GOOD FORESTS MEAN GOOD HUNTING AND FISHING
The eastern forests in the White Mountains, the Adirondacks, and the Appalachians, are not, for the most part, as well developed as recreation grounds as are the western vacation lands. However, more interest is being taken each year in the outdoor life features of the eastern forests, and ultimately they will be used on a large scale as summer camp grounds. Many hikers and campers now spend their annual vacations in these forests. Throughout the White Mountain forest of New Hampshire, regular trails for walking parties have been made. At frequent intervals simple camps for the use of travelers have been built by mountaineering clubs. This forest, located as it is near centres of large population is visited by a half-million tourists each season. The Pisgah National Forest of North Carolina is becoming a centre for automobile travel as it contains a fine macadam road. The Superior National Forest of Minnesota, which covers 1,250,000 acres and contains 150,000 acres of lakes, is becoming very popular. It is called "the land of ten thousand lakes." One can travel in a canoe through this forest for a month at a time without passing over the same lake twice. Other popular national forests are the Angeles in southern California, the Pike and Colorado in Colorado, and the Oregon and Wenatchee—the Pacific Northwest. Visitors to these forests total more than 1,750,000 a year.
The western forests are also being used for winter sports. They furnish excellent conditions for snow-shoe trips, skiing and sledding. The people who have camps on government land use their places for week-end excursions during the snow season when the roads are passable. The White Mountain National Forest is used more for winter sports than any other government woodland. At many of the towns of New Hampshire and Maine, huge carnivals are held each winter. Championship contests in skiing, snowshoeing, skating, ski jumping, tobogganing and ski-joring are held. Snow sport games are also annual events in the Routt, Leadville and Pike National Forests of Colorado. Cross country ski races and ski-joring contests are also held. In the Truckee National Forest of California, dog-team races over courses of 25 to 50 miles are held each winter.
About eighty per cent. of the 5,500,000 people who visit the National Forests are automobile tourists. The other twenty per cent. consists of sportsmen interested in hunting, fishing, canoeing, boating, mountain climbing, bathing, riding and hiking. In the Pacific Coast States there are a number of mountain climbing clubs whose members compete with each other in making difficult ascents. The mountaineering clubs of Portland, Oregon, for example, stage an interesting contest each summer in climbing Mount Hood, one of the highest peaks in the country.
CHAPTER XIII
SOLVING OUR FORESTRY PROBLEMS
A system of forestry which will provide sufficient lumber for the needs of our country and keep our forest land productive must be built on the extension of our public forests. Our National Forests are, at present, the one bright feature of future lumbering. Their tree crops will never be cut faster than they can be grown. A balance between production and consumption will always be maintained. Our needs for more timber, the necessity for protecting the headwaters of streams, the demands for saving wild life, and the playground possibilities of our forests justify their extension. Approximately eighty per cent of the American forests are now privately owned. The chances are that most of these wooded tracts will always remain in the hands of private owners. It is important that the production of these forests be kept up without injuring their future value. We must prepare for the lumber demands of many years from now.