The Camp 8 Stand: The Story of the Cloquet Forestry Center’s Old-Growth Red Pines

The Camp 8 Stand on the Cloquet Forestry Center (CFC) is a place where local schoolchildren and community members, students conducting field research, and visiting foresters have been coming for decades to stand beneath the red pines.

This multimedia article – The Camp 8 Stand: The Story of the Cloquet Forestry Center’s Old-Growth Red Pines – was developed by the CFC and features vivid images and video of the red pines, historical and research photos and maps, and interviews with center staff and community members.

In 1911, CFC Founder Samuel Green designated a 44-acre stand of red pines to be left alone as a reserve. This “reserve” status saved the red pines of Camp 8 – so named for a nearby logging camp – from being harvested as timber.

Many of Camp 8’s red pines – scarred at the base by dark fire scars – are 200 years old or older. One particularly impressive specimen – a grand red pine called the “Sequoia” or the “Grandmother” – dates back to before 1734, making this Grandmother red pine nearly 300 years old.

At the present time, Camp 8 appears drastically different from 1911. Once considered open and park-like, Camp 8’s understory is now overgrown with dense hazel and the saplings of red maple, paper birch and balsam fir. As the Camp 8 Stand’s current cohort of old-growth red pines approach the end of their life cycles, and with few young red pines to replace them, it’s becoming increasingly clear that without human intervention, the ecological legacy of these old-growth red pines will almost certainly be lost from the landscape. 

In tracing the story of these old-growth red pines, the multimedia article asks us to engage with complex questions of land management in the era of the Anthropocene, historical – yet often overlooked – truths about land tenure, and the role that we – whether as scientists, foresters or engaged citizens – will take as land stewards as we watch ecosystems change around us. Seeking to recognize and illuminate the historical role of the Great Lakes Ojibwe in shaping many quintessential Minnesota landscapes, the article underscores the important role of Indigenous fire in shaping the character of the Camp 8 Stand. The article further advocates for a return of this eco-cultural fire to the Camp 8 Stand, as well as for increased engagement and collaboration between the Cloquet Forestry Center and their closest neighbors, the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, on whose reservation the Cloquet Forestry Center resides.