Hi and welcome to Grey Towers National Historic Site. I'm Brandon Bell.
Grey Towers is the ancestral summer home of Gifford Pinchot.
who served as the first chief of the US Forest Service.
Every August to commemorate Gifford's birthday
we reflect on his life and enduring legacy.
Today we are examining this birthday card
given to Gifford on his eightieth birthday by the US Forest Service in 1945.
The imagery on the card illustrates Pinchot's pioneering and fulfilling life.
Gifford Pinchot was born at the Eaglewood House in Simsbury, CT on August 11, 1865.
As the first child of wealthy and well-connected James Pinchot and Mary Eno
Gifford spent his youth in New York City and Paris where he received private schooling.
He later attended Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire before enrolling in Yale in 1885.
In the summer of 1885, James asked his son Gifford a consequential question:
“how would you like to be a forester?”
With this question in mind, Gifford began his studies at Yale,
determined to pursue the field of scientific forestry even though no school in the United States offered a forestry program.
As a speaker at his 1889 Commencement Ceremony,
Gifford shelved his prepared remarks
and instead issued his “first public statement on the importance of Forestry to the United States.”
Soon thereafter, Pinchot traveled to Europe
where forestry did exist as a developed field of study and practice.
After finding a mentor in German forester Sir Dietrich Brandis,
Pinchot enrolled at l’ecole nationale forestiere in Nancy, France.
He studied in Nancy and traveled throughout Europe inspecting the continent’s scientifically-managed forests.
After just thirteen months at the National School of Forestry in France
Gifford returned to the United States in 1890, eager to prove the economic and sustainability benefits of scientific forestry in his own country.
In 1892, Gifford received his first prominent opportunity to demonstrate the potential of scientific forestry
and become the nation’s first professional forester.
Frederick Law Olmstead, a friend of Gifford’s father, served as the landscape architect for George W. Vanderbilt’s Biltmore Estate in Asheville, NC.
Olmstead convinced Vanderbilt to hire the budding forester to manage the 7,000 acres of forest surrounding his estate
and to prepare an exhibit on his forestry work for the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893.
Pinchot’s work at Biltmore and his World’s Fair exhibit resulted in increased interest in scientific forestry,
but at the time, the United States government only researched rather than practiced scientific forestry.
In 1898 Gifford became Chief of the Division of Forestry within the Department of Agriculture.
At the time, the national government’s forest reserve lands existed within the Department of the Interior.
In effect, the Division of Forestry had no actual forests under its jurisdiction on which to practice forestry.
Undeterred, Gifford conducted forestry studies on private lands to further demonstrate the need for and benefits of scientific forestry.
In the winter of 1898, Gifford studied 40,000 acres of the private forest lands
in the Adirondacks and co-authored a working plan titled "The Adirondack Spruce for the forest."
The federal government took a greater interest in forestry in 1901
after Theodore Roosevelt became President following the assassination of William McKinley.
Pinchot, forestry, and the conservation movement would find an ally in Roosevelt,
and Pinchot became a member of Roosevelt’s revered Tennis Cabinet
an informal yet influential group of presidential advisors.
Gifford’s Division of Forestry became the Bureau of Forestry in 1901,
and the Bureau of Forestry became the Forest Service when Congress passed the Transfer Act of 1905,
which transferred the forest reserves from the Interior Department to the Department of Agriculture
marking a pivotal victory for Pinchot, now the nation’s Chief Forester.
Together, Roosevelt and Pinchot added over 100 million acres to the national forests from 1901 to 1909.
Following his departure from the Taft Administration in 1910,
Pinchot made Grey Towers his primary residence as he entered the Pennsylvania political scene.
He served as Commissioner of Forestry from 1920-1922,
before being elected Pennsylvania Governor in 1922.
He would serve two terms from 1923 to 1927 and again from 1931 to 1935.
Although Pinchot pursued politics, his dedication to forestry and the conservation movement remained steadfast.
He remarked,
Gifford spent the remainder of his life penning his autobiography, "Breaking New Ground"
and continued enjoying his lifelong passion of fly fishing.
He passed this passion and love of the outdoors onto his son Gifford Bryce Pinchot,
who donated Grey Towers to the Forest Service to monumentalize and perpetuate his father’s legacy.
Today, we remember America’s first professional forester and the father of American conservation, Gifford Pinchot.
We remember that his life and legacy call each of us to conserve our nation’s natural resources
and act for “greatest good of the greatest number in the long run.”