All:
My wife and I have done a lot of exploring of ghost towns, old ROWs, and assorted other interesting places in all of the western US states over a 50 year period. This phenomenon occurs in all of them -- even a proliferation of sagebrush in some places.
Look at the old William Henry Jackson photos of the 19th century and compare them to what the area is like currently. There was a hardcover book published about ten years ago that did just that.
How many of you knew that the Lake Tahoe basin of California was almost clear cut by 1896? Took a long time to grow back. From a small plane, my Dad took some aerial color photos of the Emerald Bay region of that lake in 1947. I scanned his 35mm slides and made 11x14 color prints a few years ago to decorate our rental cabin at Tahoe City. The first thing my son noticed was was how thin the forest was. 60+ years of more growth changed the appearance completely.
There are so many examples of regrowth of the forests that it would take an encyclopedia just to list them.
With best regards, Hart Corbett
________________________________________________
Jerry Day Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Christian Romberg Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Hi,
> > I'm just watching some vintage movies from
> Green
> > Frog, and I've noticed,
> > that the vegetation at many locations, e.g.
> Windy
> > Point is now much higher, more trees, less
> view.
> > What's the reason for that? Was there any
> > event/human influence which had removed the
> trees
> > well before the 1950/60ties, and now they have
> > regrown?
> > Christian
> Christian:
>
> You see that on most Colorado rail lines and
> abandoned ROW. About 30 years ago a friend and I
> hiked past Deen tunnel on the Tennessee Pass line.
> We wanted to shoot a train going up hill in the
> same spot where Dick Kindig shot a 3600 around
> 1945. There were so many trees up there now that
> we could not get a clear view of the track the way
> Dick did. Saw the same thing on the Ibex branch
> abandoned ROW east of Leadville. In early George
> Beam photos, there were almost no trees along the
> ROW and you could see the entire town of Leadville
> below. Now there are so many trees that you cannot
> even get a view of the town. Same thing on
> Marshall Pass.
> As was stated, policy now is to put our every fire
> ASAP. In the past, trees were also cut for
> firewood in the homes of folks who could not
> afford coal.
>
> Jerry Day
