15 percent ponderosa,

lodgepole, and western white pine] was good to excellent 5

years after shelterwood cutting to three overstory densities.”

He determined “a residual overstory. . .adequate to provide

natural regeneration within a 5-year period” (Seidel 1979a).

Seidel conducted a similar regeneration survey in

mixed-conifer and Douglas-fir shelterwood cuttings on the

Naches Ranger District of the Wenatchee National Forest

and the Mount Adams Ranger District of the Gifford

Pinchot National Forest, respectively, in 1981. This survey

“showed that, on the average,

shelterwood units were adequately stocked with 

a mixture of advance, natural postharvest, and 

planted reproduction of a number of species.

Shelterwood cuttings in the Douglas-fir type had 

abundant regeneration, whereas those in the mixed

conifer type had generally adequate stocking but 

fewer seedlings. Much of the understocking 

appeared to be related to a non-uniform overstory, 

lack of advance reproduction, or high elevation 

(Seidel 1983).

Seidel teamed with other researchers in a study begun 

in 1974 “on the Starkey Experimental Forest and Range in

eastern Oregon . . . about the effects of grass seeding, grazing, and the shelterwood system on natural regeneration and

growth, tree seed production, and seedbed condition in oldgrowth mixed conifer stands.” After 6 years, the study

showed that “natural regeneration was abundant, regardless

of grazing and grass seeding treatments, after shelterwood

cuttings to three overstory densities” (Seidel et al. 1990)

and contributed useful management parameters. 

In 1983, Seidel and S. Conrad Head of Eastern Oregon

State College (now Eastern Oregon University) in La

Grande published results of a survey that

showed that, on the average, partial cuts in the 

grand fir [stands] were well stocked with a mixture 

of advance, natural postharvest, and planted reproduction of a number of species. Partial cuts in the

mixed conifer [stands] had considerably fewer

seedlings; some plots were understocked. Much of 

the understocking appeared to be related to low and

irregular overstory density, lack of advance reproduction, reproduction destroyed by logging, and 

heavy grass cover [Seidel and Head 1983].

Seidel also studied the response of mixed-conifer 

reproduction to release by overstory removal. He began a

study on the Ochoco National Forest in 1974 “to compare

height growth before and after release, to compare diameter

63
64

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-711

and height growth for several periods after release, and to

develop an equation to predict diameter and height growth

after release as a function of variables, such as live crown

ratio, and initial height.” Results published in 1980 indicated that “The best potential crop trees are vigorous advance

reproduction having live crown ratios greater than 50 percent and those with the greatest height growth before

release” (Seidel 1980).

Seidel conducted a similar study in clearcut and 

shelterwood units and uncut stands in upper slope mixedconifer communities on the Deschutes and Winema National

Forests in 1983 and 1984 “to obtain information about the

diameter and height growth response of suppressed advance

reproduction of grand fir, Shasta red fir, and mountain hemlock (Tsuga mertensiana) after release by removal of the

overstory.” This study showed that “Postrelease growth was

greatest in clearcuttings, intermediate in shelterwood cuttings, and slowest in uncut stands.” As in the case of the

previous study, “Vigorous advance reproduction having live

crown ratios greater than 50 percent are the best candidates

for crop trees” (Seidel 1985a).

Teamed with entomologist Boyd Wickman and statistical assistant-technician Lynn Starr, both of the Forestry

Sciences Laboratory in La Grande, Seidel helped survey

“natural regeneration 10 years after severe grand fir mortality caused by an outbreak of Douglas-fir tussock moth

(Orgyia pseudotsugata) . . . in the Wenaha-Tucannon

Wilderness in the Blue Mountains of northeastern Oregon.”

The study concluded that, as a result of “past and present

management regimes for this area, the pattern of gradual

stand dominance by grand fir is the result of natural succession and lack of ground fires. . . . Within a hundred years,”

as a result of “past and present management regimes,” they

predicted that “history will probably repeat itself with a

severe tussock moth outbreak that again reduces the grand

fir component of the stand” (Wickman et al. 1986).

In 1977, Seidel assumed responsibility for a levels-ofgrowing-stock study installed in a 33-year-old even-aged

western larch stand on the Union Ranger District of the

Wallowa-Whitman National Forest “for the purpose of providing basic growth and yield information over a wide

range of stocking levels” (Seidel 1977a). Seidel reported

results after 20 years in 1987 (Seidel 1987) and, after his

retirement, teamed with Pat Cochran to report results after

30 years in 1999 (see pages 75–76).

Bob Martin and Joan Landsberg: Fire and 

Silviculture

Dr. Bob Martin was a University of Michigan forester with 

an uncommon academic and research background in—and

passion for—fire ecology. As the Forest Service’s fire policy changed from fire control to fire management, he spent 

7 1/2 years between 1975 and 1982 at the Bend Silviculture

Laboratory focused on the job Experiment Station Director

Bob Buckman sent him to do: “start prescribed burning

research” (Steen 1994). He also replaced soon-to-retire Walt

Dahms as project leader.

As a graduate student, Martin had worked for the

Forest Service at its Southeastern Forest Experiment

Station’s Southern Fire Laboratory in Macon, Georgia,

“where I picked up my skills in prescribed burning.”

Between earning a Ph.D. at Ann Arbor in 1963 and arriving

in Bend in 1975, he had taught wood technology and fire

management at Virginia Polytechnic Institute. After he

“found that wood technology was not as exciting as fire,”

Martin moved to Seattle where he trained fire researchers 

in a cooperative Forest Service unit at the University of

Washington for 4 years.

Martin’s approach to fire ecology research and to “getting prescribed burning going” in central Oregon reflected

his college teaching background minus its “publish or 

perish” syndrome: As he explained it:

I told [the Experiment Station] in Portland, if you 

want me to help people do prescribed burning, I’m 

not going to get a lot of research publications out,

because we’ll be teaching people to do burning, 

and they’ll come up with questions, and we’ll try 

to answer those. . . . But, to start with, if they wanted

prescribed burning, I’d be short on publications. 

That’s what I did, and they bought it. So we did a 

lot of teaching. In fact, I had a lot more contact 

hours teaching [prescribed burning at the Bend
Ponderosa Promise: A History of U.S. Forest Service Research in Central Oregon

Silviculture Laboratory and Pringle Falls 

Experimental Forest] than when I was at the 

university.

Martin had teamed with John Dell, the fuels manager 

for the Pacific Northwest Region who shared his interest,

and “we started with a bunch of prescribed burning workshops,” he recalled in 2000.

We were running one or two a year. I preferred to

run them [in Bend rather than in Portland], because 

at Pringle Falls [Experimental Forest] and on the

Deschutes [National Forest] we could go from permanent snowfields to desert within thirty miles. 

Every time we had workshops, which were all 

hands-on workshops, we introduced people to fire 

ecology and prescribed burning one day, took them 

out and gave them a demonstration burn the next 

day, came back in the classroom the next couple 

days, had them plan some burns. We already had 

prescriptions for them, but we’d go through the

motions of having them plan burns, and then we’d 

have everybody out there on prescribed burns at 

the end of the week.

“I preferred to do it here,” he reiterated, emphasizing 

the value of central Oregon research facilities, “because we

would always have some high-elevation, medium-elevation,

and some very dry understory burn plots available. When

we tried to do it elsewhere, usually they’d set up one set 

of plots and if it were too wet or too dry you couldn’t do 

a good burn. . . . Either you’d do too much damage or it

wouldn’t burn well” (Martin 2000).

Prescribed burning on national forest lands east of the

Cascade Range caught on and took off during those years.

The first year I was at Bend, I could find only 

about four or five hundred acres of prescribed understory burning or range burning in eastern Oregon

and Washington. Just wasn’t that much. For the first

couple years [of prescribed burning workshops], I

could keep track of how much was done and where 

it was done, and then I couldn’t keep track. I 

thought, well, we’re accomplishing our goal, 

people are using so much of it I can’t keep track of 

it. I think the last year I was [in Bend] there was 

somewhere between fifty thousand and one hundred

thousand acres of understory burned. So, from 1975 

to 1982, we got maybe a hundredfold increase in 

the amount of prescribed burning being done” 

[Martin 2000].

Buckman was pleased with Martin’s work. “He had 

a special talent for that work,” he told historian Harold K.

“Pete” Steen in 1992, “and as a result of that research I am

told that eastside Region 6 is burning as much as fifty to

sixty thousand acres a year. I think it was the research program . . . in Bend . . . which had a lot to do with the legitimacy of fire research in eastern Oregon” (Steen 1994).

Martin’s teaching of prescribed burning research was

not limited to workshops. While in Bend, for example, he

initiated and encouraged Oregon State University graduate

student Joyce Bork’s research of fire history in ponderosa

pine forests in central Oregon intended “to determine the

historic fire return intervals” and “provide reliable data to

guide foresters in managing” those forests. This research,

conducted on sites of high, intermediate, and low precipitation on Lookout Mountain and Pringle Butte within the

Pringle Falls Experimental Forest and near Cabin Lake on

the Fort Rock Ranger District of the Deschutes National

Forest, respectively, culminated in Bork’s 1984 Ph.D. dissertation (Bork 1984). Bork’s basic conclusions supported

prescribed burning in ponderosa pine forests:

Whatever the historic frequency of fire was, 

there is no doubt that it is important to the ponderosa pine forests of eastern Oregon. The new fire

management policies must consider the introduction of remedial fires to reduce fuel and danger of 

catastrophic wildfires. Then decisions can be made 

to introduce fire at a return interval that best fits 

forest management goals [Bork 1984].

In the case of the Pringle Falls Experimental Forest, 

Bork found that fire exclusion had increased the danger of

destructive wildfires through excessive fuel buildup even as

it had stagnated growth in formerly productive stands. “A

65
66

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-711

wildfire at Pringle Butte with the . . . fuel load . . . accumulated since the late 1890s,” she emphasized, “could be 

catastrophic” (Bork 1984). In 1985, Bork submitted a fire

management plan for the 600-acre, ponderosa pine-dominated eastern block of the research natural area on the

Pringle Falls Experimental Forest, and recommended similar plans for appropriate ecosystems within central

Oregon’s congressionally designated wildernesses (Bork

1985).

Jimmy Lee Reaves, an Atlanta University graduate 

student and Forest Service trainee assigned to the Bend

Silviculture Laboratory during Martin’s tenure, researched

the relationship between prescribed fire and the root fungus

Armillaria mellea on the Pringle Falls Experimental Forest.

The results of his field and laboratory studies were presented in his 1985 doctoral dissertation (Reaves 1985). Results

of a subsequent study led by Reaves suggested that judicious use of fire could play a role in controlling Armillaria

root disease in ponderosa pine forests (Reaves et al. 1990).

In addition to foresters and graduate students, Martin

taught the public to accept prescribed burning. Indeed, as

soil scientist and colleague Pat Cochran put it, “Bob came

here as an evangelist for prescribed burning” (Cochran

1999). Martin, as did Berntsen and Dahms before him,

interested the local press in spreading the word. A feature

article in Bend’s daily newspaper, for example, interpreted

Martin’s experimental burns at Pringle Falls Experimental

Forest in terms of fire’s safety and silvicultural benefits.

The article got the readers’ attention with an explanation 

of how Martin’s research “eventually may help lessen the

destruction caused by raging wildfires in eastern Oregon

and Washington.”

“In the past we’ve deliberately protected our forests

[from fire], and fuels have built up,” said Dave

Frewing, a Forest Service technician. “It’s becoming more difficult to control wildfires.”

By deliberately burning at times when the fire 

is not likely to run out of control, the amount of 

undergrowth and dead wood can be reduced without

killing many healthy trees. That means when a fire

starts accidentally, there is less to keep it going.

The key is determining when a fire will burn 

hot enough to maintain itself, but not hot enough to 

kill adult trees. The right combination of conditions, 

or “prescription” as it is called by researchers, varies

for each area. Only through a series of experimental

burns under a wide range of conditions can the 

proper prescription be determined [Boyer n.d.].

After reviewing the scientific monitoring and measurements involved in such experimental burns, the article summarized the other benefits of prescribed burning.

Lowering the potential for destructive wildfires 

is far from the only benefit of prescribed burning, 

said Bob Martin. . . . Regular occurrences of fire, 

which used to happen naturally, appear to control 

some types of diseases or parasites such as dwarf

mistletoe. . . .

Fires can help control damage by insects. . . . 

In many instances, the insects are attracted to forest 

areas where there is a large amount of dead or 

downed timber. When that is cleared by fire, the 

insects are less likely to appear.

Fire can conduct a natural thinning operation 

as well. It removes young trees and undergrowth 

which would otherwise take nutrients from the soil.

Those nutrients become available to the more 

mature trees, allowing them to grow faster for 

commercial harvest.

“We have stands of trees that stagnated,” 

Martin said. “Natural fires used to thin these stands 

and that’s where we got these beautiful stands of 

ponderosa pine” [Boyer, n.d.].

Almost a decade after Martin left the Bend Silviculture 

Laboratory to teach at the University of California, a combination of mechanical thinning and prescribed burning 

was used to mimic the natural fires responsible for those

“beautiful stands of ponderosa pine” on a Pringle Falls

Experimental Forest demonstration plot. Reporter Tim

Preso explained this use of fire to the public in a 1990 

article in The Bulletin on “Re-creating a forest” of “the

open, park-like character that the first frontiersman 

found.
Ponderosa Promise: A History of U.S. Forest Service Research in Central Oregon

This “turn-of-the-century” forest . . . will give visitors 

a taste of the Central Oregon landscape of the 

1800s, according to Dave Frewing, operations 

manager for the experimental forest. . . .

On this 173-acre section of the experimental 

forest about 25 miles southwest of Bend, the Forest

Service is re-creating the look of the natural forest 

by clearing young lodgepole and ponderosa pines 

that have grown up under . . . the taller old-growth 

pines, most of which are 200 to 350 years old.

The smaller trees grew up amid the pine stands

here because naturally occurring forest fires, which

once swept through the pine forests every eight to 

10 years, have been suppressed by man. The natural

fires killed off brush, small plants and young seedlings, but never burned hot enough to reach the lofty

crowns of the old-growth pines.

To mimic the effects of natural fires, the Forest

Service plans to set small ground fires in the “turn-ofthe-century” forest every eight years, beginning in the

late 1990s [Preso 1990b].

This has been done, and the role of fire in ponderosa 

pine stands is interpreted for Deschutes National Forest 

visitors at a convenient pull-out on Forest Road 43. The

need for such a public demonstration is found in an anecdote Frewing told about “the time his four-year-old son had

to tell his nursery school class what daddy did for a living.”

There were a couple of other Forest Service kids in 

the class, and they said “My daddy puts out forest

fires.” 

They came around to my kid and he said, 

“My daddy starts fires.” That teacher sure had a lot 

of questions about what I really did [Boyer, n.d.].

