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A 1928 plot of land carved out to be “light burned” annually
Over 350 new photos have been digitized and uploaded to DigitalNC, courtesy of our partner, the Forest History Society. Located in Durham, North Carolina, their organization is dedicated to the preservation of materials about forest history and conservation. While their mission is to promote and collect materials about forest and environmental preservation around the world, these photos are specifically about North Carolina’s history of forest and wildlife conservation.
The back of a firefighting truck
A photo of firefighters creating a firebreak, a strip of open space that slows or stops the spread of a fire
These newly digitized photographs were taken from the late 1920s to early 1940s, by various photographers for the NC Department of Conservation and Development. They include images of fire control conferences and forester’s meetings, fire lines and fire line equipment, and much more. Many of the later photographs include construction of lookout towers across the state and angles from the top of those towers. Taken in dozens of counties across the state, these photographs give us views of the state and views of firefighting that we don’t often get to see, and show us how dangerous firefighting was at that time. For example, in the photo on the right, the men creating a firebreak were dressed in suits and ties instead of fire-protective gear.
A 1940 photo of CCC Camp P-73 from the Riegel Tower in Brunswick County
To browse through these materials, visit the Forest History Society’s partner page, or check out their website.
Bear cub on a hillside.
County Warden Bardel and District Forester Kimball pose by a tree in 1926.
Photographs and vertical files from our newest partner, The Forest History Society, are now online at DigitalNC. The Forest History Society is a nonprofit organization located in Durham, North Carolina, that is dedicated to the collection and preservation of materials concerning forest history and conservation. The Forest History Society represents information about forestry around the world, but the materials now up on DigitalNC are specific to North Carolina.
Vertical files from this batch cover topics like forestry schools in North Carolina, the Cherokee National Forest, the Pisgah National Forest, the Southern Forest Experiment Station, the effects of Hurricane Hugo, Fran, Hortense, and Bertha on NC forests. Each vertical files contain a range of materials such as newspaper clippings, pamphlets, maps, images, reports, press releases, magazine articles and correspondence. Materials in the files are text searchable and provide a great overview of forestry issues in North Carolina.
The images in this batch also document a wide variety of subjects related to forestry. Fire prevention is one major theme of this image collection with photographs of fire towers, forest fire prevention signs, and fire control exhibits. There are also images of different tree and plant species, nurseries and planting efforts, tree damage and disease, and portraits of foresters, wardens, and rangers.
To browse through all of these materials, visit The Forest History Society’s partner page, and learn more by visiting their website.
One of the many fire prevention signs in the image collection.
Fourteen films about various aspects of the forestry industry and forest conservation are now online from the Forest History Society. The films date from the 1920s up to one about the Yellowstone National Park fires in 1988. Thanks to our colleagues in the Southern Folklife Collection, these audiovisual materials were digitized utilizing funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
To view more materials from the Forest History Society, visit their partner page. To learn more about our partnership with the Southern Folklife Collection, read this post. And to view and hear more audiovisual materials on DigitalNC, visit our North Carolina Sights and Sounds collection.
Thanks to our partner, Chapel Hill Historical Society, a batch containing three scrapbooks and over 100 slides featuring trips and experiences of Chapel Hill Boy Scout Troop 835 and Girl Scout Troop 59 are now available on our website.
The scrapbook topics include Troop 835 in the news; the life of Scoutmaster, Paul B. Trembley; and Troop 835’s trip to Europe in 1968. Traveling numerous places from North Carolina to Canada, the slides in this batch show stunning and silly images of the troop’s trips and experiences taken from the late 1950s to early 1990s.
To view more materials from the Chapel Hill Historical Society, please visit the DigitalNC Chapel Hill Historical Society material page.
To learn more about the Chapel Hill Historical Society, please visit the Chapel Hill Historical Society website.
To learn more about the history of Troop 835, please visit the Troop 835 website.
