Albert Hackert and Otto Heckert

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Oral History Interview

About the Crater Lake Oral History Series

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

Interview Location and Date: Jacksonville, Oregon, October 31, 1991

Transcription: Transcribed by Chris Prout, August 1997

Biographical Summary (from the interview introduction)

Both brothers were seasonal maintenance employees from 1922 – 1924.These brothers have the distinction of having been employed at Crater Lake further back then anyone I have interviewed. The opportunity to interview them came about when Albert Hackert visited the park in September 1991. At that time he made mention of having hauled rock for the construction of  annexes on Crater Lake Lodge to another NPS employee, Ray Todd. With lodge construction having started the summer, Mr. Hackert’s experiences intrigued me and I arranged to speak with them through their niece, Dorland Offenbacher.

Materials Associated with this interview on file at the Dick Brown library at Crater Lake National Park’s Steel Visitor Center: taped interview; Hackert and Heckert are pictured in slides taken immediately after the interview.

To the reader:  

These brothers have the distinction of having been employed at Crater Lake further back then anyone I have interviewed. The opportunity to interview them came about when Albert Hackert visited the park in September 1991. At that time he made mention of having hauled rock for the construction of  annexes on Crater Lake Lodge to another NPS employee, Ray Todd. With lodge construction having started the summer, Mr. Hackert’s experiences intrigued me and I arranged to speak with them through their niece, Dorland Offenbacher.

Most of the interview, which took place in a farmhouse between Oregon Street and Hanley Road, was captured on the following transcription. Amazingly enough, both brothers were still alive to approve it six years later. A small amount of material related to the interview, such as my field notes and some correspondence with Mrs. Offenbacher, are in the park’s history files.

Stephen R. Mark

(Crater Lake National Park Historian)

October 1997

Albert Hackert and Otto Heckert Oral History Interview

This is an oral history interview given in Jacksonville on October 31, 1991. The interview is a little different from others I’ve done since I am interviewing two man at the same time. Otto Heckert and Albert Hackert are seated beside some of their relatives who have brought out a photo album. I am going to give the microphone to Otto for an introduction, and then it will go to Albert. We’ll proceed toward talking about Crater Lake.

Otto, when were you born and how did you grow up in Jacksonville and how did you come to Crater Lake?  

I was born in 1904 and I went to school in Jacksonville. After I got out of eight grade, I stayed home for a year or two and then went looking for a job. My brother already worked at Crater Lake some, so we went over and applied for seasonal work and were hired by Alex Sparrow. My brother Albert drove the supply truck and hired out as a truck driver, and I thought I could be a truck driver. I could driver a Model T, but I couldn’t driver anything bigger then that, so they started me off driving a little old GMC truck from Medford. They didn’t have any brakes on them trucks in the park area in those days. Of course, they had signs on all the trees: Check your brakes! But we didn’t have to bother because there were no brakes. And when another truck driver was driving a Reo Speedwagon that they’d bought for a supply truck, instead of this old truck that I was taking up there and he was going to show me, be sure that I got to Crater Lake with it. So when we got up to Laurelhurst, up at McCleod, we had to detour across the Laurelhurst bridge and up the other side. It came out at the Green Mountain Ranch they called it. In doing so, I had to ram the front end into the bank occasionally to slow it up to go down that grade to get across this bridge. When I got across the bridge, it muffled out when I got pretty near to the incline on the other side of the bridge and it rolled back. We cranked it up, and when I went up the second time it slipped out of gear and I was freewheelin’ and missed the bridge when I came back down. It dumped a bunch of stuff out of the back end of that thing into the river. About six inches of frame of that old truck hit the upright approach to the bridge and that was the only thing that kept it from going in the river. We had to go down the next day with chain blocks and pull that old truck up out of there. A crew from the camp came back down the next day. I don’t know what they ever did with the old truck from there. I guess they just took it out and wrecked it. I don’t know what else. So then one night, I made such a bad job of getting that old truck up there, they hired me as a teamster. Of course, I got a dollar a day extra, which was fairly good money in those days. So I drove the horses on the grader, grading the park roads and hauling gravel. Of course, they split the four horses when they put them up on these Studebaker dump wagons to haul gravel, you know, and keep the roads repaired. We had quite a long experience up there with just general work. You know, shoveling snow and keeping the roads in shape and everything repaired, that they did.

This dock business over on the island, why, we went around to the Wineglass. That was later in the season, of course, and we felled these trees and peeled the poles and skidded them over a gin pole, they called it, at the head of that Wineglass and shot them over the top. Two guys with a peeve would start the poles over there and they’d run and give them a start and they’d do down that Wineglass which is a pumice slide. Some of them would go clear into the water from the rim around the Wineglass. And then some of them would go down and hit that narrow place, and other ones would come along behind and just splinter. Of course, we had to follow down through, then clean that all up on the way down and be sure to get all the logs down to the water, and then they rafted them together. Next day the launch (1) would come by and hook on to the raft that we’d built there, tie all the poles together and floated them over to the island. We stayed on the island until we’d built this dock.