Since that time, prescribed burning has become an 

accepted and standard forest management practice and a

key to restoring and maintaining forest health.

Martin’s publications during his Bend Silviculture

Laboratory years both consolidated fire ecology and prescribed burning knowledge and reported the results of prescribed burning research at Pringle Falls Experimental

Forest and elsewhere east of the Cascades. A regular participant in the annual fire ecology conferences organized by

the Tall Timbers Research Station, a private Florida laboratory, held from 1962 to 1975 (Pyne 1982), Martin was 

senior author of a paper in the proceedings of the 1975 

conference (Martin et al. 1976). Several more papers on

prescribed fire and fuel loads were authored by Bend laboratory scientists and others in the next 5 or 6 years (Martin

and Dell 1978, Martin and Mitchell 1980, Martin et al.

1979). In 1981, Martin and Bend Silviculture Laboratory

technicians Frewing and James L. McClanahan published

“data on shrub fuel loads from several locations in Oregon

67

This interpretive sign at the Pringle Falls Experimental Forest explains the role of fire in ponderosa pine forests; stands near the sign show

the three types of forest described.

Les Joslin

Les Joslin
68

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-711

and northern California, including [the] Pringle Falls

Experimental Forest” (Youngblood 1995), in an Experiment

Station research note intended to “serve as an interim tool

to estimate fuel loads . . . until more exacting data are compiled and analyzed” (Martin et al. 1981). 

Martin’s first 1982 publication reported the results of

what he termed “our biggest experiment” conducted “on the

Lookout Mountain Unit of the Pringle Falls Experimental

Forest” to study “the effects of prescribed burning for shrub

control before timber harvesting” (Martin 2000). His second publication that year reviewed “literature relating fire

return intervals to fire severity and effect on successional

stage for various North American forest types,” in which 

he noted that the “Pringle Falls Experimental Forest has a

short fire-return interval” (Youngblood 1995). In two papers

published in the same general technical report, he summarized Pringle Falls Experimental Forest research on antelope bitterbrush regeneration and reestablishment after fire

(Martin 1983, Martin and Driver 1983).

Martin advised national forest managers on prescribed burning. When the Winema National Forest, 

for example, was “doing a first burn in ponderosa 

pine-bitterbrush types . . . and must have had 80 

people out there . . . and had to burn very slowly 

because conditions were so dry,” he advised a 

different tack. “I told them they shouldn’t be doing 

it that way. They were doing an awful lot of damage 

to the stand. They should be going out under very 

moderate conditions, skim off the surface, knock 

those fuels down, and then burn again. They said,

‘Well, we can’t afford to burn twice.’ I said, ‘Well,

you’re spending a lot more money burning once 

and doing a lot more damage to the stand than if 

you did it the other way. You wouldn’t need 40 or 

80 people. You’d do it with six or eight people’”

[Martin 2000].

Martin also conducted prescribed burns off the National

Forest System. He started the prescribed burning program

on the Lava Beds National Monument in northeastern

California in 1973, while still at the University of

Washington, and continued after moving to the Bend

Silviculture Laboratory. Two lightning fires that year, one

near the monument headquarters, had proved the need. “It

was the only place I got to burn big units,” he remembered.

“The biggest one was about 1,600 acres. . . . At the costs

we were burning for, we could have burned the whole

46,000 acres [of the national monument] for the cost of

fighting those two [1973] wildfires [that totaled 900 acres]

on one day and still have had $10,000 to handle escapes.

They have a good program going there now” (Martin

2000).

Martin started Joan Landsberg on the research that 

was a logical extension of the prescribed burning she had

worked on with him. “My first big effort at the Lab was to

[co-write with soil scientist Pat Cochran] the study plan for

a project to determine the effects of prescribed fire on ponderosa pine lands,” Landsberg recalled. The effects of fire

on growth and yield in thinned stands of ponderosa pine

were emphasized. The specific goal of this study reflected

what Landsberg called “Bob Martin’s charge . . . to introduce prescribed fire east of the Cascades.”

In order to do this with the national forests and 

ranger districts, [we had to answer their questions]:

“Well, what’s going to happen to tree growth, to 

regeneration? Aren’t you going to burn up the nitrogen? What’s going to happen to the nitrogen-fixers, 

the ceanothus and the bitterbrush?” These were 

questions that, as a research organization, we needed to answer as part of the package of introducing 

prescribed fire [Landsberg 2002].

“We started out [in 1979] with a site at Lava Butte, in 

an even-aged, second-growth ponderosa pine stand” about

8 miles south of Bend on the Deschutes National Forest.

“We put in study plots” that allowed for “a control, a moderate fuel consumption burn, and a high fuel consumption

burn.” The moderate and high fuel consumption burns were

obtained “by burning at different moisture levels. When the

moisture level was higher, we’d get less consumption, and
Ponderosa Promise: A History of U.S. Forest Service Research in Central Oregon

that created our moderate fuel consumption burn. Three

weeks later, lower moisture level, lower humidity, and we

got what we called our high fuel consumption burn.”

Bend Silviculture Laboratory scientists and technicians

conducted the underburns at the Lava Butte site themselves.

Landsberg described one of her early field study experiences.

I was working with Bob Martin, Pat Cochran,

Dave Frewing, Dick Newman, and Lee Barker at 

Lava Butte. It was my very first experience on a 

prescribed fire. Since I was very new at this, my 

job was to walk the perimeter of the four- to six- to

twelve-acre plots being burned. We would light off 

at four or five o’clock in the afternoon as the 

humidity started to rise so we would burn into the 

rising humidity . . . into conditions that would make 

[the burn] easier to control. I got to the far side of 

one unit about one-thirty in the morning, and looking across the unit . . . into the forest where there 

were no plots and no burns . . . was a spot fire! I 

was the new person on the block. I used good 

reason and decided, instead of going out there alone

with a headlamp and a shovel, I would go back to 

let Bob and the others know. So I went back, not 

around the fire line but straight through the unit, 

barking my shins on just about everything I could 

find, found Bob, and said, “Bob, there’s a spot fire 

over . . .” while pointing to where the moon was 

coming up! I was told it was not the first “lunar 

phenomenon” reported as a fire, and it didn’t take 

any control work at all [Landsberg 2002].

Bend Silviculture Laboratory personnel who worked on

prescribed burns were sent to the Deschutes National Forest

fire guard school for safety education. In 1982, Landsberg

and two temporary employees, forester Paul Flanagan and

physical science technician Michelle Penner (Finck), won

the rotating “Guard School Champs” trophy for earning the

three highest grades at the school (USDA FS 1982a).

Four years into the study, Landsberg and her colleagues

could report they had “quantified the growth response of

thinned stands of Pinus ponderosa . . . to prescribed underburning in the interior Northwestern United States.” In

addition to reporting on tree growth response and tree mortality, they reported “the fuel loads, burning conditions, and

fire behavior for the prescribed underburns . . . because fire

effects need to be understood in the context of the fires that

produced them and because of their importance to fire 

managers.”

When the underburns at the Lava Butte study site

resulted in “unexpected reductions in tree growth . . . , 

the research was expanded to three additional sites” on 

the Deschutes, Ochoco, and Mount Hood National Forests

“where operational underburns were prescribed and conducted by personnel from the national forests.” Research on

the four sites, across a range of conditions, would produce

more useful results.

Fuel loading, burning conditions, and fire behavior

were documented so the conditions that produced 

69

In 1982, Bend Silviculture Laboratory staff members Paul

Flanagan, Michelle Penner (Finck) and Joan Landsberg, who

worked on prescribed burns for research projects, won the rotating

trophy for the highest grades earned at the Deschutes National

Forest fire guard school. 
70

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-711

any growth changes would be known. Post burn 

observation periods ranged from 4 to 12 years. At 

all four sites, we asked the question: Are growth 

rates of trees the same on underburned plots as on 

plots that have not been underburned? On [the 

Lava Butte] site we also asked: Are the growth 

rates of ponderosa pine the same on plots with 

moderate fuel consumption as on plots with high 

fuel consumption?

Landsberg and her colleagues sought answers to these 

questions “because prescribed underburning [was] being

recommended for expanded use in the silvicultural management of forests in the interior northwestern United States”

(Landsberg et al. 1984).

But people and nature intervened to limit Landsberg’s

development of complete answers to many of these questions. Nature dealt the first major blow to tree growth measurements with two insect epidemics. After discovering at

the Lava Butte site that underburning temporarily slowed

tree growth, “we had hoped to continue monitoring tree

growth until the growth rate of the burned areas . . . again

[became] the same growth rate as [that of] the controls,”

Landsberg explained. “We wanted to find out how many

years that would take. But the Lava Butte plot where we

had the longest history had the pandora moth epidemic, and

that blew our long-term measurements.” At about the same

time, on the Ochoco National Forest site, a mixed stand of

Douglas-fir and ponderosa pine, a western spruce budworm

infestation that resulted in “negative tree growth” among

Douglas-fir cost the researchers their ability to determine

height growth.

In 1986, as the study progressed, Landsberg succeeded

Deeming as Bend Silviculture Laboratory project leader

and, in addition to administrative duties, was immersed in

the protracted struggle to secure funds to keep the facility

open. On top of that, work on a doctoral dissertation associated with the prescribed burning project, as well as other

research projects, consumed her time, and illness slowed

her pace. In 1992, upon completion of her Ph.D. program,

she was transferred to the Forestry Sciences Laboratory in

Wenatchee, Washington. “We could have continued monitoring [the remaining two prescribed burning sites] had the

Silviculture Lab not been closed,” Landsberg observed.

“We didn’t get to the answer on tree growth, because

we didn’t get to that point where tree growth resumed the

same rate in the burned units as in the controls,” Landsberg

said of the study in 2002.

We were about 4 years away from it, or maybe 8.

Those 4 and 8 years have passed. But we could still 

get the information by going back. We know the 

dates they were burned, the conditions under which

they were burned, their growth rates for 4 years 

at one location and 8 years at the other location, 

and we could find out what they’re doing now.

Have those growth rates closed? Are they the same? 

If they are the same, we [could] tell forest managers

and fire managers that [if they conducted a prescribed burn] under these circumstances, [they] 

probably would encounter growth reductions of a 

certain percentage [that would] last for a certain 

number of years. Right now, we can tell them that 

in the first few years of a moderate-fuel consumption burn [they can expect] a 14-percent growth 

reduction, but we can’t tell them how long it will 

last [Landsberg 2002].

Martin and Landsberg published some of the findings 

of this project in research papers, and these findings

informed her 1992 Ph.D. dissertation (Landsberg 1992).

These works informed such subsequent studies as those

reported in Ronald W. Shea’s and J. Boone Kaufmann’s

report completed for the Research Station in 1993 (Shea

and Kauffman 1993). As recently as 2002, Landsberg

expressed the opinion that the widespread prescribed burning common east of the Cascade Range was being done

“for hazard reduction [without] knowing the full outcome.”

Completing this unfinished study, for which she then saw 

a 3- to 5-year window of opportunity, would provide some

“very significant results. . . . But there is no funding”

(Landsberg 2002).
Ponderosa Promise: A History of U.S. Forest Service Research in Central Oregon

Pat Cochran: Soils and Silviculture

Dr. Pat Cochran arrived at the Bend Silviculture Laboratory 

in July 1967 from a teaching and research position at the

New York State University College of Forestry at Syracuse.

“It was a good job, but I didn’t like living there. After about

18 months, a job came up [at the Bend laboratory], so I

applied for it and got it” (Cochran 1999). Appointed as a

soil scientist, Cochran was assigned to research “the soil

phases of reforestation and timber development problems,

with emphasis on interior conifers—especially ponderosa

pine and lodgepole pine” (USDA FS 1967a). His preparation for the job included a B.S. in forest management from

Iowa State University in 1959 followed, after U.S. Army

service, by M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in soils earned at

Oregon State University. The interest “in heat and moisture

transfer in pumice soils and how they affect tree growth” he

developed in Corvallis proved useful in his new assignment

(Cochran 1999).

Cochran was no stranger to central Oregon, having

worked three summers for the Deschutes Research Center

on the Pringle Falls Experimental Forest as a field assistant.

In the summer of 1961, his work also included collecting

seeds of the local thinleaf alder in Bend for use in experimental plantings in Japan (Bend Bulletin 1961b). He and

his family spent the summers of 1962 and 1963 living in

“the cottage” at the experimental forest compound. “The

pavement ended right there by the driveway [into the compound],” Cochran reminisced in 1999, “and people would

pull in there and ask for maps and directions. So we went

down to the Deschutes National Forest supervisor’s office

and got a bunch of maps, and my wife would hand them

out. They were just so grateful to get those maps” (Cochran

1999).

Cochran’s early experiences at the experimental forest

and the laboratory convinced him of the value of the longterm studies he and his colleagues pursued throughout their

careers and into their retirements.

I first went to work [at the experimental forest in 

1961 when] Jim Barrett had just [installed] the 

Pringle Falls spacing study. There were a lot of 

[visits] by people from Washington, D.C. [over 

the years], and they were all very impressed with 

the study. And we found out a lot of really interesting things with the study. I think the primary 

thing [this study showed about] the value of longterm studies was that, during the first 20 years of 

the study, the plots without understory vegetation 

grew more . . . , and during the last 15 years, the 

growth rates of the plots with understory were 

superior. There’d been a change in soil quality. . . . 

So the results of the study were eventually 

reversed with time. And that was really important

[Cochran 1999].

The need to understand those changes over time and 

what they meant to forest growth and yield drove Cochran’s

research.

This research began with the soil. Following in the

footsteps of Munger, Experiment Station soil scientist

Tarrant, and Oregon State University soils professor

Youngberg, Cochran studied relationships between drainage

and temperature on tree regeneration and growth. In 1967,

71

Dr. Pat Cochran’s career at the Bend Silviculture Laboratory

evolved from soil scientist to silviculturist. Cochran (center),

flanked by forestry technicians Dick Newman (left) and Larry

Carpenter (right), was a familiar researcher in central Oregon

national forests.

Mark Reid
72

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-711

he was senior author of a paper that held “regeneration of

many logged-over areas may depend more upon thermal

properties of the seedbed . . . than on any other factor”

since “the probability and extent of seedling injury by heat

or frost depend upon the temperature variations at the soil 

surface and in the air layer surrounding the seedlings”

(Cochran et al. 1967). In a 1969 paper, Cochran reported

that the size and shape of lodgepole pine clearcuts affects

minimum temperatures near the soil surface. He had found

that “circular openings provided more protection against

low soil-surface temperatures” that could damage or kill

seedlings “than did long strips with the same width” and

that “strip clearcuts should not be wider than twice the

height of the residual stand” (Cochran 1969a in Youngblood

1995). There, early in his career, were practical research

results forest managers could use.

