History of Spruce Reforestation in the Southern Appalachians
Excerpt from Mount Mitchel & the Black Mountains, An Environmental history of the highest peaks in Eastern America.
by Timothy Silver, 2003, University of North Carolina press, pages 170 & 171 Between 1923 and 1931, as the lumbermen retreated, researchers from the newly established southeastern Forest Experiment Station in Asheville laid out seventy-seven small plots (each spanning about a tenth of an acre) at an elevation of 5,500 feet on the Southeastern face of Clingman’s peak. along with native red spruce and Fraser fir, foresters planted a variety of alien trees, hoping to find some fast growing species that might be used to repopulate the fire-ravaged mountains.