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Author

Max G. Geier, is assistant professor of history at Western Oregon University, where he specializes

in the history ot natural resources and rural development in the North American West, serves as

faculty advisor for the environmental studies program, and teaches courses in the history of the

Pacific Northwest, Canada, and the United States. He has worked with the Pacific Northwest

Research Station as contract editor and historian since 1990.

Cover Photos:

Background photo: The Kuskokwim drainage as seen from the air in June 1969. The spectacular expanse of the forests of interior 

Alaska contrasts starkly with the mountainous terrain and coastal inlets of southeast Alaska. (Juneau 3348)

Front cover inset (upper-left): Forest Service boat, the Tongass Ranger, towing a riffle sifter out of Tenakee Inlet. An example of 

the "can-do" spirit and optimism of the early 1960s, the riffle sifter was an experimental prototype designed to restore salmon

habitat in logged-over watersheds, but it suffered from repeated technological breakdowns. Later fisheries habitat experts discount 

the theoretical basis behind this technological solution to systemic problems. (Meehan collection)

Front cover inset (upper-right): Concern about mass soil movements on large clearcuts on the Maybeso Experimental Forest in the 

1960s led to studies of underlying geological structures and a broadening of the range of expertise among scientists in Alaska. Doug 

Swanston, shown here in 1978 at Whitestone Harbor coring in-situ for engineering soil tests with Lee Schroeder, a cooperator from 

Oregon State University, was one of the scientists recruited to Alaska during this period. (Swanston collection)

Front cover inset (bottom): Watershed research in the 1970s focused on reproducible studies under controlled conditions in an 

artificial streambed (flume) constructed at Youngs Bay Experimental Forest in southeast Alaska. Here, Bill Walkotten manipulates a 

freeze sampler in the flume. (Schmiege collection)

Back cover inset (left): Wildlife research in the 1980s included laboratory research under controlled conditions with live 

specimens; Don Spalinger is measuring the intake rate and bite size for deer in a foraging study by Tom Hanley's unit at the Juneau 

FSL in the 1980s. (Hanley collection)

Back cover inset (right): This technician measuring rodents in the Hollis laboratory in 1958 illustrates the rigorous measurements 

and methodical records generated in the early years of the Alaska Forest Research Institute. Institute researchers adhered to 

scientific standards of their era, despite the remote, rustic setting of the lab. (Juneau 190)
Forest Science Research and

Scientific Communities in Alaska:

A History of the Origins and Evolution

of USDA Forest Service Research in

Juneau, Fairbanks, and Anchorage

Max G. Geier

Pacific Northwest Research Station

U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service

Portland, OR

March 1998
Abstract

Geier, Max G. 1998. Forest Science research and scientific communities in Alaska: a history

of the origins and evolution of USDA Forest Service research in Juneau, Fairbanks, and

Anchorage. Gen. Tech. Rep. PNW-GTR-426. Portland OR: U.S. Department of Agriculture,

Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station. 220 p.

Research interest in the forests of Alaska can be traced from the 1990s back to 1741, when

Georg Steller, the surgeon on Vitus Bering's Russian expedition, visited Kayak Island, collected

plants, and recorded his observations. Given the scope and scale of potential research needs and

relatively high expenses for travel and logistics in Alaska, support for forest research in Alaska,

from this first European contact through the present era of scientists working with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, seldom was adequate. Forest Service scientists at Juneau,

Fairbanks, and Anchorage in the late 20th century have nevertheless accomplished research goals

despite difficult logistics, limited funding, and agency mandates for timber production. The Alaska

Forest Research Center was established at Juneau in 1948, with some research activity also at

Fairbanks by the 1960s, in cooperation with the University of Alaska. Research at Juneau included silviculture, mensuration, fisheries habitat, water quality, soils, entomology, pathology,

and forest survey; and, at Fairbanks, silviculture, fire ecology, entomology, hydrology, and aquatic

biology. Multifunctional research units at Fairbanks and Juneau studied the ecology of interior

and coastal forests by the 1970s. The Forest Inventory Unit was transferred from Juneau to Anchorage in 1978. The Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act and public concern about

the effects of logging on the Tongass National Forest redefined the context of research in Alaska

by the 1980s. The research program at Juneau was reorganized in 1984 as a Multiproject Program to conduct research that would assess how timber harvests, as mandated by ANILCA, would

affect the multiresource management goals mandated by the National Forest Management Act of

1976. The program also included six PNW Research Work Units outside of Alaska: Recreation,

Utilization, Forest Engineering, Production Economics, Foreign Trade, and Resource Management Impacts. Agency scientists and cooperators broadened the range of questions and disciplines in forest-related research, but budgetary concerns, and the political environment continue

to influence the kinds of issues studied in the search for usable knowledge about Alaska's forests.

Keywords: Forest research, Alaska, history, ecology, fisheries, entomology, wildlife, survey,

inventory, timber, taiga, Tongass, Chugach, Pacific Northwest, fire, clearcut, salmon, watershed,

landslide, experimental forest, Research Natural Area, aerial photography, remote sensing, transportation, boats, aircraft
Preface

This project began in late 1991, when Ken Wright first asked whether I would be interested in

editing a compilation of anecdotes and recollections into a history of forest research in Alaska.

That conversation initiated the process of framing the scope of this historical inquiry, and the

boundaries of the project were fleshed out a few months later in a meeting with Dick Woodfin,

Cindy Miner, and Wright. As with any research project, initial assumptions and priorites in force

during the planning stage of historical research influenced decisions about the methodology,

hypotheses, and resources used in gathering information, weighing evidence, analyzing data,

and reporting the results of research.

The primary purpose of this project, beginning with that first conversation with Wright, was to

tell the story of forest-related research from the perspective of the people who had made that

work a significant part of their life's purpose. Wright and Miner were most helpful in providing

copies of Ray Taylor's autobiographical account, personal notes, and correspondence about his

time in Alaska from 1924 through 1959. They also provided copies of Robert Cowlin's massive

manuscript covering the history of the PNW Station through the mid 1970s from the perspective

of a former Station director, a preliminary chronology of significant events that Al Harris had

compiled several years earlier from the perspective of a scientist with extensive field experience

in Alaska, and open access to the historical files maintained at the Portland office. Their continued assistance and advice were invaluable in the early stages of planning and refining the intended purpose and scope of the research project.

As with many other research projects in Alaska, this study faced the familiar constraints of a

limited budget coupled with a compressed field season, scheduling conflicts, and high overhead

costs for travel, lodging, and logistical support. The process of selecting subjects, scheduling

interviews, and reviewing written records, consequently, involved a curious admixture of meticulous planning and serendipitous opportunism to make the most of scarce resources and time.

People or events excluded from discussion in these pages, therefore, were not necessarily excluded by intent or design, and although some may feel as though their contributions were neglected or slighted, I can only hope they will accept my apologies and advance assurances that

any perceived slights were wholly unintentional and probably unavoidable, given the constraints

noted above.

The background, preparation, and priorities of the lead researcher also invariably influence

research design, execution, and analysis, and the author of record shoulders the burden of responsibility for the final product. As a historian of community development and natural resource

issues in the American and Canadian Wests whose academic training is rooted in the traditions of

the land-grant universities and state systems of higher education in Washington (1990 Ph.D. in

history at Washington State University) and California (1985 M.A. and 1983 B.A. in history at

California State University, Northridge), my professional priorities and historical outlook are indelibly colored by a lifetime of personal experiences and acquaintances among human networks
in Western states ranging from Minnesota to Oregon and from California to Alaska. In my lifetime, I have seen once-thriving farming communities in Minnesota and Wisconsin wither up and

drift away, and I have lived among logging and timber communities in Oregon, Washington, and

California that have similarly slid into decline over the past 20 years. Some of the people in those

communities sank into despair and self-imposed isolation, blaming outside forces for the decline

and often with good reason. Others struggled to expand their vision of community beyond their

immediate surroundings and reached out to develop new human networks, often with unanticipated results. Similar processes are apparent in the communities of people who have participated in forest-related research in Alaska.

