New York State College of Forestry at Cornell
Encyclopedia
The New York State College of Forestry at Cornell was a statutory college
established in 1898 at Cornell University
to teach scientific forestry. The first four-year college of forestry in the country, it was defunded by the State of New York in 1903, over controversies involving the college's forestry practices in the Adirondacks. Forestry studies continued at Cornell even after the college's closing.
, Superintendent of New York's state-owned forests during the mid 1890s. At that time, forestry research and education was conducted only in Great Britain and Europe. Fox believed that the State's constitutional amendment adopted by the voters that set aside the Adirondack and Catskill preserves as lands to be kept forever wild was unfortunate. Instead, Fox would prefer that enlightened forest management should apply to these areas. In his annual reports for 1896 and 1897 Col. Fox advocated inauguration of a demonstration forest to educate the body politic regarding what "modern" forestry was all about.
When Governor Frank S. Black
went on a fishing trip with a Cornell trustee and discussed Col. Fox's proposal, the suggestion was made that Cornell would be well-suited to implement the demonstration forest. Cornell President Jacob Gould Schurman then began lobbying for a state-funded college, just as he had successfully advocated for a state-funded veterinary college in 1894. The legislature quickly approved the new college. The act authorized New York State to pay for a tract of forest land in the Adirondacks from funds, previously appropriated for the acquisition of lands to be held "forever wild" in the Adirondack Forest Preserve, with Cornell holding title, possession, management, and control for 30 years. After 30 years, the land would revert to the State.
Schurman recruited German trained, Dr. Bernhard E. Fernow, who was then the 3rd Chief of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Division of Forestry (predecessor of the U.S. Forest Service) and one of the top forestry experts in the United States, to be the first Dean of the college. Fernow quickly moved to acquire a tract of land for the demonstration forest and to establish a program of instruction. The former involved purchasing 30000 acres (121.4 km²) of forested Adirondack land near Axton in Franklin County, New York. He also contracted with the Brooklyn Cooperage Company to take the logs and cordwood from the forest land for a 15-year period. The more valuable, in the 1890s, red spruce trees had been logged leaving primarily a forest of northern hardwoods. The company turned the hardwood logs into barrels; and the cordwood into methanol
and charcoal
by a process called destructive distillation
.
To his credit, Fernow established the first tree nursery in New York State at Axton, the site of an old lumber settlement originally called Axe-town. Most of the nonnative, conifer species, he planted on his reforest scheme, such as Scotch Pine and Norway Spruce, did not do well for many years. However, the foresters recklessly denuded the area, leaving behind a bleak landscape of slash that could be viewed by wealthy "great" camp owners Knollwood Club
on Saranac Lake. Moreover, in addition to being a poor businessman and manager Fernow had a prickly character who alienated nearly everyone he came into contact with.
In 1901 Fernow's plan drew criticism from adjacent landowners and Adirondack guides such as Ellsworth Petty, father of Clarence Petty
who ferociously protested the plan and in a letter writing campaign successfully lobbied the State to assign a special "Committee of the Adirondacks" to tour the Axton site. It concluded that "the college has exceeded the original intention of the State when the tract was granted the university for conducting silvicultural experiments."
Fernow's plan called for clearcutting a total of 30000 acres (121.4 km²) of forestland at the rate of several thousand acres per year to prepare for planting conifers. Smoke from the burning of brush and logging slash, along with Fernow's arrogant disposition toward landowners from nearby Saranac Lake further alienated the public. The years 1899,1903,and 1908 were terrible years for forest fires in the Adirondacks. Many, tens of thousands of acres were consumed by forest fires.Most fires were started by sparks flying from coal-burning locomotive stacks and landing on logging slash. Louis Marshall branded locomotives as "instruments of arson." Fernow had a 6 miles (9.7 km) long railroad spur built from Axton to Tupper Lake in order to deliver logs to the Brooklyn Cooperage Company facility.
In 1899, Fernow had been recruited as a member of New York's E.H. Harriman expedition to Alaska along with fellow Cornellian Louis Agassiz Fuertes
. The expedition set sail from Seattle on May 31, 1899 aboard the refitted steamer, the George W. Elder. "His research on the expedition was hampered by the fact that the coastal itinerary never gave him a look at the inland forests. His overview thus limited, he concluded that Alaska would never be a great source of timber: the wood was inferior and the conditions of lumbering too difficult. Some say that history has proven him wrong, but his opinion did have an effect: for a time, it discouraged commercial interests from prospecting for timber in the Alaskan forests."
In 1902, Fernow founded and became editor-in-chief of the Journal of Forestry
, the pioneering scholarly journal in this field.
