Listed in Arkansas Register of Historic Places on 08/03/22

SUMMARY

The Yale Camp Historic District is being nominated to the Arkansas Register of Historic Places with local significance under Criterion A for its associations with the lumber industry and forestry management in Ashley County.  Built in 1946, the Yale Camp allowed students from Yale University’s Forest Management program, which was the country’s premier Forestry Management program, to have a hands-on educational experience with the Crossett Lumber Company in Arkansas, a program that continued until its closure in 1966.  However, the legacy of the Yale Camp program was that it aided in the development of forestry management as a profession in the South, something that really didn’t exist prior to the Yale Camp program’s establishment.

Due to its relocation to the former Crossland Zoo location in the Crossett City Park in early 2022, the Yale Camp Historic District is also being nominated to the Arkansas Register of Historic Places under Criteria Consideration B as a property that is removed from its original location.

ELABORATION

HISTORY OF THE PROPERTY

European settlement in Ashley County is believed to have begun in the late eighteenth century at Long View on the Saline River, which was near the route connecting Arkansas Post and Monroe in Louisiana.  Goodspeed notes that “Of this settlement there were two families – Fogle and Buleet – who claimed to have located there in 1769 or 1770.  Some years later came Can, and these, with their grown-up children, constituted for perhaps three-quarters of a century the white people of the present Ashley County.”  The next settlers to arrive in the area were Isaac and Thomas Denson who came from Mississippi and located at Fountain Hill, and they were the first of many settlers who began to populate the area.[1]

After the Densons came to the area, the influx of other settlers was apparently pretty fast since Ashley County was created just a couple of years later on November 30, 1848.  At the same time, the settlement of Hamburg was chosen as the county seat, and by 1850 the county had a population of 2,058 people.  The initial county and circuit court sessions were held at the home of Isaac Denson, and “he was allowed the sum of $5 for each session.”[2]

Even though the county was created in 1848, and the population grew relatively quickly early on – Goodspeed noted that it was approximately 14,000 in 1890 – the establishment of towns in the county was relatively slow.  By the time that Goodspeed’s book was published in 1890, Hamburg “was the largest town in Ashley County, both in population and the amount of business transacted,” and its population was 1,000.  It was noted that the town of second-most importance in the county was Poplar Bluff, which had a population of about 200 and had been incorporated in January 1889.  With respect to the rest of the county, Goodspeed reported that “Other small places with the county have a store or two, but can not be designated towns.”[3]

From the earliest days of Ashley County’s existence, it was known that the area’s timber resources were a valuable commodity, and Goodspeed noted that the people, “Aware of the natural advantages their county holds in its soil, climate and timber, they seek for men and money to develop these interests, and to all who may come, seeking homes, offer the hospitality for which the Southerner is ever noted.”[4]

The development of the Crossett Lumber Company, the biggest lumber enterprise in the area, and the City of Crossett go hand in hand.  Edward Savage Crossett, Charles W. Gates, and Dr. John W. Watzek, who were all from Davenport, Iowa, founded the Crossett Lumber Company on May 16, 1899.  Gates was named president, Crossett was named vice-president, and Watzek was named treasurer of the company’s board of directors, and the first action that the company carried out was to purchase 47,000 acres of land from the Michigan investment firm of Hovey and McCracken.  Initially, the company grew slowly as railroad connections were being built, and no timber was actually sold until 1902.[5]

The Crossett Lumber Company built its first mill in May 1899, and it had two band mills, dry kilns, a planer mill, and other equipment that was used for the smoothing and distribution lumber.  A second mill was built in 1905, and it allowed the company to produce 84 million board feet of lumber per year.  The company also built a paper mill, silo, and chemical companies to aid in the company developing new products and being more competitive in the market place.[6]

