America's First Forest: Carl Schenck and the Asheville Experiment

- [Voiceover] Major Funding for America's First Forest: Carl Schenck and the Asheville Experiment is provided by: (soft piano playing) (soft instrumental music) - [Voiceover] "Great trees are interesting.

"So too are great men, "and the greatest of the great men "are those who are unconscious of their greatness."

Carl Alwin Schenck.

- [Voiceover] More than 50 years have elapsed since I stepped from the boat in New York.

During the first decade and a half of those years I saw and was an active participant in the slow burning of forestry in the United States.

Now, in my 83rd year, I am here setting down recollections, refreshed by diaries faithfully kept of experiences, problems and people that crowd my memory.

(instrumental music) After a ride of some three miles, we hitched our horses on top of the ridge and descended northward into the valley of Big Creek.

In which Pinchot had told me logging operations were to begin.

In the valley were the most beautiful trees I had ever seen.

Towering Tulip Trees with gigantic chestnuts.

Red Oaks, Basswoods, and Ash Trees at their feet.

I soon realized that Sherman Forestry, the variety in which I had grown up, was as impossible of success in the United States as was Indian or Swedish forestry.

A brand new sort of forestry was needed.

- [Voiceover] Over the last 400,080 million years, this Southern Appalachian Mountains have evolved into one of the most biologically diverse places on earth.

Including more than 100 native species of trees in a dynamic eco-system.

Under this beautiful and complex canopy in a forest owned by one of the riches men in America, the industrial revolution would meet the scientific revolution.

And here, at a critical time in history, an extraordinary group of men and their ideas converged forming a new and distinctly American approach to forestry.

One of these men was a German forester named Carl Schenck whose life and work would play a critical roll in this effort.

Helping to restore and preserve the forests of America while laying important stones in the foundation of the conservation movement.

(instrumental music) (axe hitting tree) (tree falling) In America during the second half of the 19th century as the industrial revolution was exploding demand for wood rose to unprecedented levels.

The Civil War and subsequent reconstruction, the building of industries, railroads, and American cities were decimating the forests of the Northeast and Midwest.

The forest resources of America were not limitless anymore.

Creating a public and political concern of a timber famine.

- In the 1880's people started to get worried about the timber itself, the fact of the timber and whether there would still be an infinite supply as they imagined it sometime in the future.

- The premise behind so much of the logging at that time was simply to get these logs out, don't worry about the erosion, don't worry about what's going to happen to the streams around there.

If you go back and look at some of the photographs in the early 20th century taken of the mountain tops you'll see that there's no replantings, what would come up would come up on its own.

So, it was seen as a very short-term cut and slash, we will leave and go on to another area.

- People's concept of the utilization of the forest was strictly exportation.

- It's all in the name of the almighty dollar and it needed to be stopped and it was stopped.

Largely because of these figures that came in and said, wait a minute, you know, there's more value than just taking it off and selling it and not replacing it.

- And that led many to figure out, or at least to begin to argue that there had to be a better way.

There had to be a better way to manage out natural resources so that the nation in 1880 could bequeath to those of the 1980's a continued supply of natural resources, a forest of timber, of grass, of water, of minerals.

- [Voiceover] The romantic appreciation of America's natural resources had been evolving through the works of writers, poets, and painters.

But in 1864 George Perkins Marsh's book Man and Nature introduced to America readers a new scientific approach to resource management.

Informing and inspiring the likes of John Muir, Theodore Roosevelt and others to begin advocating for change.

20 years later, a young man on his way to college was given Marsh's book by his father who encouraged him to become a forester.

His name was Gifford Pinchot and he would soon play a pivotal roll in American forestry.

But in the 1880's, the idea of forestry in the United States was still virtually unheard of.

- Well the notion that forestry was foreign to Americans is encapsulated by a story Gifford Pinchot used to tell about one of his first conversations about this new science when he came back from Europe having been trained there and a woman said, "Well, I understand you're a forester, "tell me about my rose garden."

And he realized that the gap between what he knew and what other people knew about what he knew was so immense that one of the central things that the late 19th and early 20th century foresters were gonna have to do is actually educate the public about the science that these people were espousing.

- [Voiceover] While Americans may not have understood what a forester was, they understood what the industrial revolution was doing to the forests of America.

But some of the wealth being made in the 19th century became the capital for change.

It came in the story of George Washington Vanderbilt, the grandson of Cornelius Vanderbilt a mogul of shipping and railroads.

- When George Vanderbilt became an adult, a young man, the family's wealth was so vast that there really was no expectation that he join the family business.

And he was able to indulge his love of art and architecture and history and literature and he very much became an intellectual.

