Early Days in the Forest Service Volume 3

By Albert E. Cole
(Retired 1935)

In February of 1916, after having been out of the Forest Service for over five years, I took the ranger examination in Anaconda under Supervisor L.C. Stockdale. In April of that year I was given a temporary appointment as a forest employee and went up toward the head of Mill Creek, south and west of Anaconda, to assist a ranger named Robert Henley in scaling stulls and measuring converter poles, mine props and lagging that the Forest Service was selling to the Anaconda Company (known then as the Anaconda Copper Mining Company).

This material was badly deteriorating from smelter fumes; trees were dying. Sulphur fumes were killing the timber and arsenic fumes were killing livestock in the Deer Lodge Valley, in Mill Creek, and over the divide into the Big Hole watershed. The cut was a clean one and thus the timber did not need to be marked.

I worked on this sale until the first of July that year, when I was sent to the Fleecer timber sale on the head of Divide Creek in the vicinity of Feely Station on the Union Pacific Railroad. This sale was administered by William Latne. I had left my wife in Butte, Montana, with my son, as a second child was soon to arrive, and he was born in October. In December I brought my family out to the sale area and we were housed in a very small two-room cabin which had no plumbing, no water in the house, and the room we used for a kitchen-living room was so small that my wife said she could stand in the center and reach anywhere to get whatever utensil she happened to need.

That was one of the coldest and stormiest winters I had ever seen in Montana, and I had lived here since my birth in 1880, except for three years and about nine months spent in the armed services of the U.S. Two years of this time - 1902-03 - I was in primitive Alaska where, although the temperature dropped to 73° below zero, it did not seem any worse than on that Fleecer sale; in fact we marked timber on snowshoes (the web kind) from about the first of November until after the first of June.

I think that our baby contracted rickets, a bone disease, in that little cabin because of his confinement and lack of sunshine, and we were put to considerable trouble and expense for medical attention. This is mentioned just to show the conditions we were faced with in those early days.

In April 1917, Mr. Latne was transferred to the Supervisor's Office in Anaconda and I was promoted to take charge of the sale. Mr. John B. Taylor had come on the sale as a supervisor for the company doing the cutting. In the spring of 1917 Mr. Taylor enlisted in the Army (Forest Engineers) and went to France. More about him later.

On the first of July 1917, I was transferred to the Dry Cottonwood district as ranger and moved there with my family. This ranger station building I had helped W. J. Derrick, when he was District Ranger there, build in February 1907. In explanation, I had been a Ranger and forestguard from 1905 to January 1, 1911, when I was furloughed from a district on Dry Creek in the Big Belt Mountains on account of a shortage of funds. I secured other work and did not go back in the Forest Service until later on.

The building on the Dry Cottonwood district was a very good four-room log structure with a good stone-constructed cellar and a fine spring, the water from which was piped into the kitchen. We were very happy here and hoped that we would be left for a long time. I particularly liked the district as I had become acquainted with it when I worked with Ranger Derrick in 1906-07.

My work here was mostly routine, with quite heavy grazing use, there being three sheep outfits and four or five cattle and horse outfits, but the majority of the latter were small. The commercial timber sales were quite numerous as the people who lived in Browns Gulch and Flume Gulch, which was over the divide from Dry Cottonwood, were engaged in cutting mining timbers and wood which they sold in Butte to the mines and to private customers. The fire menace was quite low, and I had only small Class A fires to contend with.

On March 27, 1919, I received a telephone call from Supervisor Z.C. Stockdale to meet him and Assistant Supervisor W.W. Weber at Gregson Springs. On my arrival at the springs they informed me that I was to accompany them to the High Rye Ranger Station about five miles from the springs. I was not informed as to why I was included in this trip. We stayed at the High Rye station all night. This station was occupied by a man named Murray Skillman. I was finally informed that Skillman could not stay there any longer as he was too old to get an appointment as Ranger. He had been in the Service before and had resigned. He had tried to take the examination again but was ruled out because of his age.

