Doug and Sadie Roach

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Doug and Sadie Roach Oral History Interview

Interviewer: John Morrison, Crater Lake National Park Historian

Interview Location and Date: Jacksonville, Oregon, August 25, 1987

Transcription: Transcribed by Cheryl Ryan, August 1997

Biographical Summary (from the interview introduction)

Doug and Sadie Roach were among the first individuals contacted by my predecessor when he began this oral history project which has stretched over the past decade.  The Roaches lived at Crater Lake almost eight years (1934 to 1942) and, in the following interview provide some insights into what it was like being among the first people stationed at the park year round.  After the war, Mr. Roach became a manager for Bear Creek Corporation and the couple remained in the Rogue Valley until 1994.  It was just prior to their relocating in Minnesota that I had the pleasure of talking with him over the telephone.

Materials Associated with this interview on file at the Dick Brown library at Crater Lake National Park’s Steel Visitor Center

taped interview; Mrs. Roach died earlier this year, but Mr. Roach wanted to bring this interview to final form and was kind enough to assist with editing.  Related newspaper articles, as well as my notes from our 1994 conversation, are in the park’s history files.

 

To the reader:

Doug and Sadie Roach were among the first individuals contacted by my predecessor when he began this oral history project which has stretched over the past decade.  The Roaches lived at Crater Lake almost eight years (1934 to1942) and, in the following interview provide some insights into what it was like being among the first people stationed at the park year round.  After the war, Mr. Roach became a manager for Bear Creek Corporation and the couple remained in the Rogue Valley until 1994.  It was just prior to their relocating in Minnesota that I had the pleasure of talking with him over the telephone.

The following transcription is from a taped conversation which took place more than ten years ago.  Mrs. Roach died earlier this year, but Mr. Roach wanted to bring this interview to final form and was kind enough to assist with editing.  Related newspaper articles, as well as my notes from our 1994 conversation, are in the park’s history files.

Stephen R. Mark

(Crater Lake National Park Historian)

October 1997

This is an oral history interview with Doug and Sadie Roach on August 25, 1987.

(DR)   I applied for the position of storekeeper and heard nothing of it for three years.  As the situation was, I had just changed boarding houses where I lived in Seattle.  I got a telegram on a Friday evening when I got home from work requesting me to report on May 14, which was the following Monday.  They just caught up with me inside the deadline to let them know I was available or that pick would have gone to someone else.  I hurried quit my job, and packed up what I could in a valise and a suitcase.  The rest I took to her [Sadie’s] folk’s home…..

(SR) And a car, which we had purchased together.

(DR) I took the train in Seattle on Saturday night and arrived down here (Crater Lake) on Sunday.  I reported to the old Park Service offices in the old, original post office building, and came up on the 14th of May in 1934.  That began my experience as assistant storekeeper under Gould.  The things that happened at that time kind of upset the routine of the park.  The day that I came on duty Superintendent Solinsky was suspended and so was the chief clerk, a man by the name of A.R. Edwin, and another man by the name of Davidson.  I just knew those three by name because they were not in active service for the park from that time on.  Very shortly after that, the man who I was assisting, Gould, was later suspended.  So Dave Canfield was appointed as acting superintendent for a term, and then his (permanent) appointment came through (1).

My duties were those of storekeeper, taking care of stock and supplies, and keeping record of them.  I lived, that first summer, in the ranger dormitory (2) and we had our meals at the Mess hall.  I lived up there with a bunch of characters, some of them temporary and some of them that worked pretty regularly.  They were graded men in the ranger force and they were great for having fun in the parks.  It was, all in all, a very interesting summer.  I toured the park, took horse rides around the park a time or two.  Then came the first winter.  I very much liked it.  I was on a temporary appointment, you understand, even with the Civil Service, and one thing led to another and Mr. Canfield asked me if I would like to stay in and jumped at the chance.  But the only opportunity was that of a cook for the crew that he was putting together for the winter.  The idea behind this, which was different than previous (years), was they wouldn’t open the park for passage or for traffic (3).  They would keep the roads plowed during the winter so that in the spring there wouldn’t be this tremendous, long drawn-out job beginning in May of opening the many miles of road, to both the entrances and around the rim.  The idea was we’d keep the road open to the rim, Annie Spring to the West Entrance, such as we could with one rotary snow plow.  That was the variation for the crew that he was holding on.  There were six of us all together.  Other than the couple at the lodge, Mr. and Mrs. Richardson, there were no other people in the park (4). They [the rest of the park staff] in Medford.  I was not exactly a cook, but I went home and took a short course of a month, a leave of absence, vacationed before we settled in, and came down and reported for duty.

