Print Friendly

The next year, ’32, I stayed and did some work in Los Angeles to make money to come back up to Oregon State. So I was able to finish out the fourth year of work in landscape architecture. It was during that time that I received a letter from Crater Lake and Don Libbey giving me the opportunity to accept the job as landscape architect at Crater Lake. I’d also written to Fred Cleator of the Forest Service and my professor insisted and encouraged me to accept the Forest Service job (10). This was because he felt that I’d have a better opportunity to get a wider range of experience in landscape design with the Forest Service because of its wider ranger of work – fishing resorts, lodges. And planning the ranger stations, things like that, plus all the campgrounds, and setting wilderness area boundaries and boundaries for all development. At that time, we had a new chief of recreation and lands for the Forest Service, Bob Marshall, a famous wilderness man. He set up policies that were particularly restrictive and land use classifications. As a landscape architect, it gave me the opportunity in the Forest Service to do a lot of what I call resource planning.  I found that working in the Forest Service was very joyful, a wonderful experience. But there was one thing about it, though. It was hell on my social life, because I worked on the regional foresters’ Travel Team. I was not home. I was out in the field most of the time. I’d get home from a field trip and I’d be there in the office for about a week and then I’d have to take off. And even when winter came, I would have to be out traveling in the winter sports areas. With the Timberline Lodge project, I spent the winters of ’35 and ’36 up there getting the date together to draw up my plan of development for the Timberline Lodge development. One of the projects I had on the Columbia River, I drew up the plan of development for the Eagle Creek Recreation Area. Because of my experience at Crater Lake, I had the knowledge of the building and design of the Sinnott Memorial Overlook. By the way, his niece, I mean Nick Sinnott, the Congressman, was the secretary to the regional forester. Because of my association with the Sinnott Memorial Overlook and having given one of the first lectures there, as a ranger-naturalist, I included in the plan for the Eagle Creek area, an overlook that would have the same kind of a function that the Sinnott Memorial Overlook building had as a place for the Forest Service to have recreation staff people give talks. It had a wonderful view up on the point overlooking the Columbia River Gorge and the backside of Bonneville Dam, the upriver side. All these Park Service experiences I had helped me a lot in the Forest Service. The planting that went on at Timberline Lodge was all based on my experience at Crater Lake, where I was able to get sod from an area we call Mud Lake, where later we would build a dam and create a lake. It’s called Trillium Lake now, but before it was flooded, I had the crews dig up all the sod and do exactly at Timberline what had been done on the rim at Crater Lake. That background of experience at Crater Lake helped me in that connection.