It was simply Howard Baker took it on himself to do that?
That was the way it was done. Obviously, it was arranged with Director Wirth, cause he called up and congratulated me and all that. I had kind of a hard time being very enthusiastic, I had never seen the place, I had over heard of it. But it was great, it was fun, a good place to learn.
[Ron] When you did a lot of your planning studies, were you with a planning team or were you alone?
Occasionally there would be two of us. When I got promoted again to Supervisory Planner, then there was someone to help drive and keep track of where you were. It’s very involved, you know Ron, we had some of the most marvelous maps that I’ve ever seen, great big county maps, right down to out houses on them. Somebody had to keep track of where you were going, especially when you were tracking down BLM parcels, forty acres or whatever. There was no team effort.
Not in the modern sense, where we send out these Harpers Ferry or DSC teams?
No, that came later. As far as I know, at least in the Midwest Region, there were about ten or twelve planners working in our Division. Chet Brooks was there, but the rest of them went to BOR. Chet, at the same time I went there, went to Bighorn as Superintendent, great historian that guy, did you ever run into him?
No, I haven’t.
He is the wildest story teller you ever heard in your life. A tremendous historian, he retired at Rocky, I think he is living right around there somewhere. If you ever run into him, stop and talk to him. We had historians on that planning group, we had interpreters, I was the only management—type, as the ranger series was considered management in those days; I guess it is really not today. We had city planners from Chicago on the staff, a real interesting mix. So you had a good review of the product, but it was pretty much individual stuff. That Wild Rivers study came along; being the old planner, they decided I would go on the Wild Rivers study for one summer.
This was about 1964?
About that.
A prelude to the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act?
Somewhere along in there, I’m not too sure when it was.