(SR)  My aunt gave him a course at real baking.  I wasn’t a cook either, but I had some recipes and I gave them those recipes.  We boned up on a lot of things and tried a lot of things.

(DR) I came on prepared to cook for this bunch of fellows.  They weren’t the best meals, and I found out real early that they would eat steak and potatoes three times a day if you gave it to them.  And that’s a fact.  I was brought up with the idea of a balanced diet and one day I thought I would do something really different.  I cooked them salmon soufflés and served it to them.  They sat and grumbled and looked at it.  One fellow said under his breath, “They’ve got a whole house full of steak and potatoes and you feed us this stuff!”  My heart went right to my shoes.

Shortly after that, with the fact that the permanent suspension for Mr. Gould came through, I was then put in the position of being storekeeper and they sent out for a regular cook.  They brought a little guy in here by the name of Jimmy Fader.  We had, at that time, on trial, as I understand it, one of the first ideas of a snow sled.  It was a very simple device and not very practical.  Anyhow, they made a couple of trips with it from here to the South Entrance.  They brought this Jimmy Favor in on it from Fort Klamath and they lost him off the sled somewhere along the line and had to go back and find him.  He came in and took over and I took over in the warehouse.  That was my job during the rest of my stay here.

We had some interesting experiences, as you can well imagine.  The year that this (photo) was taken, which would have been January of 1936, we just had the one plow here.  It was on New Year’s Day and we had made a run to the rim and it was snowing lightly.  We got up to the rim and were plowing out the turn around area and snapped a drive shaft between the main engine and the snow rotor.  We went back down to camp and the long and the short of it was, we had a storm that continued for 19 days.  We had to order, a part from Dubuque, Iowa, by rail.  It came in to Chiloquin and they took one of two caterpillars that they had up here that they used in conjunction with the snow removal.  You had it explained to you how they removed the snow in the old days, one cat ahead and the other breaking down in front of the rotary and the rotary would blow it out?  Anyhow the had to walk this tractor to the South Entrance when we got word by phone that the part had arrived, and then walk it back up here.  It took hours. We lashed a 50 gallon drum of gasoline on the tractor to insure enough fuel to make the round trip.  Two men rode the tractor.  It was somewhere like three weeks before we had the snow plow back in operation.  In the meantime, it was 19 days of steady snowfall.  The average was about two to six inches a day.  It wasn’t blizzard conditions, but snow fell every day, constantly.  We then had to regain the road that we had lost.

(SR) I was going to add that this was my first winter in and I would get cabin fever.  I had never been in this situation, never saw snow.  Seattle didn’t have much snow.  For a long time I thought I would have to go into Medford without Douglas but finally Dave Canfield said well, Elizabeth, we’ll take a chance on you if Doug well.  He said he would.  He let me stay in.  Before I was able to stay in, we went to Seattle and he picked up skis and a ski outfit for me and he said that you must get out everyday and you won’t mind this snow.  So I thought I would go out everyday.  This one lady, Mrs. Palmer, her husband was the one that ran the shop; I would go to everyday and tap on her window and see how she was.  One day when we were snowed in I went out, and I didn’t know anything about this plow being broken down.  She was real provoked at me.  She said, “How can you be so happy.  Come in here.”  Then she told me that we had been snowed in for so long and there was no hope until we got this part.  I came home and I said, “Why didn’t you tell me that we were snowed in?”  And he said, “Well, you didn’t say that you were going anywhere.

(DR) I didn’t want to confuse the situation.  She took it in stride, and we were here for seven winters together.  I put in eight, she put in seven.

(SR) The thing was that after that first winter, the women that moved out of the park with the office had a big party.  We went and took the payroll in once, and were snowed out of here.  In the paper, it had, “Park couple snow bound.” And I said I wonder who that was, and that was us.  They were having a big party that night and invited us.  The superintendent came over in his cups and he shook his finger at me and said, “That woman. Every woman wants to stay in the park next year.”

(DR) The Canfields were very easy people to talk to.  He was as comfortable as an old shoe.  He really was.  And he was a pretty good judge of men.  He developed a pretty strong force of graded people up here.  They all had a great deal of regard for him.

