The authors have found many reasons to recommend tree planting as a desirable reclamation alternative. The data base is a survey conducted in 1976 of tree plantings thirty years old on mined lands. These plantings were experimental plots established by the strip-mine research unit of the USDA Forest Service in 1947 or later in cooperation with the coal industry, plus some coal company plantings. In the survey the authors measured 13.236 on 134 plots and took 785 soil samples. The success of tree planting for reclamation reported in earlier studies was sustained and enhanced over a thirty-year period. The total area presently in forest represent 18 million trees planted by the coal industry in past years, and volunteer trees such as cottonwood which come in naturally on the fresh mineral-rich soils.