Thomas R. Cox

a tale of two journals:
FIFTY YEARS
OF ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY—AND ITS PREDECESSORS

ABSTRACT

In 1996 Forest & Conservation History and Environmental History Review merged to form Environmental History. As a continuation of these earlier journals, in 2007 Environmental History celebrated fifty years of publication. The scope of coverage of the journal and its predecessors changed over time, reflecting not only the emphases of their various editors but also the evolution of the societies behind the journals and of environmental history itself. The merger was not accomplished without strain. The haste with which it was done and the differing cultures of the sponsoring organizations, the Forest History Society and American Society of Environmental History, created problems that were difficult to overcome, but in the end not intractable. Today not only the journal, but both societies are larger and stronger than ever.

UNLIKE WITH HUMANS, the birth dates of scholarly publications are often hard to determine. Truth be known, they evolve more often than they spring forth full grown like Athena from the head of Zeus. Environmental History is a case in point. In 2007 it either was—or was not—fifty years old. Its cover lists the present volume as number thirteen, but that refers to the number of years since Forest & Conservation History and Environmental History Review merged to form today's journal. If one considers Environmental History a continuation of those forerunners, then 2007 was, indeed, its golden anniversary. Whatever its age, this is an appropriate time to retrace the history of the journal and the forerunners from whence it sprang, for its past tells much about the evolution not just of the journal but of environmental history as a field.

The beginnings were modest. In the spring of 1957, what was then known as the Forest History Foundation published volume 1, number 1 of the Forest History Newsletter. Elwood R. Maunder, the anonymous editor of the three-page mimeographed production, noted that "a growing number of friends with a serious interest in forest history are trying in a variety of ways to collect, preserve, research, write, teach, and otherwise make use of that history" and the newsletter was "intended to stimulate the growth of that program." Maunder sent the newsletter to seven hundred recipients to "test the waters"; his newsletter thus ante-dated John Opie's Environmental Review, the other ancestor of Environmental History, by almost twenty years.¹

Figure 1. Forest History Newsletter.

Image courtesy of the Forest History Society, Durham, North Carolina.

Forest History Newsletter, n.v. (Spring 1957). The Forest History Foundation, a precursor to the Forest History Society, published this first issue of the Forest History Newsletter during the spring of 1957.

Maunder had grander visions; he had a background in journalism and later confessed one reason he took the job of executive director of the fledgling Forest History Foundation was the possibility of editing his own journal. In 1957, shortly before the first issue of the newsletter appeared, Maunder announced his intentions in the Pacific Northwest Quarterly: "We should like to try our hand at publishing a journal devoted to articles on forest history and scholarly reviews of published works. ... [A] journal of this kind would serve to encourage research and writing in this field. ... [T]his aspect of our program is still but a gleam in our eyes."²

The gleam soon became reality, and the contents of the first issue of the newsletter suggested the scope of forest history as it was then conceived. Included among the announcements of forthcoming works were a biography of William B. Greeley, former chief of the Forest Service; a "long-awaited bibliography" of the California Coast redwoods; a history of the Weyerhaeuser Timber Company and its affiliates; a dictionary of "logging lingo"; a history of the Western Forestry and Conservation Association; and two studies of the Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumbermen.³ Other announcements reported activities in oral history, manuscript collecting, and museum work. There were no articles. The first of these, excerpts from an oral history interview conducted by Maunder, appeared in the winter issue of 1959; the first article based on scholarly research and complete with footnotes did not appear until 1961.⁴

Gradually the journal—and the organization behind it—broadened. Founded as the Forest Products History Foundation, a project of the Minnesota Historical Society, and financed by a three-year start-up grant from Weyerhaeuser family members, the foundation's initial focus was strictly industrial.⁵ Rodney C. Loehr, an assistant professor tapped to be the part-time first director, later recalled that during his tenure there was no discussion of making it broader. Loehr seems to have been comfortable with the emphasis. His own background was in American economic history, and the project was referred to on various occasions as an undertaking in that field.⁶ On the other hand, the terms business or environmental history were not used. The former was then developing as a field and the label would have been appropriate, while the latter had yet to emerge, although works by Carl O. Sauer and the iconoclastic James C. Malin were harbingers.⁷

The initial emphasis was hardly coincidental. More than anyone else, the foundation had been the brainchild of the University of Minnesota's dean of Graduate Studies, Theodore C. Blegen, who had published extensively on that state's history.⁸ His work had led Blegen to an appreciation of the huge role the lumber industry had played in Minnesota's development and in America at large, a contribution he thought muckrakers and the progressive historical school had badly distorted. A more balanced approach, he believed, could come only through scholarly research in records of the industry, but these were generally unavailable. Bloodied by earlier attacks, company executives were loath to open them to researchers; almost none had found their way into archival collections. Blegen urged officials of the Minnesota Historical Society to join in a corrective program to save company records moldering in attics, warehouses, and forgotten files and to encourage scholarly research therein.⁹

Blegen soon found an important ally in Frederick K. Weyerhaeuser. The Weyerhaeuser family, then in its third generation of leadership in the American forest industry, continued to be enthralled by the accomplishments of Frederick Weyerhaeuser, the founder of the huge syndicate that bore his name. F. K.'s father, Frederick E. Weyerhaeuser, had spent years compiling a solidly researched record of the founder's work, and F. K. hoped it would be published eventually. Meanwhile, a cousin, Edwin Weyerhaeuser Davis, prepared a list of "possible projects in respect to the history of the lumber industry" that he thought might be undertaken under the aegis of the Minnesota Historical Society.¹⁰ For his part, F. K.'s brother J. P. ("Phil") Weyerhaeuser, Jr., wanted a multivolume history of the lumber industry in America. Like Blegen, all three realized access to company records would be required to bring such things to pass. When Blegen, Davis, and F. K. Weyerhaeuser met with officials of the Minnesota Historical Society in December 1945 to discuss "what was in our minds," Blegen blasted the progressive historians' biases vehemently, while for his part F. K. Weyerhaeuser, the family's main champion of establishing a program, decried the "literary" studies of Richard Lillard and Sarah Jenkins Salo, works that he thought lacked depth due to their failure to utilize solid business and economic data.¹¹

Although the foundation that resulted began operation in September 1946, it would be over a decade before it began publishing a journal. Loehr, tapped to be director of the experiment, recruited a staff of researchers, largely graduate students, and set to work on a "great bibliography," on locating and arranging for the preservation of archival materials, and on the publication of scholarly manuscripts under the foundation's imprint, most notably Forests for the Future: The Story of Sustained Yield as told in the Diaries and Papers of David T. Mason, 1907–1950 (St. Paul, MN: Forest Products History Foundation, 1952). Through his publishing program, Loehr established a level of scholarship for the society that Harold K. ("Pete") Steen, a later executive director, considered unequaled until the 1970s.¹²

There was an element of tension in the organization from the first. Scholars and industrial leaders harbored suspicions of one another that were not easily overcome. Intent upon keeping his professional integrity above question, Loehr felt uncomfortable fund-raising in the forest industry, however vital that might have been to the future of the organization. As he noted, a major reason for putting the foundation under the Minnesota Historical Society had been "to assure the professional quality and objectivity of the work to be accomplished." Staff members "had no particular axe to grind," nor, he clearly thought, should they. F. K. Weyerhaeuser agreed. He bluntly insisted that the organization's purpose was "Not propaganda." Still, members of the family seemed unable to understand the suspicion with which their efforts were met. Phil Weyerhaeuser, in particular, did not like Loehr's "aloof attitude" nor his "assertion that he 'could not be cooperative with the industry and still maintain his [scholarly] standing.'" It was a tension that would continue to bedevil the organization for years to come.¹³

On the need for sound scholarship, however, there were no differences. Throughout his tenure, Loehr noted, there was never any pressure to be less scholarly. F. K. Weyerhaeuser believed only sound scholarship firmly based in archival sources would change public opinion about the role of the industry in the development of the United States. Revealingly, soon after, when his family selected authors for a history of the Weyerhaeuser companies, they did not turn to such well-known popularizers as Stewart Holbrook and Paul Hosmer, but to three leading business historians—Ralph Hidy, Frank Ernest Hill, and Allan Nevins. According to their introduction, the resulting study was done "on ordinary academic salaries ... under conditions of absolute independence."¹⁴

Problems with the Minnesota Historical Society, not those with industry, led to Loehr's departure and to a major reorientation of the organization. There had always been some difficulty in developing a foundation with a national program and supported by nationwide fund-raising efforts under a state historical society with goals of its own. After Harold D. Cater came aboard as director of the society, the problems grew worse. Becoming "sick and tired of all this," in 1951 Loehr resigned to take a position with the Allied High Command in Germany, but the basic problems remained. Blegen admitted difficulties with the society "were of a kind that could not be easily solved," and urged the foundation to seek a bridge so friendly relations could continue. However, the problems proved unsolvable, and in June 1955 the two organizations severed relations. The foundation incorporated as an independent body, the Forest History Foundation, and leased office space in downtown St. Paul.¹⁵

