The New York State College of Forestry, the first professional school of forestry in North America, opened its doors at Cornell University, in Ithaca, New York, in the autumn of 1898. It was advocated for by Governor Frank S. Black, but after just a few years of operation, it was defunded in 1903, by Governor Benjamin B. Odell in response to public outcry over the college's controversial forestry practices in the Adirondacks.
Less than a decade later, in 1911, the New York State College of Forestry was reestablished at Syracuse University by the New York State Legislature, with a mandate for forest conservation.Reznikoff, pp. 1080-5. The institution has continued to evolve and is now part of the State University of New York (SUNY) system, while still closely related and immediately adjacent to Syracuse University. Today, the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry, or SUNY-ESF, is a doctoral degree-granting institution based in Syracuse, New York, with facilities and forest properties in several additional locations in upstate New York and Costa Rica; it commemorated its centennial anniversary in 2011.
Founding at Cornell University
The New York State College of Forestry, the first professional school of forestry in North America, was founded at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, "by an act of the New York State Legislature in April 1898." Along with the establishment of the college, the legislature also provided for the purchase of of forest in the Adirondack Mountains, the Axton tract near Upper Saranac Lake, from the Santa Clara Lumber Company, for $165,000.Donaldson, pp. 202-207. This act came as an enlightened response to the devastation being wrought at the time by indiscriminate logging not only in New York, but also in Pennsylvania, Michigan ("the lands that nobody wanted"),Schmaltz, Norman J. 1983. "The land nobody wanted: the dilemma of Michigan's cut-over lands", Michigan History Magazine, Vol. 67 Jan/Feb, pp. 32-40. Wisconsin, and elsewhere.
This was not Cornell University's first venture into forestry. Almost forty years earlier, under the 1862 Morrill Land Grant Act, the Federal land grant scrip for New York state of 989,920 acres was given to Cornell, to the later chagrin of the trustees of Syracuse and New York Universities. As a matter of fact, Genesee College, the forerunner of Syracuse University, accepted $25,000 from Ezra Cornell to drop its opposition to the proceeds from the Morrill Land grant going to Cornell University. Ezra Cornell, under advice from lumberman trustee Henry W. Sage, wisely parlayed the grant into ownership of Wisconsin pine lands that he held until the wanton logging was diminished and the price for lumber increased, providing a substantial endowment for the university.Gates, Paul W. 1943. The Wisconsin Pine Lands of Cornell University: A Study in Land Policy and Absentee Ownership. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Dr. Bernhard Fernow, then chief of the USDA's Division of Forestry, was invited to head the new college. In preparation for assuming this new post, Fernow visited George Vanderbilt's Biltmore Estate, where Dr. Carl A. Schenck was establishing the Biltmore Forest School. Fernow saw the mission of forestry education as different, if complementary, to that envisioned by Schenk. In subsequent correspondence with Schenck, Fernow wrote that "the Cornell School of Forestry 'shall greatly lack in practical demonstration' and variety of demonstrations", and inquired whether "Cornell students [could] supplement their education by summer courses at Biltmore."
Fernow resigned his Federal appointment in July 1898 to come to Ithaca. "At ten o'clock on the morning of September 22 or 23, 1898, in a classroom in Morrill Hall",Rodgers, Bernhard Eduard Fernow, p. 262. classes commenced at the New York College of Forestry, "the first professional school of forestry in North America", according to Professor Ralph Hosmer. Just two years later, in the fall of 1900, the New York State College of Forestry had 24 students; Biltmore nine students in its 12-month program; and Yale's new postgraduate forestry program, seven.
A fruitful marriage or hybridization between German methods (Professor Bernhard Fernow) and American practice of forestry, silviculture came about in the person of Raphael Zon, an emigre' from Simbirsk, Russia. Part of North America's very first graduating class in forestry from the New York State College of Forestry at Cornell in 1901, Zon later became a "giant" among American foresters, or as Secretary of Agriculture Claude R. Wickard said, the "dean of all foresters of America."
