MENDOCINO County, California — The Jackson Demonstration State Forest was controversial from the day it was purchased in 1947 from the old Caspar Lumber Company. The government taking over private property can create suspicion, especially in those red scare days. At the time, big lumber corporations from the Deep South and Pacific Northwest were clearcutting newly purchased lands in California. The old-growth timber resource of Mendocino County was almost entirely harvested. Replantings were either not done or were done in a non-scientific way, threatening the ecological and economic forest and causing alarm in universities, science and government. Caspar Lumber remained one of the few large operators that was locally owned, with a famous annual family picnic. It was relatively responsible, practicing some selective logging in an age of bulldozer clearcutting. Then came the creation of California’s demonstration forest system with four big land purchases by the state in the late 1940s.