Wayne R. Howe

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Leavitt wasn’t around?  

Leavitt was in Medford. We were pretty much autonomous up here in the wintertime. So we took that bear and went up toward the rim. But of course you couldn’t get very far anyplace then with the snow on the ground. So we threw it over the edge. The only problem was that the next spring when the snow melted, that bear showed up down there and another bear showed up eating it, the carcass at the same time. Of course, this was reported at the entrance station. Of course, as far as the entrance station was concerned, as far as our explanation was concerned, it was just a bear that had died. This was the nature of bears to feed on each other. That’s what happened. There was one other bear situation. I was told by Clyde Gilbert, who the Chief Ranger was at the time that I almost got myself fired because of it. There was a bear that was killed up at the lodge. It was during the time that they were closing up in the fall. This bear was trying to break in to a building up there. None of us did know who actually killed the bear. We had ideas as to who did, but we could not prove it. But some visitor found parts of this bear in a sack out toward the north entrance and turned it in to the ranger force. I think it was turned in to me, and I was on duty at the entrance station down at Annie Spring at the time. The superintendent didn’t think that we took fast enough action. Since I was involved in it, why I was told that the chief ranger had to argue an awful lot to keep me from getting fired. Now I question that, in light of certain things that happened after that time. I don’t think that’s what happened. But that’s beside the point. Those are the three bear stories that I can think of at the present time.

Did you have problems with porcupines? 

We didn’t have many problems. There were some problems down in the south particularly in that southeast entrance. Are there problems now?

Just some evidence of porcupines. What we call Rat Hall, the old machine shop, has its steps that lead up to the second floor chewed by porcupines. 

I’ll be darned.

They didn’t damage vehicles? 

No.

Jean: I thought there was one time when they got our car tires when we were in the Annie Springs house. 

Some people think they like to dine on the hoses and that’s their excuse for shooting them. 

Well, the only reason that they would dine on tires that I know of would be because of the salt from your snow salting in the wintertime. That would be the reason. You may be right about that. It wasn’t a big thing. Of course there were porcupines around. We did have problems.

Now, you asked did we make use of the motorways or the backcountry cabins. We did make some use of at least the Bear Creek cabin for boundary patrol and in the fall for deer patrol.

There wasn’t any active wilderness management as far as those motorways were concerned?  

No, we used them for fires or to get to fires. Nobody ever heard of the wilderness in those days. When the Wilderness Act finally came in, there was man of us in the Park Service who said this is a farce, we are a wilderness anyway. We manage our backcountry as a wilderness. We did in places like Yellowstone and Yosemite and these big natural areas and Olympic. I’m not implying that the Wilderness Act was bad or anything of the sort, it’s an excellent Act. But it did do something for Crater Lake, it got rid of the motorways, and I don’t think the motorways were necessary. They were nice. It was a nice deal to be able to take of at 1:00 in the afternoon and spend four hours out in the motorways and be able to come back and go home. It was a nice way to spend an afternoon if things were slow, which they were sometimes.

You can’t do the amount of windshield in the park that you could in the forest areas. 

There was quite an extensive network of motorways. They were in all quadrants of the Park.

Were adjacent areas like Sky Lakes or Mt. Thielsen managed as wilderness areas at that time?  

Not that I know of. No, they were just there and they were difficult to get to. Of course, there were not nearly as man logging roads into places in those days. That’s because logging was just starting to become a booming industry in ’46.

The lower elevation forest was still being cut. 

They had plenty of places to cut where they didn’t have to come up this high and didn’t have to intrude on areas we now consider wilderness areas. So there was no problem there. We used the motorways sometimes in the wintertime. They were good paths. We had some high markings on the trees, on a lot of the trees that went through these motorways so that we could take skis through or a Snow Cat.

Were they attached markings or blazes? 

They were attached markings, diamonds probably, orange diamonds. I can’t remember for sure.

Similar to what we’ve got now? 