Ernie, (Rostel) who worked on the Medford paper. Came up to the park in the summer as a temporary ranger. He was responsible for press releases and public relations.  I might add, he was a humorous individual.  There were some real big characters.  There was a football coach from Klamath Falls by the name of Al Sinclair and there was old Bill Montgomery, and Bernie Hughes, a football player for the state of Oregon and in the early days a pro ballplayer (5).  They were great big bruisers and they played rough when they played.  This little Ernie Rostull would come around and shake every one of us and ask if we wanted to get the bathroom.  They got a little tired of that and Al Sinclair and Bernie Hughes and Bill Montgomery got their heads together and they were going to cure him of doing this.  One particular night they laid awake and waited for him, and sure enough, he came and started through his routine.  This great big Al Sinclair hopped out of bed and grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and the seat of the pants and proceeded to run him into the showers, which were in here, I think on this side, and turned cold water on him.  They got him in there, but Ernie wouldn’t let go of Al.  He was in there in his pajamas and Ernie was in there in his Park Service uniform.  You could hear the caterwauling all over the camp.  He was yelling, “I like it, I like it! Give me some more!  And he kept Al Sinclair in there, so it was a question of who got the worst of which.  Ernie came out, sat down on a chair in the middle of the floor, took his boots off, and poured the water out.  They were full of water.  And this nice, moth-colored cavalry pant that they used to wear in those days was soaked (6).  And the other favorite trick that they would pull on one another, besides the innocent short sheeting was they would take a number four rat trap and set it as the base of somebody’s bed.  So there was never an idle moment up there in this bull camp.

We had a good summer. Some things of historical interest.  Are you aware of the incident where two teachers lost their lives up here in the early thirties? It had to be in the fall of 1933.  Two teachers were en route between somewhere north and south and they simply disappeared.  The best that they could pinpoint was they ended up somewhere here on the east side of the park.  What had happened they put a search party out but they never found them. Come summer, the snow was melting and one of the rangers making a patrol around the lake got down by the Pinnacles and saw the car tracks.  This car had skidded.  These girls had come up here, they figured, in the snow and coming out in snowstorm they lost control of the car and went over the bank at the Pinnacles.  At the time, word got around.  They were obliterated.  Nobody could believe it.  Anyhow, they saw this snow still resting in a set of car tracks.  Somebody was pretty sharp.  Sure enough, they recovered the bodies and they brought the car out.  They had what they called the old cherry picker.  They took it over and brought the car out and it sat there in the lot in the utility area.

On Decoration Day of 1937, when my sister was here taking care of Sadie- we had our oldest girl in March- we had an incident with a group of young people, a church group from Medford that came up on a bus for a day.  We had a rope tied across, a barrier, although simple, out on stakes driven in the snow, to keep people behind the edge.  It was on the rim just this side, as near as my memory tells me, of the Information Building.  These youngsters were cavorting and throwing snowballs on the wrong side of the rope and this girl lost her footing and went clear to the lake’s edge.  We had to rescue the body and it was a rather harrowing experience.  Her father got up here and it was all that people could do to restrain him from going over the rim.  What we did was bring the cherry picker up and the rangers got what they call a Navy Stretcher.  Just to the west of where the old trail used to kick off there was kind of a natural saddle and slide, covered with snow that took you clear to the water’s edge (7).  We left about four men and passed them down to the water’s edge.  We had to have additional cable.  In those days, the Park Service had a rowboat that they stored under a ledge so that when they were ready to get over to the island and get the park boat they could get this rowboat out.  It was in such place that the snow didn’t interfere with it.  This ledge, incidentally, was near this saddle.  They went down and worked their way around to the boat.  They got the boat out and came on around and got the body.  They brought it on around and attached it and hauled it back up.  This happened around noon and it was after dark before we ever got the body up here.  That was one incident.

Then one summer, I can’t recall the date, I was in Medford on business and stopped to have a bite of supper before I came home.  I went into the restaurant and took a paper and when I opened it up the headline said, “Boy dies at Crater Lake.” The story to that was, as I recall and piece the fragments together, there was a professor traveling in a group of three or four boys and they drove up to the rim.  The kids hopped out, a group of them, and these two grabbed their suits and jumped the wall and dashed over.  One of them stopped in time, but the other one was ahead and he couldn’t stop and he went to his death.  It was somewhere in the area between the trail beginning and the Sinnott Memorial.  He just dashed over.  It was unreal.  That was another time.

Also, there was a drowning one day, which had some suspicious overtones according to the rangers who were involved in recovering the body.  They were fishing and this man stood up in the boat and lost his balance and went overboard. Those were three incidents that took place during the years that I was up here.

You asked me about Dave Canfield.  Dave was liked by everyone.  As I say, he was pretty astute in his judgment of men.  There is another man, if you can get hold of him- Rudy Lueck.

I talked to him on the phone.

