Finger Lakes National Forest
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The Finger Lakes National Forest is a
United States National Forest In the United States, national forest is a classification of protected area, protected and managed federal lands. National forests are largely forest and woodland areas owned collectively by the American people through the Federal government of ...
that encompasses of
Seneca Seneca may refer to: People and language * Seneca (name), a list of people with either the given name or surname * Seneca people, one of the six Iroquois tribes of North America ** Seneca language, the language of the Seneca people Places Extrat ...
and Schuyler counties, nestled between Seneca Lake and
Cayuga Lake Cayuga Lake (,,) is the longest of central New York's glacial Finger Lakes, and is the second largest in surface area (marginally smaller than Seneca Lake) and second largest in volume. It is just under long. Its average width is , and it is a ...
in the
Finger Lakes The Finger Lakes are a group of eleven long, narrow, roughly north–south lakes located south of Lake Ontario in an area called the ''Finger Lakes region'' in New York, in the United States. This region straddles the northern and transitional ...
Region of the
State of New York New York, officially the State of New York, is a state in the Northeastern United States. It is often called New York State to distinguish it from its largest city, New York City. With a total area of , New York is the 27th-largest U.S. state ...
. It has over 30 miles (50 km) of interconnecting trails that traverse gorges,
ravine A ravine is a landform that is narrower than a canyon and is often the product of streambank erosion.pasture Pasture (from the Latin ''pastus'', past participle of ''pascere'', "to feed") is land used for grazing. Pasture lands in the narrow sense are enclosed tracts of farmland, grazed by domesticated livestock, such as horses, cattle, sheep, or swine ...
s, and
woodland A woodland () is, in the broad sense, land covered with trees, or in a narrow sense, synonymous with wood (or in the U.S., the ''plurale tantum'' woods), a low-density forest forming open habitats with plenty of sunlight and limited shade (see ...
s. Although about 3.2 million acres (1300 km²) of the State of New York is in the State Forest Preserve, Wildlife Management Areas, and
Forests A forest is an area of land dominated by trees. Hundreds of definitions of forest are used throughout the world, incorporating factors such as tree density, tree height, land use, legal standing, and ecological function. The United Nations' ...
, there are few large areas of public land in the
Finger Lakes The Finger Lakes are a group of eleven long, narrow, roughly north–south lakes located south of Lake Ontario in an area called the ''Finger Lakes region'' in New York, in the United States. This region straddles the northern and transitional ...
Region. The Finger Lakes National Forest is the only National Forest in New York and the only public land that has had an explicit philosophy of multiple use.


Early history

The area around the Finger Lakes National Forest was originally inhabited by the
Iroquois The Iroquois ( or ), officially the Haudenosaunee ( meaning "people of the longhouse"), are an Iroquoian-speaking confederacy of First Nations peoples in northeast North America/ Turtle Island. They were known during the colonial years to ...
Indians. Information of their use of the area within the current forest boundary is sketchy at best. It is thought that at least some hunting activity occurred. This area was a forested hunting territory for the Iroquois people 250 years ago. Just 100 years ago, it was nearly treeless, the result of logging, farming, and grazing practices by Euro-American settlers. Today it is a mix of second growth woodland, pasture and lots which are in a transition from pasture-to-woodland. The cellar holes, stone walls, artifacts, and other material evidence of the former residents of this area are an unwritten reminder and historical record of their lives. They are protected by Federal Law. There are a number of
archaeological Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscap ...
sites on lands managed by the Finger Lakes National Forest, most from the post-Revolutionary period. Prior to the European rediscovery of eastern North America, Native Americans lived in this part of New York for more than 10,000 years. The Iroquois are the last in a series of Indian cultures to have lived here, and two of the six Iroquois Nations' homelands border the Forest. The lakes around which much Indian life took place now bear their names:
Cayuga Cayuga often refers to: * Cayuga people, a native tribe to North America, part of the Iroquois Confederacy * Cayuga language, the language of the Cayuga Cayuga may also refer to: Places Canada * Cayuga, Ontario United States * Cayuga, Illinois ...
and
Seneca Seneca may refer to: People and language * Seneca (name), a list of people with either the given name or surname * Seneca people, one of the six Iroquois tribes of North America ** Seneca language, the language of the Seneca people Places Extrat ...
. The lack of reliable water sources and lime-rich soils (good for corn agriculture) precluded development of large year-round Iroquois villages within the Forest's present-day boundaries, but the original forest cover of pines and
hardwoods Hardwood is wood from dicot trees. These are usually found in broad-leaved temperate and tropical forests. In temperate and boreal latitudes they are mostly deciduous, but in tropics and subtropics mostly evergreen. Hardwood (which comes from ...
(such as
hickory Hickory is a common name for trees composing the genus ''Carya'', which includes around 18 species. Five or six species are native to China, Indochina, and India (Assam), as many as twelve are native to the United States, four are found in Mexi ...
,
elm Elms are deciduous and semi-deciduous trees comprising the flowering plant genus ''Ulmus'' in the plant family Ulmaceae. They are distributed over most of the Northern Hemisphere, inhabiting the temperate and tropical-montane regions of North ...
,
beech Beech (''Fagus'') is a genus of deciduous trees in the family Fagaceae, native to temperate Europe, Asia, and North America. Recent classifications recognize 10 to 13 species in two distinct subgenera, ''Engleriana'' and ''Fagus''. The ''Engle ...
,
chestnut The chestnuts are the deciduous trees and shrubs in the genus ''Castanea'', in the beech family Fagaceae. They are native to temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere. The name also refers to the edible nuts they produce. The unrelat ...
,
oak An oak is a tree or shrub in the genus ''Quercus'' (; Latin "oak tree") of the beech family, Fagaceae. There are approximately 500 extant species of oaks. The common name "oak" also appears in the names of species in related genera, notably ''L ...
, and
maple ''Acer'' () is a genus of trees and shrubs commonly known as maples. The genus is placed in the family Sapindaceae.Stevens, P. F. (2001 onwards). Angiosperm Phylogeny Website. Version 9, June 2008 nd more or less continuously updated since http ...
) would have made this a good
hunting Hunting is the human activity, human practice of seeking, pursuing, capturing, or killing wildlife or feral animals. The most common reasons for humans to hunt are to harvest food (i.e. meat) and useful animal products (fur/hide (skin), hide, ...
and nut-gathering territory for these people.


