H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest Site Visit Group Oral History Interview - Part 3, September 22, 1997

Jerry Franklin: I feel sorry for those people who lived by themselves. All alone. (Unintelligible background conversation as the rest of the group arrives 00:01:00at the Carpenter Mountain Lookout)

Lookout Person [Doug]: [Explaining how to locate Mount Shasta on the horizon to south.]

Al Levno: (Trying to get the group together so he can take a group photo.)

Max Geier: Do you have a place I can lay some pictures out?

Lookout: Sure, right here on the -

Ted Dyrness: Do you have pictures?

Geier: I've got those 1935 ones.

Levno: Oh, wow! Yeah. You've got 'em! Where'd you get 'em?

Geier: You gave them to me.

Franklin: Oh, I see it. [Sighting Mt Shasta].

Lookout: Yeah, that was pretty surprising, the first time I saw it, too. [Clear skies/good visibility]

Franklin: Whoo! I've been here many times, and I've never seen that!

Lookout: [Offers group juice to drink, discussion of lunch, the view, panoramic 00:03:00pictures, etc.]

Franklin: [Background conversation with Dyrness becomes intelligible] ....he was an Oregon State University timber beast.

Dyrness: You'd shake up some of the timber beasts?

Franklin: Oh, yeah, and they'd say, "Why the hell do we need wilderness like this?"

Dyrness: Yeah?

Franklin: Yeah. Oh, yeah. He managed to ding me for about a year-and-a-half, on that.

Dyrness: I often think about even clearcutting Watershed 1. We'd do it without a qualm, you know? [Context: post-World War II "industrial forestry" model used by U.S. Forest Service]

Franklin: Same old thing. We thought they were going to cut it all. Remember?

Dyrness: Yeah. (Laughter)

Franklin: The only thing we could do was maybe get some Research Natural Areas?

Dyrness: Yeah. Oh, yeah. (Whistling in background)

Lookout: [Referring to the old panorama photos.] Looks a little bit different, doesn't it?

Al McKee: Yeah, let's see, what's the change, now? (Laughter) Who shot these, 00:04:00then? Al, do you remember? I was outside.

Geier: It used to be, you came up here, and all you saw was black and white. (Laughter)

Martha Brookes: That's changed a lot. Very strange.

Dyrness: Did you get his picture when he was out there talking?

Levno: Yeah, this might be better, through the window.

Dyrness: See, Roy's the guy that laid out most of the roads around here.

Lookout: That's what I understand.

Franklin: Look at the trail. You can see the trail. Holy smoke!

Levno: Are you ready now, Doug?

Lookout: Sure. Firefinder on there now? [Replacing cover for the fire-finder]

McKee: Look at the brass shine on that!

Levno: [Setting up photograph/discussion of where and when to eat]

Levno: [Referring to the panorama photos] Did you see these yet, Art?

McKee: Yes, I did. They're incredible.

Levno: 1933. There was a crew of 3 people with a pack train, to carry the cameras in. (Laughter)

Geier: Did they do that at different spots around the Northwest?

Levno: Yeah. They did every lookout in the United States, in 1933 and 1934. We used this camera, Jerry; it's an interesting one, it goes 360 degrees. [Special camera to mount on Osborne Fire Finders that shoots with 360 degree markers, found at most USFS fire lookouts by the 1930s.]

Franklin: Whose is that?

Levno: It's my camera. I bought it in. [Discussion of who designed the cameras involved] But I think it's a double enlargement.

Franklin: That's what's been driving me nuts. I couldn't figure it out for a 00:07:00while. You can see that. You can see that in the 1935 one pretty well.

Levno: Where? Oh, really?

Franklin: And I'm amazed at these. Oh, yeah. [Group looking at photos]

(Discussion becoming audible as people sit on rocks eating lunch - looking at 00:08:00panoramic scene).

Franklin: Was that the landing strip?

Roy Silen: No, it was down on the McKenzie, well, out of McKenzie Bridge. They flew out of there. It was up from the ranger station [Forest Service, McKenzie Ranger District] about a mile-and-a-half. On the road, and it was on the right-hand side, as you go up.

McKee: That makes a lot more sense.

Silen: It had a 7 percent grade, and you would get extra weight, because they'd load it up, they would run it down the grade and take off.

Geier: Where was this plane crash you were talking about on the way up here? [About Silen's narration on the hike to lookout about his discovery of plane 00:09:00crash on the Andrews in the 1950s, in which pilot survived crash long enough to scramble out of the wreckage, which was hung up in the trees, and drop to the ground, only to be covered with leaking fuel from the plane, as he lay immobilized on the ground below with injuries. Eventually, he caught fire and burned to death]

Silen: About half a mile from here.

McKee: Was this the backside of Two-Finger Jack?

Silen: Yeah. [Multiple background conversations, discussion about food.]

Franklin: Yeah, we went everywhere on the Andrews. I was thinking about Glen Hawk the other day. I remember, he asked me to write him a letter. I wrote this 00:12:00for him about 10 years ago, and that was the one where I wrote a letter of reference for "Glen Campbell."

Dyrness: Oh, no. Glen Campbell? (Laughter) Oh no!

Franklin: I don't know what I was thinking about.

Dyrness: Glen Campbell is a singer.

Franklin: I started losing my mind early! You can see that. I remember. I sent him a copy of it, and he [Hawk] sent me back a nice letter, saying he really appreciated that, but could I write one for him? (Laughter) Glen Campbell, Glenn Hawk, geez. They're both from Texas.

(Laughter)

Dyrness: I thought Glenn was in [unintelligible/Hawk likely in U.S. Southwest]

Franklin: I don't think so. I think he's teaching. No, he's guiding.

Dyrness: Guiding?

McKee: Do you know why he's doing that? Well, after his dad died, the Mexican government yanked their holdings away from them.

Franklin: No. They didn't?

McKee: Yeah. The provincial government took them away, something where ownership would pass on, so they [Hawk's family] lost the lion's share of a guiding business. He's been teaching, apparently, someplace in the southwest, the past two years. He got into this Jesuit-Catholic school, based in Missouri? He had a 3-year contract to provide college-level classes in the southwest.

Dyrness: He's teaching biology?

McKee: He's teaching biology. I wrote a letter a couple of years ago to support 00:14:00him for a full-time position.

Franklin: Well, I can understand why he never asked me to write him another letter. (Laughter)

Martha Brookes: He did, only he sent it to Jerry Garcia. (Laughter)

Dyrness: So that's where he is, then. You know, he married this gal from Junction City.

Franklin: Is he still married to her?

McKee: No. I asked him how he was doing. He laughed, and said, "Well, Art," "I'm 00:15:00fine. I'm a genuine, certified, bona fide red neck now." I said, "What do you mean? What are you talking about?" He said, "Well," I went to a reunion. Remember that joke about how when you're a redneck, you go to family affairs to pick up dates?" "I married my third cousin. I met her at a wedding." (Laughter)

Dyrness: Oh, man. I never could understand why he left.

