Thursday, July 11, 1946
Last Friday, I took a day’s trip through and over a part of Monongahela National Forest and there is a lot which could be written about it. To begin with, the national forest in the East, as we know it, had its beginning away back in the big flood of 1907 which cost Pittsburgh many millions of dollars. Inquiry was made of the office of the National Forest Service in Washington – what about it all?
The head forest man was then young Gifford Pinchot. He later became Governor of Pennsylvania. Then, he had a small office, with few assistants. He sent word back to Pittsburgh that heavy rains had fallen out on the mountains at the headwaters of the Alleghany to the north and also on the mountains of the head streams of the Monongahela to the south. These said mountains were barren and bare in many places from indiscriminate cutting of timber and uncontrolled periodic forest fires. That the floods would come down bigger and bigger and their general water flow smaller and smaller, unless the forest cover of the mountains was grown back and great retaining flood prevention dams were built…
So, in the beginning here in the East, national forests were created to help in flood control, and incidentally grow timber for coming generations.
Now the enlarged forests, public owned, have as their objective not only conservation of water, soil and timber for present and future, but in addition take in consideration the necessity of supplying places and means of recreation – hunting and fishing, if you please.
As for game, it is well known that a forest may be so good in the production of timber as to starve game out – biological desert, I believe is the high sounding book term to use. This is especially true when it comes to game fowls, like grouse, quail and turkeys. These delight in glades and open grassy places in the woods…
Typhoid Clinics
Typhoid immunization clinics will be held at the following places during the month of July:
Minnehaha Springs School.
Booster shots for typhoid vaccine will be given at the following places:
Mt. Lebanon School, Hillsboro School, Durbin School.
BEARS
Last Tuesday, Fred Galford and some of his children went strawberry picking up between Big and Little Spruce Knobs, on Williams River. Expecting bears to be in the strawberry patch, Fred took his pack of three faithful bear dogs; likewise his gun. Sure enough there had been bear in the strawberries. The dogs wanted to go so much that Fred turned them loose.
It was not long before the dogs bayed the bear in a flat on the head of Camp Five Branch. However, the bear did not tree there, and away went bear and dogs, with Fred following, to Black Mountain. Bear and dogs fought up the mountain. Just under the first railroad grade, the bear treed high up in a big birch.
Fred slipped around to the upper side of the tree so that if the bear winded him and fell out, it would go down the mountain.
The bear did wind Mr. Galford and started to fall out. He then shot at it, and it did not fall out. The three dogs all ran in and grabbed the bear by the hams, but it soon loosened the dogs. Fred could have shot the bear on the ground, but his gun fouled.
Then followed a grand bear and dog fight. They went down grade to the laurel patch at the Red Hole of Williams River, across the river and up to a pine flat, then back down to the river and up Black Mountain again with Fred trying to keep up with it all.
About halfway up Black Mountain the dogs put the bear up another big birch tree. This time, Fred got above the tree and got in a good shot. The bear slid down the tree and fought the dogs to a stand still. It hit one dog in the neck, sinking a claw into the dog’s windpipe, but he is all right again.
Fred could not stand to see the big black brute do his dogs that way, so he goes in until he could get a fair sight behind the shoulder without endangering a dog and let him have it. The bear let go of the tree and tumbled over a six foot rock.
Mr. Galford says he sure had one job skinning this bear. It was nice and fat, and would weigh about 400 pounds. He got five gallons of bear oil out of it. He saved most of the meat as he likes bear meat, especially when he dresses it himself. This is his fifty-first bear.
WEDDINGS
Martin – Taylor
Announcement is made of the marriage of Miss Ethel D. Taylor, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Russell W. Taylor, of Greenbank, to Captain James T. Martin, of Rocky Mount, North Carolina, in Carson City, Nevada, on Tuesday, May 7, 1946. After spending a short honeymoon at the famous Lake Tahoe in Northern California, Lt. Martin returned to Camp Stoneman and Captain Martin to Fort Lewis, Washington…
VanReenen – Kellison
Mr. and Mrs. Clarence Kellison, of Marlinton, announce the marriage of their daughter, Norma June, to Mr. Carl C. VanReenen, of Warren Ohio, son of the late Mr. and Mrs. William M. VanReenen, of Onoto, on Thursday, July 4, 1946, at the Edray Parsonage with the Rev. R. H. Skaggs officiating…