Did you have any contact with the NPS during your time with the state parks?
Yes. We worked with the National Park Service, especially Neil Butterfield, who headed the Portland Field Office. We cooperated on work at areas like Champoeg State Park, where John Hussey did history. The NPS was also involved in planning work for the Columbia Gorge, where Neil was particularly involved. I also remember their assistance in what is now Lake Owyhee State Park. The were also involved in the transfer of lands at Silver Falls Recreation Demonstration Area developed by the NPS to the state parks. Even after that, there were concerns about the management of the park because there is a reversionary clause on the transfer. For example, in one place there was land within the RDA that state park officials decided they wanted to sell in order to buy in holdings located in the smaller area that’s now the state park. They sold the timber on part of the RDA with permission from the NPS and bought some of the in holdings in Silver Falls State Park. I was involved with the appraisal and sale.
How well did you know Sam Boardman?
Sam Boardman retired in 1950 after 21 years as state parks superintendent. The parks for Sam were his whole life. After he retired, he used to come down to the office. He was writing a series of articles which have become kind of a classic and were published later by the Oregon Historical Society (2). They were about various parks and how he had acquired them, the acquisition part being what mainly concerned him. Consequently he used to come by where I worked. As a matter of fact, the main reason he came in there was because we had a spittoon he could use. He chewed tobacco and he’d sit there and talk with us and occasionally spit. He’d give us his ideas about how we ought to develop the parks. I guess that’s probably the thing that stimulated my differences with his successor. We were very far apart on developing some of these key areas, like Oswald West, Cape Lookout, Honeyman, Silver Falls and some of these other places where there was a desire to do more clearing as a prelude to development.
