Did Coulee and Death Valley have Superintendents in the sense we have now?
Yes, very small graded Superintendents.
I know there was a period in the ‘40’s when they had Custodians, and I don’t know when the transition occurred.
I don’t know, Valley had a Custodian-type back when Colonel White was in charge of Sequoia. But when that change occurred there, was a good twenty years before I arrived at any rate. Superintendents had a lot of clout and still do, but not nearly what they did have.
At the time you left Death Valley, were you District Ranger and you became Chief Ranger at the time you left for Rushmore?
I was Chief Ranger at Mount Rushmore, promoted as I transferred there. I was there, without looking it up, whether it was ’60 or ’61. They offered me a planning job in the Omaha regional office. Went in there as a 9 and in a year I was an 11. That was an interesting transition from the ranger series to the planning series. Spent most of the time in Wyoming and Colorado investigating BLM lands.
As possible recreation areas?
Yes, for BLM. It was one of those arrangements— I was a park employee all the time—there was a reimbursement.
Was that because this was before the Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission Report?
The ORRRC Report came out and established, what do they call that outfit?
The BOR.
BOR, Bureau of Outdoor Recreation. That is when another transition occurred that I had nothing to do with; you wonder sometimes why you go a certain direction. Sometimes you have a choice and sometimes you don’t. There were about ten of us in the Planning Division at the time, and half of us were transferred to BOR, unbeknownst to us. Very interesting, I was on a field trip doing the first preliminary study at, oh gosh, what is that Recreation Area—Crow Agency?
Oh, it is in Montana?
I was doing the study and we stayed in Billings and the park gang always stayed at one hotel, there was only one hotel there. My boss showed up and so did the Regional Director, Howard Baker. We were all close friends, golf buddies, and all that type of stuff whenever we got together, which was pretty rare. You know mission ’66 and all those things we were pretty busy, a lot of planning for new areas – studies. He says, “Oh, by the way Don, you got transferred to BOR.” I said, “Oh, when did that happen?” He said last Monday. He said, that he took it upon himself to transfer me to Superintendent of an area in Iowa. I said what area do we have in Iowa? So that’s how I ended up as Superintendent of Effigy Mounds. I never had any ambition or interest per se in being a park superintendent. I was fascinated with what I was doing and that is just the way it went. I had been Acting Superintendent quite a bit at Mount Rushmore.