They could also benefit from his 1970 “review and

synthesis of current literature and personal observations

relating to successful direct seeding of ponderosa pine” in

the proceedings of a 1969 Oregon State University symposium on ponderosa pine regeneration. After covering factors

affecting seeding success, Cochran presented several biological and financial advantages of direct seeding over

planting of seedlings. The seedlings are established in place

and not subject to the root injury and shock associated with

transplanting. Reforestation is not tied to nursery production schedules. Seeding requires low investment in equipment and facilities, generally costs less per acre than

planting, and can be done on rocky or inaccessible sites

where planting is not practical (Cochran 1970).

In 1972, Cochran published the results of his Bend

Silviculture Laboratory greenhouse studies on how temperature and soil fertility affect lodgepole pine and ponderosa

pine seedling growth in Forest Science and on the tolerance

of lodgepole pine and ponderosa pine seeds and seedlings

to high water tables in Northwest Science. In the first, he

studied the growth of lodgepole and ponderosa pine

seedlings, germinated from seed collected at the Pringle

Falls Experimental Forest, under nine temperature regimes

and four levels of soil fertility to increase understanding of

the growth rates of the two species in south-central Oregon.

He found that fertilization increased growth of both species

under all nine temperature regimes, and that lodgepole pine

growth was not as sensitive to night temperature fluctuations as was ponderosa pine growth (Cochran 1972). In the

second, he studied the “effects of high soil water levels on

seed germination, seedling survival, and early growth” of

lodgepole and ponderosa pine, using seed and soil taken

from the Pringle Falls Experimental Forest. He found that

seed and seedlings of both species “had high tolerance to

very wet soils and low oxygen diffusion rates,” that “high

soil water levels did not cause significant mortality of either

species,” and that “growth of both species tended to be

lower with high soil water levels” (Youngblood 1995).

In 1973, Cochran published the results of several studies of natural regeneration of lodgepole pine in the Pringle

Butte Unit of the Pringle Falls Experimental Forest combined with additional observations made in the field and

laboratory (Cochran 1973a). In these studies, “lodgepole

pine seed was sown and protected from small mammals in

seed beds in the fall of 1969, 1970, and 1971. Subsequent

germination, growth, and mortality were monitored. Seedling mortality was attributed to exposure to low night 

temperature, drought and heat injury, and frost heaving.”

Cochran described “the sequence of events necessary for

establishment of lodgepole pine” in terms of a variety of

factors (Youngblood 1995). In a related 1973 article,

Cochran and Berntsen reported findings from their study 

of lodgepole and ponderosa pine seedling tolerance of low

night temperatures (Cochran and Berntsen 1973). Growth

chambers and other Bend Silviculture Laboratory facilities

made such studies possible.

Cochran’s early impression “that fertilizer wouldn’t do

much [to stimulate tree growth in central Oregon forests]

because it was so dry” didn’t hold up when his studies at

Pringle Falls Experimental Forest and elsewhere proved

“fertilizer did cause significant increases in growth [in]

ponderosa and lodgepole pine and white fir” (Cochran

1999). He knew, though, that Tarrant and Silen in 1963

(USDA FS 1963b) and Youngberg in 1969 (Youngblood
Ponderosa Promise: A History of U.S. Forest Service Research in Central Oregon

1969) had reported mixed but promising results from ponderosa pine fertilization studies at the experimental forest

and elsewhere east of the Cascades.

In 1969, Cochran set out “to determine the response 

of height and diameter growth to fertilization for small 

saw-log and pole-sized ponderosa pine in thinned stands”

on the Pringle Falls Experimental Forest, on the Deschutes

National Forest east and west of the experimental forest,

and in the Sumpter Valley of northeastern Oregon. Four

years after fertilization, he reported increases in diameter,

height, and volume growth that indicated the need for 

“further study to determine the amounts and kinds of elements necessary to produce maximum response and [to

determine] the duration of those responses.” He emphasized

that “the responses were in connection with thinning, a

proven tool for producing more usable wood,” and that

“considerable work [was] necessary before the use of fertilizers in standard pine management [could] be evaluated”

(Cochran 1973b). Cochran continued this work. At the 8-

year point, he reported diameter and volume growth continued to respond to fertilization, but that height growth did

not. He also reported that “removal of bitterbrush in one

study area decreased volume growth in the seventh and

eighth growing seasons,” apparently because it “stimulated

fescue growth, increasing water and nutrient competition.”

This study showed that foresters could expect “significant

responses . . . to fertilization in thinned stands of pines . . .

for at least 4 years and possibly more than 8 years on some

sites,” and allowed Cochran to make “tentative recommendations” to “land managers wishing to fertilize thinned ponderosa pine stands” (Cochran 1977). He later did not

recommend “fertilization without thinning. . .since much of

the increased growth may be by trees that will never reach

marketable size” (Cochran 1979a).

In a related study, Cochran asked the question: “How

fast will thinned ponderosa pine stands grow when fertilized repeatedly?” Answering this question, he wrote,

“becomes increasingly important as the land base available

for intensive timber management continues to shrink while

rising energy costs escalate prices of fertilization and other

stand treatments.” Application of “moderate amounts of fertilizer at 5-year intervals to plots in a ponderosa pine stand

[about 20 miles south of Bend and representative of large

areas on the Deschutes National Forest] that had been precommercially thinned” provided at least a preliminary

answer. Comparisons of “the fertilized and unfertilized

treatments for the first 5-year period after initial application” showed growth rates [of height, basal area, volume,

and bole] “were increased more than 50 percent by applications of nitrogen, phosphorus, and sulfur” (Cochran 1979a).

In yet another study, Cochran, Newman, and Barrett

investigated the effects of fertilization and spacing on 

the growth of ponderosa pine seedlings planted in the

absence of competing shrubs. The study at Pringle Falls

Experimental Forest began in 1966 when ponderosa pine

seedlings were planted at 9- by 9-, 12- by 12-, 15- by 15-,

and 18- by 18-foot spacings in auger holes in which fertilizer had been placed. Common understory shrubs had been

removed and were controlled by herbicide applications.

Tree heights were measured annually from 1967 to 1973,

and heights and diameters at breast height were measured in

1974, 1980, and 1984. In 1991, Cochran and his colleagues

reported that

fertilizer placed in the planting hole increased 

height growth . . . early in the life of the plantation. 

Later broadcast applications of fertilizer may have 

had little effect on growth. Wider spacings produced

larger trees but less volume [of usable wood] per 

acre than narrower spacings after average tree height

exceeded 7 feet. Fertilization produced larger trees 

and more volume per acre at each spacing [Cochran 

et al. 1991].

These results suggested that “fertilization at the time of

planting should be investigated further” and that

experiments . . . to determine the influence of 

different. . .commercial fertilizers . . . with and 

without the influence of competing vegetation 

need to be initiated. For now, practicing foresters 

can expect [fertilizer] as used in this study . . . 

will directly increase the growth rates of planted 

73
74

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-711

ponderosa pine in the pumice soil region of southcentral Oregon for at least six growing seasons and

indirectly for much longer where competing vegetation is not a problem [Cochran et al. 1991].

In an earlier study of soil effects on tree growth 

conducted on the Sisters Ranger District, Cochran and

Deschutes National Forest soil scientist Terry Brock found

that soil compaction during logging and related operations

reduced height growth of ponderosa pine seedling planted

to reforest central Oregon clearcuts. They proposed an additional study “to test the effect of tillage of compacted areas

on growth rates” (Cochran and Brock 1985).

As time passed and scientists retired, Cochran’s career

at the Bend Silviculture Laboratory evolved from that of a

soil scientist to that of a silviculturist. As he put it:

Walt Dahms was the first to retire [in 1976], so I 

took over his lodgepole pine studies. And then Jim

Barrett was the second to retire [in 1982], so I took

over his ponderosa pine studies. And when Ken 

Seidel retired [in 1988], I took over his larch studies.

When someone retired, I got his stuff, see! So my 

work sort of shifted from soils into growth and 

yield of these various timber types east of the 

Cascades [Cochran 1999].

And so it happened that Cochran inherited a small 

empire of study plots at Pringle Falls Experimental Forest

and throughout eastern Oregon and Washington, along with

the research responsibilities that went with them. He wound

up writing studies with these retired colleagues as well as

others still on the job.

Cochran had begun his shift from soils to silviculture

in the latter half of the 1970s. “When the Forest Service on

the east side started cutting the mixed conifer types, there

were no data on growth,” Martin said in 2000. “So I got Pat

to take the study on. And we said ‘Well, it’s going to take

us 5 years to do a quick and dirty study on growth’ . . . by

taking sections of trees at different ages on different sites

and pasting it together. . . . That is not really the way you

should do it, but we didn’t have the time. I think he did that

study in 3 or 4 years” (Martin 2000). Cochran’s effort

resulted in publication in 1979 of Site Index and Height

Growth Curves for Managed, Even-Aged Stands of White

and Grand Fir East of the Cascades in Oregon and

Washington constructed from stem analysis data collected

from 8 plots in Washington and 26 plots in Oregon

(Cochran 1979b).

Cochran’s greatest contribution to silviculture east of

the Cascade Range probably was the work on stand density

index (SDI) and the implications of managing various

species outside certain ranges of SDI that he reported in

Stocking Levels and Underlying Assumptions for UnevenAged Ponderosa Pine Stands (Cochran 1992) and that he

and others concluded in Suggested Stocking Levels for

Forest Stands in Northeastern Oregon and Southeastern

Washington (Cochran et al. 1994). As Youngblood observed:

This work ties together much of the earlier mensurational effort on growth and yield with later work 

on disturbance effects and the role of thinning and

spacing, and probably represents the most significant impact on management of east-side Oregon 

and Washington ponderosa pine and Douglas-fir 

of any research theme at the Bend Silviculture 

Laboratory [Youngblood 2004].

To produce the latter publication, Cochran led an informal team of Research Station and Pacific Northwest Region

scientists formed to implement existing science and stimulate applied research. Using existing information, this team

“devised a method for estimating the upper stocking limits

for managed stands of various species and species mixes in

different plant associations” in northeastern Oregon and

southeastern Washington (Cochran et al. 1994).

The effects of fire on forests and their productivity are

a pervasive issue for many forest scientists. As reported in 

a 1990 paper by the same name, Cochran teamed with Area

IV Ecologist Bill Hopkins to ask and attempt to answer the

question “Does fire exclusion increase productivity of ponderosa pine?” Although comparison of yield data for “oldgrowth stands [that] had frequent, light ground fires” with
Ponderosa Promise: A History of U.S. Forest Service Research in Central Oregon

data for “second-growth stands [that] had not been subjected to fire” produced inconclusive results, Cochran and

Hopkins concluded that “Continued long-term investigations of the influence of prescribed burning on productivity . . . are necessary. These investigations should include

the study of growth rates after fall and spring burns along

with the processes that may be influenced by burning”

(Cochran and Hopkins 1991).

After he retired in 1996, Cochran affiliated with the

University of Idaho to write a series of research papers that

wrapped up several of the long-term studies he and his colleagues had pursued for decades. “I was the logical person

to get the job,” he reasoned 3 years later. “I agreed to write

nine papers, but I combined two of them into one, so I

wrote eight papers” (Cochran 1999).

Two of these papers put a couple of Dahms’ lodgepole

pine studies to bed. Closest to home, the first reported

results of the two levels-of-growing-stock studies Dahms

initiated on the Deschutes National Forest near the Twin

Lakes in 1959 and Snow Creek in 1962. These studies

addressed measures to improve the health and productivity

of natural lodgepole pine stands that, left unmanaged, tend

to stagnate, die of natural causes or as victims of mountain

pine beetle outbreaks, and create a fire hazard. Both demonstrated that “early spacing control coupled with later commercial thinnings should reduce mortality considerably”

and “allow most of the wood produced to be captured by

merchantable trees” (Cochran and Dahms 2000). The 

second reported:

the 27-year responses of growth, mortality, and 

crown cover to five spacings imposed on a natural

lodgepole pine stand 4 years after establishment. . . .

Simulation to a breast high [sic] age of 100 years 

indicated the most merchantable cubic volume was

produced at the 6-foot spacing but that the 12-, 15-,

and 18-foot spacings produced about the same 

board-foot volume” [Cochran and Dahms 1998].

Three more research papers continued Barrett’s ponderosa pine studies, two conducted on the Pringle Falls

Experimental Forest and one on Washington State 

Department of Fish and Wildlife land in northern

Washington. The first, published in 1999, reported the 30-

year results of Barrett’s effort to determine the optimum

growing-stock level in even-aged ponderosa pine on the

Lookout Mountain Unit. The paper noted that growth

decreased with increasing stand density, bark beetles were

the primary cause of mortality, and no mortality occurred at

the lowest density (Cochran and Barrett 1999a). Similarly, a

second 1999 paper reported the 35-year results of Barrett’s

classic spacing study on the Pringle Butte Unit. Cochran

found that “average height growth for all trees increased 

. . . and volume growth decreased . . . as spacing increased”

and “large differences in tree sizes with spacing developed

over the 35 years of the study.” Also, although “during the

first 20 years of study, plots without understory grew more 

75

Research Paper PNW-RP-512, published in July, 1999, reported 

35-year findings from the spacing study on ponderosa pine saplings 

on Pringle Falls Experimental Forest. The four experimental treatments produced dramatic differences in tree sizes.
76

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-711

. . . , during the last 15 years, growth rates on plots without

understory were not superior to plots with understory. . . .

Plots without understory produced the highest volume yields

after 35 years, but the difference in yields between the two

understory treatments is expected to diminish in the future”

(Cochran and Barrett 1999b). A third paper updated Barrett’s

1981 report of tree and stand growth on the Methow Valley

spacing study that had been preceded by McConnell and

Smith’s 1965 and 1970 reports on understory response to

thinning and Sassaman and others’ 1973 economic analysis

of timber and forage returns (Cochran and Barrett 1998).

By 1999, Cochran’s work with retired colleague Seidel

on the latter’s western larch studies had determined that

thinning every 10 years to five growing-stock levels

“resulted in widely differing tree sizes and volumes per acre

after 30 years.” Whereas “the largest trees but the least

cubic volume yield per acre were produced in the heaviest

thinning level,” the “highest board-foot yields were found

in intermediate thinning levels.” Citing factors that “rule

out. . .uneven-age management for larch stands,” Cochran

and Seidel concluded that “thinning is necessary in many

larch stands to maintain vigorous, rapidly growing trees.”

They added that these same factors “also would make it

nearly impossible to maintain a significant larch component

. . . in mixed-species stands managed . . . to maintain 

several size classes on each acre.” Their contribution to

western larch management transcended pure silviculture 

to observe that:

Decisions about the desired future condition and

appearance of landscapes containing western larch

stands and the silvicultural practices necessary to 

create and maintain these landscapes need to be 

made, probably with public input. The public needs 

to know what is biologically possible and silviculturally reasonable, and at the same time managers 

need to obtain the public’s concepts of the appearance of future forests. In this communication process, it might be possible to settle on management

goals and methods to achieve these goals that 

would be supported by most people interested in 

future forests [Cochran and Seidel 1999].