My association over the past 5 years with Research Information Services (now the Communications Group) at the Pacific Northwest Research Station in Portland, Oregon, and with Forest

Service people at the Forestry Sciences Laboratory in Corvallis also has shaped the context within

which this project evolved. In working on the project, I was drawn into closer relations with

Forest Service people, and I have had to make a conscious effort to step back from that community to maintain critical perspective and judicious balance while still fulfilling the primary goal of

compiling a personalized history from the perspective of agency scientists engaged in forestrelated research in Alaska. Those scientists were part of a community of scholars with networks

reaching back into past traditions of scholarship and ranging widely through the present to include colleagues in other agencies, academia, and other walks of life. They developed a wide

array of personal networks and shared experiences that shaped their world view and the priorities

they brought to their work.

This history of research in Alaska is intended to convey the ongoing process by which scientists continually build on the work of their predecessors in an effort to expand the range of human

understanding about forests and related ecosystems. Each generation of scholars, however, also

operates within the cultural context of its own era to frame research questions and to set priorities

for the allocation of resources, which can never be sufficient to cover the full range of potential

inquiry. Ideas and priorities fall in and out of favor from era to era, and words themselves often

take on new meanings with the passage of time. The terms ''utilitarian" and "frontier" are two

examples of this phenomenon, and because they appear frequently in the pages that follow, a

brief mention of their intended meaning is necessary. The term "utilitarian," as used in this study,

refers to the philosophy that pragmatic purposes are, or should be, the motive force driving human action. Americans tend to value pragmatism as a positive virtue, and virtually every human

being who has ever walked the Earth, I would argue, acts on that philosophy at some level during

the course of everyday life. Utilitarian motives, however, may also conflict with other priorities,

or with another person's sense of utilitarian value. My use of this term in this study is not intended

in a judgmental sense, rather to convey the potential conflict inherent in the process of weighing

conflicting interests. The term "frontier" similarly tends to convey a sense of individualism and

positive virtue in American culture, particularly in Alaska. One person's expansive frontier, how-
ever, is usually another person's defensive perimeter, and individualism carried to the extreme

can undermine community stability. My use of this term in various ways throughout this study is,

again, not intended to be judgmental, but to convey the self-perceptions of individuals in Alaska

and the community culture of their era.

The scientists who engaged in forest-related research in Alaska brought to their work traditions of scholarship, personal experiences, and human networks that provided the context for

understanding their roles in the research communities at juneau, Fairbanks, and Anchorage. All

of the scientists interviewed for this project, without exception, stressed their indebtedness to the

work of their predecessors in Alaska and the unusually strong sense of community they enjoyed

with their colleagues there. The study emphasizes those aspects of their time in Alaska that they

recalled as most significant to their work, but it is not intended to imply that those experiences or

perceptions were necessarily unique to Alaska or that the problems they encountered were not

also experienced by their colleagues in other regions or throughout the Forest Service. The focus

is on Alaska experiences because that was the primary purpose of this study as originally conceived, but those experiences are also considered in the context of national and international

trends relevant to the issues at hand. Finally, because the initial planning for this research project

began in 1991, the study ends with the decade of the 1980s. Obviously, much has transpired in

the first half of the current decade, perhaps most notably the closure of the Fairbanks Lab in fall

1 995, but the project goals defined at the outset called for bringing the narrative through the late

1980s, and the research methods were designed to meet that goal. The 1990s are certainly

worthy of study, but that is another project for another time. It is my sincere hope that this current

study will serve a utilitarian purpose by conveying a collective memory of past experiences into

the present, where it may inform plans for the future.

Many people went above and beyond normal expectations in supporting and encouraging

this project. I cannot hope to do justice to them all, and I apologize in advance to any whom I

inadvertently slight in this brief note. In addition to the many current and former administrators,

scientists, technicians, and staff at each lab who graciously agreed to be interviewed or energetically responded in writing to requests for information (their names appear in the footnotes throughout this work), many other people directly contributed in ways less immediately apparent. A

grant from the Western Oregon University faculty-development committee funded research to

locate and identify the numerous photographs that appear in this publication, and many of the

faculty and staff at Western contributed ideas, encouragement, and collegial enthusiasm. Keith

Hadley was particularly challenging and incisive in his comments and suggestions, and Mike

McGlade's good humor and penchant for interdisciplinary exchange has sparked more than one

idea. Martha Brookes edited my tortured prose and grammatical quirks with tactful aplomb, but

more importantly, facilitated my early interview efforts and contributed insightful criticisms, professional guidance, and personal enthusiasm from the beginning of this project through the final

copy. Bill Robbins provided early advice and encouragement and made room in his frenetic
schedule to review an early draft. Ken Wright and Bill Meehan read more drafts and editorial

reviews than anyone should do in a lifetime, and they were unfailingly diplomatic and helpful in

their suggestions. Cindy Miner's deft administrative skill and respectful grasp of history as it

relates to contemporary issues are largely responsible for keeping this project on track. Del

Thompson went far beyond the call of duty to communicate his ideas and work miracles with the

layout of text, photos, and graphics, including his own line-art drawings, which appear on the

cover and throughout the text. John Ivie artfully accomplished the daunting challenge of converting raw files, photos, and ideas into an integrated whole, and the grace and style apparent in the

final layout largely reflects his talents. Stella, Josh, and Andrea Greenberg made Fairbanks feel

like home over and over again, and Hans Geier contributed incisive critiques of the Alaska experience from his homestead near Delta and his day job at the university. In true Alaska spirit, Carla

Dedera rescued me from the Juneau Airport one day before Christmas when Rudolph wasn't

flying, and Bill Farr showed me the ropes and facilitated interviews and gatherings at the Juneau

Lab. Gilda Geier gave up Hawaii for Alaska more than once while unflaggingly supporting and

encouraging my work on this project, and Mitra Geier, in the first year of her life, found herself

facing north on the frozen tundra of the Yukon drainage with the wind in her hair.

Max G. Geier

Western Oregon University

1997
Contents

Chapter One:

Introduction to the History of Forest Research in Alaska 1

Scientific Research in Forests of Russian America, 1 741 -1867 5

Forest Research in the American Era, 1 867-1 900 1 2

Forest Research and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1900-1924 1 5

Chapter Two:

The Foundations of Modern Forest Research in Alaska, 1924-1948 23

Early Forest Research on the Tongass and Chugach National Forests 27

Transportation and Conditions of Early Research Efforts 33

Forest Fires as an Impetus for Research 35

World War Two and Military Spending 37

Chapter Three:

Forest Research With the Alaska Forest Research Center 43

Origins and Establishment of the Alaska Forest Research Center 44

Research Priorities and the Maybeso Experimental Forest 49

Research Natural Areas Established Before 1960 56

Administrative Changes and Expansion of the Research Program 57

Natural Events and the Transformation of Research in Alaska 59

Forest Survey Methods and Technology 60

From Alaska Forest Research Center to Experiment Station 69

Generational Change and the Young Bay Experimental Forest 72

Chapter Four:

