Frederick Erskine Olmsted, also known as Fritz Olmsted, was an American forester and one of the founders of American forestry. Through his work with the United States Forest Service, Olmsted helped establish the national forest system in the United States and helped train the next generation of Forest Service agents and college professors. He was instrumental in the creation of at least twenty national forests in California and Alaska including the Muir Woods National Monument and Tongass National Forest. He also wrote the Use of National Forest Resources, a foundational Forest Service manual that laid the groundwork for the nation's enduring forest management system, elements of which remain in use today.

The Biltmore Forest School was the first school of forestry in North America. Carl A. Schenck founded this school of "practical forestry" in 1896 on George W. Vanderbilt's Biltmore Estate near Asheville, North Carolina. The school grounds are now part of Pisgah National Forest in Transylvania County, North Carolina, as the Cradle of Forestry in America, a 6,500 acres (2,600 ha) historic site which features exhibits about forestry and forest conservation history.