Meanwhile, the foundation was undergoing a shift of focus. In 1953, at F. K. Weyerhaeuser's suggestion, the organization's logo—which had featured a logger, circular saw, and boards—was changed. As he put it, "I'd rather see trees than the products of trees." The change was more than cosmetic. The organization was becoming concerned with more than industrial or business history, foresters were soon prominent among its leaders, and articles on wilderness preservation, parks, and other non-industrial topics were appearing in its journal with some regularity, reflecting the rising interest in such topics in scholarly circles, interest that in time would coalesce as environmental history. One of these, Hugh Raup's study of ecological change, "The View from John Sanderson's Farm," would prove to be one of the most cited (and reprinted) articles in the organization's history.¹⁶

The incorporation papers of 1955 revealed a further shift. The purpose of the newly independent body was to promote "research and writing which will not only set forth the history of North American forests and forest industries but ... evaluate that history in the light of contemporary conditions and give its proper place in the larger history of this country." The wording made it clear; the organization would henceforth be concerned not just with the United States, but with Canada too. On letterheads from 1954, in internal documents from that same year, and in early drafts of the papers of incorporation, the group was called the American Forest History Foundation, but "American" was dropped from the title in an explicit effort to encourage Canadian participation. In spite of pronouncements, results were slow in materializing; the first article dealing with a Canadian topic would not appear in Forest History until October 1965, and even that was taken from a government report of 1884. A lone article by a Canadian and based on original research appeared in October 1967; others did not materialize until 1974.¹⁷

An equally important shift, largely unacknowledged, accompanied the transfer of leadership from Rodney Loehr to Elwood Maunder. Loehr had been a respected historian with solid academic credentials; he not only engaged in research himself, but also recruited a staff that did research under society auspices. Although he had a master's degree in European history, Maunder was first and foremost a journalist, and under him original research by staff members declined (among other things, drying up what might have been a source of articles for Forest History). Not that Maunder was hostile to research—far from it, for he visited the University of Oregon and other campuses encouraging graduate students to tackle topics in forest history and urging their advisers to encourage such studies—but his focus was on preserving materials from which histories could be crafted, not the actual process of crafting them. Maunder spent the bulk of his efforts finding forest history records and arranging for their deposit in archival centers, persuading archivists to develop centers for these materials, providing records- management services to companies with important materials, doing oral history interviews with key participants in events, and obtaining financial support for these undertakings. All this required considerable time on the road, especially in the South and West, where the society initially had few contacts. Maunder explained his approach to Phil Weyer-haeuser, the "first job to be done is that of collecting, [then] good relationships must be built up between industry and the academic groups who will direct scholars & writers to our regional collections." He told his board of directors, "The history ... we seek to reveal is the whole story, not the best alone or the worst alone, but all the story. ... Our job is to spread the record plain and to invite objective, constructive examination of it." After all, Maunder noted on another occasion, the "verdicts [of historians] ... will [only] be as good as the facts at their disposal." James B. Craig, editor of American Forests, agreed, lauding Maunder's archival efforts for "giving historical pursuit a new twist by delving into cellars and wet basements, etc. to bring out the facts."¹⁸

Figure 2. Elwood R. Maunder.

Image courtesy of the Forest History Society, Durham, North Carolina.

Elwood R. Maunder, shown here circa mid-1950s, was editor of the Forest History Newsletter.

Maunder's emphasis on oral history had unforeseen consequences. Many of the interviewees were professional foresters, often former employees of the Forest Service or state forestry agencies, and a number were drawn into membership in the Forest History Society (as the foundation was renamed in 1957). To the mix of historians and businessmen, a third constituency with perceptions and agendas of its own was now added, making the challenges of internal communication and external programming more difficult than ever. Reflecting the increased concern with the development of professional forestry, the society soon accepted permanent custody of the voluminous records of the Society of American Foresters, and in 1964, seeking a new academic affiliation to give it increased credibility and financial security, moved to Yale University, where it was associated with that institution's Forestry School and university library.¹⁹

Many of the newcomers had a firm commitment to the organizational culture of the early Forest Service, which considered Gifford Pinchot the father of conservation who had saved the nation's forests from rapacious despoilers. It was a simplistic view badly in need of qualification, but it was widely held and made scholars who might question some of its tenets suspect, if not targets for outright criticism. At the same time, many harbored Pinchot's own suspicions of industry. Problems were exacerbated by the fact that most had little understanding of the work of professional historians and often held ideas of history that were more antiquarian than analytical (an approach that would later lead the Forest Service to hire archaeologists, anthropologists, and the like to fill its positions for "historians"). Pete Steen, himself trained both as an historian and a forester, once described the problem to this author: "To a group of foresters, history is what the oldest man in the room remembers." Their lack of interest in solid historical study was underscored in 1962 when a major effort to recruit members from among those belonging to the Society of American Foresters fell flat.²⁰ Serving its tripartite constituency and crafting a journal that would meet the diverse needs thereof would continue to challenge editors of Forest History over the years.

Maunder's extensive travels and ambitious oral history program were expensive and time consuming. In 1953, he and oral historian John Larson logged eighteen thousand miles of travel and the following year thirty thousand. Budget shortfalls became endemic, but were especially severe in 1957, 1962, and 1973. Organizational budgets were little more than wish lists, for the board tended to authorize "the executive director to do essentially anything he could pay for," and Maunder frequently juggled funds to keep desired projects going. As Maunder found himself having to spend more and more time in fund-raising, much of the editorial responsibility for Forest History fell to others. Maunder was still usually listed as editor (or editor-in-chief), but Joseph A. Miller, Pete Steen, Douglas F. Davis, and Ronald J. Fahl, each in turn, modified the journal and reshaped its emphases.²¹

As the first of these de facto editors, Joseph Miller played an important role. In addition to writing articles of his own, Miller edited letters on the evolution of power logging and coedited others from a young ranger on the Apache National Forest in 1914–1915, all to help fill the pages of the journal at a time when there were still few outside submissions. Miller also selected and edited materials from Canadian sources as a part of the society's efforts to encourage participation from that quarter.²² Moreover, while direct evidence is scanty, it seems Miller played a central role in broadening the journal's coverage during his period of editorial activity, while his continuing bibliographic work in the growing fields of forest and conservation history provided him with leads and contacts that increased the number of submissions. Materials from Maunder's oral history interviews continued to appear, but now there were also an historiographical article on conservation, Raup's "View from John Sanderson's Farm," a special issue on national parks, and articles on wilderness and perceptions of nature—none the sorts of things Theodore Blegen and F. K. Weyerhaeuser had in mind when they set the Forest Products History Foundation on its way.²³

In the fall of 1969, the society ended its never-very-satisfactory relationship with Yale University and moved to Santa Cruz, California, where it associated with the new University of California campus. Harold K. Steen was the first of the new hires in Santa Cruz.²⁴ With degrees in forestry and a newly acquired joint history-forestry PhD from the University of Washington, he was a well-qualified addition. Steen first appears in the October 1969 issue of Forest History as assistant editor; he would become editor with the July 1971 issue and eventually replace Maunder as executive director of the society.

Steen's contacts in the Pacific Northwest were soon evident. The October 1969 issue included an article on the importance of forests to Northwest Coast Indians. The next issue featured articles by Ivan Doig (whose This House of Sky would later be a National Book Award nominee) and John Finger, former graduate students at the University of Washington who, like Steen, had worked under Vernon Carstenson.²⁵

Steen's training and experience in forestry might have led one to expect Forest History to return to a narrower focus than it had assumed under Miller. Such was not to be the case, as was illustrated by articles on artist Carl Sprinchorn, German game administration, a civil rights case involving a Yale Forestry graduate (but hardly focusing on forestry), the importance of forests to early English sea power, the theory that afforestation could bring increased rainfall to the Great Plains, efforts to halt the destruction of birds for the millinery trade, political influences within the Civilian Conservation Corps, and the extensive use of wood in the early automobiles of the Ford Motor Company. The field of environmental history was emerging and Forest History was a logical venue; unsolicited "over-the-transom" submissions increased in number, but the growing range of coverage also reflected editorial activity, for having learned through the journal's bibliographical listings of the breadth and depth of work being done, Steen actively solicited submissions reflecting this growing scholarship. In addition, he made the biblioscope, which reported the latest works in the field, a regular feature of the journal.²⁶

Two other shifts occurred under Steen. First, there was increased coverage of far western topics, a shift encouraged by the society's move to Santa Cruz but also indicative of how far the society had come from its early days when Maunder, operating from St. Paul, had struggled to establish contacts in the region.²⁷ Second, there was increased internationalization. Articles on Canada appeared, but now they were complemented by articles dealing with China, Australia, and elsewhere. The Forest History Society was still officially an organization concerned with North American forests, and some of the old guard expressed a preference for material on traditional topics (more material on "the boys in the bunkhouse," as Steen put it) but he was moving the organization toward a broader—and less antiquarian—view. Steen himself would later become a major figure in international forest history organizations, work that contributed to his being awarded the Society of American Foresters' Schlicht Award for his "broad and outstanding contributions.²⁸

Not all was change. Recognizing that for years the society had spent much time and effort on its oral history program, but feeling the resulting interviews underutilized, Steen devoted the October 1972 issue of Forest History to excerpts from oral histories (not all done by Maunder). Traditional Forest History Society topics dominated the selections, but even here international subjects were present. Occasionally excerpts from oral histories appeared in other issues as well, but their inclusion no longer seemed intended to fill issues when there was a shortage of outside submissions, the field of forest history—and of environmental history, which was developing alongside—had grown too active for that.

