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Richard Frederick Smith was born in Bedford, Pennsylvania, in 1911. In 1918, his family moved to Salem, Ohio. In 1933, he entered the Civilian Conservation Corps, where he developed a love for forestry work. He studied forestry at Ohio State University from 1939 to 1941, then planned to transfer. His education was interrupted while he served in the Navy during World War II. In 1946, he and Ruth Lane Troxel were married; they later had two children. In 1948, he graduated from the University of Washington with a degree in forestry. The next year, he became the county forester for Clark County, Washington. He developed a forestry management technique of individual tree selection, demonstrating his ideas by buying and managing his own tract of timberland near Sandy, Oregon. He died in 1988.
Incomplete transcript (15 pages) is available for in-person use at the Oregon Historical Society Research Library.
Oral history interview with Richard F. Smith, by Charles Digregorio, SR 9236, Oregon Historical Society Research Library.
This oral history interview with Richard F. Smith was conducted by Charles Digregorio on September 20, 1978. In this interview, Smith discusses his early interest in forestry work, including serving as assistant forester in the Civilian Conservation Corps and in the Resettlement and Farm Security Administration in Ohio. He talks about his forestry education at Ohio State University. He then talks about working for the Forestry Department in Clark County, Washington, and describes his development of the forestry management technique of individual tree selection. He talks about his agreements and disagreements with environmental activists, his efforts to convince owners of small land tracts to use his forestry management techniques, and about other methods of forest management.
Copyright for this interview is held by the Oregon Historical Society. Use is allowed according to the following statement: Creative Commons - BY-NC-SA,