Earl Wall

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Earl Wall Oral History Interview

Interviewer: Stephen R. Mark, Crater Lake National Park Historian

Interview Location and Date: At Earl Wall’s residence in Jacksonville, Oregon, March 17, 1989

Transcription: Transcribed by Chris Prout, July 1997

Biographical Summary (from the interview introduction)

CCC enrollee 1934. I located Earl Wall through Larry Smith, who had been interviewed during the previous month for this series. Although his term of employment at Crater Lake was relatively short, Mr. Wall’s memory was sharp and he provided valuable insight into several parks projects undertaken during 1934. His account, along with several others in this series, should be read collectively to obtain some idea of life as a Civilian Conservation Corps enrollee during the depths of the Great Depression.

The following transcription is brief, but supplemented by notes taken during a telephone conversation which preceded the interview.

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

Taped interview 311. File includes biographical note by Larry Smith. Slide taken at time of interview. Additional background information, both about Mr. Wall and the CCC camps at Crater Lake, is in the park’s history files.

To the reader:

I located Earl Wall through Larry Smith, who had been interviewed during the previous month for this series. Although his term of employment at Crater Lake was relatively short, Mr. Wall’s memory was sharp and he provided valuable insight into several parks projects undertaken during 1934. His account, along with several others in this series, should be read collectively to obtain some idea of life as a Civilian Conservation Corps enrollee during the depths of the Great Depression.

The following transcription is brief, but supplemented by notes taken during a telephone conversation which preceded the interview. Additional background information, both about Mr. Wall and the CCC camps at Crater Lake, is in the park’s history files.

Stephen R. Mark

(Crater Lake National Park Historian)

October 1997

CONDUCTED BY STEPHEN R. MARK IN JACKSONVILLE [OR] ON 3/17/89

Where were you born and raised? What is your educational background?

I was born at Bend, Oregon, in 1917, during the winter in about three feet of snow. That gave me a good start to be at Crater Lake! I went to school through the eighth grade because back in the Depression years there were a lot people that didn’t go too far in school because they didn’t have money to travel very far to get to school. If you lived very far from school, it was just impossible to g any further in your education at that time. After I got out of school, we were into the mining game. We had a hard rock mine, quartz.

Is that how you came to Medford?

We had come down here in 1929, during the Depression, when things were really tough. We had to just about give our dairy away and a whole lot of other things because there just wasn’t any way to continue. We were leasing property, trying to buy it, but there wasn’t that much money to buy anything with. You couldn’t even give it away because people couldn’t pay the taxes on it even if they got it. Finally, we got acquainted with a fellow that was from the Medford area. He kept telling Dad how nice it was down here. He said this was a real paradise, lots of fruit, the weather was great, nice winters and all that. When you’re in the Bend country, you can figure on some pretty harsh winters. You get a lot of snow and ice. So you had some winters there about like they had this winter in a lot of the colder country. So Dad came down and looked the place over. Finally, he found a place out at Eagle Point that he kind of liked the looks of. It belonged to a banker. It had quite a bit of ground and a big house. So we sold out what we could and gave the rest of it away. We loaded up what stock we had, milk cows, and what we had left, anyway, and we migrated down to Eagle Point. We went by Klamath Falls, over the Green Springs, and through Ashland out of Eagle Point.

While we were there, we got acquainted with an old miner. He was a shoe repairman, a cobbler from the old school. He was a guy that knew how to make a shoe from the bottom up. He had done quite lot of mining in his earlier years and he was still interested in it. He knew where there were a couple of pretty good possibilities of finding some gold. So we got to monkeying around and finally went out with him. [That’s when] we really went into the mining business. We started working on a prospect up here in Sterling and we finally ran into some pretty good gold (1). We took out somewhere near $3,000 that winter and spring. That was when we were getting $14 something and the top price was $16.50. But it was the other minerals that were in it that lowered the price on our selling to the guy that bought the gold. Most of it we traded right here in Jacksonville, to the Goddard Store. He bought gold. The gold scales that he had in his store are now in the U.S. Bank building down here, I believe.

Anyway, that’s how we got down into this country. In 1934, our gold had petered out and we were having a hard time making a living. So the next best thing for us kids was to go into the three C’s. We could send $25 a month home and spend the other $5 in the camp or wherever. My brother finally came out of the woods after they had gotten shut down because they couldn’t make any money. He joined up with me in the three C’s, so that sent $50 a month home for the family. So we managed to survive in pretty good shape until things started picking up on the outside. We both mustered out in ’35 in the spring. He went back to the lumber and I went back into mining. I finally went into the lumber industry and wound up over at Klamath Falls.