Yes. In March of 1948, I think that was the year where the January was a light year. It started to snow in February and it never quit until about June. My wife remembers that. This was one of the problems about this part of the country. The winters were great, but in the Spring along about April or May, you’d go down to Klamath Falls and everything was nice down there and you had to come back up to the dirty snow at Crater Lake. If cabin fever ever set in, that was when it started to get to you. But one spring, the National Geographic decided to run the Pacific Crest Trail from the California border, I believe to the Washington/ Canadian border. They were taking some of the newer Snow Cats and these were Snow Cats that had tracks on all fours. They had four tracks instead of two tracks and two skis. They were much more sophisticated than the one we had up here. Crater Lake was used as a proving ground for tougher Snow Cats. They would bring them up here and try them out. Well, they were going to go through on this and they were going to go following the Pacific Crest Trail as much as they could. They couldn’t travel on a whole lot of it, but they could follow one of the motorways that went fairly close to the Pacific Crest Trail in the west half of the park.

Was it still called the Skyline Trail at that time?

I think it was, as I remember. They didn’t have any trouble until they got across the west entrance road and started up the road, which then bottomed out at the Pumice Flat and up into that country. On the side below Watchman there is a spring down there, I can’t remember the name of it. Is it Thousand Springs? (11) I’m sorry the name escapes me at the moment. But down in that part of the country. We had warned them about this because we were having terrific snows and we had a terrible March. It just snowed and snowed and snowed and snowed. It was one of those times when you would get two feet of snow over night and then it would just keep on going. So that you might get, within a 48 hour period, three of four of snow. It was loose snow, it wouldn’t have a chance to pack. And Snow Cats, at least in those days, did not operate too well in that loose snow. I think I’ve given you ideas about that. I think there were two Snow Cats and I don’t recall how many people of course, there would have been a writer and photographer along, plus a couple of drivers. That got completely bogged down over in that park of the park. Now how we knew all this I don’t recall. There must have been radio communication somewhere between them and the Forest Service or us. But anyway, we sent our own Snow Cat in. I didn’t go in on it. But they finally came out the way they had come in on the west entrance road, took their Snow Cats down the road, and then came back up the road that runs between Union Creek and Diamond Lake junctions. They could not go across clear through on the Skyline Trail. I don’t think I ever saw that article. I don’t know whether it was ever written or not.

I’d have to look it up if it was. I haven’t seen it. I do have a lot of the Geographies from that period. 

I doubt it was ever written because it was such a fiasco. Here again, it wasn’t completely their fault, except they had been warned that this was a bad month. We did have a man who skied the entire Skyline Trail from the Columbia River clear down to the border one winter. We were real concerned about him, too, because he was several days late when he got in here. But he did make it all right. I don’t remember how long it took him. I think he had fairly good weather. But of course, you never had good weather for a long period of time in the winter. Even with a lack of snow, you still had storms come.

Were you ever stationed at the Mount Scott lookout?

In my day, Mount Scoot lookout was not in action, except I think, the first year. The summer of 1946, I think we had somebody up there. And then it was so decrepit that we didn’t use it anymore. It sticks in my mind that the Mount Scott lookout was worked on some to make it so that it could be used.

It wasn’t replaced until 1958. 

Okay. What is it used for now, merely an emergency type of situation?

It is only manned during the fire season. 

Is it manned all the time in the summertime?

No, just the Watchman. 

Now the Watchman, of course, we kept it up. We used it all the time. But Mount Scott we did not use, except as I recall, the first year I was here. But from then on it was just a place to go up and look around the country and to use in an emergency.

There is still two of that style of lookout on the Rogue River Forest. I got a chance this summer to look around one of them (12). 

I think you will find no matter where you go within that era, you’ll find all the lookouts similar. If you were a lookout in one, you would go in another and close your eyes you’d find everything in it. You’d have no problem.

What about the lake level and water quality measurements? 

We didn’t do anything like that at all. It was more sophistication than we had reached at that point in time. And I don’t think anybody ever even considered the fact that anything could hurt the water in that lake. That was sacred. Of course, acid rain wasn’t even thought of. Or anything likes that.

Were there any problems with point sources of pollution? 

Not then, there wasn’t. Fishing was done a little bit in the lake. I think fish were planted probably one or two years during the period of time that I was here. But fishing was very poor in the lake. We had row boats on the lake in those days.

Were those run by the concession?  

Yes.

Do you know how long that lasted? 