As the Crossett Lumber Company built its plant, it also built houses, a school, and a church for the company’s workers and their families.  The area developed by the Crossett Lumber Company was incorporated on April 22, 1903, as the City of Crossett.  After the town was incorporated, the Company continued to develop the community – soon electricity was available and a Methodist church was dedicated in 1904.  The town’s newspaper, the Crossett Observer was begun in 1906, and telephone service was introduced in Crossett in 1907.[7]

By the 1930s, the importance of Crossett and the Crossett Lumber Company in the lumber industry was noted in The WPA Guide to 1930s Arkansas.  The guide reported that:

            Between Hamburg and Strong US 82 weaves through a region heavily grown with shortleaf and loblolly pine.  The Crossett Lumber Company insures a perpetual timber supply here by planned cutting and replanting.  Fire hazard is reduced by frequent corridors cut through the forest and kept clear of underbrush.

            The entire town of CROSSETT, 56.6 m. (159 alt., 4,891 pop.), is owned by the Crossett Lumber Company.  Most of the houses are alike, four- and five-room frame structures painted steel gray and surrounded by picket fences.  All phases of life – commercial, educational, social, and religious – are controlled by the company; ministers and barbers as well as sawmill workers draw company salaries.

            The huge CROSSETT LUMBER COMPANY MILL, in the center of town, turns out a hundred million board feet of pine a year, besides a quantity of hardwood.  …  Logs are hauled by truck to central stations in the forests, from which they are taken by rail to the mill.  A pioneer in the practice of scientific reforestation, the company has gained national distinction for its methods.  Each summer the senior class of the Yale School of Forestry comes to Crossett for a six-week field-study course.[8]

During the 1940s, the Crossett Lumber Company supplied lumber to the U.S. government during World War II, and the company also worked on expanding the city of Crossett, and many of the town’s residents also began to own rather than rent their homes.  However, in May 1960, a proposed sale of the Crossett Lumber Company to Union Bag and Paper was announced.  Although the sale of the company fell through, the company was eventually sold to the Georgia-Pacific Company on April 18, 1962.[9]

During the early twentieth century, it was standard to practice to use a strategy that was known as “cut-and-get-out,” which was a practice that resulted in the creation of many acres of useless land.  However, the land was perfect for growing pine, and in order to help Crossett Lumber Company practice more sustainable forestry practices, the company hired Yale School of Forestry graduate W.K. Williams in 1926.  Williams advocated ceasing the practice of cutting down trees as fast as they grew; rather, the healthiest trees were left in an area in order to repopulate the soil.  These new techniques kept forests alive rather than destroying them, and it was a very progressive practice for American forestry.  As has been noted, “Soon, the United States Forest Research Station was founded, and Crossett Lumber Company was tackling and solving problems in the 1930s that would not be regarded as environmental issues until the 1970s.”[10]

Although Williams was hired by the Crossett Lumber Company in 1926, the relationship between Yale and the Crossett Lumber Company actually began in 1912.  The relationship with Yale resulted in many improved manufacturing and forestry practices, and many other lumber companies, in addition to the Crossett lumber Company, hired many foresters trained at Yale as it became apparent that there was a need for professionally-trained foresters.  The initial research that Yale carried out was also supplemented by work completed at the 1,680-acre Crossett Experimental Forest, which was established in 1934, and located about seven miles north of Crossett.[11]

However, the most significant outcome of the relationship between the Crossett Lumber Company and Yale University was the Yale Camp, originally located to the east of Crossett off of U.S. 82.  Interestingly, during the early twentieth century, Yale University had the country’s premier school of forest management.  The University, in order to supplement the classroom work of the students, arranged a field trip in the spring to the South to visit forests and work with a different lumber company each year.  In 1912, Yale students took their first trip to Crossett to work with the Crossett Lumber Company, and it was the direct result of the work of Charles Harlan Watzek, an Iowan who graduated from Yale’s program in 1911.  Watzek’s father, Dr. John W. Watzek, was an investor in and cofounder of the Crossett Lumber Company.  The field trip to Crossett “gave the students an opportunity to study forest management and wood utilization in the vast ‘laboratory’ provided by the Crossett forests and the company’s manufacturing plants.”[12]