McKee: [Obscured conversations discussing plane crash in Falls City in relation 00:16:00to Glenn Hawk's family ties to Oregon and subsequent career] Glenn worked the summer of 1980 in southwest Oregon on the FIR project. [Forestry Intensified Research] Then, by '81 he was teaching in Falls City. [Obscured discussion of 00:17:00AMWAY sales efforts by Glen Hawk] They tried hard to get him to sign a contract, 00:18:00but he dropped out of sight, from where the family base of operations had gone.

Dyrness: Wasn't he into AMWAY, too?

McKee: He was. He was a big AMWAY salesman.

Franklin: He still does that, doesn't he? Man. He toyed with us, you know. He lured us over to his house one night. We thought he was finally going to 00:19:00introduce us to his new wife. Put on the pitch, he just slipped it to us. (Laughter) Carol [Franklin's wife] never forgave him. I don't believe she ever had a civil conversation with him again. And that was also about the time he was really losing it with regards to the science.

Dyrness: Yeah, he did that when he came up to Alaska, too. [AMWAY]

Franklin: Did he? People who do that ought to have a big scarlet "A" blazed on their forehead so that you know what you're getting into when you talk. Look at the raptor. Is it a raptor, or a ...?

McKee: A vulture.

Franklin: A vulture? Big bird.

Lookout: There are a pair of falcons that come by. Peregrines.

[Extended discussion and comments about peregrine falcons on Wolf Rock, ospreys on Van Buren Bridge in Corvallis. Overlapping conversations/discussion of 00:21:00traffic tickets/fines in Corvallis, Junction City, and Gold Beach. Fred Swanson 00:25:0000:24:0000:23:0000:22:00joins group, hiking up to Carpenter Lookout.]

Franklin: Art, you weren't on that field trip to [unintelligible location] with Glenn Hawk, were you? The one where we had foreign visitors who drove up to Nisqually, and Glenn had that big knife, and he reached up, pulled down a branch 00:27:00of an Alaska cedar, pulled out his knife, and went 'whack' and almost cut his finger off. (Laughter) We had to take him into the hospital.

Levno: Well, should we take pictures now? You guys don't mind?

Franklin: Hey, Fred! How you doing? [Greetings to Fred Swanson, who just arrived]

Dyrness: He crept in.

Franklin: Quietly. [Discussion of when Mike Kerrick will join the group/comments 00:28:00about lunch/dessert, vantage points, photographic arrangements, group photo, 00:30:0000:29:00reconfiguring on rocks].

Dyrness: Where's that cake?

Geier: Fred ate it. I think it's gone already.

McKee: I'm sure it is. (Laughter) The first time I worked with Fred up on Watershed 10, at lunchtime, we went back to his car, and in back there was this huge bottle of Dr. Pepper, a package of Hostess Twinkies, and that was --

Dyrness: -- That was lunch?

McKee: He had his banana sandwiches, ate that whole pack of Hostess Twinkies, and washed it down with a whole bottle of Dr. Pepper. I thought, "Wow. This guy's not playing with a full deck." (Laughter)

Dyrness: Who was this?

Brookes: Fred.

Fred Swanson: Training meal. (Laughter)

McKee: And he was telling me about how, remember how you had just finished the race, and the guy was getting on you about eating after the race?

Swanson: Oh, yeah. That was in Corvallis, and Mary [Wife] and I had gone out and gotten burgers at the A and W stand. (Laughter)

McKee: That was about when this guy came up and saw Fred eating and lost it. (Laughter)

Swanson: The only time I ever ran in a marathon, I ran in the Boston Marathon. I wasn't in very good shape, I was just there to experience the spiritual values (laughter), and going along about 20 miles out, it was one of those deals where you run 20 miles, and then you have 6 miles left in front of you, which still seems like an awfully long way. Well, I was running by this old guy, at least he 00:32:00seemed old at the time. I was in college then, and he didn't look in very good shape, but along the way, people would hold out oranges or water, stuff like that, it's a tradition of the Bostonians. Some kid just came out of a store, and he had an ice cream cone, and he sort of jokingly held it up, and this guy, this old guy, grabbed it (laughter), goes ahead and eats it.

So, we're gathered here today. I want to thank everybody for coming up here, I mean, this is really an incredible collection of human resources and knowledge of this area. Max and I were talking about it a little bit last night, some 00:33:00things we could do to capitalize on our time here together. I don't have any idea that anything new or different will turn up. He said he'd spoken to all, or most of you, individually, but number one, we wondered about what might emerge in the way of recollections from just looking at this landscape, and being out here. Number two, was being together and hearing what the memories of certain people and ideas might trigger in others. One reason for thinking about this place is, I came up here with Jerry last summer, who was leading a class out of 00:34:00the University of Washington; we parked down on the saddle, we walked up here, and at one point Jerry recollected that, well, you [Franklin] tell the story.

Franklin: I came down here [HJA] in '57 when I was just a student trainee, and the first weekend, I decided I'd circumnavigate the Andrews, on the ridge up, the trail up Blue Ridge, and back across on down to McKenzie Bridge. But, I'd never slept in the big woods by myself. I'd never really been out in the wilderness by myself. So, I figured the way to do it, I'd get so far out there that there's no way I could do anything but stay. (Laughter) So I did. It was 8 miles in to the Carpenter Saddle Trail Shelter, and it was just about dark when I got there, and I was stuck. And I remember, I built a big fire at the mouth of 00:35:00the shelter to ward off the various and sundry nightmares that were obviously out there, but the damn fire kept waking me up. Because it was, a log would roll over in there, make a noise, and I'd wake up thinking, "Oh boy. The bears are here." (Laughter) Anyway, the notion was to put yourself in a place where you just had to persevere. Well, and what Fred decided was that's what I'd been doing with the Andrews ecosystem group; getting them way out in the wilderness. (Laughter)

McKee: That's an interesting metaphor, all right.

Franklin: That's the best way, if there's no way out....

Geier: Well, I thought we might start with that, and if everybody here would just talk about the first time that they had come up to the Carpenter Lookout here, or to Carpenter Saddle, and what your perceptions were at that time? Why 00:36:00you came there, what you observed, who you were with, what you were doing? No one wants to start? Roy, did you ever come up here?

Silen: Well, I came up here several times. I can't remember the first time I came up here. It was after I had been on the Andrews awhile. I don't remember whether it was the first summer or the next summer, but boy, I had an occasion to come to Carpenter, and I must have walked up and down today as I did then. It was manned, the lookout and I talked a lot, and I studied the landscape. We had only a quadrangle sheet for a map, and that was, what? An inch to the mile? Or half-inch to the mile? I forget, but it was a very low-grade map, so I studied 00:37:00the topography up here I remember, and we went back, came up the trail, and went back to McKenzie Bridge on the trail. I don't even remember. I think it was the ranger that was with me. I believe the occasion was that he was taking something in with pack animals, and I just decided I'd go along.

Dyrness: Did you ride a horse?

Silen: Huh?

Dyrness: Ride a horse?

Silen: No. I think we walked. I can't remember riding. I never rode a horse on this trail. I don't have a lot of recollection.

