But Odegaard hurt us a lot there. We did not have to take the abuse that we did from Joe LaFleur (42). We didn’t have to do that, primarily because Odegaard simply didn’t have the guts to go to war. He doesn’t understand war in the sense of fighting for a principle. He understands fighting for politics. He does not understand fighting for principle.

Was the Reagan delegation pretty supportive?

No. Smith was probably in bed with them (43). I know his sympathies certainly were, no doubt about that. Packwood had his own problems (44). We had some help from some of the other representatives.

So Hatfield was involved (45)?

Yes, Hatfield was key to our salvation. Hatfield helped us a lot, and some of his staffers were absolutely wonderful in finessing what Odegaard was catching from these lackeys. Yes, Hatfield people were just outstanding. No question about it. They were there to be counted on. And we did. There was lots of telephoning on that. But he kept out of visible stuff. He didn’t do a lot of hollering, but he was around there with a few bucks here and there, quite a few. Yes, he was a major, major player.

When did you first catch wind of Cal Energy and their intentions?

I don’t remember.

Did it go back as far as ’85 or ’86, or was it more recent?

It went back early. We had some hints [of what was] going on in there. But those kinds of details I just don’t remember. We had some concern, as I think any area with hot springs like the Campbell property, Hawaii, or Yellowstone, would. I think we all worry a little bit about that kind of stuff. No, I couldn’t put a finger on it. We knew there was stuff going on. For a while, we had some pretty good spies in BLM. We had some people in the BLM office that were feeding us some stuff about some of the rotten things that were going on, and that proved very valuable (46).

Did you have any contacts in the Forest Service? I know with the Newberry project Cal Energy was up there as well.

No. That was one of the side issues. Obviously, Newberry Crater should be in the National Park Service. The only reason Newberry Crater is not is because Bob Smith and the representative down there in Klamath Falls won all for cattle and exploration. So we lost Newberry Crater (47). We’d have pushed for it very hard. Again, that was one of the things that Odegaard was not willing to do. That’s a nice property in that it would tie so very well with Crater Lake. It would nest in there really nice. We had nobody willing to fight for it, and quite frankly, my plate was full enough. There was not time for me to go to war on Newberry Crater. From my level, I’d have lost it, anyway. That would have taken some prime movers up the road a ways. But, no, we didn’t get any help much from the Forest Service. As I say, we did have a couple of dandy spies in BLM. We used to get some neat calls from those folks. And of course, ultimately, I’m sure you’re aware, the geothermal issue cost the district manager his job (48). His inability to force the Park Service to back down on it cost him his job.

Did what you set out to accomplish here preclude any role as a key man? I was thinking back to Spalding and Volz.

Yes, I had no interest in that. I didn’t want to play that role. What we talked about Crater Lake needed from day one and what was very obvious when I got there, was what I worked on.

So it didn’t mean being an absentee superintendent?

We’ve talked about this before. The greatest weakness right now in the National Park Service, as I see it, are superintendents that aren’t in the park. Old John Townsley (49). “Somebody has gotta stay home and watch his store.” We are, in this thrust of politicization brought about by Reagan and others, putting an awful lot of demands on superintendents to spend all their time farting around running all over the country, going to Rotary Clubs and all kinds of meaningless stuff. You have to mind the farm. You really have got to. And you watch parks that are failing, that are going downhill, that are not moving forward, you’re probably going to find that those parks have a superintendent that isn’t there all the time. He is gone a disproportionate amount of time. You are going to find that. I know of no exception. If you have a J. Leonard Volz, and he is told this is what I [the director] want you to do, then that’s what you do. Spalding, as an example, did some of that (50). But if you want to just look at a park, that’s a great way to look at it. If it’s vital, if it’s growing, if it’s progressing, if it’s getting better within the parameters of its boundaries or its expanding boundaries, if it’s a viable, dynamic place, the superintendent is there. If it is not, he probably isn’t.

 It seems to me that often the money comes with superintendents there in the park. And if a superintendent is off doing something else, it would be difficult to make all the internal improvements that you’ve discussed.

That’s right. They just don’t happen.

What were your main concerns in regard to terrestrial resources?

There are some concerns. Obviously, the park is established for the lake, The lake has to be your focus. If you lose track of the fact that the lake is the resource, then you are going to put disproportionate shares of money that are outside of your prime focus. Obviously, a concern there is the role and the attempt to establish a more natural ecosystem which includes forms of manipulation, certainly including fire.

As of the day I left Crater Lake, the fire program which aimed towards getting back to a natural ecosystem had failed virtually 100 percent. We really never accomplished a damn thing of any good significance towards a fire program and the restoration of the natural ponderosa and other ecosystems. We failed completely. In fact, we damaged it horribly through some of those fires down there in the panhandle.

I know of some fires in the early ’80’s. . .

There was some bad stuff while I was there. We didn’t have the information. The information was poor. It was poorly implemented. It just utterly failed. There was an issue that needed to be dealt with and still needs – well maybe it has been – to be dealt with, and while my tenure was there it failed completely. We just simply didn’t do anything right.

Did it seem like things were turning around a little bit with specialization, like in the FMOs (51)?

Keep in mind, when I left, we were trying to move into a more sane and a better researched situation there. It may have been getting better, but it sure wasn’t good. One of the problems we had in there was some awfully bad research. Again, we had scientists, so-called, in there and they were giving us really bad information and advice. What can you say? Sometimes you just totally fail, and from my perspective, and I was the chief duck, we failed.

What necessitated the creation of a staff ranger position at Crater Lake?

A staff ranger has the ability to work on ranger-type issues without being wrapped up with operations. First, as a sub-district ranger, it was my goal to get every damn thing I could for my sub-district, even though the other sub-districts may have had needs that were as great as mine or greater. As far as I was concerned, hell, I wasn’t objective about that at all. I wanted it. I wanted everything he had. As a district ranger, exactly the same thing. As a superintendent, my goal was to have it in the context of competing for money. So having a person who is a staff ranger, this is a person that can deal on ranger issues for whatever is needed without being locked into a district or a sub-district or law enforcement or resource management or any piece of turf or function. That is nice to have. It’s a very good role for a chief ranger to have. I don’t know how George is using these people, you know, but as a chief ranger I would have loved to have had a staff ranger. I think they serve a real good function.

