It was a real isolated affair in the winter time. The Park Headquarters was in Medford and the superintendent and most of the office force lived in Medford. The chief ranger moved to Klamath Falls and maintained an office there. About ten families lived in the park during the winter. This included the three permanent rangers, a warehouse man named Doug Roach, and about a half dozen or so snow plow operators. Most of the snow plow operators lived down at Fort Klamath, which is about 17 miles away. They came up for their shift on the plows. For the ten families in the park it was a close knit community, I guess you would say. There was no school, and no children of school age while I was there. Later on I think they did try to run a school in the park, but not while I was there (2).
The main three C camp which had been there prior to when I arrived was gone as such, but they did maintain a “spike camp” in the winter with maybe a half dozen or so fellas (3). They were quartered in the rooms over the machine shop (4). These fellas helped out with snow shoveling and other duties around the park in the winter time. The winter was a real interesting time. Not many visitors during the week, but on weekends there were quite a few. Mostly skiers from Klamath Falls. The Park Service as such did not go in much for large ski development, but did permit skiing so long as it did not interfere with the main reason for having the park. We would get probably a thousand skiers each weekend. Most were from Klamath Falls, and the rest of them were from Medford.