Geier: You didn't have much purpose to come up here?

Silen: It was just an observation point where you could see out, not for what 00:38:00you might say was a "business" reason. I'm wondering now, if I went back out the Blue Ridge trail. No, we went back the other way.

Geier: How would you compare the way things look today with that time?

Silen: Well, the weather was sure different. (Laughter) You'd find very few days like this. And I can't remember, we actually went in here and came out the same day. I think we did.

Dyrness: That was over 16 miles, wasn't it?

Silen: Yeah.

Franklin: 24. 24 miles.

Silen: Because I don't remember staying out here.

Dyrness: Well, that's a long ways, yeah. Wow! Man.

Silen: The other times we came in here was when we just happened to be on the trail. No, I don't think we even came up here then. I haven't been on the lookout many times. It was quite a ways back in the forest.

Dyrness: Too long a walk, in other words.

Silen: Yeah, it was something you'd have to give up the whole day for.

Geier: I don't know how many of you noticed that I put the pictures from 1935 out inside the lookout here, on the bed in there. There's a panorama, a view from the lookout taken in 1935, or '33, excuse me. There's a matching one from 1995. On the way up here, we were talking quite a bit in the van about the 00:40:00different sites we went by, and I was just curious what strikes you, from when the last time you were up here?

Silen: The last time I was up here?

Geier: Or just up at the Andrews site here.

Silen: At the Andrews site? Well, let's see, I came up here sometime in the past before a meeting, I guess. I can't remember when that was. The group here was just showing it off, and I visited it then, and I think you were on the same trip, Bob?

Tarrant: Is that right?

Silen: I think that was the 40th. [Anniversary of HJA-EF 1948 creation in 1988]

Tarrant: Was that the 40th birthday?

Silen: Yeah, I think that must have been it. That's the last time I was up here.

Geier: I was just wondering, if you think about the most striking changes on the landscape of the Andrews since you started working here, what would that be?

Silen: There are lots more openings. (Laughter) It was almost all forest [at the 00:41:00start], and very few clear-cuts you could see. From the last time I was up here to now, since nothing's been cut over, they've greened up so much they're blending back into the landscape. Yeah, it's a lot of change. Of course, there was no road to the saddle. All the years that I was here, going from McKenzie Bridge, or coming from McKenzie Bridge, either way you could take. But any time that I had occasion to come this far, I would have to plan for it, because I always had other priorities. Since this would involve the whole day, I avoided coming back here just for recreation.

Geier: I'm trying to think of the order here, I guess, you're the next person up 00:42:00here, Jerry.

Franklin: I think I was after Ted?

Geier: Okay, yeah.

Tarrant: I've never been up here before. (Laughter)

Geier: Really?

Tarrant: I think the difference I see is you don't see fresh clear-cuts, and except for the one-day visit, which I made, and watched it change in, now, what is it, 50 years?

Silen: Yeah, 50 years.

Tarrant: That makes a half-a-century benchmark.

Geier: Where did you usually go on the Andrews when you came up here?

Tarrant: Always to a clear-cut, and I studied up there. Always on a clear-cut, and as the weather dictated. I came up when the weather was dry, and worked in 00:43:00the summer. I think I was here when Roy was here, and George Meagher called and dropped the bomb on you that he wanted you to move into genetics.

Silen: Yeah, I think you were. [Silen was posted in Corvallis, working on forest genetics.]

Dyrness: It happened like that? They just called?

Silen: Just like that. They called, and I could tell, George had fortified himself a little bit before he called. (Laughter) Yeah, quite a shock.

Tarrant: I recall that you didn't say yes.

Silen: No. I didn't say "yes." In fact, my first impression was that I wanted to stay on the [Andrews] Forest. (Laughter)

Dyrness: But you were there? When was that?

Silen: '54?

Dyrness: '54? No kidding.

Silen: Yeah, they wiped it out. The program stopped, and what was to happen, I 00:44:00asked, and he said the Blue River District would handle the timber sales, and watershed management continued to be quite separate from where we were.

Dyrness: Yeah, that was why Jerry Dunford came to start the watershed management program.

Silen: Yeah. He was doing that before I left. He had some watersheds in --

Dyrness: And he's the guy that hired Jack [Rothacher] to come here.

Silen: Of course, in those days, everything we were doing was from the vantage 00:45:00of timber and getting it out, putting in the first cuts. It was a full-time job. Coming up to Carpenter Mountain was something I just didn't do.

Tarrant: That's a full-time job for a whole infantry.

Silen: Oh, yeah! That reminds me of something I've got to say, because the Siuslaw National Forest, what was their cut, about 100 million [board feet], something like that? And the largest sale on the Siuslaw Forest, two years ago, was an experimental sale in which we logged two loads of logs off our area, 00:46:00which was about the size of Corvallis. How about that, Bob? (Laughter)

Levno: Do any of you guys know anything about the operations of the Blue River watershed? The [Army] Corps of Engineers' snow studies?

Silen: Well, there was a cabin up here by Wolf Rock that was used by people who had snow studies. They used it. That was the main use of the trail.

Franklin: I have a picture of the old snow lab, which was up by Wildcat Mountain.

Levno: Oh, is that right?

Franklin: It was right there on the road. There where the Wildcat Trail takes off. I have a picture of that. And there was an old rain gauge that was there, 00:47:00and Jack carried part of it down the mountain, as a matter of fact, about '61 or so.

McKee: Where, at the [Carpenter] Saddle?

Franklin: No, it was right here.

Dyrness: Right here?

Franklin: There's an opening that you can see, and there was a part of a precip [precipitation] gauge there. So, my first trip up here was in '57. I came up here many times. I was less responsible than Roy. (Laughter) I always found excuses to come up here. But I actually had an excuse that summer. The first time I was here was just on a lark. I just wanted to walk the ridgeline, and see the Andrews from the back. Later in the year, at this time of the year, I came back up here to collect cones. I was collecting cones for the seedling 00:48:00identification study I was doing at that time. I came up here with Carol [his wife], and we packed your [Silen] aluminum section-rod thing that had kind of a little noose on it. Remember that?

Silen: Aluminum?

Franklin: Remember that section-rod thing? [Measuring device]

Silen: Yeah. Yeah. Well, those are big.

Franklin: I carried up about 24 feet of that stuff.

Silen: It was aluminum, but they weren't light. (Laughter)

Franklin: I came up, collected mountain hemlock cones, alpine fir cones, noble fir cones, and so on.

Silen: Well, you needed the poles?

Franklin: Yeah.

Silen: Oh, you could have climbed?

Franklin: Well, I could have, but I didn't know that then. (Laughter) And when we collected 2 or 3 burlap sacks of cones, and carried them back down.

Dyrness: How long of hike was that? (Laughing)

Franklin: 8 miles.

Silen: Did you make a sling out of the poles?

Franklin: No, we didn't. We weren't smart enough to do that.

Silen: Well, I can't feel sorry for you. (Laughter)

Dyrness: You had to walk 8 miles? To come up?