While I was in the three C’s, I met a girl up there that came in here from California. She was a pretty nice-looking blond, blue-eyed gal, so we finally got married. I went over to Hilt, California for the Fruit Growers and I was in a saw mill there up until ’41. In the spring of ’42, right after the war broke out, I went into the construction business for the government and built army camps, airports, roads and whatever else.

After we went into the three C’s, we wound up in Company 1555 at Annie Springs.

How did they assign you there?

After I had gone down to Medford to sign up, they were using the Jackson County fairgrounds as their headquarters. I don’t know how I got sent to there, but that’s where they sent me.

Your brother was sent there too?

Later. He came in behind me, and I don’t know whether he asked to get up there. I don’t remember that part. But he and a brother of one of the guys that I went in with came to Annie Springs. We had a lot of activity up there, working and doing all kinds of things.

Was that the first time you ever saw Crater Lake?

Yes, that was the first time I’d seen Crater Lake. It was in the early spring, March or April. There was a lot of snow on the ground and we were just starting to build a new camp at Annie Springs when I got there. We had to dig out snow banks to set our tents and get things situated around so we could build a new camp. After we got that built, we started out on cleaning up along the roads, cutting a lot of snags and things that they quit doing later on.

Did you mostly work on the road to the rim, or was it out on Highway 62?

No, we worked on 62 down to the park boundary from the south side. Then, over this way, on 62 down to, I guess we ran clear down to the boundary. They did a lot of bank sloping, cleaning up and burning along the roads, and getting rid of a lot of the old snags and downed timber and all that sort of thing. [We did] cleaning up in general.

Had they just finished rerouting the road, so they had to do a lot of that?

We didn’t get in on any road rerouting because it was all there then (2). Later on, the only part that I know of that they rerouted was that piece there from the top of the rim down into Annie Springs when they cut that new road. But I don’t know when they did that because that wasn’t there when [I was there.] It’s a little different in there now than what it was when we went in there to set up that camp. They moved the gate, the South Gate (3).

We had some forest fires that we worked on when we were there in the camp. We had a little one in the park down somewhere in that country towards Union Peak. I don’t know where that [boundary] line crosses down there, but we were still in the park.

Did you get any kind of orientation when you first got to the camp? Did they introduce what the CCC’s were to a lot of people and talk about who was going to do what?

I don’t remember that part of it. If they did, it didn’t sink in because I don’t remember any of that. They must have had some instructions of some kind, but I don’t recall any. Anyway, one of our jobs was working along the roads, as I think I have already said. We felled some big trees down there. I mean, some big sugar pines. I’ll bet some of those trees must have been 5-6 foot through on the stump. I have some pictures somewhere. But they were great, big snags. They were snags, but they were sugar pines. I’m sure that unless somebody hauled them out of there that the center, the heart of those things, is still laying there. But I am sure they’ve been gone a long time now.

We did some work at the park, government headquarter, on what I guess is the Administration Building. At that time, it was just going up and they had a lot of rock work that was done there around the base. They had the framework, the rafters, up. We came in and helped with the sheeting and the shakes on the roof. We shaked those roofs. They were really steep, to me. I had never worked on anything that steep.

Where did the shakes come from?

I don’t know whether they split their own shakes there or whether they were hauled in there. I didn’t cut any. I don’t remember splitting any. I think they were hauled in because I think they were bundled, as near as I remember. They were bundled shakes, and I don’t know whether they were split or sawed. I have an idea they were probably sawed shakes. They split those things and then they saw them. One side is sawed and the other is still in the rough.

They stained them later?

Yes. They were all stained afterwards. Everything was stained. The rest of the building, which I think had siding on it, but it seemed like it was a shiplap siding, drop siding. Anyway, we helped complete that roof and cleaned up around there. Then we hauled a lot of sod from down at the creek towards Annie Springs (4). We hauled sod and stuff for landscaping around the headquarters. We hauled a lot of stuff out of those bogs for that.

Did you just do the landscaping around the Administration Building or the Ranger Dorm, too?

I don’t remember because I was down on the pit loading trucks, and they’d just haul it up there and dump it off. They had another crew that was doing the landscaping. I don’t even, right now, remember who that was. I know we shoveled a lot sod out of that place down there. I suppose you probably wouldn’t see it now, because it has probably grown up again so much.

We had a fire or two that we got on. There were some big fires out of the park. We went over the Klamath Falls and had some pretty good-sized fires there. Later on, they had a big fire at Prospect, right around the area where Mill Creek Falls is, on the south side of where the water goes down the tubes for the powerhouse. It was quite a lot of area in there. That was a real hot summer, and that summer we had a big fire out at Jacksonville that burned up a lot of country.

