A History of The United States Forest Service in Alaska

December 4, 1930

Reference is made to your letter relative to butter received in the lost Seattle purchase. The brand received here is marked Montequilla Marc. Brookfield. Was probably made some years ago for export to Mexico but the Mexican government refused it. I believe it is butter, or would prove to be on analysis, but it has been removed from the cow for too many years. There are rust spots through and on it, it does not taste very good, and has a queer grainy effect when placed in the mouth. It looks more like tallow than butter but this is probably an optical illusion. Never saw butter like this before.

Chas. Burdick to R. A. Zeller, quoted in
Sourdough Notes, October 1, 1951

Politics of Forestry: The 1920s

The Taft and Wilson administrations had been marked by political battles over forestry and conservation—battles in which Alaska was prominently involved. This was also the case for the first three years of the Harding administration. Harding chose Albert B. Fall of New Mexico to be his secretary of the interior. Fall had as a goal the transfer of the Forest Service to the Department of the Interior. As an opening wedge, he testified in 1922 before the Senate Committee on Territories in favor of transferring the Forest Service in Alaska to the Interior Department. This would, in his opinion, make mining and homesteading in the territory much simpler and would at the same time allow forest use. The project found some friends in Congress, particularly in Fall's successor in the Senate, Holm O. Bursom, and from George Curry, a former congressman and governor of New Mexico, now Bursom's "private secretary." However, it was characterized by the American Forestry Association as a land grab. Pinchot used his considerable political influence against it, as did Secretary of Agriculture Henry C. Wallace. Dan A. Sutherland, Alaska's delegate to Congress, also opposed the transfer. This controversy was probably a factor in Harding's decision to visit Alaska in 1923. The president became a convert to Forest Service views while in Alaska, and in a Seattle speech he strongly supported Forest Service management and advocated development of a pulp industry in Alaska. [1] The political threat to Alaska's forests disappeared during the 1920s, and it was in general a period of quiet but steady progress.

Calvin Coolidge, Harding's successor, was pledged to economy in government and to noninterference with the existing governmental departments. He provided no leadership to conservation, but he offered no obstacles. Herbert Hoover was more knowledgeable regarding resource administration. His philosophy involved businesslike efficiency, scientific management, cooperation with the states, and decentralized administration. These were not antithetical to the Forest Service objectives. Hoover was unfortunate in the time in which he served, however, spending much of his energy explaining and dealing with the economic depression.

In Congress there emerged a strong leadership for forestry and conservation. Senator Charles L. McNary of Oregon, with his strong personal interest in forestry, his legislative skill, and his working alliance with E. T. Allen, was the notable leader. Others included Louis C. Cramton and Arthur H. Vandenberg of Michigan, Henrik Shipstead of Minnesota, and George W. Norris of Nebraska. The decade witnessed important legislation, especially in the area of state and federal cooperation. The Clarke-McNary Act, the General Exchange Act, the McSweeney-McNary Act, the Knutson-Vandenberg Act, and the Copeland Report were among the accomplishments.

William B. Greeley, chief from 1920 to 1928, served during an era of relatively "good feelings" and built a record of solid accomplishments. He traveled to Alaska and made a firsthand examination of its forests. (U.S. Forest Service)

Forest Service Chief William B. Greeley visited the Tongass National Forest in 1921. (U.S. Forest Service)

The two chief foresters of the period, William B. Greeley (1920-1928) and Robert Y. Stuart (1928-1933), built substantial records. Greeley was a graduate of Yale who came to Washington after service in California and Montana. A capable, competent man who had earned the respect of the lumber industry, he had a good relationship with both the administration and the Congress. He rejected Graves's idea of federal regulation of private cutting, preferring voluntary cooperation. He gave high priority to fire control—the result of his personal experience in the big fire of 1910 in Montana. He continued Grave's emphasis on recreation in the national forests, which involved both road building and reserving of primitive areas. Scientific research was advanced greatly during his term as chief. In all these areas, except the regulation issue, he followed the views of his predecessor. Graves had been denied full achievement of his goals by political hostility. Greeley, on the other hand, took advantage of the era of good feelings in politics to get through the legislation he wanted. Greeley faced minor clashes with the grazing interests over the matter of fees, and there was some infighting with the National Park Service in recreational areas, but his was an administration of substantial accomplishments. He retired from the Forest Service in 1928. [2]

Robert Y. Stuart, chief of the Forest Service from 1928 until his death in 1933, continued the policies of his predecessor, William B. Greeley. (U.S. Forest Service)

Robert Y. Stuart, successor to Greeley, was another Yale man. He entered the Forest Service in 1906, served until the United States entered World War I, became a major in the 20th (Forest) Engineers, and returned to the Forest Service in 1920. Shortly thereafter, he went to Pennsylvania to serve as assistant commissioner of forestry; Pinchot was commissioner. When Pinchot was elected governor of Pennsylvania in 1922, Stuart was advanced to commissioner and then to secretary of forests and waters, when the name of the state agency was changed. Stuart returned to the Forest Service when Pinchot's term as governor expired in 1927, and in 1928 he became chief. During Stuart's administration, the important legislative accomplishments of the Greeley era were continued; he made no real break with the Greeley policies. In the latter part of his term, Stuart pushed for emergency relief work on the national forests in order to carry out projects primarily in construction and recreational areas. He died in office on October 23, 1933.

Ferdinand A. Silcox, yet another Yale forester, was chief of the Forest Service from 1933 until 1939. (U.S. Forest Service)

Stuart was succeeded as chief forester by Georgia-born Ferdinand A. Silcox. After graduating from Yale, he went into the Forest Service, serving as district forester in Missoula. He served in World War I and then went into labor management for the government. He was called back from his assignment to be chief forester. Silcox was intensely sympathetic with and loyal to the New Deal—so sympathetic that Ickes sought to have him transferred to the Interior Department. He favored public ownership and management, public cooperation, and public regulation. In addition to the existing relief and reform work during his term, several new pieces of legislation were passed, including the Norris-Doxey Cooperative Farm Forestry Act. He supervised the Shelterbelt Project in the prairie states, ordered a study of the western range, and established a timber salvage project after the great blow-down of 1938 in New England. Silcox favored federal regulation of cutting and devoted much time to working for this, until his death in 1939. [3]

In Alaska, the 1920s were a period of transition for the Forest Service. Recommendations for creation of a separate administrative district appear all through the inspection reports of the Weigle administration. Graves favored the change, and in 1919 the area was divorced from the Portland office and made District 8, later to become Region 10. Part of the pressure came from within the Forest Service, but part of it came from outside demands for further decentralization of the agency. [4] With this transition, Charles H. Flory, who had succeeded Weigle as supervisor in 1919, now became Alaska's first district forester.

The Alaska District had a curious relationship with the Washington Office. Chief Forester Greeley traveled to Alaska and made a firsthand examination of its forests. Early annual reports are filled with plans for Alaska, particularly plans for pulp mills that did not materialize. Meanwhile, Alaska's national forests were underfinanced and understaffed; transfers of personnel out of the forest were infrequent. It was the most neglected of all districts, but there were many who liked the Alaskan way of life and completed long terms of service there.

Charles H. Flory, district and regional forester from 1919 until 1937. (U.S. Forest Service)

Charles H. Flory, the first district forester in Alaska, had a curious career. He was a Yale graduate who went out to District 6 and served as chief of operations in Portland until coming to Alaska in 1919. His title was superintendent of Alaska forests until 1921, when Alaska was made a separate district, District 8. Though he had been a good lieutenant for George Cecil, he proved to be a poor captain. He was too imaginative and had too low a boiling point to be an outstanding administrator. He had many sideline activities that took time away from his regular duties, and his health was not robust. He was generally looked upon as a man of great qualities that were not fully realized. [5]

Flory had two close and able associates. Melvin L. Merritt, assistant district forester in charge of operations, was the very model of a career forester. Born in Iowa in 1870, he became a professor of horticulture at Iowa State University. After deciding that he should devote his life to public service, he went to the Philippines as a member of the Philippine Bureau of Forestry in 1905. He returned to the states in 1909, served in District 6 in various capacities, and then came to Alaska at Flory's request in 1921. After a long tenure in Alaska, he returned to Portland in 1934 and was assistant regional forester in the Pacific Northwest for the remainder of his Forest Service career. A man of deep religious convictions, he usually taught Sunday school in the communities where he served. In Juneau he also served several elected terms on the school board. Merritt was a hardworking, competent, and conscientious public official. [6]

The second associate was B. Frank Heintzleman, born in Pennsylvania in 1888 and educated at the Pennsylvania State Forest Academy and Yale. He served with the Forest Service in the Pacific Northwest for some years and then went to Alaska in 1918 as a deputy forest supervisor. He was attracted to Alaska from the first, and he dedicated his life to its affairs. Heintzleman was short in stature, tremendously energetic, an able public speaker, and devoted to community affairs. He gave much time to the promotion of timber sales, to waterpower surveys, and to the establishment of pulp cutting areas, but, he was also interested in the recreational potential of the area, particularly in fishing and tourism. A lifetime bachelor, he loved social life and the amenities. He was a poor administrator by technical standards, somewhat hostile to organized labor and politically conservative, an inept politician, and occasionally indiscreet in speech and writing. But his energy, intelligence, and professional ability greatly overshadowed some of his human weaknesses. [7]

The decade of the 1920s in Alaska was one of quiet growth. Alaska was not directly involved in the major controversies of the period. Since the forestland was nearly all government owned, the question of federal regulation of cutting did not affect the area. Neither did the controversies over grazing. Conflict between Forest Service and Park Service over recreation areas did not greatly affect Alaska; the movement for the Glacier Bay National Monument had Forest Service support. The General Land Office and the Forest Service reached accommodations over boundaries during the early part of the decade.

There were efforts during this period to increase interagency cooperation in Alaska through both formal and informal methods. One aspect of this was the establishment of formal commissions of the various bureaus and departments. The Forest Service rejected both Franklin Lane's idea of a development board to take the place of the established agencies and Albert Fall's idea of having the Department of the Interior take over all functions. However, the Forest Service did take part in a number of ventures.

In April 1920 an Interdepartmental Alaska Advisory Board was set up, consisting of members of the various federal departments with interests in Alaska. The board recommended establishment of an Interdepartmental Alaska Committee to coordinate the work of the various departments in the field. E. A. Sherman of the Forest Service strongly opposed establishment of the committee, but it was set up nevertheless in 1920. [8] It had a large membership, and Charles Flory was the Forest Service representative. Greeley spoke on the need for cooperation, pointing out that in fur farming there were three agencies involved: the Forest Service, the Biological Survey (in the Aleutians), and the General Land Office. There was need for a coordinated policy. In settlement there was no conflict, but the General Land Office was too inefficient. The Land Office in Alaska was the office of record, but the other steps—allowance of entry, acceptance of final proof, survey, issuance of certificate, and final patent—all had to go through Washington. The Land Office had three branches—the Land Office proper, with its registers and receivers, the surveyor general, and the Field Division in charge of inspection—and all operated independently. [9]

The Alaska Committee was abolished by the president on April 1, 1922. It probably had no great effect, but it may have helped to get Flory together with the Land Office on boundary matters.

In 1930 an Alaska Commission was set up to coordinate activities of the Department of Agriculture, Department of Commerce, and the Land Office in Alaska. Charles Flory served as chairman of the commission for a time. He was listed in the Forest Service Directory as ex-officio commissioner for the Department of Agriculture for Alaska, as well as regional forester. (All districts were renamed regions in 1930; all district foresters became regional foresters.) Flory accepted the commission post feeling that it would not interfere with his regular duties. From a study of inspection reports, however, it is evident that the job did take Flory away from his office a great deal, constituted about half of his work load, and may have contributed to his reputation as a weak administrator. [10]

Of more importance than any of these things, however, was Forest Service membership in the Alaska Game Commission, which was established by act of Congress in 1925. This participation helped to coordinate the work of the Forest Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service in regard to fish and game management. W. A. Chipperfield, as a member of the commission, gave outstanding service. [11]

The Politics of Conservation and the 1930s

The 1930s and the New Deal marked the revival of conservation as a crusade. Aside from the Republican Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt probably had more firsthand experience with forestry than any other president. He had operated a tree farm at Hyde Park, New York, and had a practical knowledge of forestry in all its technical and economic aspects. He had served in the New York legislature as chairman of the Senate Committee on Forestry, and as governor he had pushed a program for reforesting and managing abandoned farmlands. Roosevelt's presidential programs took many forms. They involved the emergency conservation work of the early 1930s and later the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), with its philosophy of using relief funds both to rehabilitate men and for socially desirable conservation work. The Shelterbelt Project, the NRA Forest Conservation Code, and the Taylor Grazing Act were other monuments to his administration. He pushed creation of national parks and monuments, and with the Reorganization Act of 1933 put all national monuments under the Department of the Interior. In the national forests, primitive areas were established and fish and game sanctuaries set up.

Roosevelt had his personal quirks and idiosyncracies in conservation. Some advisors outside of the ordinary chain of command influenced his decisions, as did Rex Beach in regard to mining in the Glacier Bay National Monument, John Holzworth with the proposed Admiralty Island National Monument, and Irving Brant regarding the Mount Olympus National Monument. He alternately pleased and tormented Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes, probably relying on him more for advice than on any other single cabinet officer but frustrating Ickes's desire to transfer the Forest Service to the Interior Department. He had a weakness for parkways—possibly because of his physical infirmity—and probably had more of them built than was desirable.