(DR) He can give you much more insight on Dave than I can on a one-to one basis.  Not only that, Dave was pretty shrewd when it came to dealing with Washington.  We had a very good period of development and all.  He performed in what I would consider a first- class manner.  He transferred from here to Rocky Mountain.

Was he involved in the building that was going on?

(DR) Yes.  That ECW building project.  This building was used as an office, as I was telling you the other day in just the moment we talked.  Down there in the main lobby was the sort of stenographic pool and the living quarters on this end.  And then on the other side, on the first level, Dave had his office and the chief ranger and the chief engineer, I believe, Mr. Robinson, at least in the first years or two.  Upstairs, there was the acting chief ranger going out the corridor. It was an active building.  The Administration Building was just under construction.  Then they brought a man from San Francisco by the name of Etherton to superintend the building of this Administration Building.  It was quite a work of art and a fine looking building when it was finished.  At that time, too, in the years that we were here, the Bureau of Public Roads stationed a man in the park and one of the houses was rented to him.  It was one on the next level up, the circle, the one in the middle was Art Scruple, and before him (John) Sargent.

Pete Foilen was in after Struble.

(DR) That’s right.

In fact, he bought all of his furniture for $35.  A ready made home. 

(DR) I’d forgotten where Pete lived when he was here.  Pete transferred out.  I think, what was his term here, only a couple of years.  I think two summers and one winter.  The second winter in the fall he transferred out.

He came here from Rocky Mountain. And after he left here he went to the Forest Service. 

(DR) He went to Union Creek.  He became head of the Union Creek district, I think.  Dave was always concerned about his staff.  He was out and mingled around.  He was quite different from the man that followed him.  The man who followed him was pretty much a desk man (9).  Dave, I guess, I think his background in college was forestry and he lived it in that manner.  The man that followed him was more of an administrative type of an individual.  We all regretted it when Dave left.

Did you know John Doerr?

(DR) Yes.  We were very good friends

(SR) We were very good friends.  He stayed with us when he first came here.

(DR) We visited them when he took over at Olympic National Park. Were you able to get in touch with Nancy? (10)

Yes.  I called her on the phone.  She lives up in Sequim [WA].

(DR) How is she? Do you know?

She seems to be doing fine.

(DR) The reason I asked is, we didn’t hear from her this Christmas.

(SR) We heard she was ill this Christmas and we hadn’t heard from her.

(DR) My wife has a bear story or two that she lived to tell the tale.

That’s good.

(SR) Oh yes.  The first summer we had a little cabin.  I was so proud of all my new things from the showers and things, you know.  I did a washing and, of course, we had to put the line way up because the snow was so high.  I hung these things out and I looked out to admire them, and what do you know, a great big bear was pulling each thing off the line, like that.  I tell you.

Then, another time, I wasn’t quite acclimated to the altitude and I was kind of drowsy during the afternoons and I thought I would take a little nap since I had nothing to do.  At first, I thought I’d better think about dinner.  So I made a big bowl of Jell-O and right outside the window the snow was level, and that was nice place to cool it.  I put this big bowl out there and took my nap.  I got up and I thought I would see how m Jell-O is.  Not a thing in the bowl! Not one drop.

Another time that really was kind of frightening I was just opening the house and we had a little closet way in the back, where you had a closet and a refrigerator.  We always put the little pail of garbage outside and the garbage man came by and picked it up.  Now that the lodge had closed for the season and there was no big garbage pit where a beer would go, we had to be careful because if we put that out a bear would rummage in it.  So I kept it right inside the door until I saw you coming and I’d reach out and give it to you.  This day, I guess didn’t close the door too well.  I went to put my mop in this mop closet and faced a bear; eye to eyeball, and it wasn’t a very big place.  He had come in, and turned around, and shut the door on himself.

Was it a full-grown one?

(SR) Yes, a full-grown one.

Oh, boy.

(SR) I was screaming out one door and he went right through the big window with four panes in it.  And he went right through that window.

(DR) Slashed and blasted a hole through the window.

(SR) And I went out that front door screaming.  That was so close.

And one day Doug went to town, to Chiloquin, for the park.  It was late when he came home, dark, and I thought I heard the door handles going off and he’s got an armful and can’t open the door.  So I ran and said, “Just a minute, dear.” I opened the door and that bear was sitting there.

(DR) Sitting on his haunches playing with the doorknob.  She was a little shaky when I did get home.

(SR)  I think you probably heard the story about the bear at the Hedgpeth’s. It dismantled their house. It went upstairs and knocked everything over.

(DR) It tore the cupboards off the kitchen wall.