- [Voiceover] George Vanderbilt largely avoided the lime-light his siblings enjoyed in their homes in New York and Newport Rhode Island that came along with their wealth.

When he accompanied his mother on a trip to North Carolina he found the city of Asheville and the mountains that surrounded it breath-taking and he knew that he had found the setting for his dream.

- By 1888 Asheville was a famous, prosperous lit-up city.

He and his mom stayed in the Battery Park Hotel brand-new, the most famous hotel in the south at the time.

At the same time, lots of people were coming down to Asheville and the whole area in order to stay in the city and then go hunting or hiking.

- I think he also loved the fact that there was a level of isolation.

He also really loved the natural beauty of this area and decided, on that trip, that this is where he wanted to build his country home.

- He was already inclined to set up something like a sportsman paradise.

And he saw in the land surrounding Pisgah Mountain endless acres primeval woodland.

And he thought he could do what many great men were doing at that time, which was be a man, you know, have great physical vigor and enjoy the wilderness, enjoy the finest aspects of society and also be a great capitalist.

It was going to be the self-contained, perfect world and he would help build it.

(upbeat music) - [Voiceover] But building it was an immense task.

In the relatively remote mountains of North Carolina it would become the largest and most costly home built in America under the direction of two of the finest architects of the day Richard Morris Hunt and Fredrick Law Olmsted.

- Richard Morris Hunt recommended that he create a home that was in a scale befitting the surrounding.

Which was, of course, are the vast mountains of western North Carolina.

So very soon the plans for George Vanderbilt's country home grew from a 10,000 square foot home to one that 175,000 square feet.

- [Voiceover] The home took five years to complete.

But during this time, the land surrounding it was also seeing an unprecedented rehabilitation.

As envisioned by one of the 19th century's most celebrated minds.

- George Valderbilt really loved the environment that he found in western North Carolina.

And, as he began acquiring land, he also recognized that there were a lot of challenges with what he was purchasing.

Some of the land was farm land, often overworked farm land, there were vast forests but the forests as well had been cut down with no effort to sustain the forest.

And therefore he set out to hire the best and he hired Fredrick Law Olmsted the foremost landscape architect in the United States.

- Vanderbilt knew that if anybody could help him to plan and bring this land back to its productive state and its beauty that it deserved it would be Olmsted.

- Fredrick Law Olmsted was really his mentor in helping him understand what he could do here at Biltmore to show people what was possible.

- [Voiceover] As a landscape architect, Olmsted had spent four decades creating public spaces that he felt were vitally important to the growing urban landscape of America.

His illustrious career included designing dozens of landmark projects around the country.

New York Central Park, San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, and the unprecedented White City at the 1893 World Colombian exposition in Chicago.

Many years later, Carl Schenck wrote of his deep affection and respect for Olmsted.

- [Voiceover] Olmsted was not merely the great authority on all landscapism and indeed the creator of landscape architecture in the United States, he was also the inspirer of American Forestry.

And he was more, he was the loveliest and loveable old man I have ever met.

- [Voiceover] But Olmsted had long dreamed of a venue where he could engage nature in a broader, more comprehensive way.

And George Vanderbilt needed just that.

- Olmsted saw a great opportunity at Biltmore and that is, to scientifically manage the forest in a way that they became sustainable.

And nobody else in this country was doing that.

- [Voiceover] He advised Vanderbilt that such land in Europe would be made a forest, but with a long-term view, crops of timber.

Knowing that Vanderbilt didn't have a profession he said, "that would be a suitable and dignified " business for you to engage in.

"And in the long run, it would be "a fair investment of your capital."

But Olmsted's real interest here was, he said, "This is your chance.

"This would be a great contribution " and service to the country."

To show how systematic managed forest could not only benefit the land but the land owner at the same time.

- [Voiceover] But Fredrick Law Olmsted was no forester.

In fact, there was in the United States only one American forester.

He was a young man who was only recently trained in Europe and whose family was well-known to both Olmsted and the Vanderbilts'.

The man they hired was 26 year old Gifford Pinchot.

- Gifford Pinchot was really excited about the job at Biltmore because he was convinced that to work with a private land owner was the first and best way to forestry onto the ground in the United States and once that was done then you could think about state forestry or nation state forestry.

- [Voiceover] Pinchot was looking to make his mark in forestry in America and what better place to do it than here at Biltmore.

- [Voiceover] Gifford Pinchot began by surveying and assessing the land.

Marking trees to harvest and trees to let grow as part of his emerging plan.

It was the country's first efforts towards a sustainable forest management plan.

- During Pinchot's few years here from 1892 to '95 the main thing he really wanted to prove to America was that you could cut trees and preserve the forest at the same time.

He felt that forestry properly done could perpetuate the forest forever while extracting timber products.

