Holding the line

A brief history of the Priest River Experimental Forest and a conversation with the ones who keep the legacy alive

By Ben Olson
Reader Staff

Tucked beneath boughs of western white pine, fir, hemlock and cedar, surrounded by mountains and North Idaho sky, the Priest River Experimental Forest lives a quiet life. 

The historic station has been continuously staffed by forestry experts, students, scientists, researchers and others since its founding in 1911. That is, until last year, when the federal government enacted a hiring freeze while also encouraging other federal employees to retire, leaving the station without a superintendent — and potentially without a clear path forward. Now, after 115 years and untold contributions to forestry science, a group of volunteers are working to keep the legacy of the station alive.

A brief history

Idaho had only been a state for 11 years when the PREF was founded out of the efforts of President Theodore Roosevelt and early Forest Service leaders such as Gifford Pinchot, Raphael Zon and Henry Graves, who helped establish a conservation mindset toward the care of America’s woodlands.

After years of exploitation of natural resources in the East, where forests had been largely depleted without establishing regeneration practices, Pinchot and his colleagues decided the West would be handled in a different manner. In their opinion, the federal government could manage natural resources far better than the slash-and-burn style employed by private industries that had pillaged forests in the Midwest and East over the previous century. 

The “Big Burn” — a wildfire that scorched 3 million acres in North Idaho and western Montana in 1910 — also helped influence the new path the federal government would take in its forestry policies and procedures, ultimately leading to the USFS putting fire mitigation at the forefront of its research.

Those early leaders realized that in order to manage forests well, they needed more information to inform better decisions. Field research was necessary. They followed examples from Germany at the time to establish research stations on experimental forests in order to study native trees and learn from experimentation — practices intended to establish sustainable, healthy forests able to accommodate timber harvesting, recreation and environmental protection, among other uses.

The first experimental forest in America opened in 1908, called The Fort Valley Experimental Forest near Flagstaff, Ariz. It was established after two lumbermen asked Pinchot to determine why the area’s ponderosa pine stands were not regenerating after logging.

PREF came into being three years later, representing the second experimental forest in the U.S. and, today, remaining the second oldest of 81 such forests in the country. By that time, Priest River had grown into a bustling town after providing track ties for the railroads. The site for PREF was chosen due to the abundance of western white pine, then an important species for wood products. 

“One of the first lumber companies in this area was the Diamond Match Company,” said USFS hydrologist Brandon Glaza. “Old-growth white pine made the best matchsticks. Imagine taking a five-foot diameter white pine and turning it into 10 million matchsticks.”

The location offered researchers unique opportunities to study climate and the ecology of many forest types. Within a half mile of the station were sites illustrating the entire range of conditions in the region. The 6,368-acre property included species from the moist northeastern slopes to the dry southwestern slopes and everything between.

Early foresters began building the physical facilities at PREF in September 1911. About a dozen men set up canvas tents and other temporary structures in the remote area, relying on a number of ranches within a short distance to supply fresh milk, butter, eggs and vegetables. Under the leadership of Donald Brewster, PREF’s first director, they set up weather stations, laboratories, a road connecting the buildings with the ranger station and footpaths. They also cleared areas to prepare for tree nurseries and other buildings.

The first permanent structures went up in 1917 and consisted of simple wooden cabins with few amenities, other than an office and a lab. Many of the buildings still standing today were built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s.

In the decades that followed, volumes of research came out of the humble facility. Legendary names in forestry came and went from PREF, including Bob Marshall, Harry Gisborne, Richard Bingham and Charles Wellner; all of them making enormous contributions to forest science. 

For example, many aspects of modern wildland firefighting came out of research conducted by Gisborne, including the establishment of smokejumpers. PREF made substantial advances in the study of blister rust, a fungus that decimates white pine and other five-needle pine populations. Continued research identified certain phenotypes that had developed genetic resistance to the disease, many of which are now planted in nurseries that have been maintained for more than a century.

“Blister rust research was started because it affects the commercial viability of the forest,” Glaza told the Reader. “If research at a small scale can identify a benefit or cost savings from our land management activities, it really can add up over the millions of acres the USFS manages.”

