NEW HAMPSHIRE’S WHITE PINE BLISTER RUST MAPS WERE NOT DRAWN TO SETTLE BORDER DISPUTES.
THEY DON’T PLAN TOWNS FOR NEW SETTLERS.
THEY DON’T ATTRACT TOURISTS TO THE WHITE MOUNTAINS.
CARTOGRAPHERS CREATED THESE MAPS TO HELP HALT THE PROGRESS OF A TREE-KILLING DISEASE.
BOIVIN: (Trk 1, 5:32) The disease was an imported disease…
GARDNER: RAY BOIVIN IS A PEST CONTROL EXPERT WITH NH’S DEPARTMENT OF FORESTS AND LANDS.
BOIVIN: It was a result of reforestation efforts at the turn of the century. (To trk 2) It was first identified in New York on White Pine seedlings, and because the Northeast was trying to reforest a lot of areas that had been cleared for agriculture and basically for industry...so what they did was they actually imported seedlings from Europe.
GARDNER: THOSE SEEDLINGS CARRIED THE FUNGAL PEST CALLED WHITE PINE BLISTER RUST.
IT’S A WASTING INFECTION THAT KILLS YOUNG PINE TREES AND SEVERELY WEAKENS AND DISFIGURES OLDER ONES.
FORESTERS AND LOGGERS RECOGNIZED THE THREAT POSED BY BLISTER RUST AS SOON AS IT APPEARED IN 1909.
BY 1922, THE BLIGHT HAD SPREAD TO AS MANY AS HALF THE WHITE PINES IN SOME AREAS OF NEW HAMPSHIRE.
BLISTER RUST SPREAD RAPIDLY, AND ITS DESTRUCTIVE POTENTIAL WAS ENORMOUS.
BUT RAY BOIVIN SAYS THE DISEASE ALSO HAS ONE CRITICAL WEAKNESS.
BOIVIN (:53) It’s a disease that has an alternate host, the life cycle is such that it spreads from ribes, which is the genus name of gooseberries and currants. This disease, because it has an alternate host, is able to be eliminated by eliminating one of the hosts.
GARDNER: AS EARLY AS 1917, NEW HAMPSHIRE OUTLAWED THE SALE OR PLANTING OF GOOSEBERRIES, CURRANTS, OR ANY OTHER RIBES SPECIES.
AND THE STATE BEGAN A LONG SERIES OF RIBES ERADICATION PROGRAMS THAT WOULD LAST UNTIL THE LATE 1970’S.
BOIVIN: (1:58) What they did was they started mobilizing people that would actually go out and pull these things by hand. The work initially was pretty haphazard. I remember seeing some pictures where they used horses to pull up huge areas of these things.
GARDNER: INDIVIDUAL TOWNS FUNDED THE RIBES ERADICATION CREWS..
THEY WORKED UNDER THE SUPERVISION OF FEDERAL FORESTERS.
WHEN THE DEPRESSION STRUCK, THE CIVILIAN CONSERVATION CORPS TOOK OVER SOME OF THE WORK.
THAT’S WHEN BOB WOODWARD GOT INVOLVED.
WOODWARD: (3:17) I started in 1933, when I was in the CCC, you see. I was in the Tamworth Camp, Company 117. (4:32) Being a New Hampshire boy and used to woods and fields, and things like that, the rest of ‘em were all from Massachusetts – they couldn’t hardly tell a pine tree from a spruce, (laughs) or a maple from an oak, you know?
GARDNER: BOB WOODWARD LIKED THE WORK.
AFTER HIS CCC DAYS HE STAYED ON WITH THE RIBES ERADICATION PROGRAM.
HE PULLED UP THOUSANDS OF RIBES PLANTS, BECAME A CREW BOSS, A DISTRICT LEADER, AND LATER A SURVEYOR.
WHEN THE STATE DIVISION OF FOREST AND LANDS TOOK OVER THE PROGRAM, HE STAYED ON.
WOODWARD SPENT DECADES WALKING THROUGH NEW HAMPSHIRE’S WOODS AND FIELDS, AND CATALOGING WHAT HE FOUND.
HE ALSO LEARNED HOW TO DRAW THE MAPS THAT GUIDED THE ERADICATION CREWS.
WOODWARD: (2:39) These were drawn after the eradication season. In October we’d start mapping, and we’d map right through the winter. If you had six or eight or ten towns that you were gonna work during that eradication season, why you would go into that town and you would have in your record book it would show when these were due for examination
GARDNER: WOODWARD AND HIS CREWS WORKED ON A TEN-YEAR CYCLE, REVISITING AND RE-MAPPING TO MAKE SURE THE RIBES PLANTS DID NOT RETURN.
EVENTUALLY THEY EXPANDED THEIR PREVENTIVE WORK TO INCLUDE OTHER FOREST DISEASES AND INFESTATIONS.
THEY ALSO DREW MANY OF THE LATER MAPS WORKING FROM AERIAL PHOTOGRAPHS.
BUT IN THE EARLY DAYS, THEY TRUDGED OVER THE COUNTRYSIDE ON SNOWSHOES TO GATHER THEIR INFORMATION.
AND THEY KEPT IT UP FOR MANY YEARS.
