ALDERFER: This is Bill Alderfer, of the State Historical Society, seated here
with Mr. Fred Trenk, and we're going to discuss this afternoon the various aspects of natural resource history that Mr. Trenk has been interested and instrumental in accomplishing here in Wisconsin. First of all, I'm going to ask Mr. Trenk to give us a little biographical sketch of himself, and then we'll launch into a topic-by-topic discussion of the forestry work that he has been doing for the last thirty or forty years or so. Well, Mr. Trenk, you just take 'er away now, and-- 00:01:00TRENK: I'll be glad to, Mr. Alderfer. I was born in Dubuque, Iowa, in 1900, but
while still a youngster, a few months old, my folks moved to a farm on the bluffs above the Mississippi directly across from Dubuque. As a youngster, it was always a great thrill, to me, to watch the steamboats going up and down the river and particularly to watch the log rafts coming down. I think I can correctly say that I watched the last log raft that ever came down the Mississippi River, at least as far as Dubuque. The Standard Lumber Company had its largest saw mill at Dubuque, and that was the last saw mill on the Mississippi River in 1911, when the Standard Lumber Company burned to the ground. We watched the fire from our farm home on the bluffs during the night. 00:02:00It was one of the most spectacular things one could ever watch, and you might be interested to know that the famous shot tower, which at that time was a lookout tower right in the lumber yard grounds, was on fire, and literally it was an enormous Roman candle. We watched it four miles away, and we could see clearly that the shot tower was burning up. Well, that was the last that my young sister and I ever had an opportunity to see the log rafts go down, because that was the last mill. Later on, about high school age, we moved back to the city of Dubuque. I took forestry training at Iowa State College, and after finishing my work at Iowa State, I was employed by the University of Maryland as extension forester. I spent nearly seven years in that position, and on January 1, 1931, Professor Hatch brought me to Wisconsin as the extension forester here at the 00:03:00University of Wisconsin. It certainly has been an interesting thirty years that I've been here. Wisconsin was just on the threshold of some of the most outstanding legislative achievements and administrative achievements in forestry that I think any state has experienced. It pioneered in the forest crop law, it pioneered in the rural zoning law. It pioneered in some shelter belt planting, in mechanical tree planting, in community and school forests. Many of those things took part in their initial stages immediately early in the 1930s. Since then, it has been really interesting to see the developments.ALDERFER: Now, you mention the shelter belt project that the state of Wisconsin
undertook. I wonder if you could give us some of the history of that project?TRENK: There is a bit of history back of that project, because it begins at a
00:04:00time when the dust storms were of considerable importance throughout the western half of the United States, and that included Wisconsin. I'm sure many have heard of the terms the Okies and the Arkies. They were the people from Oklahoma and Arkansas that were literally blasted by winds out of their homes and had to move elsewhere. Well, Wisconsin got the backlash of some of those terrific dust storms in 1934, but we didn't come in on the governmental aids that those western states got. You may remember that in 1934, after those wind storms, President Roosevelt had Congress enact legislation that set up the National Western Shelter Belt Project, and the government poured millions and millions of dollars into it. Now, that same year, 1934, Wisconsin set up its own shelter 00:05:00belt project, but it did not have any federal aids. I think it might be interesting to name some of the people who were key figures in setting up a ten-year shelter belt project, which has really made some marked impacts on the landscape of central Wisconsin.In September of 1934, in the little village of Almond, there was a committee
meeting that was attended by K.L. Hatch, Director of Extension, Mr. Harley MacKenzie, Director of the Conservation Department; Chris Christiansen, Dean of the College of Agriculture; and the county agricultural committees and the county agricultural agents from the central counties of Waushara, Portage, Waupaca. Of course, my office, the Extension Forestry Office, was represented. This group drew up what you might call a shelter belt compact, if you want to 00:06:00give it that term. In it, the Conservation Department committed itself to furnish an unlimited number of trees for a ten-year period for planting on sandy soil in central Wisconsin, provided these trees would be planted in shelter belts, that is in rows, three or four rows wide across the open stretches of farmland, and that these trees would be distributed under the supervision of the extension service, which also would be responsible for seeing that they were properly cared for. And so in the winter of 1934-35, we began holding meetings in almost every crossroads of the central sandy area taking orders for free shelter belt trees. The spring of '35 saw about three or four hundred thousand planted. That was rather small compared to what we ultimately were able to 00:07:00plant, but it took some time to sell the idea.Now I might review briefly the services that the conservation department gave in