Roosevelt surrounded himself with outstanding men. Ickes, a Bull Moose Republican turned Democrat, was one of the strong men in the cabinet. Irascible, honest, suspicious, committed to democracy and minority-group rights, and hungry for power, he was the most colorful of the Roosevelt group. Henry A. Wallace, as secretary of agriculture, was a quietly capable individual. The son of Henry C. Wallace, who had served so well in Harding's cabinet, he was very different from his hard-drinking, somewhat flamboyant father. Inclined to be mystical in beliefs, sometimes openly radical in his thinking, he was an odd combination of qualities.

Congress continued its good bipartisan legislative record. Senator Charles McNary played a responsible role as minority leader, and other helpful pieces of legislation were passed. It was a period of great progress also in regard to state forestry and to forest industry. Though the National Industrial Recovery Act was invalidated by the Supreme Court in 1935, private owners continued its conservation features. States, meanwhile, established good forestry practices and enlarged their park systems through purchases of land. [12]

Alaska had been out of the mainstream of forestry development until the Great Depression; after 1933, it was in the middle of things. The Depression placed special responsibility on the Forest Service, which was put in charge of all emergency conservation work and later of the CCC program in the entire territory. The addition of a large area to Glacier Bay National Monument involved the Forest Service directly, as did Ickes's machinations regarding Admiralty Island and Indian claims. The Forest Service played a direct part in the development of a forest fire program for the interior of Alaska, and, by the end of the decade, it was deeply involved in matters of defense. It was a period of planning and of preparation for the approaching shift from custodial to intensive management of the 1940s and 1950s.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes were the principal architects of federal conservation policy during the New Deal era. Ickes visited Alaska in 1938. (Roosevelt Library)

Boundaries

Boundary problems on the Chugach continued after the 1917 eliminations. Associate Forester E. A. Sherman wrote in 1921 that he considered the chief timberland of value to be in the Prince William Sound area and in the area east of 150 degrees of longitude and south of Turnagain Arm. These areas, he wrote, should be retained. North of Turnagain Arm, from the head of the arm to Indian Creek, the values were low. There was some timber near Bird Creek and Indian Greek, but these areas were isolated. Sherman suggested eliminating Turnagain Arm and all the area north of Turnagain Arm and west of 150 degrees of longitude; he also questioned the value of retaining Afognak Island. Answering his letter, Heintzleman favored keeping the "fishhook" from East Foreland to Kasilof River. He felt that the south side of Knik Arm could be eliminated, but not the area south of Turnagain and west of 150 degrees until more was known of the area. [13]

In 1923 efforts were made to reach a final settlement on the boundaries. On the way back from Alaska on the Harding trip, William Greeley conferred with Secretaries Henry G. Wallace and Hubert Work and Land Office Commissioner William Spry on boundaries. The Forest Service was particularly interested in the Icy Straits-Lituya Bay area. The Land Office, on the other hand, wanted eliminations from the Chugach National Forest in the Kenai and the Copper River areas. An agreement was reached that Charles Flory of the Forest Service and George Parks, head of the General Land Office's Field Division in Alaska, would meet and work out boundary adjustments on a give-and-take basis. Parks apparently went on the erroneous assumption that Flory would be given a free hand to make additions in the Tongass, while he would be given a free hand in the Kenai. [14]

The Forest Service carried on investigations in 1924 and 1925. Wellman Holbrook made a reconnaissance of the Chickaloon Flats area and the strip along the coast from East Foreland down to Kenai, recommending its elimination. Melvin Merritt recommended elimination of the Knik Arm area because of its inferior timber, settlement, and fire danger. Chief Greeley was opposed to these eliminations from the forest, but he finally agreed. W. J. McDonald, supervisor of the Chugach, made a trip to Afognak Island and reported favoring retention of this area and adding to the national forest some of the adjacent islands, including Raspberry, Shuyak, Whale, and Marmot. There was an increase in demand for use of the islands. These included a saltery application on Redfox Bay and two fox farms. The Bureau of Fisheries had no objection to Forest Service administration on Afognak, but there was no agreement between the Forest Service and the Commerce Department over administration of fox farm islands. Parks objected to the proposed addition on the ground that the General Land Office had timber sales on Raspberry Island, so the plans for additions were dropped. However, Latouche Island was added, and fox farmers on Wingham and Wooded islets petitioned for annexation by the national forest. Langille had already recommended the addition of Kayak Island. In addition to these, the Orca and Ellamar eliminations were cancelled. Also, at Eyak and Tabulik rectangular eliminations were substituted for circular ones. In the Copper River Delta there were no changes; McDonald and Merritt examined the area and felt it should be held for recreational purposes. These changes were made by proclamation on May 29, 1925, and the boundaries were stabilized. [15]

From time to time, there was some demand that the Anchorage Ranger District, the 1,063,673 acres along the Alaska Railroad, be eliminated. Charles Flory, in a report of February 19, 1931, declared against it. By that time, however, public sentiment had changed. The Forest Service was managing the area not only for its timber values but also in cooperation with the Alaska Game Commission for game and recreational values. George Parks, by now governor and head of the Alaska Commission, favored Forest Service management. [16] There was also some local support for establishing national forests in the interior, particularly around the Susitna River area where John Ballaine was making plans for a birch veneer manufacturing plant. [17] In 1938 Heintzleman recommended an addition for recreational purposes in the Russian River drainage, and he was supported by Ernest Gruening, who was then director of the Office of Territories in the Interior Department. There was need for the addition, Heintzleman said, to reduce fire danger and to check fishing regulations. But the addition never came through. [18]

In the Tongass, a major addition was made to the north of the existing forest. In 1917 Asher Island had made a reconnaissance of the area to the north side of Icy Straits and up as far as Cape Fairweather. He reported good stands of spruce and hemlock and an excellent stand of pure spruce at Lituya Bay. This latter area with withdrawn, on Weigle's request, as a military reservation in 1918. Heintzleman examined the area in 1923, taking with him a group of the Seattle Mountaineers, and was impressed with its recreational as well as economic value. At the time of Harding's visit to Alaska, Wallace, Greeley, and Work conferred on the matter; Greeley urged addition of Lituya Bay, the north side of Icy Strait, the west side of Lynn Canal, and the Mansfield Peninsula to the national forest. [19] In 1924 Flory and Parks conferred on boundaries. The main task was to determine the relative boundaries of the Glacier Bay National Monument, now being planned, and the new national forest area. Meanwhile, on their return from Alaska, Greeley, Leon Kneipp, and E. A. Sherman conferred with officials of the Interior Department. Lituya Bay was restored to the national forest in 1924, and on June 12, 1925, the Icy Straits addition to the Tongass was proclaimed.

There were also numerous small additions and eliminations. These included changing the boundaries in Sitka, Wrangell, Skagway, Ketchikan, Hydaburg, and Juneau from circular to rectangular survey. Later, there were numerous small boundary changes within the national forest. These included a military reservation near Sitka, an administrative site near Petersburg, lighthouse eliminations, and townsite eliminations in Hoonah, Tenakee, Hyder, and Warm Springs Bay. [20]

State of the Region, 1920-1937

During its first years as a separate district of the Forest Service, Alaska was one of many anomalies. As in forestry nationwide, there was a shift from the use of westerners (who had gained their experience in the "University of Hard Knocks") to professionally trained foresters from Yale, Penn State, the University of Washington, and other forestry schools. The old-timers became boatmen, as did George H. Peterson of Sitka, or trail and road construction foremen. The number of personnel increased, both in the field and in the office staff.

The Alaska District was poorly financed. In the Tongass, timber sales were more than the cost of forest administration. Promotion was slow and transfers difficult. There were, consequently, some feelings of frustration and a large staff turnover. Annual leave was hardly sufficient to permit trips to the states, considering the poor transportation. The work schedules were difficult, with long hours in the field. On the other hand, there were compensations. Alaska offered a unique way of life for those who loved the out-of-doors. Some of the problems of the states were lacking, particularly fire (except in the Kenai area) and grazing problems. It was good country for those who liked to live off the land and who were interested in photography and outdoor sports. There was also a large degree of independence for men in the field; ranger districts were large, as large as some national forests in the states, and inspections were few. The result was the growth of a core of men who remained in the Forest Service and who became devoted to Alaska—men like G. M. Archbold, W. A. Chipperfield, and Lee G. Pratt. [21]

Administration after 1921 was based on a system of a forest supervisor for the Tongass in Ketchikan and a forest supervisor for the Chugach in Cordova. When Alaska became District 8 in 1921, Flory's office was moved from Ketchikan to Juneau, which has remained headquarters for the district and region ever since. From a technical standard, the Alaska District was poorly administered. Flory spent a great deal of time serving on the Alaska Commission. He also had a great number of sideline activities, including rock collecting. He was a founder of the Juneau Garden Club, then a largely male organization. He spent much of 1928 compiling a history of the Ballinger-Pinchot dispute from sources in Alaska; the manuscript is now unfortunately lost. Merritt was an extremely capable and tireless field man as assistant district forester, but he left Alaska in 1934. Heintzleman spent much of his time in the states promoting pulp sales and in the 1930s was called there to assist in NRA work. Fortunately, the caliber of the field men was high, and there was probably less need for formal supervision than in most districts in the states.

There were also localized administrative problems. Before 1921, both the Tongass supervisor and Flory were stationed in Ketchikan, and the latter took on some of the former's functions. The supervisor was not given full responsibility, as on other national forests. Later, Tongass Forest Supervisor Robert A. Zeller was not consulted about road plans, the proposed pulp sale to Alaska Pulp and Paper Company, or land classification work; the supervision of timber sales was given to B. F. Heintzleman. There was no orderly planning. Assistant Forester E. E. Carter wrote in 1924 that the state of the Chugach "averaged with that on most national forests about 1907 or 1908, with the work in some lines not even on standards which would have been regarded as suitable then." Carter did not blame it on the staff—Supervisor W. J. McDonald, Deputy Supervisor Pratt, and Rangers John G. Brady and Thomas E. Murray were excellent men—but rather on the district and on Washington, which "failed to ascertain or take proper action on the Chugach in regard to such fundamental matters as fire protection, the administration of timber cutting, and the adjustment of boundaries." Carter felt the need for both fire control and timber management in the area tributary to the Alaska Railroad and questioned the need for the Anchorage Ranger District as an administrative unit. [22]

Forest Service employees W. J. McDonald, E. M. Jacobsen, and L. G. Pratt on the Copper River and Northwestern Railway. (Rakestraw Collection)

In order to assign duties more clearly and to get a better administration, a new scheme was set up in 1931. Field divisions were established to replace ranger districts. These included the Southern, with headquarters at Ketchikan; the Petersburg, with headquarters at Petersburg; the Admiralty, with headquarters at Juneau; the Kenai, with headquarters at Anchorage; and the Prince William Sound, headquartered at Cordova. Headquarters for the Kenai Division were later established at Seward. [23] In the meantime, though not related to the aforementioned reorganization, there were other changes in terminology. All districts became regions in 1930; district foresters like Flory became regional foresters. Alaska became Region 8; in 1934, through renumbering, it became Region 10.

The Washington Office conducted several inspections during the period. Assistant Forester E. E. Carter made a searching general inspection in 1923; R. H. Headley and C. H. Squire came in 1925. E. W. Loveridge made an inspection in 1930 that was marked by highly strained feelings between him and members of the Alaska force, particularly Melvin Merritt and G. M. Archbold. Assistant Chief G. M. Granger made a detailed inspection in 1936 and had high praise for the general quality of the local administration. [24]

The year 1936 was also marked by a visit of the Department of Agriculture's Bureau of Personnel, headed by Frank Russell, and a highly disruptive report. The Russell report revealed an investigation rather than an inspection; it contained as much gossip and as many unsubstantiated accusations as an FBI file. Harold E. Smith, district ranger in the Prince William Sound Division, was criticized because of discrepancies in vouchers of shipments with the Alaska Transfer Company. Accusations were made that he had used a local lawyer's office to study law on official time. Administration of payrolls was criticized; overtime was the rule, with no compensatory time. Wellman Holbrook, assistant regional forester, had taken some condemned, worn-out blankets home to his wife, who had donated them to charity. Hearsay evidence was used to accuse one man of using government labor to build a private house. Russell condemned the use of Forest Service boats to take families on picnics. The region was held to be lax in the use of annual leave and travel on official time; some personnel had taken a trip to the interior and not charged the time properly. Finally, Regional Forester Flory was criticized for inefficiency, for being a "playboy," and there were hints of "woman trouble." He was soon transferred to Washington State, where he became supervisor on the Mount Baker National Forest.

Heintzleman, the new regional forester, was infuriated by the charges. He wrote:

The striking feature of this examination was its dissimilarity from the Forest Service "official inspection" which is always welcomed because of its constructive criticism and suggestions for betterment which are its primary purpose. This, however, was an "investigation" conducted along the lines employed by judicial agencies to obtain evidence in cases involving definite and serious charges of law violation. I know of no such charges having been placed against any member of the Region 10 organization in justification of such an investigation.

