F. Owen Hoffman

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Owen Hoffman Oral History Interview

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

Interview Location and Date: Crater Lake National Park headquarters, Steel Visitor Center, Dick Brown Library, August 25, 1998.

Transcription: Transcribed by Renee Edwards, September 1998

Biographical Summary (from the interview introduction)

Owen F. Hoffman, seasonal naturalist 1966 – 1968. My first contact with Owen Hoffman’s work came about 10 years ago, when I first ran across his master’s thesis in the park library. Little did I know that former Chief Park Naturalist Bruce Black, who I interviewed in 1988, would bring the two of us together by e-mail in November of last year? A number of messages followed and culminated in Dr. Hoffman arranging his schedule so that he could volunteer for a week during the latter part of August.

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

Taped interview; File includes extensive correspondence (most by electronic mail), abstract of his masters thesis (on zooplankton of Crater Lake) and two manuscripts. Copy of thesis in the park library.

To the reader:

My first contact with Owen Hoffman’s work came about 10 years ago, when I first ran across his master’s thesis in the park library. Little did I know that former Chief Park Naturalist Bruce Black, who I interviewed in 1988, would bring the two of us together by e-mail in November of last year? A number of messages followed and culminated in Dr. Hoffman arranging his schedule so that he could volunteer for a week during the latter part of August.

This interview took place in the park library near the end of that week, the day before Owen Hoffman because the catalyst for hike up Garfield Peak and across to Vidae Falls with five other past or present NPS employees. That trek highlighted an exuberant seven days at the park for virtually everyone he came in contact with during that time. His excitement about Crater Lake is also evident in the interview, as well as throughout the electronic correspondence lodged in the park’s history files.

Stephen R. Mark

(Crater Lake National Park Historian)

December 1998

I would like to allow Owen some time to describe his career and then we will go back and concentrate more heavily on both his activities at Crater Lake, and then his observations some thirty years hence.

What are the circumstances of your educational attainments and what led you lay to Carter Lake in 1967?

I graduated from Pacific High School in San Leandro, [California] in 1962. A track scholarship brought me to San Jose State in the fall of that year. Upon entering San Jose State, one had to choose a major. I had no real major in mind, so I took an exploratory program for the first semester. I found that I had an affinity for the biological sciences. The first “A” that I pulled was in freshman biology. I noticed among the biological sciences that there was a special curriculum in wildlife conservation with a park ranger option. I thought immediately the best job in the world was to be a park ranger, so why not take that as a major? It was that simple.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but many legendary seasonal and permanent Park Service employees had professorships at San Jose State. They were: Dr. Carl Sharsmith, in botany, plant taxonomy, and plant ecology; Dr. Richard Hartesveldt, soil conservation and fire ecology; Dr. Tom Harvey in fire ecology and conservation; Dr. Shellhammer in zoology, who also contributed to investigations on the fire ecology in the giant sequoia; Dr. J. Gordon Edwards, who among other things, wrote the climbers guide to Glacier and was my professor in entomology. I majored in biological conservation and took all the necessary courses. By the time I reached the end of my junior year, it became time to look for summer employment. I had a job offer with the California State Park system, in Henry Cowell Redwood State Park (1).  The job was somewhat threatened by the budget cuts imposed by then Governor Ronald Reagan.

I inquired to Richard Hartesveldt if there was another opportunity that he had knowledge of. He said he’d look into the matter. Within a week he came back and said, “Would you be interested in working for the National Park Service?” He had been in contact with Crater Lake National Park and they had a student internship that would start at GS-4. I would start as a full-fledged park ranger naturalist. He felt that would be a much better opportunity then the park aid position that I would have had at Henry Cowell Redwood State Park.

You said that you had chosen the park ranger option. Were you already predisposed to working in parks from visits as a child?   

Great question! I was raised in San Francisco, and had Golden Gate Park as my front yard and Sutro’s Forest as my back yard. I had a grandfather, who would tour the national parks and take his eight millimeter camera and shoe pictures of Yellowstone and Carlsbad Caverns. My predisposition came from my Grandfather’s enthusiasm for the national parks. My grandfather would often compare Yellowstone with Yosemite. He said that in Yosemite the scenery is always the same, but in Yellowstone you always had changes. So his preference was Yellowstone over Yosemite. As a teenager my parents would vacation in Yosemite. I really enjoyed that, as well as spending my summer in a cabin in the California Redwoods.

Where in the redwoods?  