And so he was anxious to show that it could be profitable.

- No one had attempted in North America to try to rehabilitate these types of lands with trees.

There were very few forest conditions on this estate property because there were no forest.

There was abandoned agricultural land for the most part.

Where as, on the Pisgah track there were lots of forests.

- [Voiceover] During his first few years of work at Biltmore, Gifford Pinchot had initiated the complex project and created an abundance of public attention about forestry at Biltmore.

But he was making plans to take on other challenges.

- Biltmore was simply a weigh-station for him.

And he would move on and moved on fairly quickly.

But he needed somebody on the ground, the boots on the ground to do the work that he and Vanderbilt and Olmsted had imagined would take place at Biltmore.

And so he reached out to his German mentors and they all recommended Carl Schenck.

- [Voiceover] Born in 1868 in Darmstadt, Germany, Carl Alwin Schenck wanted to be a forester since he was a boy.

He was a good student.

Educated first in law and then, while working on his PhD in forestry, he toured the strictly managed forests of Europe.

He was a member of a student club that, by his own words, spent their time mostly in dueling, drinking, dancing, and other sports.

He had learned English from a girl he was in love with while he was in school.

Memorizing Shakespeare's King Richard the II to impress her.

He was described as daring and dynamic with an abundance of self-confidence.

- George Vanderbilt contacts Carl Schenck, extends an offer to him of $2,500 a year salary.

Plus some other incentives including the freedom to go back to Germany every two years to fulfill his military obligations.

Carl Schenck accepts the offer from George Vanderbilt, sets sail, he comes into New York Harbor right by the Statue of Liberty in the spring of 1895.

- [Voiceover] Gifford Pinchot met Carl Schenck in New York City before heading south and touring him through Vanderbilt's quickly expanding forest assets in North Carolina.

By then, they exceeded 100,000 acres primarily in an area known as the Pisgah Forest.

There, Schenck and Pinchot spent a week together exploring, hunting and fishing.

The two would become, for a time, good friends.

- [Voiceover] On this memorable trip, we took along our guns and some fishing tackle.

Most certainly no one meeting us on the road would have taken us for scientific foresters bent on serious work.

- Schenck and Pinchot, they're going out to the Pisgah Forest for the first time, they probably crested that hill on horseback and there below him is this valley full of Tulip Poplars and just nature at its finest.

Gifford Pinchot says, in effect, "this is your workplace "and the work is to cut these trees."

- [Voiceover] Carl Schenck would first meet his new employer George Vanderbilt not in the forest but at dinner with Gifford Pinchot.

- [Voiceover] This first evening with him is unforgettable.

Not for a moment was forestry discussed, much more interesting to both Vanderbilt and Pinchot was modern French literature of which both seemed to have a wide knowledge.

My own small literary accomplishments at this meeting condemned me to silence.

Vanderbilt was most kind to me personally.

- He was very anxious that Schenck get started rigth away.

So Schenck had to jump in feet first.

- Carl Schenck when he arrives at the Biltmore estate finds out very quickly he's in the deep end of the pool and he doesn't have swim fins.

He's dealing with landscape he's never seen, there are literally hundreds of tree species he's unfamiliar with, the Pisgah Forest is just one of the most biologically diverse areas in the world.

Carl Schenck is unfamiliar with the landscape, the trees, the people, democracy.

He is in way over his head.

- [Voiceover] From a German viewpoint the forest might have been designated chaos of trees belonging to a large number of species.

Many of them unknown to me.

- There were a lot of expectations that Vanderbilt and Olmsted built into the forestry project at Biltmore.

The first of which was, repair the land.

Project number two, how is this going to pay for itself?

How are we going to use this landscape to make the claim that forestry is actually a profession that can produce profit?

- George Vanderbilt charges Carl Schenck with make it happen, make it so.

So to do that in forestry you log.

Well, who's gonna buy the logs, who's gonna buy the material.

And I think part of what Pinchot and then ultimately Schenck wrestled with was exactly how to make this thing pay.

(inspiring music) - [Voiceover] Job one for Carl Schenck was to execute a project that Gifford Pinchot had been planning that George Vanderbilt was very excited about.

It was an extensive cutting of massive Tulip Poplar trees in the area of the Pisgah Forest known as Big Creek.

And then moving them down river to Vanderbilt's saw mill.

- Pinchot's vision was, float that stuff down the creeks, get it into the French Broad River, float it down to the mill because that's how his grandfather and great grandfather had logged northeastern Pennsylvania.

- Schenck was fairly suspicious that it would actually work as well as Pinchot indicated to Vanderbilt that it would.

But Vanderbilt was insistent that carry Big Creek Splash-Down operation through.

