A Place for Inquiry, A Place for Wonder

William Robbins’s latest study makes an important contribution to the environmental history of the Pacific Northwest through its thorough, careful scholarship that documents a significant, as-yet little recognized site in our nation’s forest science history. In A Place for Inquiry, A Place for Wonder: The Andrews Forest, Robbins argues that the 15,800-acre experimental forest—“a cloistered place, unknown to the vast majority of Oregon citizens” (p. 192)—is the site of significant contributions to ecosystem science, as well as the environmental humanities, at regional, national, and international scales. The H.J. Andrews (named posthumously for Horace J. Andrews, Regional Forester of the U.S. Forest Service’s Pacific Northwest Region (1943–1951)), located west of the Cascade Mountains within the Willamette National Forest, was established in 1948. Over its seven-decade history, this Experimental Forest of the U.S. Forest Service has generated insights about old-growth Douglas fir forests and plantations and the drainage basin’s watershed processes....

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