addition to furnishing trees. They furnished trucks, to truck the trees to what we called depots or distribution centers. There were five or six of these distribution centers in every one of those counties. Farmers who had ordered trees were notified of the exact hour and day and place that their trees would be ready for distribution, and farmers came for them. In addition to handing out the trees, at every one of these distribution centers, we conducted a demonstration on the proper method of setting trees, how to keep the roots moist, how to tap the soil, and discussion as to what kind of cultivation was needed later. This took, of course, a great deal of time over that ten-year 00:08:00period. We repeated this annually, and when you consider that at the end of the ten-year period, there were something like three thousand miles of shelter belts planted by farmers in those seven central counties without any federal aid or supplementary payment, we consider that we did a great event.Now, I can point out one rather thrilling experience I had a few years ago. I
was flying in a North Central plane to Wausau, and there was about six inches of snow on the ground. After we had flown north from the Columbia County line, these shelter belts began to show up as they would with just that little snow on the ground. By the time we were over Waushara County, as far as one could see both east and west, you could spot those shelter belts quarter mile after quarter mile, and running in their north-south direction generally. I got a tremendous thrill out of seeing that. 00:09:00ALDERFER: [inaudible] Now, naturally in any new program, there are bound to be a
few or many objections. Can you recite some of the arguments that were presented as to why this particular program shouldn't be carried out?TRENK: We didn't have too much objection. I will say we had one advantage to
start with. My predecessor, Mr. Fred Wilson, back in the late '20s, had established a few demonstration plots distributed geographically on the sandy soils to show what a shelter belt might do. These areas that in seven or eight year period had reached the size that they did prove their effectiveness in those dust storms. We had a real demonstration to fall back on, and that was very helpful. There were those who were reluctant at first to, say, give up that much land to plant trees, and they were afraid too, because as the old saying 00:10:00goes, the trees would sap the soil, you wouldn't be able to farm anywhere near the trees. The reason, I think, for their misconception of sapping soil, as they said, was the belts of oak trees, native oak that was growing in that area. It's well known that oak does take a great deal of moisture and fertility out of the soil, and sometimes for 30, 40, 50 feet from the edge of an oak shelter belt, there won't be much agricultural development, they would be very poor crops. But we were able to demonstrate that under these older shelter belts, they were able to grow very good alfalfa and potatoes right up to the tips of the pine limbs. When they saw that it was that good, and when they also saw that during the wintertime the snow lay on the fields that had been protected by these belts, when otherwise without them the snow would have blown away in that open area, 00:11:00they realized more moisture was being trapped and going into the soil, and so the work went on very fine.Now, one thing I think we should say is that at the end of 1945, when the free
granting of trees ended and people from then on had to pay, there was a very little drop in the number of trees ordered. And two years later, they were ordering more than they ever had before, even though we had gone through a war period, and there had been severe shortages in labor. To me, the fact that farmers during that war period felt it was as vital as anything to get out and plant shelter belt trees was a great testimony to their conviction that it was the smart thing to do.ALDERFER: I see. Did the improvement in tree-planting equipment have any
particular effect on the shelter belt movement here in the state of Wisconsin?TRENK: No, it didn't. Ninety percent or more of all the trees that went into the
00:12:00shelter belt were hand planted.ALDERFER: Hand planted!
TRENK: This was before we had mechanized tree planting, and it was all hard work.
ALDERFER: That's a back-breaking job, all right.
TRENK: Well, it is on some soil. Fortunately, on sand, it isn't quite as rough.