Near the end of 1972, Steen stepped down as editor of the journal to undertake a history of the Forest Service under a three-year grant to the society from the federal agency.²⁹ Douglas F. Davis, who had done graduate work in philosophy at the University of California, San Diego, was hired and in January 1973 became assistant editor under Maunder. After some grooming, it was clearly intended that Davis would become editor, and in July 1973 he did so. Davis was an odd choice. Although he had some experience as a writer of popular material, he was not a historian and lacked contacts in the profession so important for successful, let alone creative, solicitation. Still, momentum built up under Steen and the influx of unsolicited manuscripts carried the journal along, and the trends to broadened and internationalized coverage continued.³⁰

The informal—some would say chaotic—financing of the society was impacting its journal. Davis told one correspondent that because of inflation and the society's inability to obtain new sponsors, "our journal is in trouble." In his annual report for 1974, Maunder went further, noting "[t]hese are harrowing times for all cultural organizations ... [now] faced with the problem of how to meet the next payroll." But the problems went deeper than these assessments indicated. The society was dependent upon soft money, and when grants were obtained they frequently required additional funding. The society lacked an endowment fund, thus finances continued to be stretched thin even as budgets grew; moreover, some supporters grew restive as funds they provided were diverted to unanticipated purposes. A tightening of administration and clarification of purposes was clearly in order. Early, but minor, steps in this direction came in April 1974, when Forest History became the Journal of Forest History—thus renamed, Davis reported, to clarify "the identity of our quarterly as a journal rather than a newsletter or some other type of publication"—and adopted the consecutive pagination through each volume standard among scholarly journals. Still, the journal—with its frequent reports of society business, comments from the executive director, appeals for financial support, and letters of praise from correspondents—continued to be something of a "house organ."³¹

Ronald J. Fahl played a central role in the journal's transition to a more scholarly persona. A doctoral candidate at Washington State University and former history instructor at Eastern Oregon College, Fahl came to the society in 1973 to prepare a bibliography of North American forest and conservation history. That work, funded by a two-year grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, drew upon the compilations of earlier Forest History Society bibliographers, but went far beyond them. The bibliography would not be published until 1977, but work on it had been largely completed by 1975, at which time Fahl began taking on editorial responsibilities with the journal.³²

Fahl first appears as assistant editor in the January 1975 issue of JFH. From the beginning, he assumed a major role. This author was to have an article in that January issue, and it was Fahl not Davis with whom he worked in preparing it for publication and locating and selecting illustrative material.³³ With the departure of Davis two issues later, Fahl became editor in name as well as in fact. He brought significant assets to the job. Fahl's work on the bibliography gave him a host of contacts and an unmatched grasp of the field. As the first editor of the journal with doctoral training in a traditional history program, he was comfortable with historical methodology, standards, and expectations. Moreover, he had a thoughtful, meticulous mind. A leading historian once commented that what it took to be a good historian was "the capacity to take infinite pains." Fahl had this in full measure.

Fahl was instrumental in the creation in 1977 of The Cruiser, a society newsletter for the sort of non-scholarly material that from the beginning had cluttered the pages of the journal. Its existence eased the transition of Forest History into a more scholarly quarterly. But challenges remained. As Fahl explained, "an aggressive editor seeks out the best available scholars and writers, becomes familiar with their research interests and writing abilities, and invites them to submit contributions on topics of significance." In the diffuse, emerging field of environmental history, this was no small task, requiring as it did not only wide reading and extensive correspondence, but regular attendance at conferences and colloquia. The materials recruited often presented problems, for "[m]any scholars are not literary craftsmen, and are unaccustomed to writing for folks outside the ivory tower." Writing clearly without resorting to the specialized terminology of an author's field of specialization, terminology that could serve as a barrier to readers not members of the "in-group," proved difficult for many contributors, and Fahl had to exercise his editorial and diplomatic talents carefully to make articles accessible to all members of the journal's diverse readership.³⁴

In 1981 Fahl took on fund-raising responsibilities for FHS thus reducing the time available for editorial work. As a result, from October 1981 to July 1984, his associate editor, Richard W. Judd, carried a good bit of the burden of the journal. Judd had completed a PhD in labor history at the University of California, Irvine, in 1979 and had done postdoctoral study under FHS auspices on the history of logging in Aroostook County, Maine. He thus brought solid qualifications to his job, and Fahl gives him considerable credit for the journal's record during the early eighties.³⁵

The widened coverage begun under Steen continued under Fahl and Judd. Evaluating the field at that time, Fahl noted the "broadening definition of forest and conservation history" and contributions from a wider range of fields (in addition, he added, the "'western tilt' of several years ago was being evened out"). Looking back years later, Fahl took pride in the increase in articles based on original research that occurred. Reflecting the changes taking place, the society's Program Committee crafted a new definition of the scope of the journal and directed that the process of broadening continue.

But the parameters of proposed coverage were unclear. Earlier expansion had been eased by the fact the rising scholarly concern with such things as wilderness, parks, and attitudes toward nature were at least indirectly related to forests, yet environmental history was moving into intellectually more distant areas—maritime and built environments, for example—and not everyone in the society was comfortable with including such concerns in its journal. Internal discussions proceeded and once again involved renaming the journal, this time to make it clear nonforest environmental issues were grist for its mill. No name change resulted. To many foresters, the term "environmentalist" conjured up images of "tree huggers" and extremists who engaged in ecoterrorism, and no one was able to come up with a new title satisfactory to all concerned. Sufficient work on forest, conservation, and environmental history had emerged to justify a broader journal than JFH, but the Forest History Society seemed unwilling to make the leap.³⁶

During this pivotal period John Opie appeared on the scene. A professor of history at Duquesne University, Opie had been disturbed by Rachel Carson's Silent Spring and John Hersey's Hiroshima and felt the need for an approach to history that would encompass his concerns; yet, at the time, it was nonhistorians—people like Paul Sears, René Dubos, Loren Eisley, and Paul Ehrlich—who were addressing such issues most effectively. Opie set to work and in 1970 edited the first Heath reader in environmental history; he soon found himself deeply involved in a developing field.³⁷ At about this time, he met Wilbur Jacobs, whose concerns were moving in similar directions, and found him supportive of the idea of an organization to bring together scholars who shared their interests and serve as a clearing house for ideas.³⁸ In April 1974, Opie's efforts along these lines led to a panel discussion on the teaching of environmental history at the Denver meeting of the Organization of American Historians; it drew eighteen attendees. Informal discussions followed. Pete Steen was in attendance, and on a field trip afterward, riding in the back of the Jeep of Estella Leopold (Aldo Leopold's daughter), listened as Opie talked about his dream of an environmental history journal. "Why don't you join us in a joint publication?" Steen recalls asking, but Opie demurred, "No, I want to do my own."³⁹

Opie followed the Denver convention by arranging meetings of an Environmental History Caucus at gatherings of the American Historical Association and other academic organizations. He cobbled together an Environmental History Newsletter and sent a trial mailing to fifty-two recipients whom he thought might be interested; he received sixty-two responses. At each meeting of the caucus, the list of those interested grew; by June 1975 the newsletter had a mailing list of 140. Encouraged, Opie pushed ahead with organizational plans. Initially, he proposed calling the new body the Society for the Study of the American Land and the journal he envisioned Land and Life, but others persuaded him this cast too narrow a net; in the end, the organization that emerged in 1976 was the American Society for Environmental History; its journal, Environmental Review, was to feature "original documented research, produced to reach an educated public." The first issue appeared in December 1976 with Opie as editor.⁴⁰

Figure 3. John Opie, 2005.

Image courtesy of John Opie.

Opie's desire to go it alone may have stemmed in part from chariness about the influence of industry in the Forest History Society. Certainly there were those in Opie's circle, such as well-known historian Samuel P. Hays, who expressed such concern. So too did Douglas H. Strong, a member of the initial advisory board of ER, and William G. Robbins, who would be the third editor of Environmental Review. Yet no adversary relationship developed between the two journals. Indeed, there was a good bit of cross-fertilization. A lengthy announcement appeared in JFH as the Environmental History Newsletter prepared to become Environmental Review, "a full-fledged interdisciplinary journal ... to provide a forum for extended articles, essays, and reviews which will consider environmental issues from a broader historic and humanistic point of view." Steen and Susan Flader were on ER's advisory board from the first, as was Harold T. Pinkett. Flader had published in Forest History and was playing an increasing role in the Forest History Society (as vice-chair of the Program Committee she was a major force in pushing for the broadened coverage of the journal adopted at that time). In turn she worked closely with Opie and chaired the ASEH session at the annual American Historical Association meeting in New York in 1979. Pinkett, author of a biography of Gifford Pinchot, was a member of the board of FHS and served as president from 1976 to 1978; although less active in ASEH than Flader, as a senior official with the National Archives, his presence on ER's advisory board was significant. Hays, one of Opie's strongest allies in the creation of ASEH, also provided extended programmatic advice to FHS as it clarified its mission in the late seventies. Others crossed over too. When Opie called one of the last of the "caucuses" at a professional meeting in the San Francisco Bay area, a sizable contingent traveled from FHS headquarters in Santa Cruz to lend support; among them Steen, Fahl, Richard C. Davis, and this author—whose first article in ER would be awarded the Forest History Society's Blegen award for excellence in 1981. Reflecting this mutuality of interests, the two societies joined in 1984 to sponsor a twoday conference in Denver on the forest history of the Rocky Mountains.⁴¹

Figure 4. Environmental Review Cover.