WOODWARD: (2:20) All winter long I mapped. I mapped about 300,000 acres, I think. (30:59) I had Gilmanton, I had Barnstead, Laconia, Meredith, Moultonborough, Sandwich, Tamworth, Conway, Chatham, Jackson, I had Bristol, Plymouth, I had Wolfeboro, Alton, Sanbornton, Belmont, good lord, I think there were about 32 towns in the whole thing.
GARDNER: EACH TIME A TOWN WAS COVERED, NEW MAPS WOULD REPLACE THE OLD ONES.
FORESTER RAY BOIVIN SAYS BOB WOODWARD AND THE OTHER MAPMAKERS BECAME EXTREMELY SKILLFUL.
BOIVIN: (3:10) By the 1950’s they had really become very sophisticated about how they did this…(4:38) What they did was they gave these people compasses and grid paper, and they’d take a topographic map, a USGS map if you will, and they’d make these blocks up of each town, and by drawing lines on those maps, and taking a piece out of the map and making a grid on it, they could actually go out and pace and compass work, they could identify all the permanent features….. This was primarily stone walls, cellar holes, streams, and forest type.
GARDNER: THE MAPMAKERS DREW THE STONE WALLS AND CELLAR HOLES BECAUSE THEY WERE INVITING SITES FOR THE RIBES PLANTS.
AS THE DECADES PASSED, WOODWARD AND HIS CREWS CREATED AN IRREPLACEABLE RECORD OF THE LANDSCAPE THEY EXAMINED.
RAY BOIVIN:
BOIVIN: (15:28) Whenever they went back, they added to their maps, so if you had someone that worked in an area for 20 years, let’s say, those maps got to be pretty detailed with a lot of information in them, and of course they had type information, they had road information, they had everything from whether or not there was a bear den to how many cellar holes there were, just amazing information.
GARDNER: NO OTHER MAPS OF NEW HAMPSHIRE CARRY THE FOOT-BY-FOOT DETAIL OF THE BLISTER RUST MAPS.
THEY RECORD THE LANDSCAPE LAYOUT AND ITS FOREST COMPOSITION EXACTLY AS IT WAS IN THE 30’S, 40’S, 50’S, 60’S, AND EVEN 70’S.
MANY OF THEM ARE WORKS OF ART, BEAUTIFULLY INKED AND COLORED.
MOST WERE DRAWN BEFORE REDEVELOPMENT BEGAN TO ERASE THE FIELDS, FORESTS, AND MEADOWS THAT HAD DEFINED NEW HAMPSHIRE’S PAST.
THUS, THEY REVEAL PATTERNS OF SETTLEMENT AND USE THAT DATE TO THE 18TH AND 19TH CENTURIES.
RAY BOIVIN SAYS THE MAPS’ HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE HAS NOT GONE UNNOTICED.
BOIVIN: (13:00) That value was recognized fairly early on. (19:18) Most of our state maps were first made using those as a main tool. I know that the land surveyors are aware of them and use them a lot….I think that the schools are going to be making a lot more use of them because they’ve become aware of them and they’re using them for a variety of things.
GARDNER: RAY BOIVIN QUICKLY ADDS THAT SOME OF THE MAPS ARE PROTECTED.
THEY SHOW THE EXACT LOCATIONS OF SENSITIVE ARCHAEOLOGICAL AREAS, AND OTHER HISTORIC SITES.
THE MAPS ARE ALSO VOLUMINOUS.
BOIVIN SAYS THEY OCCUPY 20 TO 30 FILE CABINETS AT THE STATE ARCHIVES, MOSTLY IN THE FORM OF SINGLE 8x10 SHEETS.
THESE MAPS WILL ONLY GROW IN VALUE AS THE YEARS GO BY.
BOB WOODWARD DREW SOME OF THE MOST DETAILED AND BEAUTIFUL OF THEM.
HE’S PROUD OF THE CONTRIBUTION HE MADE TO THE HEALTH OF NEW HAMPSHIRE’S FORESTS, AND TO THE RECORD OF THE STATE’S LANDSCAPE HISTORY.
AND HE REMEMBERS HIS INTIMATE CONNECTION TO NEW HAMPSHIRE’S LAND AND PEOPLE WITH ENORMOUS SATISFACTION.
WOODWARD: (32:15) It was a dream job, it really was. I just lived for every day, everybody knew me, I would go into an area and I’d stop at a farmhouse, and I would introduce myself and tell them that I was going to be poking around looking for blister rust or for whatever….(33:30) I met a lot of people that way and it was just a wonderful career, it really was.
GARDNER: BLISTER RUST MAPS EXIST FOR MOST THE NEW HAMPSHIRE SOUTH OF THE WHITE MOUNTAINS.
THEY’RE PRESERVED BY THE STATE ARCHIVES OFFICE.
HERE’S A TIP FOR THE NEW HAMPSHIRE HISTORICAL SOCIETY:
THE NEXT TIME AN EXHIBITION OF HISTORIC MAPS IS PLANNED, THESE UNIQUE WORKS OF PRACTICAL ART SHOULD BE INCLUDED.
BY THEN, THEY’LL BE AN EVEN MORE VALUABLE RESOURCE THAN THEY ARE TODAY.
FOR NHPR NEWS, I’M KEVIN GARDNER.
