A History of Forest Conservation in the Pacific Northwest, 1891-1913

The application of the conservation principle necessarily moved in different directions as one or another problem became important. [1]

The dispute over sheep grazing in the Cascade Range is instructive from several points of view. From the standpoint of use of the reserve, it involved the clash of issues, whether the reserve was primarily for aesthetic or utilitarian purposes. In terms of persons and personalities, the dispute was primarily between the two chief spokesmen of the differing points of view, John Muir and John Minto. The final solution of the problem was the first use by the Federal Forest Administration of the method which has counted for much of their success, that of settling local problems on the spot by investigation, rather than relying on unilateral, superimposed directives from Washington, D.C. The Pacific Northwest became a social and scientific laboratory for working out the experiment; the regional solution was applied later in all parts of the west. Finally, the solution had a long-run significance for Washington and Oregon, in that this area got off to an earlier start in regulated grazing than any other part of the west, and consequently the relations of grazers and administrators had a longer period of adjustment.

At the time when the Cascade Range reserve was created, in 1893, there had been some difference of opinion as to allowing grazing in the reserve, some feeling that grazing was a necessity for the livelihood of the sheepmen, others that grazing would be detrimental to the forests and the recreational resources. The sheepmen raised little objection to creation of the reserve, believing, as most people in the west did, that an administration policy would soon be forthcoming. However, Congress was dilatory in passing any legislation, and meantime the reserve was closed to the pasturing of any livestock whatsoever within its boundaries.

There was no uniformity of opinion in the west as to the advisability of opening up the reserves to use, particularly to grazing. The recreationalists in general were opposed to any sheep grazing in the reserves. Their most eloquent spokesman was John Muir. Muir was doctrinaire in his opposition to sheep grazing. In their migrations from the lowlands to the mountains, he wrote, the sheep left a swath of devastation behind them; their grazing killed the native herbaceous growth, leaving but a sandy or rocky waste behind. Sheepmen set fires, both to encourage growth of tender shoots and to clear the land of dead and down timber, which would otherwise impede the movements of flocks. Muir estimated that ninety per cent of the fires in the Sierras were caused by sheepmen. These fires not only destroyed the undergrowth, but also the young trees and seedlings on which permanence of the forests depended. Muir's opinions were typical of most of the recreational group, not only in California but in all parts of the west. [2]

The chief opponent of Muir was John Minto of Oregon. In many ways the two men were alike. Both were Scottish in blood, and both had migrated to the United States at an early age, and pushed on to the frontier—Muir to Wisconsin, Minto to Oregon. Both were nature lovers, both for the sake of what the wilderness does to the human spirit and because of scientific interest. Both were keen observers of nature, and concerned with revision of the public land system for a more rational use of natural resources. But here their paths diverged. Muir looked to the Federal Government for reservation and regulation of the public domain; Minto turned to Australia as a model for a rational system of land use.

John Minto was born in England in 1822. He migrated to the United States in 1840, and to Oregon with the migration of 1844. In 1860 he became interested in the raising of pure-bred Merino sheep in the Willamette Valley, and successfully established the industry. To him was due much of the credit for developing a superior breed of sheep in Oregon, one that commanded a premium price on the market. He held several state offices in his lifetime, and in 1898 was Oregon State Horticulturist. His writings include papers on the sheep industry in Oregon and California; historical and literary sketches; verse, patterned after the style of Burns, whose poems he could quote by the ream; and reminiscenses. He was an accurate observer and an original thinker, who, as official spokesman for the woolgrowers on the west coast, furnished them with a scientific rationale for their protests against the recreational group. He was among the first to challenge the "timber-famine" idea, by pointing out the rapid reproduction by seed of Douglas fir on cut-over land. He was something of a gadfly to the conservationist group, but served a useful purpose by his criticisms, forcing them to establish on a scientific basis the facts on which they based their theories as to forest influences. [3]

The more famous John Muir was born in Scotland in 1839. His family moved to Wisconsin, and John, after attending the University of Wisconsin for a time, traveled west to California in 1860. Here he became a horticulturist, so successfully that a ten-year period of work enabled him to retire. He was an ardent mountaineer, finding in the mountains both opportunity for scientific research and pantheistic communion with nature. He was the first to attribute the Yosemite Valley to glaciation rather than to cataclysmic causes, as had earlier geologists such as Clarence King. Muir gained a nation-wide audience for his writings on the mountains through his friendship with Robert Underwood Johnson, the editor of Scribners who published his writings. With Johnson, he was one of the leaders in the movement to make Yosemite Valley a national park and to create national forests in the Sierras. [4]