- When the logs shot down the creek and blew into Mills River and then ultimately into the French Broad they just blasted into farms, they took out bridges, I mean, it was a disaster.

- It cost them time, I think it was about 18 months from the time they started logging to the time they got those logs to the mill.

It cost them a lot of money because he had lawsuits that he had to deal with when the logs tore up some adjacent farmlands.

The beauty of the are was decimated.

I think Schenck even uses the word destroyed.

And you can sense that he's a bit heart-broken by what has happened there.

They took out a lot of trees, far more than he was comfortable with.

He thinks that this was a huge mistake and that it's a failure.

(soft music) - [Voiceover] Unique, unrivaled wonder trees had gone and had gone forever the primeval beauty of Big Creek had been destroyed.

The financial loss incurred by our brand of forestry amounted to many thousands of dollars.

- What's intriguing is how Schenck and Pinchot interpreted that event.

It's a really interesting moment in which these two men's perspectives get to play out around one forest and what happened there.

- [Voiceover] Yes, Pinchot was elated while I was utterly depressed and torn by a doubting conscience.

And to small expense, without sacrificing the finest trees, we might have obtained the same end.

- Gifford Pinchot views it as a success from the Silvicultural standpoint.

The trees that they had logged dropped their seeds and those seeds took and natural regeneration began.

- Schenck was concerned about that not being the primary method of forestry that he wanted to apply.

And I think that both he and Pinchot learned over time that forest types were different in different regions and the different species mix of trees so you had to do different treatments.

And that's really how American Silviculture was born through these experiments.

What Schenck learned at Big Creek is it would have been cheaper in the long run to build road and to do what he called permanent forestry than to construct these Splash Dams and then try to run the logs down to the mill that Vanderbilt owned.

- [Voiceover] As Schenck began reforesting the land around Biltmore, his first approach was to use seed plantings.

And this also proved unsuccessful in the unfamiliar terrain.

- And so he planted literally thousands of nuts and acorns right on the steep hillsides.

He thought, well this is going to work fine, you know, a couple of years we're gonna have a good stand of trees coming along.

But he didn't count on all of the rodents, the voles and field mice and the squirrels eating most of the seeds up.

- [Voiceover] My plantations were complete failures.

I was sorely disappointed and ashamed.

But Vanderbilt did not have a word of blame for me when he learned of the failures.

He was kind enough to realize that I had tried an experiment and he must have been confident that I would learn by my own failures.

- Carl Schenck learned that he was going to have to adapt or be fired.

This was a constant threat for him.

(upbeat instrumental music) - [Voiceover] Despite the early problems, scientific forestry in America had begun.

By 1897 Carl Schenck had Biltmore's forests providing wood for customers in Asheville and beyond.

And was reforesting the eroded and abused farmland through innovative forestry practices.

Supported by the vast nurseries at Biltmore, Schenck grew native seedlings practicing the science known as Silviculture.

The work on the enormous Pisgah Forest required hiring a crew of rangers.

Their work was the implementation of Schenck's methods which included many duties like the building of roads and the marking and logging of trees.

As the work progressed, Schenck was often deep in the Pisgah Forest in an area called the Pink Beds named for the abundance of Rhododendron there and its vibrant flower.

This brought him in close contact with many people who had been living on and working the land for generations.

- It was a slow awakening for him.

It was a slow process of adjusting to life in the mountains.

Life with moonshiners and subsistence farmers.

It was a very difficult transition, you had a very proud German military officer.

- There was one local whom he offended who took his hat off and stomped on it.

And Schenck said, these people, for being poor people that they're the damnedest most independent people I've ever met.

- [Voiceover] It dawned upon me that the real owner of the Pisgah Forest was not George W. Vanderbilt but these mountaineers who were using his property for farming, pasturing and hunting at their own pleasure.

- Vanderbilt closed off the roads in order to create his hunting preserve in the Pink Beds.

And Carl Schenck was walking around and he saw this man fishing in the Davidson River and he went up to the man and he said, "That is not permitted".

And the man said, "Go to hell!"

And Carl Schenck said, "I will not go to hell I will go to Brevard" Because Brevard is where the sheriff was and Schenck was going to tell the sheriff.

And Schenck, imagine this bravado, he got in the man's buggy and drove off.

And the man came running along with his revolver and pointed it at Schenck and said, "Pull out your gun!

"Pull out your gun!"

He said, "I don't have a gun."

And he got down and he backed off.

And then he went to the sheriff and the sheriff said, "We can't do anything about that.

"I'm afraid of that guy."

(laughing) - [Voiceover] In time, Schenck befriended and respected many of the locals that might have viewed him cautiously at the outset.

