Early Days in the Forest Service Volume 4

INDIAN CREEK RANGER STATION
By Ralph L. Thayer

I first went to work for the Forest Service in June 1911. I helped move the office and files from Indian Creek Ranger Station, which was in Glacier National Park, near what they called the Henshaw Ford. You could ford it when the water was low or Park Service had a boat above the ford about 31 miles. We hauled and carried some of the equipment to the boat landing about 4 mile from Ranger Station. The cabin was a log cabin made out of big logs. It had two doors and two windows 24"x24". Harry Vaught was the first Park Ranger. He and his wife were there for about two seasons. She was a real all-around woman. She homesteaded west of Belton, Montana, on the Middle Fork River. She had a trap line in the hills south of Belton on which she made her living until she and Harry Vaught were married, then they moved to Indian Creek Ranger Station on the North Fork of the Flathead River.

Anyway, I saddled up four head of pack horses at Moran Ranger Station on Moran Creek on west side of the river. There was no regular trail, just the best way to get through. Well, being in the first part of June the water was high. I couldn't get through the river bottom or the A. N. Smith bottoms. I had to back track and go up the hill west of the river bottom in order to keep things dry. When I went up through the Bottoms Empty I made it o.k. The river rose in p.m. so couldn't make it. The Ranger at the Indian Creek Ranger Station in Glacier National Park, that is, the Forest Service Ranger, was Theo. Christensen. A man by the name of A. E. Clark, USFS Ranger, took Theo. Christensen's place that summer. Also an Indian who was working for Theo. Christensen. He was a Kootenai Indian. He enlisted in the Canadian Army in WWI; he never came back so I guess he was one of the missing in action. He was a Park Ranger in Glacier National Park, also.

The last part of June 1911, we had Smokechaser School at Indian Creek in Glacier National Park. Supervisor R. P. McLaughlin was there also. Along with Ranger W. C. McCormick I helped build Moran Ranger Station, skidded the logs into where we put up the Ranger Station. George Grubb was an old-timer from eastern Montana. He was a blacksmith at Zortman, Montana, in his early days. In 1908 he settled on a homestead in what is now Glacier National Park. He was a real good broadaxe man. A fellow by the name of Ben Mace and myself sawed the logs for George. Between cooking and times chasing smoke we hung an emergency wire telephone line. We hooked on the Glacier National Park line. It was a No. 12 wire at first, and then they put up a No. 9 wire. It was something in those days-to keep the telephone lines up.

In the book "Early Days in the Forest Service, "(Vol. I) there is a picture on page 128 (facing Page 139). It shows some old-timers. F. N. Harmes was supervisor of the Blackfoot Forest when I first went to work. It also shows J. C. Cosley, which I spoke of.

They named Peter Degrant in the wrong place. He is kneeling in back of Fred F. Clark and Bill Owens.