Image courtesy of the Forest History Society, Durham, North Carolina.

This first issue of Environmental Review was published in December of 1976.

The content of early issues of Environmental Review must have served to alleviate any latent anxiety within the Forest History Society. To be sure, there were articles that might well have found their way into the Journal of Forest History, but they were the exception.⁴² Of the seventy-eight articles listed in the index compiled at the end of seven years of publication of ER, only twelve appear to have been appropriate candidates for inclusion in JFH. From the beginning ER's content was both interdisciplinary and international; articles on urban and built environments, the environmental effects of modernization in China, the need for population stabilization, and historical geography as a discipline were all well beyond the bounds of what even the broadened Journal of Forest History might have been expected to cover. As Fahl noted in his annual report for 1979, in spite of the increased scope of the Journal of Forest History, it did "not have the wherewithal to take on all of environmental history, broadly defined." Yet Environmental Review sought to do just that. It was a daunting task for, as John Opie noted, environmental history "tends to be centrifugal; it keeps on flying apart," producing works on an ever-widening range of topics.⁴³

Over the years, the American Society for Environmental History was relatively free from some of the internal tensions experienced by the Forest History Society. Its constituency was made up almost exclusively of scholars who, for all their disciplinary differences, shared a common culture that made mutual understanding easier than it was among the historians, foresters, and businessmen who made up of the Forest History Society. Moreover, ASEH had a more modest, less diverse program. It sought through its journal—and the biennial (eventually annual) conferences it would sponsor—to encourage scholarship, as Opie put it, "which combines the humanities and environmental science ... [emphasizing] an historical and cross-disciplinary approach towards the relation of man and nature."⁴⁴ For such purposes, the society did not need a library, archival facilities, sizable staff, or major headquarters facilities. It also had no oral history program. Fund raising for such needs posed continuing problems for the Forest History Society, but not ASEH. The pages of Forest History and subsequently of The Cruiser long were replete with news of fund-raising efforts and appeals for support, appeals that in some eyes undermined the aura of impartial scholarship the organization sought to project. At that point, ASEH had no such need, and its journal remained largely free of such items even during the period beginning in 1984 when the ASEH Newsletter was incorporated therein. New members were drawn by its journal and conferences and by the growth of environmental history as a field; these additions, together with aid from the editors' universities, provided ASEH with its main bases of support.⁴⁵

Initially, Environmental Review was a modest publication, running some thirty to fifty pages per issue (81/2 by 11 inch sheets of inexpensive paper, folded and stapled). Book reviews were an irregular feature and in some issues merely copied from typescript, rather than printed in the same font and type size as the articles. Right-hand margins were unjustified. Issues were scheduled to appear three times a year, but, as Opie confessed, they appeared "fitfully," and eventually the number was cut back to two to reduce production problems and the difficulty of adhering to a schedule. Outside referees do not appear to have been used in all cases; editing was at best inconsistent. John Opie's talent was as an organizer and enthusiastic champion, not as an editor, and as his successor noted, "ER was pretty much a 'one-man operation.'"⁴⁶

Bit by bit the journal grew in size and quality. The number of issues per year had been reduced, but the total number of articles and pages increased. The fall 1981 issue was greatly enlarged and appeared in a new format with improved printing and binding. The first issue under the University of Denver's J. Donald Hughes, who replaced Opie as editor in 1983, continued the trend, running 128 pages and containing five substantial articles (to be sure, most issues during Hughes's editorship were significantly smaller). From that point on, the journal appeared quarterly, and all manuscripts apparently received two peer reviews before acceptance (although the number of submissions was still so low Hughes could not be too selective). When Hughes took over as editor there were but 250 subscribers (almost half of them libraries); by the end of his three-year tenure as editor subscriptions of all types had reached nearly 500, and the journal had a press run of 750 (except for the index issue, which ran 1,000). The society was growing too. In the spring of 1984, Hughes reported that during the past year membership had risen from 158 to 413.⁴⁷

Oral histories long contributed a significant portion of the content of Forest History, providing a cushion when there was a shortage of quality submissions; ASEH's biennial conferences played a similar role. The fall 1982 and spring 1983 issues, both guest edited by Kendall Bailes, were made up of papers originally presented at the society's first conference. The practice was repeated in two double issues in 1989–1990 that featured material from the society's third biennial conference.⁴⁸ On other occasions, papers originally presented at an ASEH conference appeared in ER alongside independent submissions. Unlike some of the oral history material in Forest History, such articles did not seem so clearly to be "fillers" nor seem inconsistent with the purposes of a scholarly quarterly.

William G. Robbins of Oregon State University assumed the editorship of Environmental Review in the spring of 1986. His tenure was to be relatively brief. Support from Oregon State, which to that point had little history of commitment to the humanities, was "minimal" and some that Robbins had anticipated failed to materialize. Moreover, Oregon's voters were becoming increasingly conservative and sentiment in favor of major tax cuts growing, developments that did not augur well for higher education. Administrators at Oregon State began to retrench, and history—never among the institution's main emphases—was among the victims. In effect Robbins was left to fend for himself. He struggled on for a time, but in the end had no choice but to resign his editorship.⁴⁹ ASEH, scrambling to keep the journal alive, persuaded John Opie, by then at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, to step into the editorial breach until a new editor could be found. Opie's "interim" appointment was to last for four years. Fortunately, unlike Robbins, he had a provost who was "most supportive," and a study committee chaired by Richard Judd prepared for ASEH president William Cronon a report that suggested further ways of improving and bringing stability to the journal.⁵⁰

Brief though it was, Robbins's editorship was significant. There was no backlog of manuscripts when he took over—he "squeaked through the first issue on a last minute submission"—but Robbins worked hard soliciting quality submissions and set a high standard for those accepted. As a result, he was able to fill the journal with contributions from scholars who were—or would soon become—major figures in the field: Hal Rothman, Donald J. Pisani, Alfred W. Crosby, Stephen J. Pyne, Richard Tucker, Donald Worster, Theodore L. Steinberg, Clayton Koppes, Martin V. Melosi, Carolyn Merchant, Arthur F. McEvoy, Thomas R. Dunlap, and Richard Judd. As Robbins later recalled, he "ceased publishing some of the more esoteric, 'touchy-feely' submissions ... focusing the journal more exclusively on environmental history rather than some of the soft-headed writing that had passed for the same in the past."⁵¹ Under Robbins, the journal became not only more scholarly, but also more polished and carefully edited. Yet it was a period during which membership in ASEH declined, slumping to less than four hundred individual and institutional members. One suspects the reason for this latter development was that during its early years ASEH attracted a number of people into membership who were at heart more interested in activism than scholarship; finding the organization not what they expected, they drifted away. In response, in the fall of 1990 Environmental Review was renamed Environmental History Review, a name which "better represents the contents of the journal to our readers, researchers and libraries, as well as potential authors and a wider audience." Indicative of how far the organization had come from the days when ER was essentially a one-man operation, the change of name was decided upon by "the Officers and Executive Committee of the American Society for Environmental History, and the Editors and Advisory Board of the Society's journal." Still, there was continuity; those in charge promised the journal would "continue ... to explore the human experience of the environment with emphasis on the perspectives of history and of the liberal arts and sciences ... [and] support publication from a wide range of disciplines."⁵²

The importance of this change of titles is problematic. The field of environmental history was growing and in time both membership in ASEH and submissions to ER followed suit. Early in John Opie's second period as editor, he received only about two submissions a month and had to publish roughly two of every five. When Opie stepped down four years later, membership had doubled to more than eight hundred, while more than eighty manuscript submissions were received each year. The increase in the quality of articles, begun under Robbins, continued, for Opie could accept only some sixteen submissions per year and thus was at last able to be selective.⁵³

ASEH and ER were not alone in benefiting from the growth of environmental history as a field; so too did the Forest History Society and its journal. In 1983 FHS adopted a five-year program plan that included a new, broadened definition of the scope of the Journal of Forest History, which the policy called the "principal instrument" for achieving the society's goals by disseminating a balance of refereed, scholarly articles, substantive popularly written articles, [and] book reviews" that would "enlarge knowledge of the field and of opportunities for further research." Relevant non-North American material "may also be included," the policy makers added, while procedures were to meet the professional standards of "the best history journals ... without conscious prejudice against or favoritism toward any group or individual concerned with the field." Finally, the policy called for "topical, disciplinary, and geographic balance." It was a policy statement that put JFH on a course remarkably similar to that of ER, and there were some, such as Richard White, who worried whether "there is enough good work ... to support both of us."⁵⁴

Although he had played an important role in drafting the new policies for JFH, Ron Fahl was not to be in charge of implementation. In 1984 FHS severed its relationship with the University of California, Santa Cruz—never entirely satisfactory—and moved its headquarters to Durham, North Carolina, where it affiliated with Duke University. While the move was being pondered, this author expressed concern to Herb Winer, chair of the site selection committee, that Fahl would opt not to move to North Carolina. "No one is indispensable," he was told. Perhaps, but when Duke was selected, Fahl chose to remain in Santa Cruz and, in addition to the other problems attendant upon the move, Steen now had to launch a search for a new editor. Alice E. Ingerson, holder of a PhD in anthropology from Johns Hopkins University, then employed by Duke University Press, was selected as managing editor with the clear expectation that ere long she would become editor. She did so in 1987 and continued to hold the position until leaving Durham in October 1991.⁵⁵