Franklin: Yeah, because you didn't have to walk all the way from the bottom, but you went to the top of, Unit 3H [timber sale] or something. Then, there was a salvage road that went back up to the top of the ridge, and that's where you started down. It was about 8 miles or so. It's a long ways.

Silen: I don't know whether you were listening to what we were saying earlier, about Hank Gratkowski getting lost up here. We were in a situation of needing a better map of the Andrews Experimental Forest, so we made one from air photos. To get the basic information of elevations and points, we had to go with an 00:50:00analog barometer and hydrometer to a plot, and take 15 minutes of records at this one spot, of barometric pressure, and while we were doing it, at base camp, do the same thing. And then, we'd go to another spot and repeat this, finding a spot on the air photo that we could actually pinpoint. We had in mind leaving very early in the morning that day, just as it got light, and Hank would go from the Blue River trail out across the valley, up the ridge on the other side, then back down into the valley. We were supposed to meet at this little lake in this basin down here. So, I came all the way up to Carpenter Mountain and back down, 00:51:00and reached the lake about 5 o'clock, 5:30 in the afternoon, something like that, and I expected Hank to be there before me, because he had a shorter leg. No Hank. I went out quite a ways on the trail where he was supposed to be on, or not a trail, as he was just going through the forest, so in the direction that he was supposed to come. I kept yelling and yelling, and no Hank. It got more and more nerve-wracking to think he might be injured out there. I think it was about 6:30 in the evening, late enough in the fall to where that was getting dark, and no Hank. So, I decided that the only sensible thing to do was to dash in and get myself organized, then get out there first thing in the morning, get lots of people, and start looking. So, I climbed out of the basin up to Blue 00:52:00River Trail, and was about to start down and gave one last yell, and I heard Hank, down in the valley bottom. Well, we got together within, it must have been after 7 o'clock when we started down the Blue River Trail, and it got quickly dark. We just had to make our way in the dark. You could feel the trail. You could feel the tread of the trail, and tell when you were getting off of it, and, how long is the trail? Seven or eight miles? Something like that. All switchbacks and everything. We made it! (Laughing) We got out!

Dyrness: What had happened to him? He just got lost?

Silen: Well, it was my fault. I took him to a point on Blue River Trail where there was a ridge out that had a good picture point, and told him to take the first one there. Well, I got him started on the wrong ridge, and it took him almost an hour-and-a-half or so, before he finally figured out what was wrong, 00:53:00and so he was that much late, all the way around. We would have arrived very close together, but it didn't work out. Those things happen.

Tarrant: I'll bet you were relieved to hear him.

Silen: Oh, yeah. That was quite a relief. You can imagine what I was going through, with somebody out there. And my chances of finding him easily were not that good, because there were lots of alternatives for him to take on the rocks, from point-to-point. We didn't know all the picture points he was going to take.

Geier: One thing I was wondering was, if there are places people have gone, where you went more commonly because you enjoyed working there more, or sometimes, just for aesthetic renewal. Someone was talking at the workshop about 00:54:00how, I think you Jerry, used to come out here just to write articles and get out of writer's block, things like that. I was curious if there were places on the Andrews that had kind of a special meaning?

Silen: I always wanted to get to the highest level that I could to look out over the country, or we had jury-built the road system up to about, 3,000 feet or so, so if I had any choice, why I'd work up there. But I didn't have any favorite spots or anything like that, I don't think. I used to fish the river, and had favorite holes and things like that. (Laughter) I had distractions, and for one thing, I was a bachelor. I lived in this little trailer furnished by the government, and I had all my meals prepared by one of the best cooks up the 00:55:00river. My bed was less than $100 a month, you know, and they cooked all my meals. And so, I had a chance to fish every evening.

Levno: All right! (Laughter)

Silen: So, that's what I did. I couldn't leave the river, because every weekend of the summer there were friends of mine that wanted to visit, and so I'd be up there all the time. It was a good life.

Tarrant: Roy, did you fish McKenzie River?

Silen: McKenzie River, sure. I hardly ever, you know, I didn't come up here.

Tarrant: You never fished the Blue River very much then?

Silen: A few times. When I had other people come up, I'd fish Blue River.

Tarrant: But you never fished Lookout Creek?

Silen: Oh, I fished Lookout Creek more than I did Blue River. I would fish the experimental forest. But I don't recall coming up here alone in the evenings and fishing very much. It was just much better on the McKenzie.

Tarrant: Yeah.

Geier: Well, Jerry or Bob, do you have any response to that?

Silen: Pardon me?

Geier: Sorry, I was wondering if either Jerry or Bob had any response to that question.

Tarrant: Well, I'll defer to those who lived here.

Franklin: I always headed for the high country, if I ever had any excuse at all, and even if I didn't. (Laughter) So, very often, I would come up here, just simply for renewal. Just to get a view and clear the head, and Ted used to do 00:57:00it, too. Of course, I probably misled him.

(Laughter)

Dyrness: Yeah. For a long time.

Franklin: For many years, if we were anywhere in the country, anywhere near it, we'd make an excuse to at least go to the saddle [Carpenter] for lunch, so we could look both ways, look down into the Andrews, and of course, look off to the Three Sisters. That's always my favorite spot for lunch. And you've got a couple studies that gives an excuse to come up here. One was the checklist of plants up at the Andrews, so we'd have to come up here for plants, and there was the reconnaissance study of vegetation on the Andrews, so we had to come up here for 00:58:00that. And of course, if you had a visitor, you had to bring him up here.

Dyrness: First place you brought them.

Geier: Hmm.

Dyrness: Yup.

Franklin: But the view sure has changed over the years. As I recall, before I arrived here in 1957, the only clear-cuts that were visible at that time, really, were at the head of Deer Creek. And the road didn't even extend to Deer Creek at the time. And there were none of the cuttings out in the High Cascades at all. There wasn't anything out there. So, it was an incredibly pristine landscape.

Levno: But that really changed in the '60s.

Franklin: Blue River drainage was essentially pristine. In fact, you had to hike the trail from Blue Ridge down to deal with the stream gauge. There wasn't any road when I first came here. Nothing on Wolf Rock, other than a jeep road into the (unintelligible-tape ends midsentence)

[Tape Break]

Franklin: Now, it's pretty much a cutover landscape. Yeah, there was a different attitude in those days: there was no way you'd ever get rid of all these trees! (Laughter) It was impossible! Look out over miles and miles and there wasn't a cut anyplace! You'd never get rid of all those trees!

Silen: And you thought in terms of, oh, one day you'd be coming back and cutting a rotation. And you thought in terms of sustained-yield: how much timber you could cut, on average, each year. I think the sustained-yield rotation was over a hundred years in the Andrews, so, it was a long time.

Geier: If you brought people up here then to see the pristine landscape, are the reasons why you bring people up to Carpenter Lookout different now? I mean, they're not going to be seeing a pristine landscape out here. Is this still high on the agenda when you have visitors from Washington out here? Is that a priority? Fred?

