Early Days in the Forest Service Volume 1

J. A. FITZWATER
Chief, Division of State Forestry
Washington, D. C.

Washington, D. C.
January 12, 1943

Dear Major Kelley:

Several years ago I prepared a statement for Governor Pinchot in connection with the book he is writing on the history of the Forest Service. He wrote to quite a number of old-timers in the hope that these letters would somewhat tie together and stabilize certain incidents. I am attaching an extract from that statement which may have some material that you can use.

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I received formal appointment as junior forester July 1908, and Hugh Calkins and I left at once for Flagstaff Arizona. We were engaged in timber survey work on the Coconino National Forest. Allison was in charge. The members of the crew were Dan Adams, John Lafaun (Lumbermen), Catkins, myself, and a couple of rangers whose names I have forgotten. We worked here about six weeks and then Allison received word that either Catkins or I was to report to Frank Vogel on Bear Creek, Pike National Forest, for similar work.

Vogel had started the work on the Coconino. He was a man with an excellent reputation as a timber cruiser (he cruised most of the holdings purchased by the Anaconda Copper Company) and was employed by the Forest Service to teach his method to Forest Service personnel. He was recognized as an outstanding man in his line but apparently was pretty harsh with his crew. Under the circumstances neither Catkins nor I was particularly anxious to leave the Coconino so we tossed a coin and I lost. I reported to Vogel about the first of September. The men in the crew were Sobey, Bunker (rangers), Coolidge, Strech, Martin and Linscoot. Barney was the cook and York the packer. We had a string of ten burros. I found Vogel to be a hard taskmaster but an excellent teacher and I decided that one could well afford to put up with a lot of difficulties in order to have the benefit of working with him. I have always had the greatest respect for Vogel. We were all pretty much youngsters in the party and he no doubt did us a lot of good. I still see him occasionally when he comes to Washington since he never fails to look in on me.

Vogel resigned about the first of October, and I was put in charge of the party. At about this time I was also notified that upon completion of the job I was to prepare a management plan report for the area covered. This latter job rather put me on the spot, since I had not seen but about half of the area. The work finished up November 1, and I then got a horse and attempted to go back over the country with which I was not familiar. The snow was deep by this time and I had what seemed to me then pretty tough sledding, floundering around in snow belly-deep on the horse, but I got over most of the area. Upon completion of the plan I reported to the new district headquarters of Region 1 at Missoula, Montana, arriving just about two weeks before Christmas.

I worked out of the Missoula district office on timber assignments to various National Forest until July 1909, when I was sent to the Absaroka National Forest as deputy supervisor. I entered the Forest Service at a salary of $1,000 and had had no promotion to date. I was really sent to Absaroka to start off the boundary work and I always felt that the title of deputy was merely given to me in lieu of a pay increase - promotions were rare in those days, money was scarce.

When I stepped off the train at Livingston, Gifford V. Lantry, the supervisor, met me. Lantry was a very picturesque man of the old cowman type. I had never met him before but he greeted me, "Hello, Fitz, how are you?" Just as I reached the platform my hat blew off and I started after it. Lantry said, "Wait a minute. Don't chase that hat. Just stand still and another one will be along in a minute." Livingston has the reputation of being one of the windiest places out-of-doors. The supervisor and I had lunch together and he told me that he had two propositions to suggest to me. Either I would handle the office and he would take over the boundary work, or he would run the office and I would do the boundary work. I appreciated, of course, that he was merely trying to give me a cordial welcome and had really no intention of allowing me to make any such momentous decision. Lantry was of the old school and did business in a far different manner than it is done today. But with all his unorthodox procedures was much respected and a good boss.

I had a boundary crew on the Absaroka made up of rangers and guards Harry Coffman, Shoemaker, Ora B. Yates, Hank somebody, and, Tack Crank. We started our work from the junction point of the southeast corner of the south division of the Absaroka, and the Beartooth and the Yellowstone National Park and worked counter-clock-wise around to the southwest corner of the south division. The crew all had horses and the first two days there was lots of grief. All of these boys had on riding boots and believed that any place you couldn't take a horse wasn't a place where anyone should go. We struck lots of country where a horse simply could not hold his footing, and as a result those high-heeled boots paused much grief but the boundary had to be run and we could not change the topography, so run it we did on run-over boots. In connection with the running of the boundary we surveyed all June 11 claims pending on streams which cut the boundary, dropping boundary work temporarily until we could complete the June 11 surveys in each drainage.

