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The Bitterroot and Mr. Brandborg Clearcutting and the Struggle for Sustainable Forestry in the Northern Rockies by Frederick H. Swanson University
of Utah Press In the late 1960s Montana’s Bitterroot National Forest became the epicenter of a nationwide conflict over the management of our forest lands. Citizens of the rural Bitterroot Valley protested the U.S. Forest Service’s program of clearcutting whole mountainsides and bulldozing unsightly terraces to aid replanting. Soon the controversy reached the pages of national newspapers and members of Congress were calling for investigations. The Bitterroot and Mr. Brandborg explores the roots of this historic controversy, which was orchestrated by a crusty, outspoken former Forest Service officer named G. M. Brandborg. “Brandy,” as Montanans called him, was the supervisor of the Bitterroot National Forest from 1935-1955, during which time he implemented his vision of how public forest lands could be managed in harmony with the local economy and the natural environment. While Brandy believed that clearcutting had its place in forest management, he presciently understood that overcutting private and public forest lands would bring social and economic unpheaval to western Montana. The issues that energized Guy Brandborg a half century ago are still with us today—and his vision of public forestry still has much to tell us about our relationship to the landscapes of the West. |
Winner of four regional awards for history and biography, including the 2007 Utah Book Award for nonfiction.Dave
Rust: A Life in the Canyons by
Frederick H. Swanson
David
D. Rust (1874-1963), a backcountry guide and tourism visionary from
Journeys in the Canyon Lands of Utah and Arizona, 1914-1916
by George C. Fraser University
of Arizona Press George
Corning Fraser, a Wall Street attorney with an unusual thirst for adventure, traveled
extensively throughout the Southwest in the early 1900s to study its magnificently
exposed geology. He was a keen observer of landscapes and an interested and sympathetic
listener, and his journals convey an engaging picture of life in the remote corners
of the Colorado Plateau in the years before the automobile made its inroads. Traveling
mostly on horseback, he spoke at length with sheepherders and forest rangers,
townspeople and ranchers, community leaders and eccentric prospectors.His firsthand
accounts will transport you to a time when explorers relied on their horses and
their wits to take them into a fascinating and little-known backcountry.
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