The demonstration forest, near Saranac Lake, in the Adirondacks drew heated opposition from neighboring land owners. who brought a lawsuit against the Brooklyn Cooperage Company and Cornell University. In particular, the annual state appropriation for the college was only $10,000 forcing it into a contract with Brookyn Cooperage Company to be viable, so more land was clear-cut than neighbors would have liked. The contract proved to be profitable and beneficial only for the company. Cornell had gained insufficient funds to replant the areas of the forest that had been clear-cut. The reforested areas of the Axton forest, which still exist today, are mostly of non-native Norway spruce(Picea abies). Although the legislature adopted the 1903 appropriation without debate, Governor Benjamin B. Odell vetoed the 1903 appropriation for the school. In his veto message Governor Odell said: "The operations of the College of Forestry have been subjected to grave criticism, as they have practically denuded the forest lands of the State without compensating benefits. I deem it wise therefore to withhold approval of this item until a more scientific and more reasonable method is pursued in the forestry of the lands now under the control of Cornell University."(Charles Z. Lincoln, ed., Messages from the Governors, X [Albany,1910],555)as a footnote in
This is what the great constitutional lawyer Louis Marshall had to say, "I hold before me the decision in the case of the People against the Brooklyn Cooperage Company.....the consequence of that (its contract with the University which agreed to cut logs and cord wood and deliver at its own expense) was that this "tremendous" tract of thirty thousand acres was to be cut down "flat" from one end of it to the other, in order that the scientific foresters might start a new forest which might mature a hundred years from the time that that contract was entered into. This is scientific forestry?". In other words, the idea to destroy a forest in order to save it, is abominable.
Dean Bailey and Dean Bernhard Fernow, of the Forestry College were the best of friends. In fact, on that night in May 1903 when the telegram arrived announcing Governor Odell's veto of the annual appropriation for the College of Forestry, Bailey and Fernow were together at a dance. Despite the bad news, the dance went on. Fernow did not want to let the veto end his school, and he continued to work without a salary. He proposed continuing the school by charging tuition to the students. (During this time, New York State students attended the College tuition-free.) However, Cornell's Board of Trustees and President Schurman (despite Bailey's urgings to the contrary) decided to close the doors of the Forestry College. In June, 1903, instruction in the College ceased and the faculty was dismissed. It was rumored, and with good reason, that a political bargain took place exchanging the College of Forestry, for the establishment of the New York State College of Agriculture at Cornell University in 1904. To quote Liberty Hyde Bailey, "Last winter at Albany I was confronted by inquiries which indicated that the State would be willing to give to either a College of Forestry or a College of Agriculture, but not to both."
Just as the legislative session of 1904 began in Albany,a most unexpected mishap occurred: at a hearing before the Federal Commission on Agriculture in Washington, the Secretary of Agriculture, James Wilson, attacked Cornell for not teaching "Soil Physics" and took the occasion to revive the old canards about Cornell misusing the riches conferred by the Morrill Act. He said of Cornell: "They were better endowed than any institution in the land, yet never did anything." Cornell's President Jacob Gould Schurman demanded a hearing and spoke in Washington with his usual brilliance, refuting the Secretary point by point.
Meanwhile in Albany, Senator Ed Stewart of Ithaca introduced a bill drafted by Liberty Hyde Bailey
,establishing the New York State College of Agriculture at Cornell. Leading the opposition was Chancellor James R. Day
of Syracuse University. According to Schurman, "the Chancellor led a pious army, the Methodists of the state. He was an angry man; his words breathe a rancor too hot to be contained by facts." He charged that Ezra Cornell
had so "manipulated" the proceeds of the Morrill Act that more than four-fifths were improperly used. He demanded a share in state bounty equal to that accorded Cornell: "Either give to all or not to any!"
Bailey broadcast an immediate refutation, but Chancellor Day had already had his speech published by the Syracuse University Press without change. The Chancellor asked for a hearing before the Assembly's Ways and Means Committee. This request granted, he spoke at the hearing but the chairman and other legislators were insufficiently attentive to him, the Chancellor broke off in a fury and left the room,"before he had adduced a single coherent argument." Dean Bailey, later put up a picture of Chancellor Day, in his office, with the subscription: "Founder of the New York State College of Agriculture at Cornell."
The announcement of the final passage and signing of the bill, in Albany, creating the New York State College of Agriculture at Cornell was met with bonfires and the pealing of church bells in Ithaca. However, the price for this new state support at Cornell was the sacrifice of the New York State College of Forestry at Cornell.
. Joseph Rothrock
, an explorer, botanist and medical doctor founded the academy to train men for service in the state forests. It was one of three forestry schools in the nation, after Yale and Biltmore, respectively. The goal of the academy, in the early 1900s was to crusade for a change from the barren hills caused by forest fires and charcoal production. Historic charcoal kiln photo: Four million acres (16,000 km²) of Pennsylvania's forest land had been made a wasteland, with the state leading the nation in logging in 1870 and fourth in 1900. There was great concern whether the denuded forests could ever regenerate a new forest. George Wirt, the academy's first administrator, patterned the curriculum after curricula in Germany, a leader in reforestation. All first year students were required to bring a horse with them to the academy until the late 1920s. The horses were used to fight forest fires in the Michaux State Forest
, named for André Michaux
whose son François André Michaux
laid the foundation for American forestry with his monumental work, The North American Sylva starting in 1811.
