Okay.
So I spent the summer surveying rivers in ten Midwestern states. There we had a team, two parks fellas on it. One was with BOR, since BOR was the lead agency on this and Evan Haynes was the Director of our group. There were about five us from Fish and Wildlife, Forest Service, BLM, Park Service and BOR. A member of each team and there were ten teams across the United State and we were to check every river and go at it.
Where there any problems on the teams with people representing that many different agencies?
The only problem we ever had was between the two parks employees. Former park employees that had very strong opinions on what was the best. I held for St. Croix, which is the one we ended up with. We could only pick one river that was the tough part. In the ten Midwestern states we ended up with St. Croix, which is a marvelous place.
So, one river out of those ten states?
Yeah.
Did each region wind up picking up a river?
No, we did; the team did.
The team did?
The regions were not involved once we started this. It was strictly a BOR team approach. Very interesting work, we just hired an airplane and took off. That was the first reconnaissance, you’d fly to Missouri, you may split up, or it may just be one of you or maybe the whole bunch for the preliminary reconnaissance. Then we would go in and check it by car and if it was floatable, we would get a boat, canoe, whatever it was, and then write all the reports, of course. Had to be a report on every river.
Whether it was negative or positive?
Yeah, that was fun.
Would those reports have been BOR reports, in their files or would the agencies all get copies?
Yes; I don’t know about the rest of them, but I kept copies. I assume they weren’t of any value to the area so they went to the region. Harry Robinson was chief of the division at that time. Chet Brown had moved from Washington and was in charge of the Park Planning Division. Then I ended up going to Washington while I was still Superintendent of Effigy Mounds.
Now, was that what year?
Don’t ask me that, I’m not sure, I think ’63.
Again that was one of the things that our Regional Director [Howard Baker], a marvelous guy, by far the sharpest Regional Director I have ever met and he taught you things, like don’t call me I’ll call you. If you have a question think it over and think if it’s worthy of consideration, then you call me.
[Bill] We had a lot of questions taken care of that way.
You work predominately with the staff, one of the staff folks, Associate Regional Director, came out and said did you ever think about going to Washington on the Departmental Program? I said I never heard of it. Well, come January I heard I was selected and I was going. So I was there for six months. And I just came back to Effigy Mounds and packed my clothes. Before I left Washington I was transferred to Platte National Park in Oklahoma. That’s where the political education started, really.
