About the Forest History Society Photo Collection

The Forest History Society maintains a rich collection of well over 30,000 photos, slides, negatives, plates, and films documenting the history of human interaction with the forest environment.

The sets of our historic photos found on Flickr represent just a tiny portion of our growing digital photo collection. An ongoing digitization effort has produced a searchable FHS Image Database, as well as numerous online subject galleries for browsing. We are excited to use Flickr to provide an introduction to our valuable historic photograph holdings.

What is the Forest History Society?

The Forest History Society (FHS), located in Durham, North Carolina, is a nonprofit educational institution that links the past to the future by identifying, collecting, preserving, interpreting, and disseminating information on the history of interactions between people, forests, and their related resources — timber, water, soil, forage, fish and wildlife, recreation, and scenic or spiritual values.

In addition to the FHS Photo Collection, the Alvin J. Huss Archives also houses a wide array of primary source materials, including such items as: letters, scrapbooks, diaries, newsclippings, reports, pamphlets, memoranda, financial records, and audio-visual materials recorded in a variety of formats. Most materials date from the twentieth century. Descriptive “finding aids,” summarizing the contents of collections are accessible online.

Additional Links

Forest History Society Homepage

Peeling Back the Bark, the Forest History Society’s award-winning blog

The Forest History Society’s YouTube Channel

Forest History Society on Facebook

Forest History Society on Twitter

Forest History Today magazine