The Life and Times of Red Pine No. 3 of 4
A short biography for a patient observer of forest history
Prologue
See place marker number 6 on this historical map of the UMN Cloquet Forestry Center circa 1924 for the location of the Four Pines. At this time the CFC was called the Cloquet Forest Experiment Station (Image: Lane Johnson).
In 1911 the pine timber along what is now known as Tunnel and Kattman Roads was harvested by logging companies based in Cloquet. The land, newly opened to colonization on the Fond du Lac Reservation of Lake Superior Ojibwe , had just come into University of Minnesota ownership the year prior to establish the Cloquet Forest Experiment Station. The first University of Minnesota forester in charge, Dillon Tierney , designated four red pine to be saved as ' seed trees ' for future silvicultural research and education at the corner of Kattman and Sawyer Roads. The site came to be known locally as the 'Four Pines'. Much of the area that surrounds Four Pines today contains mature red pine that established following the 1910-12 cutover, and many subsequent timber harvests.
Left and Center: Human- and railroad-powered logging operations at the UMN Cloquet Forest Experiment Station, 1910. Right: Dillon Tierney, first University forester in charge, and his trusty steed, 'Bob' the black mare, at a temporary work camp near Otter Creek, 1910 (Images: University of Minnesota Archives, Cloquet Forestry Center Collection).
Learning the story of Red Pine No. 3
In the summer of 2021, the last tree of the four pines, reserved from cutting 111 years prior, succumbed to a mix of stressors. We will just call the cause of death "old age" for simplicity, though the 2021 drought, bark beetles, and fungal infestation likely played a part. In November 2021, two partial wood cross sections were collected for dendrochronological analysis . Here is the story we have learned from this tree through examination of her annual growth rings.
A view of Red Pine No. 3 of 4 Autumn 2021 from Kattman Road, looking south towards Sawyer Road, a year after we began to observe her gradual decline (Image: Kyle Gill).
Note: Biologically speaking red pine are monoecious , meaning they have both male and female flowers (cones). This makes a red pine both a he and a she, intersexed, or two-spirited. For the purposes of this story, we describe Red Pine. No 3 in the feminine, though in a different narrative, we might consider her a he. Honestly, we don't know what Red Pine No. 3's preferred pronoun is. We never thought to ask.
Red pine is the common English name for Pinus resinosa. The Fond du Lac Ojibwe know this species of pine ( zhingwaak ) as bapakwanagemag. Euro-American colonizers that settled on the Fond du Lac Reservation and other parts of Minnesota commonly referred to red pine as Norway pine, perhaps as a way of making the unfamiliar familiar.
The process of collecting tree-ring fire history samples from Red Pine No. 3, a standing dead fire-scarred tree, using a chainsaw. When less than 20% of the stem area of the tree is removed, the stem of the tree continues to be structurally sound. The two samples collected were assigned the tree code CFC-60F and sample identities CFC-60F A & B (Images: Kyle Gill; Lane Johnson).
From left to right: CFC-60F A and B partial cross section tree-ring samples arranged relative to their removal from the tree; the B sample prior to woodshop preparation; the B sample after rough planing the sanding surface with a router; the sanded sample ready for examination after sanding the surface with a belt sander (Images: Lane Johnson).
The earliest growth rings of Red Pine No. 3 of 4 observable at the sampling height of sample B, collected roughly 6 inches above the ground. Note the fire scars embedded within the annual growth rings at image right (1801, 1813, 1829, 1841), and two fire-killed branches at image center. The innermost year of growth is 1772 (Image: Lane Johnson).
Red Pine No. 3's first observable growth-ring formed in 1772. She possibly germinated following a 1770 fire, or maybe it was after a 1757 fire? Her rings cannot take us back that far. At 29 years old, when she was only ~7 inches in diameter at ground height, she experienced her first fire -- 1801. The fire must have moved through the area quickly and pruned her lower branches, raising her crown base to make her more resilient to future fires. Some of her closest friends may have died from injury in this fire. Enough of her lower limbs were lost that it took several years for her to fully recover (see diagram below showing examples of tree crown scorch and mixed-severity fire).
She saw four more spring fires in 1813, 1829, 1841, and 1855.
A diagram demonstrating various ways that the heat released from a fire modifies forest structure and fuel conditions on a site (from Hood and others 2018 ).