They asked me how I would like to transfer there, and I told them that I did not wish to leave the Dry Cottonwood district. They told me that the Dry Cottonwood was to be consolidated with the Race Track district and that the manger on the Race Track side would handle the whole thing. As he was an older man in the Service than I was, this change would have to be made. The High Rye dwelling was a very poor one, but Supervisor Stockdale promised me that a new building would be erected soon; however, that never developed. That same year the supervisor's headquarters was moved from Anaconda to Butte and Stockdale was transferred to the Regional Office. I have never seen him since.

My wife fought bedbugs and mountain rats almost continually during the time we were at the High Rye station, and finally succeeded in destroying the bugs but we never did get rid of the rats. We understood that the High Rye building had been an office of the Champion Mine Company, a great distance away from where it was when we occupied it. It had an attic that was inaccessible from the rooms, but the mountain rats took up residence there and made much noise, especially at night. It sounded like they were dragging chains back and forth, but where they got any chains is still a mystery. The outside of the dwelling was covered with weather-boards which had become loose, and one night we were awakened by a loud clatter. I went to the window, looked out, and saw a huge porcupine gnawing on the boards. It was bright moonlight. I secured a long willow and started to give the porky a good whipping.

He ran out across the bridge of the little stream with me after him. I must say that I was wearing a short nightshirt and that was all. My wife often said she would have liked a moving picture of that episode.

The High Rye was a very small district with about three bands of sheep and a small number of cattle. Only three or four permittees ran cattle on this district, the largest outfit being the Higginson and Semmers Ranch situated within the forest boundary.

The year 1919, however, was a very hard one for me, as I had to have all my teeth removed the last days of May and was hospitalized for nine days with hemorrhages from my gums. This weakened me very badly, and to top that, when we could get back to the Ranger Station both my wife and I came down with influenza and were very sick. The result was that I did not get back to work until the last part of June.

I rode my saddle horse down to Gregson, a distance of about five miles, to get mail and discovered a fire south of there. I rounded up two men and we worked on the fire all that afternoon and night and got a trench around it. As neither of the men could stay on the fire to watch it and I was completely worn out, I returned to the Ranger Station to rest and to put my wife at ease, as I knew she would be very much worried because I had not returned.

Very early the next morning I rode back to the fire. It had jumped the line in one or two places. I returned to Gregson and tried to get help. There was none available. I phoned Supervisor Weber, who said that he could not get me any help until the next day. I returned to the fire but was so weak I could not accomplish much. I watched the fire and succeeded in keeping it fairly well under control. Before noon the next day a man come from Butte and said he was the foreman of a crew that was coming later. He went on up to the fire and I stayed at Gregson Springs until the late afternoon train came with the crew. I took the crew up to the fire and then went home to bed. The next day the crew got the fire out and returned to Butte. This fire was only about five acres in size, but it was just the beginning of a very severe fire season. I had one fire after another until a heavy snow early in October put an end to the worst fire season in nine years over the entire Northwest.

My wife tried to move to Anaconda the fall of 1919, but owing to a shortage of coal there she had to come back to High Rye. The winter of 1919-20 was a severe one, especially during October, November, and December, and parts of January and February. Between supervising a small commercial timber sale and preparing enough wood to keep us warm, I was fairly busy. I had to cut down a number of large Douglas-fir trees that had been killed by smelter fumes from the A.C.M. smelter in Anaconda. Temperatures hovered around 45° to 50° below zero, and the snow was 3-1/2 to 4 feet deep all over the district. My timber sale work was performed on web snowshoes, but I was used to that from the Fleece sale in 1917.

I think that Mr. Fay G. Clark took over the supervisor's position on the Deerlodge Forest early in 1920.

We were on the High Rye district until the spring of 1922, when I was assigned to the Big Hole district as Ranger. Owing to having to purchase most of my supplies in Anaconda, 25 miles from the Big Hole station, I bought a Ford car as it would help also in the administration of the district, which was quite a large one. Since there was practically no activity on this district in the winter after the close of the grazing and fire seasons, I had my headquarters in Anaconda from December 1 to May 15 or 20, or as soon as I could get out to the Ranger Station on Seymour Creek, about four or five miles from Fish Trap, which at that time was a post office.