Forest Research With the Northern Forest Experiment Station 77

Administrative Personalities and Expansion Into the Interior 78

Richard Hurd and Research Priorities for the Experiment Station 84

Development of the Research Program at Fairbanks 85

Cooperative Research on the Bonanza Creek Experimental Forest 92

Watershed Research and the Caribou-Poker Creek Site 93

Expansion of the Research Agenda in Southeast Alaska 95

New Researchers and Retraining in the Juneau Office 98

Administrative Agendas and Research in Southeast Alaska 105

The Forest Survey and the Environmental Challenge 111
Chapter Five:

The Push for Integrated Forest Research in Alaska 115

Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) and Forest Research 117

Environmental Activism and the Transformation of Research 118

Administrative Changes at PNW Station 121

Wickersham Dome and the Multifunctional Work Unit in Fairbanks 122

Caribou-Poker Creeks Watershed Project 128

Forest Ecosystem Research and Personnel Changes in Juneau 132

Forest Inventory Priorities, Methods, and Personnel 138

Administrative Moves in Portland and Implications for Alaska 140

Transfer of the Inventory Unit From Juneau to Anchorage 142

Chapter Six:

Forest Research in the Shadow of ANILCA 149

Communications Technology and a New Corporate Culture 150

Classification Systems and Forest Research 153

Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act 154

ANILCA Funding for Research 156

Calvin Bey and Staff Changes at Juneau 1 61

ANILCA and Implications for Fairbanks and Anchorage 169

Personnel and Research Trends at Fairbanks and Anchorage 170

The Tongass Timber Supply Fund and Related Research 179

Integrated Research and the Copper River Delta 187

Conclusion: Legacies Shaping Present Purposes 194

Epilogue 197

Appendix A: Timeline of Administrative and Science Leadership 200

Appendix B: Suggested Readings 207

Index 213

CHAPTER ONE:

Introduction to the

History of Forest

Research in Alaska

Human efforts to develop an understanding

of Alaska forests began long before Germanborn naturalist Georg Wilhelm Steller

visited the Alaska coastline with Vitus Bering's Russian

expedition in 1 741,1 but Steller's work is a good example

of how European traditions have shaped forest research

in Alaska from the time of first contact with the region

through the present era of scientists working with the

U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service. Many

modern forest researchers can identify with Steller's frustration at the lukewarm administrative support and the

skeletal logistics that Bering provided for the naturalist's

'See appendix A tor a timeline of significant milestones in the history of

forest-related research in Alaska from 1741 through the present,

including changes in the administrative structure and personnel with the

Research Branch of the Forest Service in Alaska. Ken Wright compiled

the timeline from information presented in this study and from his

professional experience as a scientist and administrator with the Forest

Service since World War Two.
work. The reality that scientific research often was not

a top priority in the budgets and agendas of public and

private governing agencies responsible for managing forests in North America is a historical pattern evident as early

as Steller's era, and Forest Service scientists in the late 20th

century still struggle to attain their research goals within

the constraints imposed by similar problems of logistics

and funding.2

Steller was a contemporary of the scientific revolution

in Europe at a time when scientists argued that traditional

ideas about nature were steeped in superstition and falsehood. In place of tradition, these thinkers promoted the

virtues of empirical research, direct observation, and rigorous classification in the search for an objective, rational,

and usable truth. Their divide-and-conquer approach to

describing natural systems, together with ideas of racial

and cultural superiority, often alienated European and

American scientists from the traditions, knowledge, and

methods of Native people, for whom the parts of nature

(i.e., the trees) could not be understood in isolation from

the whole (i.e., the forest ecosystem).3

German-born naturalist Georg Wilhelm

Steller visited the Alaska coastline with

Vitus Bering's Russian expedition

aboard the St. Peter. (Derived from a

drawing based on the logbook of the

voyage as rendered in O.W. Frost (ed.),

Georg Wilhelm Steller: Journal of a

Voyage with Bering, 1741-1742,

Stanford: Stanford University

Press, 1988.)

The chasm separating European scientists from the traditional knowledge of North American

people is readily apparent in forestry. Schemes of classification based on the principle of utility

have promoted the view that forests, in essence, are groups of trees with potential for economic

use as defined in European terms. This emphasis on trees and markets has colored most forest

2In the course of his voyage with Bering, Steller was allowed ashore for a brief 10-hour tour of Kayak

Island on the gulf coast of Alaska, but only after he threatened to report his superiors to the Russian

monarch for interfering with royal interests in information on Alaska mineral reserves. Steller complained that after more than 10 years of preparation, he was allowed only 10 hours ashore, and he noted

with dismay the realization that he had been included on the expedition primarily for his medical skills.

Georg Wilhelm Steller, journal of a Voyage with Bering, 1741 -1742, edited by O.W. Frost, translated by

Margritt A. Engel and O.W. Frost (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988), 64-65, 75. Steller's

journal entries and his catalog of plants at Kayak often are cited as the first scientific observation of

Alaska forest conditions. See, for example, John F. Thilenius, "Steller's Journey on Kayak Island, Alaska,

July 20, 1741: Where and How Did He Co?" Unpublished typescript (30 Sept 1981) Forestry Sciences

Laboratory, Juneau, AK; and O.W. Frost, ed., Bering and Chirikov: The American Voyages and Their

Impact (Anchorage: Alaska Historical Society, 1992). The catalog of plants (in botanical Latin) is

reprinted in Leonhard Stejeneger, Georg Wilhelm Steller: The Pioneer of Alaskan Natural History

(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1936), 554-561.

3Robert Pogue Harrison, Forests: The Shadow of Civilization (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,

1992), 1 14-122; Richard White, "Discovering Nature in North America," journal of American History

79 (December 1 992), 879-882. In fairness to Steller, he was extremely interested in Native customs and

culture, and he quickly grasped the utility of antiscorbutic plants that the Native people of Siberia used

to ward off scurvy at a time when the usual European treatment, bloodletting, did little to stop the

ailment and probably hastened the end for many unfortunate sailors. Steller, journal of a Voyage With

Bering, 92-94.

2
Native people and Europeans faced similar

problems ot logistics and transportation. and

boats often provided the onls access to sites

along interior rivers or in coastal waters. This

drawing ot a "skin boat" depicts a scene

similar to Steller's description ot his first view

ot a Native Alaskan near Bird Island in 1741.

(Drawing reproduced from Leonhard

Stejneger, Ceorg Wilhelm Stella: The Proneer

of Alaskan Natural History, Cambridge:

Harvard University Press. 1936.

Native skills and technology tacilitaled Euro-American research

efforts through the late 19th century. Inland travel often proved

a grueling test ot endurance, and most early naturalists and

scientists consequently based their analyses on second-hand

repoits or relied heavily on Native guides and expertise.

(Naturalist William H. Dall introduced his study. Alaska and Its

Resources, Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1870, with this drawing of

a dog-sled team.

research in Alaska from Steller's era through the early 1970s, when social and political pressures

in the United States began to encourage a more encompassing view of forest ecosystems. Most

current Forest Service research programs in Alaska, however, still carry forward scientific traditions of partitioned and segmented research.4

Native people and Europeans, despite differences in their views of nature, studied Alaska

forests for comparable reasons of economic utility, and they faced similar problems of logistics

and transportation. Problems of travel in the immense Alaska landscape are compounded by the

remoteness of the region, with its limited access and vast range of climatic and physiographic

conditions. Native people, nonetheless, accumulated a storehouse of knowledge about Northwest ecosystems that enabled them to manipulate and exploit forest resources to meet their needs

for subsistence and commercial activities before and after contact with European traders.' Among

other uses, that knowledge supported the early success of the Russian and British fur trade in the

late 18th and early 19th centuries. European merchants found that Native trappers often were

more reliable suppliers of turs than were European adventurers. Native communities were well

'How and v\hen the locus of research in Alaska began to shift away from trees to include consideration

ot broader ec osystem issues was discussed in numerous interviews with USDA Forest Service researchers stationed in Juneau, Anchorage, and Fairbanks in December 1992 and |ulv 1993. Particularly

helpful on this topic were the comments of loan M. Foote, Wilbur A. Farr, Vemon |. LaBan, William R.

