Remember how I promised to get back to the “America’s Cleanest Forest” subject a couple posts ago? My hope was to write a little something about the old Welcome to Idyllwild sign coming down and maybe work in something about how the new sign just doesn’t bring the charming like the old one. I was even going to shoot a picture of the new sign to prove the point. I needn’t bother.
Before Our Time
by Robert B. Smith
A clean forest…
Shortly before year’s end, an icon disappeared from the corner of Highway 243 and South Circle Drive.
I speak of the former welcome sign, now replaced by a classy new version. Its weatherbeaten boards had seen better days, but like most old, familiar things, they have a history worth recalling. Fittingly, its key components now reside with the Idyllwild Area Historical Society.
Chief among those components was the proclamation “This is Idyllwild — Entrance to America’s Cleanest Forest.” I noticed it shortly after settling here permanently, and my first thought was, “how could you know that?” Does somebody survey the country’s woodlands, evaluating cleanliness? As I became more familiar with our forest, by walking hundreds of miles back and forth along its trails, I had to agree. Compared with other regions I’ve traversed, the local trails did seem remarkably litter-free. But “America’s cleanest?”
As far as I can reconstruct, the slogan was pulled from thin air in 1950 within the young Idyllwild chapter of the Izaak Walton League. That group was perpetually led by the ubiquitous Ernie Maxwell and had a permanent influence on the character of Hill communities.
Maxwell and his wife, Betty, arrived in Idyllwild in 1946 equipped with a love for the outdoors and an activist’s bent. Once they founded the Town Crier late that year, it became a bully pulpit to proclaim their values, especially wilderness conversation from a fish and game enthusiast’s point of view.
Ernie was automatically absorbed into the Chamber of Commerce, which has long aspired to fill the vacuum created by absence of any local government. There, he formed a Wildlife and Conservation Committee, which by autumn 1948 sought an independent existence.
On Oct. 12, 1948, a group of eight citizens met to form a “San Jacinto Mountain Fish and Game Club” to organize conservationists and sportsmen more effectively in developing the recreational potential of the San Jacinto and Santa Rosa ranges. Led by Maxwell and USFS District Ranger Don Bauer, the group from its outset sought greater leverage on forest policy by affiliating with a larger entity. Their ultimate choice was to align with two groups, a newly created Riverside County Conservation Commission and the national Izaak Walton League.
The Idyllwild chapter, who called themselves the “Ikes,” immediately attracted 25 members and grew within a decade to 118. Collaborations with the Forest Service, the Chamber of Commerce, the Boy Scouts, the Sierra Club, and the Fish & Game Commission got them into a wide variety of projects.
One was a “Junior Ranger” program at the Idyllwild School; another was the anti-litter campaign, for which they invented the “cleanest forest” slogan. There was a natural marriage between these two projects, and the Junior Rangers went about gathering up trash to fill the Ikes’ scattered barrels.
The Programs eventually faded, and after many years the League chapter folded, but the slogan lived on, emblazoned on the old welcome sign at the main entrance to Idyllwild.
Squeaky clean.