American Revolution

Because of the Iroquois alliance with the
British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...
during the
American Revolution The American Revolution was an ideological and political revolution that occurred in British America between 1765 and 1791. The Americans in the Thirteen Colonies formed independent states that defeated the British in the American Revolut ...
,
George Washington George Washington (February 22, 1732, 1799) was an American military officer, statesman, and Founding Father who served as the first president of the United States from 1789 to 1797. Appointed by the Continental Congress as commander of th ...
assigned Generals Sullivan and
Clinton Clinton is an English toponymic surname, indicating one's ancestors came from English places called Glympton or Glinton.Hanks, P. & Hodges, F. ''A Dictionary of Surnames''. Oxford University Press, 1988 Clinton has frequently been used as a given ...
to mount a campaign against them. The
Sullivan Campaign The 1779 Sullivan Expedition (also known as the Sullivan-Clinton Expedition, the Sullivan Campaign, and the Sullivan-Clinton Genocide) was a United States military campaign during the American Revolutionary War, lasting from June to October 1779 ...
of 1779 was a major military undertaking which destroyed more than 40 villages and laid to waste hundreds of acres of cultivated fields and a large portion of the stored food and materials the Iroquois and British were dependent upon. A secondary, non-military result of the neutralization of the Six Nations Iroquois in this region was that it created "new" lands to allot to Colonial soldiers after the war in partial payment or reward for their service. The land was divided up into "military lots", the one mile (1.6 km) square (2.6 km²) units that are still the basis for the road (and much of the trail) system present on the Finger Lakes National Forest today. In 1790, the area was divided into 600 acre (2.4 km²) military lots and distributed among Revolutionary War veterans as payment for their services. These early settlers cleared the land for production of hay and small grains such as
buckwheat Buckwheat (''Fagopyrum esculentum''), or common buckwheat, is a flowering plant in the knotweed family Polygonaceae cultivated for its grain-like seeds and as a cover crop. The name "buckwheat" is used for several other species, such as '' Fago ...
. As
New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
grew, a strong market for these products developed, encouraging more intensive agriculture. The farmers prospered until the mid-19th century, when a series of unfortunate events occurred - the popularity of motorized transportation in urban centers (reducing the number of horses to be fed), gradual depletion of the soil resource, and competition from the midwest.


