It’s either 340 or …somebody used to say 334 as a set number.
It has gone up so dog gone much that we do have a tremendous number of people. We have lost some of our, what I would say is a “close-knit” group, that we kind of stand together on things. The Park Service itself, I feel, has lost something through the years, but I don’t know that there’s anything you can do about it, it the point.
It seems to be an agency without a “set track”, unlike some of the other ones. So it’s in danger of fragmentation.
I think you put it very well. I know that probably in the ‘50s, from ’50 to ’65 was probably our most productive years as far as the Park Service concerned because I was in the field in more increasingly difficult jobs and with jobs where I could make a difference. I don’t think you really make much of a difference in the Washington office. Really, the Director is about the only one that makes a direct difference there because he’s political, is the thing. The rest of it, you do work all right, but I’m not sure you change the course of human events that much. But as a chief ranger at Yellowstone, or assistant chief ranger at Yellowstone, I think you actually can make some changes. I’ve had people tell me from Yellowstone that they wished that some of the things could be done again the way they were when I was there and when my assistant chief at that time, Ken Ashley, was there. And they’re people that have been around for quite a while, so I feel pretty good about that. But, there’s so many things that you can’t do a darn thing about. It’s almost kismet, “so what do I do?”- Type things. If just rolls along. And the fact that the Park Service has increased, has gotten so much bigger, has so many more areas and so many different type of areas. The maritime deal that was in the last Courier was something that.. We never heard of such a thing. The recreation area came in, the Gateway East and Gateway West, why we would have gone stark raving mad if that had been mentioned in 1950 (32). For a long time I didn’t think we had any business being in the recreation areas, I’m still not quite sure that we have.
It may have been one of the Wirth’s ideas to expand…
I think it was, yes. And I’m not saying that he’s wrong because a lot of them have proved out to be fine areas that the Park Service should be in, but I’m not at all sure that some of them shouldn’t be a facility that the states should be taking care of.
