It was while I was in the School of Forestry that I decided I wanted to work in one of the national parks during my summer vacation. I wrote to several national parks. I remember writing to Yellowstone. The later director of the Park Service, Horace Albright, was Superintendent then at Yellowstone. And Horace Albright had jillions of applicants; I’m sure, for jobs. I applied to be a ranger. Of course, I was just a 19-year-old-kid. Horace Albright’s reply to me was that they needed mature men. That got me thinking I’d better get older fast. The next letter I wrote was to the superintendent at [Mount] Rainier National Park. They offered me a job in the Blister Rust Control Program. In the meantime, I had written to the superintendent at Crater Lake and I got a very encouraging letter from him. So I decided that I would go to work at Crater Lake, which was to my advantage because E.C Solinsky, the superintendent, gave my every opportunity to learn the ways of the National Park Service by putting me to work on different projects and with the older men rather than with the college bunch.
My first job in 1930 at Crater Lake put me to work on the Beetle Control Program. From there, after, I was a limber on the Beetle Control Program and then after that was over with, we’d turned all the bug trees to get the full advantage of the sun. I went to work with a crew of local men, older men. I was 21 then and the men were in their 50’s building the motorways. The first motorway built in the park was located by Chief Ranger Bill Godfrey. I remember going out with Bill Godfrey on a number of the locations for these motorways. I was telling Steve about the different ones. I went with Bill Godfrey on the motorway to Union Peak. There were motorways through the lodgepole on the south and the west and the north side of the rim. These motorways that I worked on were maintained by my son when he worked in the park for six seasons. He did the maintenance on them with his crews. They worked under the Chief Ranger Buck Evans.
The crews that I worked with had the trees, which had been established by the locators, ready for falling. All of these motorways were done on the manner of taking out the trees and rocks that were in the way. I got to the point where I got pretty expert at being able to locate and dig out rocks. There was no grading of these roads, except in very special cases. They just went through the country. Where we had to cross any streams or any boggy areas, we put in a log base so the vehicles wouldn’t got mired down in the water and in the mud. The associates with me were men that just treated me like their son’ cause, at my age, I was so much younger than they. I enjoyed Bill Godfrey coming out and meeting with us on the jobs. I used to work stripped to the waist, just in boots and blue jeans. Yes, they even had blue jeans in those days. No headgear. I would get pretty brown. Bill Godfrey would always come out and spot me and he’d say, “Well, how’s wild man Blanchfield today?” That’s they way he would greet me.
