The Forests Of Oregon

The Forests of Oregon is a federal survey publication by Henry Gannett, written during his long career as chief geographer of the United States Geological Survey. Gannett, who lived from 1846 to 1914, produced many similar regional studies of American natural resources during the period when the federal government was systematically cataloguing the western territories and their economic potential.

The study presents a comprehensive account of the forest resources of the state of Oregon as they stood at the time of the survey. It covers the major forest types found in the state, from the coastal Sitka spruce and western hemlock forests of the Pacific shore through the Douglas fir forests of the western interior, the ponderosa pine forests of the eastern slopes, and the various smaller forest associations found at higher elevations and in transitional zones. For each major type the study provides estimates of the area covered, the volume of standing timber, the species composition, and the commercial significance.

The study reflects the institutional concerns of the federal scientific bureaus of the period. The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were the period when the federal government was first systematically asserting a public interest in the management of western forests, with the creation of forest reserves and the eventual establishment of the United States Forest Service in 1905. Surveys like Gannett’s provided the basic factual foundation for these policy developments by establishing what forest resources actually existed and where they were located.

Gannett’s method was generally quantitative and cartographic. He was a leading figure in the development of American government mapmaking and the study includes maps showing the distribution of the various forest types across the state. The text discusses the methods used for the survey and the limitations of the data, with the careful technical honesty that characterized the better federal scientific publications of the period.

The study is mostly of interest now to forest historians and to readers of the history of American federal resource management. It documents the state of Oregon’s forests during a particular moment when those forests were beginning to attract sustained federal attention and when the policies that would shape their subsequent management were being developed. It pairs naturally with the other state and regional forest surveys produced by the Geological Survey during the same period.