In 1907, Bernhard E. Fernow became the first Professor of forestry, in a four year baccalaureate degree program, at Penn State, State College,PA after having been the nation's first consulting forester since leaving Cornell and Ithaca, New York in 1903. His office was in New York City. After teaching the 1907 spring semester at Penn State Dr. Fernow left to organize the Faculty of Forestry at the University of Toronto in Canada. He gave as a reason for leaving, his argument with Dr. Rothrock that Mont Alto should not have departed from its role as a "ranger school" to pursue higher aspirations.
Fernow left Cornell to become the first head of the Faculty of Forestry at the University of Toronto. In 1910, Liberty Hyde Bailey
, the Dean of Cornell's Agriculture College, succeeded in having what remained of the Forestry College transferred to his school. At his request, in 1911, the legislature appropriated $100,000 to construct a building to house the new Forestry Department on the Cornell campus, which Cornell later named Fernow Hall. That Forestry Department continues today as the Department of Natural Resources. In 1927, Cornell established a 1639 acres (6.6 km²) research forest south of Ithaca, the Arnot Woods.
However, Cornell had contracted with the Brooklyn Cooperage Company to take the logs from the forest at Axton, and the People of the State of New York, Knollwood Club
members living nearby on lower Saranac lake during the summer (People vs Brooklyn Cooperage Company and Cornell) sued to stop the destructive practices of Fernow even before the closing of the school. A lawsuit was filed, naming Cornell University and the Brooklyn Cooperage Company as defendants with the People of New York State as plaintiff. The lawsuit was decided in favor of the People in People vs Brooklyn Cooperage Co. and Cornell University in 1910 and on appeal in 1912; and the case defined forestry in the United States for a generation. The 30000 acres (121.4 km²) of forest lands were placed under the "forever wild" protection of the Adirondack Forest Preserve.
It is indeed ironic that when Gifford Pinchot
, named for Hudson River School painter Sanford Robinson Gifford and the future first Chief Forester of the US Forest Service asked Dr. Bernhard Fernow's, then Chief of the USDA's Division of Forestry, advice on finding instruction in forestry, Fernow advised against a career in forestry. During the Brooklyn Cooperage trial, a forester on Chief Pinchot's staff, Charles S. Chapman, testified on behalf of the plaintiff. In 1914 Gifford married Cornelia Bryce: "Her influence worked its way into Gifford's view of conservation, adding a human component to the scientific management of natural resources. Years later in a speech he said: The conservation problem is not concerned only with the natural resources of the Earth. Rightly understood, it includes also the relation of these resources and of their scarcity or abundance to the wretchedness or prosperity, the weakness or strength of peoples, their leaning towards war or towards peace, and their numbers and distribution over the Earth."
Subsequently, in 1911, the State Legislature established a New York State College of Forestry
at Syracuse University
, but not without opposition from Cornell University. In 1930, the NYS Board of Regents
questioned the need for duplicate, state-supported forestry programs at Cornell and Syracuse. A formal study resulted in an agreement in 1937 that the Syracuse program would be the sole site for professional undergraduate training in forestry. Cornell's Department of Forestry continued with responsibilities curtailed to courses in "farm" forestry, to cooperative extension work in forestry, and to research and graduate education. In an exchange, Syracuse University
agreed to abandon its School of Agriculture. However, in 2000, SUNY System Administration established ESF's "primacy" among the 64 SUNY campuses and contract colleges for development of new undergraduate degree programs in Environmental Science and Environmental Studies, but ESF does not have a veto power over competing new programs.
with Dean Liberty Hyde Bailey
adding a Department of Forestry to the New York State College of Agriculture at Cornell University
in 1910-11. Walter Mulford, of the University of Michigan, was appointed as department chair. In 1914, noted forester Ralph Hosmer
, a 1902 graduate of the Yale School of Forestry and contemporary of Gifford Pinchot
, replaced Mulford as Professor and head of the Department of Forestry at the New York State College of Agriculture at Cornell University
, a position he held until his retirement in June 1942.
The world famous Cornell Lab of Ornithology was the brainchild of Professor Arthur A. "Doc" Allen, beginning in 1915. Louis Agassiz Fuertes
, the son of Cornell's first civil engineering professor, Estovan Antonio Fuertes, America's most famous painter of bird-life, after John James Audubon
, taught at Cornell from 1923 until his untimely death in 1927.
Following in the footsteps of the great botanist and horticulturist, Liberty Hyde Bailey
, a most extraordinary plant physiologist, Frederick Campion Steward
, arrived to teach and conduct research at Cornell University in 1950 as Professor of Botany. From his Cornell classrooms and laboratories, Steward was responsible for creating and inspiring a generation of botanists.
In 1978 the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research
relocated to the Cornell Ithaca campus from its original site in Yonkers,NY. Its history is extremely interesting and relevant.