Near Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park. The cabin was right across from the park. I spent all the summers in my teenage years under the canopy of the redwoods and hiking in the forest.

I was a member of the San Jose State track team and did a lot of running in the redwoods forest. That is what led to the opportunity to be a park aid at Henry Cowell.  In some ways I was a bit apprehensive about turning down the job of park aid in the area that I knew well, since I knew nothing about Crater Lake. The pictures didn’t do in justice, I wasn’t too impressed. Then I saw Gordon Edwards and said, “Dr. Edwards should I accept this job?” He said, “This will be a life altering experience, you’ll love the job. Forget the pay. Get out there and get the experience, and it will stay with you the rest of your life.” He was right.

I came on duty here while I was still attending San Jose State. I had just finished my junior year. It turned out that the position was mad possible by Dick Brown, who had just made the transition from chief naturalist, to a research biologist. My recollection is that Dick did not have a Ph.D. but had all the mental faculties of someone well beyond Ph.D. status (2). He was very well respected by al his scientific peers.

The new chief naturalist was Bob Bruce. The assistant chief naturalist was Glen Kaye. The training sessions were conducted by Glen and Ted Arthur. They took everything so seriously that you knew you were about to enter a profession as opposed to something that would be on the order of a clerk or a tour guide. They gave each of us two weeks time to rapidly learn about the plants, animals, and the geology of the lake. We spent two weeks in training prior to being permitted to put on the uniform. After that time we would audit the talks and walks of the more veteran naturalists. I can recall that first summer being a one of high anxiety because I believe I am a natural introvert. It took forever to become comfortable in giving talks and presentations. One of the things that helped, I thought, was the two man programs in the evening. You could audit the formal presentations given by the ranger naturalist at the same time by functioning as their master-of-ceremonies. You could gain experience in loosening up the audience by conducting campfire songs. It was mandatory that even the Ph.D.s on the staff would sing campfire songs. One didn’t question whether one would sing, it was just mandatory that you would. We gathered in the evening and traded tricks, trying to figure out which songs worked and which wouldn’t work. You wanted the kinds of songs that would be pleasing to the audience and at the same time educate them about the park. We always tried to introduce the campfire song by telling some sort of story about the park or something about park regulations.

How large was the interpretive staff?  

My recollection is it was between 13 and 15.

Did the staff change much from 1966 to ’67?  

Yes, it changed considerably. With just one seasons experience I was suddenly a veteran. Dwayne Curtis and Ted Arthur who returned. Rod Cranson started in 1967. Bill Wilderson, who had met Bob Bruce and myself on a Garfield Peak hike in 1966, started at Crater Lake and is now one of the veteran seasonals at Olympic. He went to Olympic in 1968 or 69 and he has been there ever since. He has almost 30 years of experience at that park. Bruce Kaye was working in 1967 as a boat driver but by 1968 he joined the naturalist staff. He is now a permanent park naturalist at Theodore Roosevelt. He is Glen Kaye’s brother.

Were there any special events held in 1966 because it was the 50thanniversary of the National Park Service?  

I don’t recall anything special other than the naturalist-led Garfield Peak Hike stopping over at the plaque of Stephen Tyng Mather to discuss the National Park Service and his role in the National Park System. That year was also the end of the “Mission 66” program in the NPS. I recall we had lots of field trips. I think Dick Brown took me personally under his wing and so we went on trips together to Hart Mountain, the Lava Beds, and into the Three Sisters Wilderness Area. Though him I learned a lot about the ecology and geology of this region.

Were they weekend trips?  

Yes, these weekends, or if it wasn’t a weekend, he would just call Bob Bruce and he would make allowances in the schedule.

One of the things that were really interesting was that we seldom had more than 50 percent of our time devoted to visitor contact. This allowed us to be fresh. We had a substantial amount of time to prepare programs and special projects. We would either be sorting slides, or assisting with the museum and library, or having outdoor field research projects.

Adolph Faller and Marion Jackson, who were here during the 1966 season, had as their special project the plant ecology of Wizard Island. They subsequently published on that topic a few years later (3). I can recall being on Wizard Island and helping them walk transects and identify the plants.

Did project time carry with it the expectation that people would pursue publication?  

No. It depended upon the level of the person, whether the person was first year or not. Their project time was primarily spent to learn more about the park. In fact during that first year you weren’t required to do more than perfect one evening program. The idea during the first year was to master the geology walks and talks and then really polish the evening programs. Perhaps by the end of that first year you’d begin to work on a second talk. If you were a second year seasonal, you were promoted to a GS-5. By the second season, it was expected that you would have two or three evening programs at your disposal.

