“Gifford Pinchot and the First Foresters”

Bibi Gaston

Author and Landscape Architect

Bibi Gaston is an author, landscape architect, and explorer. She joins us to talk about her new book, Gifford Pinchot and the First Foresters, published earlier in 2016. Her book tells the story of six tattered blue boxes were unearthed in the Library of Congress’s Pinchot Collection in Washington D.C. in 2005. Inside were 5,000 pages of letters describing the work of early resource conservation professionals. The letters were labeled simply “The Old Timers.” The letters, penned between the years 1937–1941 by the first class of American Forest Rangers to serve under President Theodore Roosevelt and first Chief of the U.S.Forest Service Gifford Pinchot, offered a mirror to the America we once were, and an optimistic guidebook for the road ahead.

These narratives tell of extreme hardship, fearless struggle, confrontations with cattlemen, miners, loggers, and the challenges of turning confrontations into cooperation and gratitude. It wasn’t an easy life by any means, but to these men and women, a life of service was the best life they could imagine. To a one, they were grateful for the chance to live a meaningful life in a time of struggle.