HAWAII NATURE NOTES
THE PUBLICATION OF THE
NATURALIST DIVISION, HAWAII NATIONAL PARK
AND THE HAWAII NATURAL HISTORY ASSOCIATION

Administration

The law establishing the park contained a provision inhibiting the appropriation of public funds for the improvement and maintenance of the area until the United States acquired perpetual easements and rights of way over private lands as the Secretary of the Interior might find necessary to make the park "***reasonably accessible in all of its parts." By 1921, a sufficient amount of acreage had been acquired to satisfy the requirements of the inhibition in the law, and thus the door was opened for the administration, maintenance, and development of the park.

Albert O. Burkland, a U. S. Geological Survey Topographic Engineer assigned to the Territory, was designated as superintendent of the park in January 1922 pending the appointment of a permanent superintendent. Before Burkland, B. G. Rivenburgh, the Territorial Land Commissioner, functioned as National Park Service representative. Rivenburgh's designation was essentially a pro forma maneuver, for no funds were available to him for operation because of another restrictive inhibition in the act establishing the park; however, during the time that he functioned as Park Service representative, Rivenburgh began the land acquisition program and did a real job of it.

As acting superintendent from January 1922 until his successor arrived the following spring, Burkland initiated the park's improvement program, beginning with repairs to the Crater Rim Road. The first sizeable appropriation for the operation of the park, in the amount of $10,000, was made by Congress for the 1922 fiscal year. Appropriations of $750 each were made in the 1919 and 1920 fiscal years, but these were earmarked for advancing the land acquisition negotiations, and in the 1921 fiscal year Congress appropriated $1,000, of which only $62.49 was spent.

On-the-ground administration of the park began with the arrival of Superintendent Thomas R. Boles in April 1922. On paper, the park had a superintendent and an acting superintendent between February and June 1922. Boles' designation was made effective two months before he entered on duty, while Burkland's extended until the end of June. A native of Arkansas, Boles is the son of Congressman Thomas Boles, who voted in favor of the establishment of the world's first national park, Yellowstone, back in 1872. He is a likeable individual and has made many friends for the national parks. P. C. Beamer, a Hoosier who has lived in Hilo since 1901, recalls Boles as a "wide awake fellow with a pleasant and friendly manner." Willie Elderts, who has been employed at the park since 1924, remembers the first superintendent as a "very good man—but very, very strict." Another old timer likened Boles' energy to that of his fickle volcano, which two years later was to send the superintendent sprawling amidst a shower of explosive debris. Boles retired from the National Park Service in 1951 as the dean of national park superintendents and is now living at Carlsbad, New Mexico. While he was superintendent of Carlsbad Caverns National Park, Governor Clyde Tingley made Boles an honorary colonel on the State staff, a designation which has stood as one of his proudest achievements.

The new superintendent, a civil engineer by profession, entered on his new job with real zest. Within the month, he had relocated a portion of the trail across Kilauea Crater, done some survey work along the existing Crater Rim Road to Halemaumau, made plans for the visit of a large group of mainland Shriners, and assured his chief that he would observe the policies outlined earlier for the government of the national parks. Also, he had built and installed a substantial number of signs.

Thomas R. Boles, the first superintendent of Hawaii National Park.

Boles was conservative with Uncle Sam's dollars, except where signs were concerned, for he cluttered up the landscape with them, much to the annoyance of the local citizens, who were not used to being regulated by signs at their volcano. He needed office furniture desperately but decided that the prices quoted by the local dealers were too high for his modest appropriation. For two months he contended with some soap box type furniture, awaiting the auction of the furnishings of a defunct Hilo bank. His waiting paid off: for $145.25 he bought $350 worth of furniture. To his chief he reported that the furniture was commensurate with the dignity of the National Park Service.

As superintendent, Boles had a wide assortment of duties, being all at once park engineer, accountant, surveyor, naturalist, law enforcement officer, construction and maintenance supervisor, stenographer, and disbursing agent. In all of these roles he acquitted himself admirably, except that of park accountant. He was taken to task regularly by R. M. Holmes, of the Washington Office, for his accounting errors. Boles agreed with Holmes' boss that Holmes' complaints were well founded, but he managed to justify his shortcomings on the intricacies of Government accounting. In a letter to his chief, Boles asked him to assure Holmes that the superintendent was not really hopeless and his accuser need not worry so much.