During the progress of the work Bob Stuart came down from Missoula on an inspection trip and brought Mrs. Stuart with him. We traveled with a buckboard where we could and then used the same team for riding purposes when the terrain became too rough. Mrs. Stuart stopped at ranch houses. The day I was to drive the Stuarts to Big Timber to catch the train turned out very stormy and we holed up at a little hot-springs resort on the east branch of the Boulder River. It was a terrible day half snow and half rain. Growing rather restive in the afternoon, I decided to go fishing. It was very cold and after wading the stream for about half an hour with no luck whatsoever with flies I was about ready to quit when I discovered a grasshopper crawling slowly along in the grass. He was so numb with the cold he could barely move. I put him on and cast just below a big boulder. I got action immediately and landed a 16-inch cut-throat trout. In the next hour I collected a beautiful mess of trout. It was slow, tedious work and the grasshoppers hard to find, but it was no trick to get fish when once you found the hopper.

Late in October after the south division had been completed, Lantry received a telegram telling him to have me report at once in Missoula for an important assignment. Lantry and I had made what we thought were some rather comprehensive plans for timber sale work to be done that fall and winter and neither of us warmed up much to the idea of my leaving. Lantry, therefore, prepared a telegram telling the district forester of the important work which he had lined up for me and that it would be impossible for me to report. Next day the laconic reply was received, "Refer previous instructions. Have Fitzwater report at once." I went.

When I got to Missoula I found that the job was to take a crew of rangers up on the North Fork of the Flathead, then on the Blackfoot National Forest and estimate the timber on the proposed rights-of-way of the Great Northern and Milwaukee Railroads. The job had been given to one of the lumbermen but he had resigned rather than take it. The Glacier National Park had just been or was just about to be created and these two railroad crews were having a race to see which one could file its plats of survey first and thereby be granted a franchise. The railroad was to run from Columbia Falls to the Canadian line. My job was to get an estimate of the timber which would be removed in clearing the right-of-way. Mr. Haines (Roscoe Haines' father) was supervisor of the Blackfoot, with headquarters at Kalispell, Montana. My crew was made up of C. N. Whitney (now in Products in the Northern Rocky Mountain Experiment Station), Rangers Theo Christianson, Dad Reynolds, E. Clark and John Rice. Winter had set in before we got on the job, and it was pretty tough pickings. To complicate matters, apparently when one of the railroad survey crews got behind, it hopped over on to the other crew's right-of-way and used it until it caught up and then jumped off into the brush again. This made it almost impossible to follow the two separate survey lines. Sometimes the lines would end abruptly and then pick up again 200 yards away. Only too often the blueprints gave an entirely different picture from what we actually found on the ground. The snow got pretty deep and travel was difficult, especially along the west side of the river above Coal Creek where steep shale banks ran down to the river almost perpendicularly - we slid into the river frequently.

We had a fellow by the name of Joe Crosly, a half-breed Indian, as cook and packer. While Joe was an excellent cook, he was one of the dirtiest cooks I have ever encountered and one was never just sure what he was eating. He was a picturesque fellow - always wore a red sash for a belt. I can see him yet backed up to the camp fire with his face lifted to the stars, reciting "The Wreck of the Julie Plant." Ranger Christianson had a station about half-way up the river and had three or four very fat horses in his pasture. Our pack string was rather ragged and we were constantly urging Christianson to let us use his horses, but to no avail. Those horses to him were something sacred, and were to be gazed upon in all their rotund beauty rather than used. One frosty morning while we were packing up under the twinkling stars, Joe Crosly appeared on the scene and said that our horses had disappeared. He had looked everywhere for them but could find not a trace. Christianson had had official business calling him to Kalispell so Joe proposed that we use his horses. I did not like to do this without Christianson's permission, but camp had to be moved, so we rounded them up. The rest of the crew went out on line and I stayed with Joe that morning to see that the moving of camp got under way. The new camp site was on the other side of the river. We put five 50-pound sacks of flour on one of Christianson's horses and lashed it down good and tight. When in the middle of the river something came loose and this horse started to kick. As a matter of fact, these horses were so fat it was almost impossible to cinch a pack on them. In kicking, the horse caught the back of his shoe in one of the sacks of flour and in just a few minutes the whole river was white. The flour spread out just like oil. By the time that horse got through kicking and unloading, the flour was gone. To add to the difficulties the river was full of slush ice. Well, the move was made and Theo got his horses back without injury, but he never forgave us.

Upon completion of this job I was sent to the Kaniksu to make a topographic map of the famous Section 26 in the lower West Branch River. The snow was between six and eight feet deep, and, of course, all work had to be done on snow shoes. It was the first time I had ever had webs on, and the first few days my antics were anything but graceful. Incidentally, I made a five-foot contour interval map of this section with an aneroid barometer - some stunt on eight feet of snow. Notwithstanding, I think I made a pretty good map. Anyway, it was reproduced in Colonel Graves' "Principles of Handling Woodlands."

