In the 1930s, the U.S. Veterans of Foreign Wars asked the U.S. Forest Service to create a memorial forest for Kilmer, a poet and journalist who had been killed in World War I. After considering millions of acres of forest land throughout the U.S., the Forest Service chose an undisturbed 3800 acres patch along Little Santeetlah Creek, which it dedicated as the Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest in 1936.