In the 1880's, when General Christopher C. Andrews began urging Minnesota to consider the future of its forested lands, most Minnesotans did not believe timber could ever become scarce, but by his death in 1922 the vast virgin pine forests were gone, lumber was being imported from the Pacific Northwest, and devastating fires had claimed hundreds of lives and millions of acres. Andrews had served during the Civil War as captain and colonel of the Third Minnesota Regiment of Volunteers and at the war's close as Brevet Major General United States Volunteers. Appointed minister to the combined state of Sweden and Norway in 1869, he became interested in reforestation while living in Stockholm. After returning to Minnesota, he worked to save parts of the state's remaining forests, encourage replanting, and establish a school of forestry. He introduced the Swedish idea of cutting only the annual growth of trees for lumber each year and is considered by professional foresters the father of sustained yield in the United States. He met with little success until 1895, the year after the Hinckley fire killed more than 400 people, when the legislature passed a bill he wrote calling for the preservation of forests and the prevention and suppression of forest fires, and he became the state's first chief fire warden. Preservation remained difficult in regions with hundreds of logging camps, miles of railroads with uncleared rights of way, and acres of slashings left by lumbermen, and despite his efforts, carried out with almost no funding, terrible fires swept northern Minnesota in the early years of the 20th century. Along with firefighting, he played a key role in establishing Superior and Chippewa national forests and developing a forestry board to oversee state forest reserves, serving the forest service for 26 years at an average yearly salary of only $1,650 while winning the appreciation of only a farsighted few of his fellow citizens.