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.
