Adaptation of Tracklaying Tractors for Forest Road and Trail Construction

Abstract

I t is staggering to contemplate how much forested acreage came under U.S. Forest Service management during the first two decades of the twentieth century. The major problem in managing these lands was the general lack of a transportation network, although the Forest Service did inherit a system of game and Indian trails connected with a few wagon roads. Transportation was slow to improve; in a classic 1920 essay, "Piute Forestry or the Fallacy of Light Burning;' William B.Greeley admitted that accessibility was one of the Forest Service'smajor problems in suppressing wildfires in National Forests,'