R. Nevan McCullough papers , 1903-1982

R. Nevan McCullough was born in 1904 on a forest homestead three miles from Mount Rainier National Park, in Washington State. His father, William A. McCullough, an Irish immigrant, found "stump-farming" too heartbreaking and joined the U.S. Forest Service in 1903, serving until 1922.

Nevan McCullough began working for the Forest Service as a trail builder and fire guard in the early 1920s, and was appointed District Ranger in the White River Ranger District of the Snoqualmie National Forest on April 21, 1928. He served in this position until March 31, 1959. During his thirty-one years in office, McCullough developed a thorough knowledge of the history and geography of the White River area, and came to be highly regarded in the Forest Service for efficient fire safety and timber sales management. During his term of service, McCullough saw sweeping changes in Forest Service implementation of "multiple use" policies, and foresaw the development of a struggle between industry and environmental interests. He was featured in the February 14, 1955 issue of Time magazine ("Woodsman, Chop That Tree," pp. 20-21) as representative of a new breed of "timber manager" forest rangers.

After his retirement in 1958, Nevan McCullough worked as a forestry consultant and trail building contractor, maintained a string of pack-horses with which he led a number of wilderness expeditions, and took part in several historical societies. He built up a fine collection of over 3,000 photographic negatives of historical interest, mostly of forestry subjects, for which he often received use requests from newspapers and magazines.

In 1970, the Forest Service History Project commissioned McCullough to write a history of his district. The result was a publication entitled Interpretive Study of the White River Drainage.

In his last two decades, R. N. McCullough was active in public debate over multiple use and wilderness designation, attempting to state the timber industry's viewpoint in a rational manner, believing in the efficacy of a debate in which each side should be willing to learn from the other. He died in 1983.