French foresters find treasure trove at Grey Towers

MILFORD, PA — Two French forestry professionals recently spent a week at Grey Towers National Historic Site culling through books and documents investigating the connection between the French and American schools of forestry.

The link between the two is Gifford Pinchot, who studied forestry at Ecole Forestiere de Nancy in 1889. At that time, there were no forestry schools or practicing foresters in America, and forests were being clear-cut for their timber. Pinchot learned in Europe that forests could be managed and utilized at the same time, and he set out to convince America of the same. In 1905, he helped found the U.S. Forest Service, and served as its first chief.

Grey Towers, Pinchot’s ancestral home, contains numerous textbooks, maps, notes, diaries and other historic artifacts for the researchers to pour through. Of particular interest was one of Pinchot’s original textbooks, “Traite de Sylviculture” (“Methods of Sylviculture,” meaning forest culture), complete with underlined passages and handwritten notes in the margins. Le Tacon and Lionnet cross-referenced the materials they found with Pinchot’s 1889 diary entries.

The textbook and Pinchot’s notes “fascinate us, because it shows what he thought was important, and this is what he used to introduce forestry in America,” said Le Tacon, Director of Research at Centre Inra de Nancy, France. “This book was the first—and the best—sylviculture textbook published in the world,” he said. “It had a fantastic effect on Pinchot… nobody in America believed the forests could be managed, but he did, and then he came home and did it!”

Pinchot studied forestry for one year in Europe. Upon his return, he teamed up with President Theodore Roosevelt to create the U.S. Forest Service, setting aside nearly 200 million acres as national forests. The Pinchot family then endowed the Yale School of Forestry so that others could be trained professionally. Summer school for the Yale students was held at Grey Towers from 1901-1926.