We talked about maintenance quite a bit before and some of the pressing needs. Did the needs seem to shift substantially through the time you were there?

Yes, of course. Basically, what we’re really talking about in a lot of ways is reconstructing an operation during the early days. If you have a brand new building, it doesn’t require much maintenance. In fact, one of the bigger arguments that I had in this thing was the need to have a full-time janitor. Lon Ryder, I don’t know if he is still around (52). There was a big reluctance on behalf of the maintenance folks to say, no, we don’t need a janitor. We have one of the guys come up from the B&U crew (53). Well, see, that doesn’t do it because you don’t need anything with a brand new building. You go in there and sweep the floors and dust the furniture and that’s about it. But as that facility gets older and older and older, you have to have the mindset built into the maintenance operation so that the buildings are maintained. And you start that with a janitor.

And your office space increased dramatically after the rehabs too.

Oh yeah. We were all. . . administration, the superintendents office, interpretation, part of the ranger office, maintenance [were] all centered in what is now that building, what do we call it these days, the Sager Building. So we had all of this diverse thing, and we built quarters, and rehabbed them (54). Everything that we did changed as these things were completed. You have to start, then, getting out of the construction/reconstruction mode and getting into basic maintenance. And where you had only a few poorly-kept buildings for me and you to worry about when I got there, now you guys face a lot of very nice buildings that need a first-class me-and-you operation to take care of [or] else they will all turn into what the hell they were when I got there.

And somebody that really knows those preservation guides (55)?

That’s what it’s all about. That’s exactly right. I’ve always maintained you need, and one of the things that is icing on the cake, a preservation specialist. I would have thought that we would have got it at some point. We sent some of our maintenance people off to the preservation school. I don’t think they got much out of it. But I do think that probably, had I stayed, by now or very shortly ahead from now, we’d have an historian-type folk working in maintenance.

Like an historical architect?

Not an architect in the sense of. . . it’s probably an historic preservation person.

Like a maintenance person.

A trained, historical preservation person in maintenance, probably as a staffer, right to the chief.

[This person] would have a lot of the traditional skills and certainly know how to translate today’s technology into maintaining the buildings?

Exactly. And close enough to the chief of maintenance that he could make it happen. And enough authority from that area that he could go down and where some klutz in the carpenter’s shop was trying to screw something up get it stopped or changed. This is 1994. By about now, we would have had that type of a person within maintenance.

That would help a lot. I sort of shoulder most of the burden [in doing compliance].

And you can’t be. With your background, you can’t go down and go to war with a carpenter.

Right.

A historic preservation type can, because they know what carpentry is all about. Anyway, that would be totally wonderful.

When you initiated renaming the buildings, Sager, Steel, and Canfield, what was behind the selection of those three names? Why did they come to the forefront rather than other names?

Of course, Steel speaks for itself. Canfield was one of those old superintendents that did a lot of really neat things, not only in Crater Lake but other places. Dave Canfield has been a legend in the Park Service for a long time. He probably drank a little too much bourbon on occasion, but he certainly contributed a lot to the Park Service. Surprisingly enough, I expect, [he contributed] more than a lot of people would think at Crater Lake. Sager was one of those guys that, in the early history of Crater Lake, was an important figure.

Did you meet him while you were in Washington?

Yes.

Okay. I know he was chief of the landscape architects for a time in the ’60’s.

I met him briefly.

What were the forces behind the expansion in the number of positions in administration?

You have to be able to, first, analyze what you don’t have. The pathetic administration system that we had was a complete disaster. The AO, the minute he found that I was coming to the park, quickly retired. We had a part-timer who could’ve developed into a very excellent computer guy, and would’ve, but he had some personal problems. But we just simply had to look and say hey, we’ve got nothing and establish the need and go after finding some people to do it. We use the same theme. If you’re going to compete, particularly from a distance, with the Mount Rainiers and the North Cascades and the Olympic national parks, you better get some people to help you compete. Because you ain’t gonna do it just as a superintendent. You need some AOs, personnel, procurement, and computers, secretaries, file clerks. You name it. You’ve gotta have it.

Did you ever compare the operation at Crater Lake with that of Lassen? I was struck by the parallels when I was there.

No, we never compared ourselves with Lassen. We considered ourselves above most of those types. We never tried to draw any parallels. That would get you into all kinds of trouble. If you play those kinds of games, it’s spinning in the wrong circles. You really need to be sitting back there and not trying to compare to another area. If you do, you will have limited your horizons. At Crater Lake, we had to look big. So the answer is no, we wouldn’t have bothered.

The rest of the historic buildings. It’s been difficult to get money for those.

It shouldn’t be. I know that that’s fairly easy money to get. I don’t know what’s happening there now. I simply don’t. I would just simply say. . . Okay, put it in this context. If you expect that there is going to be a big bright, shiny cloud suddenly appear over Crater Lake and throw all kinds of money to fix up the stone houses, it ain’t gonna happen. If, on the other hand, you beg, borrow, steal, connive, switch resources, do anything legal that you can, stopping just short of illegal, and do one house, just one, of the stone houses, just do one, the rest will follow. You do one and the rest will follow.

Was your thought to start with 19 first?

Nineteen was so big (56). You’re talking about $250,000 in the dollars that I remember. Lots of bucks. I think it would have taken that much. My figures look better at 175. My thinking there was, hey, the National Landmark. That’s where that was gonna have to come from. But the name of the game to the stone house project has got to be to do one. And you can find [it], if you make it a high enough priority within the parameters of Crater Lake. There is money there that in one, outside two, you can get. . . you’d have to go up and, you know, grovel at Stephanie and Laurin, and snivel here and snivel there, but you can get enough money to do one house (57). And do it right. Do it absolutely right. But just do one. The rest will happen.