Swanson: One way I use it, when I come out here now and bring a class, is to stand at the saddle talking about these things and the examples of landscapes with different management trajectories you can view from here. The wilderness areas that are, "Let natural processes proceed, except try to suppress fire, take it off into this ecological state that it was never in." This former 01:01:00"general forest" that has had decades of general treatments [clear-cut logging] and now is in different land- use categories, and how that plays out. The Andrews has a couple decades of management, and now with almost 30 years of very little cutting, 28 or so years. That represents a 25 to 30-year-old, late-successional reserve. From up here, you can see some very different pieces of real estate.

Franklin: I think Bob Buckman would probably love to forget this, exactly what happened after this, but I remember when he first became director [of PNW Research Station], I came up to the top of Wildcat Mountain with him. We were 01:02:00there primarily, to look at the research natural area, but he was looking at all the staggered-settings, all the dispersed patch clear-cuts, and he was very upset by it. He said, "You know, there's just got to be a better way to do timber harvesting than to create all of these little patches of different age-classes scattered all over the landscape." I don't know what he was thinking about, but my initial reaction was, "Well, Bob, this is the way we do this stuff. It's a hell of a good system, it works really well, and what else would you do? Continuous clearcutting?"

Silen: Well, you could cut into the wind.

Franklin: You could. Yeah.

Silen: I thought about doing that on part of the experimental forest. But I didn't do it. You know why I didn't?

Franklin: Why?

Silen: I could've done it, you know, it would have been easy. The area that you had, where you had your study in that area, was a candidate for having a good, 01:03:00wide strip moving into the wind. The reason I didn't do it is because I'd already planned staggered-settings around, putting settings into the areas that had the most degenerate of the stands that were falling apart at different rates. Especially where there were root rot problems in a stand, and that it was rather apparent that the ones that were deteriorating the fastest were the ones that were the worst off. In other words, they had to be left together, so that I was looking ahead to what would be intact in 80 or 90 years. I was putting the clear-cuts in those areas that the stand was already deteriorated, and deteriorating more rapidly deteriorating than the stands around it. The continuous clear-cut approach would violate that whole concept. That's why I 01:04:00didn't go into it. I had one planned out at one time.

Swanson: See, that's just where the landscape rule of moving into the wind would override the stand-level considerations.

Silen: Well, see this is all 400-year-old stands, so I didn't worry about that.

Swanson: But you were setting your priorities based on the degree of decadence.

Silen: Yeah, the rapidity with which a stand was falling apart.

Swanson: Yeah.

Silen: That was happening in patches, and in '55, when I came out of here, I was thinking I should be weeding out those patches. I thought that should come first.

Franklin: That trip with Buckman, for me, was the one that probably first got me thinking about the negatives. People had started these clear-cuts, and it took about a decade for the whole thing to bloom in my mind, but it didn't happen on Carpenter.

Dyrness: What year was that trip?

Franklin: When were we doing that "natural area" work for Buckman? That would have been '71.

Dyrness: Buckman was not yet director of the [PNW Station]. He was coming out from the Washington office? [USFS]

Franklin: Maybe that's right. Yeah. Must have been in the early '70s.

Dyrness: Yeah.

Franklin: I'm sure today, he'd disown any responsibility for anything I've been involved in, subsequently.

McKee: Oh now! (Laughter)

Silen: You know, Jerry, there was a follow-up with that idea of deteriorated stands. I had this sale, Sale 3, and Herb Weiner was the man in the Eugene office of the Willamette Forest who did a lot of the cruising, and he had to cruise those units. I think they beat around in that brush to where it got obvious that this was an awfully brushy clear-cut. So, he let me know about it. 01:06:00He said, "Roy, these are the brushiest clear-cuts I think I've been in." (Laughter) I said, "Well, I have to admit that that was deliberate. I can't stand here and lie to you, but those are the brushiest areas that we have seen, and the reason I was doing it was....," and I explained it. I never heard any more. I expected to hear some reaction. Never heard any more until I saw a memo that came out of the Willamette [National Forest] office that said, "We are changing our policies on laying out clear-cuts, and we are now going to look for areas that are degenerating and put that clear-cut there." I never had to do it, never had to argue. It just came up that way. (Laughter)

Geier: Ted, do you want to talk about the first time you came up here?

Dyrness: Well, I can't remember the first time I came up here. Probably with 01:07:00Jerry. He was still there. When I first started to work on the Andrews, it was zeroed in pretty strictly on the three small watersheds. [Watersheds 1, 2, 3] And that would include the vegetation and soils work, because we were just starting the treatment phase, and it was high-time that we get some baseline information on the watershed. I was doing a soil study on the three small watersheds, and I remember the time that Jerry happened by, and I don't know, he was checking on something, and we went out to eat supper at McKenzie Bridge, I 01:08:00think, to eat steaks. Remember that Jerry?

Franklin: Uh-huh.

Dyrness: He said, we ought to do a vegetation study on the Andrews. Nobody's really done a good job looking at what the full range of forest communities are. That was the genesis of getting me first off just doing the three small watersheds. Just not being that terrestrial, if you know what I'm saying? We started that, but neither of us could afford a lot of time every summer, but at the beginning of each field season, we set aside at least a couple weeks to put in plots, and do that. Then Jack Rothacher woke up one day, and he said, "You guys are doing this study. Where's the study plan?" (Laughter) Remember that?

Franklin: Yeah, I remember we had to work. (Laughter)

Dyrness: That's what stunned me about that.

Geier: Was there somebody you had to check in with when you were doing work down here, back then? When you came in to do something on the forest? Did you let people know where you were putting in plots, things like that, or did you just kind of come out and do it?

Franklin: We just went out and did it.

Dyrness: See, this was well before IBP, and there's not that much going on. So, there was no danger, not much danger, anyway, of you stepping on anybody's toes. (Overlapping conversations in background) So, we didn't worry about that, did we Jerry?

Franklin: No, we really didn't. It was a very low-density operation down here.

Dyrness: [laughing] Yeah.

Franklin: And I think it was '61 when they proposed eliminating the Andrews, because there was nobody working down here except on the small watersheds. 01:10:00They'd completely terminated any timber management activities. Timber management was in the late '50s and early '60s.

Dyrness: So in '61, they really wanted to shut it down?

Franklin: I think it was '61, when it was proposed to turn back the South Umpqua Experimental Forest and the Blue River Experimental Forest, the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest, to the [National] forests, except for the experimental watersheds.

Dyrness: Wow.

Geier: Do you know who was pushing that?

Franklin: I think it was George Meagher, wasn't it? [PNW Station Director of Timber Management Research at the time before becoming the PNW Assistant Station Director.]

Tarrant: Pushing which, what?

Franklin: Terminating.

Tarrant: Oh, yeah. I recall him. I recall him talking to, who was it, Cowlin then?

Dyrness: Bob Cowlin, yeah.

Tarrant: Yeah.

Swanson: Why didn't it happen?

Franklin: Well, for one thing, Ted and I got pretty tee'd off about it. (Laughter) We thought it was an extraordinary resource for scientists, and there 01:11:00was never any chance we were ever going to get another one established again, and I think we had a very sympathetic person in Jack Rothacher.

Dyrness: Oh, yeah.