Cochran reported the demise of a white fir (Abies concolor) levels-of-growing-stock study he had established in

1982 on the Deschutes and Fremont National Forests in

March 1998. “Mortality between 1991 and 1995 destroyed

the study,” he pronounced in the research note-obituary for

the once-promising effort. “At the time of establishment,

little density-related mortality was expected. Suppressed

trees were removed in the initial thinning and the study was

to be repeatedly thinned. Mortality owing to agents other

than suppression in even-aged white fir stands had not been

shown to be related to stand density.” But drought, western

spruce budworm and fir engraver beetle, and root rot

changed all that. Yet, Cochran found some useful results.

He concluded that these “results raise doubts about maintaining stands with a large component of white fir on these

sites over a long period. Managed stands on these sites

should have a strong ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa)

component and should be managed by using ponderosa

pine stocking curves” (Cochran 1998a).

Another study affected by an unexpected natural event

was documented by Cochran in July 1998. A pandora moth

outbreak first detected in central Oregon in 1988 spread to

the spacing study Barrett had begun in 1959 on the Pringle

Butte Unit of the Pringle Falls Experimental Forest.

Cochran seized the moment. 

The relation of defoliation to five tree spacings 

was examined, and stand growth reduction due to 

defoliation was estimated. Defoliation generally

increased as spacing varied from [about 6 feet to 18

feet] and then decreased as spacing increased to 

[about 26 feet]. Partial defoliation in 1992 reduced

stand volume growth, and partial defoliation in 

1994 reduced height growth . . . [Cochran 1998b]. 

Defoliation significantly slowed growth of usable wood.

“Basal area annual increments of sample trees were reduced

by 25 percent in the first growing season after defoliation

(1992), 30 percent the second year after defoliation (1993),

and 63 percent after the second defoliation (1994).” The

same drought that helped destroy Cochran’s white fir study

had “resulted in low stand growth rates in Oregon for some

time, and defoliation by pandora moth [had] reduced
Ponderosa Promise: A History of U.S. Forest Service Research in Central Oregon

growth even further.” Noting in 1998 that “the effects of

drought and defoliation are not yet over,” Cochran opined

that “serious mortality from bark beetles could occur in 

the next few years” (Cochran 1998b).

By the time the final paper in this series was published

in 2000, Cochran had brought up to date—if not concluded

—many studies pursued by retired colleagues, some of

which had their roots in the early days of the Pringle Falls

Experimental Forest, or even in Munger’s 1908 peregrinations.

Ken Wright, Charlie Sartwell, Dick Mason, 

Boyd Wickman, and Russ Mitchell:

Insects and Silviculture

Following in F. Paul Keen’s pioneering footsteps, another 

generation of Forest Service entomologists researched a

variety of insect infestations and their silvicultural ramifications at Pringle Falls Experimental Forest and elsewhere

in central Oregon. One, Dr. Russell G. Mitchell, eventually

was based at the Bend Silviculture Laboratory.

In the 1950s, Kenneth Wright, an entomologist in the

PNW Research Station’s Division of Insects and Disease

under Robert L. Furniss, used the Pringle Falls Experimental

Forest as a base for bark beetle surveys into the early 1960s

(Wickman 2003). In 1964, Wright hired entomologist

Charles Sartwell, then working at Hat Creek, California, for

the Pacific Southwest (PSW) Forest and Range Experiment

Station, to research the biology and ecology of the pine

engraver beetle attacking residual ponderosa pine following

extensive logging in central Oregon. These beetles bred in

the slash of logged trees, then attacked and killed the smaller pines. “I’m not sure how Ips pini came to be my focus,

since Ken thought mountain pine beetle was of far greater

importance,” Sartwell recalled.

However, in the early 1960s, silviculturists on 

several eastern Oregon forests were resisting the 

advice to avoid thinning in summer. That advice 

was based on a study by Walt Buckhorn in the early

1940s that found more than 90 percent of tree killing by Ips pini in recently logged stands occurred

where slash was deposited [from] July through

September. Ken wanted the matter revisited 

[Sartwell 2004].

Working at and from Pringle Falls Experimental Forest 

for 3 years, Sartwell studied pine engraver emergence densities in slash felled in precommercial thinnings of ponderosa pine. His study determined that fairly reliable

estimates of pine engraver beetle emergence from such

slash could be obtained and used to manage slash disposal

efforts to control infestations (Sartwell 1971).

When, in 1967, Sartwell’s research focus shifted to

mountain pine beetle as a pest of second-growth ponderosa

pine, the nine 10-acre research plots in eastern Oregon and

Washington that he cruised annually for mortality for 5

years included one on the Round Mountain Unit of the

Pringle Falls Experimental Forest. He occasionally stayed

at Pringle Falls during those years, but what he called “my

romantic heyday on the banks of the Deschutes” when he,

his wife, and young son lived in the cottage there was gone.

As did so many other Pringle Falls scientists, Sartwell

“really liked the place” (Sartwell 2004).

An extensive lodgepole needleminer infestation in 

central Oregon in 1967 brought entomologists Richard R.

Mason and Boyd E. Wickman, who had just replaced Wright

as project leader, to study the insect’s effects on lodgepole

pine growth and mortality. Timothy C. Tigner, a University

of Michigan graduate student researching a Ph.D. dissertation on the needleminer (Tigner 1970), helped establish the

original sample plots. The significance of this study, based

partly at Pringle Falls Experimental Forest, was reflected in

a September 1967 field meeting there of about 30 entomologists from the PNW Research Station and some of its 

laboratories, the PSW Research Station, the University of

California, Oregon State University, and private timber

companies. Mason and Wickman researched the lodgepole

needleminer for another year or two, and Mason and Tigner

reported that vigorous stands on productive sites were most

resistant to population buildup (Mason and Tigner 1972). In

1999, after analysis of 30 years of data, Mason and H. Gene

Paul, a technician at the PNW Research Station’s Forestry

and Range Sciences Laboratory in La Grande, Oregon, published “Long-Term Dynamics of Needle Miner Populations

77
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General Technical Report PNW-GTR-711

in Central Oregon” in Forest Science (Mason and Paul

1999).

By the 1970s, when forest insect problems were more

prevalent in the Blue Mountains of eastern Oregon, the

research effort shifted and Sartwell focused on the mountain pine beetle while Mason and Wickman focused on 

the Douglas-fir tussock moth. In 1981, the PNW Research

Station entomology unit was transferred en masse from

Corvallis to the Forestry and Range Sciences Laboratory in

La Grande; however, Wickman and Bob Martin agreed that

Russ Mitchell would be based at the Bend Silviculture

Laboratory as a detached member of Wickman’s unit. And

so it was that the Bend Laboratory’s only entomologist was

“attached” rather than “assigned” to a laboratory the PNW

Research Station “was trying to find ways to terminate”

(Wickman 2003). Mitchell knew something of central

Oregon. As an Oregon State College undergraduate, he had

listened to lectures by Ed Mowatt and Jim Sowder during a

1954 field trip. Later, as a Forest Service seasonal employee

and a graduate student, he had worked there with Wright

and Sartwell (Mitchell 2003).

In 1980, his first year in Bend, Mitchell collaborated

with Martin on two papers on fire-insect interactions

(Martin and Mitchell 1980, Mitchell and Martin 1980) as 

he focused on three insects—the western pine beetle, the

mountain pine beetle, and the western pine shoot borer—

that stalk pine forests east of the Cascade Range.

In 1982, as his tour in Bend was cut short by a 2-year

assignment in Portland, Mitchell and two members of the

Department of Forest Science, College of Forestry, Oregon

State University, published “Thinning Lodgepole Pine

Increases Tree Vigor and Resistance to Mountain Pine

Beetle” in Forest Science. Pursuing the role of entomology

in silviculture to maximize growth and yield and prevent

mortality caused by insects, he and his co-authors reported

findings at Dahms’ experimental plots on the WallowaWhitman National Forest that suggested “lodgepole pine

can be managed through stocking control to obtain fastgrowing, large-diameter trees and to avoid attack by the

mountain pine beetle” (Mitchell et al. 1983).

After completing the 2-year assignment in Portland,

Mitchell was again attached to the Bend Silviculture

Laboratory in 1985 to study the silvicultural management

of the mountain pine beetle under the co-sponsorship of

Wickman’s unit (Wickman 2003) and the Deschutes

National Forest (Pederson 2003). Between 1987 and 1989,

he authored or co-authored two more publications on the

mountain pine beetle and three on the western pine shoot

borer as well as additional papers not related to central

Oregon entomology. His 1987 analysis of a mountain pine

beetle outbreak in central Oregon (Mitchell 1987) helped

him conclude that the presence of lodgepole pine invites

attack by the mountain pine beetle and increases the likelihood that ponderosa pine will be killed along with lodgepole pine (Mitchell 1988). In general, Mitchell concluded,

“the mountain pine beetle wouldn’t exist [as a problem] if it

weren’t for overstocked stands. The solution to the mountain pine beetle is to manage stands, thin them properly, let

fire play its natural role, and [thus] reduce the potential for

population growth.”

Mitchell regarded the western pine shoot borer as “a

great insect to work on. Other insects come and go, but the

western pine shoot borer is a chronic pest to both ponderosa

pine and lodgepole pine. And it is a stealth pest. The damage to height growth and form is significant but hard to 

recognize” (Mitchell 2003). He and Lonne L. Sower of the

Forestry Sciences Laboratory in Corvallis, who had previously researched the shoot borer with other Forest Service

entomologists including Sartwell, described host tree selection in an article in Environmental Entomology (Sower and

Mitchell 1987). In a 1991 paper in the Journal of Economic

Entomology, Mitchell and Sower (1991) described the

insect as “a common terminal miner in ponderosa pine in

central Oregon and elsewhere” that is “occasionally responsible for considerable height-growth loss and stem deformities throughout the range of lodgepole pine (Hessburg et al.

1994). In 1994, 3 years after Mitchell retired, he and Sower

explained how synthetic sex attractants called pheromones

could reduce the shoot borer’s impact by making it difficult

for male insects to find and mate with females (Sower and

Mitchell 1994). 
Ponderosa Promise: A History of U.S. Forest Service Research in Central Oregon

From 1988 until 1991, when he retired, Mitchell interpreted a central Oregon pandora moth epidemic for national

forest managers and concerned citizens. The outbreak came

to Mitchell’s attention when physical science technician

Michele Penner (Finck) noticed “big caterpillars” and told

him about them. “You just don’t see pandora moths often,

and I could see we were in for an outbreak like the one in

the Grand Canyon” in the early 1980s, Mitchell recalled.

Sizing up the outbreak, he prepared forest managers and the

public alike for the epidemic, explaining that the pandora

moth requires 2 years to complete its life cycle and that

populations increase for three or four generations—6 to 8

years—before becoming infected by a naturally-occurring

virus and crashing (Mitchell 2003). He got the word to the

general public in “The Pandora Moth is Coming to Central

Oregon” (Mitchell 1989) in the fall 1989 issue of Cascades

East, a popular regional magazine, and through other local

media.

The epidemic progressed, and by the spring of 1990 the

Deschutes National Forest was receiving “numerous calls

from residents of . . . southern Deschutes County . . . who

were worried that their trees [were] dying” because they

looked “moth-eaten.” Mitchell’s answers reported by Nellie

Nix in The Bulletin on May 17, 1990, helped allay their

fears.

“They can completely defoliate the tree, and it 

looks absolutely like a disaster,” Mitchell said. “But

what they do is eat the old needles. The new needles

haven’t come out by the time the larvae are through

feeding. The defoliation [prior to spring “bud burst,”

when new needles that keep the trees alive appear]

rarely kills a tree [Nix 1990].

The central Oregon outbreak hadn’t become severe by 

1990, but Mitchell warned that “the moths’ flight in 1991

[would] probably be followed by another year of defoliation. The moths could then fly again in 1993.” And that’s

just how the epidemic continued until it crashed. In the

meantime, Mitchell suggested in 1990, “if people get tired

of the larvae munching on their trees, they could always

gather the larvae to cook and eat. . . . That’s what the

Paiutes of the Mono Lake area of California do,” he

observed. “They call the larvae piuga and traditionally

roast, boil and eat them like popcorn or in a stew” [Nix

1990].

While central Oregon’s ponderosa pine forests survived

the pandora moth outbreak, Landsberg’s study of the effects

of fire on tree growth was interrupted by the change to

nutrient cycling the epidemic caused.

“Mother Nature has thrown us a ringer” with the 

epidemic of the pandora moth, said Joan Landsberg,

project leader of the prescribed burn study. “What

they’re doing in essence is taking the needles that

would fall over a period of three, four, or five years

and putting them down on the forest floor in one

year”[Nix 1990].

The needles hit the forest floor as frass, or moth feces, 

that Mitchell explained made the caterpillars’ presence

known. “If you’re in a place where they’re quite heavy, 

you can feel the frass—or feces—dropping down out of 

the tree.” Landsberg’s physical science technicians, Penner

(Finck) and Pat Joslin, who were gathering frass samples 

to help determine “the effect the frass [would have on] the

prescribed-burn areas included in the study,” joked about

wearing hard hats while they worked. “In truth,” The

Bulletin reported in May 1990, “the falling frass has gotten

79

From 1988 to 1991, Russ Mitchell researched a pandora moth 

epidemic in central Oregon and interpreted the event for national

forest managers and concerned citizens. 

Mark Reid
so thick of late that they eat their lunches inside the pickup

truck instead of outside in the sunshine” (Nix 1990).

The frass will serve as sort of a fertilizer, Landsberg

said. This means . . . that while the trees may not 

see any growth this year the extra nutrients in the 

soil contributed by the frass could cause a “substantial growth increase” in the future. As part of 

the study, researchers will try to determine if the 

trees will make up for this year’s lost growth in 

subsequent years [Nix 1990].

Conditions beyond the researchers’ control combined 

in the early 1990s to prevent even this gain from

Landsberg’s interrupted study.

At the same time, however, Wickman, Mason, and Paul

availed themselves of the opportunity “to find out if a single

treatment with nitrogen . . . would significantly reduce 

the impact of pandora moth defoliation in a thinned secondgrowth ponderosa pine stand” and its effect “on growth and

behavior of pandora moth larvae and . . . the chemical composition of foliage and larval frass.” The responses to this

fertilization of both ponderosa pine and pandora moth were

studied for 4 years and published in 1996 (Wickman et al.

1996). This pandora moth infestation stimulated yet another

study that Wickman designed and pursued before and after

his 1994 retirement in cooperation with the Laboratory of

Tree Ring Research at the University of Arizona at Pringle

Falls Experimental Forest and other central Oregon sites.

