Engineering drawings for equipment, maps, and 1919-1925 reports of cultural practices at the Wind River Nursery in southwest Washington

The Wind River Nursery in Skamania County, Washington was started in 1909 to grow seedlings to regenerate burned and cut over lands. The nursery workers developed several types of equipment and cultural practices. Some of the equipment developed at the nursery has been mentioned in early accounts of the nursery and shown in some photographs, but details of their construction were noted as not available. The engineering drawings for the Wind River Seed Drill and Weeder prepared in 1947 by Oregon Department of Forestry have been found and scans of those drawings are included in this package. Each piece of equipment is described in 4 or 5 oversized sheets (18 inch by 24 inch). The first sheet provides an overview of the equipment with front, plan and side views and the other sheets for each type of equipment include detailed drawings of all the parts involved down to the type and size of the fasteners used. This package also includes three maps: the Wind River Nursery area; the cover crops used in the nursery fields, along with the date of sowing and turning (plowing into the soil) in each field for crops of oats or oats and vetch from 1926 to 1932; and fertilization practices used in each field from 1919 to 1926 (manure, sulphur [sic], sodium nitrate and acid phosphate) and the sizes of the various nursery fields. Reports summarizing fertilizer treatments and soil crops at the Wind River Nursery from 1919 to 1925 are also included.
The purpose of these images, maps, and reports were to document the equipment developed and the cultural practices used in an early nursery.