The constant questioning of subordinate Forest officers about supervisors; of officers of one Federal Agency about those of another Federal Agency; of merchants from whom purchases were made, and of all classes of the local public with respect to possible infractions by Forest officers of specific laws and regulations (whose breach involves grave consequences) leads to an inference, both inside and outside of the organization, of serious misconduct on someone's part and that a search for evidence to ensure the conviction of the culprit is being conducted. The point needn't be emphasized that in Alaska, as elsewhere, Forest officers are almost invariably outstanding and highly respected members of their small communities, and such investigations are embarrassing to them and detrimental to their standing with the public and with their subordinate Forest Service employees. I strongly urge that such type of investigation be restricted to serious charges and not be made a routine practice in the Department.

On the specific charges, he pointed out that it was desirable for the field men to see the country outside the national forest. He termed false the charges against Smith, those relating to the vouchers, house building, and lax office hours. He pointed out that the Forest Service had always permitted field officers to take their wives to see the country and that the privilege was not abused. Such travel was also used to check the winding of streamflow recorders, saving a special trip to do this on official time. He acknowledged the charges involving the condemned blankets but felt it trivial at best. As far as the charges against Flory were concerned, it was not necessary to meet them. Flory had just been transferred, but Heintzleman implied nonetheless that the charges were false.

Chief Forester F. A. Silcox supported Heintzleman on several of the points. In regard to leave, he wrote, "I think there is sometimes a tendency on the part of auditors to forget that the humanities of certain situations merit some consideration in applying the rules as to leave or similar matters." On the boats: "If occasional water trips are denied Service residents in Alaska, one of the few sources of pleasure they will have will be taken from them." On Flory, he "questioned the wisdom of such interrogations by inspectors or auditors," while he dismissed the charges against Smith as "gossip." [25]

Inspections notwithstanding, the work of the rangers and supervisors was ordinarily in the field. W. A. Chipperfield reported that his usual routine was three weeks in the field followed by one week in the office writing up reports. Hours were long, with twenty-hour days not uncommon. It often took a long time to go by boat from the ranger station to work. George Peterson noted that he had worked 291 hours and traveled 700 miles by boat in March 1921. The men faced the hazards of storm, shipwreck, and inclement weather. The work itself involved scaling, cruising, surveying town lots, patrolling, and the like. During the 1930s an increasing amount of time was spent on CCC projects. They also did rescue work, as revealed by a typical entry from the diary of Harold Lutz:

July 16, 1925

Found a scow boat from the Nellie Juan cannery wrecked just outside of the skookum chuck. Men intended to go in late p.m. before the high tide, wind rolled boat, broke mast and boom. Men camped on beach lagoon. Gave coffee, bread, matches, etc.

As before, the boats were put to the service of a variety of people—members of the Game Commission, Park Service men, visiting dignitaries, archaeologists, researchers, and the like. [26]

Boatmen accompanied the rangers on their work. They were responsible for seeing to the upkeep of the boats and also aided the rangers. Boatmen were a distinctive breed of men, as individualistic as the old-time packers of the Forest Service in the states. Their logs are a good source of information on day-to-day activity. They vary in content. Bernie Aikens, in the logs of Ranger 1, comments cheerfully on a colleague's sobriety and on the quality of Ranger Kane's profanity. On the other hand, there is occasionally stark tragedy, as in the log of the Weepose dealing with the death of Jack Thayer:

Oct. 16

Elija Harbor. Thayer killed by bear. Thayer and Fred (Herring) left about 8.15. Fred back at 3 p.m. Report bear got Jack about 2.10. Carl Collins of Weepoose and Fred left to get Thayer and found him at dusk. He was pretty bad. Passed on at 10.30 p.m. Tried packing him out and got 1/2 miles and had to leave him and go for help. Too much for two men. To Weepoose.

Oct. 17

Weepoose left Elija Harbor 11.15 a.m. Went to Pybus Harbor for help, got 5 men.

Oct. 18

Left Pybus Bay 4.30 a.m. got to Elija at 7.10 and 5 men left at 7.30 and got back with Thayer's body at 11.30 p.m.

Oct. 19

Arrived Juneau at 8:30 p.m. running all night. [27]

The number of boats in use on the Tongass increased. By 1921 there were five boats of the Ranger class, from thirty-five to forty feet long, powered with 20-25 h.p. engines; these were the workhorses of the Forest Service. The Tahn continued in service. A ninety-eight-foot yacht, the Hiawatha, was purchased in 1921; it had twin 80 h.p. motors. It had been a patrol boat for the Navy. The Hiawatha was a bad investment; the engines were in poor shape, and it was too large and expensive to run regularly. It was used to some extent to take visiting dignitaries around and as a floating camp, but eventually it was traded for the sixty-five-foot Chugach. The Weepose was also purchased in 1921. It was a sixty-five-foot boat with an 80 h.p. motor. Its log indicates that there was continual trouble with its engines and toilets. There was also a tender, twenty-two feet long with a 5 h.p. engine. The marine station on Gravina Island near Ketchikan was a busy place, and its facilities for boat building and repair had to be enlarged. [28]

Skiffs with Evinrude outboard motors were used for station work and for work on the rivers. This, too, had its hazards, as one diary entry indicates:

August 2

Started up river after noon and found river overflowing banks, making progress very slow. Caving banks fill the river with sweepers. At 3 p.m. the boat swamped and entire outfit washed away. Succeeded in rescuing Mr. Ball after narrow escape. Beached the boat and recovered tent, bedding and a few other articles. Lost rifle, all clothing, ax, tools for engine, oars and all provisions, notebooks, papers, etc. Cached recovered property in trees near lake and walked to lake, where we found an old skiff, in which we crossed to south shore, where there is an old trail. Walked to Ray's cabin and camped without food. Mr. Nettleton and Mr. Ball will return for the boat when river falls again. [29]

Air travel came to be of increasing importance during this period. The Navy played a major role in the development of the region before 1928 by making aerial photographs, which were of tremendous importance in developing the timber resources of the country. As accurate as ground surveys, the photographs located bodies of timber, waterpower sites, streams, lakes, and logging shows, and were a major asset in planning. Airplanes were also used increasingly for inspection trips by supervisory personnel. A several-day inspection trip over enormous areas—the Juneau Ranger District alone covered 9 million acres—could be done in a day by plane. Planes also supplied CCC camps, especially those on the inland lakes of Admiralty, and isolated trail crews. They began to be used in the Kenai for spotting fires. [30]

Motorized transportation also became more important in the forests. After the building of roads, trucks were used to haul equipment within the forests. Trucks became a key part of the protective picture in the Chugach, where roads to Moose Pass and Hope made it possible to move men more quickly than by railroad.

The public relations of the Forest Service also improved during this time. The road-building program was particularly popular in the coastal cities, where the highways gave breathing space to the people, and in the Kenai with the development of that region's enormous recreational possibilities. [31] The CCC programs were well liked, particularly the totem pole program. The Forest Service took an active part in National Fire Prevention Week in the Anchorage area. Both the overhead and the rangers were well liked as individuals and as members of the community.

Forest Research
(written by Raymond F. Taylor)

When Frank Heintzleman was put in charge of forest management in the new District 8, he was well aware that the Tongass lacked many technical tools. The volume tables used for cruising were those used for spruce and hemlock in Oregon and Washington. There were no growth tables to show what second growth stands would do after the decrepit and ancient climax forest was cut. How best to get reproduction of desired species or to treat cutover areas was more or less unknown.

Efforts had been made to get funds for forest research, but not until 1928, when a pulp operation on the Tongass looked very promising, did Congress authorize a forest experiment station for Alaska. Then, when the Depression caused the pulp company to lose interest, no funds were appropriated for the station. That's the way it stood for twenty years. Heintzleman, in the meantime, using timber management money, had started studies of forest reproduction on small cutover areas and of growth of young stands of various age. Measurements were taken of trees being cut for saw timber and piling in order to make local volume tables.

James M. Walley and Harold J. Lutz, young technical assistants, were assigned to this work in 1924. No transportation was furnished, so they had to descend on the local ranger and crowd into his boat for short periods in order to work on promising areas in his district. Sleeping under a tarp draped over the boom in wet weather or lying alongside a leaky gas engine did not put the researcher in the best of moods to go forth with enthusiasm. But they did, and they ate wet sandwiches, standing up, at noon.

In 1925 Lutz transferred to the Chugach, and Raymond F. Taylor took his place on the Tongass. There was some "boarding out" with rangers, to their disgust, but later a boat was assigned for research and a boatman hired for the summer. Some of these men knew how to start an engine and steer but not how to lay a course. A few liked to take wild chances, hoping the bottom would miss the rocks the chart showed so plainly. The boatman was also supposed to cook, and he made valiant efforts.

Harold Lutz photographed the Paxson Roadhouse along the Richardson Highway in the Interior. (Harold Lutz Collection)

The researchers would tie up at a logging show, measure logs by sixteen-foot lengths, take diameters with sixty-inch calipers, measure lengths with an 8.3-foot bamboo stick, and the top length with a steel tape. Age was counted at the stump. Sometimes, to get good distribution of sizes, they would wait for certain trees to be felled, and occasionally, due to poor judgment as to which direction the tree was to fall, there was a good deal of leaping from log to log. In those days of the long two-man saw and springboards, fallers were often ten feet in the air and had their own problem getting the saw out and themselves out of the way when the tree began to go. Researchers in the area were expendable.

Studies of second-growth had to be made wherever there were such stands. Since logging by cable was relatively new, many areas studied were where wind-storms had leveled the old trees. There were also abandoned Indian villages or mining towns, as at Hollis and Sulzer, growing up to trees. A few acres had been burned. The idea was to get a range of sites from poor to good and a range of ages of stands. Plots were laid out, usually from a quarter-acre to one acre in size, and some trees were bored for age of stand. All trees were measured for diameter, and sample heights were taken. From this basal area, volumes in cubic and board feet were computed.

Walley transferred to the Lake States in 1928, and Taylor moved to Juneau to take charge of research. He was assigned a boat, usually one that was ready to be condemned, and a summer assistant was hired. Taylor and Lutz had both gone back to Yale in the fall of 1926 for master's degrees. Lutz remained to teach, but Taylor returned with a little more know-how in research.

During the years from 1924 to 1934, research continued in this manner—fieldwork from about April to October and working up results in the long dark days of winter. Permanent plots were established in second-growth stands to be remeasured at five-year intervals, and the total of all plots brought up to the number required to construct a set of yield tables. This same sort of work was going on at newly established forest experiment stations in the states. Richard E. McArdle was working in Douglas-fir and Walter H. Meyer in spruce-hemlock stands under Thornton T. Munger, director of the Pacific Northwest Forest Experiment Station. Leo A. Isaac of the same station was deep in studies of reproduction. Experimental forests were being established at all stations. In Alaska, however, one man with one assistant worked like crazy to get basic information for management under a pulp cutting regime. While still a bachelor, Taylor found time during evenings to write and illustrate a Pocket Guide to Alaska Trees.

In 1929 Taylor returned to Yale under a Charles Lathrop Pack Fellowship to work on a doctorate. He finally received it in 1934, the delay being mostly caused by his insistence on working on a dissertation titled "Available Nitrogen As a Factor Influencing the Occurrence of Sitka Spruce and Western Hemlock Seedlings in the Forests of Southeastern Alaska." [33] Fieldwork for this study was in addition to the regular studies of reproduction. Also in 1934, Taylor's work on growth and yields of future stands was published as a technical bulletin. [34]

The dissertation was published in Ecology in 1935 and pretty well summarized what had been revealed in the reproduction studies; namely, that clearcutting and tearing up the raw acid humus resulted in a good stand of new young trees with adequate stocking in about ten years. There were other reports on the details. The growth and yield bulletin summarized the work often years and showed that the climax forest, in which decay and mortality offset any growth, would be replaced, when cut for pulp, by a new stand of fast-growing trees, which in about a century would have twice the volume of the climax stand. The tables, charts, and manuscript for these were all worked up in the Juneau office. On the side, new volume tables were issued for the main species. The figures for the yield tables were borrowed by the Pacific Northwest Station to add to Walter Meyer's yield tables for the Pacific Northwest.

It was lucky that all this work was completed by 1934, as emergency conservation work had taken over in Alaska and there was no money for research. Taylor, not wanting to boss CCC crews, transferred to the Washington Office as assistant chief of the Division of Silvics. He escaped to the newly formed Rocky Mountain Forest and Range Experiment Station a year later, and, after fourteen years at three stateside stations, returned to Alaska in 1948.

This research work, though old, is still of great value. Old reports and publications should be studied. There has always been a tendency for new researchers to discard as valueless anything that is over ten years old. Because of that, they "discover" that seeding cutover areas by helicopter is, after all, not necessary. That was known in 1930, but using helicopters and treated seed is wonderful public relations.

