Three years after the 1905 creation of the U.S. Forest Service , Gifford Pinchot, the new agency’s chief, sent Yale-graduate Thorton Munger into Washington’s forest to conduct research. This scientific study of forest trees, or silvics, was part of Pinchot’s directive to improve administrative discipline and record-keeping, adjust boundaries, develop stations and build trails.

A New Englander, Munger was the sole director of research at what later became the Wind River Experimental Forest inside the Gifford Pinchot National Forest near Stabler. According to his 1967 oral history, the service selected the forest for its diversity, including the Yacolt Burn, old and second-growth timber, recent cut-over areas and a huge preexisting nursery. All offered a “great opportunity for the study

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