His school house became a church on Sunday with Schenck playing hymns on an organ he purchased for the church.

He also knew these relationships were important to his success.

- Carl Schenck recalls what his mentor Dietrich Brandis had advised him on which is essentially work with, if not win over, the local people to make forestry succeed.

- [Voiceover] News about Biltmore's forestry project continued to spread.

And Schenck was now being approached by many young men keen on getting in on the ground floor of a new career as a forester.

Initially he took them on as apprentices.

- It soon developed into a whole following that I guess that Schenck had.

They would either learn from this man who they recognized as very knowledgeable in forestry.

- [Voiceover] They accompanied me everywhere.

And they asked continually for explanations.

Why do you do this?

Why do you cut this tree and not the tree yonder?

From these and the thousands of other questions the idea of the Biltmore Forest School originated.

- [Voiceover] In September 1898 Carl Schenck officially opened the Biltmore Forest School.

The first forestry school in the United States.

He was convinced that teaching was perhaps the most important thing he could do as a forester in America.

- One of the things that Carl Schenck brought to America in addition to his knowledge, in addition to his passion, was his capacity to train students into think that forests and forestry mattered.

- [Voiceover] Schenck advertised in lumber magazines actively seeking the sons of lumbermen for his new school.

He knew these boys would be the next generation of timber landowners.

- [Voiceover] During the one-year course at Biltmore the student was expected to become familiar with all parts and passes of American forestry.

There were no vacations.

- [Voiceover] Winter classes were held on Biltmore estate close to Asheville.

But from early spring to late fall the school moved 20 miles into Pisgah's Forest's Pink Beds.

Here Schenck used an old settlement schoolhouse for lectures and rough cabins became housing for the students.

Tuition cost $200 a year with students providing their own horse and supplies.

- Schenck expected a lot out of them.

He was very demanding and he expected them to apply themselves.

And so the mornings were spent in serious lectures and classroom learning.

But at some point, after lunch, in the afternoon they would take to the woods.

And that's what the boys really got excited about.

- One of the challenges Carl Schenck faced as a teacher was forestry in America in the late 1800's early 1900's is a new science.

They're learning everything on the fly.

When he opened the school in 1898 there were no forestry manuals or textbooks written in English.

So, he would spend his evenings working sometimes dictating, sometimes handwriting out his lecture notes.

And ultimately he had those printed up and bound.

And these became the first textbooks for American forestry students.

- Dr. Schenck's philosophy with regard to the teaching in the school was that he felt that logging was very much a part of forestry just as much as Silviculture.

- He wanted those guys to understand not just logging techniques and forest conditions but they had to understand the forest economics.

His students will actually become kind of acolyte and carry forth the torch of knowledge.

- [Voiceover] I am a forester.

And as a forester I am meant to raise trees.

Partly by planting, partly by lending nature a helping hand.

I am a lumberman.

I cannot help being a lumberman.

Without lumbering no cash dividend is attainable from forest investments.

Therefore I cut the trees though I do not cut all the trees.

For the reason that it pays better not to cut all of them.

- [Voiceover] And I think the Biltmore School is a wonderful example of actually the American little schoolhouse in which you take people and you train them up to be something bigger and greater than what they were when they arrived.

- If you've ever yourself lived in a fraternity house in college or whatever, you know, boys are boys They had a good time.

They got to know each other.

And they often became close friends during their year to year and a half at the Biltmore Forest School.

And so they built, and Schenck encouraged, a comradery among the students and they kind of gained a reputation of liking to have a good time sometimes.

Singing and carrying on and sometimes got into a little trouble.

Occassionally got arrested and held overnight.

And I know on one occasion the sheriff came to visit Carl Schenck in Biltmore and, you know, he said, "I've had a number of complains about your students "keeping people awake at night."

And he says, "If you don't get that "under control I'm gonna come arrest you."

Schenck had this idea, well, to control them and to keep himself out of trouble, started these little events he called Singer Fests where they would have a couple of kegs and play a few games and have a good time.

in the air close by - But he also had this warmth to him.

Clearly had this warmth to him because these young men in their later years remembered him almost in an iconic way.

That he stood for things that were larger than himself, helped them see their role in a bigger universe, that they could never have imagined at 18 or 19 years old but Schenck saw in them the future that lay before them.

And I think any teacher that's able to do that is really a powerful figure in the imagination.

Carl Schenck, his students, his boys as he called them, loved him.

And so he wasn't just a teacher.

He was a mentor.

He was a guide.

He was a striking figure brought to the American educational scene that allowed him to be as successful as he was.

- I think he would look on his greatest accomplishment are the accomplishments of his students because they went on to be very successful and many different roles.

(instrumental music) - [Voiceover] As Vanderbilt's forester, Carl Schenck was tasked with a complex challenge.