So the evening program topics varied pretty widely?  

Evening programs would be at the lodge, at the Community House that serviced the Rim Village Campground, and at Mazama Campground where there’d be an outdoor amphitheater.

You had three different ones to choose from?  

Yes, three different ones to chose from every night and they would be on three different topics. I cannot recall if the titles to the talks were advertised. With the exception of the lodge, the way we got people to the campfire programs was by roving the campgrounds prior to the talk. Since there was two of us, one would take one side of the campground and one the other side. We would meet each person at the campsites and would say, “An hour from now we will have a campfire program and it would be really neat if you would show up.” That really worked. We would fill the place up and often there would be standing room only. At the campfire program it would be the master of ceremonies job to advertise the next day’s activities. That would guarantee that you would have 30 or 40 people for an Annie Creek walk.

Did all the evening programs have slides?  

No! I forget about Lost Creek. There were also programs at that campground. Lost Creek was a primitive program, an old fashioned one. We’d show up there with props, stuffed animals and rocks. We’d talk about the history of Crater Lake and do things in a much more informal setting. That was the easiest program for me to give because it was so informal. I thought it was the best because of the natural setting. You just had the fire, and stars, and close contact with people.

Was the lodge program problematic given the dining room turnover?  

The lodge programs were frightening. I can recall mentally freezing up in the middle of a talk because of stage fright. That experience will never be forgotten. I don’t recall it being so much of a problem in being interrupted because of someone shouting out table reservations. The biggest problem I recall is trying to get the room dark enough because the programs had to come before the evening talent contest by the [concession] employees. It was often difficult to shut the shades and get the room dark enough to show slides.

Was that was the only entertainment by the concession employees?

Ralph Peyton recruited from local universities, and so the employees were always teenagers or people in their very early twenties. The nightly shows would give them something to do in the evening.

Did that contest shorten the evening program?  

No, not really. It’s just that we wouldn’t lead songs there. What we would do is go up and give a formal 30 minute presentation. With all of our slide programs the goal was to give it in 30 minutes, but some of us went 40 and a few went 25. The employee entertainment would follow after a break of 10 or 20 minutes.

That’s roughly the same amount of time for an NPS evening program as now.  

We didn’t have lapse dissolve units then. We would have a standard Kodak carousel projector and a slide tray holding 80 slides. Usually we used all 80 of them, so for a 30 minute presentation that would be about three slides per minute.

Were all the Rim Village programs done in the Community House?  

Yes! We would also sing songs there.

How about the Mazama Campground where you had the amphitheater?  

The Community House and Mazama Campground would be identical. There were two man programs in both places. I believe that only in my last year (1968) did they start going to one man programs. We started going to one man programs because of policy reorganization within the Park Service to maximize the amount of programs that could be given. We reduced the number of people giving evening programs so people could be freed up to do other things during the day.

You mean more walks?  

They wanted to have more visitor contact. More roaming at Rim Village. They also wanted to put someone out at the North Junction and rove around the rim.

What about the boat tours at that time?  

The boat tours would always have two naturalists down at the boat docks. On the day we pulled boat tour duty, it was the only activity you would have. You would have two boat tours per person, so that would be a total of four boat tours wit ha naturalist (4).

These were concession boats?  

Yes. You’d have a boat driver, and the naturalist giving the story. My recollection is that the entire trip was two or two and a half hour. The tours stopped off at Wizard Island, but fairly consistently covered the outer rim. There was no short cutting. They would go to the Eastside and then stop in a little cove where you could see Diller’s  Pin just below the lodge.

You didn’t hike on Wizard Island, the boat just stopped there?  

We just stopped. It’s the same thing that they do today, where they stop and allow people to hike if they so choose. Otherwise they just get off for a short break on the island and get back on the boat.

How did your assignments change from 1966 to 1967 and from 1967 to 1968?  

The biggest change I experienced was in 1968. I did every thing to accelerate graduation from San Jose and began a limnology program at Oregon State in 1967. I then commenced my research at Crater Lake under the supervision of Dr.  John R. Donaldson, who was my major professor. At that point in time I met up with Doug Larson, who was beginning to engage in a Ph.D. program at OSU.