CCC Projects

General Projects

The Civilian Conservation Corps was one of the major accomplishments of the New Deal. During the closing days of the Hoover administration, funds were made available for putting men to work in conservation projects, largely road and trail and construction projects. Incoming President Roosevelt called for full-scale use of manpower in work relief to conserve, protect, and renew natural resources. The Emergency Conservation Act was passed on March 31, 1933. Roosevelt used the term "Civilian Conservation Corps" as an equivalent for the emergency conservation work, and the name gained currency. The act was extended by Congress and in 1937 was supplemented by formal establishment of the Civilian Conservation Corps, set up for a period of three years.

The CCC program was administered by resource agencies in the Departments of the Interior and Agriculture. The Department of Labor did the recruiting, the War Department operated the camps and ran the educational program, and the resource agencies carried on the field activities. Enrollment was open to young men from eighteen to twenty-three years of age. Foremen were largely local men, often loggers or Forest Service retirees.

The venture was a new and a challenging one for the Forest Service. As Chief Robert Y. Stuart pointed out, the Forest Service had always been able to be selective in choosing its personnel. With the establishment of the Forest Service, the old Land Office policy of allowing political appointees had been dropped for the merit system and for standards for retention and promotion. The new men in the CCC program were chosen by another agency, on criteria other than merit; they were untrained and unmotivated. The Forest Service had the test of giving both technical and vocational training and working with somewhat refractory human material.

The program proved highly successful, and it is generally regarded as one of the most successful of the New Deal efforts. It achieved its basic goal of relieving unemployment; it gave 3 million young men a new start and a new outlook; it awakened the public to a new concern for conservation; and it aided in its main objective of conserving and renewing natural resources. There were many factors that accounted for its success. The Army career officers, in the doldrums and out of public favor because of the isolationist temper of the times, found the work challenging and brought great professional ability to bear on the project. The Forest Service worked with imagination and judgment. It developed new techniques, such as the progressive method of fire fighting in which it was able to make maximum use of untrained men. [35]

In Alaska the CCC program was unique in many ways. There was unemployment in Alaska, and the Forest Service was given authority by the government to handle disbursement of relief funds voted by Congress in the national forest area. The first of these were Federal Emergency Relief Act funds to care for unemployed people. In the beginning, these allotments had few strings attached and were used to relieve unemployment by local projects. In Craig, a water system for the village was put in; in other areas, roads and trails were built. [36]

When the CCC program started in 1933, there were no federal troops in Alaska except for an infantry contingent of 200 men at Chilkoot Barracks near Haines and a nearly equal number of Signal Corps men stationed at the many telegraph and wireless stations throughout the territory. It was therefore impossible for the Army to carry out its function as it did in the states. Consequently, Regional Forester Flory secured the president's permission for the Forest Service to take charge of all CCC activity in Alaska. This included enrolling, clothing, housing, transportation, as well as supervision of projects—everything, in fact, except disbursement of funds. The Army paymaster at Chilkoot issued the checks; the Department of Labor selected the enrollees. Unemployment in Alaska was not primarily of the young, but of the middle-aged. It was also seasonal, involving men who did not have a winter "stake." Age restrictions on enrollees were dropped, therefore, as were restrictions on re-enrolling. This latter provision made it difficult to keep leaders and cooks, but it met Alaskan conditions. A one-year residence requirement was established to eliminate young men who had come to Alaska for seasonal work and became stranded. [37]

The problem of clothing, which had to be adapted to a variety of climates, mostly bad—including rainy, snowy, and cold—was worked out through the Army Quartermaster's Office in Seattle. A list of clothing necessary for Alaskan conditions was prepared. The Seattle purchasing agent for the Alaska Railroad, who already handled Alaskan purchases for the Forest Service, prepared specifications and called for bids. The plan worked well. [38]

Charles Burdick was put in charge of the CCC work for all Alaska. He held the post until about 1938, when he was transferred to the reindeer project. After that, Heintzleman managed the project. Because of the distances and slow travel, small camps were set up instead of the large camps characteristic of the states. By the end of 1934, the Forest Service had 325 men enrolled: 125 in the Southern Division out of Ketchikan; 25 at Petersburg; 130 in the Admiralty Division working out of Juneau; 25 in the Prince William Sound area; and 20 in the Kenai.

Their work in the early years was varied. In the Kenai it consisted of building trails and truck roads for recreational and protective purposes, stream-gauging stations, bridges, a warehouse, and small boat facilities; burning on the right-of-way of the Alaska Railroad; and most important of all, fire suppression. Around Ketchikan and Petersburg, truck roads and trails were built, and log jams from the Unuk River were removed. The greatest work was in recreational planning, including the building of campgrounds and water systems.

In the Admiralty Division some roads were built, but the prime work of the men was planning and building recreational areas. These included a shooting range and skaters' shelter cabin near Mendenhall Glacier and shelter cabins and trails on Admiralty Island in the lake area. Near Sitka, by 1934, twenty-two miles of trail and several log cabins were built and the beginnings made, under both Forest Service and Park Service personnel, of archaeological exploration on the site of the Russian settlement at Old Sitka. [39]

The Civilian Conservation Corps put young men to work on the national forests during the Depression. Recreational facilities built at Mendenhall Glacier near Juneau included a skaters' shelter cabin (foundation being laid in this 1936 photo) and a rifle range in the center background. (U.S. Forest Service)

The CCC crew, posing in front of rented quarters, worked on the Basin truck trail near Juneau. (U.S. Forest Service)

CCC crew at Quartz Creek Camp in the Kenai Division. Middle-aged men served along with younger fellows. (U.S. Forest Service)

By 1937 there were 1,037 men enrolled in the national forest area: 262 in the Southern Division working out of Ketchikan; 101 at Petersburg; 245 in the Admiralty Division working out of Juneau; 77 in the Prince William Sound area; and 240 in the Kenai. In addition to continuation of the work projects noted earlier, there were many special projects. These included a trout hatchery at Ketchikan to provide trout to plant in near by lakes; at Sitka, landscaping the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey station, restoring the old Russian cemetery, and building trout traps and floats in cooperation with the Bureau of Fisheries; building a dock and a small boat harbor in Cordova; building a bear observatory on Admiralty and skiffs for use on the inland lakes; and wing dams for channel control and a suspension bridge on Eagle River near Juneau. At Little Port Walter, houses were built for the Bureau of Fisheries, along with shelter cabins, floats, a salmon weir, and a fifteen-room biological laboratory.

In the Kotzebue area Heintzleman worked out plans with the Office of Indian Affairs for the wolf-reindeer project. He conferred in September 1927 with officials of the U.S. Biological Survey and the Indian Office. The program emphasized trapping, shooting wolves, and teaching the Natives to close-herd reindeer. Logan Varnell was put in charge as foreman. One hundred-eighteen Natives were hired in the Kotzebue area; their salaries were paid from November to July by the Biological Survey and the rest of the year by the Forest Service.

The wolf-reindeer project was not particularly successful. Varnell felt that the Eskimo community ownership of the reindeer lessened their feeling of individual responsibility. Many herds were unattended. The wolves were not under control, reindeer would elope with caribou, and there was need of a few large herds, rather than many small ones, for control to be effective. Varnell recommended putting the herds under individual ownership, building line cabins or igloos for the herders, and giving the Eskimos formal training in range management. The project was abandoned in September of 1938.

Other work in the Kotzebue area was more successful and lasting. This included building drainage ditches, community wells, landing fields, herders' shelter cabins, and cold-storage facilities. [40]

Nowhere was the work of the CCC more appreciated than in the isolated Native villages and missions in the interior. Seventy-six enrollees worked on the lower Yukon. The CCC built a muskox corral on Nunivak Island. They razed the Army barracks at St. Michael. Lumber from the barracks was used to build a workshop for Father P. G. O'Connor's mission at Kaulurah. At Galena there was extensive flood damage; the debris was cleared away, the land cleared, and prepared for a garden. Community houses and sanitation drainage projects were common. A telephone line was built between Nulato and Unalakleet. These projects broke down isolation and supplied some amenities. Letters written to the regional forester from the teachers and missionaries are among the most touching documents in the entire history of this enterprise. [41]

A forty-man camp was set up in Fairbanks, and W. A. Chipperfield was placed in charge of it. A variety of work was carried on, including salvaging twenty miles of fence that had been used to enclose muskox pasture before the herd was moved to Nunivak. Landing fields were built, and fire and flood control was introduced on the Ghena. [42]

Totem Pole Project

The CCC work took on other aspects by 1938. The Forest Service had always been interested in Indian antiquities. W. A. Langille had been partly responsible for the creation of the Sitka National Monument, and he and F. E. Olmsted had initiated the movement toward setting aside Old Kasaan. Boat logs contain some accounts of early efforts to preserve Indian antiquities under the provisions of the 1906 act. [43]

Between the creation of Old Kasaan National Monument and 1938, a great deal of planning for totem pole preservation took place. Flory visited the national monument in 1921 and suggested the necessity of getting an overall plan of preservation to prevent artifacts from being looted and to protect totem poles from the weather. He felt that the most practical thing would be to move the outstanding poles in Old Kasaan and elsewhere in the Tongass National Forest to Sitka National Monument and there to set up a primitive Native village. The Smithsonian Institution favored the program, as did the Bureau of American Ethnology. Territorial Delegate Dan Sutherland introduced a bill to finance the operation, but it died in committee. Other attempts failed for lack of funds. After the Reorganization Act of 1933 transferred jurisdiction over all national monuments to the National Park Service, that agency's officials sought appropriations to move the best totems in Old Kasaan to Sitka. This effort also failed for lack of funds.

In 1934 the Forest Service and the Park Service developed new plans to move the Old Kasaan poles to Sitka. Flory pointed out that although the Sutherland Bill for a special appropriation to move the poles had not been approved, he nevertheless hoped to get the project funded through the general appropriation bill. It would be a waste of time, he thought, to try to rehabilitate Old Kasaan. The poles should instead be shipped to Juneau or Sitka and Native labor used to rehabilitate them. Meanwhile, Wellman Holbrook examined the Sitka poles and found them in bad condition. Some sections had rotted away, and there was a great deal of decay in the wood, particularly at the bases of the poles. He recommended that expert help be brought in to rehabilitate the poles, with the CCC furnishing manual labor, and that action be started in Washington.

In Washington, Associate Regional Forester Melvin Merritt called on Harold G. Bryant, head of the Park Service's Branch of Recreation and Education. Merritt urged the abandonment of Old Kasaan, the assembling of the good totems at Sitka, and the transfer of qualified men to the area for the repair work. The Forest Service pledged its cooperation. Merritt supported Flory's recommendation that a community house be constructed out of the remains of existing ones. Forest Service photographs and descriptions of Old Kasaan were transferred to the Park Service. In June W. J. McDonald examined Old Kasaan and estimated that there were about twenty serviceable totems. He recommended repairs on the poles to consist of cutting them off at ground level, replacing rot with sound wood, and replacing the poles on concrete bases. He estimated costs would be from $5,000 to $7,000.

By the fall of 1934, the Park Service had made plans to move four of the best totems to Sitka. These were large poles, about fifty feet high, three and one-half feet at the base, and one and one-half feet at the top. Native owners were sought out. They asked $125 for each pole, saying that they had originally cost $2,000 at the potlatch in which they were erected. The Forest Service estimated that the cost of shipping the poles to Sitka would be about $2,500. The Park Service abandoned the project for lack of funds.

The Forest Service became involved during this time, both directly and indirectly, in archaeological work. In 1932 Frederica DeLaguna made the first of her many expeditions to Alaska. She sought an archaeological permit to do work in the Tongass and the Chugach national forests, and the Forest Service aided her in transportation to the archaeological sites. Flory, in commenting on her work, complained that too much of the material recovered from such excavations went out of the territory; he suggested that half the Indian artifacts recovered be donated to the University of Alaska. No agreement was reached, and after the exploration was over, Flory again commented unfavorably on this failure.

The second enterprise involved using CCC money to excavate Old Sitka, site of a fort established by Baranov in 1799. A stockade, bath house, and various buildings had been built at the site, on a bay to the north of Sitka, but the settlement had been wiped out by Tlingit Indians in 1802. The site had been occupied by a cannery in 1878 and a smokehouse in 1910. In 1907 it became part of the Tongass National Forest. In 1914 Father Sergius George Kostrometinoff of the Sitka Cathedral was issued a special-use permit by the Forest Service to erect a cross at the burial site of the Russians.

Charles Flory had a deep interest in Alaskan history. In the fall of 1934, he used CCC funds to start archaeological excavations on the site of Old Sitka. W. A. Chipperfield supervised the project; it was directed by John Maurstad, CCC foreman. A fifteen-man camp was set up in the vicinity. Bancroft's History of Alaska and a translation of an account of the massacre by George Kostrometinoff were used as background. The area was mapped, with notations as to the sites of the buildings from postholes, relics, and Native traditions. In the year's work about 1,000 artifacts, some Russian and some Indian, were located. The most important find was a copper plate bearing a cross and an inscription claiming the land for Russia, probably buried there by Baranov in 1795.

The artifacts were first stored in the basement of the capitol building for safekeeping. On Flory's suggestion, they were transferred to the University of Alaska in 1937. They remained there until 1963, when they were shipped to the Western Regional Office of the National Park Service for study by the regional archaeologists. They were then transferred to the museum at Sitka National Monument, where they are now located.