Meehan, Donald C. Schmiege, and A.S. Harris. Harris noted, in reference to the focus of ecosystem

research in the 1980s, that in earlier years (meaning the 1940s. 50s, and 60s "...we just didn't think

about those things.'

For an excellent case study ot Native manipulation of the forest resource and their adaptation over time,

see Richard White, Land_Use, Environment, and Social Change: The Shaping of Island County,

Washington (Seattle: University ot Washington Press, 1980). Stephen Pyne's Fire in_America: A Cultural

History of Wildland and Rural Fire Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1982) includes a useful

discussion of the historical use ot tire to manipulate natural resources, and he explores its transmission

from Asia to North America.

3
Russian imperial interests shaped early patterns of scientific work in Alaska. Steller's journal describing his observation and route of 

Russia to Alaska, as depicted on this map, sparked a flurry of Russian expeditions. (Map based on Stejneger, Ceorg Wilhelm Steller, 

4
aware of the economic value of forest resources, both in traditional terms and in European terms,

and they acted within the bounds of their culture to develop and exploit those resources. They

organized tribal monopolies (forest reserves) to regulate access to the forest, conserve resources,

and control trade with European outposts, and they manipulated forest vegetation to encourage

the proliferation of different kinds of game, fur-bearing animals, and fish.6 They developed their

knowledge of the forest and adapted their methods of forest management to meet the new social

needs and economic conditions evident after contact with European traders. In large part, this

effort to expand and adapt an existing base of knowledge to meet new needs and conditions has

been the the role of forest researchers in Alaska from the time of early Russian contact through the

modern era of research by Forest Service personnel in Juneau, Fairbanks, and Anchorage. Forest

researchers throughout that period have been heavily influenced by public and private interests

seeking usable knowledge about the vast expanse of Alaska forests.

Scientific Research in Forests of Russian America, 1741-1867

Forest researchers in Alaska have long been preoccupied with compiling baseline data, or

"just finding out what's out there," in the words of one Forest Service scientist.7 In the 60 years

after Bering's voyage of 1741, more than 90 expeditions from Siberian ports visited Alaska's

shores in search of furs, and many returned with journals recording their impressions of the flora,

fauna, and people encountered there. Notable among these expeditions was an official venture

organized with support from Catherine II8 in 1764 and commanded by Petr Dreitsyn. Dreitsyn

and his crews surveyed Umnak, Unalaska, Unimak Island, and the Alaska Peninsula in August

1 768, and Peter Simon Pallas, a German historian, compiled accounts of many of these expeditions for the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences between 1768 and 1774.9

These reports and evidence of Russian success in the fur trade encouraged other European

powers to sponsor expeditions that broadened European knowledge of Alaska's resources. The

viceroy of Mexico dispatched expeditions to Alaska in 1774, 1777, 1 778, and 1790; the French

sent an expedition in 1785; and the Americans entered the scramble in 1789.10 Perhaps the most

6Native ettorts to limit access and manage the forest resource are discussed in Robin Fisher, Contact and

Contlict: Indian-European Relations in British Columbia, 1774-1890 (Vancouver: University of British

Columbia Press, 1977) and White, Land Use. William Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists,

and the Ecology of New England (New York: Hill and Wang, 1983) examines similar developments on

the east coast of the United States. Among other things, Native people traded furs, skins, and meat for a

variety ot European goods. Arthur F. McEvoy, The Fisherman's Problem: Ecology and Law in the

California Fisheries, 1850-1980 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986) includes a useful

discussion of various Native American strategies for managing salmon fisheries.

Author's interview with Joan Foote in Fairbanks, AK, 21 December 1992.

"In the context of her support for scientific exploration and survey of the region, Catherine II was a

correspondent with leading figures of the enlightenment, including Voltaire, Diderot, and d'Alembert.

Claus-M. Naske and Herman E. Slotnick, Alaska: A History of the 49th State, Second Edition (Norman:

University of Oklahoma Press, 1987), 28.

'Robert Fortunie, Chills and Fever: Health and Disease in the Early History of Alaska (Fairbanks:

University ot Alaska Press, 1992). 92-93; Melody Webb, The Last Frontier: A History of the Yukon Basin

of Canada and Alaska (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1985), 21-22; Dorothy lean Ray,

The Eskimos of Bering Strait, 1650-1898 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1992), 21-27.

5
Spanish and British interests in exploring the northwest coast of North America intensified after Bering, and one of lames

Cook's subordinates in 1778, Joseph Billings, later headed a Russian expedition that brought German naturalist Carl H.

Merck to Kodiak Island and Prince William Sound in 1790. Routes of the Spanish expeditions of 1774 (Perez) and 1775

(Hezeta), the British expedition ot 1778 (Cook), and the Russian expedition of 1790 (Billings) are shown here. The map

was devised from information provided in Warren Cook, Flood Tide ot Empire: Spain and the Pacific Northwest, 1543-

1819, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973), in Carlos Arnaldo Schwantes, The Pacific Northwest: An Interpretive

History, Revised and Enlarged Edition, (Lincoln: University ot Nebraska Press, 1996), and in lean Barman, The West

Beyond the West: A History of British Columbia, Revised Edition, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996.)

6
significant expedition for its effects on future scientific research in Alaska, however, was Captain

James Cook's voyage along the Alaska coast in 1778. Profits from furs that Cook's crew obtained

from Native people on the Northwest coast and sold in China prompted a flurry of British and

American interest in the region, and two of Cook's subordinates on that trip, Joseph Billings and

George Vancouver, later returned at the head of expeditions with distinguished naturalists on

board. Catherine II authorized Billings to head an expedition to Alaska in 1785, in an effort to

shore up Russian claims to the region, and Billings recruited German naturalist Carl H. Merck to

make scientific observations. Billings and Merck ventured as far as Kodiak and Prince William

Sound in 1 790 before returning to Kamchatka.11 Expeditions like these expanded knowledge of

Alaska's coastal areas, although information about the inland regions and forests remained sketchy.12

International interest in Alaska's resources increased rapidly between 1780 and 1790, but

most information about inland areas originated with private fur traders. Much of that information

was sketchy or unreliable in the first 50 years of contact because traders tried to protect their best

trading sites from competitors. The situation began to change near the end of the 18th century.

One wealthy fur trader, Grigorii Shelikhov, is notable for his role in founding a dominant trading

company that eventually gained a monopoly charter from the Russian crown and displaced the

previous system of small, independent traders. He is also notable (for the purposes of this study)

for his proposal, in 1790, that a tree-growing site be designated at each settlement in Russian

America.13 Shelikhov, with his wife and 192 men, established a settlement at Three Saints Bay on

Kodiak Island by 1 784 with trading posts on Kodiak Island, Afognak Island, and the Kenai Peninsula by 1 786. Shelikhov also sent field parties into the regions surrounding these sites and Prince

William Sound.14 These projects marked the beginnings of a more regulated effort to research

and describe the inland resources of Alaska.