Was there a trail down the Wineglass for you to come down?

Yeah, there was a trail there. Of course, some of them went down the trail that carried some of the bedding down. We didn’t have sleeping bags in those days. We just had a bedroll, you know. We stayed in that old boathouse that was on the island. We used little metal row boats for a bunk, with a piece of corrugated metal laid on them and propped up to sleep on, you know. We did our own cooking and built that dock.

So there was already a boathouse there? 

Yeah, a small one, enough to hold what boats they had in those days (2). They’d put them over there in the wintertime.

Did the Park Service have any boats or were they all concession? 

I wouldn’t know about that. But, anyway, I got a picture which says we were there for four weeks. I’d always remembered it as being three weeks. It seemed like a whole year, being locked up over there building that dock. And the way that dock was built, it was settled on the bottom of the contour, the shape of the ground, underneath the water to make it sit level when it was finished and it was cribbed up. We wheeled all the rock into the thing with what they call an old steel wheelbar. We kept adding to those cribs to sink it and then added the logs as it went down. They’d add on top until it was finished. I don’t know how long it was, maybe a hundred, maybe a hundred twenty-five yards long. It went from the contour of the ground above the water out to where it was probably twenty feet deep or more at the outer end. Then the lake, as I understand, a year or two or several years later, lowered enough so that they couldn’t use the dock. It was too high. We’ve never been able to see where that dock was when we go up to Crater Lake now and look across there with a pair of binoculars. We never could locate just where that dock was, whether it was disbanded, tore it down or what.

But it would have been at Governor’s Bay, where the present boat houses are, right?

Yeah, I think so.

They built a dock in the ‘30’s, too, so I’m not sure which dock is which. 

Well, the way that was built, it was notched on the end so it interlocked like they built these log houses, you know. They didn’t use too many nails. When you added the rock to it and built on top, that’s supposed to hold it together. Kind of hard to explain just how it set there. We had to start with a small crib at the outer end and keep adding on and making it longer so it’d follow the contour of the ground underneath the shape of the island when it surfaced and it was level. So people could go on the island from the dock.

They built a dock in the ‘30’s, too, so I’m not sure which dock is which. 

Well, the way that was built, it was notched on the end so it interlocked like they built these log houses, you know. They didn’t use too many nails. When you added the rock to it and built on top, that’s supposed to hold it together. Kind of hard to explain just how it set there. We had to start with a small crib at the outer end and keep adding on and making it longer so it’d follow the contour of the ground underneath the shape of the island when it surfaced and it was level. So people could go on the island from the dock.

That was before the days of floating docks?  

Oh, yeah.

So you were there after Albert and your brother John had already worked at the park?  

My brother John was up there in ’22, I presume. Then I went up in ’23 to work as a hand laborer. That’s when building the dock took place. The next year I went up, they gave me the team job. That was the year I wanted to be a truck driver, too, and didn’t make it.

We have a question about wages. What were they, year to year, and then for various jobs?  

I can’t remember what the wages were, but you could save about $300. That would be three months work, as I remember. Of course, me getting a dollar a day extra for taking care of the horses, and being a teamster, made quite a bit of difference in those days.

Was it quite a bit more than what the concession people were getting.  

I don’t know what they would be getting. You have no expenses and no place to spend anything. Your board was included in your wages. We had a good cook there, W. Van Camp, at the bunkhouse, the government camp (3). They’ve got so many building there now, it looks like a city.

Let’s go over to Albert and have him do an introduction.  

Well, my name is Albert. I was born in Nebraska. My folks moved here when I was six months old. I’ve been in Jacksonville ever since.

What was the year you were born?  

I was born in 1902. so I’ve been around quite awhile.

You’re as old as the park, then?  

Just about. I decided I wanted to get out and make some extra money. There wasn’t enough work on the ranch for all of us, so I got a job at Crater Lake. That’s where I spent two and a half years.

Which year did you start?  

In ’23-24, I worked for the Park Service. The first year I just drove truck and all the crews around the road jobs and what have you, and then the second year they bought a new Reo Speedwagon, and boy, was I flying high with that. I spent most of my time hauling supplies from Medford. I’d make a trip twice a week. One week I made three trips down one day and back the next. It was an all-day job going from Medford to Crater Lake over the old dusty roads. No paved roads. I might add that my wages, the second year, were 90 dollars a month, board and room. I saved all my money and when I came down, I bought a new car. It too all of it.

How much would a car be?  

