Celebrating Michigan’s Conservation
Roots
DNR makes plans to commemorate 115th anniversary of state’s first tree nursery, 85th anniversary of the Civilian Conservation Corps
The following is my condensation of a Michigan
Department of Natural Resources publication written by DNR employee Tobi Voigt. I
found the publication so compelling that I wanted to share it with you.
In 1903, a team of workers under the direction of newly appointed State Forest Warden Filibert Roth came to Roscommon County. Roth and his men looked over a barren area; the north shore of one of Michigan’s premier body’s of water known as Higgins Lake, named for one of the state’s early surveyors. The land had been cut over by lumbermen and there was little remaining beyond tree stumps of a forest that covered the sandy soil in the northern edge of Roscommon County. Roth and his men were assigned the job of replanting the forest. Within a year, Roth and his workers had planted 43 pounds of seed, representing 12 different pine species.
It was a difficult job with uneven progress. Roth wrote in his first official report, “Considerable damage was done to the seed beds by birds but far more by the ordinary striped gopher which proved quite a pest, and in spite of a shotgun, (he) completely destroyed all seeds of nut and sugar pine and much of white pine,”
Nonetheless, more than 600,000 seedlings were thriving in 1904 and, by 1906, Roth’s team had successfully cultivated 27 species of trees. Twenty years later, the nursery was shipping 22 million seedlings across the state and nation every year, and the new forest was growing.
Reforestation was hard, manual labor in those days, and in 1933, a new labor force arrived on the scene – the Civilian Conservation Corps. A New Deal program created during the Great Depression by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the CCC employed young men in many public-works projects, including “the prevention of forest fires, floods, soil erosion, plant, pest and disease control.”
By July 1, of 1933, the CCC initiative had put 274,375 young men, aged 17 to 25, to work in more than 1,300 camps across the nation, improving state and national forests. Eventually, there would be 2,650 camps scattered all over the country.
In Michigan, thousands of recruits planted trees and fought forest fires across the northern Lower Peninsula and Upper Peninsula. In 1933, those stationed at the Higgins Lake CCC Camp began working at the tree nursery, which was not far from the camp.
During 1933, about 10 million trees, chiefly pine and spruce, were planted on 17,656 acres of cutover state land in Michigan. State officials said enough miles of truck trails were built during the initial year or so of the CCC program in Michigan to reach from Lansing to Jacksonville, Florida, and back.
In 2013, the 80th anniversary of the CCC, Marquette author Larry Chabot told The Mining Journal the boys enrolled learned self-discipline, and how to work and live in groups and gained confidence with increasing skills and training.
“Parents were often stunned when the boys came home. One woman told me that when her brother came home from camp, they didn't recognize him,” Chabot said. “Over and over, the CCC boys were heard to say, ‘This was the best time of my life’ or ‘This was the best thing that ever happened to me.’”
By 1942, when the CCC program ended, Michigan workers had planted 484 million trees, more than twice the amount of any other state.
From the ashes of devastating fires and the cutover pine days, Michigan’s seeds of a sustained regenerative forestry campaign were sown in the northern Lower Peninsula at North Higgins Lake, first with the early efforts of the Michigan Forestry Commission and a generation later with the help of Roosevelt’s Tree Army.
Today, Michigan has 20 million acres of forest lands, with the state ranking first in the nation in pine acreage, third in hardwood. Almost 6 million acres of Michigan forests are certified as sustainably managed.
The DNR continues to plant over 5 million pine seedlings each year.
“Michigan’s forests, the diverse forest products industry, and the natural resources that sustain it are among the best in the nation,” said DNR Forest Resources Division Chief Debbie Begalle. “In addition to supplying the wood for the products people rely on, Michigan’s forest land provides important wildlife habitat, recreational opportunities, and plays a critical role in supporting the state’s regional and rural economic health for thousands of residents.”