Did you have a favorite picked out?

No, I didn’t. A lot of people were worried about the nurses quarters, and I wasn’t (58). It would not have been that. It wouldn’t have been 19. The naturalist house is a logical extension spinning off of 19. But the stone houses themselves, take one and do it. And you can do that. That would be a relatively easy task. And once you had it, the rest of them would be just like dominoes. You’d get them one a year. Unless you were lucky and found a sugar daddy someplace along the line and got more than one. But it wouldn’t have been a big deal at all. We would have done that. Have I be gone three years, four years?

You’re on two and one half, almost three?

Well, we’d have had one, maybe two done by now.

March 22, 1994

What do you see as important in changing the emphasis from constructing buildings to maintaining these structures?

In my view, it is a totally different thing. One of the things we always have to remember is there were some really good players that occurred at critical times while I was at Crater Lake. Certainly, we mentioned Kent Taylor as being a real prime mover and a change in interpretation. And the unusual nature of having an historian as a chief interpreter of a natural area. But I think you also have to remember that probably the key thing in straightening out what was just a horrible mess was Gail Menard in administration (59). Gail brought with her that wonderful ability to get things done. Gail got things done that I never would have imagined possible, and at the same time maintained a situation in which everybody liked her. Which is why I always have said she would be a great superintendent. In fact, I even wrote Lorraine Mintzmyer [and said], “Lorraine, please grab that lady and make her superintendent someplace.” But, anyway, when you really look at where administration is today, everything that happened Gail touched, whether it be computers or whatever. Similarly, I think we see Scott Ruesch’s hand as the key element that made maintenance work during the period of time where it was really most delicate (60).

Was that long period of not having a maintenance chief detrimental? I know that when I was hired there was an acting. . .

Yes, that’s right. It took a long time to make that happen. But it finally did. And, yes, it did hurt. I liked D.C., no doubt about it, but he was ill equipped to deal [with things in the long term] (61). I keep using the analogy of a race, but if its a good one, in that if you’re going to get in there and compete, and again, maintenance monies are tough. If you’re going to deal with that in an aggressive maintenance program, you have to have somebody in there that can play the game. Scott Ruesch was an absolute master at it. You figure that he now went directly from Crater Lake to one of the big parks as chief indicates, you know, that obviously he is very good (62). He is probably, I would guess, one of the top half dozen chiefs of maintenance in the National Park Service today, which is saying a lot.

 Was that long period of not having a maintenance chief detrimental? I know that when I was hired there was an acting. . .

Yes, that’s right. It took a long time to make that happen. But it finally did. And, yes, it did hurt. I liked D.C., no doubt about it, but he was ill equipped to deal [with things in the long term] (61). I keep using the analogy of a race, but if its a good one, in that if you’re going to get in there and compete, and again, maintenance monies are tough. If you’re going to deal with that in an aggressive maintenance program, you have to have somebody in there that can play the game. Scott Ruesch was an absolute master at it. You figure that he now went directly from Crater Lake to one of the big parks as chief indicates, you know, that obviously he is very good (62). He is probably, I would guess, one of the top half dozen chiefs of maintenance in the National Park Service today, which is saying a lot.

Crater Lake used to play that role quite a bit, of being not really a stepping stone, but certainly a launching pad.

It is. Number one, it stretches everybody. I think there is nobody that does an assignment satisfactorily at Crater Lake that isn’t stretched. And that means you, as well as Scott Ruesch. That goes with the territory. It is not an easy area to deal with. And Scott came in there at an absolute perfect time to make things happen. Of course, we were lucky in that detail. You remember, where he came down on a detail for a while?

Yes.

That did a couple of things. Number one, it gave us a chance to look at him, and [number two] it gave him a chance to look at us. That marriage, otherwise, might never have happened because Scott did not have the opportunity, in his previous chief job, to really excel. It wasn’t that he wasn’t this good. He was. It’s just that the challenges were not at Coulee Dam like they were at Crater Lake. Similarly, after a series of rather disastrous chief rangers, in terms of success when I was there, Buckingham has brought a different dimension. George doesn’t get rattled and he’s one of the few people that can really draw a line and say, “I’m sorry, this is where it is.” When you really think about it, Gail Menard, George Buckingham, Kent, and Scott Ruesch were all people that could stand up to me and say, “Benton, you’ re wrong. And did. Quite frequently, usually not in public. But they were all capable and in fact did that. When you’re dealing with a personality like I have, you have to have people who can do that.

And so you must look at a number of different dimensions in hiring division chiefs?

Oh yes. Oh boy. You really do. They’ve got to be, and you look at all of them, movers and shakers. The people that really made it happen at Crater Lake were always that kind of person. Gail Menard was extremely well-liked. I’ve never known an administrative officer to be as well-liked as Gail, not only at Crater Lake, but in every assignment she was in.

I wanted to ask you about the types of people that applied and/or successful applicants. Were they from smaller situations and they were looking for a challenge like Crater Lake on their way progressing upward?

They weren’t always from small areas. Gail was, but Ruesch had worked the big areas. George had, during his career, worked big areas. Kent had done things like Philadelphia (63). But I think they were all looking at someplace where they could do something. Were you ever aware of some of the things that we did in recruiting people?

I know about the Living and Working at Crater Lake circular.

Which, of course, badly needed done over. I guess it was. Anyway, one of the things that we did on key vacancies, if we were recruiting a chief of maintenance, we would have the administrative officer talk to administrative people associated with the candidate. We would have rangers talk to the ranger people about the chief of maintenance, with other rangers, about each candidate. So, in other words, I didn’t just talk to superintendents and say, “Hey, what’s this guy Ruesch like?” No, we didn’t do that. The chief ranger was talking to rangers where Ruesch had been.

So you tried to get some sort of peer input?