After the initial visit of Yale students in 1912, Crossett Lumber Company’s relationship with Yale grew throughout the 1920s.  In 1923, when Crossett Lumber Company hired their first forestry consultant, they hired Yale professor Ralph Bryant.  When Bryant retired in 1938, Crossett Lumber Company returned to Yale to hire Professor Herman Haupt Chapman, who served with the company until 1943.  Crossett’s next hire, Professor Walter H. Meyer, also came from Yale.[13]

After World War II, the Crossett Lumber Company offered Yale University a permanent site for their summer camp, and the Yale Camp was built in 1946.  Prior to the construction of the camp, the visiting Yale students lived in sawmill dormitories.  The camp that was built offered the Yale students cabins, quarters for the teachers, a shower house, and a central dining hall.  The site of the camp was approximately one mile east of Crossett, just to the south of U.S. 82, that was surrounded by the forest.  The buildings that were built were arranged in a horseshoe around an open space in the middle, and the arrangement allowed for easy access between the buildings as well as lots of opportunities for socializing.[14]

The popularity of the camp, however, meant that after the first year it was necessary to construct two additional cabins.  The March 1947 issue of the Forest Echoes noted that “Last year, the class came for encampment to get three months of extensive field training.  The fifteen members of last year’s class were housed in a camp constructed by the Crossett Companies and located one mile east of town.  This year, with a class of twenty-three, it was necessary to build two new cabins, bringing the total number of cabins to eight.  The camp also includes a combination mess hall and a shower bath house.”[15]

Over the next twenty years that the camp was in operation, students from all over the country, and many foreign countries as well, came to Crossett to study at the Yale Camp.  The initial spring field school also evolved, eventually becoming an eleven-week course that included the study of forest management along with work in wood utilization and manufacturing.  Crossett Lumber Company made its mills available to the students, and several of the company’s instructors were employees of the company.  “Thus, future foresters could observe the production process from the standing tree to the final product.”  The camp’s curriculum also evolved over time with more environmental issues, such as woodland preservation, becoming part of the students’ studies later on.[16]

By the 1960s, however, it became harder to attract students who were willing to come to an eleven-week field school in a relatively remote location as Crossett.  As a result, the Yale Camp was closed in 1966.  After the camp closed, it continued to be used by local scout troops for many years, but the camp’s remote location outside of town meant that it could be the target of vandalism.  As a result, an effort was undertaken to move the Camp’s buildings, and they were relocated in early 2022 to the former site of the Crossland Zoo on the south side of town.  The City of Crossett is hoping to potentially utilize the buildings for overnight accommodations and also as a way to continue to teach the role and legacy of the Crossett Lumber Company in the city’s history.[17]

Although it has been relocated to the former site of the Crossland Zoo, the Yale Camp Historic District is still a significant reminder of the early development and growth of the forestry industry in Crossett.  The partnership between Yale University and the Crossett Lumber Company was integral in helping to train professional foresters throughout the 1910s up until the mid-1960s, and the construction of the Yale Camp was an important part in allowing the partnership to flourish.  Today, the Yale Camp Historic District is a tangible reminder of the significant contributions that Yale University and the Crossett Lumber Company made to the state’s forestry industry during the early twentieth century.

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE PROPERTY

The Yale Camp Historic District was an important resource in the growth of the lumber industry in Crossett.  The training of students at the Camp meant that forestry in the Crossett area, along with other areas of the country, could be carried out in a more responsible and sustainable manner.  For example, with respect to programs that were studied at the Yale Camp, one of the most important was “…reforestation, a program of preservation and development initiated by the Crossett Lumber Company and encouraged through the years by Yale University’s forestry school and the forestry department of the Federal Government.  Without reforestation, the Crossett Lumber Company would have ceased to exist by 1930, but because of it, growth continues unabated until the present time.  Crossett became one of the leaders in reforestation in the South, and its program was copied and studied by forestry experts all over the nation.”[18]

