Early Days in the Forest Service Volume 1

A. E. FLY
Principal Forest Guard
Flathead National Forest
(Retired 1942)

Route 1
Whitefish, Montana
March 7, 1944

A PACKING TRIP

We brought the pack stock in that spring, and the first job was to pack in a lookout house and towers for Johnson Peak and a tower for Miller Mountain.

Both strings were green at packing lumber. Frank Lykins had a Remount string that had never packed lumber. So we loaded up the two strings after some trouble.

Some of the mules were packed tandem with heavy plank 14 feet long. I got my string loaded and tied up, then we started to pack Frank's string and the trouble started. After about two hours we got them loaded and strung them out, and they all started to raise hell. Some of them broke loose and run into my string, and that started the works. My saddle horse broke loose and started for the station five miles away. He and the bell mare outran the mules and tore the pack off the bell mare. I got the mules then and tied them, and went to help Frank get his lined up again. So we tied them wherever we caught them, and there were mules and lumber strung all over the woods.

Then I started after the two that went to the station. When I got back Frank was gone, but most of the string was still there, tied as we had left them.

Then a telephone call came in that one of the trail crew, who was working a trail about three miles away from where we were camped, had cut his foot and needed help, so I let the cook take my saddle horse and go after him while I got my outfit together and unloaded them. It was about five in the evening.

I brought what I could find of Frank's outfit back and got the packs and rigging off of them, and about dark Frank came in with three head. They had run up the trail towards the lookout about two miles before he got up to them. So he took them on up to the lookout and unloaded. Frank always roasted me because he got to the lookout with three and I never got there that day.

That was the end of the trouble. The mules were pretty tame the next morning. One pleasant thing about it all was, Frank was always smiling - he never got mad.

AN EXPERIENCE ON A FIRE

In the summer of 1940 I left the Star Meadow Ranger Station for Fox's farm, a smokechaser's camp on Good Creek, and when I got there, there were orders from the ranger to go into Bowen Meadows and bring out a trail camp. On the road back there was a terrific electrical storm which started several fires. As I got to camp and unloaded, two of the boys were going to a fire about two miles from there. I knew I would be called back to Star Meadows, so I kept the stock close in. I let them roll, and watered and fed them their grain, and the call came about [?] p.m. I saddled them up, and when I went to get my saddle it was gone. One of the boys who went to the fire had taken it. I had to go about two miles after it, so it made me pretty late in starting.

I got through the pass all right, then found the trails were all on fire ahead of me, so I turned back around the foot of Mount Sweeney, which was several miles farther, and it was about 1 p.m. before I got into the station. I loaded up with tools and breakfast for 300 men and went into a fire camp on Bill Creek on the east side of the fire. Got there just at daylight. The fire was raging not very far away, and I didn't hang around very long; got the stock out of there. When I got into the ranger station there were two Remount strings in that had made 200 miles or better while I was making 30. They loaded up and went into camp, and about the time they got back word had come the camp had burned. So I did not have to go out any more that day.

Holland Peak Lookout, Flathead National Forest, 1921.

Silver's Ranger Station, Nez Perce National Forest, 1925.