Today, Cornell University owns 11000 acres (44.5 km²) in its home county of Tompkins including the 4000 acres (16.2 km²) "Arnot Forest" for teaching, demonstration,and research; the Uihlein maple syrup research forest near Lake Placid in the Adirondacks; Cornell Plantations
: 200 acre (0.809372 km²) on campus and 4000 off-campus acres of diverse natural areas and mineral rights on 420000 acres (1,699.7 km²) of land across the United States
On October 28, 2010 a gift of "historic" proportions from the son of a New Jersey chicken farmer created the Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future
at Cornell University to position the university to be a global leader in the effort to create a sustainable future. The 80 million dollar gift is the single largest gift to the Ithaca campus from an individual and according to the Ithaca Journal(10/28/2010) it is the largest gift ever given to a university for sustainability
research and faculty support.
Statutory college
In American higher education, particular to the state of New York, a statutory college or contract college is a college or school that is a component of an independent, private university that has been designated by the state legislature to receive significant, ongoing public funding from the state...
established in 1898 at Cornell University
Cornell University
Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...
to teach scientific forestry. The first four-year college of forestry in the country, it was defunded by the State of New York in 1903, over controversies involving the college's forestry practices in the Adirondacks. Forestry studies continued at Cornell even after the college's closing.
Background
The idea of a Cornell Forestry school began with Colonel William F. FoxWilliam F. Fox
Col. William F. Fox was the Superintendent of Forests at the Adirondack Park in New York State.Fox was born in Ballston Spa, New York on January 11, 1840. He graduated from the Engineering Department of Union College in 1869. He fought in the American Civil War and wrote extensively about his war...
, Superintendent of New York's state-owned forests during the mid 1890s. At that time, forestry research and education was conducted only in Great Britain and Europe. Fox believed that the State's constitutional amendment adopted by the voters that set aside the Adirondack and Catskill preserves as lands to be kept forever wild was unfortunate. Instead, Fox would prefer that enlightened forest management should apply to these areas. In his annual reports for 1896 and 1897 Col. Fox advocated inauguration of a demonstration forest to educate the body politic regarding what "modern" forestry was all about.
When Governor Frank S. Black
Frank S. Black
Frank Swett Black was an American newspaper editor, lawyer and politician. He was a member of the United States House of Representatives from 1895 to 1897, and the 32nd Governor of New York from 1897 to 1898.-Life:He was one of eleven children of Jacob Black, a farmer, and Charlotte B. Black...
went on a fishing trip with a Cornell trustee and discussed Col. Fox's proposal, the suggestion was made that Cornell would be well-suited to implement the demonstration forest. Cornell President Jacob Gould Schurman then began lobbying for a state-funded college, just as he had successfully advocated for a state-funded veterinary college in 1894. The legislature quickly approved the new college. The act authorized New York State to pay for a tract of forest land in the Adirondacks from funds, previously appropriated for the acquisition of lands to be held "forever wild" in the Adirondack Forest Preserve, with Cornell holding title, possession, management, and control for 30 years. After 30 years, the land would revert to the State.
Schurman recruited German trained, Dr. Bernhard E. Fernow, who was then the 3rd Chief of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Division of Forestry (predecessor of the U.S. Forest Service) and one of the top forestry experts in the United States, to be the first Dean of the college. Fernow quickly moved to acquire a tract of land for the demonstration forest and to establish a program of instruction. The former involved purchasing 30000 acres (121.4 km²) of forested Adirondack land near Axton in Franklin County, New York. He also contracted with the Brooklyn Cooperage Company to take the logs and cordwood from the forest land for a 15-year period. The more valuable, in the 1890s, red spruce trees had been logged leaving primarily a forest of northern hardwoods. The company turned the hardwood logs into barrels; and the cordwood into methanol
Methanol
Methanol, also known as methyl alcohol, wood alcohol, wood naphtha or wood spirits, is a chemical with the formula CH3OH . It is the simplest alcohol, and is a light, volatile, colorless, flammable liquid with a distinctive odor very similar to, but slightly sweeter than, ethanol...
and charcoal
Charcoal
Charcoal is the dark grey residue consisting of carbon, and any remaining ash, obtained by removing water and other volatile constituents from animal and vegetation substances. Charcoal is usually produced by slow pyrolysis, the heating of wood or other substances in the absence of oxygen...
by a process called destructive distillation
Destructive distillation
Destructive distillation is the chemical process involving the decomposition of feedstock by heating to a high temperature; the term generally applies to processing of organic material in the absence of air or in the presence of limited amounts of oxygen or other reagents, catalysts, or solvents,...
.
To his credit, Fernow established the first tree nursery in New York State at Axton, the site of an old lumber settlement originally called Axe-town. Most of the nonnative, conifer species, he planted on his reforest scheme, such as Scotch Pine and Norway Spruce, did not do well for many years. However, the foresters recklessly denuded the area, leaving behind a bleak landscape of slash that could be viewed by wealthy "great" camp owners Knollwood Club
Knollwood Club
Knollwood Club is an Adirondack Great Camp on Shingle Bay, Lower Saranac Lake, near the village of Saranac Lake, New York. It was built in 1899–1900 by William L. Coulter, who had previously created a major addition to Alfred G. Vanderbilt's Sagamore Camp...
on Saranac Lake. Moreover, in addition to being a poor businessman and manager Fernow had a prickly character who alienated nearly everyone he came into contact with.
