Bruce W. Black

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Bruce W. Black Oral History Interview

Above photo by Bruce Black

Interviewer: Stephen R. Mark, Crater Lake National Park Historian

Interviewee and Date: Bruce W. Black and wife Barbara, September 27, 1988

Interview Location: Bruce Black’s residence in Corvallis, Oregon

Transcription: Transcribed by Darci Desharnais Gomolski, 1994

Biographical Summary: Bruce Black served as the park’s chief naturalist from 1959 to 1963. Although this was a relatively brief period in a long career which spanned more than 30 years, those four years were important ones in Crater Lake National Park. Many of the changes to park facilities and operations wrought by Mission 66 occurred at that time, and a number of these are still apparent more than a generation later.

Most of this interview is captured on the following transcription. Some explanatory field notes and subsequent correspondence are in the park’s history files.

Materials Associated with this interview on file at the Dick Brown library at Crater Lake National Park’s Steel Visitor Center: taped interview; some additional notes and correspondence in file. Slide taken of him and Mrs. Black at time of interview, also portrait in the photo file.

 

To the reader:

Bruce Black served as the park’s chief naturalist from 1959 to 1963. Although this was a relatively brief period in a long career which spanned more than 30 years, those four years were important ones in Crater Lake National Park. Many of the changes to park facilities and operations wrought by Mission 66 occurred at that time, and a number of these are still apparent more than a generation later.

Most of this interview is captured on the following transcription. Some explanatory field notes and subsequent correspondence are in the park’s history files.

Stephen R. Mark

July 1994

We’ll begin with a couple of questions that I have composed, and the first group is about your background and life as chief park naturalist at Crater Lake.

My first question is where did you grow up and what is your educational background?

From age 3 to 8, I lived in the southern Sierra Nevada foothills on the Kern, Tule, and Keweah rivers because my father worked for the Southern California Edison Company. We moved from the Kern River station to Long Beach, California, when I was seven or eight and were there during the Long Beach Earthquake. When I was ten, we moved to Big Creek in the central Sierra. That’s where I developed my interested in the outdoors—living for a time next door to the district ranger office. While in Big Creek, I started as a forestry student at the University of California, Berkeley. I went in the Army when I was 20 and spent some of my time in the “Mountain Troops,” 10th Mountain Division.

While growing up in Big Creek, I spent a lot of my youth backpacking and skiing and associating with U.S. Forest Service people and mountaineers. Eventually, I graduated from the University of California with a bachelors degree in forestry in June of 1948.

What made you decide to enter the National Park Service? How did you work your way up from, like you said, seasonal park ranger to park manager?

During the time that I was in the Army my parents moved from the Big Creek power system down to the Kaweah River. They lived at the plant about a mile below the headquarters for Sequoia National Park. When I got out of the Army, and after sitting around home for a couple of weeks, it was apparent that I needed to look for a job. The superintendent, Colonel White, and chief ranger, John Wagner, gave me a job in Giant Forest as a fire control aide, making $1440 per annum.

I interviewed Frances Lange a couple weeks ago, one of the landscape architects in the ‘30s, and he talked about Colonel White in 1931.

Colonel White was superintendent of Sequoia two different times, as I recall. He’d been there earlier, and I think he was regional director, and spent some time in the Washington office. He was the superintendent at the time I got out of the Army. He’d also been superintendent when I was a four year old when we lived on the Keweah River. I remember a story of him coming down to the powerhouse to see the chief. The Colonel asked to see the chief and my father told the chief was away. The Colonel told my father to tell the chief that he wanted to see him. My father asked him who he was (my father was new there) and the Colonel did not like that because everybody should know him. The Colonel was back again when I went there in 1945 and I was employed as a fire control aid. He was still superintendent in the summer of 1947 at the time of the Morro Rock Fire. We’re talking more about the history of Sequoia (than Crater Lake) right now.

How did I work my way up the ladder? Well I had intended to be with the Forest Service. When my parents had moved to the area just outside the park, it was very convenient to take this job for the summer, because I intended to go back to the university that fall. I liked the National Park Service so much I decided that they treated me so well, that I decided that was where I wanted to spend my career. I did go back to the University of California in the fall. However, I met my wife in Sequoia.

Barbara (wife): That first summer.

She was a teacher working for the concessioner that summer. That fall she went back to her teaching in Riverside, I went to Fresno State College and so we commuted back and forth for that year.

Barbara: Until December when we were married.

Oh yes, married. She lived in Riverside and I lived in Fresno. In the summer of 1946, I was employed as a seasonal ranger in Giant Forest. Henry Schmidt was my district ranger and we lived on Highlands, in a tent house. We spent the summer there and then moved to Berkeley in the fall of 1946. The summer of 1947 was spent at forestry summer camp in the Plums National Forest, so I missed that summer in the parks. Barbara spent that summer up there on a dude ranch very close to where I was, so we weren’t too far apart. I went back to the University and graduated from there in June of 1948, returning to Sequoia as a seasonal ranger.

Barbara: You took the Civil Service Test that fall and at some point got to be career conditional. When I was in the hospital with our first child, you told me that three career conditional positions had been filled with three other people and that your services would no longer be required! Here we were living in a park house with a new baby.

The Civil Service Commission, however disqualified those three and within 24 hours I was in! So, I really perspired for a short time! I then become a permanent park employee and we moved around about every six months within Sequoia/Kings Canyon. Hospital Rock, Ash Mountain, Giant Forest , Lodgepole, Grant Grove and Cedar Grove. We spent one summer in Roaring River, which is a backcountry station where we packed in the family and lived in lean-tos because there was no cabin. It was a good pioneering experience with two little children.

Barbara: A two and a half year old girl and a three and a half month old baby.

The following year I was promoted from a GS-5 to a GS-6 with the great title of  Backcountry Coordinator. It was too big a job, considering how much backcountry territory there is in two parks. I spent almost all my time that summer in Kings Canyon National Park doing backcountry work in horseback. I had always said I’d never leave the Sierra Nevada, ever.

Barbara: Even if he was promoted, but that was all right with him!

In 1953, however, Henry Schmidt (who, by that time had become an assistant chief ranger along with John Rutter), was appointed superintendent of Sitka/Glacier Bay in Alaska. He wanted me to go to Glacier Bay, so that was too much to turn down. I could leave the Sierra Nevada for Alaska. So we moved to Sitka in May or June of 1953. Although other rangers had served up there on a temporary basis (Wayne Howe and Oscar Dick come to mind), I was technically the first ranger just for Glacier Bay National Monument. I got promoted all the way up to GS-7, trading my horse and mules in Sequoia for a 50 foot ex-Coast Guard vessel. We spent winters in Sitka because there were no living facilities, except for a shack at Glacier Bay. We’d go up there for the summer and do the spring and fall patrols to establish a Park Service presence in the tremendous wilderness; it was more of a lawless area.