ALDERFER: On sand it isn't too bad, no. What has the University Extension done,
in as far as mechanizing the tree planting operations now?TRENK: Well, that's a second phase of work that has been expanded considerably
in recent years, and I'm very happy to say that the University of Wisconsin, primarily the Agricultural Engineering Department, had a key position in laying the ground work for the mechanization of tree planting.In 1943, '44, we were facing some surplus tree problems at the nursery, because
00:13:00of the shortage of manpower. We knew that it would just be too bad to plow under those trees, and I had often felt there must be a better way, even those shelter belts in sandy soil, putting in trees the way the pharaohs might have done it. So with the help of Professor Bruen of the Ag Engineering Department, and with the encouragement of Professor Duffee, Mr. Bruen and I set to work on some basic designs, whereby we might mechanize tree planting. This moved along very well to the point where we had a workable machine.Now, I might say, and this is an interesting footnote, in 1943 trying to buy
farm machinery was a major enterprise, even secondhand. We had agreed on a tree-planting machine that would use the tractor-trailer plow. I think farmers know what we're talking about there. It was one of these one or two bottom plows that could be pulled behind a tractor and had a gear hoist. But I spent the 00:14:00better part of two weeks going to secondhand dealers in southern Wisconsin, even trying to find those kinds of plows during the war, but we wound up with thirteen of them. The Conservation Department agreed, and here was fine help from the Department, had agreed that it would build these machines--that is, forest protection headquarters at Tomahawk, where they had heavy machinery to work with. And in turn, the machines were to be offered principally to the counties to be used as custom planting machines in central Wisconsin. Well, in that spring, actually, in the spring of '44, we had 15 machines in operation, and we had no surplus tree problems, because one machine with two men would plant in one day what it would ordinarily take a farmer's son a week or ten days to plant. So, you see, that was cut down. 00:15:00It is interesting to note, too, that we publicized our first formal
demonstration of mechanical tree planting quite widely in May of 1944. Our main "unveiling," shall we say, was held in Wood County on some Wood County property, and we invited foresters from other states to see Wisconsin's venture into this. There were foresters from Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan who came and studied what we had done. We realized, of course, that this was only preliminary. Certainly there would be improvements, and these men saw where they could improve on it. But there are now four principal types of tree-planting machines on the market in the United States. There are thousands of machines that have been built from one or the other of these four designs, and every one of them 00:16:00traces to visits made by those visiting foresters studying our Wisconsin design. I don't accuse any of them of stealing ideas. They improved on ours. But we had demonstrated what had not been demonstrated before, that you could use certain principles in mechanical tree planting that would work even on wild, unplowed lands. There was one planting machine on the market in the '40s, but it was limited to use on land that was completely tilled, like you were ready to plant tobacco. And of course, we were working on many lands that were far from so well tilled.Well, there's quite a history back of the development of mechanical tree
planting right here in Wisconsin. One Wisconsin company took over the basic Wisconsin design, and then others have used the designs that these other foresters had worked. All in all, mechanical tree planting has really 00:17:00revolutionized manmade forests, shall we say, since the 1940s.ALDERFER: We now have many lumber companies themselves, or wood products
companies that have extensive reservations of forests in the state. Do they use the mechanical planters, too?TRENK: Principally, the paper mills. Just about all the paper mills, if they
have land in the state, have machines. Now, I will say that there are two groups who have been very, very helpful in expanding the use of machines on a loan basis. The paper mills, and also the bankers. We have a Wisconsin Farmers Bankers Committee, I believe they call it, to work with farmers. Quite a few banks have bought machines and turned them over to the agricultural extension agent offices to assign to the farmers. The bankers aren't going to worry about 00:18:00that, but the county agents and the district foresters have been assigned these machines to make available, so that it really has contributed a good deal. Of course, Trees for Tomorrow in northern Wisconsin, that association of paper mills, has bought several machines, and they do some custom planting. In addition, since it is now widely accepted, many individuals have bought machines on their own and offer custom services. In other words, we have custom tree planting from people who are skilled in it, and make machines available with their own services. They go along with the machines and furnish the power. You might say its comparable, I suppose, to the old threshing rig, where they went from farm to farm, and that's what these people do with their planting machines.There's one interesting thing that has been added to our machines. It shows
00:19:00where research has come in. We did not fully appreciate how much damage was being done to our plantations by these white grubs. They're, of course, the May beetles in the larva form. Where there were oak trees nearby, sometimes our plantations year by year would be losing ten to fifteen percent of their trees, of their planted trees. Even when they were four or five years old, it would die and we knew something was wrong. Well, the entomology research people at the University, in cooperation with one of the paper mills, came up with a design of an automatic unit for shooting Aldrin or other insecticides into the planting trench, just as the tree went in. After that, in those places were grubs were problems, we really had it licked. So today, many of the tree planting machines in the state have this supplementary equipment for the control of soil insects. This simply saturates the planting zone for each tree automatically, and that's 00:20:00good for four or five years, and by that time, the tree is able to take care of itself. So, you see, there's been a constant improvement on these mechanical devices, as there are on practically all mechanical devices. Compare this old Ford downstairs in the museum with the Ford today.ALDERFER: Now, what would be the next topic that we should move on to?
