We’re in Section B, Landscape Architecture in the National Park Service and the U.S Forest Service.
Professor Peck used to tell student of landscape architecture at Oregon State about his consulting work with the U.S. Forest Service. He used to talk with me about it, because I had expressed my desire to do design projects while in college that would relate to the National Park Service. That’s when he explained to me that I had to go through the process of the design as set up by the curriculum and doing all the various types of design projects that were typical for landscape architects in studying the course. So I was able, though, in the School of Forestry as one of my projects in forest silviculture to plan a new entrance to the Peavy Arboretum at Corvallis (11). Then also I did a plan for one of the areas in the Arboretum as a day-use development. One time, I entered a ASAL design competition, which accredited schools of landscape architecture in the country, and won a second mention in the national design competition. Actually, I took fifth place among all the students in the country in this design competition. The design had to do with two adjoining country estates and integrating one new development into the old homestead development.
My earliest projects with the Forest Service as a landscape architect had to do with several of the campgrounds that were something like the Rim Village campground, where there was just nothing to it but a big dust bowl. So many of those early developments were that way. I think we’ve learned from a forest pathologist by the name of E.P. Meinecke, who came up with the concept of control roads and parking, to minimize the impact on the forest trees. Many of the trees in the popular recreation areas were dying because of compaction through human use. But along with that in the Forest Service, I was able to get involved in the Timberline Trail around Mount Hood, which we started in 1933.
Then there were a number of special use permits like at Olallie Lake. The special use permit for a summer resort, boat docks, and the lake. That was one of my early projects. I was given the job of planning the brand new ranger station at Parkdale, Oregon, on the north side of Mount Hood. The ranger station, at that time, was in the home of the district ranger. This was a complete ranger station with new residences, office, truck and trail warehouse, fire warehouses, and things of that nature that made a complex of about 24 buildings. That had to be designed. I remember the ranger station at Parkdale, in particular, because it was alongside a fast flowing cold stream of water and there were a number of Indian huts that had been used for steam baths and firepits outside where they’d get the rocks hot and then put them in these little shelters. You could just barely crawl into them. Then they’d throw water. They’d put a lot of brush over them, throw water on these hot rocks, and they’d get all the steam. After they had gotten their skin all cleansed with this hot steam, they’d step out and about three feet away was this cold running stream that they’d dive in. If they didn’t have a heart attack, they would survive. That was an interesting project.
