When the United States Government established the 500,000-acre Pisgah National Forest, a 6,500-acre site was set aside as a National Historic Site to commemorate the beginning of forestry conservation in the United States and to tell the story of America’s efforts to preserve its great forests. Today, that site is the home of the Cradle of Forestry and includes a reconstruction of the first forestry field school. The original Forestry School was established in 1898 by Dr. Carl A. Schenck, who had been hired by George W. Vanderbilt to establish the forest at his Biltmore estate. The original field school was in a community school and church in the Pink Beds community located deep in the Pisgah Forest. The community got its name from the blooms of its dense growth of rhododendron and mountain laurels.
Many of the old mountain cabins and farm homes within the Pink Beds community became the “campus” of the Biltmore Forest School. One building, a single-room community school and church, served as the forestry school’s classroom. Seven of the historic buildings nestled beside an old sawmill and a 1915 Climax logging locomotive have been preserved and are on display at the Cradle of Forestry site. The exhibit hall displays forest history through interactive displays including children’s games. There is an optional half hour film that tells the story of the birth of scientific forestry management. The exhibit hall includes a fire-fighting helicopter simulator that visitors can ride over a forest fire. The exhibits include an underground view of the animals and creatures that live under the forest floor. Don’t leave the site, however, without also taking the one mile walk into the late nineteenth and early twentieth century to experience Appalachian Mountain life as it would have been during the period. All along the Cradle’s Biltmore Campus Trail, visitors can interact with local crafters (woodsmen, quilters, basket makers, spinners, weavers, blacksmiths, and even toymakers) as they demonstrate the skills required for survival by the mountain residents. If you have worked up an appetite, you can return to the exhibit hall’s café and visit the gift shop before returning to Asheville.
Why was this spot in the middle of the forest so important that it earned the named the Cradle of Forestry and was designated a National Historic Site? To understand that answer, we need to step back in time to the early 20th century. The Appalachian Forest, like many of the country’s woodlands, were subject to devastating large-scale commercial exploitation. And deforestation for fuel was widespread throughout the nation. A concept of sustained management of woodlands was nonexistent in this country, but pioneering conservationists abroad were beginning to devise reforms for forest management. In 1889, George Vanderbilt hired a young European educated forester, Gifford Pinchot, to care for the vast woodlands around the Biltmore Estate. When Pinchot left to pursue his work at the national level, Vanderbilt hired a German forester, Dr. Carl Schenck, to replace him. It was Schenck, as noted above, who created the first school of forestry in America, the Biltmore Forestry School. The action of all three men, Vanderbilt, Pinchot, and Schenck, revolutionized the way we think of our woodlands and Schenck’s advent of formal forestry training ignited the national movement toward sustainable forest by creating the educational discipline of forest management in the United States.
The Cradle of Forestry Historic site is located on US Hwy. 276 in the Pisgah National Forest only about 30 miles from Applewood Manor. It is a four mile trip from the Blue Ridge Parkway near Milepost 411.