Shelikhov's company faced transportation and logistics problems similar to those that plagued

later forest researchers seeking to locate and identify inland resources. As in later years, boats

were crucial to successful operations in Alaska's forests. With this in mind, Shelikhov's handpicked manager for the Alaska enterprise, Aleksandr Baranov, moved operations in 1791 from

Three Saints Bay to the northern portion of Kodiak Island for easier access to forest resources

needed for fuel wood and construction materials and to take advantage of a better harbor site at

13Naske and Slotnik, Alaska, 29-30.

14Fortuine, Chills_and Fever, 93-94; Ray, Eskimos of Bering Strait, 47-49.

15Contusion over whether the Kheuveren River was forested or unforested, for example, contributed to a

long-enduring myth of a Russian fort called "Kyngovei" supposed to have been established by shipwrecked Russians from Lena in 1648. For a discussion of the myth and confusion over forested river

valleys, see Ray, Eskimos of Bering Strait, 28-38.

16David Bruce, "History of Tree Planting on the Aleutian Islands," in j. Alden et al.. ed., Forest Development in Cold Climates, (New York: Plenum Press, 1993), 396.

17Fortuine. Chills and Fever, 94-95; Naske and Slotnik, Alaska, 31-33.

7
Russian development and shipbuilding in Alaska left its mark on Alaska forest resources by the 1790s, when George

Vancouver noted "visible effects of the axe and saw" in Prince William Sound. Major Russian settlements in Alaska

by 1800 are shown on this map. (Based on information from Naske and Slotnick, Alaska.)

8
that location. Baranov then located forest reserves suitable for shipbuilding near Resurrection

Bay on the Kenai Peninsula, and recruited an English shipbuilder to construct a sea-going vessel,

the Phoenix, which broadened the company's range of activity along the Alaska coast.15

Control over Alaska forests and responsibility for identifying usable forest resources shifted

with international events and politics. Shelikhov died in 1795, and his son-in-law, Nikolai Petrovich

Rezanov, proceeded to reorganize the Alaska fur enterprise as the Russian-American Company.

Tsar Paul I then granted Rezanov's new company a monopoly charter in 1799 that conveyed

exclusive trading privileges in Alaska with a mandate to explore and occupy lands to the north

and south not already possessed by another European nation. The charter also conveyed rights of

access and control on forest reserves in Alaska.16

The ascendency of the Russian-American Company to monopoly status was partly due to

Russian concerns about Vancouver's expedition in 1794 and publication of his journals in 1 798.

Vancouver, who had served as a midshipman on Cook's voyage 20 years earlier, headed a British

expedition that included Archibald Menzies as ship's surgeon and naturalist. Menzies collected

seeds and cuttings from southeast Alaska that eventually were planted in England as specimen

trees, thus bringing Alaska species into the limelight of forest research in Europe.17 Vancouver's

journals include vivid descriptions of forest conditions in the Prince William Sound region, including the effects of human activity: "Many trees had been cut down since these regions had

been first visited by Europeans; this was evident by the visible effects of the axe and saw." He also

noted soil conditions of vegetative "morasses" on forested hillsides that appeared dry and verdant

on the surface, yet "sunk to nearly half leg deep in water" when walked upon, and he observed

that these hillside bogs retained enough water to sustain very large "pine trees" on an otherwise

rocky foundation of steep hillsides.18

Rezanov's concern about Vancouver's expedition and other examples of foreign interest in

Alaska also yielded a bonus for later forest researchers. Rezanov visited Alaska in 1805 to review

and revitalize Russian holdings as part of an effort to discourage foreign ventures in the region.

Baronov met with Rezanov in a series of meetings at Sitka and emphasized the need to raise

profits and improve morale among company employees in the bleak surroundings of the Aleutian

15Naske and Slotnik, Alaska, 32.

16Ray, Eskimos of Bering Strait, 56-57; Naske and Slotnik, Alaska, 33-37; Fortuine, Chills and Fever, 105-

106.

17Alfred Hulse Brooks, "History of Explorations and Surveys," in Alaska and Its History, Morgan B.

Sherwood, ed. (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1967). See also, Wallace M. Olson and john F.

Thilenius, The Travel lournal of Archibald Menzies, 1793-1794 (Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press,

1993).

18George Vancouver, "Voyage of Discovery to the North Pacific Ocean," as quoted in |ohn A. Murray,

ed., A Republic of Rivers: Three Centuries of Nature Writing from Alaska and the Yukon (New York:

Oxford University Press, 1990), 45-47.

9
Islands.19 One apparent result of those meetings was the decision to establish tree plantations on

Amaknak Island in Unalaska Bay to make the area more appealing to its human occupants and to

provide wood for ship repairs, housing, and firewood. Sitka spruce were transported from Sitka

to Unalaska between 1807 and 1813, and several plantations were established at various sites

over the next half century. These early afforestation sites eventually yielded information useful for

forest geneticists studying the dispersion and adaptability of Sitka spruce from southeast Alaska.20

Support for scientific research in Russian America increased after 1821, when Emperor

Alexander I renewed the monopoly charter for the Russian-American Company with the stipulation that the company's chief managers must be officers in the Royal Navy. This shift in administrative authority came about after Russian officials learned that members of the United States

Congress were advocating military action against Russian interests in Alaska. Alexander I responded with a moratorium on trade with Americans and by transferring control of the fur monopoly to military officers who were expected to be more loyal to imperial interests than to

company profits. Several of those officers were men of scientific training who encouraged geographic and meteorologic research. Frederic Litke commanded one such expedition in a survey

of Unalaska, the Pribilof Islands, and the northern coast of the Alaska Peninsula aboard the Russian corvette Seniavin in 1826-29. Litke and the expedition naturalist, a Dr. Mertens, returned to

Russia with specimens of more than 2,500 plants and more than 1,500 specimens of animals

they had collected in Alaska. The collection of specimens was made available to European

scientists at the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences, and Litke published his journal in 1835.21

Research in the interior of Alaska also increased during the era of Naval administration, and

especially after Ferdinand Petrovich von Wrangell, a noted explorer and descendent of German

nobility, became governor in 1830. Wrangell relied heavily on Creoles (offspring of Russian men

and Native women) for expeditions to expand knowledge of the interior. Creoles Andrey Glazunov

and Pyotr V. Malakhov, for example, explored the Yukon River drainage in skin boats built by

Native craftsmen in 1833-34, and laid the groundwork for Lavrenty Alekseyevich Zagoskin, who

led the first scientific expedition into the Yukon and Kuskokwim drainages in 1842-43. Zagoskin,

a graduate of the Khronshtadt Naval Cadet Corps who had studied scientific methods for field

observation and sampling, collected numerous specimens and made careful note of natural resources in the region. His published journals include detailed descriptions of boreal forest ecology in the Yukon drainage as far inland as the mouth of the Tanana River, and he also collected

19 Naske and Slotnik, Alaska, 37-38. Examples of later scientists with the Forest Service who recognized

the significance of these early plantations include Harold Lutz, History of Sitka Spruce Planted in 1 805

at Unalaska Island by the Russians (Portland, OR: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific

Northwest Forest and Range Experiment Station, Northern Forest Experiment Station, May 1963) and

lohn Alden, Growth of Historical Sitka Spruce Plantations at Unalaska Bay, Alaska (Portland, OR: U.S.

Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Forest and Research Station, Gen. Tech.

Rep. PNW-236, 1989).

20Bruce. "History of Tree Planting," 7; author's interview with John Alden, 21 December 1992.

21Naske and Slotnik, Alaska, 45-46, 50-52; Brooks, "History of Explorations and Surveys," 36-38;

Murray, ed.. A Republic of Rivers, 63-67.

10
Flag of the Scientific Corps of the Western Union

Telegraph Expedition, with names of expedition

members. As depicted in Dall, Alaska and Its

Resources.)

extensive information from and about the people native to the region and their use of its natural resources.