Boles had a flair for showmanship unequalled by any contemporary park superintendent. He knew the value of publicity and capitalized on it, doing a superb job of keeping the new park ("my park," he called it) in the headlines in the local and mainland press. He reported to his chief in Washington that it was his policy to make Hawaii the best known national park in the United States and he spared no effort to make this come about, going so far as to prepare articles on the park for publication in mainland newspapers. In the fall of 1925, a large group of visitors came to the park under the auspices of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce. Before the group departed. a large dinner was held for the members at the Volcano House. Boles spoke for twenty-five minutes on the park and its attractions, and Jaggar followed him with a talk on volcanoes and earthquakes. The Honolulu newspapers made liberal mention of Boles' and Jaggar's talks, but the Hilo Tribune-Herald failed to report on Boles' part in the program. To almost anyone else, this would have been an oversight, but to Boles it was unpardonable. He wrote a strong letter of protest to Editor Vern Hinkley, asking the newspaperman to pardon him if the superintendent took it upon himself to see that Hawaii National Park was mentioned in the local press now and then.

Boles attended a conference of national park superintendents in Yellowstone in the fall of 1923. On his return from the mainland, he was interviewed by a reporter, who quoted Boles: "Those mainland people are alive to the great value of their national parks as tourist getters. In Hawaii, I do not believe they are quite alive to this as yet."

To L. W. de Vis-Norton, of the Hawaii Publicity Commission, Boles' indictment was too much—"an undeserved slam that should not be allowed to pass," he said. A strong park booster and enthusiast, Norton had publicized the area extensively and effectively for years through numerous articles he wrote for the mainland newspapers and magazines, and he thought Boles had been unfair in commenting as he had. The publicist's rebuttal of Boles' indiscreet comments took up fifteen inches of copy in the Hilo newspaper.

This was the first of several skirmishes between Boles and Norton. The next one occurred the following year when the superintendent objected to Norton's treatment of the 1924 steam explosion of Halemaumau. Boles thought that the account of the eruption written by Norton for an English publication would keep visitors away from the park and they went the rounds again.

Norton made peace overtures to Boles, but the records don't indicate the outcome.

When Boles entered on his job, he inherited with it some tenants—a few families who lived on lands adjoining the present Hilo Entrance Road, within the park. The families lived on lands which they leased from the Bishop Estate before the park was established, and the rights of the lessees were recognized by the Government, which permitted them to live in the park until the leases ran their courses. One of Boles' tenants was J. H. Tahara, and in Tahara and his family, as well as in his other tenants, the Superintendent and Mrs. Boles took a friendly and neighborly interest. In March 1923 a baby was born to the Taharas in their home, representing the first birth of record in the park. Boles was pleased with the name the parents selected for the child—National Park. When the child was one year old, the Taharas presented Boles with an elaborate birthday cake, for the parents took great pride in the name and the fact that she was the first born in the park. In reporting the event to his chief, Boles assured him that National carried the honor with real dignity.

With his tenants, Boles also inherited a few employees whom his predecessor had hired, among them Alec Lancaster, who entered on duty in February 1922 as the first ranger on the park staff. Alec had worked on and off for the Volcano House and the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory as a sort of handyman until 1919, when the Hawaii Publicity Commission hired him to guide visitors and keep in shape the few trails used by them. Along with Jaggar and the recently-arrived Ruy H. Finch, Alec interpreted the area for the visiting tourists.

Alec was known as "Pele's Grandson" to many, but to Boles he was "The Runt." Alec measured only sixty-one inches in height (in filling out an employment form, he once indicated his height to be five inches) and weighed ninety-five pounds, but he was as lively as the volcanoes. In these, Alec took a proprietor's interest, and he enthralled thousands of visitors with his intimate knowledge of them—and particularly the delivery of that knowledge. When someone mentioned Vesuvius to him, his stock reply was, "Vesuvius is just an old man. Pele is sturdy on her job." It was nothing short of a sacrilege to talk about other volcanoes in Alec's presence.

Alec's thirst for liquor was his undoing, for it brought about his dismissal from the park staff in 1928. "The Runt" spent his last years as a public ward in the Old Folks' Home in Hilo. To kamaainas, the transplanted Cherokee is almost as much of a legend as the volcano goddess in which he believed so firmly.