I paid 600 dollars for a ’24 Model Chevrolet.

How many places would there have been for a tourist to stop during that time? Would there have been hotels along the way for them to stay, or would most of them had camped? Would they camp at, say, Union Creek, or spend the whole day getting up to Crater Lake and camp there?  

I don’t remember any camps along the road at that time. They ran a stage line, not, I don’t believe it was a permanent stage line, but my older brother at that time drove stage up there occasionally. A man in Medford had the Cadillac agency. He’d drive one of them Cadillac’s and take people up to the hotel. I don’t remember any campgrounds.

I know Union Creek was developed about 1922 or so. That’s the only one I can think of that would have been in that period. I know Prospect would have had a hotel. 

I used to stop at Prospect for dinner. I’d make it from Medford to Prospect and then go the rest of the way.

How long would it take from Prospect up to Crater Lake?  

Well, I don’t know. But lots of times it would be late in the evening when I’d get to Crater Lake, to the government camp. It was an all-day trip.

Otto had a number of different jobs. Were you always driving truck during the entire period you were there?  

Yeah.

Did you get detailed to do anything else in the park?  

Well, sometimes I’d take a road crew out if I didn’t have to make a trip to Medford. I’d take a road crew out to work on the roads.

Mostly grading the roads?  

No just patching. When they built the addition on the hotel, I hauled rock from the Watchman to where they built the annex on the hotel. At that time, the contractor had just a tent where he fed his crew. Of course, they loaded me from the Park Service to the contractor during that time that I hauled rock. But I had to east in this makeshift camp they had up there at the Lodge. We hauled the lumber from Chiloquin by truck, what lumber they needed.

Who was the contractor?  

Fran Salter. I think his first name was Frank. I’m not sure, but Salter was his last name.

He was out of where, Medford? 

I believe he was. I’m not certain where he was from.

How many men do you think worked on that addition to the Lodge?  

Oh, I’d hate to even make a guess. I don’t know. All I did was drive truck and haul rock. I stayed at the government camp overnight, but I’d east my meals up there with the contractor and his crew. They had, I’d say, five or six, stone masons laying the rock, but as far as carpenters, I don’t know.

Was the kind of rock different from the sort of roc that you would have seen in the building that was already there? Because, in appearance, it does look different.  

Well, I’m not sure. They got quite a bit of that rock from around the Devil’s Backbone, in that area. (OH)

Well, the rock we hauled was from around what they call the Watchman, on the west side. (AH)

Near where the rock was taken later on?  

I had a gentleman ask me how’d they load those rocks. I said by strength. We didn’t have no machine. We just got up there and rolled them down off the mountain and into the truck.  And we loaded them the same way. We didn’t have dump trucks. We threw them in the truck and threw them out.

So there were a few people there at the Watchman to haul rock all the time?  

We’d take a crew with us in the morning, two or three men, to help us load. We had two trucks. The government had two trucks and the contractor had one truck. So they had three trucks up there hauling rocks.

Was that also used for the lodge, or did they have other projects that needed rocks?  

No, I think that’s the only thing.

Where did the concession employees live at that point? Was it tents outside the lodge, or did some of them live inside the lodge?

Some of them stayed in the lodge, but I think they had a few cabins.

Off to the east of the lodge?  

Yeah.

I remember seeing pictures of tent cabins. There was also a comfort station built there. I’ve always wondered about it because it looked real similar to a studio that Kiser built  about that same time. [It was] basically a rock building.

You didn’t get involved in living where the tents were?  

No, no. About the only place they could be is between the lodge and the plaza, where the tables and stuff are up on that common knoll.

Up at the picnic area, where the old campground is?

The picnic area is what I meant.

There was an original road that was steeper that we now use as a ski trail. Was that used at all?  

I presume so. We used to hike up there in the evenings. We’d hike up and down that old road because it was shorter (4). I remember seeing parts of the steel showing. (OH).

Maybe we should break right now and then we could go on to a couple of topics.  

We (Dave Wilcox, Marion Robbins, Albert and I) were sent in there to track that fire down. We would trench it and put it and put it out. The other guys couldn’t pull a crosscut saw, so we’d fall a couple of trees. The wind came up while we were eating our lunch. It just started roaring. It went down that canyon faster than a horse could travel, I’m sure. All them dry needles trees just exploded when that heat hit’em. We were on that fire for about a week. The whole crew had to go over and start fighting that fire. You had to take your lunch with you when you went around it after we got it trenched. In those days, the only way we had to fight fire was a grub hoe and shovels. It got so big that we finally got it backfired to put it out, but one morning we woke up and there was an inch and a half of snow on the ground. So that put the fire out. We came back to camp (OH) 

Was that late in the year?  