There were extremists on both sides of the grazing question, and also many who felt that a middle course should prevail. Such a stand was perhaps best expressed by the editor of the chief paper in the region, Harvey Scott of the Oregonian. Remarking on the furor caused by creation of new reserves in the state of Washington, he stated that this was uncalled for. There was, he said, need for the government to take "vigorous measures" to prevent depredations on public lands, and to protect the forests, both to preserve watersheds and "against the time when it is needed for use, to be cut under regulations that will permit its steady renewal, so that the timber shall not be wasted nor the mountain slopes be stripped bare." The chief use of the forests in Oregon was for summer pasture, when the forage on the plains dried up; and with proper regulation such use should be permitted. Fire should be prevented, but here fishermen and campers were at fault also, probably more so than the sheep men.

The editorial ended on the note that local problems should be solved locally—the policy that, when adopted, was responsible for much of the success of the forest conservation program:

Forestry is a very practical matter. It can have no hard and fast rules for all time and places, but must adjust its measures to conditions and circumstances. The timber of the country, on the public lands, must be preserved from destruction, but practical judgment, not sentimentalism, must preside over the policy employed for the purpose. We have large areas of mountainous woodlands in which permanent homes, due to the depth of snow in the winter, are impossible. The timber on these lands must not be destroyed. But the lands should not be shut up against their only practical use, which, at this time, is that of summer range for the stock from arid regions. [5]

The question of use of the forest reserves for grazing grew more crucial as time went on. [6] Sheepmen in Oregon had friends in Congress in the persons of Senator Mitchell and Representative Binger Hermann. By 1896 demands were reaching the Land Office through Senator Mitchell, requesting that the reserves be reduced in size. To this the Commissioner answered that there had been no protests when the reserves were created, and most of the people favored them. [7] In June of that year the sheepmen of Wasco County sent in a petition, with many signatures, asking that grazing be permitted on the reserve. [8] Fuel was added to the fire by the report of the National Academy, condemning practices of the sheepmen. In March, 1897, the stock associations of Wasco, Gilliam, Crook, and Sherman Counties raised a fund of $500 to send a lobbyist to Congress. [9] By June they had made their influence felt in the State Legislature; this body adopted a resolution to the effect that, since the Cascade Range Reserve hindered development of the state, it should be cut into three smaller reserves: one around Mt. Hood of 30,000 acres, another of the same size near Mt. Jefferson, and another of 900,000 acres around Crater Lake. Except for these areas, the Cascade Range should be opened to grazing and settlement. [10]

In June, 1897, the legislation was passed by Congress which permitted the Secretary of the Interior to make all necessary regulations for administration of the forest reserves. Under this authority, the General Land Office on June 30 issued regulations on grazing, permitted pasturing on forest reserves, provided no injury was done to forest growth. For the present time, however, the Land Office permitted grazing only in Washington and Oregon, where the ample rainfall made for rapid renewal of herbage. Owners of herds were to apply to the Land Office Commissioner for permits to graze; and no pasturage would be permitted in places of public resort such as Crater Lake, Mt. Hood, Mt. Rainier, or the Bull Run area. The regulations were issued so late in the year, however, that the provisions were inoperative in 1897.

There was need for a thorough investigation to ascertain the exact effects of grazing in mountain and timber lands. The Department of the Interior knew absolutely nothing of the effects of grazing on timber production, plant ecology, denudation of the soil and floods; they had no first hand knowledge of the relation of sheepherders to "light-burning," nor the relative value of forests for various rival purposes. For much of their information they had relied on reports by John Muir, who was not an impartial witness. They had no exact data on which to base their plans.

Furthermore, John Minto disagreed with their conclusions and had exact data to prove his evidence, which they could not contradict. The Academy Committee had said that nomadic herds of sheep, often owned by foreigners, destroyed the herbage in the mountains. Minto denied that the herdsmen were nomadic in nature—they had, he said, settled homes in the dry pastoral lands of the range states—and denied that they permanently destroyed the timber or prevented reproduction. The Academy group had said that deforested watersheds caused floods; Minto denied this, stating that floods were caused first by the Chinook wind, and second by poor drainage channels in the Willamette Valley. The Academy had stated that trees helped to keep year round stream flow because snow lay longer in the timber than in the open. Minto denied this, stating that snow melts fastest in belts of timber and brush, "partly because of snow being caught in the crown and evaporating, partly because the trees and brush break up the snow when falling, and partly because of the influence of color on the solar rays, dark objects absorbing, white reflecting heat." [11] A rational grazing policy, he felt, might well be modeled on that of Australia, where squatters rights were recognized, and where a combination of freehold and lease with privilege of purchase permitted a stable grazing industry to exist, and encouraged ranchers to improve the range. [12]

