Bread Loaf was more a labor of love than a solvent venture, and Battell covered annual financial losses with personal funds. Inheriting Bread Loaf in 1915, Middlebury was both blessed and burdened with a time-worn resort and thousands of acres of forest land encumbered with complex conditions. The Inn could continue to operate as it had, but the Forest required new management to cover taxes, settle boundaries, exploit resources and establish a national park.
President Thomas’s 1916 annual report describing the Battell estate sparked the interest of academics, foresters, and outdoor enthusiasts throughout the east, all generous with ideas to expand the park and to develop the vast woodlands, particularly as a living lab for a forestry program.
Colonel Theodore Woolsey, renowned forester and college trustee, and Forest Manager J.J. Fritz, enacted programs in 1922 to generate income from the Forest by harvesting timber, harnessing water power, and leasing tracts to Vermont logging operations. In 1935, with the collapse in lumber and land prices following the Depression, the 21,000-acre Battell Forest was sold to the US Forest Service and incorporated as part of the Green Mountain National Forest. In 2006, Congress designated more than 12,000 acres as the Joseph Battell Wilderness.