Franklin: We decided there was only one way we're going to keep this experimental forest, and that we're going to have to get people to work here.

Dyrness: Right.

Franklin: And that's when we began to really kind of hustle people.

Dyrness: Yeah. It was like, we'd sit around and think, "Jiminy Christmas, we've gotta get more people working here." That's when Jerry caught wind of the IBP, saying, "We've got to get on board." [1967-1970 was period of query and application to International Biological Programme.]

McKee: When was that?

Franklin: That was the late '60s. Actually, it must have been about '64 or so, when they first proposed to eliminate the forest.

Dyrness: Yeah, that's right.

McKee: I think the first round of IBP proposals went out in '67.

Franklin: Yeah.

Dyrness: Yep.

Geier: So for about 3 years, between '64 and '67, it was kind of "on the bubble" to be eliminated?

Franklin: Basically, I think Jack was the responsible individual, and he sort of resisted it. South Umpqua was disestablished. [Except for Coyote Creek experimental watersheds. Later, when the Umpqua National Forest was preparing its forest plan, the question was raised of the PNW Station, "Do you agree to disestablish the rest of the experimental forest - the experimental watersheds?" and the watershed research team replied, "No."]

Swanson: What year was that?

Franklin: Have to look it up. I don't remember. Do you remember, Bob?

Tarrant: No, I don't. I never felt good about that. The watersheds.

Franklin: It was after the watershed group was created. When was that?

Tarrant: Sixty- (unintelligible).

McKee: When was the Port Orford Cedar [experimental forest] disestablished?

Franklin: That had been disestablished by the time I worked there the first time, which was in '68 [or '58?]. So that had been disestablished a long time ago, and the Blue Mountain Experimental Forest [NE Oregon] had been disbanded a 01:13:00long time before, and actually, I think South Umpqua had been eliminated, I don't know, by the early '60s. But what we did was, we tried to get anybody we could to work down here. I remember we got Dick Waring to come down here before the IBP days. Who else did we get down here?

Dyrness: Well, we tried to get Dennis Harr, because we were really hurting for people. Hydrologists, to look at the hydrology. [Harr was hydrologist who studied snow and runoff]

Franklin: We'd sit around and have all these interesting questions that nobody could work on, a lot of those problems.

Geier: Once you got people out here, how did you promote the experimental forest? [HJA] I mean, you couldn't afford to wait for a publication to come out, so how did you document that it was being used? Did you start to track the 01:14:00people who came out here at that point?

Levno: I think Jack had a map in the office at the ranger station [Blue River RD], with 'verboten' areas marked on it in green pencil, that these were, were study areas. Remember that, Art?

McKee: Yeah. The first thing I remember getting here, he had that.

Franklin: Well, one of the things we did was we started using it more. And that was about the time when we were doing the vegetation work. So, we began to use it more.

Dyrness: Plus, what really helped also was the '64 flood, to see what happened on the Andrews in the '64 flood. Documenting all the landslides and measuring them, and I think that helped, too. So, natural things, natural disasters.

Swanson: That's sort of interesting now, because I feel like our present station director [PNW] has had his focus in some other places, for example, water was not a primary issue in his mind. In fact, he was pushing two initiatives. One, disturbance, which he considered and framed for the eastside, and the other was timber production. And then we have a flood, the '96 flood, and we had ecological issues, we had public safety issues, and now, water quality, municipal water supply issues that take us back to the original framing of the experimental watershed work. We're right back there now, and so, you get back in the spotlight, because of circumstances.

Tarrant: How big a deal is the economics program in the station now?

Swanson: I'm not really sure. You may have a better fix on it.

Tarrant: Is there any relation with the current director's field of interest in economics?

Silen: He's an economist, isn't he?

Swanson: Yes. He's an economist. What he picked up on were two large, bioregional assessments, eco-regional assessments. He came on when the Interior Columbia Basin large-scale planning effort was underway. One thing I was wondering about as we are looking at the Wildcat Research Natural Area and 01:17:00thinking about satellite research areas, on one hand, you're talking about disestablishing experimental forests, like the Blue Mountains, and reducing the Umpqua [Experimental Forest]. On the other hand, you two, Ted and Jerry, were working real hard to get RNA's set up. I was sort of wondering about the broader picture of the establishment of research properties. I get the picture you were trying to grow 'em, or plant the seeds and grow 'em, using a "use-it-or-lose-it strategy" for this one [HJA], which seemed like it had the best shot at getting a longer life. At the same time, it seems like you must have had to give up on some, or maybe it didn't involve you personally, as those that were being 01:18:00disestablished. I was wondering what the overall picture was looking like at that point. Like in the '60s, and then, the early '70s, the established experimental forests and then RNA's? Did you have a big picture, or were you just doing the best you could with all of them? (Laughter)

Franklin: Well.....

Dyrness: (Laughing) No, we had a "big picture," but at a conference we were accused of not having a big picture, so we got people together at, where was it?

McKee: Near Mt. Hood.

Dyrness: Yeah, yeah.

Swanson: That was on the RNA's.

Dyrness: So meanwhile, this experimental forest had been - (Unintelligible)

Franklin: Well, I think that's an interesting concept. For one thing, Bob can comment on this, as in the '60s the Forest Service research organization started changing its image from one of woods-based to one of modern --

Dyrness: -- Lab-based! Yeah.

Franklin: Laboratory-based, yeah. The notion of an experimental forest; it was 01:19:00an old notion. It went against that new image that we wanted to have. Everybody was moving indoors, nobody was doing field studies anymore, and related to that, about the time they tried to disestablish this, was also the time when Meagher told us to pull all the tags on the permanent plots.

McKee: Whoa, whoa, whoa!

Dyrness: Who said that?

Franklin: George.

Dyrness: Meagher?

Franklin: Yeah.

Levno: Why, were you the original tree-spikers? [Radical environmentalists were putting spikes into trees in logging sites, to create havoc when they were run through saws at the mills.]

Franklin: No. (Laughter). George, and again, I'd be interested in Bob's take on this, George came from the [Fort Valley] tradition, where they were overwhelmed with permanent plots, and he hated them. I don't know if he hated them. Anyway, he said, "We don't need those growth and yield plots anymore, and I want you to go pull the tags on them, so that no one can ever go back and re-measure them." (Laughter)

Dyrness: Oh, no!

Franklin: Of course, we didn't do it. But the point was, that sort of fit in 01:20:00with the all-new image for the Forest Service. So, we were building labs. Now, RNA's, on the other hand, didn't go against that. And an RNA didn't involve a whole lot of experimentation.

Dyrness: An outdoor laboratory, you know.

Franklin: Sort of control areas, and so, that was still cool. And in fact, we had a lot of people in the organization, and we realized this landscape's being cut over real fast, and we'd better get with the program. So, they were willing to encourage young folks like us to, "Well, get out there. Run into brick walls." (Laughter) We got out there, we ran into brick walls, sometimes we butted our heads, and sometimes we got through the wall.

