What are we to make of the photographs taken from fire lookouts that are used as evidence in this talk? Consider the Thorp Mountain photo from the 1930s. Prior to that, loggers had come in and largely wrecked that forest. The USFS GIS indicates that the area around Thorp Mountain is between 20-30% old growth, is mostly mature replacement forest. So a photo from the 1930s showing patchy forests would have been a reflection of the fact that industrial era Americans had already come through and taken most of the trees.