TRENK: Well, I think that there's an interesting story in the development of
school forests in Wisconsin. There is another first for Wisconsin. Dean Russell back in the '20s had spent some time in Australia and New Zealand, and had learned of a school forest movement among the public schools down under. He was quite impressed, and when he came back, he called into his office the man who many Wisconsin people knew well for many years, Mr. Wakelin McNeel, so well known as "Ranger Mac." Mr. McNeel was assistant state club leader, and he was 00:21:00particularly interested in conservation work, so Dean Russell said, "How about interesting some of our local school boards in setting up forests that are owned outright by the schools as outdoor laboratories?" Mr. McNeel, who was always eager to use the out-of-doors as a laboratory, willingly gave his help to this idea. In fact, he organized it, and he appealed to some of the lumber companies up north to cooperate in making lands available. The first three school forests anywhere in the country were set up in Forest County in April of 1928. Mr. Callahan, a very avid supporter of conservation teaching and a good friend of Ranger Mac, attended the three demonstrations or dedications of those forests, 00:22:00the first of which was Laona in Forest County.It's interesting to note, incidentally, that the same principal, Mr. Robinson,
tended that school for thirty years, I mean served as principal for thirty years, and was keenly interested in the development of the school forest over that thirty-year period. In 1958, the 30th anniversary of the dedication of the Laona School Forest, and the year in which Mr. Robinson retired, we had some special ceremonies marking the 30th anniversary. We had some men there who, at this 30th anniversary, who had been lads and helped plant the trees. One man, who is now in the forestry work of the Conservation Department in a very responsible position, came over to the services and reported his impressions as 00:23:00a third or fourth grader when the trees were planted. Well, that idea really caught on. Today, we have about 350 or 360 school forests in the state. They're increasing in number every year. I will say this, that there is a good deal more, shall we say, caution and discretion used by school boards in accepting lands. Some of these lands that the lumber companies gave were not the best for a youngster to try to plant trees on. There have been some memorable gifts given by individuals who are interested in the school forest movement, and from some of those gifts, which was land well adapted to work by youngsters, we have had some marvelous school forests. I might mention, if we have time here, one that I would like to consider because there is a little history, or historical 00:24:00character involved. It's the school forest near Bancroft, between Bancroft and Plainfield.ALDERFER: What county is that?
TRENK: That is in Portage County.
ALDERFER: Portage County.
TRENK: Many trout fishermen in the state of Wisconsin, I'm sure, know about
Frost flies. Now, we're not advertising any particular trout flies, but there's a history back of the making of those trout flies by the Frost brothers. Their aunt, Aunt Carrie Frost, had taught them as little youngsters how to tie flies, and as they grew older they went into business. Carrie Frost was born and reared on a farm in southern Portage County right along Highway 51. Later on, the farm was abandoned. I mean, the buildings were left standing, but the people moved to town. The land, however, still was used for farming. The county agent felt that 00:25:00here was a wonderful opportunity for a school forest that might be named by Carrie Frost herself, since she was well up in years, and he had planned to suggest to her that she might give this 100 acres to the local school. Then suddenly she passed away, and the county agent felt that here had been a great opportunity missed. A few weeks later, he went to the two nephews, who had benefitted by her teaching of tying flies, and suggested that since they were the heirs, maybe they would like to give this to the local school as a memorial to their Aunt Carrie. Well, the county agent says that he was given a very cold reception, and shortly was shown the door, and he felt quite depressed that he had not had the opportunity, didn't use the opportunity when he had it to talk to Miss Frost personally. A couple weeks later, the nephews came to the county 00:26:00agent, Harry Noble, and said, "you know, that was a rather rude reception we gave you, but we've done some thinking since then, and we have come to the conclusion that our Aunt Carrie would have agreed that there could be no finer memorial than to have the old farm taken over by the school youngsters and planted into a school forest." Well, just a few years ago, they planted the last of the trees on that 100 acres. It is a marvelous forest today, and teachers, as well as students, come to the forest to study the different ages of plantation. The trees are planted in strips different years, parallel strips, so literally it's possible to walk from one end of that forest to the other and see how trees grow, to see what they look like at five years of age, ten years of age, fifteen years of age, when they begin to set cones, when they begin literally to form a 00:27:00forest soil. The most marvelous outdoor laboratory that could be imagined, and I'm sure those nephews are very proud today that this is named after their aunt. Well, now, that's one of the examples, I could cite others, of how the school forest idea has caught on, and has meant much to those who are in the instruction profession of providing laboratories for opportunities to do things as well as to study.ALDERFER: Has there ever been any idea that these school forests might help
someday to alleviate any of the financial problems that school districts have? In other words, the trees will get old, and does there come a time when a tree should be taken down in the forest?TRENK: Well, I should say that the management, including the cutting of these