That was in ’24. I can’t remember. It was the late part of the season. It had to be because the first snow put the fire out.

We talk about the Desert Cone fire, it as referred to at that time as the Silver Forest.  

Yeah, the Jack pine. They’re just a mass of needles anyway (5). When they stood there dead, and that heat would hit’em, they would practically explode like kerosene. No stop to it when the wind would carry the crown fire.

Was there any pine beetle work being done at that time?  

Not that I remember. They may not have even known what pine beetle were in those days.

We’re in that cycle, about sixty years, where we’re seeing it again. 

Yeah, they have a lot of insects now that they never knew of at that time. Too.

Did both of you go out on fires?  

I was driving trucks at the time. They had me hauling water to firefighters. (AH)

On that same fire that Otto was on?

Yeah, that one. I don’t know if I should  mention any names or not. The guys in charge were down there checking on the fire and rode horses around there. They took one of the horses to ride around and look at the fire, and the meadow was all water. It made them very unhappy. (AH)

Did the Forest Service help with some of the fires in the park or did you go out on forest fires?  

I wouldn’t know about that for sure, but I doubt it. (OH)

Where did you get the water?  

From Annie Springs, I think. (AH)

So you wouldn’t have gone over to the river and hauled it in? I know you’d have to go up and around to get to that fire.

I know we had a bunch of ten-gallon cans we’d fill with water and haul around to the guys fighting the fire. They were packing water on two horses from the road to where the fire line was. (AH).

So you didn’t have access to hoses?  

No. (AH)

I think they had water piped here and there at different places. As I remember, when we’d water the horses around by the Wineglass, I think there was a pipe spigot over there and a horse trough. There was the same thing over at the Devil’s Backbone, because you couldn’t get to the water unless you had pipe there. There were a lot of springs around on the rim that they picked, gravity water, you know.  Wherever the barns were. I don’t remember being close by any streams. (OH)

Did you both go fishing regularly? I know we talked a little bit about hauling fish in cans down to the lake.  

When we were camped down by the dock on the island, every time we had a little slack time we’d go around on the north side of the island and fish from the shore. We kept fish in a wire by the boat dock, and we used to give them to people who’d come by and weren’t having very good luck. That would give us a good incentive to go fishing again if we’d take time to go after work, or days when the boss would go to camp, we’d knock off and go fishing for maybe an hour or two. It created quite a time with the tourists. Fishing got awful good there for awhile while we were over there. Pretty near everybody got a fish. It creates quite an interest in fishing. (OH)

We talked about planting fish. Did all the fist come from Butte Falls at the time? 

I’m not sure where the original fish came from, but while I was up there, I think I only made two trips to Butte Falls during that time. (AH)

What was mostly planted?  

Rainbow trout. (AH)

We just broke for lunch, and we’re resuming our oral history interview this afternoon, starting with Albert’s story about a bear in the cook shack.  

This happened at the bunk house where the boys stayed at the ranger station (6). We slept upstairs. The cook slept upstairs. The dining room was downstairs. And the front door swung in and had a thumb latch on it. This bear came around and pressed the thumb latch and came in and the door went shut behind the bear. So in the night, I heard a noise downstairs and I told the cook, “Billy,” I said, “There’s something in your kitchen.” He went down the stairs wearing a long white nightshirt and scared the bear. The only way the bear could see out was through the window, and the bear went out through the windows and took the windows out with him. That’s the bear story.

Did both of you know the names of certain bears at the park? We have pictures with bears identified.

(Family showed photo album..)

Jimmy was the black bear and had the two cubs. (OH)

They changed her name after they found out she was a mama bear. Buster was a brown bear that had two cubs. I don’t know what they named her for. Anyway, she had the cubs. And there were several other bears that had cubs. They never did name them as I could remember.

We have a photo album of some of the bears identified, including Buster and Jimmy.

There’s Billy Van Camp, the cook, feeding the bears. He’d stand at the back door of the kitchen. Here’s Billy down here again. This is me feeding the bear and over there, that’s me. I believe that’s s bear they called Bruno. He was about a two-year-old cub. There’s the two little cubs at the base of the tree. Evidently, they’re that brown bear’s [Buster’s] cubs.

I know the bears were in the government camp a lot because of the dump. Were they down at Annie Springs at all?

Because of the garbage at Government Camp. (OH).

Do you know where the Lady of the Woods is? Well, the garbage dump was awfully close to that place. It’s probably been covered up so long that you couldn’t detect it. It was a good thing to get rid of. (AH)

I hadn’t heard of that being a dump before.

As a mater of fact, I thin it was just to the south and a little bit more to the west from where that lady of the rock is. (AH) 

I know at one time they had tents near where the maintenance yard is now, but I hadn’t heard about a dump.  

