Carl Alwin Schenck and The Biltmore Forest

THE attempted beginnings of technical forestry education and one of the very first applications of good forestry in America were associated with an unexpected and unavoidable chain of circumstances. In 1890 the wealthy George Vanderbilt, the grandson of Cornelius Vanderbilt, who amassed a fortune in railroad development, bought a large tract of land in the mountainous section near Asheville, North Carolina, built a French castle, developed and landscaped the environs and invited Dr. Carl Alwin Schenck, a German forester, to come to America and direct the management and improvement of the forested portion. Out of the first purchase of nearly 12,000 acre unit a net area of 7,280 ( 4) acres was to become a demonstration to all near and far that the harvesting of forest crops in this country could be conducted and controlled in such a way as to secure perpetuation of the forest, prevent unguided exploitation and devastation, and stave off the threatened timber famine