That’s right. You know, what was this guy like? We rejected just some absolutely wonderful-looking candidates on paper strictly due to that procedure. We used it on all the vacancies. And in all the time we used that particular procedure, it only failed twice. Actually, it really only failed us once. We picked a person at a point in time and the peer review divided between two candidates and it leaned one way. We took the way it leaned, and the other candidate turned out to be better, a lot better. They went on to do some absolutely wonderful things, Still, it’s a good technique because you do get a peer look, and technically, you get a certain amount of commitment. If George Buckingham is looking at an administrative officer and you hire that administrative officer, and George has said, “Hey, this is my preferred candidate,” George has a certain amount of commitment or investment in that person. He also knows a lot about them before they ever get there. Anyway, I’m sure that has gone by the wayside because it’s a pretty cumbersome system to use. But it does work. And that’s how we got all those folks that we just mentioned. It was pretty exhaustive.

 I remember Jerry McCrea, and he was very impressed with what you were trying to do with getting rangers to do interpretive presentations as part of their performance evaluation. What led to that?

Again, it is a need for everybody to kind of walk a little bit in other people’s shoes. It’s very easy for rangers to get caught up in their world and lose track of the visitor as a person. Many times, the protection-type ranger is dealing with the visitor in a sense of other than total friendliness. If the person has got their dog off a leash, or if they’re throwing out a beer can, or they’re speeding, or any one of the myriad of other things that happen that require some degree of admonishment, you tend to lose track of, over a period of time, the fact that visitor basically comes to Crater Lake to have a good time. He’s not there deliberately to break laws. He’s not there to antagonize rangers. He’s not there to destroy the resource. He may inadvertently do all of those things, but he really is there for a good time. So by having the ranger deal with an interpretative program, you get that ranger on a different plane with the visitor. Second, you also get the ranger to think in terms of his role as it relates to the visitor. So suddenly, a lake program or whatever program they have to deal with, instead of being an abstract research tool, becomes something to talk about in the positive sense to the visitor directly.

It might force that occasional interpreter to learn more about the lake program?

Sure does. So that’s kind of what it’s all about.

What sort of relationship did you have with the state parks? Did you participate in their annual tours?

I was on a couple of the tours. Not on the whole tours, just portions of it. That was something that we worked and worked and worked on. It wasn’t a total failure, like the fire program that I mentioned, but, boy, it was kind of a dud. And I don’t know why. I knew Dave Talbot well (64). I talked with him, conversed with him, and was on a first name basis with he and some of his key staff in the capital. I got along really well with him. I thought it was a very positive relationship. We tried. We asked the people at Collier State Park to participate in training with us. We asked them to come up to our seasonal training. We wanted them to participate in our fire program and our interpretative program and our maintenance things. The same thing with the state park at Lost Creek (65). They were always extremely polite – gee, thanks a lot, how nice of you to ask us – and they never ever once showed up. I figured, well, you know, there’s this business of the big bad fed with lots of money and, you know. . . I would stop. I talked to the superintendents or their managers in every one of those areas. They were always very nice, but I never could get a spark lit anywhere there. And I asked George Buckingham. Maybe the big superintendent in the sky, maybe that’s not the angle. Let’s move it down. Why don’t you try this same type thing? And George is generally excellent in his outside community relations, with the Forest Service and all these kinds of things. George usually does that very well. And as far as I know, he never got any takers either. I never could figure it out. I never ever did. And it isn’t because we didn’t try. We really worked at it. I felt that we had the opportunity to cross feed each other. We could contribute to their success, and they to ours. Stewart State Park makes a wonderful bedroom campground to Crater Lake. Or an early season campground to Crater Lake. Gee, it just never worked. I don’t know why to this day because it wasn’t for lack of trying.

I’ve been down to do programs, but there isn’t much more than just come down and talk to us and we’ll see you next time.

Peter Thompson, even before George (66). Pete was about as friendly a guy as ever existed, and he didn’t make any dents in it. I don’t know what we could have done. Whatever it was, it was not one of those things that was a success.

 Were you in favor of continuing organized events like the Rim Run, ski race, or the Masons meeting?

That’s kind of interesting. The Masons say, of course, that they have a personal letter from Harry Truman that gave them the right to do their stuff over there. After a long time, I don’t know remember how many years, but after some number of years, I finally got to see the infamous letter. Of course, it doesn’t say that at all. My feeling is, so what. It’s a long-time use and it disturbs virtually no one. I would never have tried to move the Masons out. I would have, had I stayed there any longer, probably been after them for some bucks to do some work over there on the area that they used (67). They have a lot of money. I think we probably could have made some group campsites, say a couple or three, that would encompass the area that they used. Then when they weren’t using them, which was only one week in the year, it was available for all the merit of other group-type uses that would have fallen in there. So as far as the Masons were concerned, they were nice people and they didn’t cause us any harm and they really did like the park. I thought that there was no problem there.

The ski race, the ski thing. I feel bad and again. . . I thought it was a real important thing, but it never went the way that I had hoped [it would]. I would have hoped that the ski race would have evolved into what it was back in the ‘301s, a real honest-to-goodness run from Fort Klamath all the way to the rim (68). I could have supported that 100 percent. I think it was consistent with the park and they really did like the park. I thought that there was no problem there.

I think it was consistent with the park and what we were trying to do in promoting things like cross country skiing and so on. I think it would have been a wonderful thing to have done. It could be that it never could have happened simply because apparently there isn’t as much snow around there these days as there was in the 30’s, at least not in Fort Klamath.

Last year was one of the few times where you could have even staged the race.

I would have liked to have seen that go forward. And if you couldn’t run it from Fort Klamath, come up closer to the park where there was snow. I think it was a really good idea. I wished it would have happened, and I hope that someday that it does. I think it’s just excellent. It didn’t interfere with anybody. It’s kind of like the Mason thing. So they go over there and have their meeting and whatever. The Masons never interfered with anybody more than a snitch. The same thing with this ski-type racing. What a wonderful thing. It didn’t interfere with anybody the way it’s held now, and it wouldn’t have interfered with anybody if you had brought it up the old power line or some other way from Fort Klamath. Again, I think it would have been a wonderful thing and I hope some day it happens.

The Rim Run, of course, is a different thing (69). It’s a somewhat spectator sport. It is clearly against the Code of Federal Regulations. It does have a major impact on the visitor to Crater Lake. And so, it should not be there.

