Greening the Strip Mines

Adman William G. ("Turk") Jones decided he had had enough of the frenzied pace of Madison Avenue: "Learning to shave on airplanes," as he puts it. So he quit his job in Manhattan, sold his house in the suburbs and in 1946 moved his family to a farm in central Pennsylvania. Then he began to do what he had always wanted--plant trees. Jones had a green thumb, his seedlings thrived, and word of his tree farm began to spread. Consequently, after Pennsylvania passed a law in 1948 requiring strip miners to refill and replant the land they had ravaged for coal, company officials came to him for help. "Won't be a damned thing grow," they said. "But go ahead and plant it. That's the law." Under Turk's care, things grew.

As consultant to the Central Pennsylvania Open Pit Mining Association, Jones, now 70, has directed teams that have successfully planted 36 million trees on strip-mined land in 17 counties. His accomplishments have won over some formerly implacable foes of surface mining who now agree with Jones that the technique has its place--as long as the spoil banks turn green again. "Coal for today, timber for tomorrow," Jones says cheerfully.

His best proof that the damage can be undone is his second farm, a 1,300-acre property that he bought in 1951, not long after coal miners had gouged and abandoned 800 acres of its coal-bearing land. Crisscrossed by enormous rock-strewn furrows, the land had no cover of vegetation, no wildlife--not even insects. With help from the U.S. Forest Service and Penn State University, Jones imported and planted carefully selected species of trees from all over the world, seeking out those that might grow in the acid, stony soil. He brought in evergreens--pines from Austria, Scotland and Norway, Douglas fir from the Pacific Northwest--because they hide the still-furrowed landscape all year round. He planted Chinese chestnuts, which also thrive in otherwise inhospitable earth, and hybrid poplars that grow so quickly "you have to jump back after planting them so that you don't get poked in the eye." Today the farm is thick with healthy trees.

One Liners. Forestry officials estimate that Jones' experiments with various trees have sped the reforestation of Pennsylvania's spoil banks by at least 50 years, an achievement that has earned him a roomful of conservation and forestry awards. He shares his findings with anybody who wants them. Every year about 2,000 visitors--university agronomists, Government foresters and ordinary citizens--come to see his farm and meet the adman turned agrarian.

Turk is an enthusiastic guide who leavens his tours with puns and one-liners. Sample: "Have you heard about the tree that didn't know whether it was a son of a birch or a son of a beech?" But he is serious about spreading the word that trees can repair the land, and has even written and published a book, The New Forest, describing his experiences. The book is dedicated to the spirit of Johnny Appleseed, who "planted while others palavered." Those words could just as easily describe Turk Jones.

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