The actual truth about the golden age and trees.

[Jason Topp]

Jason,

I don't but I have heard that stat.  Like all stats, it may come from anti-environmentalists or be skewed some other way.  But I think it has something to do with the decline of farmland, not from urbanization, but due to high production farming which allows farm acreage to be reduced.

Jeff

I have no idea how reliable this source is but it would indicate that farmland today is the same as it was in the golden age:

http://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/Americas/United-States-AGRICULTURE.html

[Jeff_Brauer]

From that site:

The total amount of farmland increased from 986 million acres in 1930 to 479 million 1.18 billion acres in 1959 but declined to 954 million acres in 1998.

We have 32 Million less farm acres than in 1930.....sounds like a lot, but that's only a 1% decline even if we assume all of that went back to woodland.

Of course, the original question was about % of tree cover, not farms. Other possible reasons for the increase (if its true) are that trees naturally tend to cover vacant, unmaintained land in most areas of the US.  And, there have been conservation programs, and moves away from lumber for heating, as noted.  

Someone else will have to tell us how all that adds up.

[TaylorA]

That map pretty much sums it up - there weren't close to the number of trees in the early 1900s east of the Mississippi as there is today. They'd been cut down to build homes, heat homes, removed for farming purposes, build furniture - any number of items. There is a lot more tree cover today than there was then. Most places where large stands of trees remained was not suitable for growing crops, which also meant not suitable for growing grass.

Does anyone have a resource for this assertion?  I am surprised by the idea that tree cover would have increased in the US because of urban sprawl.  I would guess the opposite.

I did a quick google search and only found a site discussing a 30% decline in tree cover in urban areas.  It did not address whether a decline in farmland has led to increased tree cover.

These numbers come from here:

http://www.ncrs.fs.fed.us/pubs/gtr/gtr_nc241.pdf

Forest acres (thousands) by region:
North: 1907: 138,700    2002: 169,684

(North includes everything east of the Mississippi and north of the Mason-Dixon line.)

South: 1907: 235,728   2002: 214,605

(South includes the southern Atlantic states (VA, NC, SC, GA, FL), which have seen forest land increase from 1938 to today, and South central covering the rest of the southern states, OK and TX.)

Note, this is FORESTED land, which doesn't include planted suburban areas, which now often have tree replacement requirements in excess of what was on the property at any point in history!

No, I am not an "anti-environmentalist" or obtained it from some "skewed" source, unless you consider the US Ag department one of those two.

[Mark_Fine]

Wayne,
I clarified my point with a better choice of words.  

[Jeff_Brauer]

Taylor,

I didn't say you were! I thought the stats were true, but wasn't sure. There are a lot of stats thrown about by those who have vested interests. I just didn't want to make an assertion beyond what I was certain of. Thanks for the stats and site link, which is now in my favorites, under design data.

[Jason Topp]

These numbers come from here:

http://www.ncrs.fs.fed.us/pubs/gtr/gtr_nc241.pdf

Forest acres (thousands) by region:
North: 1907: 138,700    2002: 169,684

(North includes everything east of the Mississippi and north of the Mason-Dixon line.)

South: 1907: 235,728   2002: 214,605

(South includes the southern Atlantic states (VA, NC, SC, GA, FL), which have seen forest land increase from 1938 to today, and South central covering the rest of the southern states, OK and TX.)

Note, this is FORESTED land, which doesn't include planted suburban areas, which now often have tree replacement requirements in excess of what was on the property at any point in history!

No, I am not an "anti-environmentalist" or obtained it from some "skewed" source, unless you consider the US Ag department one of those two.

Taylor - thanks

[Anthony Butler]

John:

I think there's some truth to that.

And I think developers today are too dense to notice the same thing.  I know of at least one developer in northern Michigan who bought wooded land for the "bargain" price of $2000 per acre instead of paying $3000 for another less wooded piece.

Then he paid $3000 per acre to clear the bargain property for a golf course.

I'm not sure how smart the guy clearing the land for $3,000 an acre is either. We paid $3,000 to have 10 trees taken down in New Hampshire last summer. Admittedly they were big trees, but an acre of land would not qualify as 'wooded' without a hundred trees at least. Maybe they have a deal with the guy selling firewood in town, but that sounds like a lot of hard work to me.

Anthony,

The economies of scale work that way sometimes. On heavily wooded sites, we often get bids of less than $3000 per acre for 30 or more acres of clearing, and $3000 per tree when only a few go down.  There is the same move in expense, and burial, burning, ability to sell the wooed and other factors can affect the cost.

Jeff,

It seems like a similar to deal to printing... the big cost upfront of reserving the press and making the plates are amortised over the number of items printed. Once you go past about 10,000 on a brochure, it's basically ink and paper costs.

Once you set up and clear about 10 acres, you're probably in production mode. If you get to keep the timber and it's good quality wood you'd almost be breaking even at that point. I imagine that dynamiting stumps might be extra though...  

[TaylorA]

Taylor,

I didn't say you were! I thought the stats were true, but wasn't sure. There are a lot of stats thrown about by those who have vested interests. I just didn't want to make an assertion beyond what I was certain of. Thanks for the stats and site link, which is now in my favorites, under design data.