Did you attempt to modify that?

Oh yeah. I attempted to eliminate it. I really did, and lost. I lost on the political reasons. Again, I believe we lost it because people were not willing to stand there and say, “Yes, hey, this is part of the Code of Federal Regulations. It’s clearly against the policies of the National Park Service and the Department of the Interior, and it’s over.” And nobody was willing to do that. So I lost, I suppose [it’s not] the end of the world. But I begrudge that. I do. It should have been stopped. It’s one I should have won, but I guess I’d rather win the geothermal issue than the Rim Run.

There’s a little difference in scale.

Yes, a little difference in scale.

 With the ski race, did local contacts, like say John Day and John Lund, have a lot to do with the friendly atmosphere with its being staged?

I don’t know John Lund (70). John Day, of course, was a wonderful man (71). He was. He was great. I feel privileged having known him. I feel good about that. The big thing is, of course, the park was involved with both the Rim Run and the ski race. But I think the larger thing is I think that everybody felt better about the ski race because it is consistent with the things that Crater Lake does and it doesn’t hurt anybody. The Rim Run, the park was very heavily involved in that, but I think people were a little more hostile or perhaps less supportive of it primarily because it is certainly against policy and against the Code of Federal Regulations.

Was that sort of complicated by previous staff having been so heavily involved in it?

Yes. There’s no doubt about it. You know, people get caught up. It’s an easy thing to get trapped into that kind of thing. When I was at Colorado National Monument, we had a little informal run across the top of Colorado National Monument by bicycle. No big deal, you know. Then it grew until it was a bicycle race. But for the most part, again, it really did not interfere with Colorado National Monument. It really didn’t. Well, a little bit.

Okay, but at a point, well after I left, it had grown to the point that it became an Olympic-qualifying race and part of the Coors Classic bicycle race event. It grew from something that was utterly benign and harmless, or almost so, to a major impact on the park and the visitor.

Certainly something that the park wasn’t established for. . .

Yes. It just kind of went, little by little by little by little, and suddenly there it was. Of course, I was long gone, and it was interesting. I don’t know where it is today. But I do know that the same attempt was to be made in other areas of the National Park Service and they kept going, I1Well, they do it at Colorado National Monument.I1 And I know that gave some regional directors some real fits, including Lorraine Mintzmyer.

I’ll bet. To what extent were you involved in public meetings during the DCP process from 1984 to 1988?

What, did they have five of those things?

Well, it seemed like it.

I went to most of them. I didn’t go to all of them. Those were Odegaard’s, you know, if that’s what you’re talking about.

Well, yes, 1 know about the ’88 one. I know there were public meetings, I guess, for the ’84 DCP.

Well, a lot of that, you know, was likely to happen. I was involved to some extent because there was nothing that happened in them that I wasn’t aware of and hadn’t bought into. We never generated an awful lot of opposition. There was nothing that I remember in any of those things that was going to cause great heartache to Crater Lake.

 How about demolishing the lodge? I know that Dickinson had to go in front of Weaver at one point in ’84, but I’m not sure if that was before you got here?

The thing about it was, of course, if you’re making judgments based on dollars, to redo the old lodge made absolutely no sense at all. It was made out of crap the day they built it, and 60 years didn’t do it any good. So once the decision was made that we were not going to tear it down, and the Congress and Senate [went along1 with it and said we’re going to fund it, then, heck, let’s go for it. The only question is to do it as absolutely well as possible, so that when we’re done with it we have something that the National Park Service and the people of Oregon can stand there and hold its head up and say, “There ain’t anything better than this.’! I suspect that’s about what it’s going to be, isn’t it?

I think one of the keys behind that is having pretty stable supervision. Did you meet Ray Todd?

Oh yeah.

Having him here for the life of the construction project has made an enormous difference.

That was one of the things that I spent a lot of time with. We had to have an absolutely super person in there, and we had to be able to count on him year after year after year after year until it was done. And we got it. I hope, and I just assume. . . I can’t imagine anything that could have changed that dramatically. . . I suppose that next year when you open that thing up, it ought to be just an eye-stopper, comparable, I always use comparables, except for its newness, it ought to ranked right there with the El Tovar and the Ahwahnee. It won’t, but it certainly is in that parameter of a really nice, elegant lodge.

Were there substantial changes in the number and type of seasonals employed at Crater Lake between 1984 and 1991? Did the numbers fluctuate at all?

I don’t remember. We moved numbers around a lot because that might have made perfect sense at one time did not always. All of a sudden you had a larger RM program, you all of a sudden had fire programs. You had a lot of other little tangential things coming at you. I don’t have any idea where that’ll go. You’d have to look at the numbers.

Did housing affect the quality of seasonals available?

Yes. Absolutely no doubt about it, it does. This business of the old Park Service adage that we can get the people to commute from the surrounding communities does not work in a place like Crater Lake. For the same reason that we needed really good, high quality housing for the permanents, you need that same thing for the seasonals. If a guy is a good ranger, interpreter, maintenance guy, or whatever, and hopefully he brings his wife, or his wife and kids, and he comes out there, you can’t throw him in some of the things that we used to throw people in and expect him to be happy. This is not 1940.

I never saw the old Sleepy Hollow because in my first summer there were trailers there. That was still being occupied when you came on?

Oh, sure. Even the house torn down, down there by the campground (72).

The Annie Spring house.

It was just awful. It was just absolutely a travesty. It was so bad that I played around with the idea of reestablishing the old tent frames. Actually, because the houses were [so bad], tents would have been better. And you have to have it. You just simply have to have decent housing for your seasonals. The same thing is true for concession. You’ve got to have places for those young people to live if you’re going to attract the quality and the continuity from year to year to year to year that you need to make it happen.

Were the Coldwater cabins still being used when you came on?

Yes. It seems like we shut them down one year (73). That was more of a political thing to force the concessioner to get off his behind. Those were pretty awful.

