In Milford, on a hill above the town, stands a French-style stone castle called Grey Towers — and the man who grew up in it did as much to save the American wilderness as anyone who ever lived. His name was Gifford Pinchot, and if you love these woods you owe him a tip of the hat.
Pinchot was born to a wealthy family in eighteen sixty-five — the same year, as it happens, this valley's story of loss and rescue would echo a century later. His father had made the family fortune partly in the timber trade, cutting forests down, and grew troubled by what that was doing to the country. So he pointed young Gifford at a brand-new idea: instead of just cutting the forests until they were gone, could a person learn to manage them — to use them and keep them, both? There was no American school for it, so Pinchot went to Europe to study forestry, and came home the first trained American forester.
And then he changed the country. He convinced his friend President Theodore Roosevelt that the nation's forests were a treasure worth protecting, and together they set aside a stunning amount of it — a hundred and fifty million acres and more of national forest. Roosevelt made Pinchot the first chief of the US Forest Service, and Pinchot built it into the guardian of the woods it still is. His whole creed came down to a simple, radical idea: that the forests belong to everybody, and ought to be managed for the good of all the people, for the long haul — "the greatest good, for the greatest number, in the long run."
And it's a fitting thing to sit with right here in this valley — a place that was condemned and nearly drowned, and then saved and handed to the public forever, watched over from Milford by the very man who taught America that idea: that the wild land is worth keeping, for everybody. Go see Grey Towers if you've got the time. It's where the notion that saved places like this one grew up.
Photo: Pirie MacDonald · Public domain
