Gifford Pinchot Journal "Trip GP and Jack Monroe Up Swan River, June 1896" (Rewritten 4/20/1897)

In 1896, Gifford Pinchot, who later became the first Chief of the U.S. Forest Service, traveled through the Swan Valley inspecting this region of Montana, while working for the National Forest Commission. Jack Monroe, a trapper and guide, accompanied him. In an account of his trip through the Swan Valley recorded in 1897, Pinchot wrote:

In the course of work on the National Forest Commission, I camped last summer, on the shore of Swan Lake, through which passes on the tributaries of the Flat Head River in northwestern Montana. I was anxious to study the forest in the valley of the Swan River f...