The 1860s were an exceptionally dry decade, a hard time for many trees. A multi-year drought along with possible crown scorch from a hot fire in 1864 caused a series of narrow rings from 1864 through the 1870s. It's possible she experienced another fire in 1872 and then another in 1882. Indications of fire injury are present again, in 1894 and 1909, buried deeply behind a large lobe of healing wood formed over the 20th century. These later fire years are evident in the tree-ring record elsewhere at the CFC and across northern Minnesota including the Boundary Waters, Voyageurs National Park, and Itasca State Park. The year 1894 may be familiar as it is the year of the second deadliest fire in U.S. history, sometimes called the (not so) Great Hinckley fire .
Finally, micro-scars, what we fondly called 'scarlets', are evident in 1929 and 1932. These are very small fire-induced injuries that may be associated with the controlled burning of logging slash or small wildfires that started along Sawyer Road, what was a relatively busy county highway at that time.
A partial cross section view of tree-ring fire history sample 'CFC-60F B' removed from Red Pine No. 3, with an inner ring of 1772 and an outer ring formed in 2019. Evidence of at least 11 fires is recorded on this sample including: 1801, 1813, 1829, 1841, 1855, 1864, 1872, 1882, 1894, 1909, 1929 and 1932. Comparative analysis of the associated sample 'CFC-60F A' and records from other trees will help refine these dates. (Image: Lane Johnson).
By the mid-1930s a local firefighting force was fully formed in the area including much manpower from a local Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camp at nearby Big Lake. This was just one part of a huge investment in people and technology in the 1930s that kicked off what has become an 80 year episode of fire absence that continues to present. This is an anomalous fire-free period relative to the rest of Red Pine No. 3's life caused in part by a tireless effort to exclude fire from our forest lands to maximize the growth and yield of timber resources. A historical wildfire map from the CFC records provides information on common ignition sources from 1910 up to the CCC era.
Workforce and work trucks at a Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camp, 1935, possibly Big Lake Camp S-79 located west of the Cloquet Forestry Center on the Fond du Lac Reservation, Carlton County, MN. (Image: University of Minnesota Archives, Cloquet Forestry Center Collection).
The Four Pines site circa 1926 looking west from the corner of Sawyer and Tunnel Roads. Red Pine No. 3 of 4 is at far left (Image: University of Minnesota Archives, Cloquet Forestry Center Collection).
Red Pine No.3 once had alot of growing space caused by frequent fire and then the big pine cutover. But since the mid-20th century her neighborhood gradually became densely populated, perhaps overcrowded, with new and younger red pine, paper birch, red maple, and balsam fir. It's likely that competition from her more vigorous neighbors, along with stress from native bark beetles and wood-rotting fungi became too much for her. By 2010 she stopped forming new growth rings along portions of her lower trunk. Her last observable growth ring was formed in 2019. Her crown appeared fairly healthy through the summer of 2020, but evidence of her passing was abundantly clear by summer 2021.
May she remain standing as a reminder of the fire-maintained conditions our wild lands need to perpetuate pine forests in any meaningful way.
If you want to visit Red Pine No. 3 of 4 on a future trip to the University of Minnesota Cloquet Forestry Center, you can find her at:
Dense pine forest conditions at Four Pines in 2022 with Pine No. 3 at image center. Note the brown needles at the top of her crown relative to the adjacent living red pine (Image: Kyle Gill).
In Reflection
- How would you describe the story of fire history preserved within the growth rings of Red Pine No. 3?
- What do you think are the key variables that contributed to the frequent fires that Red Pine No. 3 experienced over the first 160 years of her life?
- Can you provide two or three explanations for the absence of fire in the tree-ring record from the 1930s to present at this site?
- In what ways do you think tree-ring fire history records like those from Red Pine No. 3 can be used to guide forest stewardship?
The new Cloquet Forest Experiment Station fire lookout tower in Sept. 1929, located three-fourths of a mile southeast from Four Pines.
To learn more about the ecological and cultural history of fire in northern Minnesota, and other parts of the Upper Great Lakes region, view the 16-min fire film: Oshkigin | Spirit of Fire .
To learn more about the ecology of red pine forests, and efforts to perpetuate the pine ecosystem of one of Minnesota's most cherished places, read the article: Itasca, Alight .
Author contact: Lane Johnson can be reached at lbj@umn.edu
Anishinaabe family picking blueberries in a burned area near Little Fork, Minnesota in 1937 (Images: Russell Lee, Library of Congress).