Jeff, re-reading my last sentence, I realized I came across harsh instead of tongue-in-cheek. Glad to be of help. You are certainly correct that you can find stats to support just about any position, but I find that government stats (at least in the sciences) are viewed fairly evenly. They may not be - but at least they're viewed better than if I had found it at bigpapermillcompany.com!

[mike_malone]

 I think they wanted courses on land without trees and coincidentally it was cheaper.

[Lester George]

John,

I have always been convinced that your premise is correct.  When MacDonald did the Greenbrier Old White he deliberately avoided routing down Howards Creek because it was wooded.  It could have yielded some very dramatic hoes had he used it, but he stayed out in the open areas around the property.

I agree with Tom D. that most developers today do not see the virtue of open land which, in part,  comes from 80 years of  prominent players, the USGA and others using words like "FRAMING" or "SEPARATION" when discussing good golf holes.  I am currently working on a course where the principal theme was to avoid the woods and place the course in the open,  We are having to spen a lot of time explaining to potential members why we are doing it.  Seems backwards in some way to me.

Lester

[michael_j_fay]

Nearly every Ross course I have visited that was built before 1930 was built on fallow farmland. The reason was economic, the cost of removing the trees was prohibitive because of the lack of proper equipment.

One notable exception is the Jefferson-Lakeside Club in Richmond, VA, which was built in an arboretum. Unfortunately they did not remove enough of the trees and today it is encompassed by marvelous specimen trees that chokes the daylights out of the routing and murders the agronomics.

I have seen pictures of some of the contraptions that Ross and others used to remove rocks and some stumps, which they invariably buried to create mounds. Hint: When you see a mound on a Ross course that is at the top of an elevation, more than likely he did not put it there. Most of his mounds can be found at the low lying levels. Again, economics, much easier to move rocks down the hill rather than up.

When you consider that a crew for the building of a Ross course in 1923 was 300 men, 50 horses and at least two pair of oxen, it is hard to believe that these coursse were built in as little as three months. If they had to cear, I wager that not too many would have been finished.

[Lester George]

Michael,

You sure pegged Jefferson-Lakeside.  So much unmet potential, so little vision.  I  just finished a course right down the road with similar problems and 40+ Jefferson-Lakeside members quit and went to the course I just did.  They need to do something quick.

Lester

[Mark_Fine]

One other notable Ross exception was Oyster Harbors where tens of thousands of trees were cleared to make room for the golf holes.  

[TEPaul]

"Is the real reason so many golden age courses started without trees because open farm land was cheaper to build on?"

Of course it was, particularly in the beginnings of architecture outside the linksland. Getting into sites that were heavily treed was considered an unnecessary and unappealing expense---eg the cost and inconvenience of massive tree removal. That particular cost and problem never existed on farmland.

[Jason McNamara]

Does anyone have a resource for this assertion?  I am surprised by the idea that tree cover would have increased in the US because of urban sprawl.  I would guess the opposite.

The other thing to remember is that despite whatever sprawl there may be, "urban" areas (city + suburbs) cover barely 3% of the lower 48 (fig. for 2002).

http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/EIB14/eib14a.pdf   (pg. 4)

[michael_j_fay]

Mark:

Oyster Harbors was built by the Mellon family so I do not think that the normal rules applied.

MJFay

[Sean_A]

Michael

I grew up on a pre1930 Ross that was built more or less from swamp land.  It took something like 3 years to build and cost a fair bit of dosh. Loads of cinder, loam and sand was used to cap the land and fairways were watered from the beginning to keep the grass growing.  I think Grosse Ile was one of the first courses in the country to have watering system for fairways.  I don't know why that site was chosen.  

Ciao

[Greg Murphy]

John's premise makes very good sense.

In Canada, however, at least if Stanley Thompson courses are any indication, it would seem heavily treed sites were sought out rather than avoided. I'm thinking of Highlands Links, Banff Springs, Jasper Park Lodge and Capilano, maybe St. George's, too. Of course, the Canadian Pacific Railway footed the bill for Jasper and Banff, acknowledged when built as the most expensive course ever constructed.

Ian Andrew, Jeff Mingay, et al, if you're out there reading: am I right or wrong? Did Canadian Golden Age sites differ from American sites, with Canadian courses skewed more toward heavily treed sites and American courses toward open farmland?

[TEPaul]

I'd like to change my post above that Golden Age courses did not get into much other than open farmland sites because the clearing of trees was costly and or impractical.

I believe the projects that very much steered clear of treed sites and other complicated topography were those that were done in England, Ireland and America when golf and architecture first emigrated out of the linksland into other and inland areas around the world. These were the courses that essentially preceded the Golden Age of Golf Architecture.

It's pretty clear that some of the Golden Age courses got into some heavily treed sites and other truly complicated sites such as The Lido, Pine Valley and Yale, and Alpine.

[Mark_Fine]

Michael,
I believe Forris W. Norris, an entrepreneur from Boston, was the founder of Oyster Harbors, but your point is well taken.  Unlike most, money was not an object of concern on that project.