Similar to some of the things that the NPS had to do in 1980 after the passage of the Alaska lands bill.

Probably so. People were not used to law enforcement presence up there at that time. In addition, there was not a lot known about Glacier Bay, so we had the pleasure of exploring.

You did a lot of the survey work?

For example, we went into one bay, which according to the Coast and Geodetic Survey chart, was mostly under glacial ice. This was Adam’s Inlet and it was completely free of ice. This was where we found several thousand molting Canada geese which nobody, except fishermen and prospectors (who never reported them), knew about. As a result of this discovery, the NPS and USFWS started a cooperative banding program after we left. We spent two and a half years doing survey’s at Sitka/Glacier Bay. I say “we” because my wife and family were very much involved in this work.

Barbara: We went to Glacier Bay with him and lived either on the boat or in a little cabin on as island.

In February of 1995 I got in an avalanche above Sitka, on Harbor Mountain. Later that year, in late November or December, we moved down to Joshua Tree National Monument where I became the first permanent park naturalist. There were other ranger there, however. Chuck Adams (park ranger) and Les Earenfight (chief ranger) were certainly much more knowledgeable about the desert flora and fauna than I was.

Was that a lateral or did you go up in grade?

I got promoted from a GS-7 to a GS-9. Really getting way up there, I thought!

Was it an easy transition to go from ranger to naturalist?

No, I don’t think it was really easy. The reason I was selected stemmed from the fact that the regional naturalist, or chief of interpretation, I’m not sure how he was designated at that time, John Doerr visited Glacier Bay and spent several days with me.

The former chief park naturalist at Crater Lake.

He was now the head interpreter at the region and one of the many VIP’s who visited us in Alaska.

Barbara: They like the idea of going out in a boat and seeing the glaciers.

I couldn’t help but be very interested in natural history. The Glacier Bay experience gave me a chance to develop the first checklist of birds there and make records of everything we saw. I realize now that the records were not nearly as complete as they might have been. Doerr, however, was apparently impressed somewhat with my potential, so I was offered a choice between going to Death Valley or Joshua Tree as a park naturalist. We chose Joshua Tree and lived in 29 Palms. So, our first year, I remember, at 29 Palms it rained a quarter of an inch.

Barbara: After 86 inches of rain in Sitka, it was quite a change! It was kind of neat, though, with three little kids, you know, you don’t need boots and raincoats and stuff; they’d just run out there on the desert.

So, to answer your question, it wasn’t easy to go from a ranger job into a naturalist job.

It doesn’t sound like you were in the shadow of anybody at Joshua Tree, being the first.

That’s true, of course, depending on who you follow.

Barbara: But, the ranger there, Chuck Adams, was very interested in natural history and he knew a lot more about the birds and the animals than Bruce did at the start.

He probably still does. I talked to the superintendent about “I need training” and “how about if I go up to Yosemite for two weeks and see what I can find out from everybody up there”. The regional office approved of this, and Doug Hubbard, who was the chief naturalist in Yosemite at the time, approved of the idea. We went up as a family and spent two weeks at Yosemite and I got into everything I could there: the library, seasonal talks, nature trails, publications, and museum. I worked very intensively for two weeks, and I think this was some of the best training that I ever had.

Do you think Yosemite would be the best place, if you were to do that again?

I don’t know. I haven’t thought about that.

Barbara: Well, you had individual training too. It was just you there, and they helped you and answered all your questions.

That’s right. Tremendous cooperation. I remember when we took a vacation (this was on our own) and we stopped at Grand Canyon. I heard Louis Shelback, who was chief naturalist at that time, speak in the lodge at the north rim of Grand Canyon to a packed house. It was packed with people and Louis came out on stage, no slides, no notes, nothing like that and he mesmerized the audience with what he had to say. And he was so impressive I felt, “gee, it’s impossible to be like that.” I was kind of sorry I decided to become a park naturalist! The contrast was just so great. I think he was one of the people that said, “don’t try to be like anybody else, be like yourself.” That gave me a little different perspective. Also, he showed me all through their study collections, what they were doing there, and this added, I think I could have learned a lot in a number of different parks. But these things were both very helpful. So I spent a lot of time developing nature trails and publications, a slide fire. I also remember that Joshua Tree was loaded with archeology. I spent a lot of time getting the museum study collections in order. And that was at a time when the Park Service was getting much better organized in giving the field a unified system with which to work.

Were there archaeologists on site?

Well, there’d been archeological work done there earlier. Because I was the naturalist there, I had an opportunity to spend time with people from, I believe it’s UCLA, and elsewhere, and regional archaeologists in the park. It was still so unexplored at that time. My eyes were opened through having been out in the field with them, seeing what they saw. So any time I could spare three hours away from the office, I could always find a new archeological site. So that was great. But it was in February of 1959 that we moved to Crater Lake. We moved into Sleepy Hollow. The house had a kitchen which was too small for table, and a small living room with a oil stove in it.

Barbara: And you had to put the table in the living room because there wasn’t room in the kitchen.

It also had a small bedroom. Upstairs you had a 35 foot long attic. One end of it had been made into a small room where we put our oldest girl, and then we put another girl into the next space which was unfinished, and we wrapped our boy around a hot water tank and chimney!

Where in Sleepy Hollow?

The last houses on your right (1).

Barbara: You know the house with the washing machines and stuff? Well, you start around the circle from there, it was right on the outside curve as you turn on that.

Right. It’s the last house on the right and there’s a little stream going by. That was it. And then we found out why the sloped roofs aren’t all that great, either. Because the snow falls so heavy that snow slides off there’s no other place for it to go, so it just keeps building up. Well, they took care of this by bringing a bull dozer in and pushing the snow away so it slide. Tom Williams was superintendent. He had been living in Medford. Then, because of the new housing, they pulled the superintendent up to the park (2).

He kept the Medford house, though (3). For some reason, they decided that the superintendent should move back down to Medford. I think it was in June that Tom J. Williams moved up to the superintendent’s summer quarters(4) making his quarters available, so we were fortunate enough to get in there, which seemed like paradise, and it was a wonderful place to live. We stayed there, of course, for the remainder of the four years we were in the park.

Barbara: We were there four years, and we spent about five months, or so, in Sleepy Hollow.

Yes. Dick Brown was assistant park naturalist. I’m trying to remember the name of the chief ranger….Jack Broadbent.

Barbara:  He lived in the stone houses.

They lived in the stone houses.

That circle of three…the next set above the cottages?

Well, the stone houses are the ones up above what you call the hospital.

There was one house that was traditionally the chief rangers?

I don’t know, I can’t comment on that. My job there was mostly office work. My office was upstairs in the administration building. I could look out my window onto the snow gage and right across the half from me was Dick Brown’s office.

