The next one was about the specific projects you did at the caves and at Lava Beds. How much of a role, and where you worked in the State Park System.
Well, they have so damn much going on nowadays, hell. Well, as I recall, Mr. Davidson who was a regional landscape architect and well, it was in the ’35s and ‘36s. At that time there was a lot of activity in the Oregon State Parks and a fellow by the name of Samuel Boardman, who was Superintendent of the Oregon State Parks and they were cooperating with the NPS in the Oregon area. And as I recall, the State Parks asked for assistance, technical assistance from the Park Service in reviewing some of the landscaping work and development that was being done in the Oregon State Park system. I’m not saying that they directed the works, but I was instructed to go up and visit the various State Parks camps over at Woahink Park near Florence, Silver Creek Fall near Silverton, Casey Park and several others. I used to visit them about once every four or five weeks in the summer moths. Sometimes less frequently depending on the work load I had at Lassen and CRLA and the other areas. So, although I worked with the landscape foreman in each of those camps most of the landscape foremen were well qualified in doing the work they were doing working through the office of Mr. Boardman. My position or our position was merely consultation or comments but not trying to direct the work. We were just offering advice as much as we could.
They were landscape architects….
Oh yeah, good men there, we had a good man in Silver Creek Falls, a good man at Woahink, had a good man at Casey, had a good man at Roxy Ann [ Prescott + Metropolitan Park in Medford], we had very competent boys, they were Oregon State landscape graduates. So, they were good fellows to work with. And they got along with our crew. So, that is my experience with the State Park, I didn’t have much time for it. My services weren’t that much in demand because people were competent to do it. I went out on two or three trips when we looked at …in the 30s along the Oregon Coast. I remember one time we went on a two or three weeks tour with Emerson Knight. Emerson Knight, he was a well- know landscape architect from San Francisco, and he came up from San Francisco and I had accompanied him on a two weeks inspection trip of the Oregon Coast with State Park officials looking over potential State Park sites. At that time, the Oregon State Highway was just a two lane road, you know. It’s not the modern day highway now. It was very primitive, and some of those areas were beautiful areas. Well, I was surprised how cheap land was at that time. And we looked at sites, beautiful sites overlooking the ocean for sale that the prices at that time seemed high, but it’s unbelievable what that land is worth now. You could have bought it in those days had you have had the money. But the Oregon Coast was beautiful country, rugged, unspoiled by any major developments, and I’ve noticed a lot of changes.
