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<br />Sherman accorded the applicant a warm reception, but having no specific openings to
<br />offer, suggested that Carhart correspond directly with the various District Offices of the
<br />Forest Service to determine their possible need for a landscape architect, Following a series
<br />of letters and examinations, the Forester approved the plan of securing " recreational
<br />engineer for the Denver office at the beginning salary of eighteen hundred dollars per
<br />annum, From his home in Mapleton, Carhart accepted the appointment, agreeing to report
<br />to Denver at his own expense on March 1, 1919, to take up his duties as the first
<br />Recreational Engineer to be employed by the Forest Service on a full,time, permanent
<br />basiS,21
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<br />By May, 1919, news of the work that Recreation Engineer Carhart had undertaken
<br />began to circulate throughout the Rocky Mountain Region of what was then District 2 (now
<br />Region 2) of the Forest Service, an area embracing some twenty-three million acres.22 In
<br />what was probably his first article boosting recreation in the National Forests, Carhart wrote
<br />in May, 1919:
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<br />Recreation plans for the Forests of the District are getting a real start toward a comprehensive
<br />development plan. Not a surprising lot will be accomplished this season perhaps but the important
<br />thing, the beginning of 8 full utilization of Forest Recreation, commenced.23
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<br />The "beauty engineer," as Carhart was quickly dubbed,24 meanwhile continued to
<br />maintain contact with his friend Sherman in Washington, In reply to a letter from Carhart,
<br />Sherman wrote that he was very glad indeed to hear that conditions appeared favorable to
<br />the development of recreation in the National Forests in both Colorado and Wyoming,
<br />adding:
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<br />I was particularly interested in your scheme for developing a system of camps for the city of
<br />Pueblo. The idea seems to me to be an excellent one and will no doubt meet with the approval of all
<br />persons who are able to visit the camps by automobile whether they be residents of Pueblo or of the
<br />plains country to the eastward. . , ,25
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<br />In the meantime, Carhart was working out "the system of camps" and was in the
<br />process of writing a sixty,four page report which' he called "General Working Plan,
<br />Recreational Development of the San Isabel National Forest, Colorado," complete with
<br />attached maps of the locality,26 Beginning in 1919 with this and other reports, articles, and
<br />letters, Carhart's writings seemed to pyramid. I n drafting the San Isabel plan Carhart stated
<br />that it was "the first great regional plan that has been undertaken anywhere in the National
<br />Forests and it is bound to be a model for other like plans that will inevitably follow, , , ."27
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<br />In that year also, when he became a truly itinerant Recreation Engineer, Carhart made a
<br />survey of the Superior National Forest in Minnesota. He traveled through the country now
<br />the Boundary Waters Canoe Area by canoe, as did the early French voyageurs and coureurs
<br />de bois,2a On this trip he made observations and took photographs and extensive notes for
<br />the Forest Service, He embodied his findings in a preliminary report of 117 pages, with 85
<br />pages of lively text and 32 magnificent photographs, carefully identified,29
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