forests, is definitely in the picture. You have asked a question that several 00:28:00school boards could answer in the affirmative of how they have contributed materially at critical times. Now, here is just an example of how one worked. There is a school forest up in Oneida County that belonged to a school district that was in the process of building a gymnasium with other facilities, and instruction rooms. In other words, they were putting in a new building but there was some special equipment they wanted for the gym. They found that they were two thousand dollars short. They had borrowed all they could. They used all the money that was available, but to include what they wanted, it was going to take two thousand dollars more. Now, they had an eighty acre forest that incidentally had not been planted by man, it was one of those that they had gotten from the lumber company. But after thirty years of intensive protection against forest fire, it had a marvelous second growth on it. So they turned to this school forest, they got volunteer labor from the men and the boys in the community. On 00:29:00weekends, they had some ten or fifteen power chainsaws buzzing away, and I don't know how many tractors and teams in there. And in less than a month, they had delivered to the paper mill two thousand dollars' worth of pulp wood, and so they achieved their aim. That's one example of where they have had income that was really very important.There's another angle I might mention just in passing, that some of these school
forests are memorial forests to notable men in military service, or otherwise in the state. Of course, we talked about Carrie Frost, as a memorial to her, but we have, for instance, a Richard Bong, a memorial forest in Forest County which was dedicated a few years ago, just a couple years after the Major had been killed. One of the trees, it was replanted by his family, who were present at this school forest, was a tree that he as a 4-H Club youngster had planted at the 00:30:00home farm. The community up around there near Maple are very conscious of the importance of school forests, and are proud they have identified their forest with the memorable history of Richard Bong.ALDERFER: Now we're going again here, and Mr. Trenk is going to tell us
something about the community--was it the community forest that we were going to talk about now? What is this?TRENK: The community forests are really an addition, you might say, to the
concept of school forests. School forests are a community forest, but they are owned by school districts. Now, there are other public units of government--governmental units, I suppose we should say--that are unable by 00:31:00Wisconsin law to own and manage forests for themselves, or can appropriate money or even borrow money. Towns, villages, cities, counties, as well as school districts can go into the forestry business literally. Some states don't allow local governmental units to do that, but Wisconsin does. Now, we have nearly a hundred of those types of forests in the state, and some of them have shown some very profitable income.But there is one little story here that I might relate, because it shows how
this community forest law enabled Dunn County to solve a very baffling financial problem in reference to roads. Down in the Chippewa River, there was a large 00:32:00island that had about a dozen farmers on it, and there was one bridge from the mainland to the island. Well, as you know, the Chippewa River floods many, many times in the course of a few years, several times even in one year, and after each of those floods, it was virtually a job of rebuilding the main bridge to the island. It was certainly expensive, and the county had to pay for it.Someone raised the idea, "why doesn't the county just buy that island and move
those people off and rip out the bridge, and we're through with it for good?" Well, then the question came up, and as I recall it was presented to the district attorney, "what authority has the county to buy that island? We're not going into farm business. What right have we to buy it?" As I say, I believe the story was that the district attorney said, well, here's the law that says the county can go into forestry business, so they said, that's the answer. We will 00:33:00make that island a county forest.Now it was good timing here, and the land was bought up just before the war. The
farmers, I think, in general were willing enough to get off the island. They knew that, in a few of those floods, their very houses had been threatened. They sold the buildings, and the county sold the buildings after the farmers had moved, sold them at public auction. As I say during the war lumber was pretty scarce, and some of those buildings brought much more than the county had even anticipated. The point is, that in the sale of those buildings, and in the money that was realized in the first two or three years after the county had taken out 00:34:00the bridge, the county had realized enough to liquidate the entire investment on buying the whole island.Now, the question is, did the county keep faith with its premise that they were
buying it for a forest? They certainly did. Most of the island, of course, had been farm and pasture, and it was ideally suited to machine planting. Here the machines had just come available, and so the county went in on a grand scale of planting trees. Now, interesting enough, getting the trees to the island with the bridge out was not the easiest thing. Getting the tractor to the island with the planting machines and with the planting crews, they probably wished they had a bridge at that time, but by luck and good seamanship, they got the trees, and the men, and the machinery to the island.Today that island, and I think it's something over two thousand acres (I don't
00:35:00remember the exact acreage), is entirely planted up. I've been there once or twice since, and it is a marvelous place to see. There is a high water table, of course, on that island, so the trees, even though the soil is a bit sandy, always has enough water, come sunshine and drought. I don't think it's going to be so many years from now that Dunn County is going to realize sustained income from its investment in forestry. So that really is a unique community forest.I might mention one other that gives Wisconsin something of a national record.
