I should have thought about those historical images.  It doesn't look like the area I outlined as the "main building" was really a building at all.  Maybe that is where they burned everything?  Those old aerials look like there was 2 major buildings - one where that fencing was, and one where I said it looked like it might have been a garage.  Also, between the 2000 and 2005 images there was some cutting done   In the 1994 image, it shows pretty much a completely filled area - then in 2000, a few trees were cut and in 2005, more were cut.

Too bad I didn't see it when it was still in use.....

I was told the story once but only recall the gist of it which had to do with loss of funding and there was also a point in time when the seed zones that were seemingly so important became discredited science. I don't know if any of you recall how many zones were once established. I remember hunting all over to try to get the right seedlings.

Also, obviously, why finance reforestation research after the end of large scale timber harvesting.

The buildings seemed to me to be of the same era as the compound in Estacada across the river, now sold off.

Not all old the records are particularly interesting or useful. Much of it was just paperwork.

Cloning firs is a well- and long-known topic going back hundreds of years, so its not likely they were studying the act of cloning itself. How well different clones perform would need to be studied so that is a possibility. It is also possible that clones of "superior" trees (however that may be defined) were grown to try to combine various "superior" qualities in the seed, leading either to seed with those combined qualities or yet more "superior" clones. This sort of approach was mostly dropped once it was realized that a strain doing better than most in one location might not even survive in a much different location, even if the tree is native to both locations.

The old zone concept is fine for broad-stroke comparisons between areas, but it falls way short if you need to do a detailed ecological analysis of an area. Current practice is to describe ecologically similar areas by the plants that grow there. It turns out that the plants are consistently good at telling you something of the nature of the soils they grow on. If the undergrowth is mostly beargrass, the soil is poor, if there are huckleberries as well, the soil is a little better, and if you start seeing a variety of herbaceous plants thrown in the mix the soil may be pretty good.

Heres the reply I have -- there may be more to the story but this is more than we had before.

So the FS actually recycled the buildings instead of torching them. Wow, that's a change from past practices. Of course having a road next to the structures aided in the decision making process.