The firsthand training that students received while at the camp was an important aspect of the camp’s significance.  Dr. Meyer, who was one of the teachers at Yale Camp, believed that the best way to learn was by participating in activities and also through observation.  Meyer also believed that the Crossett Lumber Company had one of the best forestry programs in the world.  Another significant aspect of the Yale Camp’s program was its comprehensiveness.  As Buckner wrote in Wilderness Lady:  A History of Crossett, Arkansas, “Students at Yale Camp received instruction in timber estimating, spotting, insects, disease, measurements, and fire control.  In addition to being exposed to modern management, they also learned the latest technique in sawmill, papermill, and logging practices.  The Crossett camp for Yale students emphasized dirt forestry of the actual raising and care of trees from the time they were seedlings until they emerged as products of the mills.”[19]

An article in the April 1958 issue of Forest Echoes gives an excellent picture of the scope of the influence of the Yale Camp.  It states:

            During the past 13 years students from all over the world have spent the 12 weeks in Crossett.  In addition to their rigorous schedule of work, they have visited in the homes of many graduates of the school who live in Crossett and taken week-end trips to surrounding points of interest.  For many of these young men, their entire impression of the South has been formed by the hospitality and conversations with these people.  For a number of years the governments of Pakistan and India sent their bright young men to Yale for study.  Many of them have come to Crossett for the spring field work.  There have been students from Canada, Australia, Africa, South and Central America, Scandinavia, Austria, the Ukraine, Japan, Scotland, Iraq, as well as from Maine to California, and from Wisconsin to Louisiana.

            The Crossett Company has drawn many students from this Yale School of Forestry into its own organization.  Many others have found employment in other southern lumber and paper companies.  Thus, many times that spring trip for the boys has resulted in a future in southern forestry not anticipated when they packed their bags in Connecticut.  And it is partly because of the distribution of these young graduates from the Yale Forestry School throughout this area that it can be said that “This region is the most advanced in its application of forestry principles and practices of any area in the United States.”[20]

Due to its importance with the lumber industry and forestry management in the Ashley County area, the Yale Camp Historic District is being nominated to the Arkansas Register of Historic Places with local significance under Criterion A.  Built in 1946, the Yale Camp allowed students from Yale University’s Forest Management program, which was the country’s premier Forestry Management program, to have a hands-on educational experience with the Crossett Lumber Company in Arkansas, a program that continued until its closure in 1966.  However, the legacy of the Yale Camp program was that it aided in the development of forestry management as a profession in the South, something that really didn’t exist prior to the Yale Camp program’s establishment.

Due to its relocation to the former Crossland Zoo location in the Crossett City Park in early 2022, the Yale Camp Historic District is also being nominated to the Arkansas Register of Historic Places under Criteria Consideration B as a property that is removed from its original location.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Southern Arkansas. Chicago: The Goodspeed Publishing Co., 1890.

Buckner, John Wordy.  Wilderness Lady:  A History of Crossett, Arkansas.  Little Rock:  Rose Publishing Company, 1979.

Clark, Janice.  “Crossett – Yale Have Enjoyed Close Relationship Since 1912.”  Forest Echoes.  April 1958, pp. 8-10.

“Classes in the Pines.”  Forest Echoes.  March 1947, p. 14.

Darling, O. H., Jr., and Bill Norman.  “Yale Camp.”  The Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture.  Found at:  https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/yale-camp-2324/.

Norman, Bill.  “Crossett (Ashley County).”  The Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture.  Found at:  https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/crossett-ashley-county-821/.

Reed, Bernard.  “Crossett Lumber Company.”  The Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture.  Found at:  https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/crossett-lumber-company-3588/.

West, Elliott.  The WPA Guide to 1930s Arkansas.  Lawrence, KS:  University Press of Kansas, 1987 reprint of 1941 publication.