Although I’ve long ago gotten used to crazy things turning up around campus, every so often even I get surprised. Last week I got an email from a very nice woman in Lovett Hall asking if I’d be interested in an old metal tube that had turned up. It was labeled “Rice Land Lumber Company – original tracings, permanent records. DO NOT DESTROY.”
Well, yes, I’d like to see that.
The tube was full of tightly rolled . . . something. The first things that came out were delicate tracings, so brittle as to be, in essence, dust held together by inertia.
Note, by the way, that these maps were made by Frank Shutts, who I talked about a couple years ago here. The very early date answers a question that I’ve sort of idly wondered about: Did President Lovett hire Elmer Shutts’s father or did he admit Frank Shutts’s son? It must have been the latter.
As you might suspect, it’s going to take a little time to get these properly unrolled but in the meantime I was fascinated by this:
There were long lists on each map, detailing section by section which trees were where–mostly pine but also a bit of sweetgum and holly. What I’m curious about is what “old government trees” might be.
Bonus:
