The California State Board of Forestry, 1883-1960

Abstract

One of the most neglected areas within the broad field of forest history concerns the relationship of governments - federal, state, and local - to timber resources. Although much has been written about contemporary problems of forests and their management, little of it has been historical. With a growing interest in this new branch of history, however, in the future there may well be greater emphasis on the evolution of public forest policies. Indeed, no clear-cut picture of American resource management can be obtained unless detailed studies are made of the development of state forestry boards since the Civil War, of their cooperation with federal officials in their respective regions and in Washingington, and of the United States Bureau of Forestry. Great opportunities for research lie in this relatively unexploited subject. Within this general context of needed investigations the purpose of this paper is modest - to present a brief administrative history of a single state agency, the California State Board of Forestry. As one of the nation's most important forestry commissions, its members faced problems also met by their colleagues in other states. The major issue between 1883 and i960 revolved over the nature of its functions. Was it to be primarily a research agency to collect and disseminate useful information and to engage in scientific work? Or was it to act as a regulatory body emphasizing the enforcement of fire prevention regulations and timber destruction? The mixture of research and regulatory functions which came to characterize the work of public forestry agencies after 1933 came out of a half -century of struggle and only after a great deal of experimentation. The history of the California State Board of Forestry mirrored a conflict that went on at various levels of government and that constituted one of the outstanding features in the development of American forest policies.