Recent critics have stated that this operation was not carried out by trained archaeologists, and indeed the work lacked some of their refinements. The records show, however, that Chipperfield and Maurstad exercised all the care and skill one could reasonably expect of the intelligent layman. In any event, the excavation was carried out in the nick of time. During the war a Navy installation was planned for the area, and extensive bulldozing was carried on.

There was a lull in the planning between 1934 and 1937. The first two years of CCC work revolved around badly needed recreational work in the southeast and the archaeological work on Old Sitka. In 1937, however, there was a revival of interest in totems. It came partly from requests by the Alaska Native Brotherhood, through William Paul, Sr., that more Indians be employed on relief projects. Also, Charles Flory was transferred to the Mount Baker National Forest and was replaced by B. Frank Heintzleman, a skilled public relations man who dedicated his entire life to Alaskan interests and gave the movement more momentum than it had had previously. Heintzleman found support in the higher echelons through Chief Ferdinand A. Silcox of the Forest Service; Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes; Ernest Gruening, director of the Office of Territories in the Department of the Interior; and Arno Cammerer, director of the National Park Service. Through their efforts, most of Flory's dreams were realized. Early in 1937 a series of letters was exchanged and conversations held among Silcox, Gruening, and Heintzleman. Silcox informed Gruening that the poles, including those on the national monuments, were private property and that the Indians asked large sums ($1,000 each) for them. Ownership was also often in dispute, so the validity of a given purchase was unpredictable. Silcox suggested use of CCC work on villages on deserted shorelines along the lines of travel, building totem villages, and buying totem poles at public subscription.

During 1937 and 1938 field examinations were made of villages. Forest Service men photographed poles and community houses, evaluated their condition, talked with Indians over matters of title, and outlined plans to get title to the poles and move them to central locations. To support this work, Heintzleman borrowed a large number of books and photographs on the Indians of southeast Alaska from the Smithsonian Institution, American Museum of Natural History, National Museum at Ottawa, and American Geographical Society. Meanwhile, he kept the mails and wires to Washington busy, seeking money for the project. He initially sought $51,760 in WPA money for rehabilitating poles and constructing community houses. But these applications failed, and most of the money spent was from CCC funds, except for the Sitka project.

Eventually, the Sitka project got started when the Forest Service made an agreement with the National Park Service to restore the Old Kasaan poles. This involved their removal from the site and restoration with WPA money. The Park Service recommended that a trained ethnologist be in charge of the work. Meanwhile, Heintzleman conferred with the head of the Office of Indian Affairs, Claude Hirst, who recommended that meetings be held with the Indians and that blanket authority be given by all claimants of the poles, making them the property of the entire community. The poles could then be set up on a public site dedicated to that use. The Forest Service, for its part, agreed to meet costs of inspection, transportation, reconditioning, and erection from CCC and Forest Service funds. With all the concerned agencies in agreement, the Forest Service experiment in totem pole preservation and restoration was ready to begin. [44]

Sitka National Monument

In January 1939 the Forest Service secured a WPA allotment for totem pole restoration. Heintzleman wrote to Arthur Demaray of the National Park Service, offering to use the funds to restore the poles at Sitka National Monument. He asked if the Park Service could furnish a technically trained foreman. The Park Service had no specialist available and suggested that Heintzleman hire one from the University of Washington or the University of Alaska; it told him to go ahead with the project if he found none available. Support came from other institutions. The Alaska Road Commission gave the Forest Service use of its dump truck, and the Forest Products Laboratory sent advice on the use of Permatox D, a flat, colorless preservative similar to spar varnish. It directed that the poles be soaked in the solution when dry; if soaking were impracticable, the poles should be brushed with the solution. The purpose was to prevent moisture from entering the pole and causing rot. Charles Burdick, associate regional forester, made a survey of the poles in March, sending pictures and reports on the condition of each pole. With the expiration of WPA funds in the same month, CCC funds were used to complete work.

The project was carried on with nine Indians as workers, John Maurstad as foreman, and George Benson as chief carver. Some of the poles were badly deteriorated; they had for years been held together by wire and were hollow shells under the ground. A complete photographic record was kept of all poles, both originals and duplicates. A community house designed by Forest Service architect Linn Forrest was built, and most of the work at Sitka was completed by March 1940.

Sitka National Monument received a full-time superintendent for the first time in 1940 when Ben Miller arrived from Glacier National Park. Miller was highly enthusiastic about the totem restoration and the caliber of the work being done, writing, "After we have Sitka National Monument in the shape it should be in, there should be erected a monument to the Forest Service and Regional Forester Heintzleman." There was some debate as to the fate of the old poles. Frank Been, regional park superintendent, wrote, "Personally, I don't think they are worth building a shed for, especially after we have exact duplicates." Even if they had a shed, he noted, it would be hard to guard them against theft, and poles so rotten could be destroyed. Pending design of a shed, however, it was decided to store the old totems in the open on skids.

Been and Forrest thought that a new historical totem giving the history of Sitka would be appropriate. A pole was commissioned to show Baranov and his dealings with Chief Keeks-Sady. This was planned to be placed at the Sitka dock site, an area set aside for national forest use by executive order in 1920 and amended by executive order in 1933 to establish a public park. The Baranov pole was duly commissioned, but it ran into all sorts of difficulties. George Benson, the head carver at Sitka, took another job. The cedar log was taken to Wrangell and fashioned by another carver using the Benson design. But Sitka Natives protested when it was erected; it did not, they said, repeat the true story of the peace between Baranov and Keeks-Sady. Baranov was placed on top of the pole, dishonoring the Indian chief. Also, the double eagle given Keeks-Sady, now in the Alaska Museum, was to have been on the pole. There were threats by the Indians to burn or mutilate the pole, but eventually the dissension died down.

The Sitka venture would rank among the highest accomplishments of the project. The poles were very old; they had been old when Governor John Brady collected them for showing at expositions in St. Louis and Portland. Later returned to Sitka, they were badly deteriorated. About half the poles were restored and the rest duplicated. The quality of the carving was, in general, good. The community house was new, following the design of the old dwellings, and was well constructed. [45]

Linn Forrest with an entrance pole at Saxman Park, which he designed and laid out during the 1930s. (Linn Forrest Collection)

Linn Forrest and CCC Totem Pole Work

Linn Forrest was put in command of the totem pole project, and he remained in charge as long as the project lasted. Forrest was educated at the University of Oregon and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, majoring in architecture. As an architect for the Pacific Northwest Region of the Forest Service, he had been in charge of the construction of Timberline Lodge on Mount Hood. This alpine lodge, designed to give work to artisans, was built with WPA funds and was a show place of alpine architecture. The lodge featured a great deal of hand carving and hand-wrought iron work, and building it was good training for the totem pole project. Forrest came to Alaska in 1935 to build alpine lodges at Sitka and in the Kenai. Instead, he was given charge of the totem pole project.

The work was set up as a year-round project. At each of the sites selected for totem parks, large open sheds were built to serve as workshops and later as sheds in which to store the old totems. These were built near school playgrounds so that they could better be used as shelters for children and as recreation centers. The workers were chosen from local villages, eliminating problems of transportation. Carvers were chosen from among the older men who had retained such skills; the carvers in turn trained younger men.

Tools for carving were handmade, modeled after older tools used before the coming of the white man. The Indians demonstrated much skill in making these, using car springs and old files, and showed an astonishing knowledge of metallurgy. Samples of the Native paints were made, using ancestral techniques. Black was made from veins of graphite, white from clam shells, yellow from lichen and yellow stones, and green from copper pebbles. The Indians knew where to locate the veins of rock from which the colors came. These were ground up in mortars with pestles. Then salmon eggs were wrapped in cedar bark and chewed; the saliva was spit out and ground up with the coloring. The paint made was authentic and permanent, but, for a project of this proportion, larger quantities were needed. So Forrest duplicated the colors with commercial pigments. Following is the estimate of material necessary to preserve and paint forty totems:

This would make 10 gallons of white, 10 yellow, 10 bluegreen, 20 frog green, 20 red, 20 bear brown, 20 beaver red, and 20 of black paint. In addition to this, 40 gallons pentrared, 120 gallons permatox, and 20 gallons avenarious carbolienum were needed for the preservative work. Permatox B was a preservative developed by the Forest Products Laboratory in Madison, Wisconsin.

The poles were carried into sheds to be worked on. They were transported whole—none were ever dismembered, except the Seattle pole, of which more later—and placed within the sheds on skids. If the pole was to be restored, it was worked on there. If the old pole were badly deteriorated, a new pole would be carved. Careful measurements, with calipers, were taken of parts to be replaced. Indians felled cedars of suitable size for new totems, and these were rafted to the totem worksite. The Forest Service vessel, Ranger 7, was used for transportation. The new log would be laid alongside the old pole to be copied. The old men themselves knew the stories of the totems, and they took great pride in their work, making every effort to strive for authenticity. They, inspired the younger men, too, with much of their own pride in craftsmanship, and the communities became devoted to the project. As one carver, Charles Brown, said:

The story of our fathers' totems is nearly dead, but now once again is being brought to life. Once more old familiar totems will proudly face the world with new war paints. The makers of these old totems will not have died in vain. May these old poles help bring about prosperity to our people.

Both the Smithsonian Institution and the National Park Service had suggested that the work be directed by a trained ethnologist. Heintzleman sought one, but no agency could provide him with one. He finally hired Dr. Viola Garfield (Mrs. Charles Garfield) as a part-time collaborator. Garfield was well acquainted with Alaska. She had traveled there with her husband and had done research among the Tsimshians along the coast of British Columbia. As a member of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Washington, she had for eight years been taking students to Alaska on field trips for university credit. Heintzleman hired her to collect stories of the totems and Indian folklore as she went around the area. She traveled to each of the areas—Klawock, Hydaburg, Ketchikan—talking with people, taking photographs of old totems, and getting their stories. She collected twenty-seven volumes of notes and pictures.

Linn Forrest, meanwhile, collected stories on his own. Like Garfield, he found the Indians to be great storytellers. He collected the stories dealing with the totems located in the parks and mailed them to Garfield for editing. They were collected in the book published by the University of Washington Press, The Wolf and the Raven. Some of Linn Forrest's stories appeared in the Alaskan, official publication of the Alaskan CCC; others still remain in manuscript form.

Once the poles were completed, they were placed, for the most part, in totem parks laid out by Forrest in harmonious settings. Some poles were set in the ground with the bases buried about six feet deep; the poles were raised by block-and-tackle apparatus. Others, especially the small poles, were set on blocks.

This is the general pattern the project followed. Each of the totem parks and locations had its own history, however, and we may here look briefly into the history of each separate project.

Wrangell, because of its strategic location and early occupation, had become a major center for totem collection and display. Two dealers and collectors, W. Waters and Alex Rasmussen, lived there. There was interest in retaining Indian arts at Wrangell Institute, where Edward L. Keithahn, then a teacher for the Office of Indian Affairs, taught his students totem carving.

Alex Rasmussen was one of the major latter-day collectors of Indian artifacts. Of Scandinavian descent, he was born in Indiana in 1886. As a young man he was ordained a Presbyterian minister and preached in North Dakota. In 1917 he became a teacher and in 1921 resigned his pastorate to give full time to teaching. He came to Alaska in the late 1920s. As superintendent of schools at Wrangell, he became interested in Indian arts and began to collect. He gained the confidence of the Tlingit Indians, notably Mrs. Kay Shakes and Mrs. Fred Wiggs. Eventually, he bought the late Chief Shakes's house on a small island on the outskirts of Wrangell and used it to display his collection. In 1937 he went to Skagway as superintendent of schools, taking his collection with him. Ultimately, his collection went to the Portland Art Museum.

The Wrangell Women's Civic Club and Library Association became interested in the task of totem restoration. In 1938 the president of the club, Mrs. M. G. Johnson, wrote to J. M. Wyckoff, district ranger at Petersburg, suggesting that a plan be developed for protection of the old totems in the Wrangell area. She felt that they would have to be moved from their present location. The club also apparently corresponded with Rasmussen, since he telegraphed to Wyckoff that he would sell Shakes Community House for $1,700. This sale would include four corner totems inside the house and two totem poles and one marble marker outside.

There followed a long period of negotiation. Rasmussen owned the northwest end of the island on which the house was located. A part of the other end had been sold, and a central strip sixty to seventy feet wide was still in possession of the heir of Mrs. Shakes. Heintzleman wrote to Wyckoff, stating that no money was available for purchase of land or poles. He made several alternative suggestions, one that a Forest Service recreational site, a mile outside town, be used. An other was that the island be acquired with funds available under the Wheeler-Howard Act, which authorized federal acquisition of lands to distribute to tribal units. Rasmussen suggested that he be left in possession of the house and that the rest of the island be made a national monument.

Territorial Delegate Anthony Dimond supported the idea that the island be made a national monument, as did the Wrangell chapter of the Alaska Native Brotherhood. Regional Forester Heintzleman, however, had other thoughts. He pointed out that the Indians of southeastern Alaska needed other means of making a livelihood than fishing, especially since increased mechanization was reducing employment in canneries. He suggested that a curio shop, in which the Indians could sell handicrafts, be set up on or near the island. There had always been some market for handicrafts, especially in the tourist season; Heintzleman thought such sale could be institutionalized. Eventually, the Wrangell City Council raised money to buy the island from Rasmussen and then transferred ownership to the Office of Indian Affairs. The Forest Service was authorized to commence work on the restoration of Chief Shakes's house and totem poles.