They pulled us out of the main camp then and sent us out on spike camps building these log cabins that they called snowshoe [patrol] cabins. We spent the biggest part of our summer out on those. Some of them we built from the ground up and completed them. Some we completed that were partly built. I don’t remember now how many there were. It must have been about four—one at National Creek, one at Bybee Creek, Red Blanket, and one at Maklak Springs. I don’t remember how big those cabins were. They must have been about 16 by 20. They were pretty good-sized little cabins. They were all built out of logs, chinked, and shake-roofed. Everything it takes to make a good, sturdy cabin.

You’d do all the work there on building the cabins? Nothing was hauled in?

I think they hauled the shakes in and whatever lumber went into the cabin. The sides, all the logs in the sides, and the ends, and it seemed to me the roof were hauled in. Were the rafters out of poles or were they sawed 2 by 6’s?

I think they were out of poles, but I’m not sure because they were demolished in 1970.

It seemed to me they were out of poles, but I’m not too positive of that. I know that the boards that we nailed the shakes to were boards. There wasn’t much lumber in one of them. The floors were made out of boards, and I don’t remember whether the floor joists were sawed or whether they were logs. It has been a lot of time since we built those things.

What did they have on the inside of them?

They had some cabinets in there to keep their cooking utensils and their food in, their canned things and things like that. I know we built them right there on the job. We built some regular cabinets in there. It seemed to me like there were just wooden bunks built against the wall. They would have to haul a mattress and stuff into them.

Was there anyplace to cook?

They had a cook stove of some kind. I don’t remember what we had in there, but they a regular little cook stove of some kind. Back in those days you could buy these little cast iron cook stoves that had about four lids on them, a fire pot, and a little oven underneath with a cast iron door.

Sort of like a Dutch oven?

You might say that. They were just one of the popular old time stoves that you’d see out on the cattle range or sheep herders camp or the old sod-buster shacks. They were just a common stove in those days, as far as I know. I’ve seen hundreds of them.

Those stoves, they’d get them in Medford or somewhere and bring them out?

I don’t know. I couldn’t say. I don’t know where they came from. You could get them at any place. I don’t know whether they were issued to the Forest Service or the Park Service or whether they had to buy them back east and have them sent out here.

How big were the crews when you were building those cabins?

It seemed to me like there must have been six or eight of us, at least. There must have been about eight of us, maybe 10 with the cook and the foreman.

Did all the guys know each other ahead of time before they got on the crew?

Yes, I would say so because we had been together in the camp. Some of us, four of us in that group, mined and hunted and fished together before we ever went to Crater Lake. There were a lot of other people that you had known from the areas around. The ones that were in our spike camp on those cabins, four of us, were right out of the same community. The other were just guys you got acquainted with in the main camp.

How many guys do you think were in the Annie Springs camp that summer?

That’s a good question. Right now, I haven’t the slightest idea. But I’d say there must have been 150 to 200 guys in that camp. Maybe more.

Would they all have the same enrollment period?

No. Some of them in there had been in for a year or more before I went in. Some may have been in the three Cs ever since they’d started it and had been stationed at different camps. There were some in there from the Lava Beds camp. There were some that were in there from Round Prairie, up here on top of the Green Springs (5). That wasn’t a very big camp. It was a spike camp of a sort. There were some that were over at Dog Lake. That’s out of Lakeview. There were some from Middle Fork [of the Rogue River]. We had some in there that were up on Roxy Ann (6). They had a spike camp up there. I don’t know if I knew of any that came down out of the Applegate country in Carberry Camp and the Seattle Bar, which is on the Applegate. I don’t know whether we had any in out of that camp or not. But, by the time we got to Evans Creek, we had a few people in there from every place in half the state of Oregon (7).

Did you notice a difference in the way the Forest Service administered their camps as opposed to the NPS?

It was pretty well the same because most of the guys that worked in through the park service were in with the forestry. There wasn’t a whole lot of difference. I just can’t say that we had any differences because we had the same army regulations and the same captain and lieutenant, people like that, that governed the camp. So we were pretty much the same.

It was more similar because…

You’d go out on the job, whether you were working on the roads or not. When we got to Evans Creek we were on mostly roads. We had a rock crusher down there that we operated. So we were cutting right of ways and making and maintaining roads. To me, I don’t know that there was a whole lot of difference. It was down there at Evans Creek in the rain all winter, were you had been in the snow at Crater Lake. It was kind of wet.

