HEAD OF THE FORESTRY DIVISION, US. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE, 1898-1901

HEAD OF THE BUREAU OF FORESTRY, 1901-1905

HEAD OF THE U.S. FOREST SERVICE, 1905-1910

A Valued Adviser.

The most influential of the small group of close friends who advised President Theodore Roosevelt on conservation issues, Gifford Pinchot made conservation one of the leading causes of the Progressive Era. In the course of his career he slowly expanded the nation's concept of conservation from protection of forest resources to the conservation of human society itself.

Background.

Born on 11 August 1865 at his maternal grandfather's summer home in Simsbury, Connecticut, Gifford Pinchot, the son of a wealthy New York merchant and land speculator, spent much of his childhood abroad with his parents and three siblings. After graduation from the prestigious Phillips Exeter Academy in 1884, he enrolled at Yale University. His...