In 1967 we lowered a Boston whaler from OSU down snow slides into the lake and that eventually became the Park Service’s research boat from 1967 until 1970 or 71. To make room in the boat house for the Boston whaler, a decaying naturalist boat that was no longer sea worthy was brought out into the lake and sunk (5). It was sunk between Wizard Island and the lodge. I would say about a mile from Wizard Island.

The Boston whaler was towed back up on snow slides and removed sometime in the early 1970’s.

During the summer of 1966 my special project time had to do with either sorting slides or library work. During 1967 and 1968 it was all devoted to lake research.

Did you find that material here at the park was helpful in your work?  

There were virtually no materials here at the park, just the early limnological papers by Hans Nelson, and Art Hasler and others. The guidance of the research came from Donaldson. Everyone else was busy in the interpretive program. Dick Brown had no limnology background, so he could only encourage me. He was interested in what we were finding, but he only participated to a very minimal extent. To him all research was good. He was less interested in applied research as opposed to basic research.

That’s a rarity in the Park Service?  

Right. I think it was his Harvard training that made the difference. As for the Park Service itself, the main support we got was with a tractor trailer for the Cleetwood Trail to transport equipment down to the boat dock.

How did you do for staffing?  

The staffing was ourselves, and anybody else who wanted to donate time. Rod Cranson came out to help with sampling. Ethan Shoemacker, who worked the fire crew, came out a lot to help me take samples. Every now and then a member of the naturalist staff would come out and help, too.

How did you get the word out?  

We socialized together all the time. We’d say, “Tomorrow I’m going down to the lake, do you want to come along and help me take some samples?” That’s the way we’d do it. There was no formal program and there was no formal research component to park operations.

You would have lived in Sleepy Hollow and know people that way?  

No, I lived right here in this building. It was the Ranger Dormitory then. My quarters were where Mary Benterou is located right now (6).

The library at that time would have been in the Administration Building?  

It was right opposite of Dick Brown’s office. I think Dick Brown had the main responsibility for keeping it up because he was in research and needed the library. I can’t remember who Dick’s secretary was, but I know that when Glen Kaye was inducted into the navy in 1966, his wife Harriet became our secretary. She then kept up the library. The library was held in great esteem because it was really the information source for the interpretive program.

My recollection is that Dick Brown was a perfectionist and demanded perfection from the naturalist. Bob Bruce only had to carry on with that momentum, but Bob was nowhere near that demanding as a supervisor.

Did Bob carry the program himself when Glen was away?  

Bob delegated much of the program supervision to Dwayne Curtis. Dwayne took over as seasonal supervisor in 1968 when Ted Arthur took a leave of absence that summer. Dwayne Curtis did the assignments for the seasonal staff.

My recollection is that after 1968 there was massive turnover. Bruce and Curtis left, and I don’t think there was a single returning naturalist other than Tom Young and Nancy Jarrell.

You earned a masters degree in two years?  

Yes. By 1969 I had masters in limnology from Oregon State.

How did your career affect your choice of seasonal jobs?  

By the time I finished my masters, my goal was to get a permanent job with the National Park Service, I couldn’t think of anything else I wanted to do but be permanent with the NPS. I was ready to come back to Crater Lake in 1969, but I sent out applications to Yosemite, Glacier, Grand Canyon, and Zion. Just before I finished my master’s degree, I got a call from Zion and they asked me if I wanted to work there. I called up Bob Bruce and told him I was going to go down to Zion and take on that job. He said he understood because he was leaving too. I don’t recall them really trying to get to come back to Crater Lake because at that time there were so many people leaving (7). I went to Zion and spent five months. I found that from the training I got as a naturalist at Crater Lake I was immediately one of the best interpreters at Zion. Their program was not anywhere close to being at the same professional level as the program at Crater Lake. I later found out that what really happened at Crater Lake was all really due to the leadership of Dick Brown. It was Dick’s professionalism that makes this a special team. I would say it was a team of interpreters that rivaled that of Yosemite. After Zion I sent an application for winter seasonal employment to the Everglades and Yosemite. I was picking up by Yosemite, and ended up working there for two full years. My last year I was promoted to supervisory seasonal for Yosemite Valley. It was a year round seasonal position.

I still wanted to seek permanent employment. I took the Federal entrance exam and only scored 89, which wasn’t high enough. You had to be 95 or above to qualify. I took a leave of absence in 1971, and went to Germany on a honeymoon after getting married. I got a job in Germany as an environmental scientist working for the Institute for Reactor Safety in Cologne, with the idea that I would return to Yosemite soon. Instead I was rapidly promoted and continued to learn about the interactions of radioactivity and the environment. I ended up spending five years there. After that, I returned to Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where I eventually obtained my Ph.D. in ecology at the University of Tennessee. I’ve been at Oak Ridge ever since.

