Lake Tahoe became one of the major project area studies, and the Grover Hot Springs area on the summit of the Sierra on the east side was another major project. We had quite a variety of beach projects along the coast. At the time we had the big tsunami (16) that wrecked a lot of Crescent City and came down along the Oregon Coast was when we were making a study under the direction of Pat Brown, who was governor, for a study of the redwoods. We made a study of what existed and what redwoods were being logged, and then what redwoods were in danger of being logged so we could set up a program for land acquisition. We were able to accomplish some of this. The timber companies were almost like enemy number one. They didn’t want to even see us on their property. It was a hectic period of time. The National Park Service had just made a study prior to our study in connection with the National Geographic Society which provided funds for a study of the redwoods (17). I met with the landscape architects of the Park Service who were doing that study and it was a lot of help. I had a lot of help from them to come up with our study and our report to the director, which then went on to the governor and then on to the Legislature.
The state park planning system grew quite substantially from the time I entered in 1949 as the chief landscape architect until I retired in 1973. It went from me being the only landscape architect and I think we must have had about 75 at the time I finished. I was in the field and in the Sacramento headquarters office. Then, of course, as things often happen, feast and famine set in and they had to let a lot of the personnel go after I retired because the Legislature didn’t come up with the appropriations that were needed. They didn’t have enough taxpayers anteing up into the treasury. Well, the whole state system was having a difficult time with finances. The state grew to the point where they had so many different divisions and divisions within divisions that I used to say that it’s getting to the point where it’s like the doctor that’s so specialized that he specializes in the lower lobe of the left ear. That’s about the way the state was. They’d set up a landscape architect group that studies just National Guard armories and another group that would study signs. I explained to them I felt a landscape architect should be like the family doctor. He should be capable of doing everything and anything that came his way. But there were a lot of people that were looking for careers in some specialty and this is the way they felt they could get a career going. That went on for a while. There was one group that just specialized in studying the reservoirs.
