A number of people roughly equivalent to half of the U.S. population visits national forests every year.
They certainly have lots of opportunities, with 193,000,000 acres of land inside those forests, stretching from the Chugach in Alaska to the Ocala in Florida. Yet the forests are still used for timber and mining and other commercial concerns.
Greg M. Peters, who used to work for the nonprofit National Forest Foundation, includes recreation, logging, controversy, and more in the book Our National forests: Stories from America's Most Important Public Lands. The author visits with a taste of his ambitious overview.