You see, they built that stuff across the creek since we were there in camp. They put that big building in there where you drive around. We drove around in there since and they don’t look like the same country. It changes everything when they start leveling off for building and put houses up in the trees. (AH)

I know that the Army built a lot of those buildings and then left after they finished  the road.  

Those buildings that we were in were some of the original ones. (AH)

Those bears, they got to be pretty tame. Billy Van Camp fed them an awful lot of Karo syrup that the government paid for. If they knew how much he paid for Karo syrup through the groceries, I suppose they’d call that embezzlement, wouldn’t they. (OH)

Diversion of funds… 

That’s probably what part of the national debt is. There’s a German brown trout that I caught down at the boat landings where the trail used to go down on the south side of the lake, before they moved it around by the Wineglass. I gave that to Mr. Childers and his family. He carried that up the trail and everybody commented to him on what a nice fish he caught down there. Then he have to explain that I caught it and gave it to him and all that, one after another. It just about wore the fish out getting up that trail, I guess. (OH)

Childers, did he have an auto dealership in town?  

No, not this Childers here in Jacksonville. He lived here in town. As a matter of fact, Albert’s wife is related to the Childers’ through marriage. They were old timers here. As a matter of fact, he built the gas station in Jacksonville, the Shell Station that I bought from Ed Severance in ’37. Then they lived on the Applegate for a number of years, but most all of them are dead now. (OH)

You mentioned earlier about the building of the arch on the west entrance.  

Well, that was that one picture that I showed you, or did I get around to showing it to your? I couldn’t remember whether we made the arch over the road.

We had a picture of the cabin in one of these that I brought.  

I think it was built alongside the road. The road went in front of it here. Do you remember it that way Albert? (OH)

I can’t remember. I don’t believe it was over the road. (AH)

No, it stood parallel to the road on the south side, I believe, after I see the picture. We worked on it, put those timbers up, and the traffic was going to the lake. They didn’t stop the traffic, and they’d a had to if I was to snake those logs over there and across the road with a team. We cut the timbers, we didn’t, but somebody cut ’em in there a day or two before and had them ready for us. We were down there a day, I think, putting it up. It may have taken two days. I don’t remember. But I can’t remember taking the horse back and forth to Annie Springs. I can’t even remember taking them down once, but we had the team in there, the one black team that id the skidding. And that was, of course, quite a ways from Government Camp. That Government Camp was five miles above Annie Springs. Of course, we had a horse barn at Annie Springs where we stayed when we worked the roads from Annie Springs down to the south entrance and west entrance. Old man Krueger was the camp attendant the second year I was up there in ’24. He was an old Dane. (OH)

An old grey-headed Dane. (AH)

Pretty good old camp cook. They had camp facilities there, a cook shack, where he stayed. We were down there one time and had to clean the barn up and spruce up the place. It took a horse and a wagon to do it. We stayed most of a week. (OH)

Did you stay upstairs? Was there a sleeping area up there?  

I don’t think there was at Annie Springs. It was just a one level deal there, several bunks in the bunkhouse. It wasn’t much of a building, a small building. (OH)

Was there a gas station there at Annie Springs?  

I don’t believe so, unless there was in later years I think the first gas station was clear up there by Government Camp where it’s always been.(8) (OH)

I read something about a lunch counter and a gas station about 1922, but I wasn’t sure. 

I don’t think so. It was all tents in there. There were no cabins or anything like that, just a place to pitch a tent, running water, and stuff like that for campers. (OH)

Here’s something I have wondered about. This sign called “Cascade Divide,” along the west road near Annie Springs. Do you remember that? I am still not sure when that was built and of course, when it was taken down.  

You’re not sure when that was built? It would have been in ’24. Yeah, the second year I was there, when I was a teamster. They probably put that trimming there after we put up the big timbers. We probably just kind of roughed it out. They probably put it in later. We had to put the heavy timbers and stuff. We had a gin pull and stuff to place those timbers where they are. (OH)

I know in looking through your album we talked about a couple of things before, the charges that were set to open the roads. Was it both a combination of blasting and then there were a crew of men shoveling out? Did they do this for the entire rim road.  

They opened the road from Annie Springs up to Government Camp first. Then we’d come down to the west entrance most generally. At the corkscrew this side of Annie Springs, that’s where they heavy drifts were. That’s where we had to open it up. Then they could get up from there. We got in there one time and stopped at Whiskey Creek. Whiskey Creek is down this side there (9). It’s quite a ways this side of the west entrance. That’s where we went with the trucks the first time we went up there, as I remember it. After they’d opened the road there, then they’d open the road from Government Camp to the lodge. There were some heavy drifts up in there. Then after that, of course, the South Entrance. I don’t know if they opened it all the time first or second. That’s the way it all went. Then the rim road, after they had these other roads opened up. But they’d have to shoot these drifts to crystallize that snow so that you could handle it with a shovel. It made them black after you worked in it. You’d swore you worked in a coal mine. It made all the crystal-chunked pieces of ice black. You’d look like you were all full of black tar and such. You’d think shoveling snow would be a clean job, but it wasn’t. It was kind of a nasty, messy, smeary job. Of course, they’d want to get it broke up like that and we’d get it moved.

