The making of a national forest: The contest over the West Michigan cutover, 1888--1943

In 1888, Michigan was the leading lumber producer in the United States and West Michigan contributed substantially to that title. But by the end of the century, West Michigan's pineries were exhausted. Yet it was not until 1933, that the National Forest Reservation Commission established the Manistee National Forest Purchase Unit. This dissertation explores those intervening years and the cultural, political, economic, and environmental reasons that forty years passed before a lasting land-use policy was put into place.;The initial contest over land use in the cutover was between agrarians and foresters who both argued that the land needed to be productive. Agrarians believed that the plow should follow the axe, so the land would be best used by agricultural settlement. However, environmental and economic factors limited farming in Northern Michigan. Foresters countered that reforesting the most marginal cutover lands was the best way to overcome the problems faced by farmers. Despite the claim that they did not oppose agriculture, foresters could not generate the political and cultural support to push through their programs on a large scale. Each side had support at different levels of society, but lacked the requisite political power to implement its vision in the cutover.;The stalemate between these opposing views was broken with the rise of tourism in the 1920s. Tourism provided a new way for the land to be productive that did not extract its resources. It also met the needs of locals for a strong tax base while answering the state's desire for economic growth. This development tipped the balance in favor of reforestation, which offered aesthetic improvements that would make the region attractive to tourists.;Despite resolving the contestation over what should happen to the cutover, widespread reforestation was not implemented until the federal government provided the necessary funding as part of the New Deal in the 1930s. In an effort to control more land for Civilian Conservation Corps work projects, President Franklin Roosevelt arranged for money to purchase marginal land that would be managed by the United States Forest Service. Purchases commenced in West Michigan and led to the creation of the Manistee National Forest. The conversion of the land from forest to farm back to forest again demonstrates not only the process of state expansion in the early-twentieth century, but also the development of a land ethic amongst local residents.