All libraries will be closed Friday, March 29th and Sunday, March 31st for our Spring Holiday.

Preserving A Warehouse of Forestry History

Posted about 4 years ago by kathryn Coker
 0
 118

According to a 2005 survey, American institutions retain over 4 billion items like books, manuscripts, photographs, oral history, maps, sound recordings, and digital collections. Libraries own 63 percent of them. About 630 million items need immediate attention and care because they are deteriorating.  However, not all records merit permanent retention. The National Archives has determined that after appraising the federal government’s records “only about 3 percent are so important for legal or historical reasons that they are kept forever.” This is generally true on the state level.

First, we tagged records clearly not deemed of historical value. A flatbed truck was to carry those away. It seemed like every voucher from the 1930s to the 1970s had been saved! We knew this information was documented in other permanently valuable records. So, it was safe to destroy them. Other material earmarked for destruction included purchase orders, requisitions, travel reimbursements, equipment and supply order forms, and the decomposing skin of a rabbit or opossum—it was hard to tell which. We loaded the truck three times!

Then began the task of sorting through the containers of records we had set aside for further review–after the Forestry Commission sprayed them to minimize the bugs, removed wooden strips from records stored in wooden crates, and removed mud dauber nests. Fortunately, no mold was found.

We spent four days in that warehouse working with the records as best we could, given the bizarre conditions. We uncovered records about the Forestry Commission’s diverse programs including evidence its early administration of the state park system. There was proof that forest fire protective associations formed by groups of landowners and the commission had begun in 1928 (the first organized effort in South Carolina to combat forest fires) and the program’s evolution into a countywide system. The state’s reforestation program had started  also in 1929 with legislation authorizing the commission to establish nurseries. It expanded in 1961 to include seed orchards, the active forestry management program which offered direct assistance to farmers beginning in 193. All this history needed to be saved.  

We were concerned about documenting the commission’s numerous reorganizations and its financial administration. Short-lived or temporary programs such as the New Deal’s Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) warranted preservation. The CCC started land restoration by building extensive terraces and planting over 56 million tree seedlings. Many of the records in the warehouse verified that history. There were records of the CCC’s projects at the state parks and wayside parks and its county timber-type surveys. They had to be saved for posterity. The state’s current wide-ranging forests are thanks to the CCC’s ground-breaking conservation work and its imaginative planning. We worked closely together to review the schedules, matching them with the records stored there so long ago. We knew the permanent preservation of many of these records-some fragile-was critical to safeguarding the state’s forestry history and the lessons they provided for today’s conservation efforts. We had to check gaps in documentation and find out how the Forestry Commission’s records complimented other state agency’s records. For instance, the Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism had assumed administration of the state park system in 1967. In short, this was a comprehensive inventory, review, and appraisal of an agency with a broad range of programs, an agency whose diversified records fortunately dated from two years after its beginning in 1929 to the warehouse review.

Among these records were some real treasures — the master plans of early state parks and state forests, meeting minutes, bylaws, and correspondence of the early forestry protective associations and county forestry boards. There were even forestry rangers’ radio talks on topics ranging from soil conservation to the World War II timber conservation effort and forestry surveys complete with photographs! The CCC records included a set of rare timber-type county survey maps; camp task completion reports and correspondence; and a priceless photographic volume of projects like landscaping, excavation, building and bridge construction, transplanting trees, clearing nature trails, quarrying rock, sodding, erosion control, and dam preservation at selected parks.

Dusting ourselves of, we were ready to transport 220 cubic feet of records dating from the early 1930s to the mid-1970s to the state archives. There they were to be fumigated and then further screened. Some records, especially the fragile CCC photographic volume, needed immediate conservation attention. In the end, the personal annoyance of cobwebs, bugs, nests, a decomposing skin, strained eyes, and dirt was overshadowed by the significant and diverse records recovered just in time from that warehouse. It was truly an exceptional story in records preservation.

kathryn Coker

I am a retired Department of the Army civilian historian now working as a Library Associate in the Law Library.

Recent Posts

Categories

Write Your Comment