Did the training in limnology provide a basis for what you did as a doctoral student?  

In Germany, the plan was that the Institute of Reactor Safety would use my limnology background to study the effects of the future use of the Rhine River as a source of cooling water for the nuclear power industry. That issue soon went away as they made a national law obligating all large thermal power plants to be equipped with cooling towers. Soon after that I was reassigned to look into the issues of radioactivity. It was in Germany where I first learned about the concepts of radiation and radiation protection. The establishment of regulations to protect the public against ionizing radiation and that initial on-the-job training got me the experience necessary to eventually be hired at Oak Ridge National Laboratory where I spent 17 years. For the last six years I’ve been leading an environmental consulting firm called SENSE Oak Ridge, Incorporated, Center for Risk Analysis. We specialize in human health and ecological risk analysis due to the presence of trace level contaminants and disturbance of habitat.

I would say that the success in my own career came from my training as a Park Service naturalist. I enjoy investigating complex scientific issues and expressing those issues in terms that a person with multi-disciplinary training could readily understand. Just making things clear to an audience of curious people was a talent of mine and that talent was cultivated during the years that I worked as a park ranger-naturalist.

We made a brief mention off tape about how you time at Crater Lake catapulted your rather quickly. 

My training at Crater Lake was first noted during my five months at Zion. At Zion it was clear that even without a lot of experience working there I was among the best of the naturalist staff. In fact, I can recall visitors going by the superintendent’s office and saying how remarkably different my programs were from the rest of the programs they had attended at other parks. All I was doing was delivering the same quality of programs I had been taught to do at Crater Lake with a little more maturity and self confidence. Taking the Crater Lake ethic with me, I was promoted at Yosemite to being the year round seasonal supervisor which was a GS-6 position at the time.

How much larger was the naturalist program at Yosemite in terms of staff and visitors compared to Crater Lake?

I was year round, but each district had its own staff. There was the Wawona District with its naturalist, the Tuolomne District with its naturalist, and Yosemite Valley. Actually, the valley program was not much larger than the Crater Lake program.

You didn’t have the interesting situation of having to supervise Carl Sharsmith?  

Oh, no! He was my professor. We had no one in the valley of Carl’s stature. In fact, there was nobody that could supervise Carl. He was his own entity. It became a topic of discussion for the permanent staff as to how do one actually supervise Carl Sharsmith. We would have park wide training programs in Yosemite and Carl would be part of those training programs. They used him as a resource person to train all of the younger naturalists. He was one of the few who could name all of the High Sierra peaks. His knowledge of geology, botany, ecology and folklore was astounding.

How did you get involved with the situation at Stoneman Meadow?  

It was just a matter of being there at the time. I was considered to be one of the more effective interpreters. During the summer of 1970, even as early as Memorial Day, there were large gatherings of hippies in Stoneman Meadow. In the evening there would be concentrated law enforcement activity to try to control the use of drugs and public nudity. It was evident during that summer we were going to have trouble on July 4th. This was known in advance, and as the density of people built up, the problems got worse. There were problems on July 2, and July 3, but on July 4 the decision was made to announce the closing of the meadow at 7:30 p.m. The NPS had the insight to try to diffuse the tension that had built up. On the day of July 4th Bob Barbee and myself were sent out in uniform (8). We took off our badges and hats so we would look more friendly, just gray shirt and pants. Our job was to talk to them to try and explain the ecological reason for why the meadow had to be closed. We failed in that mission. Announcing that the meadow would close at 7:30 gave the professional agitators amongst them to organize. The people who gathered at the meadow resisted attempts to make them leave at the set time. Law enforcement rangers deputized concessionaire wranglers, put them in uniform, and sent them on horseback into the meadow to try to disperse the crowd. The horse bolted as they were pelted with rocks and bottles. At that time I was not in the meadow. I was adjacent to the meadow at Camp 14 leading campfire songs and telling the attendees at the campfire program not to worry about the shouts and pistol shots heard off in the distance. “The Park Service had everything under control,” I exclaimed, since no one bothered to tell me that the program was supposed to be canceled that night. I was not informed that the superintendent had declared an emergency and closed all interpretive activities. I was just carrying on with my program like I thought I should have. That evening, after the riot, I was drafted- so to speak. I was given a riot helmet and a night stick and told to do down to the entrance and not to let any dirty underwear into the park. That order was given to me by Pete Thompson, who later became a ranger here a Crater Lake (9).