What amount of discretion is granted to a superintendent in following the recommendations of an operations evaluation? I know some things happen on a time line and others don’t seem to happen.

I don’t know. I’ve always tried to separate out from the operations evaluation those things that they’re really saying they want done, those things that they think would be nice, and those things that they put on paper but really don’t feel very strongly about. Sometimes it’s very difficult to do. I, quite frankly, ignored an awful lot of that stuff. I always did. I did it in every area I was in. I didn’t ignore anything that fell into the list that they really wanted done.

Would the people involved have a beginning meeting with you and then a close out?

Yes.

I remember that one in ’88, where Briggle was sort of the team captain. I wasn’t sure what the difference was between things that were really important that happened and some of the things they recommended that didn’t happen.

That’s what you’re always trying to sort out. You’re always trying to sort out, “Did they really want to do this?” Sometimes, a team member can make a recommendation that really looks like it really makes sense, and yet it doesn’t. So you just sit these and say, “Hey, okay, well that’s fine if you want it to go into the final report, but there ain’t any way that will happen.” So I don’t know about all superintendents, but I always felt I had a lot of discretion because I kept my job and I ignored an awful lot of that stuff as not being necessary.

 Have there been OE’s that get into subject-matter specialty? Of the two that have been here while I’ve been here, nobody has asked about the history program and they don’t ask Mark Buktenica how to do lake research better.

That should come into play once the area has matured after a major thrust of development, like we did. In other words, I would have expected, now that pretty much the die has been cast throughout the park, whether it is housing or buildings or programs or concessions or all of this stuff, that subject-matter specialists on such things as the history program or the lake program, would have happened by now, They would have happened had I been there because we had outgrown, just as we outgrew the construction phase in maintenance and we were going into a maintenance phase, this rapid changing of everything in the world [park]. Because we did. There wasn’t a thing that hadn’t seen tremendous changes since I first got there.

And you wanted to be able to sustain those changes?

That’s right, And once you have that done, you need to go back and quietly examine the subject-matter program. Absolutely. But right in the middle of deciding whether or not you’re going to rebuild all the Steel Circle houses, you don’t really worry about what the fisheries program is. Not that it’s not important. It just should wait its time. Or I felt so. But it should be. There’s no doubt that it should.

I know Mark is big on peer review, in bringing the best people they could find and have the program evaluated by them, but I guess that’s more technical and not so operational.

That’s right. You have to live with the fish program over there on the side. I was on, at one time during my tenure in the Rocky Mountain Region, an awful lot of operations evaluations. Often times, they were on subject-matter areas. Sometimes, as mundane as ranger budget. Right down into that, or the orchard program at Capitol Reef. We had that big orchard back there that we had to deal with. And I’ve done a lot of subject matter evaluations. So yes. We didn’t do much of it at Crater Lake.

I was also going to ask you, when we talk about facilities, whether there is a problem with visitors or students not having any kind of group facility where there would be [something] like a classroom. Do you think that is kind of a gap?

No. No absolutely not. That’s not our role. We never even looked at it, even half way. I never envisioned that, and the people that put Crater Lake together the way you see it today, that wasn’t even thought of as having any value at all. Keep in mind, why are we there? We’re there for the lake. We’re not there to educate people in the sense of classroom. We’re there to interpret. We’re also not there to solve the drug problems of the United States. We’re not there to solve integration. There are an awful lot of things that Crater Lake isn’t there for, and the National Park Service isn’t there for. And one of them is classroom education.

At the Sinnott Memorial we have an observation station where you can hear a lecture and a museum.

We need a visitor center. We need an honest-to-God real visitor center. Hopefully, we’ll get it, on the rim. We need a good one. We don’t have one. But what we don’t need is a classroom to bring people up there and to teach school, as we envisioned it. This goes right down the line, whether it’s Tobin or Briggle or me or Babbitt or any one of those folks. That wasn’t any part of it. Remembering those days, if there were 50 other things that we would like to have done at Crater Lake, something like a classroom wouldn’t have made the list. It was that unimportant.

What were some of those other things?

A visitor center, of course.

I think of that as sort of a given.

A good fire program. A good backcountry management program. Expanded staff in virtually every area. Such programs as how do we get rid of those damn fish in the lake, politically and practically. Because those fish need to come out of there. Mark will tell you that. Those things should be gone.

Yes, that was evident in the 10-year study (74).

That’s right. We need to get rid of those damn fish. I think we need to get the rangers and the interpreters off their butts and out there in the field. I mean, we may hire a seasonal ranger to walk trails. But it’s been a long time since some of those permanent rangers have been out there walking trails. I think we need the interpreters out there. For example, how long has it been since we’ve had an interpreter walk, what’s the big mountain there on the east side of the lake?

Mount Scott.

How long has it been since we’ve had an interpreter, in uniform, hike Mount Scott?

Eight years.

That’s right. Yet it needs to be done. You need to involve that interpreter with the visitor out there in the field. What a better way. Man, interpreters just go absolutely wild with one, two, three people on the Mount Scott trail. My goodness, the opportunities there are just wonderful. And how long has it been since we’ve had an interpreter take a group of people by appointment and do a hike into the Sphagnum Bog (75)?

A long, long time.

Oh yeah, but what a wonderful opportunity. These are things that need [to be done], We’ve got to get the ranger and the interpreter out there on the ground. I can’t remember for sure how successful I was, but getting interpreters to give talks without their little slide projectors. Get them out there and let them interpret the resource as it is. Mount Scott, Sphagnum Bog, wherever.

