 In 1899, William Kerckhoff, president of the Forest and Water Association, paid for $50 worth of seed to give University of Southern California forestry students for planting, and in a two-week period, more than 60,000 seeds were sown by the young foresters.The next year Lukens, with support by the Forest and Water Association, planted several thousand knobcone and ponderosa pine seeds in the San Gabriel mountains above Altadena, California.Lukens' reported to the association that "ridges and crowns of hills were selected, that when the trees came into fruiting the seed would be cast in different directions down steep slopes."