In the tradition of European science, however, he

prided himself on avoiding dependence on native

people or their methods.22

Support for scientific study of natural resources in

Russian America shifted when international conflicts

and innovations in long-distance communications and

newspaper technology altered the relative importance

of Alaska on the world stage. The Crimean War (1852-

54) and conflict with the British Navy weakened the

Russian Navy and drained the imperial treasury. The

same war attracted great interest from newspapers in

the United States. American newspapers had expanded circulation and established newswire services

during their coverage of the American war against

Mexico 4 years earlier. Interest in transoceanic telegraph cables peaked in the mid-1850s, when news correspondents struggled to provide timely

news about the Crimean War for American newspapers and their readers, but attention shifted

northward to the Bering Strait after the American Civil War disrupted trans-Atlantic shipping

during the early 1860s. The Western Union Telegraph Company commissioned a survey in 1863

for an overland telegraph line from the Western United States through British Columbia and

Russian America to the Bering Strait, where it was to link up with the trans-Siberian line. Robert

Kennicott, formerly curator for the Northwestern University Museum of Natural History, headed

the Russian-American division of the survey for Western Union, and he assembled a "scientific

corps" of specialists in botany, insects, birds and small mammals, paleontology, and invertebrates

and fishes. The scientific corps drew minimal salaries from Western Union, but contributions

from the Smithsonian Institution and the Chicago Academy of Sciences funded much of their

work. Members of the scientific corps traversed much of Alaska from 1865-67, sent reports and

specimens to the Smithsonian, and produced numerous publications relating to forest resources

in coastal and interior Alaska. These reports appeared in the United States just as new technology

in steam-powered presses and new methods for producing newsprint from wood pulp began to

transform Americans' perceptions of forest resources and shortly after they discovered that their

Secretary of State, William Seward, had purchased Alaska for $7.2 million in 1 867.23

22Melody Webb, The Last Frontier: A History of the Yukon Basin of Canada and Alaska (Albuquerque:

University of New Mexico Press, 1985), 25-28, 31-36; Naske and Slotnik, Alaska, 52-54; L.A. Zagoskin,

"Nulato, A Settlement on the Yukon," as quoted in Murray, ed., A Republic of Rivers, 79-83.

23Michael Embrey, The Press in American History; Brooks, "History of Explorations and Surveys," 42-43;

Webb, The Last Frontier, 53-55; lames Alton lames, The First Scientific Exploration of Russian America

and the Purchase of Alaska (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University, 1942). Morgan B. Sherwood,

Exploration of Alaska, 1865-1900 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965), 15-35.

11
Russian and American military infrastructure in Alaska created local

markets for forest resources, as this view ot the interior of Fort

Durbin suggests. The amount of wood necessary for pallisades and

structures was just a fraction of that needed for firewood. (Drawing

from Dall, Alaska and Its Resources.)

Forest Research in the

American Era, 1867-1900

The United States Army occupied

Alaska and assumed administrative authority soon after the purchase was announced, but scientific research in

Alaska was a relatively low priority in

the American Army in 1867. International agreements and the purchase of

Alaska had largely resolved issues of

sovereignty and control that had driven

exploration in earlier years, and the

United States was just entering the tumultuous years of reconstruction and

military occupation of the former Confederacy. The military culture of the United States Army in

1867 also differed from that of the Russian Navy. Army officers who rose in ranks during the

American Civil War were rewarded for skills not necessarily scientific in nature, and they often

found duty in Alaska boring and uninspiring. Some of their Russian predecessors, by contrast,

actually had requested assignment to Alaska because of their scientific interests and training.24

The initial result, in 1867, was relatively weak support for government-sponsored research programs in the region.

The Western Union project also floundered after the purchase, and other private research

efforts mostly lacked the scope, direction, and depth of the scientific corps project. Kennicott

died of heart failure in 1866, and his 20-year-old successor, fish specialist William Healy Dall,

suffered a fate familiar to later forest researchers when funding for the project was abruptly terminated in 1867. Western Union cancelled the telegraph survey because, shortly after the Civil

War ended, a trans-Atlantic telegraph cable successfully linked the United States and Europe,

and the Alaska route no longer seemed economically feasible. The work of the scientific corps

did help Seward win Congressional approval for the Alaska purchase, and he also organized a

small group of Coast Survey scientists headed by George Davidson to examine and report on the

new territory. Davidson's group touched base at Sitka, Kodiak, and Unalaska in a 4-month cruise

aboard a Revenue Marine cutter before filing his report, while Dall was forced to scramble for

private funding to complete his work in Alaska. He eventually collected more than 4,500 specimens in the Yukon drainage, and his book Alaska and Its Resources, published in 1870, encouraged further scientific expeditions in the interior of Alaska.25

24Sherwood, Exploration of Alaska, 31-33; Naske and Slotnik, Alaska, 67-69.

25Sherwood, Exploration of Alaska, 31-33, 40-43; William Healy Dall, Alaska and Its Resources (Boston:

Lee and Shepard, 1870).

12
William Dall. John Muir, and Bernard Fernow accompanied Edward

H. Harriman and 18 other scientists on an extended research voyage

aboard the George W, Elder (shown here), which made more than

50 stops on a 9,000-mile cruise off the Alaska coast in 1898. (Photo

bv E.H. Harriman.)

With Dall and other Americans,

the tradition of scientific research

with emphasis on the isolation, identification, and classification of distinct and usable truths assumed new

significance in Alaska. Charles

Darwin's The Origin of Species by

Natural Selection, published in

1 859, challenged the ideas of Louis

Agassiz, a naturalist who argued that

individual species were created

separately and with no genetic connection. Before his time in Alaska,

Dall had studied with Agassiz and

spent much of his time in search of

evidence that could be brought to bear on this dispute. He gained appointment with the United

States Coast Survey in 1870 and continued his naturalist work amidst other official duties in later

years, forwarding plant specimens and other materials to the Smithsonian and to Agassiz. The

Alaska Commercial Company, organized in 1868 and the dominant force in the American fur

industry in Alaska by 1870, also cooperated closely with researchers affiliated with the Smithsonian,

collecting specimens and providing logistical support.26

Federal support for research in Alaska forests before formal establishment of the Division of

Forestry in the Department of Agriculture, largely centered on the efforts of Ivan Petroff, a native

of Russia and veteran of the Union Army who compiled a special report on Alaska for the Tenth

Census of the United States in 1880. The Tenth Census was particularly concerned with natural

resources, and Petroff, a journalist who previously had researched Russian sources for historian

Hubert Howe Bancroft, produced a census report that divided Alaska into several districts classified according to distinct physical and climatic provinces. Petroff noted that forests covered a

broad area of Alaska, but he argued that valuable or usable species were relatively sparse compared with the forests of Oregon or Washington. His report described commercial stands in the

Alexander Archipelago, Prince William Sound, and Cook Inlet, and it is notable for Petroff's effort

to designate particular species found in each area. It is also notable for its division of the forest

into distinct groups of independent, exploitable resources: fish, fur, timber, and minerals. Petroff,

who was not a scientist bv training or inclination, drew heavily on the work of Dall and earlier

sources and scientists to compile his report. Bernard E. Fernow, the Prussian-trained forester

who headed the Division of Forestry in the U.S. Department of Agriculture after 1 886, later noted

that Petroff's data on Alaska timber was "vague" and "faulty." Petroff's census report and his work

26Note that Dall contributed evidence that bolstered the arguments of Asa Gray, an American champion

of Darwinian theory. Sherwood, Exploration of Alaska, 42-46; Naske and Slotnik, Alaska, 67-69.

