In May 1903, Samuel W. Pennypacker, governor of Pennsylvania, established the Pennsylvania State Forest Academy in Mont Alto. With the precipitous closure of the New York State College of Forestry at Cornell in the same month, the new Pennsylvania school became one of three forestry schools in the nation, along with Yale and Biltmore. George Wirt, the academy's first administrator, patterned the curriculum after curricula in Germany. All first year students were required to bring a horse with them to the academy until the late 1920s. The horses were used to fight forest fires in the Michaux State Forest.