The Midwestern Roots of Forestry – Webinar

Industrialization, Indigenous Lands, and the Environment, 1867-1933

The talk will focus on the role that the logging industry in the Upper Midwest had in transforming the environment, including deforestation, but also in the construction of logging dams, waste, and forest fires. These transformations were noticed as early as the 1860s, and Indian Agents became some of the earliest critics of wasteful, unregulated logging, as fires devastated reservation lands and logging dams flooded wild rice crops.

Christopher Columbus Andrews played a large role as an early voice in favor of forestry, drawing upon his time as a foreign diplomat to Sweden in the 1870s, appealing to Congress in 1882 for a land grant to establish a School of Forestry in St. Paul in 1882. Had this passed, it would have predated the Biltmore School by 16 years. It did not, and the Lake States continued to battle devastating fires; following the Hinckley Fire of 1894, Minnesota named Andrews the state’s first chief fire warden.

Taxes played a major role in the cut-and-run policies employed by logging companies, who saw regulated cutting not only as an impediment to profits but also as a major tax burden. Similarly, taxes on cutover lands, along with the costs of fire prevention and reforestation, left many logging companies to tax delinquency, with delinquent lands transferring to the state.

As the center of the nation’s logging industry at the end of the nineteenth century, the forests and burned-over lands in the Lake States played a central role in early conservation and forest policy.

Presenter:
Dr. Hayden Nelson, Gale Scholar, Research Historian at the Minnesota Historical Society
Grey Towers Heritage Association Dianna Levine Memorial Scholar in Residence

Presentation length: 1 hour which includes 10 minutes Q&A from those who joined the webinar

This presentation is free.

A link to the webinar will be sent via email to registered participants.