One incident comes to mind which relates to the first summer on the Big Hole district. My family always came out to the Arcola Ranger Station as soon as school was out. They had been there for about two months or so when we made one of our trips to Anaconda for supplies. We left Anaconda late in the afternoon on a hot August day, and it looked like we might have a thunderstorm that evening. My wife urged me to stay in town that night and go out early the next morning, but as I wished to make a field trip the next day I persuaded her to start back to the station that afternoon. As we crossed the Continental Divide at the head of a fork of Mill Creek, we ran into a severe thunderstorm which settled into a heavy rain and got worse as we drove on. We came to a very steep pitch, and I told my wife to keep the engine running while I got out to put on the tire chains. However, the engine died and I could not get it started again. I had to leave the family in the car and walk to the Home Ranch, operated by the A.C.M. Company, a distance of about three miles. There I got a man and team and returned to the car, hooked the car to the wagon and was towed to the ranch. As it was during the haying season all the bunkhouses and the main ranch house were full: We had to sit up all night, my wife holding the younger boy on her lap and I holding the older one. We sat in the kitchen so kept warm by the kitchen stove.

In the morning one of the hay crew who had had quite a lot of experience with Model T Fords, told me that probably the coils in our car had become wet. I dried them out thoroughly in the kitchen-stove oven and we got the car started and drove on to the Ranger Station. I got a "panning" from the Mrs. for not taking her advice. These coils had an important function in regard to the ignition system of the car and when they got wet or very damp they shorted the whole electric system. That was one of the "pleasures" of driving a Model T Ford.

Another incident at the Arcola Ranger Station occurred one time when I was away on a field trip. My wife and the two boys were at the station and she was working in the kitchen when she heard a slight scratching sound. She thought it was caused by a mouse or a mountain rat, but looked up to see a large snake crawling along the top of the door frame between the kitchen and living room. She called to the oldest boy to close the door and went out to find something to cope with His Snakeship. The only thing she could find was a digging bar, but she took that and knocked the snake down. It crawled under a cupboard and coiled, but she killed it with the bar, took it outside and hung it on a ladder that was leaning against the house. Fortunately, the snake was not a poisonous one, but she did not know that. She did not panic as some women would have, her whole thought being to protect the boys and herself. This was the largest watersnake I have ever seen.

Herb Schwan, a student from the forestry school of the University of Montana at Missoula, was my assistant during the summer of 1922. Tie was a very good and efficient helper, could use a transit and was a great help to me as he was the author of the first grazing management plan that had ever been drawn up for that District. He had a very harrowing experience while examining the heavily timbered country at the head of Seymour Creek. A severe lightning storm came up and he got off his horse to take shelter in a dense jackpine grove. His horse broke away and ran out through the brush and trees, tore the saddle bags off and lost the compass, camera and all of Schwan's films and other Forest Service property. Herb caught his horse but was unable to recover the lost property.

The same John B. Taylor mentioned earlier as being the company foreman on the Fleecer timber sale in 1917, who went to war with the Forest Engineers, and who was a graduate of the University of Montana forestry school, came to the Deerlodge Forest as supervisor, vice Fay Clark who had resigned to take other work. I had become well acquainted with John and was very glad he was to be my chief.

My first job on the Arcola District was to encourage the formation of a livestock association, which was accomplished almost immediately after I assumed charge of the District. The cattlemen were anxious to form such an association, but had been under the impression that the Forest Service would not cooperate.

In the fall of 1923 I was transferred to the Boulder Ranger District with headquarters in Basin, about 36 miles west of Butte. I arrived in October and was quite disappointed with the Ranger Station dwelling and with the poor school there. My wife refused to live at the Ranger Station, so I rented a house in town. I learned in November that the Deerlodge Ranger District was to be vacated by L. D. Willaimson, whom I had worked with in 1906-07; and who was moving to Libby, Montana. A Joe Callahan was to be transferred from the Gallatin Forest to the Deerlodge, but after he had looked things over there he said he would rather have the Boulder District, probably on account of having to pay rent in Deer Lodge. It had been the policy of the Regional Office that only one transfer per year of an individual would be authorized, but Supervisor Taylor received permission to let me go to Deer Lodge, and I have lived here since that time.

I arrived on the Deerlodge District on a cold day of December 10, 1923, and found that Charley Joy was in charge, although he was in the field when I arrived.

