United States Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Parsons Nursery Photographs
Collection
Collection Number: A&M 4716
The USDA Forest Service Parsons Nursery Photographs is a collection of black and white photographs of the Parsons Nursery in Parsons, West Virginia. It consists of two sets of prints. The first is a set of forty mounted prints, documenting activities at the nursery. These photographs date from 1930-1936. A few mounted prints have additional prints in envelopes attached to the back of the mounting. The second set of photographs consists of ten prints of seed storage and equipment, and various other views. These photographs date to the 1960s.
No special access restrictions apply.
Permission to publish or reproduce is required from the copyright holder. These materials may be U.S. Federal Government Works, which are in the public domain. For more information, please see the Permissions and Copyright page on the West Virginia and Regional History Center website.
Parsons Nursery
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), Forest Service, established the Parsons Nursery on a 28.8-acre tract situated along the Black Fork of the Cheat River near Parsons, West Virginia in 1928. The Forest Service established the nursery to provide trees to reforest the Monongahela National Forest (MNF). The nursery not only provided seedlings to MNF, but also to other national forests and parks such as Allegheny National Forest and Shenandoah National Park. The capacity of the nursery was 7.5 million trees.
The Forest Service operated the Parsons Nursery until 1951, when MNF leased the site to the State of West Virginia Division of Conservation (now Division of Natural Resources). The DNR closed the nursery after the devasting November 1985 Cheat River flood.
50 Year History of the Monongahela National Forest
HABS/HAER Collection, Parsons Nursery, HABS WV-237
Dr. Franklin Charles Cech
Dr. Cech was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1919 and passed away in Morgantown in 2009.
Dr. Cech studied biology at the University of Montana in the late 1940s. He was on faculty at Montana College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts in the early 1950s. He received his doctorate from Texas A&M University in 1958. Dr. Cech joined the West Virginia University Division of Forestry in 1964 as a Professor of Genetics and Forest Geneticist. He retired as an emeritus professor in 1988.
Dr. Cech served in the U.S. Army in both World War II and Korea. His rank was Captain. Cech is buried in the West Virginia National Cemetery, Grafton, West Virginia.
Ancestry
WVU Catalogues 1965-1990
.42 Linear Feet (1 document case, 5 in.)
English
West Virginia and Regional History Center / West Virginia University / 1549 University Avenue / P.O. Box 6069 / Morgantown, WV 26506-6069 / Phone: 304-293-3536 / URL: https://wvrhc.lib.wvu.edu/
Gift from Cech, Franklin, 1986.
Part of the West Virginia and Regional History Center Repository