The first American forest: George Vanderbilt's vision of a country estate gave rise to a movement powered by three of forestry's greats

American Forests, Summer, 2005 by Bill Alexander

Nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains near Asheville, North Carolina, Biltmore Estate is well known as the site of America's largest private residence, but it is equally famous as the "birthplace of forestry." The forest that covers more than two-thirds of the estate's nearly 8,000 acres is living testimony to the vision and conservation-mindedness of three forestry pioneers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

It was at Biltmore that Frederick Law Olmsted, America's "father of landscape architecture," conceived and established the nation's first program of forestry management; Gifford Pinchot, the estate's first forester and later first chief of the U.S. Forest Service, created the country's first comprehensive working plan for sustainable forest management; and Carl A. Schenck, chief forester from 1895-1909, founded the first forestry school in America.

At a time when America was still relentlessly devastating its forests, Olmsted was advocating their long-term, scientific management. His dream of a model forest didn't take shape, however, until he joined forces with young George Washington Vanderbilt in the fall of 1888.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

George Vanderbilt, 26, was the youngest son of William Henry Vanderbilt and the grandson of the man known as the Commodore, Cornelius Vanderbilt, who had made the family fortune in steamships and railroads.

George Vanderbilt had taken a liking to the Asheville area while vacationing there with his mother. A spot overlooking the French Broad River, he thought, might make a good homesite. The immediate surroundings had been frequently slashed, burned, and overgrazed, but Vanderbilt thought it could be improved over time. He began quietly purchasing vacant tracts, quickly acquiring several thousand acres along both sides of the river. Vanderbilt then hired two of America's preeminent designers: noted architect Richard Morris Hunt, an expert in the Beaux Arts style of architecture, to design a house, and landscape architect Olmsted to help plan the extensive grounds.

Olmsted's recommendations called for surrounding Biltmore House with an extensive landscape of pleasure grounds, gardens, lakes and ponds, and miles of carriage drives, but his plans went beyond aesthetics. Olmsted envisioned a nursery and arboretum as an outdoor museum of trees, a working farm with diverse enterprises, and a systematically managed forest as an example for the country.

But transforming Vanderbilt's land into a model forest presented challenges even for Olmsted. Much of the Asheville area's original forest had been cleared over decades for crops and livestock and to provide timber for houses, barns, fences, and firewood. Thousands of trees were girdled to die in place so light could reach crops planted around them. Much of the cleared land was steep and the soil erodible, so many of the farms wore out quickly. Allowing livestock, particularly hogs, to graze in the woodlands and setting intentional, periodic wildfires to beat back the forest were devastating.

Many landowners cut their best remaining timber to supplement their income and feed their families. As the land grew poorer, many sold out and moved on; much of the land Vanderbilt bought had landed in the hands of real estate speculators.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

In a letter to his friend Fred Kingsbury, Olmsted wrote, "I take pretty nearly your view of the Vanderbilt property. It is in itself (i.e. regardless of the outlooks) a generally poor and vagabondish region but there are potentialities in parts of it, especially in the valleys, of which we can make something."

Vanderbilt had envisioned a park, but Olmsted discouraged the idea. Instead, he suggested, "My advice would be to make a small park into which to look from your house; make a small pleasure ground and garden, farm your river bottom chiefly to keep and fatten live stock with view to manure; and make the rest a forest, improving the existing woods and planting the old fields."

Thinking over Olmsted's suggestion of a commercial forest, Vanderbilt acquired additional land, bringing the estate's size to 6,000 acres.

By the time Olmsted wrote Kingsbury, the Biltmore's nursery had 40,000 trees and shrubs and was propagating even more. He attributed the degraded condition of the patchwork of wooded parcels to a variety of reasons. The estate had the remains of several sawmills, for which "every tree desirable for any sort of saleable lumber has been felled," he wrote Vanderbilt in the summer of 1889.

"What is seen now is the refuse. As is always the case, to get out the best trees, many a little less choice have been felled or broken down and ruined. Of what remained the settlers have taken great numbers for their cabins, fences and fuel. Big fires are the one luxury of the pioneer cabins. Then more have been taken to feed Asheville hearths than you can readily imagine."

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Olmsted's vision for Biltmore was captured in what might be one of the country's earliest written forest management reports. "Project Of Operations For Improving The Forest Of Biltmore." The report contains instructions for selective thinning to improve the forest and for training foremen to work under the resident landscape architect and forester. His idea of combining the economical or utilitarian aspects of forestry with the aesthetics or landscape effect, was ahead of its time. Only in more contemporary times has there been an emergence of "landscape forestry" in America.