I can recall working through the night and then hearing Pete on the radio the next morning, announcing to anyone who was within radio earshot about how quiet the valley was. They made 170 arrests and turned the visitor center into a holding pen.  People filled all the jails of Modesto, Merced and Fresno counties. They brought in the FBI. I think the outcome of that riot in the absence of Park Service training to defuse it, gave birth to a major law enforcement emphasis in the National Park Service.

How did the riot affect the rest of the summer at Yosemite? Did you work all the way through September?  

I worked until the next year. Patrol rangers were given intensive training that summer. [U.S.] Park Police were sent into Yosemite and they trained seasonal and permanent NPS rangers in defensive horseback patrol and self defense. Everyone went through about one week of knowing how to use a night stick. They instigated more horseback patrol. Visitation dropped of markedly, but at the same time [the anticipated] Labor Day problems never came about.

I had a question about the emphasis on horse patrol. Why did things go so badly in the meadow?  

Because the rangers weren’t trained and neither were the horse. Afterwards they brought in pre-trained horses which didn’t spook in the presence of belligerent behavior. Just the sight of a patrol ranger brought immediate respect. Lawlessness dropped dramatically in Yosemite Valley that summer. In anticipation of a Labor Day riot they brought in rangers from all over the Western Region. I remember joking that there seemed to be a ranger behind every tree at that time. There was not much sign of belligerent behavior. The number of youthful visitors of hippie persuasion dropped off drastically and Yosemite Valley was restored to more of family use area.

Was there any further trouble while you there? 

No. I would say if anything there was sort of a backlash. Law enforcement techniques were fairly strict. Anybody who was caught breaking the rules was cited or arrested and brought in at that time. Because of that I am sure that people who had access to others with political influence complained bitterly about the Gestapo techniques of the NPS. It was not the riot itself, as opposed to the overly strict enforcement of regulations that occurred after the Stonemand Meadow riot that brought about the replacement of all supervisory staff within the following year. There was a time lag of about a year that everyone who was in a supervisory position was transferred out-superintendent, assistant superintendent, valley district rangers, and even chief naturalists.

Were you there long enough to see that happen?  

No, I left when Wayne Cone was brought in as park superintendent in May of 1971. I kept in touch with friends afterwards and learned about the heavy turnover. Wayne Cone had perhaps the shortest term of any superintendent in Yosemite’s history. He came in to replace Larry Hadley, the superintendent at the time of the riot. He lasted less then one year. The story was that he tried to resist the concessionaire who wanted to put a Wells Fargo Bank in Yosemite Valley. His attempts to resist the bank’s construction led to a shortened career.

Lynn Thompson came from Washington D.C. to take over after Wayne Cone. His orders were to take the guns away from the rangers and to reduce the law enforcement bent that had taken over at the time. During the reign of Lynn Thompson there was an attempt to restore the park to much friendlier atmosphere, but by that time law enforcement began to dominate the entire Park Service.

He was not able to reduce the rising influence of law enforcement?  

No, I think law enforcement was ingrained by the time Lynn Thompson left Yosemite in 1974 (10).

You left the park service in after 1971, but you re-emerged at the First Conference for Scientific Research in the National Park. What were the circumstances of you being invited to give the paper on Crater Lake in 1976? 

You have to understand that when you are in love with a particular park you never give it up. In 1976 I had just accepted a position as an environmental scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. At that time I got notification from Bob Linn who was chief scientist for the Park Service that they were going to have the First Conference on Scientific Research in the National Park. He asked if I interested in contributing a paper. I said, “Certainly.” I decided to try a broad piece to summarize the research that had been conducted, and then put together a short presentation on the potential use of Crater Lake as a limnological benchmark. I summarized research of everyone I knew who had done studies on the lake, including my own thesis. As a result of submitting that paper, Bob Linn assigned me to chair the limnological research session for that conference.

Did your paper seem to have an effect? How large was the audience?  

The audience wasn’t particularly large. There might have been 40 people in that special session. Doug Larson showed up to attend that section. I think that it inspired him to continue his work on Crater Lake as a volunteer researcher. In fact, I think it was soon afterwards when Doug began to devote every summer to taking measurements.