Between 1992 and 1995, he and others collected dendrochronological data they analyzed to determine the multicentury cycles of pandora moth outbreaks. The results 

were published as “Changes in Pandora Moth Outbreak

Dynamics During the Past 622 Years” in the journal

Ecology in 2001 (Speer et al. 2004).

This pandora moth infestation, that affected ponderosa

pine forests primarily, occurred at the same time a mountain

pine beetle epidemic was decimating the area’s lodgepole

pine forests. Forest Service foresters were worried that “the

pandora moth [would] weaken the [ponderosa pines] to the

point they [would] become ‘attractive’ to the beetle.”

Mitchell’s opinion that the moth’s effect wouldn’t attract

the beetles held (Mitchell 2003).

Even as the pandora moth epidemic raged, Mitchell

experimented with a new technique to control the mountain

pine beetle by concentrating the insects “in one small part

of a vulnerable timber stand until . . . thinning projects

[could] make the trees throughout the stand less susceptible

to infestation” (Preso 1990a). As reported by The Bulletin:

Tried for the first time in Central Oregon this year, 

the strategy hinges on a relatively new technology

—the use of synthetically produced chemicals 

called pheromones to mimic the natural signals 

mountain pine beetles send to call for a gathering.

Based on results seen [in early September 

1990] at one site 20 miles southeast of Bend in the

Deschutes National Forest, the project seems to be

working.

There, the Forest Service placed 25 pheromonereleasing packages in a 12-acre stand of dense 

second-growth ponderosa pines, and beetles are 

everywhere. The signs of their presence are obvious

Pat Joslin’s work as a physical science technician at the Bend

Silviculture Laboratory included both field work and laboratory

work.

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General Technical Report PNW-GTR-711

Mark Reid
Ponderosa Promise: A History of U.S. Forest Service Research in Central Oregon

—nearly every tree is dotted with small pitch globs

where it attempted to push out infesting beetles by

secreting sap.

“The tree is actually trying to fight off the 

beetle, and it looks like it might have done a pretty

good job,” said Forest Service entomologist Russ

Mitchell, indicating a young pine particularly hard 

hit by the insects.

Even so, most of the trees in this small area are

doomed, but the use of pheromones here may slow 

the spread of beetles through the surrounding timber

stand.

“This is just designed to buy time,” said 

Mitchell. “It isn’t something you can use for 

control for a very long time.”

By delaying a huge outbreak of the mountain 

pine beetle in second-growth ponderosa pines, the

Forest Service hopes to gain enough time to prevent

the insects from spreading as widely as they did in 

the Deschutes National Forest’s lodgepole stands

beginning in 1976 [Preso 1990a].

During that 14-year infestation in central Oregon, the 

mountain pine beetle had killed an estimated 65 million

trees, 92 percent of them lodgepole pines. When beetle

infestations dropped off in lodgepole pine stands and small

beetle infestations began appearing in the forest’s large

expanses of more valuable second-growth ponderosa pines,

Forest Service officials became worried. The agency began

an ambitious program to thin second-growth pine stands so

that each tree would be healthier—and more resistant to

beetle infestation.

By the autumn of 1990, about 30,000 acres of the

100,000 acres of second-growth ponderosa pine on the

Deschutes National Forest had been thinned, and the Forest

Service was hoping this pheromone technology would give

it time to thin the rest of the stands and prevent a major

beetle epidemic. As effective as it seemed to be, the

pheromone technology was still in its infancy and this was

its first use in central Oregon. “It’s really viewed as more

experimental than operational . . . ” (Mitchell 2003).

In 1991, the year he retired, Mitchell and Lonne L.

Sower published the “results of a study of infestation patterns, effects on height growth, and seasonal history of the

western pine shoot borer” (Mitchell and Sower 1991) conducted at the Pringle Falls Experimental Forest and three

other study sites in the Journal of Economic Entomology.

Mitchell wasn’t ready to retire in 1991. “I would have liked

to have worked 2 or 3 more years and to have wrapped up 

a few things,” he mused, then noted that “I wrapped them

up after I retired.” He co-authored several more papers

between 1991 and 2001. Two of these in Forest Science,

coauthored with PSW Research Station biometrician

Haiganoush K. Preisler, reported on mountain pine beetle

colonization patterns on thinned and unthinned lodgepole

pine plots on the south flank of Paulina Peak on the

Deschutes National Forest (Mitchell and Preisler 1991).

These studies concluded that thinned stands suffered far

fewer attacks, partly because increased vigor discouraged

primary attacks but also because the wider spacing discouraged secondary attacks (Wickman 2003). A third paper,

stemming from data on the same plots that showed that

lodgepole pine killed by the mountain pine beetle began to

fall 3 years after death in thinned stands and 5 years after

death in unthinned stands, was published in the Western

Journal of Applied Forestry in 1998 (Mitchell and Preisler

1998). This kind of information helps foresters plan for 

salvage operations and assess fire danger. In 1994, Mitchell

was a co-author of Historical and Current Roles of 

Insects and Pathogens in Eastern Oregon and Washington

Landscapes (Hessburg et al. 1994). Mitchell’s last paper,

published in the Western Journal of Applied Forestry in

2001, addressed the effects of an introduced pest, the balsam woolly adelgid on true firs in the Cascade Range in

Oregon and Washington (Mitchell and Buffam 2001).

Lew Roth: Pathogens and Silviculture

Although not a Forest Service scientist and never attached 

to the Bend Silviculture Laboratory, Professor Lew Roth’s

five decades of research and teaching at Pringle Falls

Experimental Forest may well qualify him as the “dean” 

of central Oregon forest science.

81
82

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-711

As a young Oregon State College faculty member,

Roth first visited the then-young experimental forest with 

a School of Forestry silviculture field trip. But he didn’t

begin work there until 1952. Jim Sowder and Ed Mowat of

the Deschutes Research Center “were debating the reality

of a mistletoe problem at the Pringle Falls Experimental

Forest, specifically, and in central Oregon pine in general.”

They asked him “to come over and see if there was a real

mistletoe problem.” He accepted, found his life’s calling,

and became a Pringle Falls fixture for the next 50 years. 

“I spent the summer of 1952 surveying mistletoe on one

full section centered around Pringle Butte,” Roth related 

in 2002. 

This provided an excellent look at the effects 

of topography on mistletoe occurrence and severity.

Much insight came out of that year. The frequency 

and severity [of dwarf mistletoe] increased upslope,

irrespective of aspect. Overall abundance was much

lower on the northeast exposures than on the southwest. This clearly supported existing notions that

mistletoes like warm, bright sites, and not dark, 

shady sites. And so, on the sunny, steeper exposures,

there certainly was a mistletoe problem on the 

Pringle Falls Experimental Forest, and that is true

throughout Pacific Northwest pine forests in 

general. From then on, I was pretty well caught by

opportunities to do research at the Pringle Falls 

station [Roth 2002].

Roth shared the lessons he learned from his simple 

mapping on Pringle Butte and early studies in two publications, Pine Dwarfmistletoe on the Pringle Falls

Experimental Forest published by the PNW Experiment

Station in 1953 (Roth 1953) and “Distribution, Spread, and

Intensity of Dwarf Mistletoe on Ponderosa Pine” published

in the journal Phytopathology in 1954 (Roth 1954).

Roth was soon one of the Pringle Falls Experimental

Forest’s principal researchers and perhaps its leading citizen. “In summers of the early years, I lived with my wife

and two youngsters in the lower cottage. After my children

and the cottage were gone, I was privileged to occupy my

trailer close beside the dormitory where my students lived.”

In addition to research and teaching and learning, Roth and

his students “put a lot of effort into maintenance and care”

of the experimental forest’s headquarters compound that

“suffered from the lack of an on-site supervisor” (Roth

2002).

Roth once said: “Simple observations thoughtfully 

considered can have tremendous value” (Roth 2002). He

proved it in the late 1950s when a seemingly simple observation led to a breakthrough discovery “contrary to what

the textbooks say” and essential to understanding the 

“very complicated dynamics of propagation” on which any

method to control spread of dwarf mistletoe would have to

be based. Roth told the story this way:

I had learned from the literature that mistletoe

propagated by sticky seed forcibly shot out from 

single-seeded fruits. [These seeds] strike young 

pine twigs where they stick and later germinate to

infect. I wanted to know more about seed behavior.

My wonderful wife, Evelyn, was a great helper.

One day early in my studies I tried to catch some 

seed. Lyn held a herbarium blotter (these have a 

slightly soft knap) a few feet from a large mistletoe

plant on a small tree. I shook the tree. I could hear

seeds bombarding the blotter. Great! When Lyn took

the blotter down, there was almost nothing on it. 

Do mistletoe seeds strike twigs and infect? Of 

course not. They ricochet, usually to the ground. 

When I looked at Lyn, her hair was full of seed. 

Seeds must strike something resilient: needles (that 

can yield to impact)? Hair? Rodents? Feathers? 

Birds? This simple observation opened a whole 

new door on mistletoe epidemiology.

The seeds do infect the twigs, but how do they 

get there? Usually, with the first rain (usually about 

a quarter-inch), part of the seed adhesive gelatinizes,

absorbing much water adding mass and enabling

response to gravity, and in fact becomes a lubricant. 

On erect needles, seeds slip into the axils where 
Ponderosa Promise: A History of U.S. Forest Service Research in Central Oregon

they again stick and in the spring germinate. With 

more or less rain . . . seeds either don’t move or 

they wash off (Roth 2002).

Roth published these findings in a 1959 article (Roth 

1959), and the emphasis “shifted from twigs to needles, to

tree crowns, to their proximity, shape, density, etc.” (Roth

2002). After years of trapping seeds on targets and crown

enclosures, Roth and Mary Ann Strand prepared, and in

1976 published, the first computer model detailing seed 

dispersal basic to epidemiology (Strand and Roth 1976).

Simultaneously, experimental studies of mistletoe populations and their hosts and years of observation told Roth

something of the parasite’s impact on stand development.

Small trees suffer especially (Roth 1971, 1974a) as do

saplings (Roth 2001) and poles (Roth and Barrett 1985).

“Much of the effect,” Roth concluded, “appears to be a

function of stand density” (Roth 2002).

One study involving different stand densities that

required critical long-term observation fortified Roth’s

impression that some ponderosa pines had potential, developable, genetically-based resistance to mistletoe. Roth

observed that:

Exceptional trees occur with drooping rather than 

erect needles. Seeds on these are washed from the 

tree, precluding infection. Genetic development of

planting stock with drooping foliage should have 

high mistletoe control value. This contention is 

supported by the near absence of mistletoe in . . . 

parts of the pine region where drooping needles 

are common. Heritability of needle length and 

hypodermal thickness, both of which are involved 

in needle droop, has been demonstrated [Roth 

1966].

Roth tested this and other ideas. In 1974, Roth reported 

on work on Pringle Butte to develop trees with resistance to

the parasite (Roth 1974b). He expanded on this in a 1978

paper presented at a Berkeley, California, symposium (Roth

1978). This long-term study was summed up in 1992 when

Roth collaborated with pathologist Robert F. Scharpf of the

PSW Research Station to present the results of comparisons

of natural resistance to dwarf mistletoe infestation (Scharpf

and Roth 1992).

The objectives of the study were (1) to determine 

the resistance of clonally propagated ponderosa 

pines from apparently resistant and susceptible trees,

(2) to determine the survival of resistant and susceptible trees with different levels of infection, and (3) 

to determine whether resistance was correlated with

tree size, foliar habit, or crown characteristics. 

Scions taken from trees on the Ochoco, Rogue 

River, and Deschutes national forests thought to 

be resistant to infection were grafted to seedlings 

planted from 1967 to 1969 at the Pringle Falls

Experimental Forest in a stand of pines heavily 

infested with dwarf mistletoe. Tree survival, growth,

crown size, and number of dwarf mistletoe infections were recorded in 1989. High levels of resistance were found in grafts produced from resistant

83

Professor Lewis Roth, Oregon State University, and Robert

Scharpf, Pacific Southwest Research Station, summed up the

long-term study on ponderosa pine resistance to western

dwarf mistletoe in central Oregon in a 1992 publication.
84

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-711

selections of ponderosa pine from the Deschutes 

and Ochoco national forests. Mortality of both susceptible and resistant selections from the Rogue 

River National Forest was higher than [that of trees

from] other sources. The drooping needle form of 

pine, common in the Rogue River source, did not

develop when grown in central Oregon, and showed 

no resistance to dwarf mistletoe. Dwarf mistletoeresistant pine in central Oregon may be an important component of forest biodiversity, and identification, preservation, and use in future tree improvement and pest management programs are recommended [Youngblood 1995].

Scharpf’s involvement in this paper more than a dozen 

years after Roth’s retirement was motivated by that 1978

Berkeley symposium. He became “so excited about this

resistance thing that he took the data and wrote it up as a

published paper,” an exuberant Roth remembered (Scharpf

and Roth 1992, Roth 2002). Roth’s enthusiasm was more

infectious than the dwarf mistletoe he spent decades 

studying.

As he researched, Roth taught and inspired students

who went on to make significant contributions to forest

pathology. His graduate students at Pringle Falls helped

him, but spent most of their time on their own thesis and

dissertation research.

In 1960, Peter Paul Sikorowski, one of his graduate

students, wrote a master’s thesis on the dissemination of

spores of the fungus Elytroderma deformans that causes a

disease commonly known as pine needle blight based on

studies conducted in a stand of infected ponderosa pine

saplings and small poles on the Pringle Falls Experimental

Forest (Sikorowski 1960). Two years later, Sikorowski and

Roth published the results of microscopy studies of the fungus Elytroderma mycelium in the phloem of ponderosa pine

growing at the experimental forest (Sikorowski and Roth

1962).

David H. Adams, another of Roth’s graduate students,

discovered the first fruiting bodies of the root fungus

Armillaria mellea at Pringle Falls Experimental Forest

while working with Roth on dwarf mistletoe research (Roth

2002). This led to Adams’ 1972 doctoral dissertation on the

relation of cover to the distribution of Armillaria based on

field and laboratory analysis of numerous isolates of the

fungus obtained within a 250- by 450-foot study area in a

Pringle Butte ponderosa pine plantation (Adams 1972).

Analysis of Armillaria isolates recovered from one study

plot and three infection centers on the Pringle Butte Unit

supported a subsequent study on identification of clones of

Armillaria (Adams 1974).

Still another of Roth’s graduate students, Andrea L.

Koonce, explored the relationship between fire and dwarf

mistletoe at the Pringle Falls Experimental Forest. In 1980,

she and Roth reported that fire had beneficial effects on

canopy structure and tree density that discouraged dwarf

mistletoe survival and dispersal (Koonce and Roth 1980).

Dwarf mistletoe was partially sanitized from thinned

and unthinned stands by prescribed understory burning. Scorch heights between 30 and 60 percent of 

the live crown length were required to reduce the 

proportion of dwarf mistletoe in the crowns of crop

trees. Mistletoe levels were reduced from severe to 

tolerable when the crowns were not severely 

infected throughout their length [Youngblood 1995].