Faced by conflicting local interests and contradictory assertions, the Interior Department felt the need of a disinterested investigation of the facts before formulating any rigid set of rules. The Department of Agriculture was asked to furnish a trained man for the investigation, and Fredrick V. Coville, a Department botanist, was sent out in the summer of 1897. He came provided with letters of introduction from Binger Hermann, Commissioner of the General Land Office; met John Minto in Salem, who gave him letters of introduction to the sheepmen of Eastern Oregon; and was given cooperation by the western land office of the Northern Pacific Railroad, which had recently conducted an investigation of sheep grazing on railroad lands in Oregon and Washington.

Coville made a thorough examination of the range lands. After talking with local sheepmen in Portland and Salem, he traveled to Klamath Falls and there secured a pack outfit and local men as guides and camp hands. They left the southern end of the reserve July 23, and traveled north, reaching The Dalles at the Columbia River September 6. During this time they examined the forests, both the range used by sheep and those in which sheep had never grazed; interviewed sheep owners, packers and herders, cattle owners, and all classes of people opposed or favoring sheep grazing within the reserve. They noted the methods of handling sheep, the movement of sheep and choice of forage; the effects of recent grazing, and grazing of former years; made observations on the effects of fire, and whenever possible ascertained the cause.

Coville made a preliminary report late in 1897, and his final report was printed early in 1898. It was a model of fairness and thoroughness, sympathetic to the needs of the sheepmen but at the same time recognizing the need of regulations. Challenging the statement of the National Academy committee, that the industry was insignificant in Oregon, he pointed out that the 2,500,000 sheep, valued at $3,500,000 and producing an annual clip of 12,000,000 pounds, was an important part of Oregon's economy. The reserve area, he found, was necessary to the industry; summer range in the eastern part of the state was limited, and the mountains were the only available summer range. In 1897 some 188,360 sheep, representing sixty owners, had used the reserve area as range. The owners of sheep were native Americans, rather than aliens, as the Academy report had suggested, and were not "a comparatively low class of humanity" as was commonly thought. Coville thought that popular sentiment was growing in favor of the reserve, and that the opposition of many sheepmen to the reserve was due to the fact that they had been deceived by "a prominent official" who said that the reserves would permanently exclude sheep.

Nevertheless, regulation of grazing, Coville felt, would be necessary. There were certain areas from which grazing should be permanently excluded, to safeguard city watersheds, scenic areas, and huckleberry fields frequented by whites and Indians. Such areas were scenic areas around Mt. Hood, Mt. Jefferson, and Crater Lake, the Bull Run area, and scattered huckleberry fields southwest of Crater Lake, south of Mt. Hood, and to the south of the Santiam-Prineville Road. The number of sheep should be limited to the number previously grazed in a given area. Five-year permits should be issued, allowing each owner to graze a given tract. These permits might be revoked if the owner did not keep to the agreement. Stockmen should be required to put out fires on their own allotments. In selecting the allotments, the local wool growers associations would be consulted. Coville recommended that the whole system be given a five-year trial period to see how it worked out. [13]

Coville's report was, on the whole, well received. The Oregonian performed a public service by printing the lengthy report in full, so some of the customary misinformation and rumor over governmental policy was avoided. [14] Editorially, the paper commented:

It is manifestly a long way from the radical measures first prepared by the Academy of Sciences, which was willing to tolerate the miner and lumber-man on the reserves, but not the stockman. The government has learned by this time that the sheep-owner also has rights which must be taken into account. Perhaps some such compromise as Mr. Coville suggests will prove to be the best solution of this perplexing problem. It is too much to suggest that all the woolgrowers will be satisfied with such restrictive measures. Yet it is certain that some concession on their side must also be made. The sheep must live, but so must the trees. [15]

On the conservationist side, John B. Waldo and T. W. Davenport endorsed the proposal; on the part of the wool-growers, the Stockman's Union of Southern Wasco County endorsed the proposal and pledged itself to carry out the Proposals suggested. The Pacific Northwest Woolgrowers Association discussed the policies, with no hostile comment. [16] John Minto remained the principal opponent of the report. He felt that the state, rather than the federal government, should have jurisdiction over forest and homestead lands, partly to foster local initiative, partly because the reserves were exempt from local taxation. He also felt that the boundaries of the Cascade reserve needed to be shifted to the west; half its width, he wrote, was on land more valuable for pasturage. [17]

