Our most recent fire (6) has burned up a lot of beetle kill. I don’t know if this latest round of beetle kill has come in from the north.
I think it probably is. It so happens that just a few days before we were up here for the dedication (7), we came back from Wallowa Lake and came down from Bend and were quite astounded at how much more bark beetle kill there has been in there since the last time we were up in that country. So that’s a recent one, but of course which been going on for several years. In my time here it was building up, but didn’t really get to a real crescendo until in the early ‘50’s — probably ’51, ’52, ’53, somewhere along in there is when they were really working on it here. They had some fairly good size crews that did work on it. Wildlife problems. We had no deer problems in those days that we knew of. As a graduate wildlife biologist, I think I would have noticed if we had deer problems. There were deer around, of course. We would see them. We had some elk. Occasionally, we would see an elk. I think the first elk I saw was crossing the road down along the south road somewhere. I was amazed to see an elk cross the road. But bears, now that’s a different story. That’s a big story. In those days, we had a feeding ground. It was between here and, oh probably a mile and a half on the road to the south and then off to the east. It was a garbage dump is what it was (8). Of course, the bears congregated in there. As I recall, again it wasn’t advertised, but practically every Park Service individual took people in to see the bears. So it was well known, and I’m sure every concession employee knew where the garbage dump was. I’m sure this is the case. We did have bear problems. We had bears that tore into cabins up at the rim. We had bears that tried to get into house right down here. My son was about two years old down at Annie Spring and Jean looked out one time and he was chasing a bear. He was not gaining on the bear, the bear was rapidly going away from him. He was saying, “Nice doggie, nice doggie”. Of course, here was kid that was being raised in the Park Service and we couldn’t have pets in those day. So he didn’t know what dogs were all about. That bear was a dog as far as he was concerned.
Jean: Our house at Annie Springs had claw marks in the kitchen where a bear had come in that house before we lived in it.
In those days there was a campground which was behind the old log house which would be on the west side of the present road. It was one of our main campgrounds, the Annie Springs campground. And I can remember one time when I very foolishly hit a bear on the nose with a clipboard to get him scared off. Now I would never do that again. It was a stupid thing to do. For some reason or another, I did hit the bear on the nose with a clipboard. That’s about the closest I ever came to a bear incident of my own.
Jean: We had a hard time sleeping at Annie Spring because the people in the campground would get out and beat on the dish pans in the middle of the night to scare the bears away. We were right next to the campground.
We really did have quite a serous problem here with bears. You’ve asked later on about some of the changes in the Park Service. One of the best changes was getting the garbage dumps out of the parks, one of the fantastic things that happened. It was far from being natural and of course it drew bears into the park. Now do you have bear problems at all anymore?