Didn’t some of his Ph.D. work parallel your master’s thesis?  

Right. The difference was that I was only interested in Crater Lake, whereas Doug Larson was a true limnologist. He was interested in lakes in general, especially the process of oligotrophication. He studied Crater Lake, Odell Lake, and Waldo Lake. His doctoral research finished in 1971. He didn’t resurface until 1976 when he realized that it was close to ten years since he had made his last measurements. I believe he started to resume his measurements around 1978 and make comparisons after that ten year lapse.

That’s when he made his most notable observations?  

Right. The decreasing clarity. He kept looking and one summer led to another, and another, and it seemed to be consistently decreasing in clarity. This led him to the hypothesis that something was amiss. At that point hydrothermal activity was not known to exist. He thought human waste might be getting into the lake.

Did he stay in touch with you?  

All during that time. We would correspond, in fact, I even wrote letters to Senator Hatfield’s office in support of lake research. I think it’s obvious that Doug is the founder; if not the instigator, for the ten year research program. He was brave enough to bring the Crater Lake story to the attention of the public.

Do you know much about the equipment he used during the late seventies?  

No. John Salinas would know that. Salinas worked closely with Doug at that time. It was primitive stuff though, inflatable rafts, whatever could be carted down the trail. We had more sophisticated materials on the Boston whaler. We used the old winch from the naturalist research boat. That winch was bolted to the floor of the boat and allowed us to sample at depth. I don’t thing Doug was able to do anything close to what we did in the ‘60’s because he had limited equipment. He was employed by the Army Corps of Engineers and used all his vacation time to come and look at what was going on with Crater Lake. He brought in Stan Geiger, who specialized in algae and phytoplankton.

Had Gieger’s work and your thesis pretty much constituted the body of literature on phytoplankton at Crater Lake?  

I didn’t do anything on phytoplankton, mine was all on zooplankton. I would say that Jim Malick, myself and a bit of work that Hans Nelson did, were the only literature on Crater Lake  zooplankton until the 1980s when the big studies took place. Elena Karnaught [Thomas] called me up and said that the had relocated all my old samples in the archives there at Oregon State.

Did she stay in contact with you?  

No frequent contact. She called me on two occasions and then sent me a letter saying that she had finished her thesis. She also thanked me for hints and advice I had given her about Crater Lake while I was working at Oak Ridge Lab. I have never met her but I would certainly like to at some point in time.

Did the OSU program make any overtures to you in terms of what they were trying to set up in the eighties?  

No. The only thing that I received was from Jim Larson, Mark Forbes, or Ed Starkey. One of those three invited me to the 1982 planning session at Corvallis. That was my last official act on anything having to do with Crater Lake. I was a very stong proponent that the decrease in transparency could not have had anything to do with sewage input because I felt that all the rock strata sloped away from the lake, so it was highly unlikely that anything seeping from Rim Village would actually get to the lake. It wasn’t until Doug showed me the high nitrate reading in the sample from spring 42 that I said, “Seeing believes and maybe there is some merit to Doug’s hypothesis.”

My involvement with Crater Lake in later years was just through correspondence with Doug and a few letters that I sent in support of Crater Lake research.

What brought you back two years ago?  

The need to come back!

You hadn’t seen the park since 1969?  

I had visited the park in 1971 when I first got married to Ortrud Riedel, who I first met at Zion in 1969. I wanted to take my German wife up here. We stayed with Mary Shearer. This was in February of 1971, I then returned again in 1980 to stay over with David Lange. I introduced Lange to Park Service and I think he is now resource manager at Glacier. I didn’t return again until 1996. I came twice, once on my own and at the time I met no one who had any recollection as to who I was. Then I came back a month later, and ran into Tom McDonough. That was a refreshing experience. We just hit if off when we met each other. Meeting Tom got me inspired that maybe I could still do something here at the park. In all that time I was still trying to figure out ways to stay in touch with what’s going on. I even e-mailed Mark Bultenica to see if I could get involved with the limnology program, at the least in reviewing articles or commenting on stuff. At the same time I contacted Bruce Black on e-mail and he gave me your name. It was primarily through my contact with you that kept the thought going. When I had a week off, I volunteered to come back.

Earlier this week you talked a little bit about the place of Jack Donaldson, Harold Kibby and some of the researchers that were around at the time you were a graduate student.  