Almost immediately grazing regulations for the reserves in Washington and Oregon, based on the Coville report, were set up. In Oregon the Bull Run area was closed to grazing, as well as all the area north of the Barlow Road, west of the summit of the divide, and east of the east fork of Hood River. [18] The latter area was primarily to protect recreational spots, and was protested by the sheep owners, but to no avail. [19] Also several large huckleberry areas were closed to grazing, including three south of Mt. Hood, one at the headwaters of the McKenzie River, and three in the vicinity of Klamath Falls. [20] Early in 1899 members of the grazing associations met with forest officials in Tacoma for allotment of ranges. It was decided to allot the range in well defined watersheds, using streams and ridges as boundaries. The grazing fee was to be five dollars per thousand head, or, if there was competition for the range, to the highest bidder. In cases where there were disputes between cattlemen and sheepmen over range use, they were urged to arbitrate their differences, and joint committees of both types of stockmen were set up for that purpose. [21]

Had the government's policy remained consistent, all would have been well for most of the sheepmen were well satisfied by the Coville recommendations. In 1899, however, two things happened which for a time reopened the controversy. John Muir stopped in Portland on May 29 on his way to Alaska with the Harriman expedition. While there he issued a blast against the sheep owners, and against allowing the "hoofed locusts" in the reserves; and privately, in talks with the Mazamas, tried to get them to campaign against sheep grazing. [22] In the summer of that year, after attending a meeting of the American Forestry Association in California, James Wilson, the Secretary of Agriculture, made a trip through the reserves. The meeting he had attended had been loud in condemning the sheep owners, and Wilson had evidently become a convert to their cause. In an interview, he stated that permitting sheep to graze in the Oregon and Washington forests had been an error, and the error should be rectified. Sheep grazing in all reserves should be prohibited, and the sheep already on the reserves should be expelled without delay. [23]

Wilson somehow impressed the Department of the Interior with his views, for his suggestion was followed by action. [24] On September 3, the Secretary of the Interior canceled the permits of those sheepmen, sixty-eight in all, who had herds grazing on the Rainier reserve, and ordered them to take their 200,000 sheep from the reserve immediately. He also stated his intention to take similar action in all other reserves. The permits ran until September 25; therefore, the order forced sheep off their summer range nearly a month before they had planned to go. Protests rose from the sheepmen, and a hasty meeting was called by the Oregon Wool Growers Association at The Dalles to protest any similar action in Oregon. [25]

Muir's speech, and the action by the Interior Department, caused the controversy over grazing to break out anew. It was fought pro and con in letters to the Oregonian. Letters poured in from both the sheep owning and the recreational group; all letters being alike, however, in their logical and scientific reasoning when dealing with the merits of their cases, and their brilliance in wit and vituperation when dealing with persons and personalities opposed to their views. Through the two-month battle of pens, Harvey Scott, the editor of the paper, took a middle ground in his editorial comments, only occasionally taking a pot shot at one of the protagonists when he could not resist it.

On news of the canceling of the Rainier permits, John Minto, as chief spokesman for the wool growers, let forth a blast at Wilson, the American Forestry Association, and the reserve system. Wilson's conclusions, he stated, were untrue. For fifty-three years, Minto asserted, he had studied reproduction of forest growth near Salem, and had found that "the closest grazing of sheep confined by fencing had not prevented the reforestation by seed of large tracts of land that was good pasture in 1846." He again stated his belief that the best utilization of arid or semi-arid grazing land would be by the homestead and leasing system, permitting the use of plains for winter and mountains for summer range. A system of lease with the privilege of purchase, he thought, would be practicable, with the leasors' improvements appraised and the improvements charged to successors by higher fees. He had, he said, advocated grazing homesteads of three sections, with lease of additional pasture land, sixteen years ago; now he felt that the system should be that of leasing three sections to each owner of a quarter section. [26]

His ideas were backed by F. A. Young, President of the Oregon Woolgrower's Association, and by F. A. Bonney, stock inspector for Wasco County. Both favored the existing system, based on the Coville report, and both challenged Muir's views as extreme. Young stated that most of the opposition came from the Mazamas, "a small group of summer idlers, and I might say, mostly yearly idlers," having their headquarters in Portland. He was, he said, well acquainted with the "bell-wether" of the group. They were against any sheep whatsoever on the reserve, "and in the language of ex-Governor Pennoyer, they never see a sheep but they want to kick it." [27]