We’re back after a short break, and Otto resumes by commenting on a picture.  

There’s that dock that we built.

I think that’s where we’re assembling the first crib to sink it, and then we just kept adding to it at the top because we put on longer logs and filled it with rock. It was cribbed like this, square cribs so that you could dump the rock down in and they’d settle in between the logs and stuff. The more rock you put in, the more log you put on it to get it set on the bottom. I don’t think we even anchored it to the shoreline with any cables or anything like that. I thin it was the weight of it and the contour underneath that wouldn’t allow it to slip or anything. It just settled down and that was it. (OH)

Sort of a freestanding dock?

You put that much above the surface of the water, so you put a lot of weight on it. And I wheeled all the rock in that thing on a 12-inch gangplank. I don’t think I could walk down a 12-inch gangplank as far as we did with a wheelbarrow full of rock. Dave Wilcox was supposed to help me, and he’d lose the wheelbarrow off the gangplank about every time he tried to turn around. He’d get to laughing, and then you’d just, well, give up, so I wheeled in all the rock. He helped ol’ Rid dig it out of the bank back there and fill the wheel barrow. I wheeled my share of the rock down that thing. (OH)

This is that old carpenter I couldn’t recognize. I don’t think that’s ol’ Joe Ord, Pete Ord’s dad. That’s me right there behind you.  [AH]. This is ol’ Lil, the intelligent foreman, we called him. There he is. That’s just the way he looked. He wore his hat down over his eyes and that appeared like he was looking out across the lake all the time when he was talking to you. (OH)

Was Pete Ord from the local area? 

I never heard of him ‘til I went up there. (OH)

I just thought since his dad worked for the park…

Maybe his dad got the job as carpenter being as how Pete was head ranger (10). Pete was his boy. Here’s more bear pictures. I don’t know if there are any duplicates there or not. (AH)

There’s a little cub. One time we were going to work and those cubs got so they’d come in the back door of the Mess hall in the kitchen and ol’ Bill would feed them cookies and stuff like that. We had a big wooden box which we’d fix up with sandwiches and all kind of canned stuff for taking on the road when we went out different places to work. These two little cubs were so tame that they got in the pantry and into our grub box. They really messed it up before we got away from there with a grader and the team from Government Camp. We were delayed about an hour waiting for Billy to straighten up that grub box and put stuff back in it. They really went to town when they got the lid up. Those little cubs never got full, I don’t think. I grabbed one and packed him up and Billy grabbed the other one and set him out on the porch, just like a couple of cats. That’s me feeding the bears  there. (OH)

There’s Billy standing at the back door of the mess hall. (OH)

Here’s me and the grader. Old iron-wheel grader. There’s the truck that went off the bridge. (OH)

This is Albert’s picture. You know what it says on the back. It says “Otto’s tip over”. (Dorland Offenbacher)

Yeah, that’s when we got it set up on its wheels. Evidently before we got it pulled up out of where it went in. In the back of that truck there was about a half ton of coal. It also had a box in there, which had 5,000 of these government permits they used to have to sign when they entered a park. When they paid the entrance fee, they filled out these permits. People came in later in the summer and said to the fellow who was working in the check-in place that if we’d known we were going to get a permit like this one, we’d have brought one with us. We got that word from some people that came from Grants Pass. That box broke open and 5,000 permits went down the Rogue River. No way they were ever getting those back. I was thinking that box wouldn’t break open and those things dissipate along the ban here, and there. They got clear to Grants Pass. Well, that’s quite a ways down the river. That’s before Lost Creek was in there by a lot of years.

Did you meet Fred Kiser, the photographer, when you were there?  

No, I don’t think so. (OH)

I noticed the picture in one of the albums and I believe Salter built his studios as well as the lodge and some of these entrance stations. Here’s Kiser’s studio.  

I think Salter had a son. When we were up there he was in the construction business. He got a contract in Medford building something. Harold Salter. That was his boy. But he was just a kid when he was up there. He just hung around. He didn’t do nothing. Here’s the truck that I went off the bridge with. It went down and hit against the bridge timber, the bridge support, and slid backwards on its side. I can remember those boulders going past my head. It was an open cab, you know, with a little canvas top on it and slid back down there from about the approach of the bridge about up here. It had front-end loaders that slide over there. There’s the team that I drove up there, four horses. (OH)

What’s the difference between that kind of grader and what they call the Fresno scraper?  