Fieldnotes from oral history interview

Subject: Earl Wall

630 Applegate Street (P.O. Box 236)

Jacksonville, OR 97530 (503) 899-1072

Date: March 17, 1989

Connection with CRLA: CCC enrollee 1934

Notes (interview conducted at Jacksonville):

Telephone contact was made on March 7 and had a lengthy conversation, some of which was reiterated on March 17. During the phone conversation, we talked about the Annie Springs camp in 1934 and the various jobs that EW did that summer.

He said that the Annie Springs camp was composed mainly of men from the Rogue Valley and Klamath Basin. Very few from outside of Oregon, whereas the Wineglass camp had many southerners, including some black. Most of the Wineglass enrollees were close in age, but the Annie Springs camp had enrollees aged 17 to over 60. EW got to the park in April, the first time that he had seen Crater Lake. First job was removal of debris from and near roads, crew sized varied from 15 to 30. The next job was working on the roof of the Administration building, which was very steep even with wearing cleats. At that time, he also helped with the landscaping of the headquarters area. He and others dug sod from the head of a canyon near Annie Springs and this was transported to Munson Valley.

The remainder of the summer was spent building and completing backcountry cabins. The crew size for this work was ten. Began with cabins in the northwest corner of the park and worked in a counterclockwise fashion around the park. Started with the National Creek cabin and finished with the Maklak cabin. Supplies were hauled by truck via the motorways for the work and the crew would work at the site during the week. Logs for the cabins were obtained from the surrounding area of the structure, and were chinked with san and cement. Some cabinet work was done by the crews. Some cabins were started in 1933, then finished the next year. The Maklak cabin was built entirely in 1934. EW’s crew was the only one for backcountry cabins, Ed Loosely (from Fort Klamath) was the temporary NPS ranger in charge of the work.

EW described the Annie Springs (No. 1555) camp as largely composed to tents. The only frame building were the mess hall and latrines. The camp occupied the area of the present Mazama campground. Some of the enrollees had been to the Lava Beds and Oregon Caves camps the winter before, also had men from the USFS South Fork (near Butte Falls) camp. Most of the men at the Annie Springs camp had outdoor experience, very few from cities. Annie Springs enrollees would rarely venture over to Wineglass, little contact between these camps except for the occasional baseball game.

EW signed up at the CCC office located at the old fairgrounds in Medford (this is now occupied by GSA). Couldn’t get much return from mining in the Applegate area, so we able to enroll even though was underage by one year (the minimum age was18). Worked from April 1934 to March 1935, but was at USFS Camp Evans Creek from October 1934 onwards. When was being finished at Camp Annie Springs, there was eight to ten inches of snow on the ground. In late October, this large camp was broken up to smaller camps: Oregon Caves, Lava Beds, and USFS assignments like Evans Creek (where enrollees did mostly roadwork).

On the weekends, the CCC company would often run a truck for enrollees to go home. Two trucks to the Rogue Valley (one to Medford, the other to the Rogue River/ Gold Hill area) and one to Klamath Falls. The Medford truck would drop its enrollees at the RR depot and pick them up again on Sunday night. EW recalls one organized trip to Diamond Lake. There were no educational facilities at the camp in ’34 and facilities for entertainment were limited. Good food in the main camp, though there were some complaints (much better than most enrollees were getting before they joined up). Although the structure of the camp was based on a military model, it was informal. Visitors could come and go. Special dinners were sometimes held, EW met his eventual wife on one of these occasions.

Before the taped portion of the March 17 interview, we discussed the backcountry cabins and their construction. EW said that the crew had their own cook and that bears sometimes gave the crew problems, particularly at Maklak. He identified locations of several cabins on the photo file cards where identifications had not been made. He didn’t remember the Bear Creek cabin nor the west boundary cabins, as the crew did not work on them. The Maklak cabin was clearly the most memorable, as it was built on the spring and attracted much wildlife. The bears here constantly raided the crew’s provisions. Canvas tents were used by the crew when working at a site, so little could be done to deter animals.

Footnotes:

1: Approximately 10 miles south of Jacksonville near the Little Applegate River.

2: Much of this work on west Highway 62 took place in 1931.

3: The “panhandle” was transferred from the Rogue River National Forest in 1932, but work on a new entrance motif did not commence until several years later.

4: Much of the sod came from a boggy area west of the present Godfrey Glen trailhead.

5: Between Lincoln and Pinehurst, north of Highway 66.

6: Near Medford.

7: West of Shady Cove. It served as the winter camp for some of the enrollees at Crater Lake.

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