And Hiawatha 
 
 
 
            Has a Forest 
 
 
 
                   Named After Him 
 
 
                                         By 
 
 
              Margaret March-Mount 
 
 
        HE CREATION of the young Hia- 
        watha National Forest near Munising 
        by President Hoover this month, has 
        materialized the vision and rewarded 
the work of many good northern sportsmen 
and forest lumbermen in the upper peninsula. 
Hiawatha and the other two new members of 
the Federal Forest family-the Ottawa to the 
west in the upper peninsula and the Marquette 
toward Sault Ste. Marie-contain within their 
boundaries a total of 800,000 acres. They are 
carved, not like the other 149 national forests 
of the United States and Alaska, out of the 
public domain, but from the snags and stumps 
of yesteryear. 
  As early as 1924, such far-visioned men as 
John M. Bush, of Negaunee, M. J. Fox, of Iron 
Mohntain, and J. S. Weidman, of Trout Creek, 
began to focus the rays of scientific forestry on 
the pine soils of the upper peninsula. During 
the years immediately preceding the proclama- 
tion, G. E. Bishop, secretary-manager of the 
Upper Peninsula Development Bureau, Mar- 
quette, has "carried on" with the slogan, "A 
National Forest for the Upper Peninsula of 
Michigan." Today, the Forest Service joins 
with the forest-minded citizens of Hiawatha 
Land in three cheers for three national forests. 
  "No single feature of Federal Forest pur- 
chase work under the Weeks law or the Clarke- 
McNary law, is of greater interest to the 
members of the Forest Service than the estab- 
lishment of an adequate system of national 
forests in the Lake states region," said E. A. 
Sherman, assistant forester, Washington, D. 
C., in the spring of 1927, in referring to "pos- 
sible co-operation of the federal government 
in the stupendous task of restoring depleted 
and denuded lands to a normal condition of 
productivity." 
  The christening of Hiawatha has run the 
official gamut, and the seal of the President is 
set, with the understanding, however, that it is 
named for the "actual Hiawatha, a New York 
Iroquois, who taught his people agriculture and 
the arts of peace, and not the fictional Hia- 
watha, an Ojibway Indian, of Lake Superior 
and the mid-west forests, the legendary hero 
 
 
of Longfellow's poem, 'The Song of Hia- 
watha.'" Whatever discrepancy may appear, 
however, is reconciled by the fact that the 
forests are in the Agricultural Department, 
where tree crops will be cut when ripe, accord- 
ing to the selective principles of the Lake 
States Forest Experiment Station. The two- 
edged sword of publicity has already turned in 
many directions, aesthetically and economic- 
ally, and the weary, machine-turned vacation- 
ist will doubtless feel no less the romance of 
the forest--I 
      "All the lightness of the birch tree, 
      All the toughness of the cedar." 
  Foreseeing a time when the great white and 
Norway pineries would come back to their own, 
E. W. Tinker, chief Lake states federal for- 
ester, sees genuine history-in-the-making, with 
not merely millions, but tens of millions of 
trees rising up to call this generation blessed. 
While there is a mother tree now and then, 
artificial reforestation is the solution of the 
problem of bringing back the forest wealth, 
exchanging taxes on fire-ravaged acres for 
income on summer homes and resorts, and 35 
cents out of every dollar of forest receipts for 
schools and roads in the counties within which 
each forest is located; in a word, "ashes to 
assets." 
  Quoth Leslie S. Bean, first Hiawatha Forest 
supervisor, with headquarters at Munising: 
"Our aim is intensive management and devel- 
opment of every acre to its highest possible 
use. I feel that we have received an inheri- 
tance from our pioneer foresters, and that 
there is no better place in the Unitd States for 
the demonstration of the ideas they have 
worked out." 
  To Miss Elizabeth Strandness, a Nordic, who 
received her training on the Superior National 
Forest, is entrusted the responsiiblity for 
keeping allotments and appropriations within 
bounds. Ranger Albin Roemer succeeds R. B. 
McKennan, who examined most of the Hia- 
watha lands. 
  The legal skill of Leland S. French, with 
offices at Marquette, has read the titles clear 
for Uncle Sam-titles descending from large 
and small owners, from Indian and Paleface, 
and a few from "Sir Reginald, Solicitor, Crown 
of England." 
  This second generation forest is composed 
mainly of hardwood ridges, interspersed with 
pine plains and spruce swamps-beech, birch, 
maple, Balm of Gilead, and aspen, the latter 
making a good protective cover for young 
 
 
              E. W. TINKER 
    Regional forester, examining natural 
    reproduction of Norway and white 
    pine on the Hiawatha National Forest. 
       (Photo by U. S. Forest Service.) 
 
white and Norway pine. There are black 
spruce, cedar, and tamarack in the swamps, 
and whilte spruce on the ridges. Practically 
the entire area is covered with forest growth, 
and a little virgin timber is left here and there. 
  The younger human generation is growing 
up with this second-growth forest. The Girl 
Scouts of Chicago have their Timber Trail 
Camp at Skeels Lake, near the north shore of 
Lake Michigan, where they do more than one 
"good turn a day" as trained lookouts. They 
know how to build a camp fire, or to bury a 
forest fire. 
  The University of Michigan has established 
a summer school of forestry at an abandoned 
lumber camp in the northerly part of the 
forest, where foresters-to-be learn-forestry "as 
is," with a vacation-plus, a dirt-forester tan, 
and a physical fibre such as only the woods- 
man wins. 
  While each national lumbering region has 
claimed the real and only authentic Paul Bun- 
yan, mythical hero of the lumberjacks, his 
spirit is being perpetuated around these reno- 
vated tar-paper shacks by "Johnny Inkslinger," 
scribe and secretary of the college camp; 
"Sourdough Sam" has to go further afield for 
his blueberries, for seedlings are now coming 
up on the pine plains; the "bunkhouse bards" 
sing around the campfires; and old "Chris 
Crosshaul," who, according .to Shot Gunderson, 
'knocked over a section of timber by one toot 
of his horn," would be astounded at this ma- 
chine age of planting. 
        (Continued on page fourteen) 
 
 
13 
 
 
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