We’re back after a short break, and discussing Crater Lake.

Well, I don’t remember the exact year, but it was probably around 1958 or 9, that Dick Brown took a promotion transfer down to Muir Woods a chief naturalist, and I hired Dave Dame to replace Dick, and Dave eventually went up to the Washington office as chief of interpretation.

He’s mentioned in some of the reports.

Well, this was Dave’s first job with the Park Service, he had brought quite a bit of talent with him. He was the one who made a model of Crater Lake one winter there.

The model that’s at Sinnott Memorial?

Yes. (5)

I wondered who made it.

The winter staff included a secretary, assistant naturalist, and chief naturalist. So it was a small staff, and then the summer staff was 13 people, including one man who did maintenance work, whatever needed to be done. A lot of the duties were a matter of maintaining continuity because previous naturalists developed a very fine program. It was a matter of maintaining that and adding to it. One thing I added was having a naturalist at the first overlook when people came in from the north to see the lake (6). That had its drawbacks, because it could be cold and unsheltered.

The North House was gone by that time?

I don’t remember just when that was taken out, but it was not at the location where we needed it. There were no sanitary facilities, so we’d have naturalists on for a few hours at a time. I don’t think we ever put anybody there all day. We needed people oriented staff to talk to visitors getting their first view of Crater Lake.

Sort of like what we call the “rover” at Rim Village.

Yes. That would be the sort of thing it was. We tried a few other innovations such as a field trip to Union Peak, which required going through a locked gate at that time. After describing the conditions the people would have to put up with, we never got any takers.

Was it by vehicle or walking?

By vehicle up to the base of Union Peak, then scramble up to the top.

Up the short trail.

Yes. So, that was one that didn’t make it. I think the North Junction was a good idea. We changed some names around, too, which may seem insignificant now, but to make the little visitor center, so called, at Rim Village more inviting to people. While I was there the exhibits at Sinnott Memorial were refurbished. Previous park planners and park naturalists had planned the exhibits for the Watchman, and so while I was there we finished those off as they were developed down at the San Francisco museum lab.

So the Watchman was being used as a museum?

Yes. The exhibits were installed while I was there.

It’s boarded up now.

Oh. Too bad. I had a hand in helping plan those. Then there had been plans for exhibits at various points around the rim, and down at Pumice Desert and the Pinnacles area. I was very much involved in the text for those and the drawings and my good friend Jeff Adams helped me write texts. If he didn’t know what I was trying to say, I re-did it. After the exhibits were constructed in San Francisco, the park crews put them in place on the stone pedestals. The original stone pedestals are still there, I believe, but not the original exhibits. I don’t know what generation we have now. But anyway, this was a significant improvement in the interpretation of the lake. Revision of several booklets, including the Ruhle Road Guide to Crater Lake National Park, also happened. A lot of my winter time was spent planning for the following summer and going through employment applications.

So, as chief, you really controlled the hiring?

That’s correct.

This was also a time when 101 Flowers of Crater Lake got off the ground and several other publications which I don’t remember right now.

Was the book published in Eugene?

No. it was from a Seattle outfit. The author had been a seasonal employee (7).

Were the kinds of people you hired largely college faculty or grad students?

Pretty much thought some of them were school teachers. I think we had a rather high caliber of employees there. We expected quite a lot out of them, and this included how they wore their uniforms. I remember one saying something about, “well, they don’t have to do that at some other park.” And the answer was, “well, this is our, and this is what we’re going to do.” Although the seasonal employees thought that quite a bit was expected of them in the way of performance and appearance, they had a pretty high esprit de corps, too. One thing that added to that were the parties that we had every now and then.

Were those parties held….

Mostly at our house.

Barbara: We invited the neighbors because they sometimes wondered what all the racket was about.

It was when I was there, too, that we installed the lake level recorder down at Cleetwood Cove. That was at the instigation of people involved in U.S. Geological Survey, people out of Medford. It was in cooperation with them. They maintained the recorder but the park installed it (8). And that was quite a project.

The original ones were on the south side of the lake, on the old lake trail.

On the rocks. This is a recorder sitting out there at Cleetwood Cove, and maintenance employee Dick Skivington was the one that learned how to do scuba diving so that he could help get in installed on that rock. I remember Jeff Adams said it would never last because the weather could get very rough on the lake.

How did you evaluate the seasonal naturalist?

I think that was one place I feel like I had put a lot of effort into evaluations and having close-outs before anybody would leave the park. I spent about an hour, sometimes, with my assistant, sometimes not, going over their performance. And sometimes doing that on a lesser scale during the season, too, giving them a chance to say what they want to say. I believe that the evaluations were a meaningful experience for the seasonals and the permanent employees, too. I put a lot into it. And I would say evaluations are one of the hardest jobs that any supervisor is ever called upon to do. If they are done well, they are useful. If they are not, why, they almost might as well not be done.

Did you do naturalist programs?

I did some naturalist programs late in the season. I’d even done that as a well, actually, when I was stationed in Cedar Grove in Sequoia/Kings Canyon National Park. The seasonal naturalist there got me to do a few evening programs. I also did this a little in Glacier Bay when I was still a park ranger. At Joshua Tree I was involved in seasonal naturalist programs. I shouldn’t say “seasonal” naturalist, but “natural history” or “historical presentations” in Joshua Tree. I was also interested there, starting in Joshua Tree, with outdoor amphitheaters and rear screen projection. And I found that I could use rear screen projection during the day by setting up in my office with the projector and then I could be outside with people seated out in the open and show slides and talk about the natural history of the area. So, rear screen projection was just kind of getting off, it was in the pioneering stage, then. And when I went to Crater Lake I was still interested in something that was going on in Yosemite, too. So, eventually we went from a very primitive but effective, outdoor amphitheater with blocks to sit on and a plywood screen. Eventually we moved up from that to the current Mazama campground outdoor theater.

The blocks were the old rustic logs that had been cut, and would be situated in a kind of semi-circle.

That’s right. These were blocks that were just about seat height. Between that and the present amphitheater was some benches with backs to them so people could rest a little bit. We also used the old selector slides, which were shown on a specific type of side projector. A lot of money was spent on selector slides, but it seemed like a good thing.

Were they all the same location?

No. The earlier amphitheater was further south, in a location which is closer to Annie Springs.

The old part of the campground?

Old part, that’s right. Then the new amphitheater with rear screen projection was in the newer part of the campground. One thing we always did back then, too, was we’d go around and personally invite all the campers to come to the program.

We’re talking about the Annie Springs and Mazama campgrounds.

I had great expectations for the new amphitheater. And I’m afraid I’m not completely happy with the results. I wasn’t then and I’m still not. The old primitive amphitheater had a kind of a closeness, that informality there, that the new amphitheater does not seem to have.

It’s more anonymous. You can show up late and nobody will see you.

