Well, I’d like to talk about the operations we had at making furniture. This was primarily done by all CCC labor. We had a workshop established at Annie Springs, and it was in conjunction with a blacksmith’s shop, a carpenter shop and other miscellaneous duties that were performed at the Annie Springs area. But, in talking of the sign shop, we had one building devoted to the planning—that is making the necessary drawing—and making the actual construction, and the actual finishing of the furniture. Now, at this workshop we had a minimum of about 10 to 12 boys who worked in there constantly making signs. We would direct them, help them on sketches. We had one very good draftsman, and I helped him quite a bit and we created a design for a number of the buildings at Crater Lake. And I am referring to the administration building where we made a number of pieces of furniture to be used in that structure. Some were benches which were approximately six feet long, and about 30 inches high, and about 24 inches wide. We took posts of spruce and we would design figures on the post and then have them carved out like tools. Then, the frame would be embellished with tree like logo encasings to symbolize a natural effect showing tree symbols on the lower railing and along the side which we thought would add to the rustic characteristic.
Then, the seat proper would be another—we’d buy from the San Francisco office on Mission Street—and we’d buy these pieces of leather—they were about six to eight feet long and about 24 inches wide. It was very reasonable, we’d have these large pieces of leather and they served as the seating base for each of the long benches. We did put padding underneath and make them very comfortable. They were well tacked and secured and placed in place on top of each of the frames of each bench. We made a number of these. We tried to select, we had leathers tops dyed red, which came treated that way from the leather factory. We had dark shades of green, treated from the factory and also dark shades of brown, treated likewise. These made a very comfortable feeling base on which to sit. Some of them are placed in the Sinnott Memorial. We gave two or three pieces down to Lassen Park for taking down to Lassen Park a number of pieces of furniture such as tables, rustic tables, appropriately designed with tree symbols or other major items carved on the posts around the front pieces of the table. These were done to embellish them and make them more attractive to the native surroundings in which we placed them. We also built a number of benches, as I recall, I think we did about 10 benches that were delivered to the Mt. Hood Timberline Lodge as a gift from the Crater Lake CCC boys. We received many compliments from tourists and especially from the Mt. Hood administration about the tables. They seemed to take great delight in displaying and referring to this furniture. As a result of that, the Timber lodge people, as I recall, during this construction encountered on a similar campaign to make furniture of a rustic nature which we made at Crater Lake workshop.