Totem poles at Old Kasaan National Monument, 1930. (U.S. Forest Service)

Work got under way in June 1939 when Linn Forrest came to Wrangell to supervise restoration of the community house. Logs for the siding were sawed in the local mill and then gone over with handmade adzes to give a hand-hewn effect. Joe Thomas and Thomas Ukas, both full-blooded Indians, were the carvers. Two mortuary poles in front of Chief Shakes's house, the Gonadeck pole and the grizzly bear, were both badly deteriorated, so duplicates were carved. One fine totem belonging to Charles Jones, a descendant of Chief Shakes, was located in the cemetery and transferred to Shakes Island under an agreement with Jones. Two fine totems, the Kadashan poles, had title secured by the Wrangell chapter of the Alaska Native Brotherhood. The poles were badly deteriorated, so much rotted, in fact, that there was not enough sound wood to hold inserted figures. So Thomas Ukas duplicated them. Also, a ridicule totem, the three frogs, was duplicated.

The potlatch—the ceremony given on the erection of totems—had died down in Alaska but was not entirely forgotten. In Wrangell, Charles Jones, the descendant of Chief Shakes, expressed a desire for a potlatch to celebrate the restoration of the house and poles. In order to finance the ceremony properly, the entire Wrangell Chamber of Commerce was adopted into the Nanyaayi Clan. Several thousand dollars were made available for the ceremony. Heintzleman, Claude Hirst of the Office of Indian Affairs, William Paul, Sr., of the Alaska Native Brotherhood, and many others attended the lavish "blowout."

Linn Forrest supervised the Forest Service's totem pole preservation and restoration project during the New Deal period. The photo was taken at Howkan on Prince of Wales Island in 1938. (Linn Forrest Collection)

Another project took place at Old Kasaan, a village that had been deserted since 1902 or 1904, either because the Indians were employed at the cannery at New Kasaan or because the stench of shallowly buried bodies made Old Kasaan unlivable. In 1937 Wellman Holbrook made a study of Old Kasaan to see if any restoration was practicable. He reported a scene of desolation but recommended that the six totems in best condition be moved to a new location. In 1938 Linn Forrest and G. M. Archbold examined the Whale House of Son-I-Hat, built in 1880, near New Kasaan. They found the forty-five-foot-square structure badly deteriorated, with walls and roof caved in, but the basic timbers were sound and little decayed. They obtained permission from James Peele to restore the house and its totem. The Park Service gave permission to move suitable totems from Old Kasaan to New Kasaan. and agreements were negotiated for transfer of the poles with the Peele, Thomas, and Young families. Forrest laid out a totem park near the Whale House; in all, eight totems were transferred from Old Kasaan to New Kasaan. They were restored there; rotted parts were cut out and replaced with new wood, missing or rotted pieces were duplicated exactly, and the poles were painted and coated with preservative.

At Hydaburg the town council reserved lots for a totem park, and the project got under way with Walter Aiken as CCC foreman and John Wallace as chief carver. Old poles were brought in from Howkan, Klinkwan, and Sukkwan by the Ranger 7. Most of these were badly deteriorated. Of the twenty-one poles, five originals were restored and the others copied. The basement of the town hall was used as a shop for carving the totems. Forrest laid out a totem park, 125 by 250 feet. Blanket agreements were made by Charles Burdick, assistant regional forester, with the Indians of Klinkwan, Klawock Creek, Hydaburg, and Sukkwan for transfer of the poles to the park.

At Klawock the town council, acting through Mayor Robert Petratrovich, reserved town lots for a totem park. There, twenty-one poles from Tuxekan were duplicated. Walter Ketah was the chief carver. The carving on these poles was of exceptionally high quality.

In addition to these totem parks, plans were made to set up work at Klukwan, a small village of 112 inhabitants on the Chilkat River, twenty-one miles west of Skagway. During 1939 and 1940 there were discussions with the Office of Indian Affairs about setting up a park near the village, where there were twenty totems and a community house worth restoring. The project did not get under way, however, partly because of the difficulty of finding a satisfactory carver.

The Forest Service also decided to establish totem sites in the vicinity of Ketchikan. One was designed as a primitive Indian village, fulfilling a plan Charles Flory had suggested some years before. A suitable site was found for it at Mud Bight, an old Tlingit campsite about seventeen miles from Ketchikan. It had a gravel beach and salmon stream, with the forest in the background, and a headland on which the village would be in full sight of steamers. Mud Bight was thought to be an inappropriate name for the site, so it was changed to Totem Bight.

A second site was chosen at Saxman, a Native village at Tongass Narrows, accessible to Ketchikan and within view of the steamers. At Saxman, Forrest laid out a rectangular plot with an approach to be bordered with poles and a square bordered with hand-adzed logs ornamented with frog heads. Two stairways were planned to lead to the area, one flanked by raven figures, the other by bear figures, in token of the two phratries of the Tlingit. An obstacle to establishment of the park occurred in the shape of a much dilapidated Presbyterian church that stood on a part of the approach. The pastor, David Christensen, was willing to have the church moved to a new site, but the building was so shaky that there was doubt that it could stand the moving. Meanwhile, the move had to be approved by the Presbyterian Mission Board in New York, and the board had difficulty getting a clear picture, through correspondence, of just what was wanted. The matter was finally settled by a fire, which burned the church. The building was insured; the CCC cleared up the debris and the church was rebuilt on a new site.

C. M. Archbold, B. F. Heintzleman, and Linn Forrest examine an old Haida pole at East Skowl Arm on Prince of Wales Island. (U.S. Forest Service)

Agreements also were made in 1938 with the owners of poles at Cape Fox, Pennock Island, Metlakatla, Old Tongass, Cat Island, and Dog Island for the transfer of poles to public totem parks. The poles were brought in from these outlying areas and a totem shed built for carving.

The community house at Totem Bight was designed by Linn Forrest and modeled on those built in the beginning of the nineteenth century. The inside was one large room with a central, square fireplace, around which was a planked platform. The smoke hole was protected by a movable frame for keeping out wind and rain. Charles Brown, the chief carver, designed a housefront painting of a stylized raven with each eye elaborated into a face. On each of the four corner posts sat a man wearing a spruce-root hat. The carved posts within symbolized the exploits of a man of the raven phratry. The house was beautifully done in its framing design and joinery workmanship. It was put together with wooden pegs; no metal went into its construction.

The poles brought to Totem Bight were mostly in poor condition and had to be duplicated. The majority were carved by Charles Brown, though some were carved at Hydaburg by John Wallace and shipped to Totem Bight. In all, twenty-seven poles were erected on the site, all copies of originals. At Saxman, thirteen of the original poles were repaired and ten original poles copied; three new poles were carved.

In addition, there was miscellaneous totem pole work. The Seattle totem, which stood in Pioneer Square for many years, had originally been stolen from Tongass Island. It was in poor repair, and the city of Seattle asked that a duplicate be carved. The totem was cut into ten-foot sections for shipping and was duplicated at Totem Bight. The duplicated was a better pole than the original.

In Ketchikan, near the junction of Mission and Stedman streets, stood the Chief Johnson Pole—the only pole in town in its original position. It stood on a campsite of the Kajuk House of the Raven Clan, on land owned by the clan. It was erected in 1901. The title to the pole and land was clouded, but the citizens of Ketchikan thought it appropriate that the pole be restored. They managed to get title to the land and then to convey the land to the federal government. The pole was repaired. In addition, a number of poles in the city hall park, owned by the American Legion and brought to the city from Old Kasaan and Tongass Island, were repaired at city expense.

Street scene at the village of New Kasaan, 1941. (U.S. Forest Service)

North of Juneau, Auke Bay Village had been occupied by Indians at the beginning of the century but later abandoned. The Juneau Chamber of Commerce suggested that the village be reconstructed, and Forrest made studies. Funds were lacking for a village reconstruction on the scale of the Totem Bight project, so eventually plans were made to erect a single pole in a simple setting to the north of the highway near Auke Village recreational site. The legend involved in the pole was collected by Linn Forrest, and the actual carving was done by an Indian named St. Clair and two assistants.

The CCC totem pole project, supervised by the Forest Service, was a noteworthy success. In all, forty-eight old poles were restored. Another fifty-four, beyond restoration, were duplicated, and nineteen new totems were carved. In addition, eighteen poles at Sitka National Monument were restored or duplicated under Forest Service auspices. In 1941, because of construction of Annette Island Air Field, which took away many of the younger corpsmen, work on the totems began to slow down, particularly in the nearby Ketchikan area. After war was declared, work came virtually to a stop, though the program did not officially terminate until June 30, 1942.

The work was a marvelous achievement. It was particularly noteworthy in that the Forest Service, as an organization, was not professionally prepared to engage in creation and restoration of Native art; it relied on experience guided by judgment rather than on professional training. The Forest Service was able to duplicate or to repair the best of the totems that were left rotting in the woods, and it recovered, at close to the last possible moment, the Indian legends connected with the totems. The quality of work varied, as would be expected in a project of this type. Some was outstanding; in general, it was good. Both as a relief project and as an artistic project, the CCC totem pole work was a great success. [46]

Entrance totems and the Abe Lincoln pole at Saxman Park, south of Ketchikan, 1958. (U.S. Forest Service)

During the New Deal years the Forest Service supervised Native craftsmen under the CCC program in a project to preserve and restore totem poles. These poles, photographed in 1958, are at Totem Bight, north of Ketchikan. (U.S. Forest Service)

Annette Island

A final CCC project was the building of the Annette Island Air Field. CCC Director Robert Fechner made a trip to Alaska about 1939. He felt that the CCC should make some contribution to national defense. In 1940 corpsmen were brought up to build the airfield, along with the Army engineers, at Annette Island. The plans were drawn up by the Corps of Engineers, while the Forest Service was in charge of construction work under an outstanding foreman, Walter Peterson. Archbold and A. E. Glover supervised the work, which was performed under difficult climatic conditions in swamp and muskeg. Rivalry developed between the Engineers and the Forest Service men to the extent that the latter's hours of work were lengthened, at their request, to coincide with those of the former. Troops were recruited from Washington and Oregon, where the climatic conditions were similar to those in Alaska. Special transportation was provided to get weekend trips into Ketchikan for the workers. The airfield job gave the CCC men a great deal of experience running heavy equipment and they made a good safety record. The project was completed on December 1, 1941. [47]

With few exceptions, the CCC projects were strongly supported by the communities in which they were located. Morale in the camps was generally high. Camps varied in quality; tent camps were generally used for summer work on Admiralty Island and the Kenai fire control area, but, for the most part, more permanent buildings were built or rented, since drying clothing was necessary in the southeastern region. In Juneau, old mine bunkhouses were utilized. Camps were generally adequate, though Charles H. Forward was quite critical of the facilities at Kenai Lake. [48] Recreation grounds and ball parks were built, and hunting and fishing were favorite pastimes. Six CCC men got in to the toils of the law for illegal killing of ptarmigan and caribou—a low record considering the opportunity and the size of the operation. Libraries were established in the camps. One library list included such books as Dupuy's Green Kingdom, Sudworth's Forest Trees of the Pacific Slope, Sargent's Sylva of North America, F. A. Loomis's Field Book of Rocks and Minerals, various field guides to fishes and birds, Colby's Guide to Alaska, Sheldon's Wilderness of the Denali, Kephart's Camping and Woodcraft, and various technical and engineering books. Other educational facilities were provided, too. The University of Alaska Extension Service gave instruction in cooking, truck maintenance, carpentry, logging, bridge construction, drafting, and road surveying. Many CCC enrollees took instruction as cat operators or boat engineers. Opportunities to obtain high school diplomas were provided. [49]

Steam donkey engine and A-frame in logging operations at Cosmos Pass, Kosciusko Island, on the Juneau Logging Company sale, 1941. (U.S. Forest Service)

Timber Sales

Timber sales flourished during the 1920s and 1930s. In 1913, 84 percent of the timber used in Alaska was imported and 16 percent was produced locally; by 1925 this proportion was reversed. Demand grew for spruce lumber, and by 1923 the mill at Ketchikan was exporting merchantable clears to Seattle for transshipment to the East and to the United Kingdom and Australia. After 1933 CCC construction work increased the demand for timber, and after 1940 defense construction further increased it. The main mills were those at Juneau and at Ketchikan; the Wrangell mill had business difficulties and underwent several reorganizations. There were small mills at Craig, Sitka, Seward, Cordova, and other places.