Right. I think the lack of group singing is prevalent throughout all the parks I’ve visited. I think the programs are lacking in this feeling of warmth because of the loss that I’m seeing.

It also seems to be part of an older image of the ranger that many people have.  

I think you’re right, and I could talk a long time on what’s happened to the park ranger and the park interpreters over the years. That would be another story.

I did do some naturalist programs early and late when the staff was short, but I was very busy with supervising and spent most every night evaluating or attending the naturalist programs that were going on. So they were not out on their own. I think that has a real beneficial effect on interpreters if they know that the chief is interested in what they’re doing.

Did you lose people to fires?

Never lost anybody to a fire while I was there.

That’s one of our current difficulties is that late in the season we lost almost half of the staff when they go out to fight fires (9).

Our interpreters were not trained in fire fighting, is one thing.

It may be more emphasis on interagency cooperation.

Could be that. So much was required of interpreters at that time, and so much training. We’d have a training session that was a carry-over from previous years and we’d try to get them trained somewhat before they’d start talking to the public. But it really would be about the end of the summer before we’d feel like we really had a good operating level. If you’d start fragmenting with still more duty… well, we did give them one day or a few hours, I guess, of fire control training. But certainly they didn’t have the expertise in it that is expected these days. So I don’t recall I’ve ever lost any of them.

From year to year did you have a lot of returning naturalists, or many times first time people?

The turn-over was about fifty percent, so this was a problem. We had some that came back year after year. That continuity was very valuable. Many employees worked just one year. We had some really outstanding people. Hans Nelson, when he was there, started doing some work on the sediments on the bottom of Crater Lake. And I think I gave him two days of government time and he contributed his days off to do this work. He was taking cores from the bottom of the lake.

His master’s thesis was geology of the lake.

That was, that’s right. And he found out what the Geological Survey was like. He made quite a name for himself (10).

As for working out of Medford, I never did that. I visited the Medford office, and I did talk to Dr. Adolph Murie. He wrote The Wolves of Mount Mckinley. I was very impressed with him. I wish I’d spent more time listening to him.

How much research there was being done in the park at that time, or were there any interagency projects on going?

Well, the one interagency project was with the Geological Survey on lake level work. I should have mentioned the U.S. Coast Guard and Geodetic Survey in 1959 mapped the lake bottom. Dick Brown was very much into research. He was very interested in that when he came back as chief naturalist in the park. I had made a point of getting somebody from the regional office to the park every year. Primarily Russ Grater would be involved with the interpreter’s training program.

I know that seasonal employees have often not seen people from the regional office.

We tried to involve Russ Grater in a party with naturalists, too.

Barbara: When he came was when we’d have a party and have everyone.

Yes. And he was a great person to have up there. I didn’t have a lot of involvement with the Natural History Association. I shouldn’t, perhaps, say that, because before I left we were having meetings in the park. I don’t remember no much detail about those. Dick Brown was a lot more involved with the natural history, and Nature Notes.

Dick Brown mentioned that there was a guide school conducted at Oregon Caves about the time, maybe slightly before, the seasonal naturalists showed up at Crater Lake because the concession guides had to be trained. What was that like?

We had that guide school at Oregon Caves every spring and we tried to imbue the guides with the park philosophy. And talked about the quality of presentations trying to let them see their job more in terms of what it would be like if they were park employees rather than concession employees. That’s what we were after.

So they had to learn some geology.

We did give training in geology, but it was just so fast, we’d throw them so much.

Did they have any access to literature if they wanted to read?

Well, I think so. I don’t remember too well. There was what I considered a good publication on Oregon Caves geology that was put out while I was there by the management assistant.

I noticed The Underworld of Oregon Caves by Roger Contor.

Yes, he did that while we were there. Visits were not too regular to Oregon Caves. We made that one big push in the spring and maybe once or twice during the main season we were able to get over there to audit the work they were doing.

It is a long trip.

It is a long trip.

In a lot of ways it makes more sense to manage Lava Beds the same.

That’s true. People seem to do quite well after they’ve been stationed there in that position at Oregon Caves. Roger Contor has gone on to greater fame, Bob Smith, and old Cal classmate of mine…

Barbara: He retired as chief ranger at Sequoia.

Right. John Townsley ended his career when he died as superintendent of Yellowstone.

They all occupied that position.

Occupied that station.

That would have been basically the person who was in charge of the park.

Yes. It was really acting, pretty much, as the superintendent.

I know you’d mentioned earlier that you had done a background in archeology at Joshua Tree. Were there any emphasis on cultural resources at Crater Lake?

There were programs on the early history of Crater Lake National Park given at the amphitheaters. And the Indians..we didn’t have any archeological sites to my knowledge. I did try to get something started at one time on an archeological inventory, and I don’t remember whether that actually happened or not. Archeology at Crater Lake was certainly pretty well hidden.

I asked that question about Cressman being around. His work, however, was generally outside of the park.

I remember the name.

Fort Rock Sandal…

That work was done before I was at Crater Lake, but it was emphasized in the programs. There was very little in the collection. I remember my son found a projectile point on top of Union Peak once.

What work did you do in the park’s museum collection?

I remember working up the collection catalogs and encouraging that work, and assigning seasonals to do some of it, too. And assistant naturalists. I guess, how much of that got accomplished is something you can see by going through the collections. David Huntzinger was one of the seasonals that contributed quite a bit of the insect collection. That’s the David Huntzinger that has a brother Hugo Huntzinger, who was at one time superintendent of, I believe, Haliakila. We had a couple of fire control aides, Doug and Dave Morris. One of them was superintendent of Katmai, while the other was at Grand Canyon (11).

There was a proposal to move the park headquarters to the south entrance about that time. Was that ever seriously funded, or considered or did it run into opposition?

It was seriously considered. I remember being very much opposed to it, myself. And years later when I was working in master planning in San Francisco, I went with a planning team to Crater Lake. This would have been about 1967 or ’68, right about then. And it was still being seriously considered and I was still opposed to it.

In that report that I brought you listed a number of reasons.

When we went to Crater Lake, Tom Williams was superintendent, and there was the finest esprit de corps and cooperation on the staff and the families of any park I had been familiar with up ‘til that time. And I was amazed of find out that it hadn’t always been that way. In fact, before Tom got there was a lot of dissention, strife, and the sort of things going on in the park. Tom Williams started having parties and bringing park employees together and Tom was a good listener, too. So, he turned that park staff around, there was a real fine quality there, I felt, under him.

He spent a lot of time in the park.

He did when we were there, yes.

I know that hasn’t always been the case.

That had not always been the case. That’s one reason why I’m so strong on the park staff all being in the park. Because of the quality of the teamwork that you get when this happens if you have the right people in leadership positions. They had, along with Tom, Raymond Rudell who was assistant superintendent at that time, and we had known Ray from our Sequoia days, too.