Federal purchase of the land

Between 1890 and the
Great Depression The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...
, over 1 million acres (4000 km²) of farmland was abandoned in south central New York State. In the 1930s it was recognized that farmers in many parts of the country could no longer make a living from their exhausted land. Environmental damage was occurring as they cultivated the land more and more intensively to make ends meet. Several pieces of legislation were passed, including the
Federal Emergency Relief Act The Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) was a program established by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1933, building on the Hoover administration's Emergency Relief and Construction Act. It was replaced in 1935 by the Works Progress Admi ...
of 1933, and the Bankhead-Jones Farm Tenant Act of 1937 to address these problems. One result was the formation of a government agency, the Resettlement Administration, to carry out the new laws. This agency directed the relocation of farmers to better land or different jobs, and the purchase of marginal
farm A farm (also called an agricultural holding) is an area of land that is devoted primarily to agricultural processes with the primary objective of producing food and other crops; it is the basic facility in food production. The name is used fo ...
land by the Federal government. Between 1938 and 1941, over 100 farms were purchased in the area now in the National Forest. Because this was done on a willing-seller, willing-buyer basis, the resulting Federal ownership resembled a patchwork quilt. This was especially true in the Seneca County end of the Forest, where soils were more productive, and some families elected to stay. This ownership pattern still exists today. The newly acquired Federal land, named the Hector Land Use Area (LUA), was initially managed by the Soil Conservation Service. The emphasis was on stabilization of the
soil Soil, also commonly referred to as earth or dirt, is a mixture of organic matter, minerals, gases, liquids, and organisms that together support life. Some scientific definitions distinguish ''dirt'' from ''soil'' by restricting the former te ...
by planting conifers, and development of a grazing program. Previously cultivated fields were converted to improved pastures to demonstrate how less intensive agriculture could still make productive use of the land. In 1943, the Hector Cooperative Grazing Association was formed. This organization was issued a long term lease to manage grazing on the (LUA). They coordinated use of the pastures by as many as 120 individual
livestock Livestock are the domesticated animals raised in an agricultural setting to provide labor and produce diversified products for consumption such as meat, eggs, milk, fur, leather, and wool. The term is sometimes used to refer solely to animals ...
owners within a 100-mile (160 km) radius of the (LUA). In 1996, the property associated with the former Camp Fossenvue was added to the forest. On that property is the
Queen's Castle Queen's Castle, also known as Camp Fossenvue or simply Fossenvue (an anagram for "seven of us")), is the remnant of a historic camp located at Lodi in Seneca County, New York. It is a rustic, lakeside camp structure built about 1881 on the sh ...
, a structure listed on the
National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...
in 1999.


Creation of the national forest

By the 1950s, many of the original objectives of the Hector (LUA) had been met. Farmers had been resettled, the eroding soil stabilized, and alternative agriculture uses demonstrated. At the same time, the public was becoming interested in the concept of multiple uses of public land. Management and appropriate ownership of the Hector LUA was reevaluated. The decision was made in 1954 to transfer administrative responsibilities to the
U.S. Forest Service The United States Forest Service (USFS) is an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture that administers the nation's 154 national forests and 20 national grasslands. The Forest Service manages of land. Major divisions of the agency in ...
, which already had a fairly long history of multiple use management. Initially this was carried out by the Regional Office in
Upper Darby, Pennsylvania Upper Darby Township, often shortened to Upper Darby, is a home rule township in Delaware County, Pennsylvania. The township borders Philadelphia, the nation's sixth most populous city as of 2020 with 1.6 million residents. As of the 2020 ce ...
. When this region was later consolidated within the Forest Service's Northeast Region, Hector became an administrative unit of the Green Mountain National Forest in
Vermont Vermont () is a state in the northeast New England region of the United States. Vermont is bordered by the states of Massachusetts to the south, New Hampshire to the east, and New York to the west, and the Canadian province of Quebec to ...
. In 1982, the Federal land management agencies were directed to identify isolated parcels of federal land that could be sold without significantly affecting the resource base or public service. The intent was to dispose of lands that were inefficient to manage, and to generate revenue. The Hector Land Use Area was one parcel studied for possible disposal under this "Assets Management" program. When public meetings were held to evaluate this idea, there was strong local support for continued federal ownership. Local and regional citizens had come to depend on Hector for wood products, forage, recreation, and other benefits. Because of this public support, Congress enacted legislation to make it a permanent part of the National Forest System. The Hector Ranger District, Green Mountain National Forest, had been created. Local citizens asked the Forest Service to change the name to Hector Ranger District, Finger Lakes National Forest, so it would be less confusing to visitors, and promote local pride about the area. This change was made in October 1985.


Today

The national forest is a public use resource in both Seneca County and Schuyler County, lying between
Cayuga Lake Cayuga Lake (,,) is the longest of central New York's glacial Finger Lakes, and is the second largest in surface area (marginally smaller than Seneca Lake) and second largest in volume. It is just under long. Its average width is , and it is a ...
and Seneca Lake. The Finger Lakes National Forest is an administrative unit of the
Green Mountain National Forest Green Mountain National Forest is a United States National Forest, national forest located in Vermont, a temperate broadleaf and mixed forest typical of the New England/Acadian forests ecoregion. The forest supports a variety of wildlife, includi ...
. Both are managed by the Forest Service from offices in
Rutland, Vermont Rutland, Vermont may refer to: *Rutland (city), Vermont * Rutland (town), Vermont *Rutland County, Vermont *West Rutland, Vermont West Rutland is a town in Rutland County, Vermont, United States. The population was 2,214 at the 2020 census. The t ...
. The Forest has continued the management mix of pasture, forest, recreation and wildlife and includes the preservation of historic and archaeological sites. It is the second-smallest National Forest in the United States, larger only than the Tuskegee National Forest in Alabama.


References


External links

*
USDA Forest Service Eastern Region 9 website
{{Authority control Archaeological sites in New York (state) National Forests of New York (state) Protected areas of Schuyler County, New York Protected areas of Seneca County, New York