NCSU Libraries Focus Online

Volume 22 number 3 - Spring 2002

By Russell Koonts, Special Collections

The NCSU Libraries' Special Collections Department, in collaboration with the Biltmore Estate Company in Asheville and the Forest History Society in Durham, has received a $48,100 North Carolina ECHO (Exploring Cultural Heritage Online) EZ-Library Services and Technology Act digitization demonstration grant, which will be used to build a forestry research Web site featuring materials specific to North Carolina. The site will make previously inaccessible or inconveniently located primary research materials--such as photographs, diaries, correspondence, artifacts, and printed materials--available to anyone with Web access.

By the late-1880s, forested land around Asheville, North Carolina, faced an uncertain future. Landowners had cleared much of the original forest for farming and had repeatedly removed timber from the remaining patchwork of woodlands. Additionally, wildfires and over-grazing by cattle and hogs had left the landscape in extremely poor condition. George Washington Vanderbilt, whose Biltmore Estate was then being built, began acquiring thousands of acres surrounding his property, which helped preserve some woodlands. To manage his grounds and gardens, Vanderbilt hired Frederick Law Olmsted, America's preeminent landscape architect. Olmsted recognized the importance of reestablishing the surrounding forests and recommended that Vanderbilt hire Gifford Pinchot, the first forester born and trained in America, to administer the first large-scale, scientifically managed forest in the United States.

In 1890 Olmsted presented his plan, "Project of Operations for Improving the Forest of Biltmore," which Pinchot implemented. The Biltmore Estate soon became recognized as the "Cradle of Forestry." When Pinchot left Biltmore to become chief of the Forestry Division of the United States Department of Agriculture, he recommended that Vanderbilt hire Carl Alwin Schenck to be his successor. Schenck, who studied forestry in Germany and received his Ph.D. summa cum laude from the University of Giessen, developed the Biltmore Forest into a national resource.

When Schenck began his work at Biltmore in 1895, its forestlands had increased to more than 100,000 acres. During his fourteen-year tenure, a large variety of forestry practices were instituted, including the reforestation of over 2,000 acres of depleted farmland. For more than fifty years, scientists from the United States Forest Service used some of the forest plantations as research plots and published reports of their studies. The Biltmore Forest School, established by Schenck in 1898 as America's first forestry school, contributed significantly to the profession of forestry by training more than 300 of the country's foresters until its close in 1913.

The Carl Alwin Schenck Collection forms the foundation of Special Collections' resources on forest history and natural resources. It chronicles the history of the Biltmore Forestry School, which established forestry as an academic discipline, and its alumni. The Schenck collection of letters, diaries, photographs, and other materials also documents the history of the Biltmore forest and nursery and the start of the lumber and forestry industries in North Carolina.

Special Collections plans to digitize more than 1,500 photographs and negatives dating from 1889 to 1951. While the majority of these original photographs exist in "modern" form, a number of them are glass-plate negatives and slides. Additionally, existing photographs are beginning to deteriorate because of age and years of improper storage conditions. The photographs detail life at the Biltmore Forest School, forest-study tours in Europe and America, and forestry-training programs. The collection also includes images captured during Schenck's travels across the United States, Canada, and Europe. America's fascination with wealthy and powerful families will be piqued by some of the photographs of George Washington Vanderbilt and the Biltmore Estate, the largest residence in private hands in the United States.

To supplement the digitized images, the department will digitize some 14,000 letters, diaries, journals, and reports. Schenck's diaries and journals, ranging in date from 1890 to 1954, contain information about his experiences at school, his years as a forester, and his life in Germany. Biographical sketches of the Biltmore students, often supplemented by photographic portraits, paint a picture of the typical forestry student at the turn of the century. These students are noteworthy, as they were the first to embark on careers in a newly formed discipline. Among the printed materials are ephemeral school newsletters, newspaper articles published during the early years of the school, and significant works dedicated to Schenck, including Trees for the Great: Honoring Carl Alwin Schenck, published by the American Forestry Association in 1952. This publication contains two sound records that will be digitized and made accessible through the project's Web site. Images of artifacts, such as pins and flags from the Biltmore School, also will be incorporated into the digital collection.

While the Schenck collection has its own assortment of wood samples, perhaps the best use of tree specimens appears in Romeyn B. Hough's The American Woods: Exhibited by Actual Specimens and with Copious Explanatory Text (Albany, N.Y.: Weed, Parsons, and Co., 1888, 1910). This fourteen-volume set of individual wood samples (350 plates in all, with three specimens per plate) constitutes an important title in the study of American forestry. The book's publication represented Hough's lifetime achievement and was a labor of love. Today, the existence of complete sets is rare. The library's nearly complete set is missing just four plates from part XII and the supplemental part XIV published by Hough's daughter after his death in 1924. Hough's remarkable work describes the woods found in America using a detailed description in an accompanying pamphlet and thin cross-sections of actual woods arranged geographically, then mounted and labeled on accompanying cardboard mounts. Generally, each species is shown with the wood cut on traverse, radial, and tangential sections. The samples are so thin as to be easily translucent. A full scan of each plate, as well as one of its accompanying text, will complement this project.

The NC ECHO grant will enable the Special Collections Department to create the foundation of a forestry research and instruction Web site. Building on this base, future digitization efforts will provide complementary materials relating to forestry within the library's collections. Such materials include the Bruce John Zobel, Vincent Ross and Associates, and Robert W. Graeber collections, as well as selected materials from the NCSU College of Natural Resources. Resources digitized during the 2001-2002 grant cycle will be made publicly accessible in July 2002 on the Special Collections Web site at http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/archives/forestry.