M. J. Anderson of Dufur expressed the point of view of the cattle rancher and grain farmer. He was one of those who had petitioned to keep the sheep out of the area east of the east fork of Hood River, and later, as supervisor of the Siskiyou National Forest, became a capable forest administrator. Questioning one of Minto's largest talking points, that snow will lie just as long and irrigation streams flow just as well, whether sheep are pastured or not, Anderson stated that this was not so in the area where he lived. Within the last thirty years, he said, there had been changes due to sheep pasturing. In previous years snowdrifts lay miles down the slopes before the sheep had destroyed the undergrowth, and there had then been swamps, where now none existed. Minto's generalizations, said Anderson, were based on the west side, which had heavy rainfall and therefore a more rapid renewal of herbage; his mistake was, "the error that 50 years of theorizing has made incurable in Mr. Minto, that Oregon hangs suspended in the universe by a strand of wool." Anderson called Minto's attention to the fact that other industries existed; that "in the little strip of Wasco where farmers live who are asking for protection from the sheep there were raised last year 2,000,000 bushels of wheat, to say nothing of babies and bird dogs." [28]

Minto elaborated his ideas at a joint meeting of the Oregon Wool Grower's Association with the Portland Chamber of Commerce, and in a letter to the editor of the Oregonian the day after the meeting. He had by this time got hold of the proceedings of the American Forestry Association conference at Los Angeles, July 19-20, from which Wilson had drawn his conclusions, and devoted much of his letter to an attack on their ideas on the relation of water flow and forests.

One of the Forestry Association resolutions read:

Whereas, the tree is mother of the fountain, and the forests and foliage of our mountains must be preserved in order to maintain both surface and underground supplies of water . . .

Minto thought this statement ridiculous. The tree, he said, is a consumer of water, giving out none other than through respiration through the leaves or evaporation when they are dying. "If there are any species of trees growing in Oregon or anywhere else that emit water from their foliage, I have never seen such or any man who has." On the contrary, the tree is a consumer of water, being seventy per cent sap by weight. "Has any man who succeeded in making good his title to a timber culture claim also secured a spring as a result of tree growth?" added Minto. To Minto, "the rain cloud is father, the earth the mother of the tree, and the fountain, when it plays any part at all, is wet nurse."

Minto reiterated his belief that it would be good policy to allow sheep to graze in alpine meadows in order to keep dry grass down, and remove the fire hazard and temptation of light-burning. Unquestionably, he wrote, the sheep grazers had no right to jeopardize safety of timber or to disrupt water flow; but there was no evidence that they did so. Again, he suggested that local enterprise, with "the family the chief agency in so doing" was the best way to manage the area. Forest homesteads should be allowed, in such acreage as would permit the family to secure a permanent body of timber from the natural forest land. This combined with grazing homesteads on the Australian plan, would both secure a better economy and give local interests a stake in the land. [29]

The Oregonian, in an editorial comment, indicated that Minto had nullified his own position. Pointing out that Minto had been a pioneer in studies of the capacity of Douglas fir to reproduce itself, the paper stated:

The tree he has consistently championed as in itself the perpetuation of the Pacific Coast forestry, he now holds up to view as the resentless pursuer and destroyer of every drop of moisture within reach. It is well to be forewarned before Mr. Minto and his thirsty fir tree have transforned us together into a smoking desert.

Calling attention to the fact that lumbermen as well as sheep grazers might be considered as enemies of the forest, Scott ended with a plea for the Coville system of regulating grazing. [30]