We were very glad to come to Deer Lodge as both the elementary and high schools were very fine and the teachers excellent; in fact, this has always been the case. My headquarters was the seat of Powell County, and we were fortunate in renting a fine six-room dwelling which we afterward purchased. There were five old Ranger District headquarters cabins that I used for stopping places.

"Chick" Joy was transferred to the Madison Forest as a District Ranger in March of 1924, and Bill Blackman, who was my forest guard and general assistant during my last year on the Big Hole District, and who had passed the Ranger examination, was assigned to the Deerlodge District as my assistant. Bill was with me all of 1924 and until July 1, 1925, when he was transferred to the Boulder Ranger District with his headquarters at the old Bernice Ranger Station. He resigned later and is now foreman of a gas construction crew for the Montana Power Company in Butte. Bill was raised in a Ranger Station in northern Idaho and was a good trail and fire foreman.

My next assistant was Conway McAtee who had been raised on a sheep ranch in the Madison Valley. He was a valuable assistant in the grazing end of the work, as he had had experience with both sheep and cattle and knew the kind of forage suitable for each. However, he was just a temporary man and there were no funds to keep him on during the winter. He managed to get work the winter of 1926-27, and returned to work for me during the field season of 1927. He took the Ranger examination that fall and received a grade above 90. However, as he did not serve in the armed forces during World War I, owing to the fact that, as a foreman on his father's ranch, he was engaged in producing both meat and wool as well as other products, he was refused an appointment as Ranger, and the Forest Service lost a man who would have been a topnotch forest officer.

The only good assistant I had during the next year or so was a man named Vern Runyan, who had taken some forestry work at the University of Idaho at Moscow. He was with me in 1928 and part of 1929, when he was transferred to the Boulder District and sent to an isolated Ranger headquarters on the Upper Boulder River. He resigned that fall and later left the state.

From July 1, 1929, until I retired July 1, 1935, I had no regular assistants - only per diem guards and such men as I could pick up for smokechasers - as it became impracticable to break in green men who had had no training nor experience in Forest Service work. By the time a green man was broken in, the field season was over and he had to seek other employment and did not come back the next year.

John B. Taylor was transferred to the Regional Office at Missoula, and then to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and R.T. Ferguson was supervisor until I retired. C.A. Joy was made assistant supervisor a year or so before I retired.

The fire season of 1934 was the worst I had experienced since I assumed charge of the Deerlodge Ranger District, and I guess that helped to pull my health down. Also my district was greatly enlarged during the years from 1930 to 1935, and I contracted a bad stomach ulcer. I also had to take several long, hard horseback trips during 1934, one in June through a heavy snowstorm when the ulcer was very bad. The largest fire was on Rose Mountain in the vicinity of Gold Creek Lakes, and I was unable to keep warm at night and could not sleep during the ten days that I was on that fire. I had returned home, took a bath and got a small amount of rest when I had to go out on another fire on the old Deer Lodge Farms, as the Farms had a contract for fire suppression with the Deerlodge Forest.

I went through a medical clinic in Butte in December 1934, and on the strength of the physician's report to Forest Supervisor Ferguson, steps were taken to have me retired, which I was on July 1, 1935. I wish to mention some of the Forest Supervisors and assistants that I worked under: John B. Taylor, who is retired and lives in Missoula. I will always thank him for getting me transferred to Deer Lodge, which I have enjoyed as home ever since. Charley Joy, my good friend, and one of the best fellows I was ever on a field trip with. He had the distinction of serving in several Regional Offices and wound up as chief of Range Management in the Washington office. He retired recently and will live in California.

R.T. Ferguson was instrumental in getting me retired when I was about "all in." Fergie has passed away since. And there was W.J. Derrick under whom I worked in 1906, in company with Earl H. Clapp and Mallory N. Stickney. Mr. Clapp wound up in the Washington office. I don't know what became of Stickney. Derrick was supervisor of the old Madison, and later of the Custer Forest. Walt died in California the summer of 1958. And there were others I haven't mentioned.

After I retired I was appointed as Police Judge here in Deer Lodge, and was reelected until I had served nearly eleven years, when I refused to run again. I also served during World War II as chairman of the Ration Board here in Powell County.

On August 12, 1959, my wife and I celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary.

As Alex Dreyer, the columnist, says: "That's all for this time."

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