Prohibition was the law of the land when Boles was superintendent, and he discharged the enforcement of the liquor regulations with real efficiency. Local bootleggers brought their okolehao, a potent intoxicant distilled from the root of the ti plant, to the park to sell to the soldiers stationed at Kilauea Military Camp, a rest and recreation center for military personnel. Before they collected from the soldiers in payment for their moonshine, the bootleggers hid the stuff among the tree ferns in the Thurston Lava Tube area for the soldiers to find later. Certain tree ferns were apparently designated as depositories for the okolehao. Boles had a pretty good idea as to what was going on, but so did the moonshiners and soldiers, who always managed to stay ahead of him. In desperation, Boles wrote and cabled the prohibition officer in Honolulu asking that an undercover man be sent to the park to catch the lawbreakers in the act, but the funds of the Internal Revenue Service were such that it could not afford the costs of sending the man over, and Boles never succeeded in finding the moonshine in the ferns. The soldiers had no trouble locating the stuff, however.

A pre-1890 likeness of Alexander P. Lancaster, the Cherokee who guided visitors in the Kilauea region from 1885 to 1928. "Pele's Grandson," as he was known, took a proprietor's interest in the volcanoes (Courtesy, Territorial Archives).

Young Alec Lancaster, the son of the famous guide, was suspected by Boles of being an okolehao runner. According to Boles, Lancaster was a drunken rowdy and an undesirable character, and the superintendent felt it his duty to rid the park of him. One day, Boles caught up with young Alec. The boy was not only drunk but was operating a car while drinking, carried firearms without a permit, and discharged them while in the park.

After Lancaster had gotten his bearings the next morning, Boles sent him to Hilo with a letter addressed to the United States Commissioner, asking the judge to prosecute the offender for the violations outlined in the letter. Later that day, Lancaster showed up at Boles' office with a letter from the judge stating that charges could not be preferred against the youngster unless Boles signed a formal complaint. Boles sent Lancaster back to town with a letter to the judge telling him that he would be down in two days to swear to the complaint. Apparently Boles failed to get the lad convicted, for a few months later he was again writing to the prohibition officer in Honolulu asking for an undercover man to be sent to the park to catch up with Lancaster, who was now making a "specialty" of procuring liquor for the soldiers at the camp. In the meantime, the judge went away on a trip and during his absence Boles succeeded in getting Stephen L. Desha, Jr., of Hilo, appointed as a second United States Commissioner. The new commissioner was apparently more in sympathy with the superintendent's efforts to make the park free from bootleggers and drunken drivers, and a few months after that young Alec was ordered out of the park with a special warning from Boles that he would be arrested at once if found in the area without the express permission of the Secretary of the Interior, the Director of the National Park Service, or the superintendent!

The Act of Congress establishing the park set a yearly limitation of $10,000 on the park appropriation, and this hamstrung Boles in developing the new area. With the comparatively small sum that was made available to him for operation, he managed to do wonders, establishing trails, improving roads, and constructing buildings and other improvements. While the Park Service in Washington was seeking the repeal of the $10,000 limitation, a benefactor in the form of Congressman C. A. Newton, of Missouri, visited the park in 1923. During the time Newton was in the park, Boles got him out on the trails and showed him the points of interest. He did a real job of selling the influential visitor on the park as well as on the need to repeal the proviso in the law which set the financial limitation. The Congressman returned to Washington and immediately wrote a letter to Director Stephen T. Mather, Boles' chief, telling him that he had never found a park superintendent who appeared to be more efficient, more interested in his assignment, or half so determined to get the full value of every dollar expended as Superintendent Boles.

Shortly after that, Newton called on Mather and discussed the limitation set on the park appropriation, going so far as to offer to introduce legislation in Congress to have the proviso repealed. Mather, of course, encouraged the Congressman, with the result that, a few months later, the President signed into law the bill introduced by Newton repealing the restrictive limitation. In notifying Boles about it, Congressman Newton wrote that, when he saw the possibilities of the park the previous summer and the earnest effort the superintendent was making for its development with the limited funds available, he left with a firm resolution that the ensuing session of Congress should remove that limit, and it was a source of supreme joy to him that the resolution had been fulfilled. Boles rejoiced.