In her 1981 doctoral dissertation, Koonce (1981) 

demonstrated that dwarf mistletoe infections on both 

surface and aerial fuels caused “diseased trees [to be] more

susceptible to crown scorch and [to have] greater levels of

mortality than . . . healthy trees. In general,” she found, “30

percent of crown scorch was sufficient to kill 80 percent of

severely infected branches and reduce the mistletoe rating

from severe to moderate” (Youngblood 1995). Koonce went

on to a career in Forest Service research. 

Forty-nine years after Roth began his dwarf mistletoe

research at Pringle Falls Experimental Forest, he explored

the relationships between stand density and age and western

dwarf mistletoe incidence in Northwestern ponderosa pine

forests (Roth 2001). He emphasized his conviction that 
Ponderosa Promise: A History of U.S. Forest Service Research in Central Oregon

85

the species of dwarf mistletoe in the Pacific Northwest has

not been recognized as the major killer it is—as the species

in the Southwest has—because “ponderosa pine in the

Northwest regenerates so densely that foresters there welcome anything that thins.” And the killing doesn’t stop

there. “In mistletoe infested [ponderosa pine forests] the

ground is covered with resinous mistletoe kills that constitute a major fire hazard” (Roth 2002).

Roth was circumspect about his contribution to ponderosa pine silviculture. “You just can’t tell how much good

you’re really doing. As pathologists, it’s our responsibility

to provide good, solid evidence for workable things, and at

that point put it in other people’s hands” (Roth 2002).

In Other People’s Hands

The essence of a legacy is a bequest to the future or, as

Roth put it, to put something of use “in other people’s

hands.” That was the role of the scientists at the Pringle

Falls Experimental Forest and the Bend Silviculture

Laboratory from 1931 until 1996 and, of course, remains

the role of Forest Service research. The value of these scientists and their contributions is found throughout the literature in the field, to which they contributed copiously and

creatively, and in what every silviculturist east of the

Cascade Range now considers common knowledge. The

knowledge they developed through painstaking and pioneering research over more than six decades, and others

have applied to managing forest resources for almost as

long, epitomizes an enduring scientific legacy.
This page is intentionally left blank.
Ponderosa Promise: A History of U.S. Forest Service Research in Central Oregon

A comment in the Pacific Northwest Research Station’s

annual report for 1969 that “ecology” and “environment”

had become “household words” (Cowlin 1988) reflected 

the growing American awareness of and concern for what

President John F. Kennedy called “the common estate”

(Udall 1963). This awareness and concern transformed not

only the relationship between the natural environment and

human activity, but forest management and the questions

asked of forest science. And these changes combined with

fiscal issues to determine the fate of the Bend Silviculture

Laboratory and the Pringle Falls Experimental Forest.

By the late 1980s, “public demand for consideration 

of nontimber forest values and a growing concern for forest

health” had led the Research Station “to review [its research]

effort and reassess [its] research priorities” (Youngblood

1993). Much of this review coincided with the Forest

Service’s effort to replace its “old forestry” based on “timber primacy” with a more holistic approach known by the

early 1990s as “ecosystem management” (Jensen and

Bourgeron 1994). For the Forest Service:

“Ecosystem management” means using an ecological approach to achieve the multiple-use management of National Forests and Grasslands by 

blending the needs of the people and environmental

values so that National Forests and Grasslands 

represent diverse, healthy, productive, and sustainable ecosystems [USDA FS 1992b].

Chief of the Forest Service Jack Ward Thomas 

explained this philosophy and policy as “the skillful, integrated use of ecological knowledge at various scales to 

produce desired resource values, products, services, and

conditions in ways that also sustain the diversity and productivity of ecosystems” (USDA FS 1992a). It is the means

the Forest Service will use to meet society’s needs in ways

that also restore and sustain healthy, diverse, and productive

ecosystems.

“Regional Foresters and Station Directors were directed

to develop a joint strategy for making ecosystem management an integral part of the organization and its decisions,

tasks, and dealings with the public” (Youngblood 1993).

The old forestry and its emphasis on timber management—

the forestry around which research had evolved for three

decades at the Bend Silviculture Laboratory and for six

decades at the Pringle Falls Experimental Forest—was

yielding to a new forestry focused on whole ecosystems. 

A new ecosystem management strategy was developed 

for Pacific Northwest Region national forests and Pacific

Northwest Research Station research. “To successfully

carry out ecosystem management,” a shift toward “research

[that is] “interdisciplinary, integrative, and considers 

differences of temporal and spatial scale” was needed

(Youngblood 1993). This strategy reflected the “significant

evolution from managing stands toward managing resources

at a landscape scale” (USDA FS 2002) that implemented

the ecosystem management philosophy and policy and

characterized the Research Station through the 1990s and

into the 21st century.

This evolution was epitomized by the Interior

Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Project (ICBEMP) chartered in January 1994 by the chief of the Forest

Service and the director of the Bureau of Land Management

“to undertake work necessary to develop and then adopt a

scientifically sound, ecosystem-based strategy” for managing all Forest Service- and Bureau of Land Managementadministered lands “in the Columbia River basin within 

the United States and east of the Cascade crest, and portions of the Klamath and Great basins in Oregon.” Although

decades of research, including that at the Pringle Falls

Experimental Forest and the Bend Silviculture Laboratory,

“had addressed many forest health problems on the east

side, the status of the Basin as a whole had never been

addressed.” By late 1996, the Research Station was able to

summarize “over 2,000 pages of scientific, technical methods and findings produced by the project’s Science Team”

87

Chapter 5: A New Dawn: Research for Ecosystem 

Management
88

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-711

that describe “the status of [Basin] ecosystems . . . in terms

of current conditions and trends under three broadly defined

management options.” This “scientific information . . . will

be used in decision-making, and may potentially amend

Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management plans

within the Basin. The information,” the summary emphasized, “represents an integrated view of biophysical and

socioeconomic elements at a scale never before attempted”

(USDA FS 1996b).

In anticipation of and response to this evolution, Dr.

Andrew Youngblood moved to recast the Bend Silviculture

Laboratory as the home of an “Eastside Ecosystem

Management Research Team.” By 1993, he had proposed

an initial 10-year research program “to enhance understanding of the health and functional processes in forests east of

the crest of the Cascade Range in Oregon and Washington”

(Youngblood 1993) as the new basic mission for the Bend

laboratory. Only a year earlier, in 1992, Youngblood, a Utah

State University forester with a Ph.D. in forest ecology

from the University of Alaska, was transferred from the

Institute of Northern Forestry, Fairbanks, Alaska, to replace

Joan Landsberg as leader of the Bend laboratory.

At that time, the Research Station was reorganizing 

in response “to the high priority themes of the National

Research Council Report on Forestry Research—A

Mandate for Change, the National Research Strategic Plan,

and the Milliken-Chapman assessment of Forest Service

Research” in a way that would be “responsive to the recommendations of the Forest Service 1990 Program for Forest

and Range Resources.” This program included “increased

integrated research, adapting to changing needs of clients,

and ability to match organizational strengths with research

needs” among its objectives. In addition to Station leadership changes, the reorganization proposal called for several

interdisciplinary “science-driven” research programs

“designed to provide an environment for research [that

would] give Station scientists opportunity to address gaps

in scientific knowledge, develop long-term approaches, and

explore questions to great depth when appropriate” (USDA

FS 1990). The previous organization around projects and

project leaders was abolished.

The change in direction from traditional silviculture

research projects to evolving ecosystem management programs and their missions posed major challenges to both

the Research Station headquarters and field units such as

the Bend Silviculture Laboratory. By the time Youngblood

arrived in Bend, the laboratory’s small staff was split

between two of the Station’s several programs—Ecosystems

Processes Research and Resource Management and

Productivity Research—that recently had supplanted its

three-decade Silviculture of Interior Conifer Types research

project mandate. These programs were articulated as early

as 1990 in the Station’s reorganization proposal. The mission of the Ecosystem Processes Research Program was to

“improve understanding of biological, physical and ecological components and processes of terrestrial ecosystems.”

The mission of the Resource Management and Productivity

Research Program was “to understand factors affecting the

productivity of forest and range lands and to understand the

cumulative effects of management alternatives on this productivity” (USDA FS 1990). Detailed objectives were listed

for each of these programs.

Taken together, this reorganization proposal and the

programs it proposed signaled “an end to approaching 

problems from a single angle—single species, single forest

During the early 1990s, Dr. Andy Youngblood moved to recast the

Bend Silviculture Laboratory as the home of an east-side ecosystem management research team, as Forest Service research

responded to the evolution of ecosystem management. 

Les Joslin
Ponderosa Promise: A History of U.S. Forest Service Research in Central Oregon

plan—and an end to the notion that science and policy

could remain forever politely separated” (Duncan and

Miner 2000). It also signaled that the scientists who had

pursued long-term silvicultural studies at the Pringle Falls

Experimental Forest and the Bend Silviculture Laboratory

had contributed their piece to the puzzle. It was time to

move on to the more esoteric process of putting the puzzle

together to support not just timber management but ecosystem management decisions. 

Youngblood took stock of his situation and set out to

deal with it. Assigned by Charles W. Peterson as the team

leader, he found “that the team was going to consist of individuals belonging to [those] two different programs. We

had folks who were assigned to the Ecosystem Processes

Research Program led by Hermann Gucinski, and a number

of folks who were assigned to the Resource Management

and Productivity Research Program led by Charley

Peterson.” Youngblood led “an effort to develop a new team

charter and document that would lay out a strategy for the

kinds of research we would be engaged in for the next 10

years” (Youngblood 2002).

Despite some difficulties and differences, Youngblood

and his Bend Silviculture Laboratory colleagues hammered

out the planning document they called Eastside Ecosystem

Management Research: A Challenge for the 21st Century

(Youngblood 1993). This 10-year proposal

set direction for new areas of research by an 

Eastside Ecosystem Management team assigned 

primarily to the Bend Silviculture Laboratory; 

research that [would] help resource managers understand how management activities affect not only 

the growth of trees but also the functions, processes,

and interactions of all ecosystem components. In 

this way, management and enjoyment of natural

resources might be improved while forest health is

maintained or improved.

Youngblood emphasized that the proposal was “not a 

detailed plan” but “part of a process that sets broad objectives and establishes priorities for new areas of research”

that also “suggests potential partners and opportunities for

collaboration” to pursue that research. “Within this framework,” the proposal specified, “Program Managers and 

scientists together will develop more-detailed problem

analyses and study plans. Individual lines of current

research will be modified or discontinued, and new research

initiated, to meet the objectives established in this proposal”

that were “a synthesis of ideas . . . from a broad array of 

scientists, clients, potential partners, and other interested

parties” (Youngblood 1993).

“I think we did a very good job,” Youngblood 

reflected.

[The proposal] really emphasized the work in fire 

and fundamental ecosystem processes that we 

could do there [and] was a significant departure 

from the kind of work that had occurred there . . . 

that emphasized traditional growth and yield 

research. It [spoke] to the opportunity to really capitalize on the fact that we had a core of ecologists 

. . . the area ecologists in that whole OchocoDeschutes-Winema-Fremont national forest group

. . . Bill Hopkins, Gregg Riegel, and Matt Busse 

. . . all stationed right there [in the Bend Silviculture

Laboratory facility]. It really spoke to how we were

going to incorporate and make use of them in our

research program” [Youngblood 2002].

But, because of significant budget reductions throughout the federal government, it was not to be.

In a December 4, 1995, letter to all Research Station

personnel, new Station Director Thomas J. Mills announced

that the Bend Silviculture Laboratory would close in 1996

“because of proposed Federal budget reductions for Forest

Service research” (USDA FS 1996a) that included a $4 million cut in the Station’s budget. Although the President’s

budget for fiscal year 1996 for the Station was $30.8 million, the Congressional appropriation process had left only

$26 million—a 13-percent reduction from the President’s

proposal and 6 percent less than the fiscal year 1995 enacted appropriation (Mills 1995). Something had to go, and

the Bend laboratory—as well as the Institute for Northern

Forestry in Fairbanks, Alaska—failed to meet the Station’s

“explicit decision criteria” to continue.

89
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General Technical Report PNW-GTR-711

The end came on February 15, 1996, when the Bend

Silviculture Laboratory officially closed. “The employees at

the Bend Silviculture Laboratory . . . have contributed significantly to the advancement of Forest Service research,”

Mills said to mark the event. “The work done at Bend has

had broad implications to ponderosa pine research and the

scientists there have done fine work in fire research.” And

the Research Station announced that “a silviculture position

has been moved from Bend to the La Grande Forestry

Sciences Lab to be part of an interdisciplinary team that

will address east-side ecosystem research problems”

(USDA FS 1996a).

Youngblood, at the Forestry and Range Sciences

Laboratory in La Grande as a research forester, led the

process that determined how “numerous long-term studies

established through the Bend Silviculture Laboratory”

(Youngblood 1997) would be “dropped or wrapped up”

(Denton 1997)—as one participant put it—in the wake of

the Bend laboratory closure.

A meeting in Bend on November 13, 1996, kicked off

the process. At this meeting, representatives of the closed

laboratory including Youngblood and Pat Cochran, the

PNW Research Station and the Pacific Southwest (PSW)

Research Station, the Deschutes National Forest, and

Oregon State University conducted what George H. Moeller,

Deputy Station Director for Programs, called a “first assessment” (Moeller 1998). After participants “discussed opportunities to continue work on some of the long-term studies

of stand development, growth and yield, stocking control,

and effect of thinning established by Pat Cochran, Jim

Barrett, Walt Dahms, and Ken Seidel” (Youngblood 1997),

“some studies were terminated, some were continued

through cooperative agreements through the University of

Idaho, with Pat Cochran as principal investigator, and some

were taken over by . . . Andy Youngblood” (Moeller 1998).

Although the status and disposition of others remained to

be determined, Phillip S. Aune of the PSW Research

Station’s laboratory in Redding, California, submitted a

draft memorandum of understanding between the PSW

Research Station and the PNW Research Station “which

listed studies that scientists at PSW were interested in either

adopting or at least gaining access to the data” (Youngblood

1997).

A year later, on November 25, 1997, Peterson led “a

conference call . . . to assess and agree upon the disposition

of 15 studies that remained following the [November 13,

1996] meeting” (Moeller 1998). The same organizations

were represented. The session resulted in agreement on 

disposition of studies, study files, data, and responsibilities,

for 12 of the 15 studies. Cochran wrote six research papers

and two research notes, published by the Research Station

between 1998 and 2000, that wrapped up studies he,

Barrett, Dahms, and Seidel had pursued at Pringle Falls

Experimental Forest and elsewhere (see chapter 4).

