Concerned about the destruction of the Forests in his home State of New Hampshire, Republican Congressman, John Weeks guided a decade-in-the-making bill through Congress in 1911...........Revolutionary in scope, The Weeks Act authorized Congress to purchase private lands to augment the National Forest System..........Deep concerns about flooding and depleting our lumber supply(not wildlife concerns or aesthetics) enabled Weeks to get this bill passed...........Then as now, Conservatives threw all types of roadblocks in the path of this bill(from the Constitution not stating that the Feds could buy land from private owners to developers seeking to build homes)...Then as now, enlightened and forward thinking folks stepped up and found collaborative ways to put the land first and material pursuits 2nd.................We have to follow the path of Mr. Meeks in this Century and find the creative/collaborative ways of further rewilding the East, West, North and South!

The Weeks Act

March 1, 2011, marked the centennial of the Weeks Act — the "organic act" of the eastern national forests. Signed into law by President William Howard Taft, the Weeks Act permitted the federal government to purchase private land in order to protect the headwaters of rivers and watersheds in the eastern United States and called for fire protection efforts through federal, state, and private cooperation.

 It has been one of the most successful pieces of conservation legislation in U.S. history. To date, nearly 20 million acres of forestland have been protected by the Weeks Act, land that provides habitat for hundreds of plants and animals, recreation space for millions of visitors, and economic opportunities for countless local communities. As one historian has noted, "No single law has been more important in the return of the forests to the eastern United States" than the Weeks Act.

"The Lands Nobody Wanted"

Cut and burned over pine lands in Chippewa County, Michigan.

Sawmill in North Woodstock, New Hampshire, circa 1903.

The first step came with the Forest Reserve Act of 1891. The law gave the president the power to set aside public land as forest reserves to protect watersheds (in 1907 they would be renamed "national forests"). In the East, however, where little federal public land remained, watersheds remained unprotected. By the 1880s loggers had removed most of the valuable timber from New England and the Great Lakes region, and were buying forests in the Pacific Northwest and the South. Eastern farmers who had exhausted their lands and had moved west also left behind land prone to fire and erosion. The abandoned farms and badly cut-over forests became known, in the words of forest policy analysts William Shands and Robert Healy from their eponymous book, as "the lands nobody wanted."

Slash remaining from cut-over land on mountainside, New Hampshire, circa 1910s.

Popular vacation spots in New Hampshire's White Mountains and the Southern Appalachians happened to be near some of the areas affected by bad logging practices. Upset by what they saw, concerned citizens established regionally-focused organizations like the Appalachian National Park Association (founded 1899) in North Carolina and the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests (founded 1901). Both groups immediately started petitioning the federal government to buy land in both areas and protect it as a national park. In 1900, Congress gave $5,000 to Secretary of Agriculture James Wilson to "investigate the forest condition in the Southern Appalachian Mountain Region of western North Carolina and adjacent states."
Issued in 1901, Secretary Wilson's report ran more than 180 pages. The U.S. Geological Survey provided the latest data on the geology, geography, and climate of the Southern Appalachian region and its river basins. The report emphasized the region's economic importance to the entire nation. It included photos showing flood-damaged areas and burned-over lands to illustrate the damage done by indiscriminate logging and agricultural clearing. In his conclusion, the secretary did not mince words, declaring, "The regulation of the flow of these rivers can be accomplished only by the conservation of the forests. . .Federal action is obviously necessary."
Instead of creating a national park, though, he recommended the establishment of a national forest preserve. President William McKinley favored the measure and asked Congress to approve the proposal. On January 10, 1901, North Carolina Senator Jeter Pritchard introduced a bill authorizing $5 million for establishing the Southern Appalachian Forest Reserve. Ten more years, however, would go by before Congress would send a bill to the White House for signature.
In the decade following Senator Pritchard's 1901 bill, Congress rejected more than 40 bills calling for the establishment of eastern national forests. Senators and congressmen opposed these measures for a variety of reasons. Some western representatives (and conservation groups) who supported the national forests in principle resented possibly losing funding to their eastern counterparts. Many fiscal conservatives agreed with House Speaker Joe Cannon when he declared "not one cent for scenery."
Political conservatives noted that the federal government lacked the constitutional authority to purchase private land. Some wanted not only to block the legislation but dismantle the Forest Service entirely and open up the national forests for private development. Others felt that states should look after their own forests. Indeed, some states had already taken action to protect forests. Wisconsin had created a 50,000-acre forest reserve in 1878 to protect the headwaters of major rivers; Pennsylvania made a similar move in the 1890s. In 1885, the New York State legislature established the Adirondack Park from state holdings, declaring the area "forever wild" in its state constitution.
Those who championed private property rights could point to what George Vanderbilt had been doing just outside of Asheville, North Carolina. During the 1890s, as interest in preserving and protecting the southern Appalachians was growing in Asheville, Vanderbilt had quietly purchased 100,000 acres of cut-over woodlands to add to his Biltmore Estate and ordered the estate forester, Carl Schenck, to begin planting trees to restore them. Though the Biltmore Forest would become known as the Cradle of Forestry, ultimately Vanderbilt couldn't afford to operate both his forest and his mansion and would sell the forest.
After making little headway in Congress, the Appalachian National Park Association and the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests shifted tactics. To get around the issue of states' rights, by 1901 the Appalachian National Park Association persuaded five southern states to pass legislation granting their consent to the purchase of land by the federal government. That same year, President William McKinley established the first national forest east of the Rocky Mountains in Oklahoma from land still in the public domain. In 1903, the group began campaigning for a national forest reserve instead of a national park and even changed their name to the Appalachian National Forest Reserve Association to reflect this emphasis.

