America's Playgrounds: The Northern Region's Fifteen Forests

The US Forest Service Northern Region (Region 1), headquartered in Missoula, Montana, administers more land than the entire state of Indiana — over 25 million acres of national forest and grassland spread across northern Idaho, Montana, and portions of Washington, North Dakota, and South Dakota. This booklet is its general-audience introduction: a cover photograph, two pages of welcoming text, and a fold-out back page pairing a headquarters directory with a color regional map.

The interior text is plain about the multiple-use mandate. Congress directs these forests to simultaneously provide timber, livestock forage, municipal water, fish and wildlife habitat, and recreation — a framework set by the Multiple-Use Sustained-Yield Act of 1960. The booklet recites the recreation menu without emphasis: driving for pleasure, hiking, cycling, climbing, backpacking, horseback riding, snowmobiling, snowshoeing, sledding, and cross-country and downhill skiing. The text notes that a single Ranger District can deliver all of these uses at once — the multiple-use formula in its most compressed form.

The back map runs from the Canadian border — Alberta and Saskatchewan labeled at the top edge — south through all of Montana and into the Idaho Panhandle. Forest boundaries are shaded green; a directory of fifteen Supervisor's Offices with mailing addresses and post office boxes fills the top of the panel. The "America's Playgrounds" motto, in use by the Forest Service since at least the early 1970s, spans the map face alongside the agency's tree-and-shield emblem.

Dating hinges partly on one administrative change: the Kaniksu National Forest was merged with the Coeur d'Alene and St. Joe forests to form the Idaho Panhandle National Forests on July 1, 1973. If the directory lists Kaniksu as a separate unit, the booklet predates that consolidation; if it lists Idaho Panhandle, it is post-1973. The post office box addresses and phone numbers visible in the columns could also be matched against period telephone records to narrow the window further.