Photo courtesy of the U.S. Forest Service Coolidge’s proclamation which formally created the Allegheny National Forest, signed on Sept. 24, 1924.

Marking the post of Tract 1, Corner 1 last month was the first event in a year aimed specifically to commemorate the centennial of the Allegheny National Forest.

But how does something like the ANF come into existence?

This will be the first in a bunch of Saturdays that feature stories on the ANF in light of the centennial. Forest Service officials have shared a wealth of material with me that will serve as the basis for these stories. We start with the origin story today.

According to a Forest Service history, the idea of conserving public lands began to take on a more proactive feel in the early 1900s, in part because of “cut-over and farmed-out lands” in the east and wildfire problems out west. That paved the way for the approval of the Weeks Act, which granted the government power to purchase private lands for government-owned forests if such lands were “located on the headwaters of navigable streams.”

The ANF was selected as a headwaters area for the Allegheny; same for the Monongahela National Forest.

“In 1921, Congress appropriated enough funds for the Forest Service to establish the Allegheny Purchase Unit,” Raymond Conarro wrote in an article published in the 1970s at the ANF’s 50th anniversary. “Late in the summer of 1921, the Forest Service made a survey of the Allegheny River drainage and settled on a boundary essentially the same as that of the present forest.”

Loren L. Bishop, supervisor of the Choctawhatchee National Forest, was transferred here to what was at first called the “Allegheny Purchase Unit” in Sept. 1921.

Before the government could buy the land, though, it had to figure out what land was available. Bishop set up a headquarters in Warren “and began to secure land proposals from the large landowners,” the largest of which was the Central Pennsylvania Lumber Company.

Tract 1 was 32,000 acres in total and came to the Forest Service from that company, which sold the property to the government for $2.50 per acre.

Those 32,000 acres were spread around the first in Warren, Elk and Forest counties. The same company also sold land to the ANF later in McKean County.

Bishop was able to secure commitments for 200,000 acres, Conarro’s article explained, and then went up the federal chain to say he was ready to start the survey and appraisal process.

Surveying started in Dec. 1921.

Bishop outlined what the goals were in those early days in a 1925 article.

“During the past 14 years the Government has been carrying forward a forest land purchase program that looks towards the establishment of a system of National Forests through the Eastern United States,” he wrote. “Twelve such Forests have been proclaimed and yearly their area is being extended through the acquisition of additional lands.”

He said there was a need to “find a locality that offered an opportunity to acquire, at reasonable prices, a large and well consolidated area of productive forest land.

“The aim of the Forest management plan will be the production of the greatest amount of material of the highest class in the shortest length of time,” he wrote. “The soil fertility and climatic conditions of the region are such as to result (in) very great recuperative capacity and high productivity.

That surveying, appraisal and purchase process culminated in September 1923 with this proclamation from President Calvin Coolidge (the text is available on the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation website).

“WHEREAS , certain lands within the State of Pennsylvania have been or may hereafter be acquired by the United States under authority of the Act of Congress approved March first, nineteen hundred and eleven (36 Stat., 961), entitled “An Act To enable any State to cooperate with any other State or States, or with the United States, for the protection of the watersheds of navigable streams, and to appoint a commission for the acquisition of lands for the purpose of conserving the navigability of navigable rivers”; and,

WHEREAS, it appears that the public good will be promoted by reserving and setting apart said lands as a public forest reservation, and the same have been designated by the Secretary of Agriculture as the Allegheny National Forest.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, Calvin Coolidge, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the power in me vested by section eleven of said Act and by section twenty-four of the Act of March three, eighteen hundred and ninety-one (26 Stat., 1103), entitled “An Act To repeal timber-culture laws and for other purposes,” do proclaim that there are hereby reserved and set apart as a public forest reservation all of said lands within the area shown as the Allegheny National Forest on the diagram attached hereto and made a part hereof, and that all lands therein which have been or may hereafter be acquired by the United States for National Forest purposes shall be permanently reserved and administered as part of the Allegheny National Forest.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

DONE in the City of Washington this twenty-fourth day of September, in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and twenty-three, and of the independence of the United States the one hundred and forty-eighth.