Tarrant: It's amazing how successful you were. You know there's not another network like it anywhere else in the nation that holds a candle. Other regions are beginning to come on-line, but what you accomplished over that short period is just astonishing.

Dyrness: But at the same time, there were a lot of people saying, "Yeah, you 01:21:00established these things, and nothing ever happened, you know, who's used them?" To some extent, that was a logical thing to say. But Jerry and people who were working with Jerry, their attitude was, "Well, we're establishing these things for future generations. We might not use them at all." But at the same time, Jerry had this preliminary idea, what we ought to do is get out a guidebook of federal research natural areas, so that people who might use them would have some information about them. And at the same time, as a part of the write-up of natural areas, was, of course, a summary of what research was going on, and also, ideas of what good research could be done in these things. But, that kind 01:22:00of grew out of criticism, didn't it Jerry?

Franklin: Yeah. That was one of the ways of trying to stimulate some of that use.

Dyrness: Yeah. Also model it for the rest of the nation.

Franklin: Bob, how do you read that business, that lack of fit? Do you agree at all?

Tarrant: Well, where you started was, I think this is exactly what we are in right now. I think where you started was with this apparent "throw things out" attitude certainly did happen, and it was George Meagher who, incidentally, died recently.

Franklin: He did?!

Tarrant: Yeah. Yeah.

Dyrness: When did he die?

Tarrant: Oh, last year. Last year.

Dyrness: Oh, no kidding.

Tarrant: I was sitting, watching pretty close. That period was one that I 01:23:00worried about, because George was not very well at that time, and that's nothing for the record. I was uncomfortable, most of the time with his relations with project leaders, so I think it was a matter of not being really good time. I think his argument for the shutting the Andrews down was to shut up the study of old growth. He said, "Why should we study old growth, because second growth is all there's gonna be, all there's gonna be left?" Getting rid of the growth 01:24:00plots, I think, was more of a fact that he really didn't have the staff to keep up the measurements. I think he was looking for ways to cut corners. I don't know what would have happened had he not done this. I measured growth plots for various people early in the game, but I don't know if the measurements would have been kept up one way or the other. It was not a happy time, as I recall. I 01:25:00couldn't argue that doing away with measuring the old-growth plots was a tragedy, in as much as we probably wouldn't have kept the measurements up very long, anyway. What was your last thought on that, Jerry?

Franklin: Well...

Tarrant: I don't think that we had much interest on the part of the directors at that time, one way or the other.

Franklin: Well, that's important. We really were, in the '60s, trying to shift to a new image of forestry.

Tarrant: Well, I think so, and I think that --

Silen: -- You could get money for labs, that was one thing.

Tarrant: Yeah, that's right. I think that for the first time, there was a critical mass, small as it was, that was thinking differently. This is the way 01:26:00you do research, starting in 1915. I think the whole change was self-directed. For instance, John [Jack Rothacher] was told, "Go out and pull the tags," and nobody'd pull the tags, I think. (Laughter) John is a silent revolutionary, and for the better. That's right. I don't recall, in the early days, that anybody was seriously questioning this concept that, hey, forestry is getting rid of this old junk, and getting some good, fast-growing, young trees. Nobody was thinking of the consequences, or had anybody really thought through the consequences.

Silen: Oh, I don't think was because nobody was thinking. (Laughter)

Tarrant: Well, it wasn't widespread.

Silen: Well, it wasn't widespread, but there certainly people thinking about it.

Tarrant: Who, besides Phil Hagenstein was saying, "Now, wait a minute, you guys, there's the environment out here." (Loud laughter).

Dyrness: That Phil.

Silen: I think that the clientele even built in locally here, was, would have supported a balance between timber cutting industry and the environment, because, I had no problem selling to groups that came in to visit this area, the idea that I was, uh, uh, trying to cut the timber with minimum impact on the rest of the resources, and uh, we could, they could see so many examples of it here, that uh, I wasn't having, I wasn't having any trouble with the same group 01:28:00that organized, sort of organized the big revolution that we had that centered around the Three Sisters Wilderness area. That same group was visiting the experimental forest most of the time.

Tarrant: Well, let me put it this way: Yes, there undoubtedly were individuals, and I know of a few, who were sensitive to things with the, who were, I think it was a macro-sensitivity versus what we had later, once you started getting some, some research information.

Silen: Well, even the ranger, who was just, almost an enemy when I came here [laughing] was, uh, he had visited me after he'd been in Alaska awhile, and he came back and he said, 'you know, before I left, I began to see some sense of what your program was going to be, but before that,' he says, 'I was just against it. The things you were doing, we were already doing, and you were trying to say you were doing them better, and we couldn't see it.'

Tarrant: Well, uh, as late in the game as when I was in the Station the last 01:29:00time, I had two different Regional Foresters by them selves, and they were saying, 'Research isn't helping us, in fact, it's hurting us.' And they were saying to me, "They write out what happened and publish it in magazines and books, and this gives us a lot of problems with carrying out our policies.' It was that flat. And we [pause]

Dyrness: Um hm. Well, I believe it. So what did you say?

Tarrant: Oh. [soft laughter] 'Have you looked at your policy?' [loud laughter]

Franklin: Say, what was the name of the Regional Forester when you were there? I remember, he was one of the guys that went after me.

Tarrant: Oh really? Well, at any rate, uh, there was a change coming on that 01:30:00was, uh, that uh, I don't, I think was, perhaps, a welcome effect but that we didn't, we didn't understand it as it came along. It was, there was always sort of a feeling that there was more to do in research than, than uh, identifying a stand of trees and then re-measuring to see what kind of growth they had.

Dyrness: Hm.

Tarrant: The Forest Service Research started, essentially, I think you can date it back to 1890, 80, something like that, and from then on, through World War Two, the bulk of the research, in a broad measurement, had to do with 'What's in the nation's woodpile, how much is there, and wood as a product.

Silen: And a lot of insects and disease.

Tarrant: A lot of insects and disease and protection. Fire, and insects, and disease. And it had to do with looking at this as a, uh, great big, uh, warehouse of stuff that had value to it. Economic value to it. And uh, so I think that after World War Two, when things started building and money became more readily available, uh, people with different interests could be hired, maybe for the first time. [pause]

Swanson: What I'm wondering about is the relationship or roles of [different kinds of] roles of scientists operating at the experimental forest level, or 01:32:00local or project level versus leadership at, uh, the Washington Office, or the Director's Office level. My impression from the discussion that you've just given, over the last 30 minutes or more, is that in earlier days, there was a lot more, sort of command-and-control, although there was probably as much rebellious behavior [laughing], you know, uh, independent behavior on the part of the scientists [laughter in background], and then, uh, I'm wondering how that evolved. In the present time, a great deal of research that goes on in the Andrews and a great deal of research that influences land management, uh, through an Andrews or other connections, is university based, and decisions about forestry research direction, it seems to me, is really strongly, um, [learned?] at the scientist and team-of-scientists level. Now maybe that's some 01:33:00provincialism as well, that part, uh.

