67 Facts About Gifford Pinchot

Gifford Pinchot was an American forester and politician.

Gifford Pinchot served as the fourth chief of the US Division of Forestry, as the first head of the United States Forest Service, and as the 28th governor of Pennsylvania.

Gifford Pinchot was a member of the Republican Party for most of his life, though he joined the Progressive Party for a brief period.

Gifford Pinchot enjoyed a close relationship with President Theodore Roosevelt, who shared Gifford Pinchot's views regarding the importance of conservation.

Gifford Pinchot supported Roosevelt's Progressive candidacy, but Roosevelt was defeated by Democrat Woodrow Wilson.

Gifford Pinchot returned to public office in 1920, becoming the head of the Pennsylvania's forestry division under Governor William Cameron Sproul.

Gifford Pinchot succeeded Sproul by winning the 1922 Pennsylvania gubernatorial election.

Gifford Pinchot won a second term as governor through a victory in the 1930 Pennsylvania gubernatorial election, and supported many of the New Deal policies of President Franklin D Roosevelt.

Gifford Pinchot retired from public life after his defeat in the 1938 Pennsylvania gubernatorial election, but remained active in the conservation movement until his death in 1946.

Gifford Pinchot was born in Simsbury, Connecticut on August 11,1865.

Gifford Pinchot was named for Hudson River School artist Sanford Robinson Gifford.

Gifford Pinchot had one younger brother, Amos, and one younger sister, Antoinette, who later married British diplomat Alan Johnstone.

Gifford Pinchot was educated at home until 1881, when he enrolled in Phillips Exeter Academy.

Gifford Pinchot traveled to Europe, where he met with leading European foresters such as Dietrich Brandis and Wilhelm Philipp Daniel Schlich, who suggested that Pinchot study the French forestry system.

Gifford Pinchot felt that additional training was unnecessary and what mattered was getting the profession of forestry started in America.

Gifford Pinchot landed his first professional forestry position in early 1892, when he became the manager of the forests at George Washington Vanderbilt II's Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina.

Gifford Pinchot worked at Biltmore until 1895, when he opened a consulting office in New York City.

Gifford Pinchot disagreed with the commission's final report, which advocated preventing US forest reserves from being used for any commercial purpose; Gifford Pinchot instead favored the development of a professional forestry service which would preside over limited commercial activities in forest reserves.

In 1897, Gifford Pinchot became a special forest agent for the United States Department of the Interior.

In 1898, Gifford Pinchot became the head of the Division of Forestry, which was part of the United States Department of Agriculture.

Gifford Pinchot is known for reforming the management and development of forests in the United States and for advocating the conservation of the nation's reserves by planned use and renewal.

Gifford Pinchot's approach set him apart from some other leading forestry experts, especially Bernhard E Fernow and Carl A Schenck.

Gifford Pinchot coined the term conservation ethic as applied to natural resources.

The Division of Forestry did not have direct control over the national forest reserves, which were instead assigned to the US Department of Interior, but Gifford Pinchot reached an arrangement with the Department of Interior and state agencies to work on reserves.

In 1900, Gifford Pinchot established the Society of American Foresters, an organization that helped bring credibility to the new profession of forestry, and was part of the broader professionalization movement underway in the United States at the turn of the twentieth century.

Pursuant to the goal of professionalization, the Gifford Pinchot family endowed a 2-year graduate-level School of Forestry at Yale University, which is known as the Forest School at the Yale School of the Environment.

In 1905, Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot convinced Congress to establish the United States Forest Service, an agency charged with overseeing the country's forest reserves.

Gifford Pinchot was generally opposed to preservation for the sake of wilderness or scenery, a fact perhaps best illustrated by the important support he offered to the damming of Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park.

Gifford Pinchot used the rhetoric of the market economy to disarm critics of efforts to expand the role of government: scientific management of forests and natural resources was profitable.

Gifford Pinchot's policies aroused opposition from ranchers, who opposed regulation of livestock grazing in public lands.

Gifford Pinchot continued to lead the Forest Service after Republican William Howard Taft succeeded Roosevelt in 1909, but did not retain the level of influence he had held under Roosevelt.

Taft mistrusted Gifford Pinchot and did not have patience for Gifford Pinchot operating with more authority than what Taft thought was appropriate.

Concerned about the possibility of fraud in the claim, and skeptical of Ballinger's commitment to conservation, Gifford Pinchot intervened in the dispute on behalf of Glavis.

Gifford Pinchot hand-picked William Greeley, the son of a Congregational minister, who finished at the top of that first Yale forestry graduating class of 1904, to be the Forest Service's Region 1 forester, with responsibility over 41 million acres in 22 National Forests in four western states.

