On a somewhat different subject, could you give me an outline of your father’s career?
Dad graduated from Cal with a degree in forestry and a degree in mathematics. He subsequently worked as a logging engineer for the Madera Sugar Pine Company around Yosemite laying out logging railroads. He then went to Portland to work with Mason and Stevens in their consulting firm. Mason had been one of his professors at Berkeley and was a very able fellow (6). Incidentally, this is now the leading consulting firm in forestry on the West Coast. It has been for a long time. In the late 1920s, dad was transferred to San Francisco to set up an office for the firm. When the depression came in ’29, the firm was closed and dad went to work for himself as a consultant. He was doing quite well with that when the Civilian Conservation Corps was created in 1933. Dad then had the opportunity to coordinate CCC work for the Park Service as the Regional Officer in San Francisco. So he really started out in a key job and was there until 1937. At that point the superintendent of Yosemite, Colonel Thomson, died. Father had taken one of those civil service exams which allowed him to apply for the job. He was hired and worked there until 1941 when he became regional director in Omaha. In those days that region included all of the Park Service areas in the Rocky Mountains and the middle west. He went to San Francisco in 1950 as regional director. His oversaw Park Service areas in the western states as well as Alaska and Hawaii and stayed there until his retirement in 1963.
There wasn’t any particular parallel with my uncle’s work in the Geological Survey. Charlie was primarily a scientist who spent most of his career in Nevada studying the stratigraphy of the state. I think he worked on strategic minerals during the war. Before the war I was with dad in Yosemite and finishing high school. I’d say his administration of the park was quite different than Colonel Thomson’s. Father was the first one to really challenge the Yosemite Park and Curry Company to conform to their contract.
Thomson had been at Crater Lake before going to Yosemite.
The first Park Service superintendent at Yosemite was W.B. Lewis, who had been appointed by Mather. Thomson followed him. Dad was very interested in trying to get the Park Service to assert themselves in administering the park. He built a loyal advisory committee around himself which included Colby, Joel Hildebrand, Bestor Robinson and some other people that my grandfather had known. They came up with the idea of trying to get some of the things out of the valley which, of course, the YP&C Company very much opposed.