(SR) We went in to clean it up, and flower, sugar molasses and everything were all on the floor.  They went to town and left some candy next to the window.  The bear smelled it.

(DR) We had a bear break a window in our kitchen at the end of the house.  It didn’t get in.  I slept downstairs for two or three days.

(SR) I had made pickles and they smelled them.

(DR) We didn’t leave anything around, but he was prowling around.

(SR) That was in the fall when 12 bears were sleeping in our yard.

12?  

(DR) We had a circle out here of 11 bears.

Right in front of the house?

(SR) Yes.  And they would just wake up and smell.

(DR) Great big dogs.  They’d get up and sniff, and then they’d drop down.  It was just before they went to hibernate.  As Sadie said, she was making pickles, and you know the aroma of pickles. I came home for lunch this one day and there were 11 of them out there, yearlings and two-year olds, and three or four or fix adults, all lying in a semi-circle.  You had to be pretty careful. We had, in those days; too, they used a lot of double, 14 x 16 tents for temporary- rated people like rangers on the rim.

They still had a hospital tent out there?

(DR) Yes. We had two or three (bears).  There was one right here, set right off the end of this woodshed up here.  Mr. Whitworths they just got into that and made a shambles of it.

(SR) After our little girl was born, I had the bassinet on the porch.   After her bath and everything, I put her our there for her nap.  I didn’t know it, but everybody talked about me and said, “She’s not going to have a baby next year when we come.” The bear would go by, you know.  But we lived with the bear, and it was two years before we had her (the girl).  And they never bothered anybody unless they smelled food.  So there was no problem. They said when we came back, “Oh, you still have your little girl.”  We thought you wouldn’t because you left it out with the bear….

(DR) There was another incident, several actually, but one that I remember in particular.  It was early spring and the park was just opening up.  The road to the rim was not open for driving.  This young couple was on their honeymoon from Minnesota.  The drove in, and they wanted so badly to get to the lake.  We outfitted them with snowshoes so they could make it.  But they had a convertible, and at time, myself and a couple of other guys asked them, “Do you have any food?” “Oh no,” (they said).  We warned them that bears were around and they could be a problem if there was food around. “Oh no, we haven’t any food.”  (They said).  So they took off.  It was just about lunch time.  We all went to lunch, and when we got back the top (of the car) had been ripped to smithereens and they dug a hole through the upholstery of the back of the car.  There wasn’t a thing that we could do about.  The bear had gone on his way, and these young folks came down and wondered, “Who would do this to us?” And I said, “A bear.” They said, “Oh, that’s not possible.” I said, “I’m said, “I’m sorry,” and I showed him the blood on the side of the window.  I said, “We asked you if you had any food.” And they said, “Oh, we didn’t have any food.  We just had some candy bars and oranges.” That’s all it took.  It was a typical spring day up here, cloudy and cool, and pretty miserable driving, and those kids were headed to Medford and had to drive there in an open car, without a top or anything. I often wondered what ever happened to them. But oh, they looked sick.  To have that happen just ruined their car.

I stayed here until March of 1942, and then I transferred to the Arm Engineers and went to Camp White. I was at Camp White during the war.  After that, I lost touch with them.  The shuffled a lot of people around.  I understand that there’s a Hartell and a Mr. Varnum living in Fort Klamath (11).

Yes.

(DR) They were old timers here.  To answer your question, yes, there was quite a little bit of building going on.  Expansion.  The superintendent’s house on the hill and the chief naturalist’s house were just completed (12).  We had two CCC camps at that time, Camp Wineglass and Camp Annie Springs.  The young fellow who was the clerk for the army side of the operation at Camp Annie Spring became a businessman in Medford, Tony Manno.  He had a hardware store before his death.  Quite a few people came back here to settle after their experience with the three C’s. They maintained trails, did road work, and all sorts of things like that. They were involved in a lot of experiences. Their man power was involved in the landscaping that was done around the new buildings. And on the rim, too, a lot of the islands of evergreens and shrubbery were planted during that time.

(SR) Can I tell about my first experience having a party?  We weren’t here very long, but people had been entertaining.  The superintendent’s wife had a little tea and several of the others up on the hill.  And we still lived in that little cottage.  I thought, well, I just feel I should do something.  I made my best recipes and had a tea. In those days, under the old superintendent, Solinsky, they were used to coming in hat and gloves. I couldn’t believe it. And so they came. After lunch, I had picked a great big bouquet of flowers, and I had a lovely wedding gift, we had a lovely wedding, it was a big vase.  I thought, I know just where to get these flowers. So after lunch I went down behind our little cottage and I picked this great big bouquet. So the women came, and they ooed and awed, where did you get the lovely flowers? I thought, my goodness, they lived in the park and they don’t know. So I said, “Just down behind the cottage here there are lovely Indian paintbrush and lupine.” They said, “Oh, it’s beautiful.” He came home and he said, “Where’d you get those flowers?” “I just picked them down there, honey.” “You’re not supposed to pick flowers in the park!” Oh, I felt so embarrassed. But they didn’t say anything.