So you were around during three superintendents during the time you were there?

Tom Williams, Otto Brown, Ward Yeager.

Barbara: Novak.

Novak. Yeah, Novaks were there. Strong assistant superintendent.

We’re in section B now, when we talk about personalities and events at Crater Lake 1959-’63, although we’ve done a bit of that in section A.

Did you have much a contact with Lava Beds at that time?

When I was there, no, not a lot. But we did have some contact. I don’t remember just what types of contact there was, and I can’t differentiate in my memory now between what was official and what was on my own time.

But as far as official projects in geology or archeology, would it have been very separate?

It would have been very separate, that’s right.

The next question is more a broad one about the memorable events at Crater Lake in the early ‘60s. I refer to just a couple of events such as the millionth visitor and then there was a plane crash where  the pilot bailed out over the lake, was rescued, and then the plane went into Timber Crater and started a fire.

I remember that. The pilot was flying, he didn’t know Crater Lake was below him, and he lost the plane; he bailed out. When he came under the cloud cover he saw the lake under him. It’s my recollection that a ranger by the name of Williamson was working on the park service boat at the Cleetwood Cove dock at that time. Saw him came down, went out and picked him up.

He’s named in the report as one of the rangers in the rescue.

That’s about all.

I remember the millionth visitor. I remember that day somewhat, somebody was out on the road to determine who that millionth visitor was and stopped them and made some presentation and I don’t remember the details on that either.

It sounded like something that would happen during the Mission 66 years as Public Relations.

Right. Barbara, what do you remember in the way of significant events?

Barbara: The storm.

Oh! The Columbus Day storm! (12)

Barbara: Right! That was exciting! When we lived in the duplex (13), we had a swing-set in the circle in the front. There weren’t any houses there, and there were swings for the kids and so on, and the storm got worse and worse and worse and we wanted to look out but Bruce made us pull the drapes and stay back away from the windows in case a window went. And one of the trees came down right across and swing set, and you could just kind of a “boom”, you know, as trees went down all around, a lot of them went down. And some of them went down on the corner of a house in Sleepy Hollow and hit the water tank and water was spouting. That was the worst it did.

There were two houses in Sleep Hollow that were damaged, but they weren’t demolished. Of course, everybody all over Oregon who was around then remember that storm. The roads in the mountains and elsewhere too were closed by trees being down, that was quite a big mess. That was a hurricane strength storm.

Barbara: The next morning people that were coming, some of the kids in the park went to school in Chiloquin, and people in Fort Klamath who worked in the Park, and they drove up and met the trees and changed cars and went the other way!

Another significant event was in 1959 that the Coast and Geodetic Survey did their mapping of the bottom of Crater Lake. That was sonar sounding, I guess it was.

That doesn’t come out very well in the files.

It was a very important, significant thing because that’s when we discovered the underwater craters (14). And that’s when the depth was established at 1,932 feet.

The old depth was listed 1,996.

There was a Lieutenant Williams with the Coast and Geodetic Survey who was in charge, and that was a big project. The Park Service boat was used all that summer by them. An interesting side-light was that they ran ashore on the reef on the west side of Wizard Island. That was a very embarrassing thing for them, but they got it fixed without any Park Service help. Then it was a matter of putting their results on the topographic map for park.

I know there was a map about that time produced in the USGS national park series with topographic on the one side, and Howel Williams explanation of geology on the other.

In fact, I had something to do with getting the contours on that, as I recall.  I think when I was in Washington in 1962 I remember spending some time with the Geological Survey on that.

I might talk a little bit about some of the people that were there. Want to do that?

Sure.

Slim and Juanita Mayberry with their four children were there. Slim retired as superintendent of Arches and now they still live in Moab.

Barbara: They were instrumental in getting the ski tow for employees.

Garfield?

No, Sleepy Hollow. Got a little rope tow put up there.

Barbara: Slim had been a professional ski instructor and so they were able to get support to put up this little tow and they were the ones, Slim and his wife, Juanita, had charge of teaching the kids skiing in wintertime. Friday afternoons was ski time at school.

Francis Jacot eventually ended up at some time, as I recall, at Glacier Bay, where I had been, too. He was in the Washington office at one time. And then at the Western Regional Office.

Jim Bainbridge, who…

Barbara: Jake is dead.

Jake is dead. Jim Bainbridge, who had his first Park Service work at Crater Lake, came from the Navy to Crater Lake as an engineer and chief of park maintenance. Jim is now superintendent of Nachez Trace Parkway where I came from when I retired (15).

Lets see about some of these seasonals, too. Doug Cheeseman still sends us Christmas cards, and he’s now in Saratoga, California. He was teaching junior college.

Barbara: It’s DeAnza Junior College.

John Wirtz was a seasonal and is still in the Portland area.

Barbara: His wife, Felicia, was a seasonal, also.

Yes. There were several outstanding women interpreters. In those days there was only one woman, out of 13 seasonals, as an interpreter.

There hadn’t been very many women interpreters?

I think that Felicia was the first, that I know of. There may have been some earlier in the history, but in recent history, she was the first.

Barbara: And then Susan Twight.

Suzie Twight did tremendous as an interpreter and was great for the morale of the group. And Susie now lives over in Weaverville. The last we heard  from Susie was she was a country commissioner. She’d been much involved in environmental work since then.

Was that the period of time that women were first getting into the Park Service for positions other than secretary?

Actually, I think we were on the cutting edge.

Barbara: There’d always been a few exceptions here and there, but for the most part this was new.

I saw that picture of the airline stewardess uniform, but that was a little bit later…

Barbara: Well, what can you tell by their uniforms in those pictures?

They were not wearing the Smokey Bear hats at that time.

You asked a question about the exclusion of private boats on the lake. I don’t recall that having an effect on the naturalist program.

There weren’t row boats for hire?

There were. But you had to stay within view of the dock at Cleetwood Cove. Oh, that was significant thing that happened in 1960, I guess it was, that Cleetwood  Cove was opened up.

Barbara: The trail had been on the other side.

I saw a picture of a posted sign that said, “This is a Mission 66 project.”

1960, Cleetwood Cove.

Were the lake trails on the south side used?

They were closed.

Barbara: It was getting so bad it was dangerous.

After they opened Cleetwood.

Barbara: That’s  what I mean.

Let’s see, there had been a trail down under the lodge, but that was before our time. At the time the trial went down from Rim Village opposite of the cafeteria. That was in use when we went there in 1959. When we were there, there were no restrictions on people hiking down to the lake at any time or any place they wanted to. It sounds like the restrictions have happened since we’ve been there.

Barbara:  People went down the Wineglass.

Did you slide any boats to the lake?

