Galen Scheufler

“This forest is gorgeous!” Galen Scheufler thought as he drove his patrol truck along a stony creek toward the Mill Run Campground. Scheufler had been a park ranger with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Pittsburgh District for less than a year when he discovered not only one but two rare forests near Youghiogheny River Lake… Less than one percent of all forests east of the Mississippi River are considered old growth, containing trees older than 70 or 80 years old… While gathering documents, Scheufler plunged into historical records and photograph archives at the ranger station. Suddenly, he came across a paragraph claiming that many of the trees at another forest nearby had never been logged. This second forest — Klondike Ridge — was much closer to the ranger office by the dam in Pennsylvania, whereas the Mill Run forest was several miles south in Maryland.