The Forest Service tightened up regulations for timber sales. Handlogging had formerly been conducted on request of the logger, without much supervision of cutting. Logging was now put under revised regulations that required inspection of the area and marking of trees. After 1917 there were relatively few handlogging shows left. Ordinary sales were made by competitive bidding, with payment in advance of cutting, inspection after the cutting, and a penalty scale for logs left in the woods, poor utilization, and high stumps. Scaling usually was performed on the raft. Check scalers were brought in and scalers were trained to examine logs on the mill deck to see how they cut out in order better to allow for defect. Cruising was usually done in the winter months of February and March, when snow was still on the ground and had crusted. This covered up the thick underbrush and devilsclub and allowed cruisers to get around more freely. Logging was usually done by donkey engine, working in land from the shore as far as 4,000 feet. There are some records of river drives on suitable streams. Logging work was aided tremendously by aerial surveys of the forest that the Navy made from 1919 to about 1928. These surveys, when interpreted, allowed the Forest Service to map the area more accurately, to locate timber bodies and estimate their volume, to locate streams and watercourses for power development, to map out logging shows, and to develop a timber inventory. [50]

In the early 1920s Alaska was highly optimistic about the possibilities of a pulp sale. Fourteen separate zones, each with timber and a mill site, were mapped out by this time, and a thorough survey of waterpower facilities had been made. By 1921 two of the sales materialized. One was to the Alaska Pulp and Paper Company at the head of Speel Arm of Snettisham Inlet. This was a sale for 100 million feet of timber and a hundred-ton pulp mill. The other was to the Alaska Gastineau Company, which had ceased milling gold ore at Thane in 1922. It made plans to install a 200-ton pulp mill, to utilize timber from Admiralty Island, and to develop a waterpower project on Hasselborg Lake. In addition, two other companies expressed interest. [51]

The pulp plant at Port Snettisham was doomed to failure in the early 1920s by high shipping charges and poor financial conditions. (U.S. Forest Service)

But these enterprises were doomed to failure. The Port Snettisham venture sent a shipment of 100 tons to Seattle (as well as several smaller ones) but found shipping charges too great and ceased operations. The sale was canceled by mutual consent. The Alaska Gastineau Company sale was also canceled. A third company lost interest. There were several factors involved in these failures. One was high shipping costs to the outside; another was that the economic climate was not suitable for any new, large-scale pulp operation; and a third was the control of finance and market by those already involved in pulp and paper mills. Yet another reason was the expansion of existing mills in Newfoundland and other parts of Canada. [52]

Seattle businessman, John E. Ballaine, had grand plans for the development of Alaskan resources. (University of Washington Library)

John Ballaine was another entrepreneur who sought to break into the pulp business in Alaska. A Seattle-based capitalist and speculator, Ballaine had been the main mover in an attempt of the Alaska Central and the Alaska Northern to build a railroad from Seward. He had also offered to lease the coalfields on Chickaloon Creek in 1910. Ballaine's plans were to combine export of birch veneer with pulp manufacturer. In 1923 and 1924 he sent cruising parties into the Susitna Valley, north of Anchorage, which was an area that Langille had examined twenty years earlier. Ballaine's party reported a good stand between the Susitna and Yentna rivers; it was an area about eighteen by twelve miles in size, and the birch trees were eighteen to thirty inches in diameter. In applying for a sale of 500 million feet, he suggested to George Parks, chief of the General Land Office's Field Division, that a railroad might be built into the area from mile 185 to Susitna. Ballaine also negotiated at this time with the Robert Dollar interests about shipping, apparently considering operational sites either at Anchorage or at Seward. [53] In January 1925 he received a sales contract calling for 2,000 acres of timber at $1 per thousand feet, with reappraisal after five years. The Alaska office of the General Land Office was to record the cut. The sale included all available saw or veneer timber more than six inches in diameter. But Ballaine was unable to move into the area, and an application in 1928 for an extension of time was rejected. [54]

By 1929 Ballaine got further financial backing and applied for another sale. His plan this time was to cut up birch for veneer stock and to ship that out through Seward. He also intended to apply for spruce and hemlock on the Chugach National Forest and to set up a 100-ton sulphite pulp mill, using cull lumber and tops from logging operations. He planned to cut 400,000 cords per year at $11 per cord. Ballaine's financial support came from Ossian Anderson, a pulp manufacturer with operations at Anacortes and Bellingham, Washington. Anderson advised Ballaine to start small, first shipping out birch veneer logs, for which there was a good market, and working from that to the pulp operation. Ballaine desired and got a long-term contract that called for him to cut 15,000 cords of pulp wood and 3.5 million feet of sawtimber annually from 1932 to 1949. He agreed to establish a pulp mill before February 21, 1935. Ballaine estimated that he would invest $2.5 million in Alaska and greatly boost the Alaska Railroad with traffic. But, as with the other ventures, the Depression put an end to the project. [55]

Meanwhile, the Forest Service continued plans for sales on the Tongass National Forest. The Weepose took visiting industrialists around the forest to see pulp shows. [56] Chief Greeley had a deep personal interest in the development of a pulp program in Alaska, but some logging interests in the Northwest were critical of such development, feeling that the size of the sales offered was too large and that a greater attempt should be made to use waste from mills in Washington and Oregon before utilizing Alaskan forests. Greeley's answer was that the waste in Oregon and Washington could be used to make variety paper and fiberboard and that in Alaska for newsprint. Meanwhile, he reported, there were better waterpower facilities in Alaska, and it was time that its timber be utilized. [57]

Action on another sale was held up by the possessory rights question. This case foreshadowed a great many issues involving Indians' rights to the forestland. J. T. Jones of Tacoma claimed all the Swan Lake watershed because Indians had used the area for hunting and fishing. He asserted that he had obtained a quit-claim deed for the area from one Will B. Bell, who had obtained it from the Indians. In 1914 Jones had planned to build a pulp plant, and two years later he applied for a pulp sale. A gauge was installed on the stream in 1916, but he made no waterpower application. With a sale to the Crown Zellerbach Corporation pending in the area, Jones asked a federal injunction to prevent construction of a dam on Swan Lake. Merritt examined the area, found no trace of Indian occupancy, and referred the problem to the Department of the Interior. In 1933 the case was closed; Jones lost it. [58]

A stand of hemlock and spruce on the Tongass National Forest, 1930. Some sawtimber and pulpwood was sold, but the economics of the period retarded development. (U.S. Forest Service)

Two sales were made in 1927, in Juneau and in Ketchikan. The Juneau sale involved two newspaper companies, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Los Angeles Times. The Ketchikan contract was won by the Crown Zellerbach Corporation over the International Paper Company. The sale involved 1,670,000.000 cubic feet of timber, but, once again, the Depression put an end to the sales. [59]

In the Chugach the Forest Service continued to have a bad relationship with the Alaska Railroad and its contractors. Harold Lutz wrote in his diary for November 3, 1925:

With Ranger Brady—also saw Mr. Smith General manager of the RR. Spoke to him regarding his cleaning up the brush left along the telephone and telegraph line. He said that the railroad would not do it unless they were forced to, and under no circumstances would he take orders from the Forest Service.

Several days later he warned one contractor that he would close down his operation if he did not lop the tops. A week later he told another contractor that if his cook did not stop throwing cans and garbage into the lake, he would close down the operation. [60] Orders from the railroad general manager regarding spark arresters and burning on the right-of-way were disregarded. In 1923 there were fifty-eight right-of-way fires. "The only thing that surprises me," Merritt remarked, "is that we have any forest at all north and west of the Seward-Kenai Lake divide." The railroad recognized its responsibility but was operating at a loss, so it was not interested in reducing fire hazard. The troublesome situation continued into the 1930s. [61]

Some improvements in fire control and suppression were made during this period. Supervisor W. J. McDonald, aided by Rangers Brady and Murray, carried on an effective public relations program in the Anchorage and Seward areas to alert the public to the need for fire prevention. As roads were built to Hope and Moose Pass, Ford trucks were used for transportation. Telephone and telegraph lines were installed and a dispatcher system set up at headquarters. The CCC workers made fine fire suppression crews. [62]

Fire protection for interior Alaska was finally organized in 1939—more than three decades after Langille had recommended it. When Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes made his Alaska trip in 1938, he was horrified at the ravages of fires. He conferred with Ernest Gruening and B. Frank Heintzleman about it. Before long, W. J. McDonald was transferred to the General Land Office to set up a protective organization, and people trained in fighting fires in Montana were shifted to Alaska. An appropriation of $38,000 was made for fire control, and the Forest Service gave further advice on a protective system. [63]

There was also need for timber management on the Chugach, especially in the Kenai area. The major aims had been to provide the Alaska Railroad with timber for free use, to keep the country from burning up, and to have minimum standards of utilization. There was need, E. E. Carter reported in his 1923 inspection, for a "hard-headed technical man" who could introduce silvicultural practices into the area. W. J. McDonald recognized this problem but had no technically trained men; he himself was an engineer. He administered the sales competently but could not manage the area as a tree farm. In response to Garter's request, Harold Lutz, a young and talented Yale graduate, was sent to the area.

Lutz's diaries show that he accomplished a great variety of work. Early in 1925 he examined timber in the Cordova area, developing volume tables and estimates of defect from butt rot and porcupine damage. Later, he cruised Prince William Sound in rented launches, the Shamrock and the Buckeye, getting growth data, taking increment borings, cruising, and seeing to the possibility of using the area on the east side of the Kenai Peninsula as part of a working circle for the Alaska Railroad. He concluded that the timber in the area was too sparse and inaccessible for this purpose. During the summer and fall months, Lutz set up sample plots in the Kenai and developed volume tables for that area. [64]

Meanwhile, in the interior of the Kenai, J. P. Williams carried on a study of the forests to develop a working circle tributary to the Alaska Railroad. Williams was a major figure in Alaska conservation during the first half of the century. A University of Wisconsin graduate, he was a veteran of the Spanish-American War, a former hunter and packer for the International Boundary Survey, and had served in the Forest Service in Washington State before coming to the Tongass. During the 1920s he was a district ranger and forest examiner. Later, he became a wildlife specialist and took an active part in the bear census and the bear management plan of the Forest Service. [65]

Others preceded Williams in research, however. James M. Walley and Harold Lutz began in 1924, as noted earlier, and Ray Taylor came along a year later. Melvin Merritt studied plant succession before the Mendenhall Glacier from 1929 to 1934. In 1923 E. E. Carter wrote that, as a result of examination of old cuttings, a definite body of knowledge about reproduction and growth was becoming available for development of timber management policy. Increasingly, however, the need was felt for an experiment station for research on a continuing basis.

In the Tongass, timber values were gradually integrated with other uses, including game management and recreation. Some aspects of this have already been mentioned, including the recreational developments carried on by CCC labor. This movement would also include plans worked out by the Forest Service with the Alaska Game Commission, the Biological Survey, and other groups on the relationship of cutting to game management (particularly bear), and the bear census work, in which J. P. Williams was particularly important.

Studies of the recreational possibilities of the Alaska forests, from a wilderness standpoint, began by 1925 but did not become intensive until 1939. One reason for this delay was the large amount of wilderness and the fact that much of it would remain de facto wilderness. Regional Forester Flory was extremely sensitive to public opinion and press criticism; the Juneau newspapers had been hostile to the national monument and the national park ideas. But with the accession of Heintzleman in 1937, there was a new shift. Part of this may have been due to Heintzleman's own keenly developed aesthetic sense and partly with his energy and his ability to dominate public opinion instead of being swayed by it. [66]

Recreation: Glacier Bay and Admiralty Island

The Forest Service in Alaska has always been interested in recreational values. Langille, in his 1904 report on the Kenai, had recommended addition of this area because of its value as a game sanctuary and a wilderness. In 1908 he had recommended creation of a national monument in the Wrangell Mountains. Ringland and Graves also had been concerned with recreational potentialities in the Kenai. Roads, particularly the Mendenhall Glacier Highway, were constructed for scenic purposes.

During the 1920s the Forest Service set up several wilderness areas in the stateside national forests. Greeley, as chief forester, asked Flory to review the forest road plan and to make arrangements for safeguarding the wilderness. Flory replied that there was no particular problem in Alaska since some of the area would be de facto wilderness in perpetuity, especially above timberline. Chief Stuart asked in 1932 that national forest planning take wilderness areas into consideration. Two years later, Chief Silcox stated that public sentiment was pro-wilderness and that the Forest Service must recognize the need to reconcile local population needs with this sentiment, especially in road building.

The regional response to this national directive took several forms. The roadside screen idea, developed first in Montana and in Oregon, was extended to Alaska. The Forest Service cooperated with the Bureau of Roads in road location to see that they were back from the water's edge and that a screen of trees and brush protected the roads from views on the water. Establishment of game sanctuaries began in 1931. By 1939 there were 2,448,144 acres of game sanctuaries on the Chugach and 830,320 acres on the Tongass, in addition to several bird sanctuaries. [67]

The major controversies that occurred during this period were in relation to Glacier Bay and Admiralty Island. The original proclamation of Glacier Bay National Monument occurred about the same time as the Icy Straits addition to the Tongass. Its immediate cause was a recommendation by William S. Cooper of the Ecological Society of America. In 1923 Cooper had been studying plant succession on the glacial moraines, and he recommended that Glacier Bay be reserved for scientific reasons. The Ecological Society of America endorsed the idea, as did other scientific organizations. E. G. Finney, assistant secretary of the interior, recommended that a national monument rather than a national park be established, since a national park would require an act of Congress. Gifford Pinchot supported the movement, though he thought the area deserved national park status. George Parks, head of the Field Service of the General Land Office in Alaska, recommended the park, provided it be limited to the basin of the bay, north of a line from the summit of Mount Wright to Peak 4030, near Geikie Inlet. He opposed a larger area because of settlement and commercial timber values. Support was obtained from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the National Resource Council, the National Park Association, and the U.S. Geological Survey. The monument was created in 1925. [68]

The possibility of extending the boundaries of the monument came up almost immediately. As early as 1923, Heintzleman had under consideration the recreational as well as economic values of the Icy Straits addition and the Lituya Bay area. [69] Joseph Dixon, field naturalist for the National Park Service, made a field examination of the area in September 1932 and recommended extending the boundary to the west to include forested land and the habitat of the brown bear. During that year, Heintzleman conferred with Paul G. Redington of the Biological Survey, Joseph Dixon, Frank Dufresne of the Alaska Game Commission, and Horace Albright on the park possibilities. Arthur Demaray of the Park Service made a field investigation of the area in 1936 and sought the advice of W. S. Cooper of the Ecological Society of America.

