In 1915, the Babcock Lumber Company began a massive logging operation in the northern Unicoi Mountains. The company logged nearly two-thirds of the Slickrock Creek watershed until 1922, when the construction of Calderwood Dam along the Little Tennessee River threatened to flood the railroad tracks leading into the area and forcing an end to the company's logging operations in what is now the Joyce-Kilmer Slickrock Wilderness. That same year, however, Babcock began logging the Citico Creek watershed on the Tennessee side of the mountains. This operation continued until 1925, when a massive forest fire destroyed the company's logging tramways and wiped out nearly half the forest. The company continued low-scale logging in the Doublecamp area until 1929. The logging practices of Babcock and other logging companies proved extremely detrimental to the forest environment of the Unicoi Mountains, and the U.S. Forest Service began buying up the land in the 1930s. The forest service's policy of letting natural processes heal the forest has allowed the forest to recover to a great extent.