Dear HCN,
John Wesley Powell was
undoubtedly a giant in the exploration of, and proposals for,
Western lands. The essay by William deBuys tells us that if we’d
have listened to Powell, we might not have clear-cut forests and
disenfranchised local communities (HCN,
4/12/99).
In fact, we would have no national
forests, and what forests remained would probably be limited to use
by local watershed commonwealths. And I do not agree that we have
disenfranchised local communities. Here in Sedona, there is
tremendous cooperation these days between the Forest Service and
local communities.
If Bernard Fernow, then chief
of the Forestry Division of the Agriculture Department, is to be
believed, Powell seemed to be anti-forest. Fernow wrote about a
meeting on Nov. 14, 1889, of the American Forestry Association
leaders with Secretary of Interior Noble regarding the development
of policies for proposed forest reservations. Major Powell asked to
be included and was permitted to do so.
According
to Fernow, “Major Powell launched into a long dissertation to show
that the claim of the favorable influence of forest cover on water
flow or climate was untenable, that the best thing to do with the
Rocky Mountain forests was to burn them down, and he related with
great gusto how he himself had started a fire that swept over a
thousand square miles.”
I expect that Powell had
his own version of that meeting. It appears that he may have
resented the idea that people proposing national forest reserves
were butting in on his own grand plans for the arid West. Then,
maybe, he was simply Saint
Contrary.
Wayne D.
Iverson
Sedona,
Arizona
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Powell was a fire bug.
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