1831 the solicitor of the treasury assumed a partial responsibility for the care and protection of the public timber lands, and in 1855 this duty was transferred to the commissioner of the general land office in the Department of the Interior. The effect of these changes upon forest protection was unimportant. When, however, at the close of the Civil War railway building in the United States took on an unparalleled activity, the destruction of forests by fire and the axe increased in a corresponding ratio, and public sentiment began to take alarm. Action by several of the states slightly preceded that of the Federal government, but in 1876 Congress, acting under the inspiration of a memorial from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, authorized the appointment of an officer (Dr Franklin B. Hough) under the commissioner of agriculture, to collect and distribute information upon forest matters. His office became in 1880 the division of forestry in what is now the United States Department of Agriculture.
As the railways advanced into the treeless interior, public interest in tree-planting became keen. In 1873 Congress passed and later amended and repealed the timber culture acts, which granted homesteads on the treeless public lands to settlers who planted one-fourth of their entries with trees. Though these measures were not successful in themselves they directed attention towards forestry. The act which repealed them in 1891 contained a clause which lies at the foundation of the present forest policy of the United States. By it the president was authorized to set aside “any part of the public lands wholly or in part covered with timber or undergrowth, whether of commercial value or not, as public reservations, and the President shall, by public proclamation, declare the establishment of such reservations and the limits thereof.” Some eighteen million acres had been proclaimed as reservations at the time when, in 1896, the National Academy of Sciences was asked by the secretary of the interior to make an investigation and report upon “the inauguration of a rational forest policy for the forest lands of the United States.” Upon the recommendation of a commission named by the Academy, President Cleveland established more than twenty-one million acres of new reserves on the 22nd of February 1897. His action was widely misunderstood and attacked, but it awakened a public interest in forest questions without which the rapid progress of forestry in the United States since that time could never have been made.
Within a few months after the proclamation of the Cleveland reserves the present national forest policy took definite shape. Under this policy the national government holds and manages, in the common interest of all users of the forests or its products, such portions of the public lands as have been set aside by presidential proclamation in accordance with the act of 1891. These lands are held against private acquisition under the Homestead Act (except as to agricultural lands as hereafter mentioned), the Timber and Stone Act, and other laws under which the United States disposes of its unappropriated public domain, but not against private acquisition under the Mineral Land Laws. They are selected from lands believed to be more valuable for forest purposes than for agriculture, and are managed with the purpose of securing from them the best and largest possible returns, present and future, whether in the form of water for irrigation or power, of timber, of forage for stock, or of any other beneficial product. The aggregate area of the reserves, or national forests, has been steadily increased until they now include nearly all the timber lands left of the public domain.
The general lines of this policy were in part laid down by the commission already mentioned, in its report submitted to the secretary of the interior, May 1, 1897, and by the act of June 4, 1897, which was largely shaped by the work of the commission. Until this act was passed the national forests had been in theory closed against any form of use; nor had the possibility of securing forest preservation by wise use received much thought from those who had favoured their creation. Such a state of affairs could not continue. Before long public opinion would have forced the opening to use of the resources thus arbitrarily locked up, and in the absence of any administrative system providing for conservative use, the national forests would inevitably have been abolished, and the whole policy of government forest holdings would have ceased. The act of June 4, 1897 was therefore of the first importance. This act conferred upon the secretary of the interior general powers for the proper management of the national forests through the general land office of his department. It provided for the designation and sale of dead, mature and large timber; authorized the secretary to permit free use of timber in small quantities by settlers, miners and residents; empowered him to “make such rules and regulations and establish such service as will insure the objects of such reservations, namely, to regulate their occupancy and use and to preserve the forests thereon from destruction”; and made violation of the act or of such rules and regulations a misdemeanour. The statute limited the power to establish forest reservations to the purpose of improving and protecting the forest, securing favourable conditions of water flows, and furnishing a continuous supply of timber for the use and necessities of citizens of the United States. Lands found, upon due examination, to be more valuable for other purposes than for forest uses might be eliminated from any reservation, and all mineral lands within the reservations were left open to private appropriation under the mineral laws. The rights of settlers and claimants were safeguarded, and civil and criminal jurisdiction, except so far as the punishment of offences against the United States in the reservations was concerned, was reserved to the States.
While the administration of the national forests was entrusted to the general land office, the same act assigned the surveying and mapping of them to the United States Geological Survey, which has published descriptions and maps of some of the more important.
No attempt was made in the general land office to develop a technical forest service. There were, indeed, at the time of passage of the act, less than ten trained foresters in the United States, no means of training more, and very little conception of what forestry actually meant. The purpose of the administration was therefore mainly protection against trespass and fire, particularly the latter. Regulations were made giving effect to the provisions of the act of June 4, set forth above, but in the absence of technical knowledge as to what might safely be done, the tendency was rather to restrict than to extend the use of the forest. Meanwhile, however, there was rapidly developing in another branch of the government service an organization qualified for actual forest management.
One year after the passage of the act of June 4, 1897, the division of forestry in the Department of Agriculture ceased to be merely a bureau of information, and became an active agency for introducing the actual practice of forestry among private owners and for conducting the investigations upon which a sound American forest practice could be based. The work awakened great interest among forest owners, and exerted a powerful educational influence upon the country at large. The division extended its work and became (July 1, 1901) the Bureau of Forestry. It drew into its employment for a time nearly all the men who were preparing themselves in increasing numbers (at first abroad, then in the newly-founded schools in the United States) for the profession of forestry, and was soon recognized as qualified to speak authoritatively on technical questions connected with the administration of the national forests. This led to a request from the secretary of the interior for the advice of the bureau on such questions. Working plans were accordingly undertaken for a number of the forests. The general land office, however, was not ready to attempt active forest management. Though some timber was sold and the grazing of stock regulated to some extent, the main object of the land office administration continued to be protection against fire. Many of the regulations which it made could not be enforced.
The disadvantages of dispersal of the Federal government forest work among three separate agencies grew more and more apparent, until, on the 1st of February 1905, control of the 63,000,000 acres of forest reserves which up to that time had been set aside was transferred from the general land office to