Ingerson did not begin her editorship under the best of circumstances. Fahl had suffered a heart attack late in the society's Santa Cruz period, sharply reducing his activity, while Judd had accepted a position at the University of Maine and preparations for the move reduced his involvement. Thus Ingerson inherited a journal with no manuscripts on hand, but with Steen's help she solicited heavily, got the journal out on time, and gradually built up a backlog.⁵⁶ Her first issue featured articles by Michael Williams and William G. Robbins, articles that reflected traditional concerns of the journal and its readers, but a subtle shift was soon evident.⁵⁷ The July 1988 issue was devoted to Canada.⁵⁸ Articles on Celtic monks and their relationship to northern forests, on Portuguese forest smallholdings, on German forest administration in Tanganyika, and on the forests of Lapland, Guatemala, and colonial Java followed; the October 1991 issue was devoted to African forests.⁵⁹ Such articles reflected Ingerson's own anthropological background and contacts, but she does not recall consciously shaping the trend; it was, she believes, merely a reflection of the direction in which the field was moving.⁶⁰

In January 1990, to reflect the "broader scope of recent years," JFH was renamed Forest & Conservation History. As Ingerson explained, "the journal ... [has] always embraced the history of such topics as conservation politics and nature perception alongside the history of forest products and industries," and the new name was designed to reflect that fact. But an ever greater range crept in during her editorship, a breadth she justified as pulling "into a single historical conversation people who might well refuse to talk to one another in other arenas"; moreover, knowledge of experiences on other continents might make North American forest historians reassess "dichotomies they have previously taken for granted." Among other things, she noted, scholars of the American forest tended to take a declensionist approach that emphasized the negative impact of man on the forest, but those working on Third World topics were more inclined to see less destructive relationships between native peoples and the land on which they depended. Still, much of the international material Ingerson favored probably had limited appeal to some members of FHS, while the journal's new name disturbed some long-time supporters: "What are you going to do," one of them asked Steen, "study birdhouses?"⁶¹

Even as the journal and the larger field were evolving, an old issue reared its head. From Rodney Loehr's day onward there had been those who suspected the Forest History Society was an apologist for the lumber industry, even though those in charge insisted the society and its journal were impartial. Early in Ingerson's editorship, the question came to the fore as perhaps never before. Sandra Faiman-Silva, a young anthropologist from Massachusetts, submitted a manuscript tracing the century-long loss of Choctaw tribal timberland in southeastern Oklahoma and the accompanying practices of lumber firms involved. The Weyerhaeuser interests came in for sharp criticism. Ingerson asked Steen how she should handle the situation; he told her to put the manuscript through the usual refereeing process and not be afraid to publish it if it were found deserving. She did so—perhaps, she recalls, giving it more careful refereeing than normal—and, as expected, when the article appeared industrial defenders were quick to respond. Steen had to defend the article—and Ingerson—before the board, but he stood his ground, and no retraction occurred. Indeed, a second article critical of the industry—although more general in its targets—appeared not long thereafter. More clearly than any of her predecessors, Ingerson had been able to demonstrate that the journal's claims to intellectual integrity were warranted.⁶²

In spite of Ingerson's efforts, a decline in both submissions and FHS membership was under way, and the society found it necessary to heavily subsidize the journal's publication costs. By way of explanation, Steen once told this author "No one writes forest history anymore," but his claim is suspect. There were rising young historians—such as Timothy Silver, Paul Hirt, Nancy Langston, and Char Miller—who were making names for themselves; moreover, as this author has demonstrated, there was a vast range of topics awaiting the environmental historian, and—one should note—a good portion was well suited for Forest & Conservation History. As Hal Rothman noted, however, "we [in ASEH] are well positioned to present a far broader range of issues, concerns, and fields than they are. ... I just don't think that their strengths really extend beyond forest-related issues."⁶³

The problems facing Forest & Conservation History may well have been inevitable given its history and the patterns of management that had developed over the years. In one regard, the journal remained atypical, incorporating far more photographs and other illustrative material than most scholarly journals of the period in order to broaden its appeal among the diverse constituency of the Forest History Society and, it was hoped, attract further financial support and a wider readership. This was indicative of a larger problem. As Steen noted, FCH suffered from the society's "insistence that it be all things to all people": an illustrated scholarly quarterly with occasional nonscholarly articles and content that would appeal to readers ranging from foresters in and out of government to historians and other scholars interested in the environment. "Neither the scholars nor those with a general interest in history were all that impressed with the necessary compromises." Moreover, from the beginning the editorship had rested in the headquarters of the society. At a time when there was not yet a recognized field of forest or environmental history, it could hardly have been otherwise; however, by the 1990s the practice meant that many leaders in the field, employed as they were at academic institutions, were excluded from consideration when the editorship fell vacant. Meanwhile, according to Steen, there were those within FHS who viewed having the editor at its headquarters as necessary "for the purposes of control"—the old tensions between the society's scholars and other constituencies was alive still—but, he noted, "the notion of an independent journal was contrary to the notion of control." Recognizing this inconsistency and various other problems facing the journal, in the early 1990s the society's Long Range Planning Committee accepted the proposition that "a standard scholarly format and an independent editor would be appropriate." With that, the door to major changes was open.⁶⁴

In 1995 the Forest History Society replaced its newsletter, The Cruiser, with Forest History Today, a periodical with articles aimed primarily at a nonscholarly audience and news of the society. The new publication would allow Forest & Conservation History to have a narrower, more purely scholarly focus. If the approach had been given time, this new publication—together with booklets in the society's Issues Series—might well have solved some of the problems resulting from FCH's diverse readership, but events were already under way that would take the journal in other directions.⁶⁵

In 1991, Steen informed FHS's board of his decision to retire during the summer of 1997. As the latter date approached, he began tying up "loose ends." The status of Forest & Conservation History was among them. In February 1995, Steen attended a biennial conference of ASEH where he discussed with Martin Melosi, Susan Flader, and others the possibility of merging Forest & Conservation History and Environmental History Review. ASEH's leaders agreed to enter into formal negotiations; two months later the FHS board followed suit; and in July representatives of the two organizations met in Durham to hammer out an agreement. The formal proposal that resulted spelled out the rationale for merger: consolidation would nearly double circulation; it would increase the number of submissions beyond what either predecessor journal had enjoyed; under the terms of merger, the editor of the new journal could reside anywhere, thus increasing the pool of talent when choosing editors; and merger would combine "the intellectual energy and growth potential of ASEH with the superior managerial skill, financial stability, and bibliographic resources of FHS," thereby allowing "both organizations to pursue their respective missions more effectively." The combined journal, authors of the draft predicted, "should instantly become the journal of record in this exciting and dynamic scholarly field." The draft was accepted by the two organizations (although fine tuning of the agreement remained to be done), and in January 1996 volume 1, number 1 of Environmental History appeared. Hal Rothman—who had been editor of Environmental History Review since John Opie stepped down in 1992—continued on as editor of the joint publication.⁶⁶

The marriage was not without its problems. Distance made coordination between Rothman, located at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and the managing editor, located at the Forest History Society in Durham, difficult. Rothman had enjoyed a relatively free hand in editing the Environmental History Review, and chafed under the constraints of the new order. Frequent, sometimes sudden changes in personnel in Durham complicated matters.⁶⁷

While Rothman had immense energy, enthusiasm, and wide-ranging interests, he had no special commitment to publishing essays on forest history, believing the field to be a bit stale. He told this author that while he would publish something on forest history that was truly new, he saw no point in accepting manuscripts that merely fleshed out with fresh examples concepts already understood. He was as good as his word. Of the ninety-six articles published during his years as editor, only thirteen dealt with forest history (and a good half of those with non-U.S. topics). To be sure, there were numerous other articles that dealt with such broader environmental issues as had come to the fore during Alice Ingerson's editorship, but at the time that shift had caused some grumbling among the FHS old guard and it continued to do so under Rothman. Yet not all was grumbling; some applauded the change. Expansion of the journal in 2000 from a norm of four articles per issue to five opened the way for even greater breadth.⁶⁸

Some discontent was probably a result of "packaging" more than content. James McCann's article on deforestation in Ethiopia provides a case in point. A leading forester, a member of the Forest History Society's board, commenced reading McCann's article in the April 1999 issue of EH without enthusiasm. There was nothing in its innocuous title to suggest it would be more than moderately relevant to his interests. Yet by the time he had finished, the forester's attitude had changed, and he promptly telephoned new FHS president Steven Anderson to tell him that this was a piece that every forester should read and to suggest that perhaps more attention ought to be paid to selecting titles that would give foresters and other nonacademic readers a better idea of the relevance of the content.⁶⁹