We slid a boat. The rangers acquired a fiberglass boat, and we slid it down onto the lake while we were there. I’m not sure just what year this was, but it might have been about 1960. So we had the big wooden boat which was used for research and by the naturalists. I remember taking it out and putting it to bed each fall. And then the rangers had an outboard fiberglass boat, and getting it down was quite a little project.

Did the concessions operations change very much during the time you were there?

No, they did not.

Were there conflicts with Peyton?

Right. There were some conflicts between the concessioner and the park, and I suppose I had quite a lot of conflict with Ralph Peyton.

You’re not the first person to have mentioned that!

Barbara: He wanted to do things that Bruce didn’t.

He wanted to do things that didn’t seem right. And he was very definitely a businessman wanting to make money. And I could see what he was doing was asking for a lot more than a concessioner could expect to get. It’s like wanting a piece of the cake, and you happen to get a piece, and then you’re not satisfied, so you go back and get another piece, and that seemed to be what he was doing. And he was certainly doing what he saw as the right thing as a businessman, but it was often in conflict with maintenance and park standards.

Where did he house his employees?

Upstairs in the lodge, a terrible firetrap at that time. I think this is when Jack Broadbent was still there. The state fire marshal, of course, you realize he had no jurisdiction over this park, who informally said, if he had authority he would have closed the lodge down. So it seemed to me the park superintendent was really out on a limb by letting it continue to operate as a fire trap because if anything had happened and people had gotten burned, this would have surely of come out. Park superintendents are expendable when something like that happens; they’re very often the ones that take the rap for it.

As was the case in ’75.

Right. Oh, it did catch fire once when we were there and somebody got it put out which, in my viewpoint, was a mistake! I think that lodge isn’t significant when compared with Timberline Lodge, or the Chateau at Oregon Caves. So I have my own feelings about what should have happened to the lodge! That lodge was built at a time when travel was very slow, and conditions have changed…it’s only a 20 or 30 minute drive from Fort Klamath up to the rim. You don’t have the need for that kind of facility anymore.

We were there 30 years ago and all these things were being discussed actively at that time. We needed a visitor center, which every area was getting, under Mission 66. Other areas were getting visitor centers and we still had that old building which had been a photographic studio way back. Last time I visited Crater Lake it was still there, after 30 years. You can make all the plans you want to, until Congress gives you the money to do it with, why, you can just go on making plans. I was involved in the planning of Mission 66 projects for Crater Lake and in the writing of master plans—both when I was employed there and later when I was on the master planning team in San Francisco. It was when I was on that one team that the recommendation was made to make traffic on rim drive one way. My very good friend, David Turello came up with that idea and he was team captain and he sold it. But it was kind of “over my dead body” almost.

Just two years ago it got changed back to two-way.

Great!

So you won out!

Barbara: You’ve been vindicated!

We’re now in Section C and that has to do with your assignments in the Park Service from 1945 to 1980. We’ll start with when you left Crater Lake to go to Cape Hatteras. My first question is on how historical interpretation differs from supervising naturalists?

Well, my job was as chief park interpreter for Fort Raleigh, Wright Brothers, and Cape Hatteras National Seashore. Most of all of our employees were historians, and one naturalist. The job of supervising was about the same regardless of whether naturalists or historians. Our naturalist had a strong interest in history and several of our historians got interested in natural history.

Did you hire the same type of people that we talked about earlier? Were a lot of the seasonal naturalists grad students, or faculty or school teachers?

Not entirely. I’d say the highest level, academically, that I ran into was at Crater Lake. But, of course, at Cape Hatteras our year round staff was much larger. Seasonal staff was proportionately smaller. The interesting thing there, too, was we were more political. North Carolina politicians would make suggestions as to who we might hire as seasonals. Sometimes we got very good people out of those, sometimes we didn’t. I was not afraid to discharge one person that was unsatisfactory, though he threatened me with dire consequences.

Barbara: Through his Congressman?

Yes. Through his Congressman, absolutely.

Part two of our oral history interview with Bruce and Barbara Black on September 27, 1988, in Corvalis. We’re in Section C. We’re talking about Cape Hatteras at the end of part one.

For me as an interpreter, supervising historians didn’t really differ much from supervising naturalists because you let them do their thing and respect them for their expertise. Audit what they’re doing, of course, and encourage them.

Did they do much on the outside?

No. At least during the time I was there they did not. Our historian for Fort Raleigh was a woman who had been there for many years. She retired there and was a native of that area.

Was that typical?

Well, in her case, she just stayed there her entire career. We had a historian for Cape Hatteras who had been in a number of other areas, principally Civil War sites.

We had Bill Harris who came on the first year I was there. He came on as our historian and he was local. But he went on from there to much higher things, including superintendence.  The naturalist we had was a homey type of naturalist, but very much into research, but pretty much within his own self, rather than anything published. Tommy Gilbert was the one I replaced, when Tommy went to the Washington office and was involved in national park work in Africa at one time.

Earlier we talked about your writing some administrative history for Glacier Bay. Did that help with this job, in that you had some introduction, as a writer, to historical method?

Sure. What helped me the most as a writer when I was still in college and asked to do a term paper. I had never done a term paper and didn’t know how. But by that time I was married to Barbara who knew exactly how to write a term paper so she guided me through that and I wrote a term paper which I got an A on. On the policies and objectives of the National Park Service. And that’s where I started to learn a lot of park history and read, studied, the works of people who were even still in the National Park Service. And even had the pleasure of meeting them later, including E.T Scoyen, who was a very wise park administrator.

Barbara: He was superintendent of Sequoia then.

By the time we left there, he was at Sequoia. He went on the to Washington office. Scoyen was the most effective person in the Park Service when he was there, according to a highly placed person under the Assistant Secretary of the Interior. High praise. It was nice to have known Mr. Scoyen.

We talked earlier about Doc Ruhle. Another person who has had a lot to do with trying to set objectives and policies for the Park Service. I know you came across him several times in your career.

Came across him, of course, when he’d visit Crater Lake. He never tried to tell us what to do, but he always had that interest which we appreciated. He wouldn’t even introduce himself, he’d just be there and I happened to know what he looked like. So, I got the chance to chat with him a little. And later, in ’62 when I was in the Washington office, he was also stationed there so I had a number of opportunities to talk with him then. And he was very much involved in national parks in Southeast Asia. What else, I’m not sure, but he was a specialist at the Washington Office at that time.

Was he still doing a lot of naturalist work?

Well, I really wasn’t close to what he was doing. He was in international park work. And I really couldn’t fairly evaluate what was going on at the time. Everybody considered him to be a highly intelligent, motivated person with unbounded energy.

I’m sure some of his ideas may have filtered through some of the parks in Southeast Asia.

He was one of the outstanding people. Outstanding people are not necessarily always recognized. Maybe historians will recognize them as being outstanding ,but while they’re around they’re not.

Was what you did at Cape Hatteras a factor in getting a job at Nachez Trace?