There is one other person I need to mention. It’s Dr. Carl Bond in fisheries. Carl hired Jack Donaldson to start the limnological program in the College of Fisheries and Wildlife at Oregon State.

Hal Kibby was a park ranger here in 1965. In 1966 under the direction of Carl Bond, he began doing his limnological investigations and rapidly joined Jack Donaldson when he came on board in 1967. It was during the summer of 1967 that Hal Kibby performed his investigation of the surface water currents. There was a ranger patrol boat that Kibby used, which was essentially a speed boat. What he would do is fill turkey bags half full of water, and then label the turkey bags with marking pens. He threw these over the side and used a sexton to record where it was that he released each of these plastic bags. We’d go over to Wizard Island and have lunch for a couple hours and tell stories. When we went back out, we’d try to relocate those bags. Of course, we could only locate about half of them because they are very hard to keep track of once they’re in the water. Of those we located, we would mark where they were in comparison to where they were released. He would do these two or three times a summer. On the basis of that work, he produced a publication on the surface water currents at Crater Lake.

 Wouldn’t the bags eventually get water logged and sink?  

Yes, they would ultimately sink or just lay around in the sun and decay. The 50 percent that we could relocate were pulled on board. Basically, it was a mark and recapture experiment of floating bags. I read some publication that characterized the Kibby work as indicating the water is leaking of the [caldera’s] north side because the bags were all floating towards the north. When I read this, I thought that was poppycock. Kibby’s work was a fairly crude experiment that indicates short term wind driven currents. These are all wind driven currents that go in a northerly direction. There is no rationale to substantiate any conclusion about subsurface seepage.

Mine was the first master’s thesis to be produced under Jack Donaldson. Doug Larson was the first Ph.D. dissertation and Jim Malick had the second master’s thesis under Jack. All three of us worked on Crater Lake. Jack was a gregarious person, a magic personality that can make friends with everyone he met. He became very successful after leaving Oregon State. With his father, he started Oregon Aquaculture in Yaquina Bay, a commercial aquaculture outfit. They were bought out by Weyerhaeuser, and the buyout made them quite wealthy, I think. Later on, he was appointed to become director of Oregon’s Department of Fish and Wildlife. Jack served in that capacity until the mid 1980s. Then he retired from that work to become the director of the Columbia River Commission. He is still involved with Columbia River issues. The last time I saw him, his objective was to climb one mountain a summer. Jim Malick went to Alaska. Doug Larson and perhaps John Salinas might know more about him that I do.

Carl Bond was professor of fisheries at Oregon State. He was an ichthyologist and specialist in museum curation of fish species. Other then co-authoring and reviewing papers on Crater Lake, he had no personal interest in it. He was more interested in the fisheries of Oregon. I believe he retired in the mid to late 1970s.

Where was the museum collection stored when you worked at Crater Lake?  

All of our naturalist activities were preformed in the top floor of the Administration Building until 1968. That year we moved much of our material into what you now call Rat Hall. Bruce Kaye took on the job of museum curation. He was in charge of re-establishing the museum in Rat Hall.

I believe the collection stayed there until the early 1980’s. When Jerry McCrea was hired. 

I think McCrea was here during the time that Pete Thompson was a ranger.

Yes. The museum was moved when this building was renovated in 1987. 

Any other questions? I think I have exhausted my train of thought. If other things come up, please don’t hesitate to ask or write. I will respond.

Footnotes:

  1. Near Santa Cruz
  2. Brown had a master’s degree from Harvard.
  3. Jackson and Faller, “Structural Analysis and Dynamics of the Plant Communities of Wizard Island, Crater Lake National Park, “Ecological Monographs 43:4 (Autumn 1973), pp441-461. See also Jackson, “A Floristic- Survey of Wizard Island, Crater Lake National Park,” The Wasmann Journal of Botany 31:2 (Fall 1973) pp.313-322.
  4. Visitors also had the option of renting row boats.
  5. Pictures of Park Ranger Larry Hakel sinking the boat are in the photo file. Helicopters were not used to put boats in the lake (or remove them) until 1972.
  6. A second floor office located in the eastside gable.
  7. The exodus was partly due to Director Hartzog’s decision to reduce the number of permanent naturalists at places like Crater Lake. Even the job series was abolished in 1969 so that staff could be consolidated in the new Park Management (025) series.
  8. Barbee is currently regional director in Alaska.
  9. Chief Ranger from 1987 to 1989.
  10. Law enforcement commissions became mandatory for patrol rangers beginning in 1973.
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