Cameron Tygett served as a logistics chief in the United States Marine Corps at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. He now works at the Norfolk Naval Station in Virginia. In his free time, Cameron Tygett organizes camping trips to the Pisgah National Forest in North Carolina.
The Pisgah National Forest covers more than half a million acres, filled with wooded mountainsides and thundering waterfalls, and cut through by the Blue Ridge Parkway. This chiefly hardwood forest features peaks that tower a mile or more in height and offers visitors whitewater rivers and hundreds of miles of hiking trails.
The current Pisgah National Forest covers 15 counties. It all once belonged to wealthy industrialist George W. Vanderbilt, and after his death became the first lands ever set aside as a national forest in North Carolina. In 1915, Vanderbilt’s widow sold close to 87,000 acres to the federal government for only a pro forma amount. These forests already served as the home of the United States’ first school of forestry, established by expert forester Carl Alwin Schenck with Vanderbilt’s support.
The Pisgah lands were the first added under the Weeks Act of 1911, which served as the beginning of the national forest system in the eastern part of the country. This highly successful legislation has to date preserved and protected some 20 million acres of the wilderness now enjoyed by families all over the country.
Cameron Tygett 