[Bill] This was what I was referring to yesterday when I told you there is almost a line between the old rangers and the new rangers. There is a phase in period, but the line becomes more and more distinct when you deal with each individual. The newer version is specialization, I’m a cop, I’m an interpreter, I’m a resource management specialist where as before we did everything. That meant plow the roads or fix the— whatever you had to do you didit.
After a short break we are picking up with again Part 1 of the oral history interview. In some of the questions I asked when we talked about the concession development and the headquarters move at Crater Lake in the late sixties we mentioned the campground. There was an idea to have a trailer park on the other side of the road. Was that ever a very serious concern, something, I assume, Ralph Peyton was pushing in addition to the Mazama Campground?
Well, the Mazama Campground spread across the road when I was first there. I am sure it was when you were there, Bill. It was on both sides of the road, and it was really getting beat down pretty bad so we closed that and let it go through a restoration process. Which, as you know, at Crater Lake is a lengthy, lengthy time. I did not feel that we should reopen it. Recognizing of course, that we were just starting to see in those days motorhomes, nothing like you have today. But we were starting to see trailers. There was a lot of thought on that from a planning standpoint, but it didn’t lend itself to the topography that we had a t Crater Lake, without tearing it up. I remember the first time I went through Crater Lake with Director Hartzog. I picked him up at Klamath Falls and he wanted to go to the park and see Mr. Peyton for whatever purpose. Driving up, we came to this park entrance and this big road with a clearing on the side, it was like a freeway, from the road we had just come off? He said, “What is this?” I said, “This is the park entrance.” He literally went through the roof. He chewed me from that entrance all the way to the park headquarters, about why did I let that road get built like that. He wouldn’t let me say boo; he kept chomping on his cigar and going good. I said, “Well, when you get back to Washington, why don’t you go down and talk to Lenny Volz? He’s the one that signed the contract and built the road.” He said, “That is no excuse, you are the Park Superintendent and you are responsible.” But he was very sensitive that the road should lay on the surface of the land with minimal disturbance, none of this big shoulder stuff. Of course, you could arguer at Crater Lake all you wanted to about 12 feet of snow and 500 accumulated inches a year and people don’t believe it. Even the engineers who come up and built the house didn’t believe it, you know snow gets pretty heavy when it is 10 feet deep.
[Ron] Well, just consider how much money you spent on fuel to remove it in terms of snow removal equipment?
When I was there, and this is a long time back now, we are talking twenty-five years ago. We programmed a hundred to a hundred and twenty-five thousand a year, just for snow removal. I don’t have any idea what it is now?
