Before we went on tape, we talked about the cluster office. There was also the concept that we would have an office in every state. A lot of its success depended on the personality in the office and how they could develop contacts.
There was a directive from Hartzog that every state would have somebody designated as a key man for a period of time. I remember wearing that hat for Oregon. Ernie Borgman did it before me. In Idaho it was Paul Fritz. He’d send the regional office news releases and things like that, as well as meet with elected officials and other public land managers.
If you were far away from state capitals it was of questionable effectiveness. In some states such as Idaho, where we did not have a national park, we ended up with Nez Perce [National Historical Park.] (9)
Paul played a key role in coordinating our planning efforts for the Thousand Springs, City of Rocks, Sawtooth, and Hagerman Fossil Beds proposals. Don Campbell and I from our regional office, and a planning team from Denver, also worked with those projects.