Heintzleman favored extension of the monument to include the coastal timber, including Lituya Bay for its scenic beauty, value as a bear sanctuary, and for its salmon streams. He desired that Excursion Inlet be excluded because of its canneries and its value for pulp production. As head of the Alaska Planning Board, Heintzleman enlisted its support and also that of the territorial legislature. He also got the support of George Parks and Ernest Gruening. The Forest Service put its boats at the service of Park Service examiners. In 1938 Harold Ickes took a trip to Alaska and examined the proposed addition with Heintzleman and Gruening. The extension to the national monument was proclaimed on April 18, 1939. [70]

The chief problems of the Glacier Bay area came not with the Forest Service but in regard to mining in the national monument. This is an interesting way trail that deserves a full treatment, but is not directly related to our story. Here is a brief summary.

At the time extension of the boundary was under consideration, Rex Beach was writing a novel with an Alaskan setting. One of Beach's main themes in his Alaska writings had been the problems the hardy pioneer faced with the dead hand of federal bureaucracy. In The Spoilers it was the alliance of outside capitalism with a corrupt federal judge. In The Iron Trail a theme was the uninformed attacks of conservationist journalists on business enterprise seeking to develop Alaska. During the 1930s, Beach was writing a sequel to The Spoilers to be published in Cosmopolitan. He based it on the experience of Joseph Ibach, a prospector then living on Lemesurier Island. Ibach apparently had become acquainted with Beach while the latter was writing The Iron Trail. During the 1930s, Ibach was operating a claim in the Glacier Bay withdrawal and complained bitterly to Beach about the way the federal government was hindering his mining operations. Beach took the case to Delegate Anthony Dimond and to President Roosevelt. Beach touched Roosevelt's romantic streak, and the president supported the efforts of Dimond to open the monument to mining and permit miners to carry firearms for protection against bear. [71]

The problems related to Admiralty Island were much more complex and disruptive. Admiralty Island had been the scene of logging and mining operations, especially on its west coast, since before creation of the Forest Service. The federal agency was especially interested in the resources of the island, particularly waterpower and pulp timber. Kan Smith, Heintzleman, and others thoroughly examined the island between 1917 and 1930, and plans were made to develop the area as a pulp producing unit. A few squatters, fishermen, and hunters lived on the periphery of the island, and there was an Indian village, Angoon. Moreover, there were as many as seven salmon canneries scattered along the island's shores.

Many of the problems on Admiralty related to bear. Early in the century, C. Hart Merriam collected specimens of the island's fauna, especially the large brown bear. A "splitter," Merriam identified five species of brown bear, of which two were unique to Admiralty Island. Allen Hasselborg, a squatter, built a cabin at Mole Harbor on the island's eastern coast. He became a collector of bear for eastern museums and cultivated the looks and style of a backwoods sage. [72] Meanwhile, sportsmen came in larger numbers to Alaska in search of trophy bear and other game. The majority went to Kodiak Island, where the sparse vegetation made hunting more feasible, but a sizable number came to Admiralty.

Brown bear presented an everyday problem for Forest Service men on cruising or reconnaissance trips. The men had their hands full of equipment (axes, calipers, tapes, and compasses), the undergrowth was thick, and bear traveled the same trails as men. When startled, bear were apt to charge, and there were frequent close calls. After Ranger Jack Thayer was killed by a bear, foresters were required to carry rifles and sometimes had to kill bear in self-defense. Elsewhere in Alaska, the policy of the game commission was to control their numbers by the bag limit, but it passed an ordinance allowing residents to kill bear within a mile of their homes in defense of persons and property. [73]

Between 1927 and 1930 John M. Holzworth photographed bear and collected hides and skulls on Admiralty for the New York Zoological Society. He lived with Hasselborg, used him as a guide, and admired him tremendously as a self-taught philosopher and authority on bear. In 1930 Holzworth published a lavishly illustrated book, Wild Grizzlies of Alaska, in which he pictured the grizzly as being in danger of extinction because of hostility of the Alaska Game Commission, the Forest Service, and the people of Alaska. In an appendix to the book, Harry McGuire of Outdoor Life dealt further with the bear as an endangered species. The Mammalogical Society of America passed a resolution in May 1930 asking that Admiralty be set aside as a bear sanctuary. [74]

Heintzleman dealt with this proposal in the Service Bulletin of May 2, 1932. He considered the "Save the Bear Movement" to be overenthusiastic. If withdrawn as a bear sanctuary, Admiralty Island would be the "world's largest zoo." He admitted that bear had been a problem to the Forest Service, but, he claimed, the agency had not attempted to exterminate them. It had killed only twenty-two bear in a ten-year period—most of these in self-defense. Heintzleman proposed that the Forest Service and the Alaska Game Commission work out a bear management plan for Admiralty, limiting the kill and working on the sustained-yield philosophy used for timber crops.

The plan was soon put into effect, and certain kinds of areas were treated as refuges. According to an Alaska Game Commission report in 1937, these included National Park Service areas (Mount McKinley National Park, Katmai National Monument, and Glacier Bay National Monument), bird refuges on Unimak Island in the Aleutians and on Afognak Island, and in national forest areas. The latter included an area contiguous to Glacier Bay and two areas on Admiralty Island—the Thayer Mountain unit of 38,400 acres, and the Pack Creek unit of 13,400 acres. Heintzleman reported in a letter to H. H. Chapman that the bear management plan on Admiralty Island was working well. H. L. Schantz, chief of the Forest Service's Division of Wildlife Management in Washington, was also satisfied. [75]

Meanwhile, the movement for monument status had increased. Stewart Edward White, the well-known writer and big-game hunter, entered the fray with an article in the Sierra Club Bulletin in 1932. He praised Allen Hasselborg as "perhaps the most informed bear man in Alaska." The Forest Service, he said, was using Ranger Thayer's death as an excuse to exterminate the bear. Regardless of what was officially stated, Forest Service men killed bear whenever possible, he said, and this policy was "quasi-official." Bear were also at the mercy of residents, fox farmers, and visiting yachtsmen, and the use of planes, he claimed, would make them even more vulnerable. He asked that a bear sanctuary be created on Admiralty, Chichagof, or Baranof island. The Glacier Bay area, he said, was too small and too inaccessible. Finally, he asked that pressure be put on the secretary of the interior, the Biological Survey, and Congress to create such a sanctuary. [76]

White's article was followed by others in outdoor magazines, and the Forest Service received letters supporting the project. Roosevelt received communications regarding bear being shot from yachts. He referred them to Ickes, who replied that the Alaska Game Commission had been notified and that plans were being made for an enlarged Glacier Bay National Monument. [77]

By 1937 the agitation was in full swing. In April Roosevelt received a letter from Representative Caroline O'Day of New York, a close personal friend. She asked that something be done about the bear on Admiralty before the hunting season began. Roosevelt passed the suggestion on to the Department of the Interior. The National Park Service informed Ickes that it had never urged Admiralty as a national park or monument. There was commercial development on Admiralty. In addition, Glacier Bay offered a bear sanctuary because the Forest Service had closed the adjacent national forest land to bear hunting. A copy of the Forest Service bear management plan for Admiralty was enclosed, and it was suggested that an addition to Glacier Bay be made instead. Harry Slattery, Ickes's aide, informed Fairfield Osborn that he was opposed to Admiralty as a national park. Suggestions were made for a joint study by the Interior Department and the Department of Agriculture, but the latter resisted this suggestion until the Alaska Territorial Board was organized. [78]

When Ickes traveled to Alaska in 1938, he refused to commit himself immediately on the desirability of a national park, but by early 1939 he was convinced that a national park would be desirable. He drafted a proclamation stating that the climax forest, the five varieties of bear, and geological and ecological features justified park status. In a separate note to President Roosevelt, Ickes pointed out that the only town was Angoon and that there were very few other settlers. There were, he said, archaeological features of note. He repeated the points in his proclamation and stated that the whole area was a "natural outdoor laboratory." [79]

Ickes had earlier sent Roosevelt a 1932 editorial by Irving Brant of the St. Louis Star that pressed for the addition of Admiralty to the national monument system. Brant had repeated the false charges of the New York Zoological Society that the Forest Service had given 5,000 square miles of virgin timber on Admiralty to San Francisco capitalists. Brant, apparently informed of Ickes's action, wrote to Ickes to say that Crown Zellerbach had abandoned its pulp plan and that Admiralty was eliminated for consideration as a pulp production area for many decades. However, he repeated the charges that Alaskans disliked grizzly on the grounds that they killed salmon and raided fox ranches. Roosevelt, meanwhile, sounded out Secretary Wallace. He raised the specter of timber monopoly, stating that in Hoover's day there had been attempts at such monopoly and "you and I blocked this." He asked what Wallace thought of setting up a tract as a wildlife sanctuary. Wallace replied that the pulp sale had fallen through but that there were numerous small local sales. Less than half the island, he wrote, was commercial timber; the volume was about 8.5 billion feet or about 11 percent of the volume in southeastern Alaska. He felt that timber production, as well as bear protection, deserved attention. Bear protection could be managed without withdrawal of the area from commercial use. Wallace suggested that the president create a primitive area on the island and said he would confer with Chief Silcox and Secretary Ickes. [80]

Delegate Anthony Dimond of Alaska, meanwhile, got wind of the matter. In a strong letter to Roosevelt, he termed the proposal for a national monument "conservation gone mad." He wrote: "There is no more occasion to withdraw Admiralty Island into a national park or national monument than there is to build a trap to capture the aurora borealis. I earnestly hope you will put a stop to such foolishness." Roosevelt's secretary, Stephen Early, referred the letter to the Department of the Interior for a reply. Ickes argued that Admiralty was biologically one of the most desirable areas for protection of timber and wildlife, "which are certain to disappear within a few years if it continues open to exploitation." Roosevelt did not use Ickes's letter as the basis for a reply but instead sent a noncommittal note to Dimond. [81]

The Park Service remained opposed to creation of a national park or monument, but Ickes went ahead on his project with presidential support. [82] He sent drafts of his proclamation to the bureaus within the department but through an oversight failed to send one to John Collier, head of the Indian Bureau. Collier was somewhat annoyed at this, especially since there were Indian rights involved in the area. In a firm note to Ickes, he stated his objections to any proclamation that did not consider the fishing, hunting, and occupancy rights of the Indians in the area. Ickes apologized to Collier for the oversight, and the proclamation was withdrawn. Ickes could not do otherwise; he was hoisted by his own petard. Since he was at the time taken up with the Indian rights question and the proposal that the Indians be given title to the shorelines of the Alaska islands and coast, at the expense of the Forest Service, Collier had very deftly pulled the rug out from under him. [83]

From 1940 to 1942, the National Park Service made a full examination of the area. Frank Been of McKinley National Park made a tour of Sitka, Old Kasaan, Glacier Bay, and Admiralty. He thought that Admiralty was not an outstanding area and that Baranof Island would be a better national park or monument. He met with Hasselborg and did not share the admiration that Stewart Edward White and John Holzworth had for the famous guide, characterizing him instead as a nature faker. Been wrote: "He classified me as a scatologist because I mentioned a bear dropping he displayed as being scat....In my opinion he is "bull" scatologist of the first water and his comments should have little weight or bearing on any matter." Victor Cahalane of the Park Service made an inspection of the area in 1941, accompanying an inspection trip of W. A. Chipperfield. The timber, he reported, was hemlock and spruce, much of it unmerchantable. It was short, limby, and stag-headed. The bear were under management; the Forest Service had built platforms for observing the bear in the two sanctuaries of Thayer Mountain and Pack Creek. He also believed that the area was not of national monument caliber. The inlets were not outstanding, as compared with those of Tracy Arm or Baranof Lake. The fauna was "neither diversified nor remarkable." Also, there were other obstacles to national monument status—the use for timber, fishing, agriculture, fur farming, trapping and hunting, and the Indian agitation for exclusive use. It was desirable that the inland lake area be developed for recreation, but he was opposed to national monument status. The U.S. Geological Survey also opposed national monument status on the grounds that there were mineral values present and that the area was not of national monument caliber. [84]

On November 27, 1941, top Interior Department officials met to discuss the Admiralty Island matter. Ira Gabrielson of the Fish and Wildlife Service persuaded them that game could be protected by regulation rather than by creating a national monument. There were also budgetary problems within the department, so the consensus was to table the whole question. Some agitation continued, but, without Ickes's active support, it presented less of a threat to Forest Service management. [85]