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• Forest Reserves
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• R5 War Efforts
• Stanislaus Bridges in Movie
• Tribute to a Tidy Ranger
• Women During the War

In January 1907, there was considerable opposition to a Presidential proclamation that reserved thousands of acres of prime Douglas-fir timberlands in northern Washington State. The local press, chambers of commerce, and the Washington State congressional delegation protested that the reserve would cause undue hardship on residents by taking away homestead and "prime" agricultural lands (the land, in fact, was not agricultural, abut heavily forested) as well as impeding the future development of the State.

After considerable pressure, Pinchot and President Roosevelt relented by, by saying that the reserve had been a "clerical error." Soon thereafter, Senator Charles W. Fulton of Oregon, who had been implicated in the land frauds in that State, introduced an amendment to the annual agricultural appropriations bill.

This amendment, the Fulton Amendment, prohibited the President from creating any additional forest reserves in the six Western States of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado; took away the President's power to proclaim reserves, established under the Forest Reserve (creative) Act of 1891; and gave Congress alone the authority to establish reserves. However, before this bill could be signed into law on March 7, 1907, Gifford Pinchot and the President came up with a plan.

On the eve of the bill's signing, Chief Forester Pinchot and his assistant Arthur C. Ringland used a heavy blue pencil to draw many new forest reserves on maps. As soon as the map was finished and a proclamation written, the President signed the paper to establish another forest reserve. On March 1st and 2nd, Roosevelt established 17 new or combined forest reserves containing over 16 million acres in these six Western States. These have since been referred to as the "Midnight Reserves."

The President defended his actions by claiming that he had saved vast tracts of timber from falling into the hands of the "lumber syndicate." The Fulton amendment, at the suggestion of Pinchot, also changed the name of the "forest reserves" to "national forests" to make it clear that the forests were to be used and not preserved.