Other scientific advances contributed by PREF include site-preparation methods for timber harvest, development of the Stand Prognosis Model (a precursor to today’s Forest Vegetation Simulator), foundational fire behavior, fire danger rating, fire effects research, understanding forest structure influences on water yield, the importance of coarse woody debris for forest productivity and the development of the Free Selection silviculture system, among others.

“The oldest research records in the entire network [of experimental forests] originate from Priest River and date back to 1911,” said Sharon Hood, Forest Service research ecologist and scientist-in-charge at PREF.

In 1995, the facilities were officially listed on the National Registry of Historic Places, cementing PREF’s prominent position in the field of forest science. The facility is now jointly managed by USFS researchers and the Idaho Panhandle National Forest, with research activities coordinated by the Rocky Mountain Research Station.

‘A special pull to this place’

Today, the PREF research station continues the daily procedures that have been a mainstay at the site for 115 years.

Glaza is one of a handful of personnel who continue the work at PREF, the majority of them volunteers and all passionate advocates for the trees that surround them.

Grants and Agreements Specialist Natalie Hughes is the only USFS employee living at PREF full-time, along with her husband Joe Hughes, who serves as a volunteer. Glaza, the only other on-site USFS employee, visits the facility a couple of times per month. Charlie and Jane McCrum are all volunteers who live at the station and dedicate their time to maintaining the facility, while Nicole Mutchler is a master’s student at the University of Idaho doing research at PREF, and previously a botanist for the Rocky Mountain Research Station.

The tight-knit group sat down with the Reader to talk about what PREF means to them and their research, and why it’s important to keep the legacy alive. 

Whether it’s taking daily weather readings, climbing trees to inject pollen into seed cones, plowing snow, monitoring nurseries, conducting experiments in the labs or any of the myriad tasks that make up an average day at PREF, everyone around the table lives and breathes forest science. They also speak to the benefits of what it means to be able to conduct experiments while living among the trees.

“Five of us live here on-site permanently and we can just walk out the door to work every day,” said Natalie. “We’ll have people from the university who are, say, studying huckleberries, and they contact me and ask if the flowers are out yet so they can save their four-hour drive up there. The proximity of the research is amazing.”

When asked to share the impact of research that has come out of the site, Joe said, “It’s kind of tricky because science builds on itself. When something was learned here 30 years ago, it might be picked up by another scientist in Europe or somewhere, and it all builds on a certain output. The beauty of science is that everybody is collaborative.”

For Glaza, it’s the little traditions, like taking the same daily weather measurements without missing a beat.

“Every day for 115 years now, at 5 p.m., we’ve walked out to this same place to take weather measurements,” Glaza said. “That’s something like 42,000 consecutive days. We take the daily max temp, daily min temp and precipitation. There have been others collected over the years like wind and humidity, and all of that information gets reported to the weather service every day.”

“We still use manual instruments, too,” Mutchler added. “And we write it down in the logbook. You don’t want to miss a day.”

“No one wants to be the asterisk,” Joe said. “You gotta get your ass out there and take that weather.”

Glaza said long-term data sets like daily weather measurements, streamflow studies conducted since the 1930s, snow courses showing snowpack going back to 1936 and forestry plots going back to the early 1910s have all contributed to real-world applications in maintaining forest health, as well as showing trends that point out changes to the climate and other environmental conditions.

“We’re not just out here collecting numbers to give ourselves something to do,” Joe said.

“We’re all volunteers here and we all felt a special pull to this place,” Natalie said. “When you drive up, this place has some kind of power. This place is magical. … We’re volunteering to keep this place alive. Who knows what the next generation will gain from it?”

Glaza spoke of a tree geneticist who visited PREF and helped him realize the true importance of the research facility.

“There are some rows of trees, Douglas firs, that were planted 50-something years ago and have some special properties,” Glaza said. “He said having trees that old in that quantity was something special. He said it just doesn’t exist anywhere else. I couldn’t begin to describe the research he was doing, but it reminds us why we know this place is so important.”

“It speaks to the importance of areas like this because of the long time frame,” Joe said. “It might take 100 years to really see what’s going on and that’s why you need a place like this.”

For Natalie, whose Forest Service background was in fire, living in the birthplace of so many firefighting advancements was a treat.

“I had no idea what Gisborne did and learned that he modernized firefighting to use planes to fight fire,” she said. “Other tools we still use today, he invented. All those things that we still use today came from this spot right here.”

Mutchler, who studies botany at U of I, said she’s thrilled to be working where some of the blister rust science originated — research that has taken western white pine from the brink of extinction to a potential comeback.

“We’re losing that tree from the landscape,” Mutchler said. “It’s the first tree listed on the Endangered Species Act in North America. The blister rust science here helped establish a genetic study identifying gene resistance to blister rust, and we have some of those genetically resistant western white pine planted across this forest, many of which are in the nursery. Now we have cone stock … and resistant trees that are 60 years old that have grown into an entire forest.”

While research on diseases and forest health are important, climate change has contributed to more active fire seasons throughout the West. That’s why, no matter the field in which a researcher works, it all seems to come back to fire and how to mitigate it.

“Everything trickles to fire,” Mutchler said. “Brandon [Glaza] is a hydrologist, and when you look at precipitation and stream measurements, that influences fire. I’m a botanist and I look at the understory. How does it burn? All those things are important. Foresters are looking at tree health, what trees are growing and which ones are most flammable.”

‘A rich history here’

While PREF normally has a USFS superintendent and perhaps several live-in employees, recent shakeups in the federal government have brought uncertainty to the station.

Natalie, who normally works at the Sandpoint Ranger District office, said she and Joe decided to volunteer their time at PREF after hearing rumors that the historic station might be in trouble.

“I brought it up to Joe and said we gotta do our part,” she said. “There is no other option. We’ll see what happens through the end of winter. We’re open-ended.”

Mutchler said the disconnection from distraction offered by PREF is invaluable for researchers and scientists.

“I’ve been here for three years, living here all year round,” she said. “My brain has changed. … The value of being unplugged from all the distractions is incredible. … I’m getting my master’s out of U of I and I am encouraged to live down at the university, but I continue to tell my supervisors that this is the best place in the world to study and conduct research.”

Volunteers Charley McCrum and his wife Jane, both living at the site full-time, said this was their first experience in a scientific site. Their tasks revolve around custodial and maintenance duties.

“My wife and I have been involved with the Forest Service many times in years past on recreational sites,” he said. “We realize that there are certain things the Forest Service is not able to do without volunteer energy. We believe in these things. … I don’t know what PREF’s future is. I wonder if most of the research in future years will happen in places like Moscow, but it’s still no reason to get rid of this place. There’s such a rich history here. … Maybe in future years the Forest Service will have to make this thing more available to the public, which is a more viable option to keep it alive without dozing all the buildings and scrapping it.”

That has been the fate of numerous other experimental forest research facilities around the West, where sometimes the forests remain, but many of the facilities and living quarters have been razed or abandoned, leaving researchers without the ability to live among the trees they study.

‘We lost the expertise’

PREF was originally built to house scientists and their families, hosting anywhere from five to 12 full-time employees in its heyday. Those numbers have fluctuated through the years due to a variety of causes. During World War I, employees were hard to find because many were involved in the war effort. During the Great Depression and into World War II, budgets were cut significantly, and various presidential administrations have signaled different levels of commitment to PREF — but 2025 marked the first time in 115 years that a paid superintendent wasn’t living at the facility full time. 

With ideologies drifting back to “turn-and-burn” timber harvesting days, the reliance on DOGE by President Donald Trump’s administration to reduce the federal workforce and enact a hiring freeze has presented an existential challenge for the research station.

The Forest Service declined to be interviewed about personnel and funding matters, but the U.S. Department of Agriculture — which oversees USFS — provided the Reader with written comments when asked about the facility’s future.

“Under President Trump’s leadership, USDA has worked to restore fiscal responsibility, efficiency and accountability so that Americans can count on services that endure,” a USDA spokesperson stated. “Over the past year, we have addressed millions of dollars in salary deficits inherited from the previous administration. The Forest Service is now on a path to fiscal solvency.”

According to the spokesperson, the Fiscal Year 2026 appropriations bills for the Department of Agriculture and Forest Service were recently signed into law, and, “We are working on allocating available funds. The process is complicated and takes time to ensure we are fully aligned with administration priorities and the intent of Congress.”

The declining workforce was deeply affected by DOGE cuts in 2025, with many employees resigning or retiring early and others encouraged, even coerced, to leave. Longtime USFS employees like Bob Denner and Russ Graham are now deceased, and many other notables like John Byrne and Theresa Jain have retired. With a federal hiring freeze in place, there isn’t a next generation stepping up to take their place.

The group currently living at PREF abstained from speaking about personnel or management matters related to the station, but the Reader reached out to two recently retired employees who spoke more candidly about their work and the importance of the facility.

When Jain began her long career in forestry in the early 1980s, she said it was still an industry dominated by men.

“The Forest Service was primarily run by white men and it was a very military kind of management,” Jain told the Reader. “There were very few women and very few minorities. … I am a woman, but I’m also Hispanic.”

The Forest Service administration in the early 1980s was actively diversifying and recruiting, and when they came to Jain’s undergraduate school (Colorado State University), she interviewed well and came away with a job offer as a 19-year-old forester trainee in Bonners Ferry. Jain launched herself into the job, but found some tasks were physically difficult, such as jumping 1970s-era snowmobiles off of truck beds.

“When you only weigh 100 pounds soaking wet, it’s hard to manage those things,” Jain said. “That really revolved into how I got into research.”

Jain transferred to U of I and finished her bachelor’s degree there, finding herself drawn to the forestry science lab in Moscow as part of the research side of USFS.

“I walked in every two weeks and asked for a job,” she said. “Finally, after a year, they hired me as a temporary for a couple of years and I worked summers.”

Jain worked alongside scientists who conducted important research on blister rust in western white pine. She widened her experience levels, studying wildfire, erosion on roads and anything else related to forestry, which eventually led her to the PREF research station.

Eventually, she was hired as a full-time forester to support silviculture research, which is the art and science of establishment, growth, composition, health and quality of forests and woodlands. She worked under many big names in forestry, including Russ Graham, the scientist in charge of PREF for 25 years.

“What you see a lot today at Priest River — the nursery, the buildings, the research — can be attributed to Russ Graham,” she said. “He really sustained that place and maintained it. … He taught me a lot of the history of PREF, what it was that made it sustainable over 115 years, about the people and research going on that made it this amazing place.”

When Graham passed away in 2020, Jain took over as scientist in charge.

Jain said she always noticed that everyone stationed at PREF worked together and remained humble.

“It was a very different environment,” she said. “They shedded this outer armor they had when they were in Moscow. Everything was situated on, ‘How can we help forest management?’ … It was a safe space for managers to come and environmental groups and others to come and ask critical questions. … PREF provides a safe space for critical thought, questioning and learning.”

Reflecting on the many foresters who contributed to PREF’s history, Jain remembered, “We used to say, ‘We stand on the shoulders of giants.’ What Gisborne did. Or Irving Hague. … We still use some of his research done at Priest River.”

After Graham passed away in 2020, Jain remained to ensure a smooth leadership transition at PREF.

“Beginning in 1911, we always had crossover from one generation of scientist to another,” she said. “There was always overlap, so we were able to sustain some continuous philosophy and worldview of experimental forests. … It’s this continuous overlap, this continuous mentoring that gives a historical perspective on why it’s important to continue teaching the next generation.”

Jain retired in 2022, before Trump’s second term and DOGE efforts created turmoil with the federal workforce nationwide, so she wasn’t pressured to leave. She explained that working in research science under different administrations came with a host of challenges — and it was an ongoing issue throughout the Forest Service’s history.

“The Forest Service was going to be dissolved around 1923 because the administration at the time didn’t find any use for forest management and wanted to get rid of all the lands,” she said. 

That perspective shifted shortly after when the Forest Service started fighting forest fires, again leaning on research to help mitigate the potential disasters and maintain healthy stands of trees for timber harvesting and recreation.

Jain said when she began her career, loyalty to the cause was evident with every employee — something that she has noticed waning in recent years.

“With this current administration, particularly part of his early administration, shoving out all the people, doing the freezes and eliminating workers, scaring the bejesus out of folks,” Jain said. “All of a sudden, the confidence of the agency you’re working with and loyalty went right out the door.”

While there have been brief periods in the past without paid superintendents at PREF, Jain said the real cause of uncertainty for the future is the hiring freeze that isn’t replacing outgoing employees. When Jain retired, Jason Reinhardt took over the job but resigned soon after, assisting the transition to Sharon Hood as scientist in charge while based in Missoula, Mont.

When it comes to the Trump administration’s push to log nearly 60 million acres of public forests, Jain said that strategy is problematic.

“Look, I don’t think clear-cutting is necessarily a bad management strategy,” she said, explaining that if done correctly, clear-cutting can provide openings for western white pine and larch as well as treating stands of timber heavily affected by root disease.

“You have to have ecologically sound, socially acceptable and economically viable strategies,” she continued. “If socially people don’t want something done, it won’t get put on the ground. Economically, if it won’t pay for itself, it won’t get put on the ground. Ecologically, if we do something stupid, we live with it for centuries. We have to have that balance.

“This administration says hogging and logging is the way,” Jain said. “Whether that gets implemented is a whole different thing. We don’t have the infrastructure, don’t have the mills, don’t have the loggers. How will it get done? … That’s the scary part of what this administration has done. A lot of the expertise and knowledge left the Forest Service. Some of the best silviculturists in the country resigned or early-retired or just left. That’s the biggest thing that is at greatest risk; we lost the expertise.”

‘Creating chaos’

John Byrne studied forestry in Wisconsin and earned a master’s degree at Michigan Tech. After finishing school, he applied for a position at the research lab in Moscow and started his tenure at PREF in 1985. 

“One of my responsibilities was to continue measurements of some of the long-term research plots that were installed at PREF and other places,” Byrne told the Reader. “Some of those were installed in the teens, ’20s and ’30s, and we’ve had a continuous record for how the forest has changed over that period. … That’s one of the most valuable resources at PREF and we hope it can continue, but we’ll see into the future.”

Byrne still remembers his first feelings of awe upon arriving at the site.

“In my opinion, PREF is one of the treasures of the Forest Service because of its long record, being established in 1911 and a lot of the buildings put in during the CCC days of the 1930s,” he said. “It’s an amazing resource for scientists.”

While Byrne was based in Moscow, he would regularly travel to PREF and stay for a week at a time while conducting research ultimately used to develop models used not only in national forests, but by managers of other agencies that work in the forests of the northern Rockies. 

Byrne enjoyed the solitude of PREF because it eliminated many of the distractions that often got in the way of conducting in-depth research.

“You didn’t have any of the contrivances of society and you could go up there and concentrate on your work,” he said. “I’m old-school and I appreciated being away from the business of society.”

While taking measurements during his work at PREF, Byrne said he often had to refer to data recorded about a specific tree in previous years. There were surreal moments when he realized the measurements he was looking at were taken by some of the forestry legends of the past.

“A lot of scientists got their start there,” he said. “It was always very interesting to realize you’re one of the people in the line of progression that is keeping the research going.”

Byrne said the Forest Service has weathered storms before, usually involving science butting up against politics; but, this time, it feels different.

“We’ve always had ebbs and flows in some of our budgets and the focuses that the different administrations have had,” he said. “But we’ve always been able to maintain the kind of foundational work that’s done on experimental forests. We’ve always been able to keep that going, even though sometimes there would be different focuses, or a step back from something for a little while. The hope was always to keep things going.

“This current administration is, well, in my opinion, their only purpose is to break things,” he said. “They don’t have a clear purpose of what they’re doing and why they’re getting rid of people. They’re just creating chaos.”

Byrne said most USFS employees, including himself, have made conservation a guiding principle.

“They really want to do the right thing for the forest,” he said. “Unfortunately these people that are still in the Forest Service are taking a lot of abuse from the current administration to do their work. That’s quite unfortunate to me.”

Byrne originally planned to retire at the end of 2025 after nearly 40 years in the Forest Service, but wanted to see some projects finished, so was mulling spending a few more years before retirement.

“When the DOGE people started doing their business, they gave us the fork-in-the-road offer,” Byrne said. “They told us in April that we could take five months of pay and we’d retire at the beginning of October. For me, it was reasonably good timing. I saw how things were being managed at the Forest Service. It was becoming harder and harder to purchase things to do your basic job. … I wish I could’ve stayed a little longer, but the work environment got to be so frustrating it was hard to positively get much of anything done.”

While shakeups have happened in the past due to changing administrations, Byrne saw what was happening during Trump’s second term as something entirely new.

“Different administrations have come in and wanted to have a different focus, or reduce their budgets sometimes, but they’ve typically done it in a somewhat more sane way than what the current administration is doing,” he said. “To me, it’s totally un-understandable what they’re doing. It’s unclear to me what their focus is.”

When asked about their priorities moving forward, a USFS spokesperson said, “Forest Service Chief Tom Shultz has outlined FY26 agency priorities focused on fundamentals and a ‘back-to-basics’ approach for delivering the greatest good to the American people. Long-term research — such as silviculture, tree genetics and fire behavior studies conducted at Priest River and across the national forest system — supports priorities including reducing wildfire risk, thinning overgrown areas and boosting timber production to support local mills.”

Meanwhile, Byrne contends the current administration doesn’t understand the logistics of how to manage a forest in a healthy — and profitable — manner.

“They were mostly about cutting costs and getting rid of people,” he said. “The Forest Service said they wanted to get more cut out and they want to send more logs to the mills. … You can say that, but they didn’t think about the whole process. 

“You can’t just go out and cut trees,” he added. “A logger doesn’t buy a timber sale from the Forest Service until they also have a contract with a mill to take their logs to. They can’t just cut logs without having a market for them. They want to ramp things up really fast to get more wood out of the forest, but it’s not something that’s done turning on a dime. It doesn’t work that way. There are too many people in the process, too many factors in the process to make that happen. That’s why I say a lot of their ideas seem poorly thought out.”

Still, Byrne hopes the current administration gains a clearer focus moving forward.

“I have hopes that they will come to their senses, that the research branch of the Forest Service is a valuable resource they should maintain. That’s just my hope,” he said. “I would be remiss to say I could predict in any shape or form what this administration is going to do. I hope it can somehow survive, but I just don’t know.”

Like Jain, Byrne spoke of the importance of remembering that public lands and national forests provide a multitude of benefits to the American people — if they are managed properly.

“It’s not just lumber,” he said. “It’s a recreation source for people. It’s a water resource for people, especially in the West where we get moisture in the winter and depend on it in the summertime. There are a whole gamut of things. The Forest Service has always been tasked with managing all aspects of the forest, not just one aspect. To be ultra-focused on just one aspect is, to me, not thinking clearly about all the benefits of all the forest and what it does for people.”

‘Carry the torch’

No one can say what the future holds for PREF or the Forest Service itself, for that matter. With an administration hyperfocused on cost-cutting exercises and distilling the complicated balance of forest management to a simple equation of mass logging of National Forest lands — meanwhile  neglecting to hire new generations of forest stewards — it paints a picture of uncertainty for one of the West’s most important natural resources.

“The legacy [of PREF] is the reason we all volunteer our time,” Joe Hughes said. “This is a lot of work. The amount of work people have put into this place to protect it and the amount of research that has contributed to the country has been huge. … To let everything before us fritter away into the dust, it would be a shame. It would disrespect everyone who came before us. Zon, Marshall, Graves, Pinchot, Gisborne. All of these people have dedicated so much of their life to this place. It’s necessary to carry the torch.”

To learn more about the Priest River Experimental Forest, an excellent resource is History of the Priest River Experiment Station by Kathleen L. Graham, available to view online at bit.ly/PREF-pdf.