Just a couple of days?
Yes, they didn’t live there. No. so I don’t know just what they…
Native stone, and this had been considered by previous people, not me— I’m not taking credit for any of this stuff—I think the ideas was to use the native stone because it was in such abundance around the Munson Valley area that it seemed only natural to use the native materials in the construction of our buildings. The sizes of the stones varied in the construction of each building, but the fundamental principle was to put larger stones at the base and taper up to smaller stones. And also, the ends of each building rather than ending in the conventional square corner of a wooden frame building, these stones were extended out sometimes three and four feet or five feet to make it appear as though the stones were in a natural setting in relation to the building. Thereby blending in more evenly and without optical disturbance that one would see in seeing a straight line building placed on a similar area. This is done primarily for aesthetic effects. It had no additional value to construction support to the building itself. But it merely added to what we term a softness of hard lines that man made objects sometimes disrupts the natural profile and contour of nature itself.
Who made that decision to go from the small to the big?
I don’t think one guy said that, I think they just kind of got out there and thought, “Well this looked good.” Now, I know Sager didn’t get out there and say, “Now, you’ve got to move this big block.” I think when he talked to the guys he gave them their general ideas. I think they took it off.
It seemed to have happened about 1930 or so.
Yes. They had been doing a little, not too much stone work up in the ‘30s. Really, they didn’t do a hell of a lot of stone work ‘til about ’32 and ’33. That’s when the big stones…that’s when the curbs and gutters and the ranger dormitory and administrative building. So, the administration building was started in ’34. I think it was finished in ’35. I think the ranger’s dormitory was started in about 1931 or ’32. Because we moved in…I remember Sager and I moved into it in ’33 and the offices were in that building. All the Park Service’s offices were in the dormitory.
They were downstairs. A lot of fellows were sleeping upstairs in the bunk, but the offices were downstairs. That’s how small it was. They’ve probably got so many people now they can’t find each other, can they? How many have they got in that building?