13
for Bancroft's History of Alaska, nevertheless, were influential in shaping American perceptions

of Alaska forests. He was, perhaps, more remembered by acquaintances in Alaska for consuming

prodigious amounts of alcohol with no apparent effect—a skill which earned him the nickname

"Hollow Legs" and a place in the mythology of American Alaska.27

Petroff's utilitarian assessment of Alaska forests contrasted with the views of John Muir, who

toured the Alexander Archipelago and Glacier Bay in 1 879. Muir's writings were in the European

tradition of romantic naturalism, and his descriptions of the forests and glaciers of the region

contributed to the myth of Alaska as a pristine wilderness that should remain unsullied by human

industry. Like many of his contemporaries and subsequent writers, Muir failed to recognize the

long history of human occupation and interaction with the environment before European contact

with Native people, or even the extensive impact of European activities that Vancouver and others noted in the region nearly a century before Muir's expedition. Muir's writings also, ironically,

popularized the region as an area full of potential for scientific research and tourism, which he

viewed as destructive to the wilderness ideal. This conflict between productive use and aesthetic

value was part of a broader debate in American society that coincided with a movement to

professionalize administration of American forests.28

Some members of the American Forestry Association, which represented the interests of professionally trained foresters in the United States by the late 19th century, expressed concern

about diminishing timber reserves in the early 1 870s. The Association urged the national government to adopt a program that would promote timber cultivation and forest preservation. Delegates to an Association convention in 1 875 called for a national program of forest research, and

in 1 886, a member, Bernard Fernow, finally gained appointment to head the Division of Forestry.

Fernow, who was the first professional forester to hold the position, had advocated conservation

of forest lands in the United States for nearly a decade before his appointment. In his first year in

office, Fernow outlined a systematic plan of forest research and lobbied hard for Congressional

legislation to set aside federal forest lands. He was finally successful in 1891, when Congress

passed a Forest Reserve Act authorizing the President to establish forest reserves. The next year,

Benjamin Harrison established the Afognak Forest and Fish Culture Reserve, although this designation of the first federal reserve in Alaska primarily addressed concern for salmon fisheries in the

region raised by a team ot researchers working for the federal Commissioner of Fish and Fisheries

and headed by ichthyologistTarleton H. Bean.29

27Harold K. Steen, The U.S. Forest Service: A History (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1976), 17;

Lawrence Rakestraw, A History of the United States Forest Service in Alaska (Anchorage: Alaska

Historical Commission, Department of Education, State of Alaska, and the Alaska Region, Forest Service,

United States Department of Agriculture, 1981), 7; Sherwood, Exploration of Alaska, 57-65. C. Hart

Memam, Harriman Alaska Expedition, Volume Two (New York: Doubleday, Page, and Company, and

Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1902), 239.

28Sherwood, Exploration of Alaska, 75-76; John Muir, Travels in Alaska (Boston: Houghlin-Mifflin, 1 91 5).

29Steen, The U.S. Forest Service, 8-11, 26-27; Michael Frome, The Forest Service, second edition

(Boulder CO: Westview Press, 1984), 18-19; Rakestraw, Forest Service in Alaska, 8-10; Robert Cowlin,

30Federal Forest Research in the Pacific Northwest: The Pacific Northwest Forest and Range Experiment

Station" (unpublished typescript, Portland Office History Files), 11.

14
Fernow became directly involved with forest research in Alaska after 1 898, when he resigned

his position with the Division of Forestry and accepted appointment to organize and head the

forestry program at Cornell University. The next year, Fernow joined an expedition organized by

railroad magnate E.H. Harriman, who chartered a steamship and recruited more than 20 scientists for a grand tour along the Alaska coast. Among the scholars who joined the expedition were

specialists in botany, paleontology, mining engineering, mineralogy, geology, zoology, entomology, mammalogy, ornithology, biology, anatomy, forestry, and geography. Two other passengers

on the steamer who were particularly notable for their earlier contributions to forest research in

Alaska were John Muir and William Dall.30 Participants were divided into various committees

organized according to discipline and function, much like a university faculty. The expedition

made more than 50 stops in a 9,000-mile cruise, and participants produced a multitude of scholarly papers, subsequently published from 1902 to 1914 in a multivolume work entitled Harriman

Alaska Expedition. This publication was one of the most comprehensive compilations of Alaska

research available at the time. Fernow's contribution to the compendium was a report on the

forests of Alaska and an assessment of their marketing potential drawn from his own observations

along the coast and from second-hand accounts of the interior. Fernow argued that the coastal

forests in Alaska could not compete with timber from the Puget Sound area for lumber markets,

but he suggested they could be logged and marketed as pulpwood.31 This suggestion initiated a

long series of proposals aimed at developing a pulpwood industry in Alaska, and it played an

important role in shaping the direction of forest research in the first half of the 20th century.

Forest Research and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1900-1924

Forest research in Alaska entered a new era of federal direction and professional administration about the time the Harriman expedition closed out the 19th century with a grand flourish of

private initiative and funding. Federal interest in Alaska's affairs increased markedly after the gold

rush of 1898, and by the early 1900s, professional foresters were gaining a firm foothold in the

administrative hierarchy of the national government. Gifford Pinchot, who succeeded Fernow at

the Division of Forestry in 1898, was professionally trained as a scientist and forester, a former

manager of forest lands for theVanderbilt estate in North Carolina, and a graduate of Yale University. He was also a close associate of Theodore Roosevelt, and when Roosevelt became President

after William McKinley was assassinated in 1901, professional foresters gained access to the

corridors of power in Washington, D.C. By the end of that year, Filibert Roth headed the newly

established Division of Forestry in the General Land Office of the Department of Interior, and

Pinchot's unit in the Department of Agriculture was renamed the Bureau of Forestry. Four years

30Cowlin, 'Federal Forest Research," 17; Sherwood, Exploration of Alaska, 182-186.

31Rakestraw, Forest Service in Alaska, 15; C. Hart Merriam, Harriman Alaska Expedition, Volume Two

(New York: Doubleday, Page, and Company, and Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1902), 2.35-

256; Sherwood, Exploration of Alaska, 182-186.

15
later, Congress transferred administration of forest reserves from the Department of the Interior to the Department of Agriculture, and the Bureau of Forestry became the Forest Service

in July 1905.32

Federal research in Alaska forests expanded during Pinchot's tenure, but research was not

Pinchot's top priority and the people who conducted the research were not always professionally

trained as scientists or foresters. Pinchot's primary concerns were to expand the area of forest

reserves subject to management by professional foresters, and his political connections and social standing helped secure increased funding for the Bureau of Forestry and its expanding role in

Alaska. With Pinchot's encouragement, the new President made the establishment of new forest

reserves in Alaska a priority early in his administration. Roosevelt, formerly an assistant secretary

of the Navy, commissioned a lieutenant in the Navy, George Thornton Emmons, to draft a report

on the potential for establishing forest reserves in Alaska. Emmons previously had collaborated

with the Field Museum of Natural History and other agencies in various scientific expeditions in

Alaska. His 1902 report, "The Woodlands of Alaska," described in 16 handwritten pages the

forests of interior and coastal Alaska in terms of their potential marketability and importance for

local development. Emmons' proposed forest reserve primarily consisted of islands selected

because they were relatively remote from potential development, relatively devoid of white inhabitants, and relatively unlikely to be economically viable for commercial logging in the future.

