South Mountain’s forestlands, once rich in iron and copper ore, were heavily scarred throughout the eighteen hundreds by furnaces, mines, and charcoal pits that consumed vast numbers of trees, with a single furnace requiring four hundred acres annually for charcoal. By 1900, more than sixty percent of Pennsylvania’s forests had been lost to clear cutting, leaving dried treetops and rotting stumps. Doctor Joseph Rothrock, a leading advocate of forestry management, warned that six thousand four hundred square miles, more than four million acres of the state, were desolated, cut, and unprotected from fire. Conservation work in South Mountain then began to save forested land for clean air, watershed protection, and future timber, and Rothrock urged the state to buy land from lumber and iron companies to establish a state forest system in Pennsylvania. Michaux State Forest, part of South Mountain, became the site of Pennsylvania’s first state tree nursery and first forestry school. Today these forestlands remain an important renewable resource, supporting wood products, recreation, water supplies, and the rich soils of the Fruit Belt, even as private ownership and increasing development pressure continue to threaten them, prompting renewed conservation efforts through the South Mountain Conservation Landscape Initiative and the South Mountain Partnership.