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.