Youngblood at the Forestry and Range Sciences Laboratory

in La Grande, Matt Busse and Bill Oliver at the Silviculture

Laboratory in Redding, California, Ward McCaughey at the

Forestry Sciences Laboratory in Bozeman, Montana, and

Professor Doug Maguire at the College of Forestry, Oregon

State University, assumed custody of the data for these

studies.

Youngblood retained responsibility for two active studies, one begun in 1995 at the Metolius Research Natural

Area on the Deschutes National Forest to assess the effects

of fire on maintaining late-successional ponderosa pine

forests and another to assess the effect of pandora moth

defoliation on long-term changes in stand structure begun

in 1995 on the Deschutes National Forest. He also retained

responsibility for an Oregon State University graduate student’s study of stand dynamics on forested lavas begun in

1994 on the Deschutes National Forest, and took custody of

data for a fertilizer study begun in 1988 on the Umatilla and

Wallowa-Whitman National Forests.

Others stepped up. Busse took over Barrett’s classic

1959 spacing study at Pringle Falls Experimental Forest

and retained leadership of a study of long-term productivity

in young ponderosa pine he had begun on the Deschutes

National Forest in 1990. Oliver took custody of data for an

inactive 1967 spacing study and two active 1974 spacing

studies on the Pringle Falls Experimental Forest. Maguire
Ponderosa Promise: A History of U.S. Forest Service Research in Central Oregon

took over an active 20-year comparison of even- and

uneven-age management in ponderosa pine stands on the

Deschutes and Ochoco National Forests. Finally, Joan

Landsberg at the Forestry Sciences Laboratory in Wenatchee,

Washington, retained the active ponderosa pine underburning study she and Bob Martin had begun in 1979 on the

Deschutes National Forest (Peterson 1998). The dismemberment of the Bend Silviculture Laboratory research program was complete. The facility itself was given to Central

Oregon Community College.

Not all was lost to progress. Its site selected by

Thornton Munger in 1914 and designated in 1931 by Chief

Forester Robert Y. Stuart, the Pringle Falls Experimental

Forest, remanded to Andy Youngblood’s care and watched

over by retired entomologist Boyd Wickman, remains a

special place of current and potential long-term research. 

To assure its continuance, Youngblood and colleagues from

both the Research Station and the Deschutes National

Forest have evolved and begun to implement a set of silvicultural prescriptions designed to protect the experimental

forest—its historic administrative site and research plots

“currently at risk from stand-replacement wildfire” and

“increasingly at risk from recreational impacts and nearby

urban development”—and to enhance its special values

(Youngblood et al. 2004a).

Protection of these special values continues to pay 

off in the new era of ecosystem management. East of the

Cascade Range, as Youngblood and two Research Station

colleagues wrote in 2004:

There is widespread recognition of the need to 

restore health and resiliency to eastside forest ecosystems (Quigley et al., 2001). Land managers are

more aware of the many disturbance agents affecting forests, yet often lack the knowledge of how 

disturbance agents interact with each other and 

how they interact across multiple scales to cause

changes that may affect ecosystem integrity

[Youngblood et al. 2004b].

To address this need, Youngblood and his colleagues 

studied the “age, size structure, and the spatial patterns . . .

in old growth ponderosa pine forests at three protected

study areas east of the Cascade Range: Metolius Research

Natural Area and Pringle Falls Research Natural Area in

Central Oregon and Blacks Mountain Experimental Forest

in Northern California” to “develop quantitative measures 

of horizontal and vertical structural attributes in eastside

old-growth ponderosa pine forests to guide the design of

restoration prescriptions.” Their results were another step

toward “designing and implementing restoration treatments

specifically for eastside ponderosa pine ecosystems”

(Youngblood et al. 2004b). These treatments include reintroducing fire into fire-dependent ponderosa pine ecosystems, studies of the long-term effects of which began at 

the nearby Metolius Research Natural Area in 1992

(Youngblood and Riegel 2000). After more than 70 years,

the Pringle Falls Experimental Forest—along with a few

similar areas—remains a viable research facility. 

And, to this day, foresters return to learn from the

Pringle Falls Experimental Forest research legacy. On

October 20, 2004, Youngblood and Wickman hosted some

30 academics, Forest Service and Bureau of Land

Management researchers and practitioners, and others there.

They were participants in the 4-day “Ponderosa Pine:

Management, Issues and Trends” conference in Klamath

Falls sponsored by the College of Forestry, Oregon State

University. On that day, these field trippers revisited the

91

Boyd Wickman, Forest Service entomologist emeritus, cared for

the Pringle Falls Experimental Forest after the Bend Silviculture

Laboratory closed in 1996. 

Les Joslin
92

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-711

results of and considered the conclusions drawn from several of the long-term silvicultural research projects through

which those who went before—Kolbe, Mowat, Dahms,

Sowder, Roth, Barrett, Cochran, Seidel, Martin, Landsberg,

Mitchell, and others—teach their posterity and speak to the

future.

Change is constant and inevitable. Its consequences,

gains and losses, sometimes become clearer with time. The

contributions of the Pringle Falls Experimental Forest and

Dr. Andy Youngblood and Boyd Wickman hosted some 30 participants in Oregon State University’s 4-day workshop on issues

and trends in ponderosa pine management at Pringle Falls

Experimental Forest in October, 2004.

Professor Lewis Roth (center) attended the dedication of the Lewis

Roth Dwarf Mistletoe Trail on Deschutes National Forest in 2005. 

Les Joslin

Chris Jensen

the Bend Silviculture Laboratory to forest science and forest management may be documented and assessed as gains.

What may have been lost to change is difficult to estimate.

Walt Dahms may have come as close as anyone ever will to

such an estimate in 1982 when the Bend Silviculture

Laboratory seemed on the brink of closure: “When you

shut something like this down, you lose a lot of what’s been

done” (Francis 1982). And, it might be added, a lot of what

could be done.

And the sighing of the pines

Up here near the timberline

Makes me wish I’d done things different

But wishing don’t make it so.

—Ian Tyson, Fifty Years Ago
Ponderosa Promise: A History of U.S. Forest Service Research in Central Oregon

Common and Scientific Names

Common name Scientific name

Trees:

Corsican pine Pinus nigra Arnold ssp. laricio Maire

Douglas-fir Pseudotsuga menziesii (Mirb.) Franco

Engelmann spruce Picea engelmannii Parry ex. Engelm.

Grand fir Abies grandis (Dougl. ex D. Don) Lindl.

Lodgepole pine Pinus contorta var. murrayana (Grev. & Balf.) Engelm.

Mountain hemlock Tsuga mertensiana (Bong.) Carr.

Japanese black pine Pinus thunbergii Parl.

Jeffrey pine Pinus jeffreyi Grev. & Balf.

Ponderosa pine Pinus ponderosa Dougl. ex Laws.

Scots pine Pinus sylvestris L.

Shasta red fir Abies magnifica A. Murr.

Sugar pine Pinus lambertiana Dougl.

Thinleaf alder Alnus incana (L.) Moench ssp. tenuifolia (Nutt.) Breitung

Western larch Larix occidentalis Nutt.

Western white pine Pinus monticola Dougl. ex D. Don

White fir Abies concolor (Gord. & Glend.) Lindl. ex Hildebr.

Shrubs:

Antelope bitterbrush Purshia tridentata (Pursh) DC.

Big sagebrush Artemisia tridentata Nutt.

Golden chinquapin Castanopsis chrysophylla (Dougl. ex Hook.) DC.

Greenleaf manzanita Arctostaphylos patula Greene

Guayule Parthenium argentatum Gray

Snowbrush ceanothus Ceanothus velutinus Dougl. ex Hook.

Pathogens:

Armillaria root fungus Armillaria mellea (Vahl) Quel.

Pine needle blight Elytroderma deformans (Weir)

Root rot Armillaria ostoyae (H. Romagnesi) Herink.

Western dwarf mistletoe Arceuthobium campylopodum (Engelm.) Gill

Insects:

Balsam woolly adelgid Adelges picea Ratz.

Douglas-fir tussock moth Orgyia pseudotsugata McDunnough

Fir engraver beetle Scolytus ventralis Leconte

Larch casebearer Coleophora laricella Hubner

Lodgepole needleminer Coleotechnites sp. nr. milleri Busck

Mountain pine beetle Dendroctonus ponderosae Hopkins

Pandora moth Coloradia pandora Blake

Pine engraver Ips pini Say

Western pine beetle Dendroctonus brevicomis Leconte

Western pine shoot borer Eucosma sonomana Kearfott

Western spruce budworm Choristoneura occidentalis Freeman

93
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General Technical Report PNW-GTR-711

Acknowledgments

The assistance and understanding of many helped me meet 

many of the challenges in this project and made its completion possible. I thank the many interviewees including Walt

Dahms, Jim Barrett, Pat Cochran, Russ Mitchell, Boyd

Wickman, and Bob Martin, among others, for their invaluable knowledge. In addition, I appreciate (in alphabetical

order) Matt Busse, Barney Duberow, Dave Frewing, Bill

Johnson, Joan Landsberg, Lew Roth, Ken Seidel, the late

Roy Silen, the late Bob Tarrant, and Andy Youngblood 

for participating in the oral history process. I thank Andy

Youngblood, also, for hosting my October 2002 research

visit to the La Grande Forestry and Range Sciences

Laboratory and for follow-up efforts, and Cindy Miner and

Val Rapp for hosting my January 2003 research visits to 

the PNW Research Station Headquarters in Portland and 

for all their subsequent work on the project. I greatly appreciate inputs from others including scientists Carl Berntsen,

Bill Hopkins, and Charlie Sartwell, and technicians Larry

Carpenter and Michele Penner (Finck). Special thanks 

to Cindy Miner, Val Rapp, Carolyn Wilson, and Lynn

Sullivan—who took over the project when Val Rapp retired

and saw it to completion—at PNW Research Station

Headquarters for editorial review of the drafts, and to Jim

Barrett, Dave Frewing, Russ Mitchell, Michelle Penner

(Finck), and Boyd Wickman for technical reviews of the

drafts and continuing assistance and encouragement. For

setting encouraging and inspiring examples, I am indebted

to others who have written history for the PNW Research

Station, especially Ivan Doig, Max Geier, and Bill Robbins.

Finally, for her patience and support, I thank my wife, Pat

Joslin, a former Bend Silviculture Laboratory physical science technician and Deschutes National Forest botanist.

Metric Equivalents

When you know: Multiply by: To find:

Inches 2.54 Centimeters

Feet .305 Meters

Acres .405 Hectares

Board feet (logs) .0045 Cubic meters

Square feet per acre .229 Square meters per

hectare

Trees per acre 2.47 Trees per hectare

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Index

Abbot, Henry Larcom 4

Abies concolor 76

Accelerated Public Works Act 41

Adams, David H. 84

advance regeneration 55, 63-64

air quality 49

Allen, E.T. 6

Ames, Fred 6

Anderson, Clinton P. 33

Andrews, Horace J. 33

Arceuthobium campylopodum 36

Area IV Ecology Team 46, 50, 74

Armillaria mellea 66, 84

Aune, Phillip S. 90

Baker, Lee 42, 69

balsam woolly adelgid 81

Barclay Logging 54

bark beetles 27, 35, 75, 77

Barnes, Vic 44, 48

Barrett, James W. 22, 35, 38, 42, 51-61, 71, 73-75, 90, 92

Beeman, Junior Forester 18

Bend Ranger District 54

Bend Silviculture Laboratory 5, 38-52, 58, 60-61, 64-67, 

69-72, 74, 77-78, 85, 87-92

fire 44-45

closing 89-90

rebuild 45-46

Berntsen, Carl M. 38-40, 42-43, 66

Big Blowup 1, 26

Big River Ranger District 2, 3

bitterbrush 15, 20, 54, 68

black jack pine 7

Blacks Mountain Experimental Forest 91

Blue Mountains 7

Blue Mountain Experimental Forest 31, 34

Bohannon, Bo 50

Bork, Joyce 65-66

Branch of Research (Forest Service) 9-10

Briegleb, Philip A. 24, 32-33, 40

Bright, George 7

Brock, Terry 74

Brogan, Phil 40, 43

Brooks Resources Corporation 61

Brooks-Scanlon Company 8-9, 34, 40, 43, 61

browsing damage 36-37

brush control, chemical 22, 36

brush removal 22

Buck, C.J. 16

Buckhorn, Walt 77

Buckman, Robert E. 39, 45, 64-65

Bureau of Entomology and Plant Quarantine (USDA) 25, 

27, 35

Bureau of Plant Industry, Soils, and Agricultural 

Engineering 34

Burgess, Thomas 28

Busse, Matt 47, 49-50, 89-90

California Forest and Range Experiment Station 31, 33

Carpenter, Larry 47, 71

Carson, Kit 4

Carson National Forest 9

Cascade Range Forest Reserve 2, 4

Cascade National Forest 2, 4

ceanothus (see snowbrush ceanothus)

Central Oregon Research Center 32

Chandler, Robert W. 39, 45

Chapman, C.S. 13

China Hat Guard Station 33

Chinook, Billy 4

chinquapin 14

Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) 17-19, 21-22, 27, 30

Clapp, Earle H. 9-10, 12

Cliff, Edward P. 41-42

Cleveland, Grover 2

Cochran, Patrick H. 43, 49, 53, 55-56, 58, 60, 64, 66, 

68-69, 71-77, 90, 92

Coe, Urling 5, 25-26

Cogswell, Philip, Jr. 1

conversion of forest 23

Cooley, R. 62

115
116

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-711

Corsican pine 25

Coville, Frederick V. 4-5

Crater National Forest 4

Crawford, Ralph W. 33

Crescent Ranger Station 33, 63

crown scorch 84

Culture of Eastern Oregon and Washington Forests 

Research Unit 49

Dahms, Walter G. 22, 24, 32-35, 42-45, 51-54, 58, 64, 66, 

74-75, 90, 92

Dealy John Edward 37, 58

Deeming, John 48-50

deer repellents 36-37

defoliation 76, 90

Dell, John 65

DeMars, Donald J. 60

dendrochronology 11

Deschutes National Forest 2-4, 8-9, 11, 13-14, 18, 28, 

32-34, 38, 44, 46, 49, 52, 54, 63-65, 67-69, 71, 

73-76, 78-81, 83-84, 89-92

Deschutes River 2-3, 9, 14-17, 27, 33, 40

Deschutes Research Center 32-34, 36-39, 43, 46, 71, 82

advisory committee 34

destructive sampling 58, 60, 74

Diamond International 61

DiBenedetto, A.P. “Benny” 40

directional falling 54-55

District 6 (Forest Service) 6

District 10 (Forest Service) 6

diversity, ecosystem 87

Division of Forest Management Research 31, 33, 36

Divison of Forestry (USDA) 4

Division of Insects and Disease 77

Division of Silviculture 9

Doig, Ivan 7, 32

Douglas-fir 7, 10-12, 16, 41, 62-64, 74, 76, 92, 107, 112

Douglas-fir tussock moth 64, 77

Driscoll, Richard S. 36-37

drought 76

Duberow, Bernard G. “Barney” 54

dwarf mistletoe (see western dwarf mistletoe)