Publication of the Forestry Quarterly Forestry Quarterly, later to be merged into the Journal of Forestry, was first published in October 1902, at the New York State College of Forestry at Cornell University, under the editorial advisement of Bernhard Fernow, John Gifford, and Walter Mulford. The affiliation lasted only through the first volume, as publication was disrupted by the closure of the College in 1903. Subsequently, the Quarterly was published independently with a board of editors composed of many prominent figures in American forestry in the early part of the 20th century, including Editor-in-Chief Bernhard Fernow and Carl Schenck, founder of the Biltmore Forest School.
Defunding of the College
The fledgling college of forestry soon became mired in controversy, centered around Fernow's management of the forest lands given to Cornell by the state "for experiments in forestry". Soon after his appointment as Dean, Fernow moved quickly to establish a demonstration forest on the of land in the Adirondack forests acquired by Cornell with the authorization for the new college. The site was near Axton, New York, location of an old lumber settlement originally called Axe-town, in Franklin County.
Fernow's plan called for clearcutting the tract at the rate of several thousand acres per year to prepare for planting conifers. With an annual state appropriation for the college of only $10,000, Cornell entered into a contract with the Brooklyn Cooperage Company for the project to be viable. Under terms of the contract, the firm was to take the logs and cordwood from the forest land for a 15-year period. (In the 1890s, the more valuable red spruce trees had been logged, leaving primarily northern hardwoods.) Fernow had a -long railroad spur built from Axton to Tupper Lake in order to deliver logs to the company's facility. The firm turned the hardwood logs into barrels and the cordwood into methanol and charcoal, through a process called destructive distillation.
The contract proved to be profitable and beneficial for the company only. To his credit, Fernow established the first tree nursery in New York State at Axton. But Cornell gained insufficient funds from the relationship to fully replant the clear-cut areas. Most of the non-native conifer species that were planted, such as Norway spruce, did not do well for years, with a denuded area resulting.
The demonstration forest, near Saranac Lake, drew heated opposition from neighboring land owners. Smoke from the burning of brush and logging slash, along with Fernow's disposition toward landowners from nearby Saranac Lake further alienated the public.Gove, B. 2005. Logging railroads of the Adirondacks. Syracuse University Press. pp. 176-181. Fernow's actions drew criticism also from Adirondack guides such as Ellsworth Petty (father of Clarence Petty), who 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. In its findings, the commission concluded that "the college has exceeded the original intention of the State when the tract was granted the university for conducting silvicultural experiments."Christopher, Angus. 2002. The Extraordinary Adirondack Journey of Clarence Petty, p 31. Syracuse University Press
A lawsuit was filed against the Brooklyn Cooperage Company, with the People of New York State as plaintiff. It was officially entitled, People v. the Brooklyn Cooperage Company. Cornell was included in the lawsuit so that its contract with the firm could be annulled.New York Times, "Cornell Forestry Case: Appellate Division Decision Against Brooklyn Cooperage Company," July 13, 1906, p.4.
In May 1903, Governor Benjamin B. Odell made a pocket veto of funding to continue the new college. In his statement, 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."Lincoln, Charles Z. ed., Messages from the Governors, vol. X [Albany, 1910], 555, as a footnote in Colman, p. 161.
On the night when the telegram arrived announcing Governor Odell's veto of the annual appropriation for the College of Forestry, Dean Fernow was at a dance. Despite the bad news, the dance went on. Fernow and the forestry students offered to carry on the school. 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.Rodgers, p. 371.
Forestry Studies continue at Cornell
Forestry continued at Cornell, 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. At Dean Bailey's request, in 1911, the New York Legislature appropriated $100,000 (~$ in ) to construct a building to house the Forestry Department on the Cornell campus; the building was later named Fernow Hall.
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.Guise, C.H. 1963. "Ralph Sheldon Hosmer (1874–1963)," Journal of Forestry 61(9):686.
Reestablishment at Syracuse University
The New York State College of Forestry was reestablished on July 28, 1911 at Syracuse University, through a special bill signed by New York's Governor John Alden Dix. Louis Marshall, with a summer residence at Knollwood Club on Saranac Lake and a prime mover for the establishment of the Adirondack and Catskill Forest Preserve (New York), understood that a "proper" College of Forestry was needed in New York state. In 1910, Marshall became a Syracuse University Trustee and confided in Syracuse University Chancellor James R. Day his desire to have a forestry school at the university. Marshall was designated by his fellow trustees to lobby Governor Charles E. Hughes towards such an end: