Gifford Pinchot

Gifford Pinchot was the son of James Pinchot, a native of Milford, Pennsylvania, and his wife, Mary, who was from New York. In 1886, after earning a fortune in the wallpaper business in New York, James retired and returned to his hometown with his wife to build their new home. Grey Towers became home to the Pinchot family; it remained their home until Dr. Gifford Bryce Pinchot, son of Gifford and his wife, Cornelia, donated it to the Forest Service in 1963.

In 1885, twenty year old Gifford Pinchot decided he wanted to become a "forester," a profession which did not even exist in this country at the time. He enrolled at Yale University, found "not even a suspicion of it there," then sailed to Europe, where he attended forestry school in France for a year. He returned home, anxious to halt the forest destruction which was sweeping across the United States.

In 1898, Pinchot was appointed head of the Division of Forestry within the Department of Agriculture, and met Theodore Roosevelt, who became an immediate close friend. In 1901, when Roosevelt became President, he and Pinchot set aside millions of acres of forest land which were to be protected under a program of scientific management. Later, when he argued publicly with President William Howard Taft, Roosevelt’s successor, Pinchot was fired from his position in the federal government. Back in Milford, he turned to state politics and was twice elected governor of Pennsylvania in 1922 and 1930.

However, it is largely for his pioneering efforts in conservation that Gifford Pinchot is remembered. He is the "father" of conservation in the United States; his ideas about managing trees and forests as a renewable natural resource have been studied and adopted for over 100 years - not only in this country, but around the world.

The Pinchot family supported Yale University Graduate Forestry School, which conducted classes at Forest Hall in Milford, just three blocks from The Columns. To this day, Grey Towers is the home of the Pinchot Institute For Conservation, an organization committed to leadership in conservation thought, policy, and action.

The Pike County Historical Society is proud to be part of the Pinchot heritage, and holds books and other resources about the family.