Forest researchers seeking to establish Research Natural Areas in later years often found similar

characteristics helpful in securing approval for proposed sites. On the basis of Emmon's report,

Roosevelt established the Alexander Archipelago Forest Reserve by presidential proclamation on

20 August 1902.33

The transition to management and research by professional foresters was a gradual process in

the Pinchot era. The man Pinchot appointed to manage the new forest reserves, William Langille,

had broad interests and practical experience, but he was not a professional forester. Langille

assumed his duties as forest supervisor of the Alexander Archipelago Forest Reserve after a 2-year

examination of forest conditions in coastal and interior Alaska. He made a series of expeditions

from Juneau to Prince William Sound, Controller Bay, Norton Bay, and the Kenai Peninsula in

1904, and he made a dogsled journey from Seward to Fairbanks between January and March

1905. Langille, much like his predecessors in the early years of the Russian-American Company,

faced serious problems of difficult access, inadequate transportation, and a hostile population of

Alaskans. He spent much of his time locating boats for transport and answering local critics of

the Reserve. Frederick E. Olmstead, a professional forester, joined Langille in Alaska after Congress transferred administration of forest reserves from the Department of the Interior to the Department of Agriculture in 1905. Olmstead examined existing forest reserves and reviewed the

3 2Naske and Slotnik, Alaska, 85-87 ; Steen, The U.S Foprest Servicei 47-48 , 131-132 ; Cowlin . "Federal

Forest Research," 21;

33Steen, The U.S Forest Service 52-74 ; Rakestraw, Forest Service in Alaska, 15-17 ; author's interviews

wit h Wilbu r A. Farr and A.S. Harris in luneau, AK, 23 Decembe r 1992 ;

16
potential for additional designations. He also recommended a survey of timber resources in

Alaska, and he proposed an aggressive marketing campaign to promote developing those resources and enlarging the forest reserves.34

OImstead and other professional foresters in the Bureau of Forestry became more involved

with Alaska forests just as forest research began to assume a more formal standing in the Bureau.

Pinchot established the Section of Special Investigations as the research arm of the Division of

Forestry during his first year in office. By 1902, it had evolved into the Division of Forest Investigation with a staff of 55 employees accounting for one-third of the agency's budget, and by 1905,

Pinchot had organized investigative work into the sections of Forest Products, Dendrology, and

Silvics. Three years later, Raphael Zon, a Russian emigre who headed the Section of Silvics in the

Washington Office after studying with Fernow at Cornell, proposed a plan for decentralizing

research by establishing a series of Forest Experiment Stations on the National Forests. Pinchot

approved the plan on 6 May 1908 and by the end of that year, an experiment station was in

operation in Arizona with investigations being conducted throughout the West.35

As research activities expanded in the Western United States, Alaska reserves began to attract

more attention from scientists in the Forest Service. The head of the Silvics Section in the Portland

office, Fred Ames, inspected forests in southeast Alaska with Langille in 1909. Royal S. Kellogg,

an assistant forester with the Forest Service, examined interior and coastal forests that same year.

Kellogg's research was published in 1910 in the first Forest Service bulletin devoted to the forests

of Alaska. In his assessment of the market potential of Alaska forests, Kellogg echoed Fernow's

suggestion that the coastal forests were best suited for producing pulpwood.36

Forest research gained a strong advocate when Henry S. Graves replaced Gifford Pinchot as

Chief Forester in 1910, and Graves was also more directly involved with Alaska forests than was

his predecessor. President William Taft fired Pinchot after the Chief Forester became embroiled in

a dispute with the Secretary of the Interior over the disposition of coal lands in Alaska. The

circumstances under which Pinchot was fired meant that the policies of his successor were strictly

scrutinized, which in part accounts for the establishment of an independent research branch in

the U.S. Forest Service. Graves was a professional forester who supported research into the use of

fire as a tool for forest management. Amidst concerns that this research might conflict with

established Forest Service programs that enlisted public support for suppressing fires, however,

Graves faced critics in the Forest Service and in Congress who questioned whether fire research

was an appropriate use of Forest Service funds. In this context, Graves ordered a halt to the

practice of supporting experiment stations with general expense funds, and he sought independent funding from Congress for research activities in 1912 .

37

3 4Rakestraw Forest Service in Alaska, 18-22, 30-31 .

3 5 Cowlin , "Federal Forest Research." 26-28 ; Steen, The U.S.Forest Service, 131-132 ;

3 6Rakestraw, Forest Seryice in Alaska, 30-31 .

37Sleen The U.S. Forest Service, 135-137; Rakestraw, Forest Service in Alask a 55-62 .

17
Graves established the Branch of Research as an independent unit in the Forest Service in

1915, and he visited Alaska himself that same year. His published articles appeared in 1916 with

descriptions of the forests of Alaska and their value as a source of timber. Graves named a

professional forester, Earle H. Clapp, to head the Branch of Research in Washington, D.C., and

assume control over the various lines of investigative work in the Forest Service. Clapp, who

reported only to the Chief Forester in the Washington Office, credited this reorganization with

protecting researchers from the whims of District foresters. Other forest researchers, however,

including Thornton Munger, the Assistant Chief of the Division of Silviculture in the Portland

Office, argued that the realignment had centralized authority in the Washington office while it

undermined the autonomy and responsiveness of researchers in the field.38 This problem, in

various incarnations, has confounded forest researchers in Alaska from 1 91 5 through the present.

Scientists found professional respectability in the Forest Service under the protective umbrella

of the Branch of Research after 1915, and their presence established the reputation of the Forest

Service as the national leader in forest research by the 1920s, but the question of scientific autonomy and initiative remained an important issue, especially in Alaska. Graves and his critics in

the Forest Service echoed principles of scientists since Steller's time in suggesting that forest

research should provide usable knowledge for practicing foresters. In keeping with that utilitarian outlook, which was a common priority among progressive scientists and policy makers in

early 20th-century America,39 researchers in Alaska worked on volume tables and inventories to

serve the needs of forest managers and developers. Efforts to promote and develop a pulpwood

industry on the Tongass National Forest also prompted studies of waterflow and soil conditions,

mostly at the initiative of Forest Supervisors on the Chugach and Tongass National Forests. Some

scientists questioned, as early as 1917, whether this pattern of research was appropriate for scientists in the Forest Service, but their protests had little success in shifting the focus of forest research

in Alaska or elsewhere.40

Administrative realignment of Forest Service activities in Alaska in the decade after 1919

widened the gap between forest research and forest management on paper, but not necessarily in

practice. Administrative control of forest management moved closer to Juneau when Alaska was

split away from District 6 in 1921 and was reconstituted as District 8 (later Region 8 and Region

10),41 but when the Pacific Northwest Forest Experiment Station was established in 1924, initially

38Cowlin, 'Federal Forest Research," 40; Steen, The U.S. Forest Service, 137-140.

39Progressive reformers ot this era typically emphasized the need for increased efficiency, scientific

methods, and immediate action to address problems with real-world implications. The Pure Food and

Drug Acts of 1906, for example, addressed sanitation problems dramatized and popularized in Upton

Sinclair's The jungle. This utilitarian bent fostered a wave of reforms that generated a strong demand for

protessionally trained scientists in many areas ot public service and administration, including the Forest

Service.

40Cowlin, Federal Forest Research," 42-47; Steen, The U.S. Forest Service, 137-140, Rakestraw, Forest

Service in Alaska 76-78.

41Forest Service Districts were reorganized as Regions in 1930; in 1934, Region 8 became Region 10 in

a re-numbering of the various regions ot the Forest Service. Rakestraw, Forest Service in Alaska, 90-91.

18
Organizational chart for the Forest Service in 191 7. Derived from Harold K. Steen, The U.S. Forest Service: A History.

CONTINUED