In 1901 Fernow's plan drew criticism from adjacent landowners and Adirondack guides such as Ellsworth Petty, father of Clarence Petty
Clarence Petty
Clarence Adelbert Petty was a supervising forest ranger in the Adirondack Forest Preserve, conservationist, and avid outdoorsman well-known for his advocacy of protection of the Adirondack Park....
who ferociously protested the plan and in a letter writing campaign successfully lobbied the State to assign a special "Committee of the Adirondacks" to tour the Axton site. It concluded that "the college has exceeded the original intention of the State when the tract was granted the university for conducting silvicultural experiments."
Fernow's plan called for clearcutting a total of 30000 acres (121.4 km²) of forestland at the rate of several thousand acres per year to prepare for planting conifers. Smoke from the burning of brush and logging slash, along with Fernow's arrogant disposition toward landowners from nearby Saranac Lake further alienated the public. The years 1899,1903,and 1908 were terrible years for forest fires in the Adirondacks. Many, tens of thousands of acres were consumed by forest fires.Most fires were started by sparks flying from coal-burning locomotive stacks and landing on logging slash. Louis Marshall branded locomotives as "instruments of arson." Fernow had a 6 miles (9.7 km) long railroad spur built from Axton to Tupper Lake in order to deliver logs to the Brooklyn Cooperage Company facility.
Existence
In 1898, the New York State College of Forestry opened at Cornell, which was the first forestry college in North America. Because some of the students were transfer students, even though the College had a four-year curriculum, it graduated students during each of the five years of its operation, and the demand for students with Cornell forestry degrees exceeded the supply. It also offered an optional fifth year for a professional masters in forestry degree.In 1899, Fernow had been recruited as a member of New York's E.H. Harriman expedition to Alaska along with fellow Cornellian Louis Agassiz Fuertes
Louis Agassiz Fuertes
Louis Agassiz Fuertes was an American ornithologist, illustrator and artist.-Biography:Fuertes was the son of Estevan and Mary Stone Perry Fuertes....
. The expedition set sail from Seattle on May 31, 1899 aboard the refitted steamer, the George W. Elder. "His research on the expedition was hampered by the fact that the coastal itinerary never gave him a look at the inland forests. His overview thus limited, he concluded that Alaska would never be a great source of timber: the wood was inferior and the conditions of lumbering too difficult. Some say that history has proven him wrong, but his opinion did have an effect: for a time, it discouraged commercial interests from prospecting for timber in the Alaskan forests."
In 1902, Fernow founded and became editor-in-chief of the Journal of Forestry
Journal of Forestry
The Journal of Forestry is the primary scholarly journal of the Society of American Foresters that aims to advance the forestry profession, keeping professional foresters informed about developments and ideas related to the practice of forestry. The journal publishes editorial and technical content...
, the pioneering scholarly journal in this field.
The demonstration forest, near Saranac Lake, in the Adirondacks drew heated opposition from neighboring land owners. who brought a lawsuit against the Brooklyn Cooperage Company and Cornell University. In particular, the annual state appropriation for the college was only $10,000 forcing it into a contract with Brookyn Cooperage Company to be viable, so more land was clear-cut than neighbors would have liked. The contract proved to be profitable and beneficial only for the company. Cornell had gained insufficient funds to replant the areas of the forest that had been clear-cut. The reforested areas of the Axton forest, which still exist today, are mostly of non-native Norway spruce(Picea abies). Although the legislature adopted the 1903 appropriation without debate, Governor Benjamin B. Odell vetoed the 1903 appropriation for the school. In his veto message Governor Odell said: "The operations of the College of Forestry have been subjected to grave criticism, as they have practically denuded the forest lands of the State without compensating benefits. I deem it wise therefore to withhold approval of this item until a more scientific and more reasonable method is pursued in the forestry of the lands now under the control of Cornell University."(Charles Z. Lincoln, ed., Messages from the Governors, X [Albany,1910],555)as a footnote in
This is what the great constitutional lawyer Louis Marshall had to say, "I hold before me the decision in the case of the People against the Brooklyn Cooperage Company.....the consequence of that (its contract with the University which agreed to cut logs and cord wood and deliver at its own expense) was that this "tremendous" tract of thirty thousand acres was to be cut down "flat" from one end of it to the other, in order that the scientific foresters might start a new forest which might mature a hundred years from the time that that contract was entered into. This is scientific forestry?". In other words, the idea to destroy a forest in order to save it, is abominable.
Sacrifice of College of Forestry for the College of Agriculture
Dean Bailey and Dean Bernhard Fernow, of the Forestry College were the best of friends. In fact, on that night in May 1903 when the telegram arrived announcing Governor Odell's veto of the annual appropriation for the College of Forestry, Bailey and Fernow were together at a dance. Despite the bad news, the dance went on. Fernow did not want to let the veto end his school, and he continued to work without a salary. He proposed continuing the school by charging tuition to the students. (During this time, New York State students attended the College tuition-free.) However, Cornell's Board of Trustees and President Schurman (despite Bailey's urgings to the contrary) decided to close the doors of the Forestry College. In June, 1903, instruction in the College ceased and the faculty was dismissed. It was rumored, and with good reason, that a political bargain took place exchanging the College of Forestry, for the establishment of the New York State College of Agriculture at Cornell University in 1904. To quote Liberty Hyde Bailey, "Last winter at Albany I was confronted by inquiries which indicated that the State would be willing to give to either a College of Forestry or a College of Agriculture, but not to both."