Thomas Boles remained in active charge of the park until A. O. Burkland, who was again designated acting superintendent, relieved him in September 1926. The following January, Richard T. Evans succeeded Burkland. A Geological Survey topographic engineer, Evans served as the first superintendent of Zion National Park, Utah. The Geological Survey requested Evans' return to his engineering duties, and in the fall of 1928 he left Hawaii.

Thomas J. Allen. Jr., a Pennsylvanian who grew up in the Pacific Northwest, succeeded Evans in November 1928. A forester, Allen began his National Park Service career as a temporary ranger at Mount Rainier National Park in 1920. He came to Hawaii from Colorado's Rocky Mountain National Park, where he had served as chief ranger and assistant superintendent. From Hawaii, Allen went on to serve successively as superintendent of Zion, Hot Springs, and Rocky Mountain National Parks. In 1937, he was named regional director of the Service's Region Two at Omaha, remaining there until 1941 when he was moved to a similar position in the Service's Region One at Richmond, Virginia. He was awarded the coveted silver Pugsley Medal in 1950 for his outstanding work in the conservation field. A highly competent administrator, Allen moved to Washington in 1951 as an assistant director of the Service.

A Californian, Ernest P. Leavitt, succeeded Allen in January 1931. Leavitt began his national park work in 1910, six years before the National Park Service was established. The first twenty of his long years of Government service Leavitt spent in Yosemite National Park, where he rose from clerk to assistant superintendent. After serving for almost three years in Hawaii, he was transferred to the superintendency of Colorado's Mesa Verde National Park and subsequently to Lassen Volcanic National Park, California. In 1937, he was moved to the superintendency of Crater Lake National Park, retiring from there in 1952 after more than forty years of devoted and efficient duty with the National Park Service.

Edward G. Wingate, a surveyor-engineer who came to Hawaii as a Geological Survey topographer early in the 1920's, was appointed as Leavitt's successor in November 1933. A native of North Carolina, Wingate received his college training at night school at George Washington University, simultaneously holding down a full day-time job which provided for his living and schooling expenses. Until he became associated with the National Park Service in 1933, he served in various capacities with the Geological Survey, beginning as a rodman in 1920 and progressing to associate engineer for topographic and geodetic surveys under Jaggar.

Wingate resigned in the spring of 1946 as the fifth superintendent of Hawaii National Park. He is residing currently at the small village of Kapoho, on the Island of Hawaii.

During the short interval between Wingate's resignation in March 1946 and the arrival in June of his successor, Francis R. Oberhansley, Chief Ranger Gunnar O. Fagerlund served as acting superintendent of the park.

A descendant of some of the early pioneers of Utah, Oberhansley was born in that state in 1896. He was raised on his parents' ranch in Spanish Fork Valley and from early youth acquired a deep love for the out-of doors. After serving in the Navy in World War I, he completed his college work at Utah State. In later years he did graduate work in biology and wildlife management there.

Oberhansley prepared for an academic career and taught school and coached athletics for several years in Washington and Utah. In 1930, he was appointed to a summer naturalist position at Yellowstone National Park. The next four summers he returned to the park as a senior ranger-naturalist, going back in the fall to teach geology at Ogden, Utah.

The Park Service lured him away from the teaching profession in 1935, when he joined the Yellowstone staff permanently. During the ten years he was associated with that park, he conducted extensive research on wildlife management problems, devoting particular attention to the trumpeter swan, whose numbers were critically low at the time.

After serving in ranger and naturalist positions in Yellowstone, Oberhansley was transferred to Sequoia National Park in 1939 to head up the park's interpretive program. Four years later, he was called into the Navy and served until 1945 as training officer at the Corpus Christi, Texas, Naval Air Station. He returned to Sequoia after the war and remained there until he became superintendent of Hawaii National Park.

Oberhansley moved on to Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming, in the fall of 1953 as superintendent. He was succeeded at Hawaii by John Wosky, a Park Service veteran, who came to his new post from the superintendency of Oregon's Crater Lake National Park.

Inauguration of the park's full-fledged interpretive program began in the spring of 1931 with the arrival of Park Naturalist John E. Doerr, Jr. Until the first full-time naturalist arrived, interpretation of the park story fell to the rangers, seasonal ranger-naturalists, and the superintendent, with a frequent and welcome helping hand from Jaggar and Finch. The new naturalist established an interpretive program that met with immediate and hearty public response, one that has carried successfully through the years. Doerr is now filling the post of chief naturalist of the Park Service in Washington, D. C.