Another of my experiences in the park with the CCC boys that really comes to mind was building the trail up Mount Scott. It was all hand work. A lot of the outcroppings had to be dynamited to get the trail graded out as wide as it was supposed to be. I hauled lunches, tools, and dynamite up to that trail. At that time, we could drive the trucks right up the trailhead at the foot of the mountain. I’ve tried to find out if you can go over there now because I would like to hike that trail again. But it’s quite a ways across Pummy Desert to get to that trailhead.
How did you know Ike Davidson? What were your experiences connected with the Solinsky trail?
What was determined in the courts was a manipulation of finance. It was never determined that they ever stole any money. All they did was not follow procedures as well as they should have. As I remember it, Solinsky was incarcerated for three years, and I believe that I Ike Davidson got six months. There was another man, Erwin, that was involved in that same thing (6). The way that I got involved was in order to get money to build a boat, as I remember it, they padded the payroll and cashed some checks and got the money to build this boat with before the money from the appropriation became available to them. There was one of the checks, just for one week’s work, that had been drawn with my name and had been endorsed and crashed.
It was in 1934 that I was sent to Portland to be a witness on that trial. It went on for about a week and I never did get on the stand. They got it done before they ever got around to call me. So I had a trip to Portland, cooled my heels in a hotel room for a week, and didn’t even get to see any of the trial.
How well did you know your grandfather? Did he leave many records of his business or personal life behind? Can you describe your grandmother?
My grandfather, W.F. Arant, was the first superintendent of Crater Lake National Park. He served from 1902, I believe it was, until 1913. That was before my time, and I never did know my grandfather very well. He was a real hard man for a kid to get acquainted with. He lived in Klamath Falls much of the time until he moved to Ashland. By that time we had moved to Prospect, so I didn’t really get acquainted with him very much. I was far better acquainted with my grandmother because she lived for several years after my grandfather died. She also spent some of her later years in my father’s house, so I got better acquainted with her than I did m grandfather.
