DUANE
Duane's take
The marker's the authority here, and I'm just the one bringin' it to life — so let's head out to Tyler County and see what happened at a little lake in the East Texas timberlands back in 1909. Now the lake goes by Twin Lakes today, sitting about two miles west-southwest of where you're rolling right now. But in 1909 it was called Mooney's Lake, and that spring it was anything but quiet.
Senior students from the Yale University School of Forestry — all the way from New Haven, Connecticut — had come down to the piney woods for their annual spring camp. They were there to study local timber management and lumber operations. East Texas was logging country, thick with longleaf and loblolly, and there was real work to be learned out here.
But then April arrived, and with it came a visitor who had a way of making any room — or any lakeshore — feel a little more consequential. Gifford Pinchot rode into that camp in April of 1909. Born in 1865, still living and working all the way to 1946, Pinchot was at that point the first chief forester of the United States — a post he'd held since 1895 and would hold until 1910.
He didn't come alone. With him were members of the newly appointed Yellow Pine Manufacturers Association Conservation Committee. That's foresters and lumbermen in the same traveling party, which in those days was not exactly a given.
Among them: Henry Solon Graves, director of the Yale Forest School himself, born 1871 and living until 1951. And a Texas lumberman named John Lewis Thompson, born 1875, who'd be part of this industry until his death in 1938. Now here's a detail worth turning over — both Pinchot and Thompson had studied forestry in Europe.
Two men, one from the government side and one from the lumber side, shaped by the same Old World tradition of managing forests rather than just consuming them. And there's one more thread you ought to know before we get to what happened at that camp. The Yale Forestry School itself — the very institution whose students were camped out at Mooney's Lake — had been founded in 1900 by Gifford Pinchot's own family.
So when he walked into that spring camp, he wasn't just a federal official paying a courtesy call. He was, in a sense, coming home to something his family had built. What happened at that meeting, Pinchot himself remarked, was the first accord among foresters and lumbermen.
The first time those two camps — the ones who wanted to protect the trees and the ones who made their living cutting them — came to something like an agreement. The group proposed that pine manufacturers get behind federal and state legislation to discourage clear cutting, to make sure forest fires got prevented, and to revise how forest lands were taxed. Not abolish logging.
Reform it. Now, that meeting didn't change everything overnight. But six years later, the state of Texas prescribed that forestry courses be taught at its A&M College, and established a forestry agency of its own.
That agency would later be renamed the Texas Forest Service, in 1926. All of it traced back, in some way, to a spring camp on a lake in Tyler County, a handshake across the divide between conservation and commerce, and a man named Pinchot who showed up in April with something to say. This marker was placed in 1986, Texas's sesquicentennial year — one hundred and fifty years after the state was born, and not a bad moment to remember the people who made sure there'd still be trees to tell stories under.
What the marker says
In 1909 at Mooney's Lake, now known as Twin Lakes (2 mi. WSW), senior students from the Yale University (New Haven, Ct.) School of Forestry met for their annual spring camp to study local timber management and lumber operations. In April that year the camp was visited by Gifford Pinchot (1865-1946), who served as the first chief forester of the U. S. from 1895 to 1910. He was accompanied by members of the newly appointed Yellow Pine Manufacturers Assn. Conservation Committee, including Yale Forest School director Henry Solon Graves (1871-1951), and Texas lumberman John Lewis Thompson (1875-1938). Both Pinchot and Thompson had studied forestry in Europe and advocated the adoption of conservation in American forest lands. Pinchot, whose family founded the Yale Forestry School in 1900, remarked that this committee meeting was the first accord among foresters and lumbermen. The group proposed that pine manufacturers support federal and state legislation to discourage clear cutting, assure forest fire prevention, and revise taxation of forest lands. Six years later the state of Texas prescribed that forestry courses be taught at its A & M College, and established a forestry agency, renamed the Texas Forest Service in 1926. Texas sesquicentennial 1836-1986