Sustainably managing the forest for a profit in timber along with Vanderbilt's other interests and uses.

- There were a lot of dynamics going on on Vanderbilt properties.

The Vanderbilt always was weighing the advantages of developing the forestry business verses the advantages of having a kind of having a kind of a hunting preserve, a nature preserve which also could produce income.

- One of the reasons why Vanderbilt took on the project of the Pisgah Forest was he wanted a much grander playground for he and his friends to play on.

This leads to forest management with the idea of not just getting logs and lumber out but also to promote game and fishing.

- Vanderbilt was ahead of the game a bit and arguing that when you're managing forest you're managing ecosystems.

And those ecosystems have to be thought of as intact and integral, not just a part of one thing or another.

- [Voiceover] In 1901 Theodore Roosevelt became president of the United States.

During his administration forest conservation became a national movement.

It was led by Schenck's former boss, Gifford Pinchot whom Roosevelt appointed the first chief of the US forest service in 1905.

By then Pinchot no longer trusted the lumber industry to protect forests.

In time he would advocate for public control of all forests as the best way to prevent a timber famine.

Two years after Schenck opened his Biltmore Forest School Pinchot opened his own forestry school at Yale.

With ideas in sharp contrast to Schencks.

Pinchot actually pushed Vanderbilt to close Biltmore Forest School.

- Pinchot comes to distrust the style or approach of forest management that Carl Schenck and others who have learned in Germany bring to America.

And he says something about, when he establishes his own school of forestry, Pinchot says, "we want to train "American foresters in American "methods for American forests."

- They were very different kinds of human beings.

But they also believed in different philosophical approaches to their profession and to the politics that enveloped those professions.

- [Voiceover] For Schenck, the difference between the schools was simple.

- [Voiceover] My boys worked continuously in the woods while those at other schools saw wood only at their desks.

- Schenck's school was unique.

Not only was it a practicing school, but unlike Pinchot's, let's say, and to the chagrin of Pinchot, he put knowledge of lumbering above knowledge of Silviculture.

- Carl Schenck's friendship with Pinchot was very important to him and he felt a great betrayal when Pinchot sent a letter to George Vanderbilt asking Vanderbilt to shut down the Biltmore Forest School.

Vanderbilt put the letter in circular file and did nothing about it.

Schenck said nothing about it.

And they went on their way.

But Schenck recognized that they had come to a parting of the ways, he and Pinchot.

- [Voiceover] Despite Pinchot's efforts to discredit him, Schenck had become a leader in the forestry movement continuing to promote the position that good lumbering practices and good forest management went hand in hand.

As his reputation grew, and with Vanderbilt's consent, Schenck took on outside work.

- He consulted with a couple of universities.

He consulted with lumber companies.

He became one of the leading experts in the country.

He's somebody who understood or got to know American forest conditions more thoroughly than anybody else because he's working the land every day.

Gifford Pinchot, Henry Graves, Bernhard Fernow they're not working the land every day like Schenck did.

And so his knowledge far exceeded theirs.

- [Voiceover] Since 1895, Schenck had been laboring to execute the vision of Olmsted.

Creating a restored and working forest at Biltmore.

And in November 1908 he celebrated the 10th anniversary of the school.

Hosting an event called the Biltmore Forest Festival.

- It's all in the name.

It was a celebration.

It was a festival.

And he was celebrating the 10 or so years of work.

Not all successes, not all failures.

But he was willing to show all of it.

- Really what it is is the perfect public relations marketing statement to the world.

He takes the time to invite, by letter, every congressman and senator on Capital Hill.

He invites lumbermen, other politicians.

- [Voiceover] Ye Statesmen, ye Lumbermen, ye Engineers, ye Foresters, come and learn from the woods rather than from the books.

- Schenck went to a lot of effort to prepare a pamphlet for the Biltmore Forest Festival.

And in it it gave descriptions of the various activities, the successes and failures around the Pisgah and BIltmore Forest.

And then when the attendees were moved about by the students in wagons and carriages and ferried across rivers but they get out to these locations and there's signs out there describing what's happened.

But in both the pamphlet and the signs Schenck's personality comes through and this guys is really outgoing.

- I would compare it today to efforts in extension.

Extension has become in agriculture and forestry and other fields the sharing of new knowledge.

And certainly that was the perfect example of what the Forest Festival was about, is sharing new knowledge.

- He's kind of a prophet in the woods.

He's not a lone voice by any stretch but here he is.

He's preaching and trying to convert these folks who are attending.

Because most of them really had no idea what forest management was and what it looked like in reality.

- [Voiceover] The enthusiasm of the participants was not feigned.