U.S. House in session, May 1911.

The cause received a boost with the establishment of the U.S. Forest Service in 1905 and the placement of the forest reserves under professional management. President Theodore Roosevelt's conservation crusade was in full swing, led in part by his Forest Service chief, Gifford Pinchot. Pinchot and other conservationists in the federal government were very concerned about improving and protecting rivers and waterways as well as forests. With Roosevelt's approval, Pinchot organized several conferences and meetings to focus attention on the need to conserve natural resources.
In 1907, the American Forestry Association joined with local and regional groups and women's garden clubs to bring national attention to eastern forests. The organization's monthly magazine began featuring articles documenting the latest studies on flooding and forests and editorials tracing the legislative battles in Washington. Lumber manufacturing associations and magazines supported the forest movement, believing that government intervention was needed to stabilize the volatile lumber market.
Meanwhile, nature provided a case study of the important role forest cover plays in protecting watersheds. In March 1907, heavy rains brought flood waters racing down the Monongahela River in West Virginia and caused some $100 million dollars in damage. The waters surged into the city of Pittsburgh, drowning people, destroying homes, and leaving behind $8 million of damage. The flood hit the same month that congressional opponents of Roosevelt's conservation agenda managed to overturn the Forest Reserve Act and place the power to create national forests in the hands of the legislative branch.
While conservation organizations worked the halls of Congress, the U.S. Geological Survey had permission from 9 states to determine what land should be purchased and declared national forests. In short order, those states officially granted consent for federal land purchases in the interest of creating public forest reserves. Now what was needed was a federal law authorizing the purchase of private land to protect watersheds.

Congressman John Wingate Weeks.

Leadership on the issue came from a surprise source. Congressman John Weeks, a Republican from Massachusetts, was a former naval officer and a successful banker. Elected to the House in 1905, two years later Weeks was appointed to the House Committee on Agriculture by Speaker Cannon. At first Weeks didn't understand why. Having few farmers in his district, he had little interest in the agricultural matters that came before Congress. He was concerned, though, about the damage logging had done to the White Mountains. It was near where he had grown up and where he now summered with his family. Speaker Cannon told him that "if you can frame a forestry bill which you, as a business man, are willing to support, I will do what I can to get an opportunity to get its consideration in the House." The man who had once declared "not one cent for scenery" had changed his mind; it was only a matter of time until the bill passed.
In 1908, Weeks introduced a bill proposing that the federal government purchase lands near the headwaters of navigable streams by using receipts from already established forest reserves. The bill went nowhere. The following July, Weeks amended the bill, adding that the purchased lands would be permanently maintained as federal forest reserves as a way to protect the headwaters of navigable waterways, a move that would pass constitutional review under the commerce clause. In December, Senator Jacob Gallinger of New Hampshire introduced an identical bill in the Senate. With Speaker Cannon's approval (though he personally abstained from voting on the final version), the House passed the bill on June 24, 1910; after some delays, negotiations, and filibustering, the Senate did likewise on February 15, 1911. On March 1, 1911, President William Howard Taft signed the Weeks Act. With the stroke of his pen, the national forests had become truly national. Then, the hard work of establishing national forests in the East and protecting and restoring watersheds began.