 Notes

1. Park Technician [O26] series, now abolished.
2. Field Operations Study Team, which existed from 1966 to 1968.
3. The Park Management, or 025 series.
4. Interpretation and Resource Management. Combining these functions was a FOST recommendation.
5. Departmental Management Program.
6. This took place in 1970.
7. Superintendent from 1991 to 1994.
8. NPS Director from 1952 to 1963.
9. Benton was the third longest-serving superintendent at Crater Lake [out of 22] and has the distinction of being the longest in continuous residence there.
10. Stephanie Toothman, Regional Historian from 1981 to 1990, presently team leader in Cultural Resources in the Seattle office.
11. Chief of Design in the Seattle office, retired in 1994.
12. Chief of Maintenance from 1982 to 1986.
13. Park Biologist (Resource Management Specialist) from 1983 to 1986. Presently Superintendent of Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve.
14. Park Ranger (Interpretation) from 1983 to 1989.
15. Ranger Dormitory, now called Steel Center.
16. “Rat Hall” is building number 5, whereas the front entranceway of the Administration Building detracted from its appearance.
17. Ron Sarff, Briggle’s administrative aide, now deceased.
18. Craig Ackerman, presently Superintendent at Oregon Caves, who reports to the superintendent at Crater Lake.
19. George Buckingham, Chief Ranger at Crater Lake since 1989; Kent Taylor, Chief of Interpretation at Crater Lake since 1986.
20. The dispute was over access to hunting, since a portion of the park is within the treaty lines drawn in 1864. After the Indians won twice in lower courts, the case went to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1985 where the Tribe lost in a split decision.
21. This happened in 1986.
22. Mount Rainier’s headquarters shifted from Longmire to Tahoma Woods in 1977.
23. Mott was formerly state park director in California when Ronald Reagan was governor.
24. Approved as part of a development concept plan in 1988, but dropped in 1992 after a congressional committee questioned high costs associated with its design and construction.
25. This refers to Rim Drive, which was opened to two-way traffic in 1987.
26. Superintendent from 1976 to 1978, now retired.
27. Volz was superintendent from 1965 to 1967 and retired as a regional director.
28. Ron Warfield was Chief of Interpretation at Crater Lake from 1981 to 1984.
29. Supervisory Ranger (Interpretation) at Crater Lake from 1978 to 1988 who subsequently transferred to John Day Fossil Beds National Monument, where he retired in 1997.
30. Kent Taylor has a bachelor’s degree in European History and had served as an interpreter in several parks prior to arriving at Crater Lake.
31. Carolyn Hescock has been the Superintendent’s secretary at Crater Lake since 1985.
32. This took place under Superintendent Don Spalding in 1970.
33. A three-volume document printed in 1986 by the Cooperating Park Studies Unit.
34. John Morrison, who worked that summer.
35. Its location was on the second floor of that building during the 1970s and early 1980s.
36. Adaptive rehabilitation of the Ranger Dormitory (Steel Center) took place in 1986.
37. Authorized in 1982, data collection began in 1983.
38. Regional Chief Scientist until his retirement in 1993.
39. Regional Director from 1986 to 1994.
40. Odegaard’s early career had been spent in the Washington state parks. A political appointment in 1979 catapulted him into the NPS as deputy regional director.
41. The company which did exploratory drilling for geothermal energy outside the park from 1986 to 1991.
42. A geologist employed by Cal Energy.
43. Bob Smith, who represented the congressional district that Crater Lake is in, from 1985 to 1994, and was reelected in the wake of Wes Cooley’s fall in 1996.
44. Bob Packwood was one of two senators from Oregon, originally elected in 1968.
45. Mark Hatfield was senior senator from Oregon and Chairman of the Appropriations Committee.
46. BLM has responsibility for mineral leases on federal lands. The leases of concern to the NPS at Crater Lake were on the Winema National Forest east of the park.
47. Established as a national volcanic monument under the administration of the Forest Service in 1993. The state representative was Bernie Agrons, a retired forester.
48. Lakeview District of BLM.
49. Superintendent at Yellowstone National Park from 1975 to 1982.
50. Both were keymen prior to the establishment of Redwood National Park in 1968, and served while George Hartzog was NPS Director.
51. Fire management officers. Fire previously had been a collateral duty in the Ranger Division.
52. Ryder, who began work on a seasonal appointment in 1989, became a permanent employee in 1992.
53. Buildings and Utilities crew, one of the two branches in the maintenance division.
54. The reference is to the Sleepy Hollow project completed in 1991 and the renovation of Steel Circle which took place from 1991 to 1993.
55. Historic Structure Preservation Guide, sometimes called Operation and Maintenance Manuals. HSPGs were produced as part of the adaptive rehabilitation of the three buildings at Park Headquarters in 1986-87.
56. The Superintendent’s residence, designated as a national historic landmark in 1987.
57. Laurin Huffman, historical architect in the Seattle Office.
58. Building 34, constructed as a hospital, but used as apartments since its completion in 1948.
59. Administrative Officer from 1987 to 1989.
60. Chief of Maintenance from 1989 to 1991.
61. D.C. Bush, hired as the buildings and utilities foreman, was acting chief of maintenance between Bob Keller and Scott Ruesch.
62. Presently chief of maintenance for Sequoia and Kings Canyon.
63. Independence National Historic Park.
64. Director of Oregon State Parks from 1964 to 1992.
65. Stewart State Park, which is located above Lost Creek Dam the Highway 62.
66. Peter Thompson was chief ranger at Crater Lake from 1987 to 1989.
67. Masons from Klamath Falls have held an annual meeting at a site near Lost Creek Campground.
68. The present race, which has been run annually since 1978, utilizes the East Rim Drive and is staged by the Alla Mage Ski Club of Klamath Falls.
69. Staged annually on the second Saturday in August since 1976.
70. Author of Southern Oregon Cross Country Ski rails and frequent visitor to the park.
71. Seasonal ranger a Crater Lake during the 1930s and nationally-known cross-country ski advocate before his death in 19.
72. Building 129, demolished in 1989.
73. Located behind the cafeteria at Rim Village, these structures were removed in 1985.
74. A report on the lake research program printed in 1993.
75. An activity recommended by Susan Seyer and Jerry Franklin in their 1980 CPSU report on the vegetation of Sphagnum Bog.

 

 Oral history interview questions for Bob Benton

This interview will be organized around four topics: A. 00’s background and life in the NPS before coming to Crater Lake as superintendent; B. Management overview of CRLA, 1984-1991; C. Program specifics, projects, and funding; D. Past events and trends affecting future park management.

