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North Dakota State Nursery Experimental Forest

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1930s, F. E. Cobb and Joseph Stoeckeler, landscape planners. 3rd Ave. N, off U.S. 2, 3.3 miles southwest of Denbigh
  • (Photograph by Steve C. Martens)

This experimental nursery is associated with F. E. Cobb, state forester in 1931 and state administrator of the Prairie States Forestry Project that promoted the Great Plains Shelter belt Project (see RM3). The goal of the shelterbelt program was to plant forty million trees in a one-hundred-mile-wide belt from the Canadian border to Texas to serve as a windbreak against Dust Bowl erosion. The oldest U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service facility in North Dakota is the Denbigh Experimental Forest that was created, in part, to determine the feasibility of such a forested belt regionally. The nursery was established by the CCC with the U.S. Forest Service in the Denbigh Dunes area to determine which seed sources were adaptable to the Great Plains and the best methods of soil preparation. Denbigh’s forty acres contains forty-three species of trees from Europe, Asia, and the United States. It is a continuing wellspring of genetic woodland resource materials and seed source for the nearby state-operated Towner Nursery. Named in honor of forester and longtime director Joseph Stoeckeler, the arboretum is a valuable educational and scientific information resource, with unpretentious examples of CCC rustic-style buildings. The Forest Service is developing Denbigh as an education center and interpretive site.

Writing Credits

Author: 
Steve C. Martens and Ronald H. L. M. Ramsay
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Data

What's Nearby

Norway Lutheran Church and Cemetery
Old Granville State Bank

Citation

Steve C. Martens and Ronald H. L. M. Ramsay, "North Dakota State Nursery Experimental Forest", [Towner, North Dakota], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/ND-01-MH2.

Print Source

Cover: Buildings of North Dakota

Buildings of North Dakota, Steve C. Martens and Ronald H. L. M. Ramsay. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2015, 122-123.

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