New York State College of Forestry at Cornell

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.

The idea of a Cornell Forestry school began with Colonel William F. Fox, 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.

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 moved quickly to acquire a tract of land to serve as a demonstration forest and purchased some. Fernow's plan called for clearcutting the forestland at the rate of several thousand acres per year to prepare for planting conifers. He contracted with the Brooklyn Cooperage Company 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. 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 or embers flying from coal-burning locomotive stacks and landing on logging slash. Louis Marshall, with a summer residence at Knollwood Club on Lower Saranac Lake, branded locomotives as "instruments of arson." The worst sin of the lumbermen was the fire menace that they left behind, and which caused incalculable destruction. Nevertheless, Fernow had a 6-mile (9.7 km) long railroad spur built from Axton to Tupper Lake in order to deliver logs to the Brooklyn Cooperage Company facility. The company turned the hardwood logs into barrels and the cordwood into methanol and charcoal, through a process called destructive distillation. Historic charcoal kiln photo:

...
Wikipedia