Using the contours as a basis, we located the higher elevations of the section on the map and then went in the field and picked up these locations and established the boundaries to solid blocks of timber to be reserved for seeding purposes. The balance of the section was cut clean and the slash piled and burned. I have always regretted that it was not possible to carry to completion this proposed method of treatment, but before the cutting of the section was completed the land was classified as agricultural; eventually the balance of the timber on the blocks was removed. To my knowledge this section has burned over three times since then and the men who filed on the land have never even made an approach to a decent living. Much of this section ran 100,000 feet of white pine timber per acre.

In the spring of 1910 I was sent to the Superior National Forest as acting supervisor. I arrived about April 12 and three days later a fire was reported on Birch Lake. Leslie Brownell, one of the rangers with headquarters at Ely, was in the office at the time. I said, "Well, we better get some tools and a crew together and go fight it." A logical place to look for lumberjacks at that time was in the saloons, and there I recruited my crew. We got about twenty men, and after purchasing supplies and tools I had the whole outfit loaded onto a big buckboard. I had assumed that Brownell would take the crew but when it was about time to leave he said, "Mr. Fitzwater, I think you had better take this crew out because, frankly, I never have fought a fire in my life." I said, "Oh, is that so? Well, that being the case probably I had." Incidentally, I had never fought a fire either, but I didn't dare tell him that. I, of course, had some idea how to go about it, but I sure lacked experience. Anyway, we got the fire and I think I learned fast. I can say without any restraint that by the 15th of November when a snowstorm put out our last fire, I knew something about fire fighting.

My stay on the Superior from 1910 to 1912 inclusive was, I believe, my most enjoyable Forest Service assignment. I had spent much time during my boyhood days with a canoe and therefore felt very much at home on the Superior. We had no roads and, therefore, no means of communication over the forest other than by water. We used canoes during the summer and toboggans and snowshoes over practically the same routes in the winter. There was much winter work to be done, since there were large numbers of timber and stone claims which the Land Office insisted we examine. These claims were very often-located well back in the interior. There really was no possibility of settlement and an estimate of the timber which was required really had little bearing as to whether or not the claims would go to patent. We endeavored to hold the examination of these claims until we had accumulated a group in the same general locality and would then make a winter expedition to clean them up. The Superior at this time was a veritable wilderness teeming with game, fur bearers and fish. The portages had not been cut out for years and in most instances were almost impossible to find. I would go out with a ranger for six or eight weeks at a time and see no sign of another human being. While we had some timber sale business with the St. Croix Lumber Company and the Swallow and Hopkins Lumber Company, most of the timber was still relatively inaccessible. Our principal job was getting acquainted with the forest, discovering and opening up canoe routes, fighting fire and examining claims. Fire fighting under the conditions existing was extremely difficult. Ordinarily, lightning was our principal source of fire, but during the 1910 season man-caused fires gained much headway to the south and ran north into the forest. Most of the lumberjacks we had to use for fire fighters could not swim, which was not too good, since all of our transportation had to be by canoe. Furthermore, all lumberjacks wore heavily calked boots and were extremely clumsy in a canoe. Many amusing accidents happened, but fortunately we had no drownings.

In the fall of 1912 the Superior Forest was transferred from Region One to Region Two, and just before the transfer I was offered the position of Supervisor on the Pend Oreille in Idaho. I accepted, and reported to Sandpoint, Idaho, October 12. I was on the Pend Oreille from 1912 to 1919, a rather long assignment for a forest officer in one location. This was during the period when extreme pressure was being brought to open up the National Forests for agricultural settlement, and the Pend Oreille was one of the hot beds. In order to prevent wholesale eliminations by ranger districts, suspended listing came into being. Although this procedure somewhat reduced the pressure and no doubt saved much National Forest land, it also put local forest officers on the spot, for just as soon as a claimant was recognized under suspending listing, he brought all the pressure possible to have the land listed. I recall distinctly two very persistent claimants by the names of McGinnis and Heideman respectively who had adjacent claims on Meadow Creek. These two gentlemen made my official life miserable. I managed to hang on to the land and eventually had the satisfaction of seeing the timber cut with the receipts going into the U. S. Treasury and of then personally classifying the remaining agricultural land. Both of these men had 160 acres suspended listing but the final classification gave them about 40 acres each. It has always been no small measure of satisfaction to me that I sold myself to Mr. Heideman and I believe convinced him that I was entirely sincere and was trying to play the game fairly with him.

