Early Days in the Forest Service Volume 4

FIRST YEAR IN THE FOREST SERVICE
By Carl G. Krueger

It so happened that most of my 38 years in the Forest Service were in R-2 and R-8, but my first year was in R-1, so I'll write a little about that year. The job was somewhat different than most, which might make this a little more interesting.

I was graduating from the U. of Minnesota in Forestry in the spring of 1927, but had decided to work a year before taking the Junior Forester exam. A classmate, C. E. Knudson was doing the same. He had worked in various capacities for the Office of Planting, in D-1, under Dave Olson, then Chief of Planting. Through Knute I got a job on a planting survey party for that summer. We went west from St. Paul in mid-June, and reported to Dave Olson, in Missoula.

A few odd jobs for a day or two here, then on to the Savenac Nursery, at Haugan, Montana. This was the tree nursery for all of District (now Region) One, and was a sizeable operation. Except for a few locals, all the crew and transients like us slept in bunk houses and ate at the Forest Service mess. It was a good one too, in fact I never saw a bad one, though some were better than others. The work crew for the ranger district was located here too. The District ranger was Frank Hawn, a veteran of the 1910 fires.

Here again we only worked for a few days, as the survey party was really assembling on the Kaniksu National Forest in Idaho. Part of the time at Haugan was spent in getting camp gear together and shipping it to Priest River. Knute and I went by train to Priest River, via Spokane, then Forest Service truck to the Benton Ranger Station which was located where the Priest River Experimental Forest headquarters is now. That entire set-up is now gone, and it is hard to find where the old ranger station even was, but I did locate the site once. Charles Tracy was the District Ranger.

We were a planting survey party. Experience had shown that areas burned over once nearly always reproduced satisfactorily naturally, but those burned a second time didn't. The year 1926 had been a bad fire year on the Kaniksu, and a number of areas had burned the second time. We were to map these areas and recommend the species to be planted. We stripped the burns on compass lines, working in two-man parties, a compass man and a mapper. We got all distances by chaining, and took slope measurements with Abney levels, so the maps we made were accurate, and I believe were later incorporated into the USGS maps.

Our total party consisted of two mapping crews, Knute and myself, I being the compass man.

The other party was Charles (Chuck) Hagemeyer, a forestry student from the U. of Washington as mapper and Jim Rickey, the compass man. Chuck was from Tacoma and Rickey from Missoula. We had a cook too.

The first one was no good and only lasted a couple of days, but the second one, Jim Donner from Missoula, was a good one and was with us all summer. At the Benton Ranger Station we used their mess facilities, but all the rest of the season was a tent camp proposition. Usually we just set up a tent and fly for the kitchen and dining area, and slept under the stars.

At that time the only three species of trees being produced and planted were western white pine, western yellow pine and Engelmann spruce. So on the maps we designated western yellow pine for the warm, dry sites; spruce for the wetter areas and white pine for north and east slopes and deeper spoiled areas on all exposures. In practice this worked out well, except for the yellow pine, where there were many poor plantations. The failures were more due to wrong seed source than to poor site selection. The spruce and white pine, especially the white pine, did very well until blister rust came along later.

Our big boss, Dave Olson, visited us at Benton and elsewhere. At the Benton visit, Dave was accompanied by an engineer, Jim Yule, who checked us out on our surveying. Another visitor to the Experimental Forest was Robert (Bob) Marshall, who later became the noted Wilderness devotee. In later years I was with Bob a number of times.

After about ten days at Benton we went by truck to the Forks of Granite, as it was then known. This was above Nordman, at the end of the road, such as it was. There was a guard (smoke chaser) cabin here, and also a road construction camp. A Forest Service road crew, Bert Mains, was extending the road on up to what is now the Roosevelt Grove of Ancient Cedars. This was also the headquarters for a couple of pack strings, so it was a busy place. The packers were Smith, George I believe, and I think the second was Johnny Marquette. Here I met I. V. Anderson from the Kaniksu Supervisor's office, and District Ranger Clarence Sutliff, who was at the Bismark Station near Nordman. Both are still alive, but retired.

At the Forks of Granite I got kicked by a mule, appropriately called Dempsey. No harm done. Another mule somehow got turned around in his (or her) stall, and broke its neck. We also had to perform an operation. Richey had developed a felon on his left thumb; it had swollen until it was about as big as a lemon, and had a kind of greenish yellow color. Richey's dad was a doctor in Missoula, and had just happened to come over to see Jim at that time, but did not have his kit with him. So he honed a pocketknife to a fine edge, we stretched Jim out on the bridge across the creek. which was just the right height, held him down, and his dad lanced the finger. It looked as if a cupful of pus came out, but that did the job. No after effects.

