ABSTRACT
Work long has been a fundamental way that people relate to forests. After World War II, communities near national forests developed an intimate economic relationship with these lands by participating in industrial-scale timber harvest. Prior to the 1990s, rural forest community development efforts, especially those of the Forest Service, focused on sending large volumes of timber to mills (Clary 1986; Hirt 1994; Waggener 1977). This was true across the country, whether in the Pacific Northwest, South, or interior West. Although many forest communities suffered from the high poverty rates of rural America, especially after the early 1980s recession, wages in the forest-products sector generally were considered sufficient to support a family (Freudenburg and Gramling 1994). With a focus on fallers, truck drivers, and mill workers, the forest-products industry seemed to create high-quality jobs in forest communities.