The city of Superior owns a forest. There is a long story as to how the city got that from Douglas County, which we won't go into because it is a legal matter. But anyhow, it was a settlement of a claim by the city against the county, and the county gave almost five thousand acres of county land to the city of Superior. 00:36:00Now the record angle of it is this. That is the largest city forest in the
United States that's entirely within the city limits. Now there are other cities that have bigger city forests, like Seattle for its watershed, but that's miles and miles away and in another county. The Superior city forest is entirely within the city limits. Incidentally, of course, it has high recreational value too, so it's a dual purpose forest there.ALDERFER: We were talking a few days ago, Mr. Trenk, about the forest zoning up
in our northern counties. Do I mean forest zoning?TRENK: Well, it's zoning for forestry and agriculture.
ALDERFER: Zoning for forestry and agriculture. You were talking then about some
of the problems that you men who went up there in convincing the farmers and 00:37:00other settlers as to the value of this particular legal situation, and you were telling me some of the settlements from out-of-state that were up there. Can you go into any of these experiences that you had with some of the--?TRENK: Well, we can review that briefly. Zoning, the power of a county to
prohibit certain uses on lands, stems back to a law that was passed in 1927 or 1929, giving counties the power to zone for forestry, recreation, and agriculture, as well as for other urban purposes. In 1932, 1933, in the early days of the Depression, there was quite a movement from some of the major urban areas like Chicago and the Twin Cities, even Milwaukee, to cheap land. Here was 00:38:00land up north, and there were still those land companies that were perfectly willing to profit by that situation. Sure, they would sell land and you know when a person could see he could buy 40 acres for $300, that looked like a great bargain. He would promise that he would grow enough on that land so that he could keep his family together in body and soul. There were many settlers that moved in under those circumstances. Well, of course, the local government soon found themselves facing some real situations. Often this land was away from a road, and it would mean that there would have to be a road built in. Invariably those families had children, and the state law says that the local government shall be responsible for education, and there's no waiving that. If there is any relief, the local government has to take that and they soon found many of those cases were relief cases.So they began asking themselves, now just what are we in for? Is there any way
00:39:00that we can protect ourselves against settlement, where it's going to cost us far more than we will ever get back in taxes? That question was put to the extension service. We called attention to the law which authorized the counties to pass rural zoning ordinances that could actually prohibit settlement.Now the thing that, as I recall, really triggered the whole event for the first
county, which was Oneida County, happened in early 1932 when a young man, probably in his early thirties, came into the superintendent of schools. He had come from an urban area, I don't remember where, but he had moved onto a piece of land that was quite some ways from a road, and a very long ways from a school. He announced to the superintendent of schools, "I have moved here, I am 00:40:00a settler here now, and several things must happen. My wife happens to be a school teacher. Now, you can hire her as the local school teacher to teach our youngsters in our home, or you can hire me to haul them to the nearest school and built a road for them." Well, you can imagine the reaction of the superintendent of schools, and he called his county land committee together, and the district attorney, and a few others together, and they decided that maybe they had really better take a serious look at this zoning authorization.Now, we might say that from this extreme pressure, and there were others that
bordered on it, the counties were really forced into passing ordinances. It took three or four years before all the educational and legal work was completed for 00:41:00those northern counties, but by 1936, five million acres had been zoned against year-round settlement. The principal alternate use was recreation and forestry, which did not involve year-round settlement, and of course, that has saved those counties untold quantities. Nobody knows how much money it saved them. It's a good thing to have that on the books today. Now, there are over four and a half million acres of public forest on those lands. And you say, well, it was going to be forest anyhow. When you get just a few scattered settlers back there and some of them clearing land, they were also a fire hazard. The counties in the forestry interest were willing to see that something was done not to have land clearing going on back in those forests, because land clearing generally meant 00:42:00burning brush. On a windy day--ALDERFER: Away it would go.
TRENK: Away it would go. There was a whole chain of events that led up to this
zoning ordinance.ALDERFER: Well, what do you say? Should we call 'er quits?