From Forks of Granite we moved by pack string to Zero Creek, then Gold Creek, then to Hughes Meadows and finally to the Navigation Station on Upper Priest Lake. We mapped a number of areas from each camp. We were, of course, subject to fire call and fully expected to be on fire duty before the summer was over. It was a wet year though, and the only fire we were sent to had been rained out by the tim we got to it. I was introduced to huckleberries that summer, and have liked them ever since. We did not see much wildlife but the fishing was good. There were supposed to be woodland caribou in the Hughes Meadows area, but we didn't see any. We did see a few deer, black bear, but no elk or moose.

At Navigation we were loaded into outboard motor boats, and went to the Beaver Creek Ranger Station, through the Thorofare. Upper Priest Lake was beautiful then, as now. The Thorofare channel had not then been cleared of logs. The water was low as this was mid-August, and we cut off several shear pins on the way through. At Beaver Creek Station I met District Ranger Hugh Redding, who I was to see many times later, in the South. He was a real character.

At Beaver Creek all our stuff was loaded on a small barge and we went to Coolin, making a number of stops at various landings and logging camps along the way. We were on the lake all day, but it was nice, both the day and ride. From Coolin we went to Priest River by truck, then on to the St. Joe NF by train. We unloaded and camped at Roland, at the west end of the Taft tunnel, on the Milwaukee RR. We surveyed two or three areas in this vicinity. One Sunday we hiked through the tunnel to the Montana side. On the way back we met a train and had to get into one of the escape nooks built for that purpose. That train sure made a racket as it went by about six feet from us.

From Roland we went on to Haugan, and the party broke up. Richey and Donner went back to Missoula, and Knute went back to the Kaniksu to get ready for fall planting. Dave sent Hagemeyer and me to Burnt Cabin Creek on the Coeur d'Alene to gather white pine cones for seed in the area where they were logging. Again we went by train, going to the camp from Garwood on the Ohio Match Co. logging railroad. We went to the camp at Bottom Creek. The Ohio camp was the first one I had been in Idaho, though I had been in camps in Minnesota. Quite a contrast. It was a tent camp; all equipment was first class and the food excellent. Cone gathering was not good, they scattered so when the trees hit the ground that they were hard to find, so after about a week Dave took us back to Haugan, this time by car. We went by the road up Wolflodge, not Cedar Creek as now. At the Fourth of July Summit there was a resort of sorts, and a black bear was chained up. It would drink any given quantity of pop right out of the bottle. In the mining area we saw several places where the families had their outdoor toilets sitting on logs right over the stream. Flush toilets of sorts. We went over the divide at Mullan Pass, not Lookout. It was a grind for Dave's Dodge, but we made it in fine shape. By this time it had rained enough so fall planting could begin, so Hagemeyer and I went back to Priest River and on to Zero Creek, where we were going to plant part of one of the drainages we had mapped in the summer. It was to be a big camp. Knute was camp boss, Hagemeyer timekeeper. I was just a tree planter, flagman on a crew that had Hank Peterson of the Kaniksu for foreman.

The camp was typical of those at that time, and warrants some description. Everything was in tents, kitchen, dining and sleeping tents, etc. The stable for pack stock was an open fly. Six men slept in each bunk tent, which were the Army pyramid squad tents, with a Sibley stove for heat. We were furnished split cedar slats and a straw tick for a mattress. No cots. We could make up the bed any way we wanted, but of course it was on the ground, or a pole frame. The bedding was also furnished, a couple of quilts (soogans), a couple of army blankets and a shelter half for a spread. No sheets or pillow. Bath facilities were the open outdoor rack for washbasins, and tin washtubs. Water was heated and available for the wash rack, but you heated your own if you took a bath. Chairs in the tents were blocks of wood, or you sat on your bed. We did have Coleman gas lanterns though.

There was a cook, Charley Johnson; two flunkies, Jack Cairns and Paul Martin; two bull cooks, Brown and Donaldson. There were two packers who packed trees and water to the crews; they were Frank Bracy and Earl Mixer. I think all of these men were locals, but practically the rest of the crew consisted of transients recruited off of Spokane's skid row, and were a real bunch of characters.

Most were just working for enough money to hit Spokane for a good spree, but some did mention buying some new clothes. Several in my tent had their red IWW cards and were proud of them. One grumbled a lot over the fact that the 'bosses' had cots to sleep on, while all the rest of us slept on the ground. When camp was over Charlie Johnson had a stake of several hundred dollars, and was broke a few days after he hit Priest River. I expect a lot of the others were in the same boat.

