"and dire were the threats to the Executive." A Senate delegation marched over to the White House to demand a change. In advance of the meeting, Roosevelt summoned Pinchot. Caught up in the euphoria of their triumph, they started laughing, loudly enough that the senators could hear them as they approached from the hallway. Heyburn was apoplectic, steaming. These new national forests were nothing but "midnight reserves," he said in a rant to the president. After the meeting, he arranged to cut off any funds that would allow the Forest Service to publicize them. By his reasoning, if the public did not know they existed, then perhaps they wouldn't exist at all.
But the forester and the president now had most everything they wanted. In just a few years' time, they had tripled the national forest system, to nearly 180 million acres. They had introduced a new term to the public debateâconservationâand it was here to stay. They had shifted oversight of public land from patronage bureaucrats to professional foresters. In battle, Pinchot seemed to be at his most exuberant. Work was joy; the thrust and parry over ideas gave it life. "I am very happy tonight," he signed off his diary just after the midnight reserves were created.
Embedded in Idaho and Montana, in Colorado and the Dakotas and Wyoming, in Washington, Oregon, and California, in the territories of Arizona and New Mexico and Alaska, were hundreds of Little G.P.s, keepers of the conservation dream. Their job was to make sure the land was in good shape, to convince people who lived nearby that they could prosper with national forests as their neighbors, to prevent the agents of timber companies from stealing public resources, and to fight fires.
Fire was the less formidable task, Pinchot believed. He already had a rough plan in place, a new gospel for the Little G.P.s. "The one secret to fighting fires is to discover your fire as soon as possible and fight it as hard as you can and refuse to leave it until the last ember is dead," he told the
New York Times.
And the first two summers of the Forest Service under Pinchot seemed to bear him out. Only one-tenth of one percent of Forest Service land burned in each of those yearsâa huge confidence booster that had Roosevelt feeling sure of the rangers' ability to control wildfire.
"It had a great task before it, and the Forest Service has proved that forest fires can be controlled," the president wrote Pinchot in late August 1906. Pinchot had set up the monumental task: ensure that nature could be subdued even as it was preserved, an inherent contradiction. And Roosevelt now gave him a passing grade on this earth-changing score. Still ahead was the sizable job of wresting control of the land from the syndicates, who vowed continued defiance of the forest rangers, and convincing average people that this land was theirs. The challenge was to show homesteaders, grubstakers, immigrants, and others that the Forest Service worked on their behalf.
"Finally, a body of intelligent, practical, well-trained men, citizens of the West, is being built up," Roosevelt wrote. But as the Little G.P.s would soon find out, many a poor man had a different idea in a land that was wild in all ways.
4. Deadwood Days
I N A THICKET of dark Montana woods just downslope from the Idaho divide, a town sprang up with one prostitute for every three men and a murder rate higher than that of New York City. Carved inside a national forest, the village of Taft frightened most anyone not used to humanity with its raw appetites exposed. You could buy the basics in Taft: a woman, a man, a horse, a place at a card table or a spin of a roulette wheel, a fat steak for $1, a quart of whiskey for $1.25, a bunk for 25 cents. One nearby shop advertised "shoes, booze and screws," and they weren't talking about hardware. It was an easy place for an outlaw to hide, because everyone in Taft provided camouflage; a decent man would stand out like cactus on an
But the forester and the president now had most everything they wanted. In just a few years' time, they had tripled the national forest system, to nearly 180 million acres. They had introduced a new term to the public debateâconservationâand it was here to stay. They had shifted oversight of public land from patronage bureaucrats to professional foresters. In battle, Pinchot seemed to be at his most exuberant. Work was joy; the thrust and parry over ideas gave it life. "I am very happy tonight," he signed off his diary just after the midnight reserves were created.
Embedded in Idaho and Montana, in Colorado and the Dakotas and Wyoming, in Washington, Oregon, and California, in the territories of Arizona and New Mexico and Alaska, were hundreds of Little G.P.s, keepers of the conservation dream. Their job was to make sure the land was in good shape, to convince people who lived nearby that they could prosper with national forests as their neighbors, to prevent the agents of timber companies from stealing public resources, and to fight fires.
Fire was the less formidable task, Pinchot believed. He already had a rough plan in place, a new gospel for the Little G.P.s. "The one secret to fighting fires is to discover your fire as soon as possible and fight it as hard as you can and refuse to leave it until the last ember is dead," he told the
New York Times.
And the first two summers of the Forest Service under Pinchot seemed to bear him out. Only one-tenth of one percent of Forest Service land burned in each of those yearsâa huge confidence booster that had Roosevelt feeling sure of the rangers' ability to control wildfire.
"It had a great task before it, and the Forest Service has proved that forest fires can be controlled," the president wrote Pinchot in late August 1906. Pinchot had set up the monumental task: ensure that nature could be subdued even as it was preserved, an inherent contradiction. And Roosevelt now gave him a passing grade on this earth-changing score. Still ahead was the sizable job of wresting control of the land from the syndicates, who vowed continued defiance of the forest rangers, and convincing average people that this land was theirs. The challenge was to show homesteaders, grubstakers, immigrants, and others that the Forest Service worked on their behalf.
"Finally, a body of intelligent, practical, well-trained men, citizens of the West, is being built up," Roosevelt wrote. But as the Little G.P.s would soon find out, many a poor man had a different idea in a land that was wild in all ways.
4. Deadwood Days
I N A THICKET of dark Montana woods just downslope from the Idaho divide, a town sprang up with one prostitute for every three men and a murder rate higher than that of New York City. Carved inside a national forest, the village of Taft frightened most anyone not used to humanity with its raw appetites exposed. You could buy the basics in Taft: a woman, a man, a horse, a place at a card table or a spin of a roulette wheel, a fat steak for $1, a quart of whiskey for $1.25, a bunk for 25 cents. One nearby shop advertised "shoes, booze and screws," and they weren't talking about hardware. It was an easy place for an outlaw to hide, because everyone in Taft provided camouflage; a decent man would stand out like cactus on an
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