The recreational group was represented in the controversy, among others, by W. G. Steel and H. D. Langille. Steel made a warm defense of the American Forestry Association against the charges of Minto. Stating that a "man who will state that snow disappears sooner in the open than in heavy timber, and denies that forests are conservers of moisture is not expected to know much," Steel defended the scientific investigation of the Association, charged that the large sheep owners were trying to drive the small ones out of business, and declared it would be well for the reserve if all sheep owners were excluded. [31] Harold Douglas Langille's letter contained more light and less heat. Langille had been a guide in the Mt. Hood area for many years, and probably knew the region as well as anyone. He had been there when the sheep first came into the area, twelve years before, and had noted the changes that had taken place; with thousands of acres once in flourishing timber but now denuded slopes, old burns, or grown up in chaparral. From his own observation, he knew that sheep herders set fires; but, "Unfortunately, the sheepowners do not know any more about the actions of their herders than Superintendent Ormsby does about his rangers." The charge that sheep grazed on conifers was false; but they did trample the ground and destroy loose soil. If sheep were not to be excluded, a fee should be charged to the sheepmen, enough to pay for fire control and reforestation. Minto's statement that the east side was chiefly valuable for grazing was false, as much good timber was available there. [32] Minto, in answering the letters, quoted from Bulletin 24 of the Division of Forestry (a bulletin on transpiration, written by Gifford Pinchot) to prove that trees use water. He agreed with Langille that if the forage was worth having it was worth paying for, and stated that in referring to the east side as being chiefly valuable for grazing he had referred especially to the area south of the Warm Springs Indian Reservation, which he thought might well be released from the reserve. He stressed the need for positive knowledge as to forest and range conditions, from actual observation on the ground, rather than theorizing. [33]

The controversy gradually died away, and the next year the Interior Department again reversed itself and permitted grazing again under the Coville regulations. [34] That year allotments were made for both the Rainier and Cascade Range reserves, and no lasting general controversy occurred again in this area. Such controversies as did occur were localized, rather than based on general principles, and were relatively easily settled.

The controversy was a hot one while it lasted, but in the long run the effects were good. The chief debate was over scientific facts which were not yet thoroughly established one way or the other. The criticisms of Minto and others forced the forest administration to establish as its policy that of thorough investigation before promulgating rules; and the thorough airing of the issues did in the end help to clarify federal policy, in spite of the vacillations of the Interior Department.

Within a year, the investigation in the Northwest was duplicated in other parts of the West as well, in Arizona, there had long been friction between irrigators and sheepmen, and in 1900 Coville, Pinchot, and Alfred Potter made an investigation there of sheep grazing similar to that Coville had carried on in the Northwest. Out of such investigations of local conditions on local grounds, carried out first in the Northwest, arose the development of a federal grazing policy. [35]

For the Pacific Northwest, the grazing controversy had a special importance. in that region grazing was permitted in 1897, from three to five years before it was permitted in any other forest reserves, and thereby the grazers had that much longer to adjust themselves to the reserve system than in California, for example, where reserves remained closed until 1902. This may in part account for the fact that the grazing problem as a feature of national forest management has been less troublesome in the Northwest than in any other part of the West—a situation that still prevails. [36] The fact that the Coville report was made by an actual study of local conditions gave the users of the reserve faith in it, and did much to nullify the ill effects of the Academy report.

As the letters indicate, the grazers themselves in general accepted the Coville report as a basis from which to work. Wilson's arbitrary action probably hastened acceptance of the Coville plan by grazers, in lieu of losing everything. Much credit must be given to the Oregonian, which printed the Coville report in full, and offered itself as a forum for discussion of the matter.

The grazing controversy had a further significance in driving a wedge between the utilitarian group and the recreational groups interested in the forests. In terms of personalities, it was a victory for Minto, and a defeat for Muir. Previous to that time, the strongest supporters of the reserve policies had been the recreational group, represented by Steel and Muir. Pinchot's espousal of the utilitarian viewpoint in regard to the reserves—a partial repudiation of his stand as a signer of the Academy report—antagonized Muir. As Muir's biographer has put it,

Thus the rift opened that swiftly widened between the two schools of conservationists—the strictly utilitarian, commercial group who followed Pinchot, and the aesthetic-utilitarian group who followed Muir—a rift that was to manifest itself deplorably in long years of antagonism between two government bureaus. [37]

From that time on, the rift between the groups widened. The grazers, on the contrary, played a more important role as a group concerned with use of the reserves, in their meeting in 1901, the Oregon Wool Grower's Association pledged cooperation with the U. S. Government in regulation of grazing on the forest reserves, and endorsed creation of further reserves in eastern Oregon as a means of settling range disputes between cattle and sheep owners. Minto and Pinchot advanced somewhat toward each other's point of view. In 1901 Minto admitted some of the abuses of absentee ownership and of encroachment on homesteaders' land existed in eastern Oregon. [38]

By 1904, Minto, while still condemning the National Academy Committee and the American Forestry Association, said that Pinchot's idea of settling local problems on local grounds was the right one; and at the same grazing conference Pinchot managed to disassociate himself from the Academy report and stated his opposition to having rules on land use made without actual examination. [39]