Well, Bob Haraden was the superintendent of Nachez Trace (16). Later Bob told me that he was in the Washington office doing a tour on personnel selection probably for a month or two. And he was seeking an assistant superintendent for Nachez Trace. He knew what he wanted and the interpretive staff there needed a little building up, at that time because there were some problems. He ran through his check list and ended up with me. So that’s when I was offered the job, while in the master planning unit in San Francisco. He expected some things of me I wasn’t ready to give. I did not want to step in and till the interpretive staff how to do their work.

Were they mostly naturalists or some historians on the interpretive staff?

No. The man in change of interpretation at that time was a historian. He had been there a long time and he had health problems. He was replaced by John Mohlhenrich. John Mohlhenrich, who had a very strong background in natural history, came to us from Lassen, where he had been the chief naturalist. He was a very energetic person with a  lot of interest in history and natural history and getting things don. So the program there went well-the main thing I did was encourage that.

Did some of your interest in Nachez Trace stem from your interest in John Muir? As far as interpretation was concerned, was Muir’s 1,000 mile walk to the Gulf ever a topic of discussion?

No, I don’t recall that it ever was. I would say the Nachez Trace was not a place I had ever contemplated moving to. But I had felt after four years that I’d given master planning about what I had to give. One reason I was selected for that was because of my field background. That applied to John Henneberger, too, who was there at that time. I felt like I had given about what I had to give when this job offer came up to go to Nachez Trace, but it was not a promotion. I was a 13 at that time; it was a lateral. I wanted to get into management. And it was my last job; I spent 10 years there. From the viewpoint of career achievement, taking that job might not have been the smartest thing to do because while I was in Cape Hatteras, I knew people in the southeast quite well. During the four years I was in the West I developed a rapport with people in that region. I should probably have stayed in the west if I’d wanted to continue upward in the Park Service hierarchy. By going to Nachez Trace I was once again in the southeast region, but during the time I was in the West, a lot of the personnel in the regional office had changed and I had a job as assistant superintendent, not the number one person. So I think I kind of got stuck there and it seems that people who got to the Nachez Trace tend to get stuck. I have one dubious distinction in being there as assistant superintendent longer than any other person. Charley Marshall was the runner-up on that. It was a good experience and I feel good about the contributions I made at Cape Hatteras with my interp and ranger background.

Barbara: You mean at Nachez Trace?

At Nachez Trace. All my background was useful there in that management job. But I got the job because of that background. Because I’d been a naturalist, which is kind of an exception. Very often superintendents seemed at least at that time and earlier to get picked more on the basis of their ranger background. Although there were always exceptions.

The next set of questions will take us back from Nachez Trace to your job at master planning in San Francisco.

Well, I was at Cape Hatteras, of course, at that time, and declined several promotions. George Hartzog didn’t appreciate that and sent me a letter saying, “you have been selected, and you will report to the San Francisco planning office on such-and-such a time.” I didn’t want to go and I was very unhappy about it and I was even more unhappy when I got there. I didn’t even have a desk or a seat to sit in. I felt pretty low, but it wasn’t long until they sent me out on a field trip to Chiricahua and what would later become Fort Bowie and I began to see the positive side of park planning. It turned out to be, for me, one of the most enjoyable and significant assignments in the National Park Service. During the time I was there I was involved in many aspects of park planning. Well, I went to Guam on a planning team and planned two parks there: World War II in the Pacific and Guam National Seashore. The historic park was established, but the seashore wasn’t.

In Hawaii I worked on planning teams for Hawaii Volcanos and what was then known as City of Refuge, also, Koholaheyyau and Haleakala and I was involved in planning for Olympic National Park, Rainier, although that one was called off because of Scoop Jackson had some political concerns. I as also deeply involved in planning for Redwood National Park.

That was the time of opposition to the boundaries being set at Redwood.

One of the big problems was this “worm”, about a quarter mile sliver that went up Redwood Creek and it was an impossible management situation. Well, since then, of course, the water shed up above the slopes, above that worm, has been acquired by the National Park System. Big changes there. There are lots of interesting things involved with that planning. David Truello was team captain, a very dynamic person.

So the planning for Crater Lake was pretty quiet in comparison to some of the other parks?

Yes. Very quiet. I was also involved in Carlsbad and Guadalupe Mountains.

That was Region Four at that time.

No, we had the southeast and southwest regions also.

So it would be Western Region. And that would have encompassed most of the western states, Hawaii…

Well, it wasn’t a matter of regions, it was a matter of the Western Planning Center which was apart from regional offices. We were assigned parks generally west of the Mississippi River.

It’s the role of Denver Service Center now.

That’s right. Denver Service Center was another reason I took that job to go to Nachez Trace, because they were getting ready to make that move. There was a lot of talk about it at that time.

How was planning at this time different from that done during Mission 66 period? One of the things I was thinking about was that the park system was expanding fast under Hartzog versus the emphasis of getting facilities into parks under Wirth.

I hadn’t thought about that, but now that you mention it, I remember when I was still at Sitka Glacier Bay working on Mission 66 planning. And it was, as I recall, it was more facility oriented. There had been an article in Reader’s Digest, “Let’s Close the National Park.” The purpose of it was to get the national parks up to standard by 1966. That was under Connie Wirth. Then later when I was involved in master planning and even at Crater Lake, after the Mission 66 plan cut-back, we started getting into  another kind of master planning. I’m not sure I’m correct in saying “another kind,” but this is how I remember it; I remember looking at park programs, the total environment of parks within several hundred miles of park, trying to look more into the future, of being more analytical, taking the environment into strong consideration.

Did the landscape architects have much say in all this process?

When I was in the San Francisco office, landscape architects, I would say, dominated. Most of the people in the planning teams were landscape architects, there was never a planning team without a landscape architect. Bill Bowen who had been a park field man, was overall head of planning center. He was replaced by Glenn Hendrix, who, by the way, had been at Crater Lake at one time as a landscape architect. After being in charge of the San Francisco planning center Glenn was in charge when they moved to Denver.

Another factor was Connie Wirth being a landscape architect. So that probably had some influence on their status. I think landscape architects are ideally suited to be park planners because they bring a whole lot of expertise into it, and a broadness of perspective, too. That’s needed. Generally, a landscape architect would be the team captain, although we had a time when we’d just trade jobs, sometimes a team captain would be a team member. I was a team captain for a while on a couple of projects, Redwood bring one of them.

Crater Lake seems to be the best example in the Park Service of one unit being influenced by landscape architects, as having a whole landscape created at one time.