Steen had hurried the merger through prior to his retirement partly because he knew there would be those within FHS who would question the wisdom of the decision, and he did not want to burden his successor with such second guessing. The speed with which the merger was negotiated necessitated leaving members of the editorial board of Forest & Conservation History and many long-time supporters of the society out of the decision-making process. As has been noted, earlier proposals to broaden the Forest History Society's journal by including "environment" or "conservation" in the title had stirred opposition, and similar but stronger reactions could be expected to the new proposal since it seemed destined to narrow coverage—labor and business history topics, for example, would appear to have no place in the combined journal. Steen argued that good, nonenvironmental manuscripts would still get published somewhere, but there was no alternative journal that reached such a diverse readership as Forest & Conservation History; through the merger, FHS could thus be seen as abandoning its most useful tool for communication among the traditionally diverse elements of its membership—and abandoning as well the original purpose of the Forest History Foundation to encourage research on the place of the lumber industry in American business and economic history. From the vantage point of many FHS members, it must have seemed the merger served the interests of ASEH far better than it did those of the Forest History Society.⁷⁰

From the vantage point of ASEH, it was another matter altogether. Unforeseen expenses resulted in a budget overrun during the new journal's first year, a burden ASEH was ill-equipped to handle. Concerned, president Donald J. Pisani engaged Steven Anderson in a prolonged discussion about the advisability of having Environmental History published by a university press, rather than by the two societies. His rationale was that the change would save money while earning prestige for the journal. In the process of arguing his case, Pisani revealed assumptions about FHS, its membership, and its purposes that made cooperation difficult at best. He clearly saw it as an organization dominated by foresters and the forest industry and not particularly interested in independent, objective scholarship; in short, he shared the old fear that industrial support threatened academic integrity. He showed no awareness of the central role historians had long played in the organization, that they wanted a respected scholarly journal as much as he did, and that from the beginning many industrial supporters had desired the same thing. In hiring a forester rather than a historian to replace Steen, Pisani argued, FHS had shown its lack of concern for advancing historical scholarship. Moreover, he went on, the growth of environmental scholarship had made traditional forest history largely irrelevant (a view Rothman shared). Thomas R. Dunlap, a respected historian and chair of the Board of Directors of the Forest History Society, sought to defuse the situation by tracing something of the history of both organizations, their assumptions and commitments, and the roots of their mutual suspicions. He concluded: "My analysis seems to suggest that the merger was a mistake ... [but that] is not my intent"; while EH may not be entirely satisfactory, "it is what we have to work with." Not until Jeffrey K. Stine replaced Pisani as president of ASEH was a solution finally agreed upon—continued affiliation with Duke University Press with the work of a managing editor, nominally under Rothman, conducted out of FHS offices. It was a solution with which Rothman was not entirely comfortable, claiming it reduced him to the role of executive editor while leaving content editing to others. No solution, it seemed, would satisfy everyone. By rushing the merger through, Pete Steen may have wanted to spare his successor criticism, but the merger proved a major headache for Anderson nonetheless.⁷¹

The trend toward ever-broader coverage continued under Rothman's successor, Adam Rome. While the journal had what Rothman called "a peculiar inertia, pushing ever onward whether the editor wants it or not," he recognized that "editors can be tremendously influential in shaping fields, pushing scholars toward broad ideas, new creativity, and even toward goals beyond the simple publication of an article in the journal." At first glance, EH under Rome looked much like it had under Rothman, yet there were differences that can be traced directly to the two editors. Rome prefaced each issue with a "From the Editor" in which, among other things, he highlighted the importance of the articles that followed. This may not have been intended as a way of making articles more accessible for the journal's nonacademic readers, but it probably had that effect. Still, the content was clearly by academics for academics. Douglas Weiner's article in the July 2005 issue—his ASEH presidential address—is a case in point; most readers not familiar with the intellectual trends current in the academy would have been hard put to know what to make of his essay—or even what he was saying. Alice Ingerson's comment that "jargon and hierarchy of credentials [provide] ... protective armor in the social and natural sciences ... [but this] has seldom been very thick in the Journal of Forest History" could hardly be said of Environmental History. Indeed, consciously or unconsciously, the latter journal would appear to have abandoned John Opie's original intent that ASEH's publication should be aimed not at academicians, but at a broader "educated public."⁷²

Rome also added a "Gallery" section in which illustrative material was used to highlight issues the printed word alone could address only imperfectly. There was an irony in this; not all that long before, Forest & Conservation History (and its forerunners) had been denigrated by those who thought its heavy use of illustrations undermined its claims to being scholarly.⁷³ On occasion, Rome also had a section entitled "Reflections"; together these additions reduced the space available for articles and gave the journal a less traditional scholarly appearance. Just how lasting—or meaningful—these additions will be is unclear. There were other changes too. On retiring from the editorship, Rome spoke with pride of the fact that under his stewardship the number of women published in the journal increased markedly and an on-line version was initiated.⁷⁴

But there was no significant increase in the percentage of forest-related articles. Indeed, after his first year, the number actually declined. Like Rothman before him, Rome's interests primarily ran in other directions and he seem to have had little appreciation for the cutting edge issues in forest history.⁷⁵ They were not alone. In "Reflections on Teaching World Forest History," Nancy Langston—a former board member of FHS and soon to be president of ASEH—revealed an apparently widespread view of forest history (and foresters) among environmental historians. She reported her dean telling her that he found forest history "boring," and added, "I secretly agreed with him. Forest history is often tedious. Too much forest history gets mired in detail that appeals mostly to retirees who share an unusual obsession with steam donkeys and railroad lines."⁷⁶ The sort of forest history of which she spoke was hardly the only—or the best—sort. There had always been a strong antiquarian element in the field, what Pete Steen had called "the boys in the bunkhouse" material, but there was also more penetrating work being done, work that probed new questions as the role of forests in human societies changed (and forestry schools changed along with it). The idea that foresters were only interested in things that affected industrial production may have been widespread in environmental circles, but if it had ever been true it certainly was no longer. The appointment of Jack Ward Thomas, a wildlife biologist, as Chief of the Forest Service in 1993 illustrates the shift, while urban forestry had become one of the most popular fields in the University of California's prestigious forestry school. Studies of the role of riparian forests and their effect on stream-flow and aquatic life were proceeding apace; so too were studies of the connections between old-growth and endangered species and sociological studies of the interactions between forest-dependent communities and their residents and the forests per se. The connection between deforestation and global warming received critical analysis in a conference sponsored by the Forest History Society and Duke Center for International Studies. William Robbins and Richard Rajala dissected the connections between foresters and industry and, in the process, revealed divisions among foresters that belied simplistic generalizations. Others probed the interconnections between globalization and structural changes in forest industries.⁷⁷ The list goes on and on.

There was, in short, a wealth of forest-related material that reflected the emergence of a new forest history that editors of Environmental History could have sought out, but Rothman and Rome seem to have failed to do so with any consistency. The journal—and the field of environmental history—grew ever more diffuse, defying repeated attempts at clarifying definition, while forest history was made to appear passé. As Rothman had noted, in spite of a built-in inertia carrying events along, editors can influence the direction of fields; Ron Fahl, Alice Ingerson, and Bill Robbins had all done so in one way or another. So too had Hal Rothman and Adam Rome as they moved the field toward greater diversity, sophistication, and depth of analysis. Whether in time a need for tighter focus will emerge as a counterforce remains to be seen. Should that day arrive, it might well result in pressure to return to separate publications for the Forest History Society and the American Society for Environmental History, the former more tightly focused, the latter more aggressively expansive. There is, it would seem, ample room for both.

For the time being, there appears to be no such need for separation. In spite of the combined journal's rough beginnings, membership in the two organizations has risen since the merger and finances of both organizations have become healthy. Leaders of the societies point with pride to the prestige the journal has achieved, ranking as it does just behind the American Historical Review and the Journal of American History on the Institute for Scientific Information's journal citation reports for the social sciences. While it is a strange intellectual mathematics that equates frequency of citation with quality of product, the institute's ranking is the best impartial measure of the journal's success available. It is a success fifty years in the making, one reached by the tortuous road of trial and error, adjustment and readjustment, tension and controversy. It is a road that seems to have no end—nor even a clear-cut destination.

Thomas R. Cox is professor emeritus at San Diego State University. A fellow and former president of the Forest History Society, he served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Forest History and Environmental Review and has published extensively on forests, parks, and land use. He currently lives in McCammon, Idaho, where he is restoring forty acres of degraded grazing land and raises heritage varieties of apples.

NOTES

^1.�Forest History Newsletter, n.v. (Spring 1957): 1. Beginning in April 1958 the newsletter was called simply Forest History, a name that remained as it took on journal form.

^2.� Harold K. Steen, "The Forest History Society and Its History" (typescript; Forest History Society records [hereafter FHSR], Durham, NC; revised October 1996), 4; Forest History Society Cruiser 9 (Spring 1986): 1; Elwood R. Maunder, "Writing the History of Forest Industries," Pacific Northwest Quarterly 48 (1957): 133. Maunder's position was first described as "executive representative." In 1953 it became "executive secretary," and soon thereafter "executive director." Today the same position is called "president."

