Gifford Pinchot

Gifford Pinchot

From A Sudden Light

p. 106

Gifford Pinchot, whose timber-baron family made their fortune clear-cutting almost the entire Adirondack Mountains, was the first chief of the United States Forest Service.  Together, Roosevelt and Pinchot worked as crusaders to preserve the beauty of a world which had existed long before them and yet which was being rapidly destroyed in the name of progress.  Both men came from terribly rich families, but they took a position of advocating for all people, not just the rich.  They believed that some things were too good for one person to own.

Gifford Pinchot was an interesting fellow.  He married a dead girl.  His fiancé, Laura Houghteling, died before they wed, so he went ahead and married her after she was dead, and then they lived together for a long time like that, one of them dead and one alive.  You think I’m joking.  I’m not.  It was the heyday of Spiritualism.  Everyone accepted the presence of ghosts and spirits as a normal part of their experiences.

More about Gifford Pinchot

• Gifford Pinchot: Early American Conservationist

  Born at his family’s summer home in Simsbury, Connecticut. Pinchot traveled abroad regularly with his parents and was educated at Phillips Exeter Academy and at Yale. He declined an opportunity to enter the family business and instead journeyed to France to pursue his passion — forestry. While studying in Europe, he became a convert to the practice of selective harvesting of forest resources. Pinchot returned to the United States in 1891, anxious to put his knowledge to practical use.

• The Pinchot Institute for Conservation

  The mission of the Pinchot Institute is to advance conservation and sustainable natural resource management by developing innovative, practical, and broadly-supported solutions to conservation challenges and opportunities.

• Belief in Spiritualism Helped Gifford Pinchot After Wife’s Early Death

  Gifford Pinchot carried on a close personal relationship with his wife, Laura, well after her untimely death.

• Grey Towers Pinchot Estate

  Rising above the small town of Milford in northeastern Pennsylvania is Grey Towers, a national historic site operated by the U.S. Forest Service. It is the family home of Gifford Pinchot, the first chief of the U.S. Forest Service and a two-term governor of the Keystone State.