The row boats I’m sure lasted all the time that I was here. When it stopped, I don’t recall. We generally did not allow motors on the lake. Now occasionally, somebody would sneak in and go down the Wineglass trail with a boat and a motor and we’d have reports of it. But I don’t recall they would catch anybody.

Were there comfort stations down on the lake level? 

Do you remember any?

Jean: I went down there only once. I don’t think I ever saw any down there. I don’t know. 

There were some at various times right at the foot of the trail. 

I know. You showed a picture of it. And I’m sorry, I just don’t remember that.

It’s not the kind of thing that would register in your mind. 

There should have been. I’m sure of this because it was pretty easy going down and real tough coming back. And if you spent much time down there particularly out in a row boat, I’m sure that the human waste problem could have been a problem. But I don’t recall and we were not nearly as concerned about things like that in those days. It was perfectly all right to bury your human waste out in the backcountry. Tin cans were buried in lots of places. But nobody thought anything about it. Times have changed a lot on that. I don’t think I ever did fish on the lake. I fished in Sand Creek and Annie Creek but never in the lake.

Did you work with the Park Naturalist on any project?  

There was one park naturalist, the chief park naturalist, and it was George Ruhle. And I think George is still alive as far as I know. George is a pretty nice guy, but he was hard to work with. It wasn’t just on his side. Those were the days, and I don’t like to say this, when naturalists and rangers just plain didn’t get along. It was just the nature of the thing. You weren’t supposed to get along. I mean just bluntly that’s the way it was. I mean, the ranger force was THE force; the naturalist force was a kind of a subsidiary force. They did not have the same status, except in the chief part of it, the chief naturalist. And if you were in a park where there was an assistant chief naturalist, they were considered to be human beings. But generally speaking, the park naturalist, the seasonal park naturalist, was kind of a step, a half step at least below the seasonal park ranger. Now, I’m not saying that has completely stopped even to this day. Of course, I retired in 1976. Things have changed a lot in that time; things were changing a lot before that time. When I went to Yellowstone as chief ranger, my compatriot chief park naturalist, we had offices in each corner of a building. And we were very good friends. We lived close to each other. We worked closely together. The park naturalists and the park rangers worked closely together and I do mean closely. It was not uncommon for either to be switching duties. 

Is there a lot more science now in the park? 

There is now, over what there was then. We  were doing a whole lot of things, probably from the opening of the parks again in ’46 clear through ‘til another ten years to ’55, perhaps even up to ’58, something like that. We got into the scientific age pretty much by the late ‘50’s, anyhow.

Any relation to Mission 66, as far any change in temperament? 

I think so, yes. We restructured a lot of things. I know by the time I went to Washington, the mid-60’s, there was the Office of the Chief Scientist back there. These were things that were unheard of previously for years back. Like I say, the naturalist programs were good programs in those days. They were excellent programs, a lot of them. Of course, a lot of them were poor and let’s face it some of them are poor today. It depends on who’s doing the job. How much they are interested in it; we draw in poor rangers and we draw in poor naturalists.

Did you do any Interpretive Programs? 

Yes, we did. The rangers did. I didn’t do it as much here as I did later on. In Olympic, I did quite a bit of it, and particularly at Bryce Canyon, I did a lot of it.

Evening Campfire Programs? 

Both. Out on viewpoints and campfires and well, just generally manning stations where you were talking to people which was, of course, not just a naturalist job but it was also a ranger job. You know later on we went into the I & RM concept, the Interpretive and Resource Management concept. Perhaps you haven’t heard of that, Steve. But that was a concept we went into where we put them all together.

Was that just for a short time?  

No, that lasted for quite a while. I suppose it must have lasted ten years. Some of the smaller areas used that, perhaps Crater Lake did. I don’t recall. It’s something you might check into. It started in the early ‘60’s. They did the same things as a Park Ranger. They were about a half step below a park ranger (13). I can’t recall what we called them. It was supposed to be people who didn’t have quite the education to become a park ranger could become this other name. We used them quite a bit. We found this was a way to become a park ranger is to go into this way and work long enough and get transferred over and become a park ranger. And it was also found that they were doing almost exactly the same work as the park ranger were doing, and it just fell by the wayside. There’s probably still a few of them left but not many.

Uniforms stay about the same during all that period? 

Yes.

You didn’t have to wear the boots? 

The boots were out by the time.

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