Doggin'
Gifford Pinchot: Following The Trail of the Father of American
Forestry
Since September is back to school month perhaps this is a good
time for a little history lesson. If you travel alot with your
dog you have probably come across the name Pinchot: Pinchot Trail,
Pinchot National Forest, Pinchot State Park, Pinchot Sycamore,
Pinchot Institute For Conservation. Who or what exactly is a
Pinchot?
That would be Gifford Pinchot, accent
on the lead syllable. Gifford Pinchot studied in France and became
the first American trained in forestry. He was named Chief Forester
of the U. S. Division of Forestry and served under his good friend
Theodore Roosevelt from 1898 to 1910. Together the two placed
over 200 million acres of national forest came under scientific
land management. Policies developed by Pinchot still help guide
most national and state forests. In 1922 Pinchot began serving
the first of two terms as governor of Pennsylvania. He created
the first state budget and erased the state's debt, starting
by cutting his own salary.
The legacy of Gifford Pinchot is wide-ranging,
but not without controversy. Although regarded as a pioneer
in American land conservation his developmental policies were
hotly contested in California and led to the formation of the
Sierra Club, now the nation's leading voice for protecting our
natural resources. During the Depression in the 1930s Pinchot
established work camps throughout Pennsylvania that President
Franklin Roosevelt used as a model for the national Civilian
Conservation Corps. Pinchot's crews built 20,000 miles of paved
roads for "taking the farmer out of the mud."
Today, anytime you see the name "Pinchot"
it is good news for your dog. Gifford Pinchot was born in Simsbury,
Connecticut and just south of town, where Route 185 crosses the
Farmington River near the intersecton with Route 10, stands Connecticut's
largest tree - the Pinchot Sycamore. The multi-limbed behemoth
is the largest sycamore in New England. When it was last measured
the Pinchot Sycamore stood 95 feet high and was 26 feet in circumference.
A small park here affords easy access to the Farmington River
for a doggie swim and up the road you can hike with your dog
to the spectacular Hublein Tower on Talcott Mountain.
The Gifford Pinchot National Forest (http://www.fs.fed.us/gpnf/)
in Washington state had its beginnings back in 1897, making it
one of America's first national forests. Today it encompasses
more than one million acres and supprots more than 1,000 miles
of trails. Most of these are of the long-distance variety, including
a stretch of the Pacific Crest Trail that runs from Canada
to Mexico, but you can find many easier trots for your dog such
as wildflower hikes on Silver Star Mountain and cool water around
the Midway High Lakes. Today the
forest is most known as the home of Mount St. Helens the active
volcano that erupted in 1980 blowing more than 1,300 feet off
its summit. The volcano has reopened for visititaton but dogs
are not permitted in the restricted area.
Pinchot's first hard-surfaced, high-crowned
road in Pennsylvania is now PA 177, running across the northwest
boundary of Gifford Pinchot State Park (http://www.dcnr.state.pa.us/STATEPARKS/PARKS/giffordpinchot.aspx).
The focal point of the park is a multi-fingered lake which any
water-loving dog will love. The trail system, with nearly 20
miles of paths, is constrained by the water although a variety
of canine hikes can be cobbled together. The Lakeside Trail
covers 8.5 miles around the lake and includes stretches on gravel,
macadam and natural surfaces. There are some gentle hill climbs
along the way but most of the canine hiking around Gifford Pinchot
is easy on the paw.
The Pinchot Trail is a 23 mile loop-type footpath in Lackawanna
State Forest in Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains (http://www.dcnr.state.pa.us/Forestry/stateforests/lackawanna.aspx).
Backpack campers and hikers will find this trail on the Pocono
Plateau challenging, exciting and beautiful. It offers everything
from a scenic overlook of expansive forests, a path sheltered
by hemlocks next to a gurgling creek, to bog areas which contain
some plants not common to Pennsylvania. The trail is blazed in
orange. Although the entire trail can be hiked in one day by
an experienced hiker in good physical condition, most hikers
prefer to take two or more days. They either camp overnight along
the trail or use one of the connector trails to make short one-day
hikes. With a township road cutting through the center of the
system, many one day hikers do the north loop and the south loop
on seperate days.
The Pinchot family arrived in Milford,
Pennsylvania in 1816 and opened a mercantile operation, The French
Store. In 1850 by the time 19-year old James was ready to enter
the family business there was no room so he trundled off to New
York City and made a fortune in the wallpaper trade. He retired
after 25 years and by 1886 he had built the French-influenced
Grey Towers in his hometown. Gifford lived out his later years
in the family estate on the Delaware River. The Pinchot family
donated Grey Towers to the American public in 1963 and it is
now the home of the Gifford Pinchot Institute for Conservation
(http://www.pinchot.org/).
Open to the public, a collection of short trails designed to
educate and experience nature surround the Grey Towers mansion.
The Trail of Time snakes down a hillside to learn about
the Pinchot land, lives and legacy. The Forestry Trail
travels on well-groomed loop through the woods behind the house
for almost one mile and the Bluebird Trail is a walk along
the deer fence around the perimeter of Some of the most fun for
your dog will be on the free-form Tree Trail where you are invited
to "wander, walk, saunter, run, skip or hop" through
the field along the estate driveway and learn about some of the
trees of Grey Towers. Tree ID signs reveal the names and most
popular uses of these trees. One oak tree in the yard is over
150 years old and 18 feet in diameter.
Finally, if your travels take you to
the Blue Ridge Mountains and America's largest home, George Vanderbilt's
Biltmore (where the grounds are dog-friendly!) take some time
to explore the Biltmore Forest (http://www.biltmore.com/).
Pinchot was the first manager of the forest and developed many
of his theories and practices on the mountaintop.
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