LOGAN — It's almost impossible to believe driving through pristine Logan Canyon today, but 100 years ago it was, basically, a dustbowl.
Denuded of vegetation by clear-cut logging, fires deliberately set to destroy the remnants of fallen trees and widespread overgrazing by many thousands of cows and sheep combined to create erosion and waste and water pollution on a massive scale.
"Grazed almost to extinction," observed government surveyor Albert Potter in 1902. "Barren of vegetation (especially around the river banks). It would be hard to find a seedling big enough to make a club to kill a snake."
The watershed couldn't absorb the water into underground aquifers for summer use, but rather ran it all off as soon as the snow melted, creating a serious water supply problem.
"It was almost like the district had been run over by locusts," said Scott Bushman, a ranger and historian at the Logan Ranger District.
Something had to give, and something did. One hundred years ago today, speaking from the pulpit of the Salt Lake LDS Tabernacle during a Western states tour, President Theodore Roosevelt set aside the mountains around Logan and Blacksmith Fork canyons as the Logan Forest Reserve.
Roosevelt made the proclamation at the behest of the Cache County Commission, which had become increasingly alarmed at the state of the valley's watershed.
It was the first step toward the creation of the Wasatch-Cache National Forest, which now stretches from the Idaho border down to Lone Peak (east of Sandy), and which includes the Uinta mountain range.
Conservation was rather an alien concept in the 19th century. It wasn't until 1891 that a law was passed allowing for forest reserves, and it wasn't until after the turn of the century when Roosevelt used the law to set aside vast tracts of land for managed use.
The change was dramatic. In 1901, 150,000 sheep grazed in the Logan River watershed. In 1903, that number had been reduced to 30,000.
"Sheep and cattle men, wood haulers, loggers and others making use of the forest at this time were a bit hard to manage at first," reported John Squires, a former barber who was named the first ranger of the Logan Forest Reserve. "Before the Forest Service was instigated these men had practically their own way, and they still wanted it."
Others objected as well. Consider this Feb. 18, 1902, excerpt from the Logan Journal reporting on a public meeting on the subject:
"Mr. Hobbs from Benson, then took the floor and indulged in a regular rip snorter of a talk. He thought the brush should be destroyed as it scratched his pants when he got out wood, and anyway, a timber reserve was a humbug. Prayer was the thing, just straight prayer and faith. The speaker, apparently, having forgotten that faith without works isn't up to much."
People hardly give a second thought to Utah's vaunted forest and mountain areas now, but if it hadn't been for an obscure county commission a century ago, things could have been quite different.
"It gives us an opportunity to reflect on what the national forests have accomplished, and what Logan Canyon would have been like if (the national forests) weren't there," said Utah State University historian Michael Johnson.
The Logan Ranger District, 1500 E. on U.S. 89 in Logan, is celebrating the centennial with an open house and cake cutting from 1:30 to 4:30 p.m. Historian Charles Peterson will present the history of the Wasatch-Cache National Forest at 7:30 tonight in the Logan LDS Tabernacle. Call 435-755-3620 for more information.
E-mail: aedwards@desnews.com