I was married one year after going to Sandpoint, and two of my youngsters were born there. Somehow Sandpoint has always been home to me, and the friends and associations I made there have always seemed a little closer to me than any other place I have been stationed. The only break during this seven-year period was an assignment to Haugan, Montana, at the Savenac Nursery during the winter of 1917-18 when I had charge of a rangers' school for a period of three months. We had some fifteen men attending the school. Some of the rangers whose names I remember were Wholen, Harris, Rush, Crossley, Haun, Hodgins and Van Dyke. We did all of our outdoor work - surveying, mapping, estimating and timber marking - on snowshoes, since we had a good timber sale business and there was opportunity for some real timber management. We also had cattle and enough transient sheep to make things interesting. Slash disposal was a big issue and the principal bone of contention between the Forest Service and timber sale purchasers. It was here on the Pend Oreille that cooperative slash disposal was developed, and until this procedure was inaugurated we experienced but little success in proper slash disposal in the western white pine type. Frankly, I feel I made some contribution to western white pine silviculture.

In the spring of 1919 I was transferred to the district office at Missoula, Montana, as Assistant Chief of the Branch of Silviculture. John F. Preston was Chief. In leaving Sandpoint I was advised to sell my house and assured I would not return there again, that my next move would probably be to some other forest. Soon after my arrival in Missoula, the extreme fire season of 1919 broke and I saw little of the Missoula office until late that fall. Preston and I sat on opposite sides of the desk and by the time we got back into the office in the fall the desk was piled so high with paper work that we could barely see each other. One day just about the time we really began to see a little light in cleaning up the job before us, R. H. Rutledge, then district forester, came in the office and suggested that I go on an elk hunt with him in the vicinity of Cottonwood Creek on the Blackfoot River. Needless to say, I wanted to go, but I did not see how I could leave at that time with the work we still had ahead of us. R. H., however, said that he thought I would lose little by taking this vacation, and Preston finally voiced the opinion that I should go. I told Preston that if I did go I would promise to be back in not more than ten days.

The trip proved rather eventful. When we established our camp no snow was yet on the ground, but shortly afterward it began falling and snowed incessantly. I got my elk the fifth day out. R. H, shot a big bull but did not get him, although we followed him for the better part of one day, a new snow finally obliterating the tracks. R.H. was insistent that he get his elk and we moved our camp further back into the high country. I shot my elk on top of a ridge at about 9,000 feet elevation where a band was crossing from the South Fork of Flathead River drainage into the Cottonwood drainage, and after dressing and quartering hung it up on some alpine fir saplings.

The snow continued. R. H. did not get his elk, and when we finally decided to pull out we found the snow was too deep to bring horses in to the meat and we had to go down to the valley, get snowshoes, and break a trail back. We made a toboggan by stretching the hide of the elk over a couple of the thawed-out alpine fir poles, loaded the meat on the toboggan, and in this manner snaked the meat back to our base camp. The snow had become so deep that when we reached the meat we found it cleared the snow by only about twelve inches. This made the meat rather accessible, and a family of martens had moved in and burrowed into the snow just under it. By standing up on their hind legs they could just reach the meat, and they had done a good job of feasting. The next morning when it grew light at the base camp we found that the martens had trailed the toboggan all the way to camp and had again dug in. I could not tell exactly how marry of the animals there were, but I would say at least a half dozen.

Well, before daylight we broke camp and wrapped the entire outfit in the tent and using it as a tail drag, hitched it on the back of the toboggan and started down the ridge for the valley. That was a memorable trip. I never worked so hard in my life. It was relatively easy going on the down grade, but on the level and up grades coming out of saddles we had to double-turn our load. Darkness caught us before we got out of the mountains and we had to cache our outfit for the night. Next day we got the packer to go up with us and get the meat, since the snow at this elevation was not nearly so deep. When we got back to Missoula we had been out just twenty-three days, and was my face red when I faced Preston. I should add here, however, that this is the only time during my official career when I used my full annual leave.

My work in Missoula was very enjoyable, but I was hardly there long enough to get the feel of things. In the spring of 1920, a number of combinations of forests were made and the Pend Oreille and Kaniksu were thrown together, and I was sent back to Sandpoint as district forester inspector in charge of both forests. I remained in this assignment until the spring of 1921, when the units were again split and I was transferred to Newport as supervisor of the Kaniksu Forest. Shortly after making this transfer, I was offered the position as Assistant Chief of the Branch of Silviculture in Region Four, with headquarters at Ogden, Utah, and decided to accept. Before I got away, however, a very bad fire season broke loose and Regional Forester Morrell requested that I postpone my transfer until after the fire season. I reported to Ogden, October 1, 1924.