For the first time in their lives they had seen real forestry in America.

- [Voiceover] Schenck was proud of his accomplishments in the forests of Biltmore.

But he knew that the teaching of his students would yield the best return on his investment.

Becoming the future leaders of forestry.

In all, nearly 400 men graduated from the school.

They found work not just as lumbermen but as state foresters and teachers and forest researchers.

Many went on to leadership positions in Pinchot's forest service.

At the festival, Schenck watched proudly as they sang their school songs including Schenck's Foresters.

Schenck's foresters The event was a success.

A Charlotte Newspaper editorial said this, "This meeting will eventually "revolutionize the whole country."

It was, as he would say later, the high point of his career as a forester.

Because, for Schenck, everything would soon change.

(soft music) - [Voiceover] Alas, hopes are like trees.

Most of them die young.

Few grow to maturity.

And very few bear seed to regenerate themselves within the lifetime of a man.

Saint Paul was right in perfecting love to hope.

For love gives satisfaction without fail.

Hope does not.

- [Voiceover] Despite the optimism that came out of the Biltmore Forest Festival, Vanderbilt finances were sliding and he was becoming increasingly impatient.

Waiting for his forests to produce a profit.

The school was supporting itself but the visionary forestry ideas were years, if not decades, ahead of the economics.

- [Voiceover] There was no market for lumber products.

Deeper and deeper went my department in the red.

For two years I had received no salary and my payroll was paid out of my own pocket.

- Dr. Schenck put a lot emphasis on his perception that forestry had to be profitable or people wouldn't do it.

And his greatest disappointment, I think, was that he didn't have time here on the Biltmore property to show that it could be profitable.

- [Voiceover] Vanderbilt began making plans to sell his forest holdings, asking Schenck to find a buyer for the Pisgah land to which Schenck gave no effort.

- [Voiceover] All my forestry, all my teaching, all my ambitions were shipwrecked if Pisgah Forest was sold.

I did not make the slightest attempt to find a purchaser for Pisgah Forest.

- [Voiceover] In April 1909, Carl Schenck resigned as forester of Biltmore.

This followed an embarrassing event when Biltmore's general manager, John C. Beatle, accused Schenck of lying to Vanderbilt.

Schenck became indignant, punching Beatle during the argument.

While a judge would fine Schenck only one dollar for the offense, it exposed other frustrations Vanderbilt was having with Schenck and he asked for his resignation.

- The Biltmore Forest School has to leave the estate in 1909.

Schenck is fired, the school and Schenck are kicked off the estate and so they literally take the show on the road.

- [Voiceover] Schenck continued to run the Biltmore Forest School as a school with no permanent home.

He continued teaching using the many forests of Europe and the wide diversity of American forests as his classroom.

- What a challenge for Schenck.

I mean, he's teaching all the things that they normally would have been doing behind a desk, on teroforma, now they're doing on a railroad car or on board ship as they're crossing the Atlantic Ocean.

- [Voiceover] The students came in direct eye to eye contact with the possibilities and impossibilities of American forestry.

And thus were better fitted to meet the problems and hardships facing them in their coming careers.

- [Voiceover] In 1913 with enrollment dropping and unable to offer professional degrees like college forestry schools could, Schenck brought his school's odyssey to an end.

- [Voiceover] It died when it had reached apex of it's career.

Be it man or tree or institution, it is better to die too early than too late.

- The Biltmore Forest School was the first forest school in the United States.

And that's crucial, absolutely crucial because if you think about the late 19 centuries ignorance about what forestry meant, what it could be, the fact that the first school existed at all, is a signal that things were starting to change.

The other signal that things were starting to change, is that some young men heard that call.

That there was a school at Biltmore where you could learn these skills, these skills that would lead to a new profession and that that new profession might have grand things to do with the remaking of the United States in its second century.

That's what Schenck offered.

And that impact is seen not only in the Pisgah National Forest but in so many other National Forests as well as the role and importance of private landowners and the conservation of America's natural resources.

- [Voiceover] In late 1913, Carl Schenck returned to Germany proud of his work and grateful for his time in America.

- [Voiceover] The best fortune I could have met with anywhere became mine in America.

Fine fields to work in.

Good health to enjoy.

Enough to live on.

And lots of friendship.

- [Voiceover] Earlier in 1911, congress had passed the Weeks Act.

A law inspired, in part, by Schenck's success in restoring George Vandebilt's forests.

With it the US Government could buy and manage land for national forests.

Soon afterward, George Vanderbilt began negotiations to sell Pisgah Forest.

But in 1914 George Vanderbilt unexpectedly died at age 51.

After this tragedy, his widow, Edith Vanderbilt, turned to one of Carl Schenck's first apprentices, Overton Price, to finish negotiating the sale of Pisgah Forest to the federal government.