Just as the legislative session of 1904 began in Albany,a most unexpected mishap occurred: at a hearing before the Federal Commission on Agriculture in Washington, the Secretary of Agriculture, James Wilson, attacked Cornell for not teaching "Soil Physics" and took the occasion to revive the old canards about Cornell misusing the riches conferred by the Morrill Act. He said of Cornell: "They were better endowed than any institution in the land, yet never did anything." Cornell's President Jacob Gould Schurman demanded a hearing and spoke in Washington with his usual brilliance, refuting the Secretary point by point.
Meanwhile in Albany, Senator Ed Stewart of Ithaca introduced a bill drafted by Liberty Hyde Bailey
Liberty Hyde Bailey
Liberty Hyde Bailey was an American horticulturist, botanist and cofounder of the American Society for Horticultural Science.-Biography:...
,establishing the New York State College of Agriculture at Cornell. Leading the opposition was Chancellor James R. Day
James Roscoe Day
James Roscoe Day was an American educator.-Biography:He was born in Whitneyville, Maine on June 7, 1845. He studied at Bowdoin College, and was in 1872 ordained a minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church...
of Syracuse University. According to Schurman, "the Chancellor led a pious army, the Methodists of the state. He was an angry man; his words breathe a rancor too hot to be contained by facts." He charged that Ezra Cornell
Ezra Cornell
Ezra Cornell was an American businessman and education administrator. He was a founder of Western Union and a co-founder of Cornell University...
had so "manipulated" the proceeds of the Morrill Act that more than four-fifths were improperly used. He demanded a share in state bounty equal to that accorded Cornell: "Either give to all or not to any!"
Bailey broadcast an immediate refutation, but Chancellor Day had already had his speech published by the Syracuse University Press without change. The Chancellor asked for a hearing before the Assembly's Ways and Means Committee. This request granted, he spoke at the hearing but the chairman and other legislators were insufficiently attentive to him, the Chancellor broke off in a fury and left the room,"before he had adduced a single coherent argument." Dean Bailey, later put up a picture of Chancellor Day, in his office, with the subscription: "Founder of the New York State College of Agriculture at Cornell."
The announcement of the final passage and signing of the bill, in Albany, creating the New York State College of Agriculture at Cornell was met with bonfires and the pealing of church bells in Ithaca. However, the price for this new state support at Cornell was the sacrifice of the New York State College of Forestry at Cornell.
Aftermath
In May 1903, Samuel W. Pennypacker, governor of Pennsylvania, established the Pennsylvania State Forest Academy (ranger school) at Penn State Mont AltoPenn State Mont Alto
Penn State Mont Alto is a Pennsylvania State University Commonwealth Campus. It is located in Mont Alto, PA, in south central Pennsylvania, between Chambersburg and Gettysburg...
. Joseph Rothrock
Joseph Rothrock
Joseph Trimbel Rothrock was an American environmentalist, recognized as the "Father of Forestry" in Pennsylvania. In 1895, Rothrock was appointed the first forestry commissioner to lead the newly formed Division of Forestry in the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture...
, an explorer, botanist and medical doctor founded the academy to train men for service in the state forests. It was one of three forestry schools in the nation, after Yale and Biltmore, respectively. The goal of the academy, in the early 1900s was to crusade for a change from the barren hills caused by forest fires and charcoal production. Historic charcoal kiln photo: Four million acres (16,000 km²) of Pennsylvania's forest land had been made a wasteland, with the state leading the nation in logging in 1870 and fourth in 1900. There was great concern whether the denuded forests could ever regenerate a new forest. George Wirt, the academy's first administrator, patterned the curriculum after curricula in Germany, a leader in reforestation. All first year students were required to bring a horse with them to the academy until the late 1920s. The horses were used to fight forest fires in the Michaux State Forest
Michaux State Forest
Michaux State Forest is a Pennsylvania State Forest in Pennsylvania Bureau of Forestry District #1. The main offices are located in Fayetteville in Franklin County, Pennsylvania in the United States....
, named for André Michaux
André Michaux
André Michaux was a French botanist and explorer.-Biography:Michaux was born in Satory, now part of Versailles, Yvelines. After the death of his wife within a year of their marriage he took up the study of botany and was a student of Bernard de Jussieu...
whose son François André Michaux
François André Michaux
François André Michaux was a French botanist, son of André Michaux. He accompanied his father to the United States, and his Histoire des arbres forestiers de l'Amérique septentrionale contains the results of his explorations and gives an account of the distribution and the scientific...
laid the foundation for American forestry with his monumental work, The North American Sylva starting in 1811.