Pete Foiles said that he was in change of going out and picking fresh flowers every day that they had in the lobby downstairs.

(SR) Is that right?

They used to put them in vases and have them in front of the Community House, too. 

(DR) They had them at the lodge, but we thought they picked them outside of the park. I didn’t get a reprimand, but I sure was nervous.

We enjoyed the period here. We felt that we were fortunate to be park of the Park Service in this hey day, in my estimation, during those thirties. Everything was favorable for that.  They had the CCC.  It was a wonderful opportunity.  It was a busy time, but it was enjoyable.

Did you ever get to meet any of the big wigs when they came in?

(DR) Not that I can remember.  The ranger staff had that opportunity because they were usually involved in guiding the around.  I know we had Mr. Ickes out here once (13).  Then there was Mr. Tolson, who was the assistant director of the Park Service (14).  He was out here once during the time when I was here.  Was it Ansel Adams, a photographer?

Yes.

(DR) I met him a couple of time.

Do you know the building that sits up on the hill and has all been repainted? You call it a center, now of some kind, a rim center or something.  It was know as the old community building, community hall, and it was threatened with destruction because it was entirely unsafe.

It still is.

(DR) This was 50 years ago.  Low and behold, here it is with the porch taken off and all painted.  At that time, they kept a piano in there that belonged to the park.  The first or second winter that we were in (I think it must have been the first winter) Dave wondered if, Sadie played a little in those days, we would like to have a piano.  And, we said sure.  We didn’t have too much furniture and there was a space for it over in a corner.  They brought the piano in and set in into place and the floor broke away.

Oh, no.  This was in the stone house?

(DR) Right.  So the upshot of that was they got under all of those houses and redid them.  It was all dry rot.  So they did all three of them.  They put new footings under new sills.  And that was wonderful.  They painted them all nice and put new fiber board and wainscoting and did a real nice job.  Only one little thing.  All of the underneath girders and joists were treated with creosote and it permeated all of the foods.

Oh, no.

(DR) We threw out flour, wasn’t it, that we had to throw out.  For that first year we had to keep things in pretty tight canisters.

(SR) We threw out 100 pounds of potatoes.

(DR) We were coming home from Klamath Falls and it came on a freeze.  They were beautiful potatoes.  I never saw anything like that in Seattle.  Anyhow, we were getting ready for winter and brought in a lot of supplies. I thought I had the potatoes protected enough from freezing, below zero.  I brought the potatoes in and set them in the kitchen next to the cupboard, got up in the morning and they had all leaked and left a nice great, big, brown stain on the floor.  I ruined the whole thing, except a few in the very center that were edible.  The rest of them were all spoiled.

One of the little adventures in our lives was back in the year that our daughter was born, which was in March of 1937.  At that time, we kept the rim and the roads open and we had quite a little bit of tourist travel from the local cities (15). We had visitors up from Medford and Klamath Falls, skiers, especially up on this big slope right up here under Garfield (Peak).  I would serve for the ranger staff on Sunday, either for parking or patrol duty, and then had Monday off.  The routine was that one of us went down to Fort Klamath to get the mail, and any little errands that had to be run.  On this particular day, we didn’t expect our daughter for another month or six weeks, we had taken our car on down to Fort Klamath and were coming home and a heater hose burst.  We went home and I put it in the garage. The next day, after we ate lunch and I said to Sadie, “I think I better do something about that hose.”  Let me give you a little background.  I mentioned about the suspension of Solinsky and the others, and that first summer that I was here, before Sadie and I were married, there were two General Accounting Office Inspectors here and they were fine-tooth combing everything.  Putting any brakes on there was a little carelessness or the misuse of government property or doing something that was out of line we were all very much aware of this danger because of what had gone before.  I said I think I’ll do down and talk to Martin even though I know it’s against the rules (16).  I could bring the additional hose when I came up from town the next time.  So I went down, and Martin gave me the heater hose, and I put the car back together.  That night, about 10 o’clock, our baby started to arrive.

(SR) I was so excited, I reached for the lam and it went out in the snow bank.  This was in March.

