Pinchot was born in Simsbury, Connecticut, to a prosperous business and industrial family, part of whose wealth came from timber holdings in several states. The Pinchots, like other lumber investors of their day, practiced clear-cutting on forests to maximize their profits, shipped the logs to market, and with the returns, repeated the cycle. Young Gifford was pressured by his grandfather to enter the family business, but his father James was beginning to dislike the deforestation of his area, and he encouraged his son to pursue forestry.

Pinchot was educated at Exeter and then Yale, graduating in 1889. After graduation, his family supported further education at L'Ecole nationale forestiere in Nancy, France, where he studied silviculture, or forest ecology. It was in Nancy that he learned "le coup d'oeil forestier—the forester's eye, which sees what it looks...