For a few notable years throughout the early 20th century, Bates boasted a new academic department that was relatively unprecedented amongst its peers at the time. The Bates Forestry Department had a short lived and often forgotten reign at the school, but generated lasting implications that can still be traced to impact the community to date.
A century ago, Bates took possession of nearly 11,000 acres of timberland in York County, Maine, which soon became known as the Bates Forest. The Bates forest was a 17-year saga, which was eventually put to rest by the harms of the great depression, high taxes and overwhelmingly bad luck.
According to information collected from the Bates College Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library, the land was bequeathed to the college from Benjamin Clark Jordan. Jordan was a successful Maine lumberman who was prominent in the states’ lumber industry for over fourty years and died in 1912. In his will, Jordan allotted Bates 18 square miles of land, distributed throughout several parcels in Alfred, ME, a town about 60 miles southeast of Lewiston.
Jordan was a Freewill Baptist and Bates Trustee, well-revered at Bates and throughout the state of Maine. According to Jay Burns, he was referred to as “one of Maine’s most prominent and useful citizens” by Alfred Anthony, author of Bates College and its Background. Originally, Jordan intended for his daughter, Nellie Jordan, to steward the Bates Forest until her death. She honored this for about five years, before ultimately offering the land to Bates in December, 1917.
With this generous gift to Bates College came a few stipulations from Jordan, the biggest of which requested that Bates create a new academic department of forestry. At the time of the request, Bates was experiencing a rather productive period under the leadership of President George Colby Chase – the student body, faculty population, and number of buildings on campus were all flourishing.
So, with the support of Jordan, Bates became the only college in New England to offer a Bachelor of Science in Forestry. Over the years to follow, the college developed a four-year course of study with classes ranging from Elementary Forestry to Advanced Silviculture and Forest Physiology.
By 1921, the development of the forestry department was well underway, and for the very first time, four aspiring forestry majors spent the summer working in the Bates Forest. Their work consisted of orienteering, blazing boundaries, surveying, and studying tree growth rates.
In addition to this, a nursery was developed on the Bates Campus, which allowed for experimentation with seedlings and the development of an arboretum.
The department was supported primarily by Professor of Forestry Bernard Leete, and his peer Raymond Rendall, an experienced forester and WWI veteran. The two worked together to establish the Bates Forestry Department and perpetuate the health of the Bates Forest, a battle that was predominantly uphill and largely unsuccessful.
After the economic crash of 1922, the lumber industry began to struggle and the Bates Forest quickly felt the effects of this change, as the department no longer had the funds to support forest maintenance and facilitate classes.
Rendall and Leete quickly noted the forest land to be insufficient for timber merchandising and ultimately nonproductive. The land was described by Rendall as “understocked,” and they no longer had the monetary resources to change this. He explained that only one quarter of it could feasibly and productively support timber.
There are many speculations as to why this land was so underproductive, some assumed that it was over-lumbered in years past, whereas others believed it was excessively cut over.
In his 1921 annual report, Bates’ new president, Clifton Daggett Gray, reported that the department was hosting an annual deficit of $10,000 for the ten years to follow] (which in this time would translate to millions of dollars of net loss). After coming to this realization, the college quickly disbanded the department, so as to avoid the perpetuation of any further fiscal harms.
Bates never graduated a single forestry major, and the once blooming department was quickly reduced to a single course offering within the geology department.
Bates forest from this point focused on restoring the timberland and creating what they called a “demonstration forest”, a space for the public and for the value of “scientific management and conservation”
Rendall worked to establish a tree nursery within the forest. From this point, they were annually planting over 39,000 white pines, as well as working to maintain their health and extent throughout the forest. By 1927, the team reported that the amount of productive forest land had increased by 30%. Things were looking up for the Bates Forest.
All the while, the Maine legislature had just allowed tax relief to pay yearly tax on the land rather than the growing trees.
In 1930, just as things were looking up for the health of the Bates Forest, 460 acres of the forest land were swept by fire, instigating an estimated $5,000 worth of timber loss.
After 17 years of periodic loss and recovery, Bates asked the Maine Supreme Court to relieve their ownership of the Forest, deeming it a lost cause. In 1934, the land was sold under the Weeks Act to the government, though Nellie Jordan continued to receive annuity.
Today, 3,600 of the Bates Forest remains as public land, dignified as the Massabesic Experimental Forest. Similarly to its time as the Bates Forest, the Massabesic also has a rocky history, which included a massive fire that consumed 61,000 hectares of Southwest Maine and a significant amount of the forest’s timber. Since the fire, the UDSA’s Northern Research Station Laboratory has shifted focus regarding the Massabesic from stand management to artificial regeneration and forest genetics, which has become a long-term revitalization effort.
The remaining area is home to several unique ecological features, including one of the largest Atlantic white-cedar wetlands in New England. The Massabesic Experimental Forest is one of the largest blocks of public land in Southern Maine, and is popularly used for ecological research, public demonstration, and recreation.
To learn more about the Massabesic Experimental Forest and restoration efforts, visit https://research.fs.usda.gov/nrs/forestsandranges/locations/massabesic.
As for Bates’ involvement with forestry studies, the past, albeit brief and seemingly impactful, had resonant impacts on the college’s values and academic priorities. Bates has incorporated several forest-based course offerings across several majors, including Dendrology and the Natural History of Trees, a cross-listed Biology and Environmental Studies course.
In the fall of 2015, students of this course worked to create the Bates Canopy, an online resource that documents information regarding the history and ecology of the trees of the Bates Campus.
Since then, under the support of Professor Brett Huggett, Biology students have worked to further develop this website to catalog and highlight the beautiful trees of the Bates Campus. Down the line, students hope that more energy and time will be devoted to developing coursework surrounding trees, and forest management. “It would really diversify the earth sciences at Bates,” Haley Wilkins ‘25 expressed. “I know countless tree-loving people who would be really interested in these opportunities.”