A grader like this had the wheels on it. The Fresno scraper, you got like a slip scraper with a trip handle on it. You know they used to trip them with a rope, a yard or half yard. (OH)

You had two different sizes of those. One’s called a Fresno and the other was a slip scraper about this wide. The Fresno was wider. (AH)

You had a trip rope on the Fresno and on the other you just had two handles and when you dump you just raise it up and it flipped over and emptied. If the point of it caught a rock, while the horse was pulling and you didn’t let go of the handle, it would throw you over the horses. You had to dump it that way, you know, lift up on the handles just like a wheel barrow without a wheel in the front.

How did they excavate the annex of the Lodge? Did they have a scraper or a grader to dig?

It was one of those slip scrapers. They were just about this wide and you used two horses. You’d just tip them up a little bit and dig in. When they’d get loaded, you’d let them down and drag it out to where they’re dumpling. (AH)

Provided they didn’t catch a stump or something with the front, like I said. (OH)

But that’s the way they dug it. (AH)

Did you have problems sometimes grading, hitting old stumps that would have been in the roadway?  

Oh, not really. Most of the time, if you were working an area, you had first to clean that all out by going around two or three times to remove any rocks sticking up or anything down. (OH)

I had one of them slip scrapers for a long time and I can’t remember what I ever did with it. I think I gave it away. But a lot of people would like to have something like that to keep. (AH)

There’s another snow picture. All these bear pictures are at Crater Lake. These other are some hunting trips we made after we came down from the lake. (OH)

Is that Gold Ray Dam or Savage Rapids?  

This is the Gold Ray Dam right down here at Tolo. There’s a picture of Albert and me and his first car.

Did either one of you do much skiing when you were up there?  

Never. Tried one time. (AH)

How’d that turn out?  

You could ski out to Klamath. So we borrowed these skis and went across the road from where we bunked on that slope and came down on these skis. We hit the road and went into a ditch. That was the last of my skiing. (AH)

There’s one picture in here of somebody skiing down a hill, maybe right around Government Camp. 

I don’t know. We’ll give it [the album] to Albert. We got plenty left in here. I think they’re just duplicates. Probably have more. I was heading back to the bunkhouse there. Here’s what made me thin of it up here…there’s a bear standing on top of it. They’d have the carpenters rebuild that garbage sled. It was about three feet wide and probably four feet long, as I remember. And about three feet deep. They’d dump cans and waste from the cook shack in there, and then we’d haul it down there to the garbage dump, clean it out, and bring it back. That’s the way they handled the garbage. What the bears didn’t eat, well, we’d have to haul off. But they’d get up on top of that and they could take one foot and put one front against the corner of that crib you might call it, that box with the upright pieces in the corner, and they’d use a six-inch spike to nail them in the corners there and make a regular solid box out of it. Those bears would just take one foot and put across there and pull the sides off of there. So a bear would never want to put his head down in anything to eat. They want everything on the level so they could watch. They’d just pull the top off that thing with brute strength. I tell you there is no limit to the power they have in their shoulders. I’d always say I’d never wrestle a bear.

I was going to ask both of you whether either one of you had been inside the lodge at that time. What might you remember of what the guest rooms looked like and what was out in the Great Hall?  

The first year I worked up there, this is before I worked for the Park Service, I worked part of the year down on the boat. I rode up with my older brother on the stage from Medford. And I know I ate in the dining room, or where the help ate off the kitchen and took a lunch down to the lake. I spent the day there and people would come down and want to fish. They [the concessionaire] had a couple of row boats and if they wanted to fish, I’d take a row boat and take them out to Wizard Island, Phantom Ship, and you could see those big fish swimming around in that clear water and they’d catch a couple of fish and then they’d quit. That’s all I did, you know, but I can’t remember. I don’t think I stayed in the lodge. I think they had a cabin out there that I stayed in, but I ate. What was your question again? (AH)

What do you remember about the interior of the lodge?  

Lots of times we’d go there in the evening and get some gal. We’d dance and sing and just have a good time. Tom Burnfiel worked up there. He kept wood for that big old fireplace. Somebody would bring it up, and he’d have to get help to wrestle it. Lots of times I’d help him get a big old log in the fireplace. We spent a little time in there, you know. I can’t remember too much about the interior. (AH)

That wasn’t the attraction. It was the music and the gals. If there’s only one gal, she probably got a good workout. But there’s a picture of Al Loomis and Dave Wilcox and Larry Robbins. (OH)

This is Dave Wilcox right here. He’s a good looking kid. He’s been to college a year or two. That’s Al Loomis and Dave. I guess they figured one wouldn’t be very good, so they took several of them. (AH)

Now, John Maben was up there at the time.