We were in this camp at the time of the Dempsey-Tunney championship fight in Chicago. The whole crew was pulling for Dempsey. We did not learn the result until the pack string got in from Forks of Granite. The men were much let down when they learned that Tunney had won.

There was between thirty and forty tree planters in camp, divided into three crews. I was flagman on Peterson's crew. We regularly planted a thousand trees or more a day, and got up to 1200-1300. But instead of planting small patches of 30-40 acres or less, we were in a big burn and planted from creek bottom to ridge top so little time was lost turning around. Generally there were few logs or other barriers, as this was a clean burn. There were some down logs though. One day a man on the slope above me dislodged a log, which rolled down the hill. The planter next to me and I threw ourselves behind another log, and the rolling one went right over our heads. The planters were closely checked, and a consistently poor planter, or one who was unable or unwilling to keep up was sent down the trail pronto.

The planting camp closed down about the middle of October, partly on account of snow, but I think we had also about completed the planned work. As soon as the camp closed, Olson sent Hagemeyer and me to the Falls Ranger Station where there was a seed extraction plant for white pine seed. We operated that until mid-January 1928. We bought cones from ranchers @ $.75 per sack, cut the wood, dried and threshed the cones, the whole operation. Nominally we worked eight hours a day, but it was much more than that, as we had to keep the kilns fired nights and holidays too. We ate Xmas dinner with Ranger Jim Ward and family, otherwise we did all our own cooking. During the summer I got $60.00 per month plus board, now I got $70.00 as I was in charge of the job. Moving up.

On October 25, 1927, Hagemeyer, Knute and six or eight others, plus I took one of the last of the so-called Ranger Exams at Newport. This differed from the Junior Forester exam in that instead of being based on technical forestry education and thesis it was based on practical items, log scaling, woodsmanship, knowledge of horses and the like. Later in the winter I learned I got a grade of 83.10, but nothing ever developed from this. I think this was the next to the last Ranger Exam ever given.

Then Knute and I went to Missoula for a couple of months. We wrote our theses and studied for the Junior Forester exam, which we took March 7, 1928. At that time this wasn't the quickie type of exam it later became, we wrote hours and hours. Any passing mark was good; I learned later in the spring that I made 76.45.

From Missoula I went to Spokane where I met another classmate, Dick Delaney, and we spent a couple of weeks. Then I was able to get a job on the Kaniksu NF on a timber stand improvement crew, so went back to Priest River. Our job on the stand improvement crew was to follow the loggers, pile the brush for burning, cut small grand fir and hemlock, girdle the big ones and generally open the stands up for white pine reproduction. It worked, too; many fine stands of white pine resulted, on the Kaniksu and elsewhere. While we were a Forest Service crew we stayed right in a Dalkena Lumber Co. camp, and as far as bunking and meals were concerned we were the same as the loggers. This was near the Pekle Guard Station; I have forgotten the number of the camp. I worked at this until about June 1.

Then I really went up in the world, worked on logging trails for the Kaniksu @ $100.00 per month, plus board. Many of the trails were not accurately located on the maps, and especially for smoke chasers it was essential that they be correct. So I made a compass traverse of the trails, pacing distances. Every time I crossed a section line I had to tie in to the nearest corner, post the markers on the trail and correct the map. I worked mostly in the area around South Baldy, staying in whatever logging camp or Forest station was nearest the work. It was while I was on this job that I had the experience of having a mountain lion follow me along the trail. I did not know it at the moment, but I left the trail to tie in to a corner; when I came back I saw the cat's tracks on top of my own. He had followed for several hundred feet. I have heard of this happening a number of times, but this was the only time it has happened to me; at least to my knowledge.

Towards the end of June I was told to go to the Benton Ranger Station for a fire training camp for lookouts and smoke chasers. Here my mail caught up with me for the first time in several weeks. Included in the mail was a job offer from [?] of the Forest Service, as timber sale ranger on the Washakie NF in Wyoming. I wired an acceptance at once. A little later I got two other offers, the Malheur in Oregon and Plumas in California, but I was already committed. Anyway I completed the training session at the Benton and then went to Wyoming by train. My assignment was to the Wyoming Tie and Timber Company sale on the head of the Wind River, above Dubois. And that is another story.

The whole year from June 1927 to June 1928 had been an interesting one, and I had learned a lot. All my belongings were in my pack sack; moving from one job to another just meant putting on the packsack and taking off. I had not made much money but had worked about all the time I wanted, at a variety of jobs, with a wide variety of people. It was a good year.