In 1907, Bernhard E. Fernow became the first Professor of forestry, in a four year baccalaureate degree program, at Penn State, State College,PA after having been the nation's first consulting forester since leaving Cornell and Ithaca, New York in 1903. His office was in New York City. After teaching the 1907 spring semester at Penn State Dr. Fernow left to organize the Faculty of Forestry at the University of Toronto in Canada. He gave as a reason for leaving, his argument with Dr. Rothrock that Mont Alto should not have departed from its role as a "ranger school" to pursue higher aspirations.
Liberty Hyde Bailey
Liberty Hyde Bailey was an American horticulturist, botanist and cofounder of the American Society for Horticultural Science.-Biography:...
, the Dean of Cornell's Agriculture College, succeeded in having what remained of the Forestry College transferred to his school. At his request, in 1911, the legislature appropriated $100,000 to construct a building to house the new Forestry Department on the Cornell campus, which Cornell later named Fernow Hall. That Forestry Department continues today as the Department of Natural Resources. In 1927, Cornell established a 1639 acres (6.6 km²) research forest south of Ithaca, the Arnot Woods.
However, Cornell had contracted with the Brooklyn Cooperage Company to take the logs from the forest at Axton, and the People of the State of New York, Knollwood Club
Knollwood Club
Knollwood Club is an Adirondack Great Camp on Shingle Bay, Lower Saranac Lake, near the village of Saranac Lake, New York. It was built in 1899–1900 by William L. Coulter, who had previously created a major addition to Alfred G. Vanderbilt's Sagamore Camp...
members living nearby on lower Saranac lake during the summer (People vs Brooklyn Cooperage Company and Cornell) sued to stop the destructive practices of Fernow even before the closing of the school. A lawsuit was filed, naming Cornell University and the Brooklyn Cooperage Company as defendants with the People of New York State as plaintiff. The lawsuit was decided in favor of the People in People vs Brooklyn Cooperage Co. and Cornell University in 1910 and on appeal in 1912; and the case defined forestry in the United States for a generation. The 30000 acres (121.4 km²) of forest lands were placed under the "forever wild" protection of the Adirondack Forest Preserve.
It is indeed ironic that when Gifford Pinchot
Gifford Pinchot
Gifford Pinchot was the first Chief of the United States Forest Service and the 28th Governor of Pennsylvania...
, named for Hudson River School painter Sanford Robinson Gifford and the future first Chief Forester of the US Forest Service asked Dr. Bernhard Fernow's, then Chief of the USDA's Division of Forestry, advice on finding instruction in forestry, Fernow advised against a career in forestry. During the Brooklyn Cooperage trial, a forester on Chief Pinchot's staff, Charles S. Chapman, testified on behalf of the plaintiff. In 1914 Gifford married Cornelia Bryce: "Her influence worked its way into Gifford's view of conservation, adding a human component to the scientific management of natural resources. Years later in a speech he said: The conservation problem is not concerned only with the natural resources of the Earth. Rightly understood, it includes also the relation of these resources and of their scarcity or abundance to the wretchedness or prosperity, the weakness or strength of peoples, their leaning towards war or towards peace, and their numbers and distribution over the Earth."
Subsequently, in 1911, the State Legislature established a New York State College of Forestry
State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry
The State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry is an American specialized doctoral-granting institution located in the University Hill neighborhood of Syracuse, New York, immediately adjacent to Syracuse University...
at Syracuse University
Syracuse University
Syracuse University is a private research university located in Syracuse, New York, United States. Its roots can be traced back to Genesee Wesleyan Seminary, founded by the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1832, which also later founded Genesee College...
, but not without opposition from Cornell University. In 1930, the NYS Board of Regents
Board of Regents
In the United States, a board often governs public institutions of higher education, which include both state universities and community colleges. In each US state, such boards may govern either the state university system, individual colleges and universities, or both. In general they operate as...
questioned the need for duplicate, state-supported forestry programs at Cornell and Syracuse. A formal study resulted in an agreement in 1937 that the Syracuse program would be the sole site for professional undergraduate training in forestry. Cornell's Department of Forestry continued with responsibilities curtailed to courses in "farm" forestry, to cooperative extension work in forestry, and to research and graduate education. In an exchange, Syracuse University
Syracuse University
Syracuse University is a private research university located in Syracuse, New York, United States. Its roots can be traced back to Genesee Wesleyan Seminary, founded by the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1832, which also later founded Genesee College...
agreed to abandon its School of Agriculture. However, in 2000, SUNY System Administration established ESF's "primacy" among the 64 SUNY campuses and contract colleges for development of new undergraduate degree programs in Environmental Science and Environmental Studies, but ESF does not have a veto power over competing new programs.
Forestry Studies continue at Cornell
Forestry continued at Cornell,with Dean Liberty Hyde Bailey
Liberty Hyde Bailey
Liberty Hyde Bailey was an American horticulturist, botanist and cofounder of the American Society for Horticultural Science.-Biography:...
adding a Department of Forestry to the New York State College of Agriculture at Cornell University
Cornell University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences
The New York State College of Agriculture and Life Sciences is a statutory college at Cornell University, a private university located in Ithaca, New York...
in 1910-11. Walter Mulford, of the University of Michigan, was appointed as department chair. In 1914, noted forester Ralph Hosmer
Ralph Hosmer
Ralph Sheldon Hosmer was Hawaii's first territorial forester, a contemporary of Gifford Pinchot who was among the group of educated American foresters that organized what is now the U. S. Forest Service...