He was up there before my time. I remember the Maben name, but I don’t remember ever seeing him up there. We were talking about the skiing up there. I was kind of like Albert. Trying it once was all I did. (OH)

What kind of cameras did you use to take all these questions?  

A little Eastman Kodak. One of those you pull out and take a picture, you know. I still have it, but the darn thing – when you take the picture, it has a white streak in it. It’s got a leak in the bellows. It took good pictures. The big pictures, I think Sparrow must have had a camera (13). It wasn’t mine. I think he must have taken those pictures and gave them to me. (AH)

Did you stay in contact with Sparrow after he resigned from the Park Service and moved here to Jacksonville?  

No.

He told me about going out to see his horses at the fair. (Dorland Offenbacher)

His cows. I told him [Steve Mark] about that. Sparrow was in town and said he was going to go out and see our stock. No, I’ve got to go back to camp. He said, “By God, if you don’t go out to see them stock, I’m going to fire you.” So I took him at his word and I stayed over a day and went out to the fair. (AH)

Did either one of you know any of the other Superintendents? I know a couple of them retired around this area, but did you run into any of the other ones?  

I don’t know what ever happened to Thomson. I guess he went back east. (OH)

He went to Yosemite and died of a heart attach in ’37. Solinsky followed him.  

Sparrow was there on the ranch or something. I couldn’t tell you for sure just what happened to them. (OH)

Did either one of you do any trail work while you were there?

I know Sparrow had a couple of trails built when he was superintendent.  

Well, about all we ever did was clean them off, what trails were there, like down at the water and up Garfield Peak. I think I worked up there one day. Most of what you did was throw loose rock off, you know, so people wouldn’t trip. That’s about all we’d get on the trails. And that’s after snow. Of course, on Garfield, that was about the longest trail up there that I remember. (AH)

You never went out to Union Peak?  

No, no, mostly it was all just clearing up trees that had fallen over in the road in the wintertime and stuff like that. Getting the rock out of the road, cleaning the road surfaces off, banks would crumble down from the heavy snow and stuff. We’d have to clean the shoulders off and stuff like that. That was mostly all hand work in those days. They don’t do that any more. They got machinery for everything now. (AH)

Did either one of you meet the concessionaire R.W. Price when he was up at the Lodge? I know he had the Lithia Springs Hotel in Ashland, too, so he must have been a pretty busy guy. 

Maybe so. Price was there when Ella and Mary (sisters of John, Albert and Otto) worked there. (OH)

I think he was there the first year I worked up there, but I can’t remember him. (AH)

I don’t remember that I ever saw him. He probably was there in the lobby or something. (OH)

The first year I worked up there, the concession had charge of the boats, but I can’t remember who signed my check. I don’t know whether I got a check. Maybe I just worked for my board. (AH)

Did you ever have any record of Jack Reter running the boat concession on the lake? (OH)

No.  

He used to barber here in Jacksonville years ago. Albert and I even got a haircut from him here in Jacksonville when I must have been about nine or 10 years old. Anyways, I was awful pretty with a manufactured haircut. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised that we were the first few heads of hair that Jack Reter cut when he had this barbershop here in Jacksonville. This Reter Fruit Company here in Medford was built up by Jack’s boy, Raymond Reter. (OH)

I just bought some pears from him.  

Jack was his dad. Jack had the boat business at the lake. I probably shouldn’t mention that he bootlegged while he was up there. He’s probably doing time for that right now.

Footnotes:

  1. A boat with a gasoline motor.
  2. The boathouse was built in 1908.
  3. Park Headquarters. The bunkhouse occupied the site where the Ranger Dormitory, now Steel Center, is presently.
  4. The road from Munson Valley to Rim Village built in 1905. By 1923, automobiles traveled to the rim by a road constructed by the Army Corps of Engineers in 1914.
  5. Lodge pole pine.
  6. The log mess hall at Park Headquarters, built in 1914 and demolished in 1932.
  7. The Administration [Sager] Building was opened in 1936.
  8. A lunchroom and gas station were operated by the park concessionaire at Annie Spring from 1922 to 1926. Gasoline service was relocated to Park Headquarters the following year.
  9. Located less then a mile from the present park boundary, once the site of a small Forest Service camp.
  10. Ord was Chief Ranger from 1921 to 1926.
  11. Construction of the dam started in 1967 and was completed in 1977.
  12. Salter built log entrance station at the west and south entrances in 1917. He also constructed the original portion of the Kiser Studio in 1921 and the lodge annexes in 1923-24.
  13. Alex Sparrow served as road engineer at Crater Lake in 1915-16, and as park superintendent from 1917 to 1923. Most of his photo collection has been donated to the Southern Oregon Historical Society.
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