A.

1. Where were you born and raised? What is your educational background?

2. What were the circumstances that led to your first seasonal appointment? Why were you drawn to the NPS?

3. Was the number of seasonal positions expanding at the time you worked at Devils Tower and Everglades? Were interpreters expected to be subject-matter specialists?

4. What were the main changes you witnessed in the NPS from 1962 to 1972? Did the implementation of the park technician series and the dissolution of the park naturalist series affect you in any way?

5. Who in WAS0 influenced you the most during your participation in the DMP? What were the things they emphasized to prospective superintendents?

6. What background in wilderness studies did you have prior to being superintendent at Colorado NM? Was wilderness already an interest of yours?

7. Did you receive training in resource management as part of the DMP? How viable was the research biology program of the late 1960s? Were CPSUs seen as an improvement over previous organizational structures for research, or was it a system that took form because NPS scientists were so few in number?

8. Did you participate in the negotiation of any concession contracts before going to Colorado NM? What was the degree of field input/control for the 30 year agreements?

9. How did funding procedures (PCP vs. current system) change for NPS construction projects during the Vietnam War era? Did money for park housing disappear at that time?

10. What were the main differences, as far as park management was concerned, between master plans and GMPs? How did the increasing interest of conservation groups affect the planning process during the 1970s?

B.

1. What were the circumstances that led to your appointment as superintendent at CRLA? Had you known Jim Tobin previously.

2. Had you ever had an assistant superintendent prior to arriving at CRLA? How has such a position worked at CRLA?

3. What sort of regional office support was made available to you upon your arrival at CRLA? Did this change with Tobin’s death?

4. Which park policy areas did you target for change when you arrived at Crater Lake? How many could you address during your first year here?

5. How were CRLA and ORCA associated between 1980 and 1985? Did they share staff after the group office closed?

6. How far did the idea to move headquarters proceed? What were the most significant changes in operations that a move would have forced?

7. What sort of concessions operation did you think was possible in 1984? Did that vision have to be modified over time? Why was the concessioner allowed to have possessory interest in the Mazama cabins and camper store?

8. In your view, was the Rim Village planning secondary to better employee quarters in Munson Valley? What initiated the planning and design work for the new Sleepy Hollow?

9. What was the condition of the CRLA road system in 1984? How did you identify needed changes, such as the two-way circulation around the rim? Were these changes concurrent with better utilities? When were the power lines placed underground?

10. As a manager, how much contact did you have with your CRLA predecessors? What were your main sources of information for protection and resource management problems?

C.

1. What were the major differences in the interpretive division at CRLA between 1984 and 1991? Were some of those differences evident in the NHA as well?

2. How do you view the organizational split between interpretation and resource management? Between resource management and protection?

3. When did you first see the need for historians in natural areas? Was the condition of the museum collections in these parks a factor? How did the historic resource study and administrative history affect your ideas concerning a park historian?

4. To what extent were you involved in the lake research project? How did the breadth and complexity of the investigations change when the geothermal issue came to the forefront?

5, What were your main concerns in regard to terrestrial resources? How did the fire management officer position come about?

6. What necessitated the creation of a staff ranger position at CRLA? Which of the ranger division’s needs did you consider most important in 19M?

7. What were the most pressing needs in maintenance when you arrived? Have these needs shifted substantially since then?

8. Has maintenance at CRLA taken on substantially different proportions since the rehabilitation of the three headquarters buildings? How can that sort of money and expertise be obtained for the rest of the historic district?

9. What were the forces behind the expansion in the number of positions in administration? How did the hiring of a computer specialist affect the operation, particularly when CRLA is compared with other parks which did not respond to that technology?

10. What did you consider to be the most important projects during your tenure at CRLA? Did the park’s infrastructure respond to their completion and need for ongoing maintenance? Did you ever make comparisons between the operational needs and responses between CRLA and Lassen?

 

1. What were the main ways that the changes in the directorate and RD positions affected CRLA Mile you were superintendent? Which congressmen had the most direct influence on the park?

2. What sort of relationship did you have with the state parks? Did you participate in their annual tours?

3. Who were the most important people (as far as CRLA is concerned) in the communities surrounding the park? Were they useful at times when there were difficulties with certain user groups? Were you in favor of continuing organized events like the Rim Run, ski race, or the Masons meeting?

4. To what extent were you involved in public meetings during the DCP process from 1984 to 1988? What duties were delegated to Jon Jarvis and other staff members?

5. Were there substantial changes in the number and type of seasonals employed at CRLA between 1984 and 1991? Did housing affect the quality of seasonals available?

6. What amount of discretion is granted to a superintendent in following the recommendations of an operations evaluation? Why are no subject matter specialists on these teams so that an overall assessment of program direction can be made?

7. What sort of outreach programs do you think CRLA can best handle? Do you think the lack of a facility specifically dedicated to education in the park has been a bad thing?

8. Can the headquarters and associated housing problems at CRLA ever be solved?

9. What prevented the highway closure at ORCA that was discussed during 1986? When did the negotiations for an Illinois Valley Visitor Center begin? Was this why the area ranger’s residence is in Cave Junction?

10. What will present the greatest challenges to future managers at ORCA? Can their building problems there ever be solved?

Other pages in this section

• Crater Lake Centennial Celebration oral histories
• Hartzog – Complete Interview (PDF)
• Jon Jarvis
• Albert Hackert and Otto Heckert
• Hazel Frost
• James Kezer
• F. Owen Hoffman
• Douglas Larson
• Carroll Howe
• Wayne R. Howe
• Francis G. Lange
• Lawrence Merriam C.
• Marvin Nelson
• Doug and Sadie Roach
• James S. Rouse
• John Salinas
• Larry Smith
• Earl Wall
• Donald M. Spalding
• Wendell Wood
• John Lowry Dobson
• O. W. Pete Foiles
• Bruce W. Black
• Emmett Blanchfield
• Ted Arthur
• Howard Arant
• John Eliot Allen
• Obituary Kirk Horn, 1939-2019
• Mabel Hedgpeth