Steven Rinella

Made enormous sacrifices to live that lifestyle.

Very dangerous lifestyle at that time.

Because there was active warfare in the colonial areas.

And Boone, I mean, he just was hooked.

He couldn't picture living another way.

Yeah, well, a number of things.

They weren't called national forests then, but he was designated in these forest preserves and was instrumental in the National Park Program, too.

So the public estate, in many ways, comes from Roosevelt.

There's a famous story with Roosevelt where he had authority to declare these...

These wilderness preserves, whatever nomenclature they used at the time, he had authority to do it.

He was losing that authority while he was in office.

There was legislation, like he was going too crazy, they felt, declaring all these, what would become our national forest system.

And there's legislation arising that's going to strip him of the authority to unilaterally create national forests.

Support for this legislation is so strong that he knows he can't veto it because his veto will get overridden.

So he creates this another huge pile of national forest.

They call it the midnight forest because his ability to make forest preserves was going to expire at midnight.

So in a flurry, he like sits up with his team and they just start making national forests.

and then turns around the next day and has to sign legislation saying he won't do it anymore.

And those are known as the Midnight Forest that he created.

Who was right?