Skip Navigation

  Button that takes you to the Problem Based Learning model page. Button that takes you to the references page. Button that takes you to the related links page. Button that takes you to the glossary page. Button that takes you to the modules and activities page. Button that takes you to the teacher pages. Button that takes you to the home page.Image map of some Temperate Rainforest puzzle pieces.  Please have someone assist you with this.

Button that takes you to the A Native American's Observation page. Button that takes you to the View of a Clearcut page. Button that takes you to the How the Newcomers Saw It page. Button that takes you to the Home of the Gods page. Image that says Views of the Forest: Celebrating the Fourth.
Button that takes you to the Timber Industry page.
Button that takes you to the Life As a Logger page.
Button that takes you to the Wood Use page.
Views of the Forest: Celebrating the Fourth
Image of the forest on fire.Photo: Courtesy of Forest History Society, Inc., Durham, North Carolina. A New Englander named James G. Swan was among the early settlers to the Washington Territory who celebrated the Fourth of July as a very special day. After the morning bonfire, which Swan himself set off, different local oystermen read the Declaration of Independence and gave orations on Adams, Jefferson, or heroes of the American Revolution. Then came the pot-luck feast, which they properly called a banquet, followed by the firing into the air of every hand gun and rifle they could find.

Mr. Swan describes how at the end of the day's celebration, he and six or eight others crossed over the river and climbed to the top of a hill, where they discovered a hollowed out stump of an old cedar. The stump stood nearly twenty feet high and measured 18 feet in diameter. They filled the stump with dry timber and set it on fire. The bonfire burned all night and into the next day and eventually set fire to the surrounding forest. The resulting forest fire burned for months until the winter rains extinguished it.

In the introduction to James G. Swan's book, The Northwest Coast or, Three Years' Residence in Washington Territory, Norman H. Clark, who is generally sympathetic to Swan, seems compelled to comment on the rowdy Fourth of July celebration, which climaxed with the forest's being set aflame. Clark points out the that the thoughtless destruction of the forest could be seen as an "allegorical comment" on people of the old West Swan, J. G. The Northwest coast or, three years' residence in Washington territory. 1857. Reprint, with an introduction by Norman H. Clark, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1982.

[ Views of the Forest: Home of the Gods /
Celebrating the Fourth / As the Newcomers Saw It /
View of a Clearcut / Native American's Observation ]
[
Timber Industry ] [ Life as a Logger ] [ Wood Use ]
[
Glossary ] [ Related Links ] [ References ] [ PBL Model ]

[ Home ] [ Teacher Pages ] [ Modules & Activities ]

Button that takes you back to the Temperate Rainforest main page.


HTML code by Chris Kreger
Maintained by ETE Team
Last updated November 10, 2004

Some images © 2004 www.clipart.com

Privacy Statement and Copyright © 1997-2004 by Wheeling Jesuit University/NASA-supported Classroom of the Future. All rights reserved.

Center for Educational Technologies, Circuit Board/Apple graphic logo, and COTF Classroom of the Future logo are registered trademarks of Wheeling Jesuit University.