The landscape of community

New England's tradition of forested communities stretches unbroken to the seventeenth century, when the earliest settlers worked common wood lots or set aside timbered public lands to support residents, churches, and schools. Where these reserves have survived decades of changing land holding patterns, their history offers insight into the debate over the benefits of economic development and the impulse toward preservation.

Robert McCullough explains that these communal forests have come to hold even more significance for the contributions they make to public welfare and education, recreation, and conservation.