^3.� In time, these works would materialize as G. Thomas Morgan, Jr., William B. Greeley, A Practical Forester, 1879–1955 (St. Paul, MN: Forest History Society, 1961); Emanuel Fritz, California Coast Redwood: An Annotated Bibliography (San Francisco: Foundation for American Resource Management, 1957); Ralph Hidy, Frank Ernest Hill, and Allan Nevins, Timber and Men: The Weyerhaeuser Story (New York: Macmillan, 1963); Walter F. McCulloch, Woods Words: A Comprehensive Dictionary of Loggers Terms (Portland: Oregon Historical Society, 1958); Eloise Hamilton, Forty Years of Western Forestry: A History of the Movement to Conserve Forest Resources by Cooperative Effort, 1909–1949 (Portland, OR: Western Forestry and Conservation Association, 1949); Harold M. Hyman, Soldiers and Spruce: Origins of the Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumbermen (Los Angeles: Institute of Industrial Relations, University of California, Los Angeles, 1963); and Claude W. Nichols, Jr., "Brotherhood in the Woods: The Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumbermen, A Twenty Year Attempt at 'Industrial Cooperation'" (PhD diss., University of Oregon, 1959).

^4.� Elwood R. Maunder, "An Interview with Charles S. Cowan: Forest Protection Comes under the Microscope," Forest History 2 (Winter 1959): 3–14; Roy R. White, "Austin Cary, the Father of Southern Forestry," Forest History 5 (Spring 1961): 2–5. White's article had been presented earlier that year at the annual meeting of the Mississippi Valley Historical Association, held in Detroit. Other papers from the same session would appear in subsequent issues of Forest History.

^5.� A. J. Larsen to Frederick K. Weyerhaeuser, May 8, 1946 (FHSR, box 17, MHS/FHPF, 1945 file); F. K. Weyerhaeuser to K. G. Brill, July 12, 1946 (FHSR., box 19, "Mr. Weyerhaeuser" file). This letter encloses the formal proposal to the Minnesota Historical Society for creation of the foundation; there is also considerable preliminary correspondence in this file. Weyerhaeuser support continued, and gradually others joined in. By 1954, total gifts to the foundation had come to $116,602.25, with 78 percent from Weyerhaeuser companies; in 1953 contributions from outside the Weyerhaeuser group exceeded those from inside for the first time, and the percentage continued to decline thereafter until it eventually became "tiny." See E. R. Maunder to F. K. Weyerhaeuser, April 15, 1954 (FHSR, box 19, correspondence., 1954 file); Steven Anderson, interview by the author, August 14, 2007.

^6.� E. R. Maunder to F. K. Weyerhaeuser, October 29, 1952 (FHSR, box 19, FHPF, 1952 file); Elwood R. Maunder, "Report to the Board of Directors and Donors," June 18, 1955 (FHSR, separation from MHS file), 1–2; Rodney C. Loehr, oral history interview (OHI) with Harold K. Steen, August 16, 1990 (typescript; FHSR, office files). As a faculty member at the University of Minnesota, Loehr published articles on Minnesota's forest history prior to becoming head of the foundation and similar work thereafter. In 1951 he would become president of the Agricultural History Society and until that year continued as a faculty member at Minnesota, carrying a full teaching load in addition to his work with the foundation. See Rodney C. Loehr, "Caleb D. Dorr and the Early Minnesota Lumber Industry," Minnesota History 24 (1943): 125–41; Rodney C. Loehr, "Franklin Steele, Pioneer Businessman," Minnesota History 27 (1946): 309–18; and Rodney C. Loehr "Saving the Kerf: The Introduction of the Band Saw Mill," Agricultural History, 25 (1949): 168–72.

^7.� See, especially, James C. Malin, The Grassland of North America: A Prolegomena to Its History (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1947); and Carl O. Sauer, Agricultural Origins and Dispersals (New York: American Geographical Society, 1952). See, also, Michael J. Brodhead, "James C. Malin, 1893–1979," Environmental Review 4 (Spring 1980): 18–19; Robert P. Swierenga, "The Malin Thesis of Grassland Acculturation and the New Rural History," in Canadian Papers in Rural History, ed. Donald H. Akensen (Gananoque, ON: Langdale Press, 1986), 11–22; and Martin S. Kenzer, Carl O. Sauer, A Tribute (Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 1987).

^8.� Chapter 16 of Blegen's Minnesota: A History of the State (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1963), dealing with the lumber industry, would be published in Forest History 7 (Fall 1963): 2–13.

^9.� Elwood Maunder, address before American Forest History Foundation national advisory committee, October 28, 1954 (FHSR, box 19, correspondence. 1952 file), 1–2. Blegen's considerable work on Minnesota's Scandinavian immigrant population made him intensely aware of the importance of the reminiscences of participants in events, many of whom were passing from the scene. This caused him to be a strong supporter of efforts to preserve their recollections through oral history interviews and other means. Under Maunder, oral history would become a major component of the work of the Forest History Society, long overshadowing research. On Blegen, see, Forest History 13 (October 1969): 3.

^10.� K. G. Brill to F. K. Weyerhaeuser, September 18, 1945; Weyerhaeuser to Brill, November 26, 1945 (FHSR, box 17, MHS/FPHF, 1945 file). See, also, Charles E. Twining, "For the Sake of History: The Weyerhaeuser Family and the Origins of the Forest History Society," Forest History Today 2 (1996): 4–7; and Charles E. Twining, F. K. Weyerhaeuser: A Biography (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 1997). F. E. Weyerhaeuser's five-volume manuscript, "A Record of the Life and Business Activities of Frederick Weyerhaeuser, 1834–1914," was never published. Copies remain with the family.

^11.� E. W. Davis to F. K. Weyerhaeuser, October 26, 1945; K. G. Brill to E. W. Davis, October 13, 1945; [E. W. Davis], memo of meeting, December 7, 1945; F. K. Weyerhaeuser to J. P. Weyerhaeuser, Jr., December 28, 1945 (FHSR, box 17, MHS/FPHF, 1945 file); Elwood Maunder, "Report to the Board," 1955 (FHSR, box 19, separation from MHS file), pp. 1–2. See Richard G. Lillard, "Timber King," Pacific Spectator 1 (1947): 14–26; Sarah Jenkins Salo, Timber Concentration in the Pacific Northwest (Ann Arbor, MI: Edwards Brothers, 1945). Lillard's later works, most notably The Great Forest (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1948), continued to reveal his background in literature, rather than history. Somewhat ironically, he eventually would serve as president of the Forest History Society.

^12.� Rodney C. Loehr, press release, [c. September 1946], (FHSR, box 17, MHS/FHPF 1946 file); [Rodney C. Loehr], "Activities of the Forest Products History Foundation," undated (FHSR, 1948 file); Maunder, "Writing the History of Forest Industries," 127–28; Steen, comment to Rodney C. Loehr, OHI; Loehr, "Preserving the History of the Forest Products Industries," Southern Lumberman 177 (December 15, 1948): 271–76; Cruiser 9 (Spring 1986): 1. Although a product of Loehr's activity, Forests for the Future did not appear in print until after he had departed. Similarly, Forest History Sources of the United States and Canada, the society's first major reference work, would grow out of work begun under Loehr, but it did not appear in print until 1956.

^13.� Loehr, "Preserving the History of the Forest Products Industries," 271; Twining, "For the Sake of History," 7; Maunder, "Writing the History of the Forest Industries," 128–29; [F. K. Weyerhaeuser], undated notes for talk, (FHSR, box 19, FHPF, records management, 1952 file; underscoring in original). Loehr himself seems to have harbored some suspicions about the motives of the Weyerhaeusers and other industrial supporters. He told Harold Steen one of the reasons he left the foundation in 1951 was concern about it becoming "a Ladies Aid Society for the lumber industry." Steen, comment to the author, c. December 18, 1990.

^14.� Loehr, OHI; Hidy, Hill, and Nevins, Timber and Men, xi. Stewart Holbrook was best known for Holy Old Mackinaw: A Natural History of the American Lumberjack (New York: Macmillan, 1938); and Burning an Empire: The Story of American Forest Fires (New York: Macmillan, 1943). Paul Hosmer for Now We're Loggin' (Portland, OR: Metropolitan Press, 1930).

^15.� Loehr, OHI; Maunder, "Writing the History of the Forest Industries," 128; Blegen to F .K. Weyerhaeuser, January 27, 1955; Russell W. Findley, undated statement (FHSR, box 19, executive comm. file).

^16.� F. K. Weyerhaeuser to E. R. Maunder, January 23, 1953 (FHSR, box 19, FHPF, 1953 file); Maunder, "Closing the Gaps," Journal of Forest History 18 (1974): 50; Forest History Today 3 (1997): 2. Among the first of the nonindustrial topics were Roderick W. Nash, "The American Wilderness in Historical Perspective," Forest History 6 (Winter 1963): 2–13; Roger C. Thompson, "Politics in the Wilderness: New York's Adirondack Forest Preserve," Forest History 6 (Winter 1963): 14–23; Wilson B. Sayers, "The Changing Land Ownership Pattern in the United States," Forest History 9 (July 1965): 2–9; Hugh M. Raup, "The View from John Sanderson's Farm: A Perspective for the Use of the Land," Forest History 10 (April 1966): 2–11; and Peter A. Fritzell, "The Wilderness and the Garden Metaphors for the American Landscape," Forest History 12 (April 1968): 16–23. See, also, Brian Donahue, "Another Look from Sanderson's Farm: A Perspective on New England Environmental History and Conservation," Environmental History 12 (January 2007): 9–34.

