That’s something which should come out in the documentation somewhere?
But it never did. It’s not there. I found it out because I knew the old farts around Bryce Canyon.
And Bryce doesn’t have an administrative history, does it?
It didn’t.
Okay. How did Crater Lake’s come about? That was something you were interested in?
Sure. Absolutely. I felt I had to proceed on every front possible at Crater Lake because it was in such awful shape. You really had to move forward. If you had taken the normal, lackadaisical Park Service approach, Crater Lake, you know, would remain in the dark ages. We had to go and push on every facet throughout there with an awful lot of aggression. But we did not proceed on Crater Lake with any sense of diplomacy or delicateness. We simply didn’t do that. If I had it to do all over again, the only thing I would have done is probably done it even more so. We were only gonna get one shot at that. We had Tobin, and we had Briggle, and we were only gonna get one real crack at bringing Crater Lake into the modern age, kicking and screaming. We had those folk, as well as real good movers and shakers such as Dave Babbitt and Stephanie [Toothman], even in her lesser role that she used to occupy. So we moved fast.
The only thing I think that really failed miserably was that crazy visitor use perception survey (33). We just pissed away an awful-lot of money on that and it never should have happened.
I know that my predecessor was hired in 1987 (34). Did you have Kent here first in order to get the historian position up and running?
Oh yes. You have to start somewhere. You can’t really just go in to a guy like Ron Warfield and say, “Hey, guess what? I’m going to get you a historian.” You need to work on it.
What were your thoughts about the museum collection? I know that tended to go back and forth between resource management and interpretation. Was that part of the history equation?
As far as I was concerned it was, that it definitely should stay the hell out of resource management. I think that belongs in history, belongs in interpretation. Unless you’re in an historical area, where the major thrust of the park is history, you are not going to get the credit for such things as museum collections from people of a biologist background. It ain’t gonna happen. You really have to have that person with a sensitivity to history in order for that to go. I don’t know. I hope it’s still in interpretation.
