Forest Roads and Trails

 This is a brief history on the development of forest roads and trails on the National Forests for your reference as we burrow in for the winter. 

Some of the first roads and trails on the National Forests were constructed by homesteaders, trespassers doing illegal logging, mining and ranchers grazing their livestock.    In the 1930’s some of these roads and trails were improved upon and new ones constructed by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC).   Most of these served for access between fire lookouts and remote camps used by early fire and trail crews on horseback.    In 1964 Congress enacted the Forest Roads and Trails Act (FR&T Funds) which appropriated money for the development of roads and trails for recreation, fire protection and to access forest resources.    

With the increase in timber harvest after WWII roads were being constructed by timber purchasers to access timber sale areas.   They were originally located by the purchaser or logger and approved by the Forest Service with some changes to location to avoid damage to other forest resources prior to construction.   Most of these roads were not rocked and only used during the dry season.   As the timber on the easy ground was being harvested sometime in the 1960’s the Forest Service took over location and design of specified roads for timber sales that were on steeper slopes and harder to access.    These roads were located and designed by Forest Service engineers with cost estimates and were paid by the timber sale.    The purchaser of the timber sale was given credit for constructing and reconstruction of roads.  This credit was applied as payment for timber removed.    Specifications required disposal of slash by removal, burying or piling for burning from the top of the cut slope to bottom of the fill slope, known as the road prism.   All the trees within this prism are considered right of way timber included in the timber sale as a separate subdivision and usually was the first timber to be removed from the sale.  Culverts were required and installed with proper compaction.  A base course of rock was applied with four to six inches of crushed rock for the surface.    It was expensive, making some sales deficit and subsidized by the tax payers, especially in Alaska where much rock was required.    Road maintenance was performed by purchasers and/or by deposits made by the purchaser based on the amount of timber hauled per mile over a road system.  This collected money was used by the Forest Service to perform maintenance either by using contractors or by Forest Service road crews. 

According to the Forest Service Road Management website as of March 1, 2000 there were 380,000 miles of roads on the National Forests and used by 15,000 log trucks per day, down by 27,000 from 1990 when there were 42,000 log trucks per day.   

Today there is a small fraction of log hauling compared to the past, and therefore much less money is collected for road maintenance and most of that is for the maintenance of primary forest roads.   Some of the secondary roads have fallen to disrepair, closed to the public for resources protection or slowly being overgrown by encroaching vegetation.   Most trail maintenance work now is done by volunteers.