> My understanding was that the forests from the East Coast to the Mississipi were almost park-like, unlike the dank, dark, scary forests the colonials were use

> My understanding was that the forests from the East Coast to the Mississipi were almost park-like, unlike the dank, dark, scary forests the colonials were used to. Someone was tending them. This is the kind of odd B.S. I often hear from people who don't know history, particularly European history, yet they feel so confident making stuff up. Forests in Europe were tended since the middle ages. It was a profession. The same for England. Where do you think the timber came for to support the cathedral building boom of the 1000s? It came from well managed forests, not dark, dank places that no one tended. They were used for food/hunting grounds, for picking mushrooms and berries, hunting birds, and the forests were controlled, expanded or trimmed by royal decree that balanced the need for hunting grounds and food provision with the needs for wood. They were well mapped out, with hereditary positions of people who lived in the forests and keep them clean and well-ordered. This was the case for hundreds of years before any colonists set sail for the Americas, and was carried over by the colonists who had even more need for food and wood than their ancestors in Europe.