, a 1902 graduate of the Yale School of Forestry and contemporary of Gifford Pinchot
Gifford Pinchot
Gifford Pinchot was the first Chief of the United States Forest Service and the 28th Governor of Pennsylvania...
, replaced Mulford as Professor and head of the Department of Forestry at the New York State College of Agriculture at Cornell University
Cornell University
Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...
, a position he held until his retirement in June 1942.
The world famous Cornell Lab of Ornithology was the brainchild of Professor Arthur A. "Doc" Allen, beginning in 1915. Louis Agassiz Fuertes
Louis Agassiz Fuertes
Louis Agassiz Fuertes was an American ornithologist, illustrator and artist.-Biography:Fuertes was the son of Estevan and Mary Stone Perry Fuertes....
, the son of Cornell's first civil engineering professor, Estovan Antonio Fuertes, America's most famous painter of bird-life, after John James Audubon
John James Audubon
John James Audubon was a French-American ornithologist, naturalist, and painter. He was notable for his expansive studies to document all types of American birds and for his detailed illustrations that depicted the birds in their natural habitats...
, taught at Cornell from 1923 until his untimely death in 1927.
Following in the footsteps of the great botanist and horticulturist, Liberty Hyde Bailey
Liberty Hyde Bailey
Liberty Hyde Bailey was an American horticulturist, botanist and cofounder of the American Society for Horticultural Science.-Biography:...
, a most extraordinary plant physiologist, Frederick Campion Steward
Frederick Campion Steward
Frederick "Camp" Campion Steward was a British botanist and plant physiologist.- Early Life and Education :He was born in Pimlico, London but brought up in Yorkshire...
, arrived to teach and conduct research at Cornell University in 1950 as Professor of Botany. From his Cornell classrooms and laboratories, Steward was responsible for creating and inspiring a generation of botanists.
In 1978 the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research
Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research
The Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research is a research and education organization devoted to plant science currently located on the campus of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York...
relocated to the Cornell Ithaca campus from its original site in Yonkers,NY. Its history is extremely interesting and relevant.
Today, Cornell University owns 11000 acres (44.5 km²) in its home county of Tompkins including the 4000 acres (16.2 km²) "Arnot Forest" for teaching, demonstration,and research; the Uihlein maple syrup research forest near Lake Placid in the Adirondacks; Cornell Plantations
Cornell Plantations
The Cornell Plantations are botanical gardens located adjacent to the Cornell University campus in Ithaca, New York. The Plantations proper consist of of botanical gardens and of the F.R. Newman Arboretum...
: 200 acre (0.809372 km²) on campus and 4000 off-campus acres of diverse natural areas and mineral rights on 420000 acres (1,699.7 km²) of land across the United States
On October 28, 2010 a gift of "historic" proportions from the son of a New Jersey chicken farmer created the Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future
Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future
The David R. Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future is a research organization created in Fall 2007 at Cornell University. ACSF advances multidisciplinary research in Energy, the Environment and Economic Development, and cultivates collaborations within and beyond Cornell.- History :ACSF,...
at Cornell University to position the university to be a global leader in the effort to create a sustainable future. The 80 million dollar gift is the single largest gift to the Ithaca campus from an individual and according to the Ithaca Journal(10/28/2010) it is the largest gift ever given to a university for sustainability
Sustainability
Sustainability is the capacity to endure. For humans, sustainability is the long-term maintenance of well being, which has environmental, economic, and social dimensions, and encompasses the concept of union, an interdependent relationship and mutual responsible position with all living and non...
research and faculty support.
See also
- Cornell UniversityCornell UniversityCornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...
- History of Cornell UniversityHistory of Cornell UniversityThe history of Cornell University begins when its two founders Andrew Dickson White of Syracuse and Ezra Cornell of Ithaca, met in the New York State Senate in January 1864. Together, they established Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, in 1865...
- State University of New York College of Environmental Science and ForestryState University of New York College of Environmental Science and ForestryThe State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry is an American specialized doctoral-granting institution located in the University Hill neighborhood of Syracuse, New York, immediately adjacent to Syracuse University...
Further reading
- Gifford Pinchot, 1998. Breaking New Ground. Island Press. Washington. 552 p. Reprint. Originally published: New York : Harcourt, Brace, and Co., 1947. ISBN 1559636696; and in paperback.
- Gates, Paul W. The Wisconsin Pine Lands of Cornell University: A Study in Land Policy and Absentee Ownership. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1943.
- Terra pretaTerra pretaTerra preta is a type of very dark, fertile anthropogenic soil found in the Amazon Basin. Terra preta owes its name to its very high charcoal content, and was indeed made by adding a mixture of charcoal, bone, and manure to the otherwise relatively infertile Amazonian soil, and stays there for...
: http://www.nature.com/climate/2009/0906/full/climate.2009.48.html