September 7, 7200

By 1924, Maine had been a leader in the forest industry for close to 300 years, and Bangor the largest lumber port in the world for nearly 75. Lumberjacks harvested wood one tree at a time using buck saws, hauled it from the forest by horse, limbed it with handsaws, and stacked it at the river’s edge until river drivers took over and began the difficult – and often dangerous – journey downstream and on to the mills.

It was against this backdrop that George T. Carlisle, armed with a forestry degree from the University of Maine, and Henry Prentiss, a businessman and third generation timberland owner, founded a forest management firm and called it Prentiss & Carlisle.

It didn’t take long for the partners to build a reputation for both forest management expertise and wood products. In 1929, Carlisle testified about the value of timberland owners’ wood as the U.S. Government began to buy up land to create the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. In 1930, Prentiss & Carlisle (P&C) landed a ten-year contract with Maine Seaboard Paper Company in Bucksport for 100,000 cords of peeled spruce and fir at $15 a cord – including $2 for freight and the hand-loading of wood into box cars.

Then the Depression hit. For the next few years Prentiss & Carlisle spent more time producing county maps – based on its timberland charts – than wood products in an effort to keep the company afloat. But despite this and other challenges, the firm prospered, steadily building a reputation for solid forest resource management and timberland services. Ninety-two-year-old George D. Carlisle – son of founder George T. and P&C president from 1960 to1982 – lists three reasons for the company’s growth: responsible forestry practices, a commitment to client objectives, and high ethical standards.

George D.’s son David Carlisle, who served as P&C president from 1982 to 2000, adds several more: good people, the company’s commitment to long-term stewardship, and the strategic addition of assets. In fact, during his tenure, David Carlisle added significant acreage to the company’s ownership through a variety of acquisitions and trades, including a 1987 exchange with the State of Maine in which P&C took title to 12,000 acres of timberland in exchange for pristine class-one Downeast lakeshore frontage, which became part of the Bureau of Public Land System. By 1991, David had also led the company into the world of new technology, purchasing a state-of-the-art GIS system. And, during this time, the company began to market its wood products directly, instead of issuing stumpage permits.

Today, under the leadership of Donald P. White – who took over as president in 2000 – Prentiss & Carlisle provides an integrated array of forestry services, including the development of long-term sustainable resource management and investment plans; valuation, consulting, and due diligence services to clients nationwide; and the contracting and oversight of harvesting, transportation, and marketing of 400,000 cords of forest products.

And the firm continues to expand both its services and its holdings. P&C actively acquires timberland and currently owns approximately 95,000 acres. Its operations division harvests and processes nearly 80,000 cords of wood annually, builds and maintains many miles of woods’ roads and bridges – and recently began contracting for other earth-moving projects. P&C also continues to expand its concentration yard and intermodal services, augmenting these operations by manufacturing utility poles and processing firewood.

The firm’s two-year-old woodlot services division – the vision of P&C Vice President Tom Nelson – now has a staff of four foresters working under Nelson to handle a growing client base and to bring to the small woodlot owners of Maine the marketplace clout and array of services usually available only to large landowners.

In August 2005, P&C announced a management agreement with Heartwood Forestland Fund V, Limited Partnership – an investment fund of the Forestland Group, LLC – under which P&C will now manage 240,000 acres of Maine land.

On October 4, 2005, the firm finalized the acquisition of 80-year-old forest resource consulting firm George Banzhaf & Company (GB&CO). The acquisition brought the management of 300,000 acres of northern Michigan timberland to Prentiss & Carlisle, bringing the total of P&Cmanaged acres to more than 1,350,000. It also added former GB&CO president and federally certified general appraiser Samuel Radcliffe to the P&C team – and appraisal capability to the Prentiss & Carlisle service portfolio. Now a vice president at Prentiss & Carlisle, Radcliffe will oversee P&C’s Lake States operations and lead in the development of an expanded consulting and valuation team.

“The acquisition made Prentiss & Carlisle one of the few multiregional management firms in the country,” said Don White. “We’ve grown from a two-man shop in the early 1920s to a nationally recognized, vertically integrated timberland firm by keeping in mind the historical mission of Henry Prentiss and George T. Carlisle: to be a leading natural resource company that provides professional, ethical, cost-effective, high-quality services and products to all our clients.

“We’ve accomplished all we have the only way you can – by having a highly talented staff with a good work ethic, people who are motivated to do the right thing, every time.”