^17.� American Forest History Foundation, draft proposal for incorporation, 1955 (Forest History Society correspondence [hereafter FHSC], box 19, exec. comm. file); Cruiser 9 (Spring 1986): 3; R. W. Phipps, "Across the Watershed of Eastern Ontario," Forest History 9 (October 1965): 2–8; Rupert Scheider, "Martin Allerdale Grainger: Woodsman of the West," Forest History 11 (October 1967): 6–13; Robert Peter Gillis, "Great Britain's Woodyard: A Critical Appraisal," Forest History 18 (1974): 110–27; Douglas Cole, "Early Artistic Perceptions of the British Columbia Forest," Forest History 18 (1974): 128–31; and Maria Tippett, "Emily Carr's Forest," Forest History 18 (1974): 132–37.

^18.� Elwood Maunder to J. P. Weyerhaeuser, Jr., July 6, 1954 (FHSR, box 19, FPHF correspondence, 1954 file); Elwood Maunder to H. J. Malsberger, July 7, 1952 (FPHF correspondence, 1952 file); Elwood Maunder, "Report to Board," 1955; James B. Craig to Elwood Maunder, March 4, 1953 (FPHF correspondence, exec. comm. file); Maunder, "Writing the History of Forest Industries," 131–32. During Maunder's tenure he and others conducted more than two hundred oral history interviews; most were done by Maunder himself. Cruiser 9 (Spring 1986): 3. As with journal articles, archival acquisitions were slow in materializing in Canada.

^19.� Steen, "Forest History Society," 5–7; Forest History Today 2 (1996): 2. The Society of American Foresters papers were the society's first major archival holding. Generally, the society sought to arrange preservation of records in the region of origin, where it was thought they were more used by researchers than if held in a central location.

^20.� Harold Steen, comment to the author, c. October 18, 1977; Steen, "Forest History Society," 5–6, 9. There were exceptions, of course. For example, Herbert Winer, a member of the forestry faculty who was a major figure in bringing the Forest History Society to Yale (and later served as the society's president), wrote a doctoral dissertation that was sound historical work and, like Hugh Raup's study of John Sanderson's farm, anticipated concerns of environmental historians during succeeding decades. See Herbert I. Winer, "History of the Great Mountain Forest, Litchfield County, Connecticut" (PhD diss., Yale University, 1956). For an example of the distortions perpetrated by Gifford Pinchot's circle, see Thomas R. Cox, "The Birth of Hawaiian Forestry: The Web of Influences," Pacific Historical Review 61 (1992): 169–92.

^21.� Steen, "Forest History Society," 4–5, 7–9; Ronald J. Fahl, "Editing the Journal of Forest History," Cruiser 1 (October 1978): 1–2; Alice E. Ingerson, "A Profile of Forest History," Cruiser 12 (Winter 1989): 1–4. The situation of Miller, the first of these is illustrative. He had joined the staff as a bibliographer in 1960 and first appears in the winter 1963 issue of Forest History as news and books editor (appropriate considering his larger assignment). By spring 1964 he was listed as assistant editor, by winter 1965 associate editor, by October 1966 managing editor, and finally in April 1968 editor, a position he continued to hold under editor-in-chief Maunder until 1969, when the society left Yale for the West Coast.

^22.� Joseph A. Miller, "The Changing Forest: Recent Research in the Historical Geography of American Forests," Forest History 9 (April 1965): 18–25; "Forests and the Regional Landscape," Forest History 9 (July 1965): 24–29; Joseph A. Miller, ed., "From Bulls to Bulldozers: A Memoir on the Development of Machines in the Western Woods," Forest History 7 (Fall 1963): 14–17; Joseph A. Miller and Judith C. Rudnicki, ed., "Sincerely Yours, Harris: Being the Selected Letters of George Harris Collingwood," Forest History 12 (January 1969): 10–29; [Joseph A. Miller, ed.], "The Forest in Canadian Life: A Brief Historical Anthology," Forest History 11 (October 1967): 14–27; Ellwood Wilson, "Through Canadian Wilds: Three Sketches of Early Forestry in Quebec," Forest History (January 1968): 16–25.

^23.� In addition to works cited in note 16, these included Thomas LeDuc, "The Historiography of Conservation," Forest History 9 (October 1965): 23–28; H. Duane Hampton, "The Army and the National Parks," Forest History 10 (October 1966): 2–17; Roderick Nash, "The Strenuous Life of Bob Marshall," Forest History 10 (October 1966): 18–25; Arthur D. Martinson, "Mount Rainier National Park: First Years," Forest History 10 (October 1966): 26–33; John G. Miles, "The Redwood Park Question," Forest History 11 (April 1967): 7–11; Elmo R. Richardson, "Olympic National Park: Twenty Years of Controversy," Forest History 12 (April 1968): 6–15; David C. Smith, "Forest History Research and Writing at the University of Maine," Forest History 12 (July 1968): 27–31; and Peter J. Schmitt, "The Arcadian Myth," Forest History 13 (April-July 1969): 18–27. See, also, Harold Steen to the author, June 2, 2007 (Thomas R. Cox, personal correspondence, McCammon, Idaho); Ronald J. Fahl, interview by the author, July 8, 2007.

^24.� Steen, "Forest History Society," 7–9, 13–14.

^25.� Joan M. Vastokas, "Architecture and Environment: The Importance of the Forest to the Northwest Coast Indian," Forest History 13 (October 1969): 12–21; Ivan Doig, "John J. McGilvra and Timber Trespass," Forest History 13 (January 1970): 6–17; John R. Finger, "Seattle's First Sawmill, 1853–1869: A Study in Frontier Enterprise," Forest History 15 (January 1972): 24–31.

^26.� Harold Steen, interview by the author, July 9, 2007; Harold Steen to the author, June 2, 2007 (Cox, personal correspondence.). See Richard S. Sprague, "Carl Sprinchorn in the Maine Woods," Forest History 14 (July 1970): 6–14; Michael L. Wolfe, Jr., "The History of German Game Administration," Forest History 14 (October 1970): 6–16; Rosemary R. Davies, "The Rosenbluth Affair," Forest History 14 (October 1970): 17–26; Ronald L. Pollitt, "Wooden Walls: English Seapower and the World's Forests," Forest History 15 (April 1971): 6–15; David M. Emmons, "Theories of Increased Rainfall and the Timber Culture Act of 1873," Forest History 15 (October 1971): 6–14; Charles R. Kutzler, "Can Forests Bring Rain to the Plains?" Forest History 15 (October 1971): 14–21; Robin W. Doughty, "Concern for Fashionable Feathers," Forest History 16 (July 1972): 4–11; Elmo R. Richardson, "Was There Politics in the Civilian Conservation Corps?" Forest History 16 (July 1972): 12–21; Charles F. Sutherland, "Tin Lizzy's Wooden Heart," Forest History 16 (July 1972): 22–25.

^27.� In addition to the works cited in note 24, see Peter J. Rutledge and Richard H. Tooker, "Steam Power for Loggers: Two Views of the Dolbeer Donkey," Forest History (14 (October 1970): 18–29; Thomas R. Cox, "Lumber and Ships: The Business Empire of Asa Mead Simpson," Forest History 14 (July 1970): 16–26; Kramer A. Adams, "Blue Water Rafting: The Evolution of Ocean-Going Log Rafts," Forest History 15 (July 1971): 16–18, 20–27.

^28.� Steen, interview, July 9, 2007; Ronald J. Fahl, interview, July 11, 2007; Eugene S. Robbins, "Pete Steen: A Career of Contributions," Forest History Today 3 (1997): 41–42. For examples, see D. O. L. Schon, "The Handlogger: Unique British Columbia Pioneer," Forest History 14 (January 1971): 18–20; Tom Gill, "Tom Gill Looks at Tropical Forestry, 1928–1971," Forest History 15 (April 1971): 16–21; A. P. Pross, "Historical Memorandum on the Management of Crown Lands," Forest History 15 (April 1971): 22–29; Walter C. Lowdermilk with Malca Chall, "Forests and Erosion in China, 1922–1927," Forest History 16 (April 1972): 4–15; Rodney Grainger, "In the Steps of the Illawarra Cedar-getters," Forest History 16 (April 1972): 16–21; and Wolfe, "The History of German Game Administration."

^29.� Harold K. Steen, The U.S. Forest Service: A History (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1976). Illustrating the tendency of agency personnel to disparage even mild critics, referred to above, Steen and the society had to fend off the manuscript's reviewers from within the agency who were willing to give lip service to the idea of Steen's scholarly independence as a researcher, but wanted the end result of his work to be uncritical. William G. Robbins reports similar experience with his American Forestry: A History of National, State, and Private Cooperation (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1985). Yet compared to other works beginning to appear, their evaluations were moderate. At about the same time, for example, Jack Shepherd called the Forest Service "a corporate shill," and blasted it in unmeasured terms. See Steen, "Forest History Society," 9; William G. Robbins to the author, August 2, 2007 (Cox, personal correspondence); Jack Shepherd, The Forest Killers: The Destruction of the American Wilderness (New York: Weybright and Talley, 1975), 345–64.

^30.�Forest History 16 (January 1973): 34; Har

a tale of two journals:FIFTY YEARSOF ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY—AND ITS PREDECESSORS

THOMAS R. COX

ABSTRACT

NOTES

a tale of two journals:
FIFTY YEARS
OF ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY—AND ITS PREDECESSORS