Presentation: Learn how the White Mountain National Forest was Born

Join us on Tuesday September 16th at 7PM, 105 Eastport Hall, UM-Bangor Campus for a showing of the film “The People’s Forest: The Story of the White Mountain National Forest”. David Huntley’s film is about one of the greatest environmental comeback stories in American history. In the period from 1880 to 1911, the White Mountains region was ground zero for a vast ecological disaster caused by intensive, indiscriminate logging and a rash of major forest fires. The destruction of New Hampshire’s forests sparked one of the nation’s first grassroots conservation movements and set-off a decades-long national battle over the fate of eastern forestlands.

The film relates the story of the devastating floods that struck southern New Hampshire and other New England states in 1895 and 1896. The flooding closed down mills and other factories that depended on waterways like the Merrimack River for vital hydroelectric power. Thousands of people were put out of work as a result. Many blamed the flooding on the effects of deforestation in the White Mountains. The disasters led to the dawning of a new environmental consciousness in New England and throughout the country: people began to realize that natural systems like forests, watersheds, and rivers were inter-related over long distances and in complex, little-understood ways. FMI email