Irons Fork Experimental Forest
Shortly after experimental forests were authorized for the U.S. Forest Service (USFS)—an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)—by the McSweeney-McNary Forest Research Act of 1928, the Ouachita National Forest (ONF) reached out to the USFS’s Southern Forest Experiment Station (SFES). The ONF staff members wanted the SFES to develop an experimental forest to help them learn about managing the shortleaf pine (Pinus echinata)–dominated forests of the Ouachita Mountains in Arkansas. In early 1931, the SFES dispatched a three-man crew to examine possible locations on the ONF, but they did not find any areas they thought were suitable for silvicultural research. The ONF and the USFS’s Washington DC office persisted, and a few years later the SFES suggested an experimental forest on a large tract of virgin and cutover timber along the Irons Fork …
