In campgrounds and picnic areas, recreation values are protected by limiting cutting to dead, dying, and diseased trees. In natural areas, old trees and surrounding vegetation are subject only to minimum management so that visitors may read living history as written on the land. In wilderness and wild areas, timber cutting is not allowed. Those primitive lands, 14½ million acres in all, have been dedicated by the Forest Service to wilderness use and are protected in their natural state for those who enjoy extensive foot or horseback travel in serenity and solitude.
Each forest resource and each of the many uses of resources is needed in the pattern of a growing Nation. Each is accorded its place in balancing National Forest plans of management.
[Illustration: Trees, like people, have their own characteristics and habits. The stand, or community of forest trees, nearest your home is as different from the next one as your town or city differs from the town in the next county. This means that the National Forests, ranging through 39 States and a Commonwealth—from the White and Green Mountains of New England south to Puerto Rico, westward to the Pacific and north to Alaska—must be managed, harvested, and renewed in different ways.]
_Legend_ NATIONAL FORESTS NATIONAL GRASSLANDS NATION’S TOTAL FORESTED AREA REGIONAL HEADQUARTERS AREAS DESCRIBED ON PAGES 22, 23, AND 24 STATE AND PRIVATE AREA DIRECTORS
Douglas-Fir, ponderosa and southern pines, yellow-poplar, sugar maple, and the white oak are great American trees, beauties on the landscape wherever they stand. As forest trees, they are grown to serve many useful purposes. You can derive more enjoyment from your travels through the National Forests by observing these and other species and learning why each grows best in its particular environment.
_Douglas-Fir_, the State tree of Oregon, produces more wood products than any other American tree and perhaps is the world’s most valuable species of conifer. It grows in moist forests from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific coast, reaching its largest size on the western slopes of the Cascade Mountains and along the northwest coast, where soil is rich and moisture plentiful. Douglas-fir grows second in size only to the California sequoias, giant sequoia and redwood (_Sequoia gigantea_ and _Sequoia sempervirens_), with heights of 200 feet or more and diameters of 3 to 6 feet. Under favorable conditions individual trees may live a thousand years, grow 10 feet through and 300 feet tall, with furrowed, cinnamon-brown bark 1 foot thick.