In 1916, much of the forests and game lands that Schenck had managed became the core of the first National Forest established under the Weeks Act.

The Pisgah National Forest.

In years to come, the Bent Creek Experimental Forest was created on this land.

Another reminder of Carl Schenck's legacy as a founder of American forest research.

- I think the transfermation of Pisgah Forest under the ownership of the Vanderbilts to the Pisgah National Forest is symbolic of the larger effort on the part of the United States as a culture to begin to manage its resources publicly.

When the Vanderbilt family sold the land to the federal government, Vanderbilt's wife argued, rightly, that she saw this gift as a symbolic gesture emanating from her own husband's work, his conviction that the conservation of these landscapes was absolutely essential to western North Carolina.

But if you pull back from that, you recognize that as the first eastern Nation Forest it has much bigger implications.

It's not for nothing that this place is considered the cradle of forestry.

- [Voiceover] Back in Germany, Schenck was called to duty and seriously wounded in World War I.

After recovering, he returned to Darmstadt where he continued his work as a forester for the next 35 years in Europe and on occasion in the United States teaching, writing, and consulting.

During this time, Schenck's work did entail some involvement with the Third Reich's land use and economic policies.

But he later confirmed that he was never a member of the Nazi party.

And in fact, he was critical of Nazi forest policies.

And after the war, the allies consulted him about forest management during the rebuilding of Germany.

Through the many years and the two cataclysmic World Wars, Carl Schenck continued promoting his philosophy that private forest land ownership was critical to forest conservation.

He was never far from a forest and the forest was never far from his mind.

And neither were his boys.

- [Voiceover] Forestry is a good thing.

But love is better.

- [Voiceover] Schenck had stayed in close contact with a number of his former students who still respectfully called him Doc.

In a coordinated effort, they brought Schenck back to the United States in the early 1950's where he was recognized with honorary degrees and had forests dedicated in his name.

At the original classroom site in the Pink Beds they placed a huge boulder to commemorate the school.

It became known as the Plymouth Rock of Forestry.

- When Car Schenck comes back in the 1950's at the behest of his students it had to be so gratifying for him.

Because he was able to go and see some of the old sites he had worked.

He got to see his living legacy.

In a way, it's the Biltmore Forest Festival again.

He's with his students.

He is their proud papa.

He is their proud teacher.

Their proud mentor.

They're celebrating him.

He is celebrating them.

It had to be a great time for all.

- [Voiceover] Carl Schenck died in 1955 the same year he published his memoirs which detailed his fascinating story along with his enduring philosophies summed up with his sense of gratitude.

- [Voiceover] I, myself, have so much cause to be grateful that I feel I should be walking on my knees rather than on my feet.

(bell ringing) - [Teacher] They brought the train up here on this site and they would load it up with logs and they would run it down, down, down the mountain to the Brevard area right into the... - [Voiceover] In 1968 the federal government preserved the Biltmore Forest School's buildings and grounds as the Cradle of Forestry in America National Historic site in the Pisgah National Forest.

Where today, Schenck's vision and work is preserved and celebrated.

And the story of America's forest history is told to people of all ages.

(soft music) - Carl Schenck is a product of, and a man of, the 19th century Germany but he has a huge impact on 20th century America.

- Out of many great people that were the pioneers of forestry in America, Schenck stands out to me as one of the top figures of all.

- One aspect that I find so interesting is that people who come into this region believe that this is virgin forest.

But it's not.

I walk through these woods now with a sense of wonder that it has come back.

That it is as beautiful as it looks.

As a kind of miracle.

- I think we all have a tremendous emotional connection to trees and forest.

This is such a great resource.

It's natural.

It's organic.

And most importantly, trees are renewable.

They grow back.

And if you manage it properly, in a sustainable way, with conservation in mind, then they'll always be here.

And they'll always be giving us these wonderful gifts.

To understand how to do that properly you have to understand forest management.

And that's what Carl Schenck brought here to our shores and what he did in that first school of forestry.

- We don't see the handiwork of an earlier generation.

We might give it passing notice but we really need to notice it because that's our obligation also.

When people walk around this forest, whether they hike here or camp here, slide down the rocks, work their way through this landscape, at every step of the way they're encountering nature.

Some of which has been regenerated by the initiatives of those generations they know not.

They know nothing about.

And I think that's ultimately the greatest gift.

You've given to them beautiful working landscapes and you don't know where they came from.

- [Voiceover] To learn more about this topic, visit our website at AmericasFirstForest.org (instrumental music) - [Voiceover] Major Funding for America's First Forest: Carl Schenck and the Asheville Experiment is provided by: (soft piano playing)