Early Days in the Forest Service Volume 3

By G.M. DeJarnette
(Retired 1962)

These reminiscences aren't much different from any that another Forest Service fellow could write. My career in the Forest Service started as a forest assistant on the old Pend Oreille Forest in northern Idaho in 1921. On August first I reported to Joe Fitzwater at Sandpoint. Since the appointment papers clutched in my hand said Sandpoint was to be my headquarters, I asked Joe where I might find a room. "You won't need a room " he replied; "you are leaving town at 10 a.m. If you've got a trunk you can leave it here in the storeroom."

I stored the trunk, loaded my old No. 2 Duluth packsack with socks, underwear, a couple of shirts, my tin pants and boots and a few toilet articles, and asked, "Where do I go?" "Well," he said, "I guess I'll send you to Copeland. Frank Casler has some fires and there's a telephone line to build, and he can use you on some timber cruising for a sale. When you get that done, Bill Blackman over at Snyder can use some help. He has a telephone line to build and some special use surveys to run out, and some brush to burn this fall. After that we will see." So I scattered.

I next saw Sandpoint and my trunk about Thanksgiving. I got a room but the trunk wasn't to be unpacked before "Monk" and his packsack took off for the Falls District to help Larry Dunn. At that time the Pend Oreille and Kaniksu were administered as separate units but under one supervisor. That was a World War I economy move - economy of both manpower and money. After doing some odd chores for Dunn, I got home for Christmas at Missoula, but no sooner back than my pack and I hit the Falls again. I shoveled snow off buildings, marked and scaled timber on the old Dalkena Lumber Company sale, ran out June 11 homestead lines on snowshoes, took care of the pack and saddle stock at the old Gleason Station, and saw my trunk again about March.

So it went until the forests were divided again on January 1, 1924. I was assigned as timber staffman on the Pend Oreille. I began to see my trunk more frequently then. There was a chance to see more of the Sandpoint "schoolmarms" trio, and one of them put the noose on me in 1925.

That's the way most of us were broken into the Forest Service in those days. For my part, I wouldn't part with a day of it. Some say we were just custodians. True, we did a lot of custodial work, and much development work. But we did a lot of management and silvicultural work, too, under the guidance of old masters like Joe Fitzwater, Elers Koch, W.W. White, Clyde Webb, and Phil Neff. And we shouldn't forget C.E. "Skip" Knouf, who was one of the toughest and best timber sale inspectors and check scalers in the business. On the "communications improvement" side was old R.B. (Ringin' Bell) Adams, who gave me so much hell for the way I built my first telephone line that I sure learned how to build 'em "neat and pretty" but quick. He was the first man I ever heard predict the radio for our communication, and that was almost before "radio was."

So, we have come a long way - from packsacks to overnight bags; from grounded lines to "ultra high;" from calked shoes to "ground-rubbin" Chevrolets; from cutting and burning bug trees to fighting bugs with 'copters and chemicals. We have gone from pulling bushes to high powered antibiotics for blister rust. We now use almost as much paper to hire and fire a man as we once did to write a year's reports. We now plan and replan, where we used to get out and do the job. But, withal, we have made wonderful progress: I am proud to have had a part in it all.

This may sound like a "swan song." It isn't, quite, but what I treasure and will continue to treasure most in looking back over the years are the memories of the fine people there have been to work with. I have had the inspiration, encouragement, and friendship of some of the finest men and women to be found anywhere. They have been that, and they are that. Our technological advancement has been beyond the fondest dreams of the early foresters who laid the foundation for what we are today in the field of forestry. The men and women of the Forest Service have made it great and, God willing, they will keep it great.