4th & 5th Grade Social Studies Standards Relevant to the Cradle of Forestry

4th Grade History

4.H.1.3- Explain how people, events and developments brought about changes to communities in western North Carolina.

 We use the Pink Beds community as an example, both pre-Vanderbilt ownership (about 1880- 1895) and while the land was part of the Biltmore Estate and the Biltmore Forest School operated here (1895-1909).  People of Scots-Irish, German and English ancestry lived on subsistence farms in the area. Devoted to the education of their children and to their religious faiths, they built the Pink Beds schoolhouse about 1891, employed a teacher, and also used it as their community church.  Dr. Schenck’s commissary built in 1902 brought mail delivery from Pisgah Forest and supplies from Asheville to the Pink Beds community over improved roads. As Dr. Schenck put it, “civilization had arrived.” His school and forestry program employed many people in the area.  In 1901 Southern Railway brought forest-related industry to western North Carolina- leatherworks, tanneries, tannic-acid plants, veneer works, and furniture factories. Dr. Schenck’s forestry program had access to new markets and new employment opportunities.

4.H.2.1 Explain why important buildings, statues, monuments, and place names are associated with the state’s history.

 The Cradle of Forestry in America gives North Carolina the status of First in Forestry. George W. Vanderbilt was the first private land owner to hire a forester (Gifford Pinchot in 1891) to care for his current and potential forests and to make their products a business venture. Pinchot’s successor, Dr. Carl Alwin Schenck, started America’s first forestry school, the Biltmore Forest School. The over 360 young men who attended earned jobs across the nation in forestry, wood product research, and private business.

(4.H.2.2 –related; while walking the Cradle’s trails, students will see our state flower, the dogwood and may see our state bird, the cardinal.)

4th Grade Geography

4.G.1.2 Explain the impact that human activity has on the availability of natural resources in North Carolina.

 In discussions along the trails (and in many science oriented programs, such as Risky Business addressing the challenges of bird migration and conservation, and Green Invaders that focuses on invasive exotic plants and native species restoration) students will be given examples of how human activity can have either a positive or a negative impact on the availability of natural resources.  The conservation of natural resources is why forestry was first implemented and continues today.  The theme of our “back in time” programs, Gumshoes in the Pink Beds and Tools, Toys and Resources is that people today depend on the same natural resources that people did back in the days of the Biltmore Forest School.  In the past people used wood to cook their food, for heat, for light, for homes and other structures, tools, even toys and soap making. Tree cutting was a constant chore, so the forestry practice of planning for future needs came in good time.  Having often placed outhouses over streams, they did not have the systems in place we have today to remove human waste and lacked the awareness that “away” is a place.

4.G.1.3 Exemplify the interactions of various peoples, places and cultures in terms of adaptation and modification of the environment.

 We use the Pink Beds valley as an example of how geography and access to natural resources determined where people chose to live and developed small farms, pastures and orchards.  The physical environment- topography, availability of water, timber and transportation routes, and abandoned farms in Pisgah Forest all supported America’s first forestry school and the establishment of forestry in the area.  This same physical environment led to the establishment of Pisgah National Forest in 1916 and attracts millions of visitors each year to enjoy outdoor recreation.

5th Grade History

5.H.1.1 Support: Historical understanding-

 In the 1960’s when the US Forest Service was developing the Cradle of Forestry in America site as an attraction, planners needed information to develop the stories that would encourage visitors to care about its significance. They considered primary resources available. They met and interviewed surviving Biltmore Forest School alumni and people involved in Schenck’s forestry efforts, gathering their recollections.  Using donated diaries Dr. Schenck required his students to keep, photographs taken by students and Dr. Schenck himself, and books he had compiled of student biographies and his own memoirs, planners pieced together the site’s history.  Today staff at the Cradle of Forestry still examine the site’s history, and work to confirm facts that over the decades, in some cases, turned out to be folklore.

5th Grade Geography

5.G.1.1 Explain the impact of the physical environment on early settlements in the New World.

 The physical environment of the Pink Beds valley suited settlement here as early as the late 1700’s. People met their needs through using the forest resources of wood and clean water, and identified the best soil for their subsistence farms.  The forest environment provided game, wild food plants and medicinal plants to settlers and Native Americans who ranged the area before them.

Page 2 of 3 5.G.1.2 Explain the positive and negative effects of human activity on the physical environment of the United States, past and present.

 The narrow gauge logging train along the Cradle’s Forest Festival Trail symbolizes industrialization in the North Carolina mountains and the exploitation of forest resources. In years when Pisgah Forest had no forester and the US Forest Service did not have timber rights (Vanderbilt sold 20-year rights to a private company in 1912), large-scale timber cutting occurred here and elsewhere in western North Carolina on a scale much larger than the smaller impact the settlers made, tree by tree, horse pull by horse pull.  Discussions along the trails help students understand what forestry is- that the practice of forestry is carried out by carefully examined plans that include maps, species inventory, protection of soil and water, and today, the protection of biodiversity and compliance with environmental regulations.  Today land management agencies such as the US Forest Service are challenged with protecting the physical environment (soil, water, plants, animals, and a variety of habitats) from increasing impacts from recreation, while providing opportunities for the public to enjoy their lands safely.

5.G.1.3 Exemplify how technological advances have allowed people to overcome geographic limitations.

 The steam-powered portable sawmill along the Forest Festival Trail represents an advance in efficiency to the simpler technology of water-powered mills.  The narrow-gauge steam locomotive made the transport of wood to markets on a large-scale possible.

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