(DR).  Otherwise, we’d have been high and dry without a car, or ad to borrow someone’s or something.

Yes.

(DR) Anyhow, divine providence or something guided me to take the necessary steps to repair that.

(SR) And then he tried… I didn’t know. It was eight months.  I had no idea what was happening, and it wasn’t time.  But he said we’d better go to town.  And I said, “What for, this isn’t time?  It’s not nine months.”  So he dialed the phone, (actually) cranked the phone, but somebody in the park answered.  He said, “I’m trying to get outside.”  Dial again.  The next person answered.  We woke up everybody.

(DR) Everybody in the park.

(SR) Anyway, we finally got (through by phone) to the hospital and the nurse screamed, “Crater Lake! Get on your way in a hurry and take those curves easy!” Seven miles of curves.

(DR)  I was trying to straighten them out.  We went down there in about an hour and 45 minutes, which was considered good time in those days.

(SR) When we got there, she said, “Oh, we’re painting and I don’t know where I’m going to put you.  There’s a lady at Crater Lake that has to have the delivery room.  I don’t really know what to do with you.” I said, “I don’t know anyone else at Crater Lake that’s having a baby and we called you.”  Then she started scolding us for taking those curves so fast and getting down there so fast.

(DR) But the next night (there) was a blizzard. We were just in between storms. I wasn’t able to get in (to the park) the day after the birth.  I stayed, of course, for the birth.

(SR) This nurse gave him a pillow to sleep in the car.

(DR) I wasn’t able to get in.  I was just one of those divine things that happened.

Becky Foiles said the rangers had rigged up a toboggan for her.  Her baby came in February and they had to take her down the hill to get to the road.

(DR) They’ve had some really strange [things]. The thing that upset me, and I called Superintendent Benton and talked to him over the phone and I came up last year hoping to meet him and talk to him afterwards. There was an article in the paper written by some freelance writer for the [Portland] Oregonian emphasizing all the negative parts of living in the park in the wintertime.  It was, to me, such as one-sided thing and I was so upset that I wrote both Francis Lange and Rudy Lueck and called Superintendent Benton on the phone (17).  The superintendent agreed that he thought it was rather negative and invited the man back the following year to get a little more positive side.  We read about all of the trauma and all of the trouble they had and we…

(SR) People were divorcing because they couldn’t take the winters.

I’ve heard just the opposite.  There’s all these romances, and people met their wives here, got married here. 

(SR) That was our time.

(DR) It was a very bad picture.  For example, we were, for the best part of a week, I won’t say a full week, one winter without water.  What had happened….

(SR)  Oh, trying to wash diapers. Melt snow.

(DR) Melt snow, right.  It was often that we would be without electricity.

(SR) Without lights a lot of the time.

(DR) But we improvised and we took it in stride and figured it was part of the life of living in the park.  We enjoyed the summers and the fall.  The summers were busy and hectic, but the falls and the springs were enjoyable, particularly the fall and the early winter months before the snow got awfully deep. It was just heavenly up here.

(SR) The time that I remember most about the winter was one terrible time. He had not charged the park radio in our house that we used to keep in touch and tell them what the weather was like each day.  And he’d go once a month to take the payroll in, and I usually went with him.  But this time I didn’t go and nobody—there weren’t many people around- but no one knew that I didn’t go this time.  So I had this little one, and she wasn’t walking yet.  She had this little cart, you know, and wheeled herself around.  The house was snowed up completely except on little corner in the bedroom. I think you can see it here, how we were snowed up. So, I went upstairs and lights were out, and the stairwell went right off our bedroom, right straight down. I thought I would put something across there because she’s going around in this cart. I put her in the other end of the room, while I looked in the other room.  The next thing I knew, there she was, right down the stairs and hit herself against the wall.  She couldn’t breathe, and nobody knew I was in and I didn’t know how to get in touch with anybody.  I picked her up, and she was just, lifeless. I didn’t know what to do.  I took her in the kitchen and turned on the faucet and got the sink full of cold water and just dumped her. She got her breath back and I patted her on the back and that was it. But she had this, where she had hit the wall, something on her face for a while.  The reason I didn’t go to town was I was having an attack of appendicitis.

Oh no.

(SR) And the doctor in Medford had told me sometime before that he would take them out.  I went a couple of times to him with this pain and he told me you have a bad appendix.  He took a picture and he showed me.  “I’ll take them out,” he says, “for nothing because you can’t stay in the park all winter.”  I came from a big city and I didn’t believe in these doctors so I said, “You’ll never get a knife in me.” And I came back home.  That was terrible.