I think Crater Lake is a good example of when you talk about the nations’ gems, as we used to at one time, about national parks being the crown jewels. Crater Lake always comes to my mind as being a crown jewel, even when you see it from the air it’s a crown jewel. It’s a compact park that’s got everything there, the operation is compact, you go to other National Parks and the interpreters very often will be spread out a great distant from the supervisors. I remember talking to a seasonal interpreter at another wild park. He was dropped off at his place, this happened to be Isle Royale, and then that’s the last he saw of his supervisor. And this applies to many parks, the chief interpreter just can’t get around because of the distance involved the time and distance to really supervise seasonal personnel. At Crater Lake it’s such a compact operation you can do this. And I think that reflects on the quality of the interpretation.

It’s generally well-known throughout the service that an evaluation at Crater Lake means something.

Yes, I think so.

Did you have any involvement with wilderness studies?

The National Park Service geared up for wilderness studies during the time that I was in the San Francisco office. I was not specifically in what came to be the unit that took on, although I was involved in wilderness studies. I remember this was part of the first study I was on when I went to Chiricahua and was involved in most of the studies we did for the remainder of the time I was there. That added a whole new area of thinking and philosophy to park planning, “what is a wilderness”?

Which was made difficult by the legal definition being more poetic than definite. In some cases it almost all seemed to die at the same time, too. Certain parks saw the proposals go right through Congress, while others are still on the table as they were in 1970.

Things take a long time.

But there may not be that perceived crisis that will allow a proposal to go through.

That’s true. The Park Service, very definitely, is a political organization. They’re responsive to what people want and sometimes the people take a long time to decide what they want. I remember when we were involved in Guadalupe, at the time I went in there, I thought we had some new idea. Before I was through working on the master plan, I found that the idea had been proposed, at least as far as I can see, not less then thirty years earlier. You often find this in the national parks.

Great Basin might be a good example.

Great Basin is a good example of that. I don’t know how long that goes back. Certainly that long.

The last question relates to some of the things we talked about already, about the greatest changes you saw Park Service, I guess from a broad perspective, during your career.

I think this is a question that it would be good to start the day on. It’s a good question, and the changes have really been tremendous in that the Park Service has expanded greatly, the types of things it does have expanded. I remember a lot of talk about recreation areas, whether they had any place in the National Park Service or not. I should differentiate between National Park System and National Park Service, as my friend John Mohlhenrich did in the last issue of the Courier.

There’s a lot of political considerations in all of this. National parks could not afford to stay the same. You need to continually be considering the public you serve and support. The Park Service needs a constituency and that just broadens constituency, as I see it. Field people would argue, and I was a field person, from a more narrow perspective even such things as historical areas, whether something should be in the National Park System. And then, the recreational areas such as Cape Hatteras. It is a good example of being more like a national park then what might be a recreational area. And so, in some ways, is Point Reyes. There are some recreational areas that are so heavily recreation oriented…

Like the reservoir type…

Like the reservoir type. I know people who I’ve worked with who are not too happy [about recreational areas] if their background is national parks or that type of area. Big changes have occurred, I know in ranger activities. When I was a ranger in Sequoia, rangers were expected to do everything. We gladly did so. Dick Boyer, Jack Anderson, Ted Thompson, Bob Branges, Jack Raftery, we were in Sequoia together at that time. We did everything. Sometimes we’d clean restrooms, do road patrol, the phone line would go out, why maybe we could find the break, I remember doing that. Just everything that needed to be done, we would do it if nobody else was around to do it. If there was somebody else to kick rocks off the road, you could leave it to them, but if they weren’t, boy you’d do it. And you’d fix phone lines or whatever. We had an image of being top notch public servants, and we did not carry a gun. We were friendly, we were accessible, I remember as a seasonal ranger, Henry Schmidt assigned me to campground patrol in Giant Forest and the first thing he did was tell me, “you have got a walk, you can’t drive your pickup through there.” Well, I thought that was being pretty hard on me, but I came to realize that the only way to patrol the campground is on foot. Because you’re accessible, you can talk to people, they feel like they can talk to you, and now for many years more often, the rangers patrol through in their cars. First of all it was pickups, the sedans and they’re in a capsule and they’re going a little too fast and people are reluctant to want to stop them and ask them questions like they would if you were walking through. They have gone to having cars that have the light bars on top, they’re definitely law enforcement types, like the city or state police. Now they wear guns and people don’t have the feeling of accessibility and of friendliness that they had with the park ranger of years ago. I think we’re really lost a lot.

You came in at the time that the uniform had changed sufficiently where you could walk around without those boots and breeches.

Yes. The uniform has not changed all that much from the time we came in.

How did the increasing visitation affect the various positions that you held?

The National Park Service did everything it could do, especially from the Washington and the regional levels, to encourage visitations to encourage visitation to the national parks. Part of this is a matter of having to have a constituency, too. And one big change I’d like to refer to since you asked about change, the effect on backcountry use areas. There was a time when if you cut cross-country especially, you would not see anybody else in the backcountry. Now, you can’t go anywhere where you don’t see other people. And we have a reservation system which would have been unthinkable when I first started out (17).

I think of Sequoia/Kings like that.

I’m think very much of Sequoia/Kings. I spent time in the backcountry of Sequoia/Kings when I was a teenager, too.  I didn’t know the Park Service existed. I wasn’t too respectful of park regulations back then, either. So, I can understand some people who get back in a wilderness park and don’t really understand what it’s all about, because I didn’t either at one time. But the uses have had to be more regulated.

I see the Forest Service, in many cases now, talking about more restrictions in the backcountry because of the heavy use. They’re going more the Park Service direction as far as backcountry goes.

One of the prices you park for population increases, whether it’s in the national park, or national forests or cities is more regulations so that people can live together peacefully.

Footnotes:

1: House 52 in the Sleep Hollow that existed from 1934 to 1987.

2: The new housing was in Steel Circle

3: House 130, the superintendent’s quarters in Medford, was sold in 1965.

4: House 19.

5: This model is currently in the reception area of the Ranger Dormitory (Steel Center).

6: The North Junction.

7: Grant Sharpe published the book through the University of Washington.

8: The Water Resources Branch.

9: The 1988 season was unusual because of the Prophecy Fire at Crater Lake, as well as Fires at Yellowstone and other parks.

10: His “Geological Limnology of Crater Lake,” was accepted in 1961. Dr. Nelson presently works for the US Geological Survey in Menlo Park, California.

11: Dave Morris, formerly at Katmai and Canyonlands, has been Superintendent at Crater Lake since October 1991.

12: A windstorm that occurred on October 12, 1962.

13: House 227, presently occupied by the superintendent and chief of maintenance.

14: Howel Williams subsequently named the largest cinder cone Merriam Cone.

15:  Superintendent from 1980-1990.

16:  Superintendent from 1968-1972.

17: Several of Bruce Black’s report on backcountry conditions in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks are cited in Lary M. Dilsarer and William C. Tweed,  Challenge of the Big Trees ( Three Rivers, CA: Sequoia Natural History Association), p.266.

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