Gifford Pinchot had always preached of a "working forest" for working people and small-scale logging at the edge, preservation at the core.

When Pinchot traveled west in 1937, to view those forests with Henry S Graves, what they saw "tore his heart out".

At Roosevelt's request, Gifford Pinchot met Roosevelt in Europe in 1910, where they discussed Gifford Pinchot's dismissal by Taft.

Gifford Pinchot continued to affiliate with the Progressives after the 1912 election, working to build the party in Pennsylvania.

Gifford Pinchot ran as the Progressive nominee in the 1914 US Senate election, but was defeated by incumbent Republican Senator Boies Penrose.

The Progressive Party collapsed after Roosevelt refused to run in the 1916 presidential election, and Gifford Pinchot subsequently re-joined the Republican Party.

Gifford Pinchot supported Republican Warren G Harding's successful campaign in the 1920 presidential election, but, despite some speculation that he would be appointed as Secretary of Agriculture, did not receive a position in Harding's administration.

The organization, which ceased operations in 1923, never attracted as many members as Gifford Pinchot initially hoped, but its efforts affected conservation-related legislation.

Later in the 1920s, Pinchot worked with Senator George W Norris to build a federal dam on the Tennessee River.

Gifford Pinchot had appointed William Greeley during his tenure at the Forest Service, and Greeley became chief of the Forest Service in 1920.

Gifford Pinchot had always preached of a "working forest" in which working people would engage in small-scale logging, while the forests would be preserved, and he was appalled by the large-scale logging undertaken by large syndicates.

Gifford Pinchot narrowly won the three-candidate Republican primary in Pennsylvania's 1922 gubernatorial election, and went on to defeat Democrat John A McSparran in the general election.

Gifford Pinchot focused on balancing the state budget; he inherited a $32 million deficit and left office with a $6.7 million surplus.

Gifford Pinchot emerged as a potential contender for the Republican nomination in the 1924 presidential election following the death of President Harding, as many progressive Republicans hoped Gifford Pinchot could unseat Harding's successor, Calvin Coolidge.

Constitutionally barred from seeking a second term, Gifford Pinchot ran in the 1926 Senate election in Pennsylvania.

Vare went on to defeat former Labor Secretary William Wilson in the general election, but in his capacity as governor Gifford Pinchot refused to certify the results of the election, claiming that Vare had illegally bought votes.

Gifford Pinchot prioritized fiscal conservatism and avoided major budget increases, but he sought ways to help the impoverished and unemployed.

Gifford Pinchot presided over the passage of a bill to provide state money for indigent care and initiated various infrastructure projects.

Gifford Pinchot cooperated with President Franklin Roosevelt, despite Roosevelt's being a Democrat and Prohibition opponent.

Four days before the sale of alcohol became legal in Pennsylvania again, Gifford Pinchot called the Pennsylvania General Assembly into special session to debate regulations regarding the manufacture and sale of alcohol.

Gifford Pinchot was a delegate to the first and second International Eugenics Congress, in 1912 and 1921, and a member of the advisory council of the American Eugenics Society, from 1925 to 1935.

Gifford Pinchot later sought the Republican nomination in the 1938 Pennsylvania gubernatorial election, running on a platform that favored the New Deal and opposed the influence of Republican leaders Joseph R Grundy and Joseph N Pew Jr.

Gifford Pinchot was defeated in the Republican primary by conservative former Lieutenant Governor Arthur James.

Out of public office, Pinchot continued his ultimately successful campaign to prevent the transfer of the Forest Service to the Department of the Interior, frequently sparring with Secretary of the Interior Harold L Ickes.

Gifford Pinchot published new editions of his manual on forestry and worked on his autobiography, Breaking New Ground, which was published shortly after his death.

Gifford Pinchot died on October 4,1946, aged 81, from leukemia.

Gifford Pinchot is interred at Milford Cemetery, Pike County, Pennsylvania.

Gifford Pinchot gave numerous speeches on behalf of women, organized labor, and other causes, and frequently served as a campaign surrogate for her husband.

Pinchot and his wife had one child, Gifford Bryce Pinchot, who was born in 1915.

The younger Gifford Pinchot later helped found the Natural Resources Defense Council, an organization similar to his father's National Conservation Association.

The house where Gifford Pinchot was born belonged to his grandfather, Captain Elisha Phelps, and is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Gifford Pinchot is commemorated in the scientific name of a species of Caribbean lizard, Anolis pinchoti.

In 1963, President John F Kennedy accepted the family's summer retreat house, Grey Towers National Historic Site, which the Pinchot family donated to the US Forest Service.