A look inside the history and the politics of the Jackson Demonstration State Forest

THE JACKSON DEMONSTRATION State Forest was controversial from the day it was purchased in 1947 from the old Caspar Lumber Company. The government taking over private property can create suspicion, especially in those red scare days.

At the time, big lumber corporations from the Deep South and Pacific Northwest were clearcutting newly purchased lands in California. The old-growth timber resource of Mendocino County was almost entirely harvested. Replantings were either not done or were done in a nonscientific way, threatening the ecological and economic forest and causing alarm in universities, science and government.