(DR) Do you have any other questions?

I was going to ask you something about Solinsky.  When that big scandal happened, I know you just got here at the tail end of it all, how did people react to it?  Were they supportive of him? Did they like him a lot? Did they feel like it was an injustice?  

(DR) Yes, they seemed to be supportive.  The only thing that they didn’t realize…To answer you question, they did.  He was well liked.  He was a big rotund type of an individual and expansive in his way of dealing with people in certain situations. And he was liked.  He was out everyday.  Dave followed the same pattern. He would be down in that yard in the morning when the crews dispersed with any last minute instructions or any questions. That’s the way he ran the show. Yes, he was liked. But the thing was…

And what he did was not the cause of suspension. It wasn’t so much for personal gain as it was he merely took money out of this pocket and put it in this pocket to cover up something that shouldn’t have happened.  And the loss of that boat.  But, when they got to delving into it, they found that he had taken the big park limousine, taken groups of people, and footed the bills.  And that was kind of bad.  The man that I as working for, Mr. Gould, got his fingers in the ringer by having taken some checks down to Fort Klamath to Tony Castor, who ran the Klamath store, and cashed them.  And they were phony checks.  He didn’t keep the money, but he was involved in that and that’s what did him in. Then Mr. Erwin was guilty of having written the checks trying to cover this exchange of, from the 201 to the 210 or whatever account number.  Then Davidson, the construction man, in charge of construction up here, I forget what his title was, but anyhow, it turned out that he was using Park Service trucks and Park Service facilities to gather rock to haul to Medford for rock houses at that time.  There’s two of them. There’s one on Crater Lake Avenue just before you get to Main Street and there’s one on Main Street and Willamette (18).  And those houses were involved in this hassle at that time.  But Solinsky himself, other than the use of his position, as far as anyone knew or came out, didn’t benefit.  Everyone was for him. They thought it was too bad. Then they brought in these two General Accounting Office men and they were here all the summer of 1934 and boy, people walked the straight and narrow (to) make sure that if they took a government car it was for government business.  That’s about to the Army engineers.

I agree with what you’re saying.  Crater Lake is really a special place. Everyone I talk to.  It’s amazing that people are still good friends after 50 years even they may have only worked together for a very short time.  I think Crater Lake has a lot to do with it.

(DR) That’s right. Did you talk to Amy Finch?

No.

(DR) She’s a party you should talk to.  Her husband was assistant chief ranger and she’s a neighbor to Ethel Wilkinson (19).

Footnotes:

  1. Canfield had formerly been chief ranger at the park, succeeding Bill Godfrey in 1931.
  2. Ranger Dormitory, known as the Steel Center since 1987.
  3. The first experimental plowing of roads took place during the winter of 1930-31.
  4. Caretakers hired by park concessionary R.W. Price.
  5. Hughes played for the University of Oregon and later for the Chicago Cardinals.
  6. Those were riding breeches. Trouser replaced them in 1946.
  7. The Crater Wall Trail, which went to the shore from the Rim Village.
  8. House 24. The “Circle” refers to an island of plantings which has since been paved because of winter operations.
  9. Ernest P. Leavitt, Superintendent from 1937 to 1952.
  10. Nancy E. Doerr, John Doerr’s widow.
  11. Guy Hartell, heavy equipment operator, worked at the park from 1936 to 1941, and from 1956 to 1971. He died in 1990.  Richard O. “Dick” Varnum mixed Gang (Roads) foreman worked at Crater Lake from 1936 to 1941 and from 1946 to 1965.  He died in 1994.
  12. House 19 and 20, respectively.
  13. Secretary of the Interior from 1933 to 1946, who visited the park in 1935.
  14. Hillory Tolson served in this capacity from 1933 to 1951.
  15. The park was kept open during the winter on an experimental basis beginning in 1936.
  16. Martin Palmer, the park mechanic.
  17. Francis Lange was Resident Landscape Architect from 1934 to 1939.  Rudy Lueck served as a lodge caretaker, equipment operator and park ranger at Crater Lake from 1929 to 1940. Robert E. Benton was Park Superintendent from 1984 to 1991.
  18. Davidson built both houses as a private contractor but utilized some material from the park.  One is located at 201 Crater Lake Avenue and the other is 1202 E. Main.
  19. Amy Finch was interviewed by Steve Mark on the telephone in May 1989. Her husband B.R. Finch was a ranger at Crater Lake from 1933 to 1940.  Ethel Wilkinson was the Superintendent’s Secretary from 1927 to 1947. She lived in Jacksonville in August 1988.
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