Eastside Ecosystem Management Research Team 88-89

economic selection 24

ecosystem management 59, 87-89

ecosystem processes 89

Ecosystem Processes Research Program 88-89

Elytroderma deformans 84

Elytroderma mycelium 84

Emergency Relief Act (ERA) 17-18

Emergency Rubber Project 31

even-age management 11, 59, 64, 75, 91

Fall River 3,4

Fall River Fish Hatchery 15

federal forest reserves 2

Ferguson, J.W. 26

Fernow, Bernhard E. 4

fertilizer 50, 60, 72-73, 80, 90

fiberboard 36

Fight, Roger 58

fire 5-6, 19, 20, 25-26, 49, 74-75, 78-79, 84, 90-91

ecology 64, 67

exclusion 6, 19, 25-26, 59, 65, 67

research 48-49 (see also prescribed burning)

fire danger rating system 49

fire hazard station 26-27

fire-return intervals 65, 68

fir engraver beetle 76

firs 61-62

Flanagan, Paul 69

forage 19, 37, 57

Forest Insect Investigations Laboratory 25, 27

forest management research 38 (see Division of Forest 

Management Research)

Forest Products Section 12

Foresty and Range Sciences Laboratory, La Grande 77-78, 

90

Forest Survey Section 12

Fort Rock Ranger District 65

frass 80

Fremont, John C. 4

Fremont National Forest 4, 46, 76, 89

Frewing, Dave 66-69
Ponderosa Promise: A History of U.S. Forest Service Research in Central Oregon

Frost, L.W. 18, 27

frost/freezing 52, 62, 72

fuel load 65-68, 70

Furniss, Robert L. 77

Gashwiler, Jay 44

Gifford Pinchot National Forest 63

Government Employees Training Act 39

grand fir 62, 64

grass seeding 49, 63

Graves, Henry S. 9

grazing 4, 16, 20-21, 37, 49, 63

Great Northern Railroad 2

Greeley, William B. 13

growth, tree 21-22, 25, 36, 46, 50, 52, 55-57, 60, 62, 69-71, 

73, 75-76, 79, 83

growth and yield 7, 10-11, 20, 22, 36, 42, 51, 53, 59, 61, 

64, 68, 74, 76, 89-90

Gucinski, Hermann 89

Hall, J. Alfred 32-33

Hansen, Pete 44

Harriman, Edward H. 2

harvest 50, 54-55

clearcut 57, 62, 64, 72

bole only 50

directional falling 54-55

partial cuts 63

shelterwood 49, 62-64

whole tree 50

Harvey, J. Roy 3

Head, Conrad 63

hemlock 61-64

herbicides 22, 36, 54, 62, 73

Hill, James J. 2

Homestead Act 2

Hopkins, Bill 46-49, 53, 58, 74-75, 89

Horning, Professor 18

insects 5-6, 52, 59, 61, 66, 70, 77-78

insect control program 47

Institute for Northern Forestry 89

integrated research 88

intensive management 32

Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Project 87

Ips pini 77

Isaac, Leo A. 10-11, 14-17, 28, 31

Japanese black pine 27

Jardine, William 13

Jeffers, Professor 18

Jeffrey pine 27

Johns Manville Company 36

Joslin, Pat 79-80

Kaufmann, J. Boone 70

Keen Tree Classification System 23-25

Keen, F. Paul 23-25, 28, 58, 77

Kennedy, John F. 40, 87

Kent, W.H.B. 4

Klamath Indian Reservation 4

Kline, C.W. 19

Kneipp, Leon F. 13

Kolbe, Ernest L. 11-12, 14-22, 25, 27-29, 31, 52, 92

Koonce, Andrea L. 84

Kotok, Edward I. 32

Kovalchik, Bernard “Bud” 47

Landsberg, Johanna D. “Joan” 47, 49, 64, 68-70, 79-80, 88, 

91-92

landscape scale 87

Langille, H.D. 5

Langston, Nancy 5

larch 61, 76

late-successional forests 90

Lava Beds National Monument 68

Lava Butte 11

Leiberg, John B. 4

Leighty, W.J. 34

levels-of-growing-stock 51-52, 54, 57, 59, 61, 64, 74-76

Lewis Roth Dwarf Mistletoe Trail 92

light selection 23-24, 28, 35

Lodewick, J. Elton 28

lodgepole needleminer 77

logging with horses 24

long-term site productivity 49, 90

117
118

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-711

Lookout Mountain Unit 28-30, 34, 37, 54, 57-59, 61-62, 

68, 75

LPSIM 53

lumber grades 34

MacDaniels, E.H. 8

Maguire, Doug 90

mammals, small 44, 72

control of 44

damage from 44, 52 

manzanita 15, 22

maps 19, 27

soil map 19

type map 19

Marshall, Robert 10

Martin, C.S. 26

Martin, Robert E. 46-47, 49-50, 58, 64-66, 68-70, 74, 78, 

91-92

Mason, Richard R. 77-78, 80

maturity selection 28

McArdle, Richard E. 10, 12, 17, 31-32

McCaughey, Ward 90

McClanahan, James L. 67

McGuire, John S. 45

McKay, field assistant 27

McKethren, Robert 44

McSweeney-McNary Act 12

methods of cutting 7, 20, 28, 53

Methow Valley spacing study 76

Metolius Research Natural Area 49, 90-91

Meyer, Walter H. 11, 18-19, 58

Miller, William 40

Mills, Thomas J. 89-90

Mitchell, Russell G. 47-48, 50, 77-81, 92

mixed conifers 61-62, 64, 76

model 53, 60

Modoc National Forest 34

Moeller, George H. 90

Morse, Wayne 40-41

Morris, William G. 27, 32

mortality, tree 20, 22, 24-25, 52, 57, 62, 75-76, 78, 84

Mount Adams Ranger District 63

Mount Hood National Forest 69

mountain hemlock 63-64

mountain pine beetle 47, 52-53, 57, 75, 77-78, 80-81

Mowat, Edwin L. 11, 21-22, 24, 32-36, 47, 52-54, 58, 

82, 92

multiple-use management 59

Munger, Thornton Taft 4-7, 9-11, 13, 15-16, 24-25, 28-29, 

31-33, 42, 51, 91

Munier, John 54

Myrold, Dave 50

Naches Ranger District 63

Native Americans 5, 14

natural areas 18

Neal, Carl B. 14, 16

Neuberger, Maurine 40

neutron probe 56

Newberry, John Strong 4

New Deal 17, 19

Newman, Dick 47, 69, 71, 73

Nichols, Earl 44

Nieman, Kenneth 47

nitrogen fixers 68

Nixon, Richard M. 45

nontimber forest values 87

North Pacific District 6

Northern Pacific Railroad 2

Noxious weeds 37

nutrient cycling 79

nutrients, plant 47, 50

Ochoco Divide Research Natural Area 49

Ochoco National Forest 46, 49, 63, 69-70, 83-84, 89, 91

Office of Silvics 4

Ogden, Peter Skene 4

Okanogan National Forest 57

old-growth forest 23, 35, 91

Oliver, Bill 90

Oregon Trunk Railroad 3, 14

Orgyia pseudotsugata 64

overstory removal 22, 54-55, 62-64
Ponderosa Promise: A History of U.S. Forest Service Research in Central Oregon

Pacific Logging Congress 10

Pacific Northwest Forest Experiment Station 4, 9, 13

advisory council 13

established 9

Pacific Northwest Forest and Range Experiment Station 28, 

31, 34, 38-39, 47-49, 51, 61, 64, 77

Pacific Northwest Region 6, 40, 46, 65, 74, 87

Pacific Northwest Research Station 49, 74, 77-78, 87, 

89-90

Pacific Railroad Survey 4

Pacific Southwest Forest and Range Experiment Station 77

Pacific Southwest Research Station (PSW) 83, 90

pandora moth 47, 70, 76, 78-80, 90

Parks, Alice 18

Parks, Henry M. 18

Paul, H. Gene 77, 80

Penner, Michele 47, 69, 79

Perry, Walter J. 8-9, 11

Peterson, Charles W. 89-90

Peterson, R. Max 53

pheromones 78, 80-81

Pinchot, Gifford 2, 6

pine engraver beetle 77

pine needle blight 84

PPSIM 60

Preisler, Haiganoush K. 81

prescribed burning 49-50, 64-68, 70, 75

Pringle Falls 14

Pringle Falls Cruising and Log Grading Plot 25

Pringle Falls Experimental Forest 4-5, 7, 10-14, 16-21, 

26-29, 31-35, 37-39, 44, 47, 50-53, 57-58, 60-62, 65-

68, 71-72, 74-77, 80-85, 87, 89-92

Pringle Falls field meet 28

Pringle Falls Research Natural Area 18, 49, 91

Pringle Butte Unit 27, 29, 35, 37, 54, 57, 59, 72, 76, 84

Pringle, Octavious M. 14

productivity, ecosystem 87

pruning 19, 29-30, 34, 58

pulp 36

Putnam, George Palmer 8

Radosevich, Steven R. 50

range management 36-37

Rastovich, Helen 34, 42

Rea, Don P. 1

Reaves, Jimmy Lee 66

reforestation 63, 71-72, 74

regeneration 71

natural 49, 51-52, 54, 57, 61-64, 68, 71-72

reproduction, tree 15, 20, 22

research centers 32

research natural areas 23

Resource Management and Productivity Research Program 

88-89

restoration 91

Riegel, Gregg 47, 89

Riis, John 1-4, 15

Robbins, William G. 5

Rogue River National Forest 83-84

Roosevelt, Theodore 2

root fungus 66

root rot 61, 76

Roth, Evelyn 82

Roth, Lewis F. 36, 56-58, 61, 81-85, 92

Round Mountain Experimental Management Block 37-38

Russell, Israel C. 5, 11

Ryan, John E. 2

salvage harvest 24, 35, 38

Sandberg, David V. 50

sanitation-salvage cutting 35

saplings 54-55, 62

Sartwell, Charles 58, 77-78

Scharpf, Robert 83-84

Scots pine 27

Section of Silvics 6-7, 9

Section of Silviculture 12

seed, tree 11, 51-52, 58, 62

germination 52, 62, 72

mortality 62, 72

origin 11

production 52, 63

supply 27

wind dissemination 57

119
120

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-711

seedlings 22, 36, 43-44, 62-63, 72, 74

damage 36-37, 44, 72

emergence 43

temperature 72

Seidel, Kenneth W. 43, 49-50, 61-64, 74, 76, 90, 92

selection cutting 25, 35

Shasta red fir 64

Shea, Ronald W. 70

Shevlin-Hixon Company 8-9, 24, 29

shrub removal 73

Sikorowski, Peter Paul 84

Silcox, Ferdinand A. 31

Silen, Roy 11, 72

Simon, Steven 47

Sisters Ranger District 74

site index 58, 74

slash treatment 50, 54, 62-63, 77

crushing 50

broadcast burning 50

pile and burn 50

snags 26

burning 26

decay 26

falling 26

snowbrush ceanothus 15, 22, 54, 68

soil 34, 50, 56, 71

compaction 74

drainage 34, 71-72

fertility 72

moisture 53, 56

nutrients 56, 66

survey 34

temperature 26, 62, 71-72

tillage 74

type 34

Southern Pacific Railroad 2

Sowder, James E. 33, 35-36, 38, 47, 58, 82, 92

Sower, Lonnie L. 78, 81

spacing (see stand density)

stand density 53, 57, 62, 64, 74-76, 78, 81, 83-84, 90

stand density index (SDI) 74

stand improvement 21

Starker, T.J. 8

Starkey Experimental Forest and Range 37, 63

Starr, Lynn 64

Steen, Harold K. “Pete” 65

Stennis, John 39

stocking (see stand density)

Strand, Mary Ann 83

Stuart, Robert Y. 13, 16, 91

sugar pine 15, 18

sustained yield 9

Tahoe National Forest 34

Tarrant, Robert F. 6, 34, 45, 71-72

thinning 19, 21-22, 27, 29-30, 34-36, 49-50, 51-55, 57, 

59-62, 73, 76-78, 80-81, 84, 90

commercial 34-35, 53, 75

light 30-31

mechanical 66

precommercial 77

heavy 31, 35

Thomas, Jack Ward 87

Thompson, Walter 40

Thomomys mazama 44

thrift selection 24

Tigner, Timothy C. 77

timber operations, commercial 32

timber farming 10

Timber and Stone Act 2, 14

Tite Knot Pine Mill 54

tree classification 23-24

tree spacing 54-57, 59, 71

Tsuga mertensiana 64

T.T. Munger Research Natural Area 11

Ullman, Al 40, 45

Umatilla National Forest 90

Umpqua National Forest 4

underburning 49-50, 69, 84

undergrowth 54-56, 63, 71, 73, 75

uneven-age management 58, 74, 76, 91
Ponderosa Promise: A History of U.S. Forest Service Research in Central Oregon

Union Pacific Railroad 2

Union Ranger District 64

U.S. Army Topographic Engineers 4

U.S. Geological Survey 4, 11

Wallowa-Whitman National Forest 64, 78, 90

Walstad, John D. 50

Warm Springs Indian Reservation 13

water table 15, 72

Watts, Lyle F. 28

weather station 26

Webb, Clyde 42

Wenaha National Forest 7

Wenaha-Tucannon Wilderness 64

Wenatchee National Forest 63

western dwarf mistletoe 36, 54, 56-57, 60-61, 66, 82-85

seeds 82

resistance to 84

western larch 41, 64

Western Pine Association 26, 28, 31

western pine beetle 24-26, 35, 47, 78

western pocket gopher 44

western pine shoot borer 47, 78, 81

western spruce budworm 70, 76

Westveld, Ruthford H. 11

Weyerhaeuser Timber Company 13

white fir 15, 41, 76

Whitman National Forest 8, 31, 34

Wickiup Reservoir 33

Wickman, Boyd 25, 64, 77-78, 80, 91-92

wildfire 50

wildlife habitat 36-37

Willamette Research Center 38

Wind River Experimental Forest 11

Wind River Arboretum 31

Wind River Nursery 11

Winema National Forest 46, 63-64, 68, 89

Winkenwerder, Hugo 7

wood production 52-54, 57, 73, 74

Works Progress Administration (WPA) 17

World War II 29, 31-32

Wright, Ken 77-78

Wyckoff, Stephen N. 31-32

Wyeth, Nathaniel 4

yellow pine 1, 5, 6-8, 13, 15-16, 19

Yoder, Ray A. 38

Youngberg, Chester T. 56, 71-72

Youngblood, Andy 88-92

Zon, Raphael 4

121
Pacific Northwest Research Station

Web site http://www.fs.fed.us/pnw

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