Tarrant: I think that's what I was trying to say, and probably should have put it over as a first point, that I think that's what I saw happen here. I place a lot of credit for changes in the world, and you're quite right that before the, uh, when I went to work for the Station in Portland in 1946, there was no contact between the Experiment Station office, which was in the Federal Building up in the top end of Broadway, and the Regional Office. In fact, there was outright enmity generated quite a bit by personalities and uh, that of, uh, the then director who was somewhat of a martinet, but uh, I place a lot of, uh, 01:34:00credit, or uh, blame if you want, on loosening up people's ideas of expressing themselves in a job, started after World War Two, when a lot of us came back, we went away kids, and then came back, and things were never the same. And uh, and I think that that, probably, was the beginning of a breaking down of this, uh, the Forest Service was real, real, you know, real paramilitary.

Silen: Yeah.

Tarrant: And uh, well, a lot of that, uh, went down pretty rapidly when, well that's essentially who was getting tired of it during the war, was

Silen: Yeah.

Tarrant: And you had new ideas in your head than if you had just uh, gotten out 01:35:00of school and gone to work for the Forest Service. So, it was the beginning of the change that we see, now, in the country, for one thing, and it was a lot easier for people to be able to, uh, somebody would say, "Go out and pull all the stakes off of the trees." And we'd say, "Okay, we'll do that sometime." And [laughter]. Well, I think that's the way research needs to be run anyway. The, uh, administrative staff should take care of the money and keep out of the way.

Dyrness: Yeah. Yeah. [pause]

Geier: Was there any decision point on not closing the Andrews, or was that something that people just stopped pushing for?

Tarrant: I don't think there was any outcry, except for people involved in it. Do you recall?

Silen: No, I don't think anybody was in a position to do anything who was close to it. Involved in the proposal, you didn't hear anything until it was closed.

Dyrness: Yeah. No public testimony or anything?

Tarrant: No, I don't think there was anything.

Geier: So then at some point, the boss decided not to close it, is, did, how long was Meagher in there?

Franklin: I don't remember if Meagher?

Swanson: Was it a serious proposal?

Franklin: Yeah, it was. I think it was a trial balloon, though, and in the case of the Umpqua, it went up and nobody really objected that much, and in the case of the Andrews, the person in charge was Jack Rothacher and Jack just stomped it in the, in the box somewhere, and

Silen: He wasn't working for the District.

Tarrant: It didn't have the industry screaming. That was no big deal, so you didn't have the industry screaming and going to the Congressmen to get it done. Uh. Yeah. That was internal, and there never was a great amount of enthusiasm, 01:37:00uh, from the National Forest System.

Silen: No, they weren't interested in it. No, it was a , uh, Brit Ash was reporting monthly on my activities, did you know that? To the Regional Forester. Yeah, he wasn't, and yet, I think a lot of them started questioning why they were doing that, because things were starting to develop here. You can't get something going in a year or so, it takes 3 or 4 [years], and by that time, we had, well, I think we had a superior road system in, and we had a unit that was planned for, for uh, we had as much planning going into the leave units as we 01:38:00had going into the cut units, and we could tell them, this was something that the National Forest didn't do at all. They didn't want to spend money like that. And we had the watersheds, uh, and uh, wildlife activities documented, and there was getting to be some coordination as to how it would effect the timber management program would need it too. I think that the, a lot of the people in, say, the Eugene office, were coming around to saying, 'This isn't so bad.' But I don't think that reached the Portland Office [Region 6].

Swanson: That's an interesting perspective. It seems to me that what I'm hearing, and I haven't thought about it this way before, is that one way to look at the history of a forest is that it was always, it has always been making it's case, through different kinds of actions, or external circumstances, like the '64 flood, and um, there's this one incident, apparently, and it's a question of 01:39:00whether it should be disestablished, uh, and it was actually in the Umpqua, at the last Forest Plan level, there was the question whether the experimental watersheds themselves should be disestablished, and do away with the whole thing, uh, which we said no to, didn't really have to fight for, but anyway, I'm just trying to reflect on some of the things that I've heard, and I expect there are others that we haven't framed this way, but uh, circumstances in the Forest Service, in general, and particularly around experimental forests that lived or died, uh, that helped them to sustain themselves. Um, like Roy, having to, uh, in those first years, meet the agreement in yielding 20 million bd ft, at the 01:40:00same time doing something that was creative and forward looking, and sort of make the case to the plate, and I'm sort of wondering, what kind of examples of that theme there might be through time, and then, the stuff that Ted and Jerry were talking about, when you guys made the case for the place by getting it used more, and then there's so much university involvement that, uh, people aren't going to question the value of the place. I'm wondering what other, uh, things might fit in that theme, through history? [pause]

Geier: One thing that is kind of related, while this debate is going on, what kinds of changes go on in the kind of things that you try to show people on the Andrews? Um, the way in which you try to publicize information about what kinds 01:41:00of research is being done here, um, is there any conscious discussion of that, or um, you're obviously trying to recruit people to come down here, what, how do you sell them on that, and at what level do you have to sell them? [pause]

McKee: Well, it's been an easy sell, for 20 years, with the amount of activity, and the one thing that seemed to be holding us back for a while was the local infrastructure, physical plant, but that's coming along well. It's really a place that sells itself now. It's, I think it's past critical mass.

Franklin: Yeah, but there was a period when, when it didn't. And I think it has to be, somebody needs to talk about it from a watersheds point of view, but there was a period of probably fifteen, at least 10 years, where there wasn't 01:42:00anything really to talk about. Uh, the National Forest people were NOT interested in anything that was going on in the terrestrial arena [unintelligible voice interrupting]. At ALL. There wasn't a whole lot, and they'd already decided what they were going to do anyway, and so, you know, there was, the era of the '60s, there was just a, uh, there was nothing as far as getting the people from management in here to show them things. They weren't interested in it. You could bring researchers in here.

Dyrness: And it was a matter of bringing researchers in. It was more a one-to-one, like involving, Don Zobel, who was another one, and uh, Chet [Youngberg?] and his graduate students on the soils problems and so on, it was, it just, your professional colleagues. You'd go say, well, you'd have an interesting problem, do you have graduate students who would be interested in working on it, and uh, that's the way it went, but very, very personalized. Not 01:43:00that we printed out brochures, or anything like that, just, you know, it was personalized.

Franklin: And most of that time, you know, there was pretty active antagonism on the part of the National Forest System.

Dyrness: Oh, yeah. Right.

Franklin: Uh, there was some time in the early '60s where I went into the Supervisor's office, I was telling Roy, with Jack Rothacher and Dick Fredrikson, getting him ranting and raving at us, you know, about how either we were with him or we were agin' him. And he knows we're not with him, so he knows we must be Sierra Clubbers, and how come we're not on this list of Sierra Club members, 'cause he KNOWS we are. [laughter] So, and the '60s was a really ugly time, in terms of relations with the National Forest.

Silen: We had a lot of, you know, quite a few visitors up here in the '50s, that

Franklin: [interrupting] Well,

Silen: [continuing over the interruption] that were here, and the, uh, Society and others met up here, and we didn't seem to have any lack of interest, both 01:44:00from the foresters and the non foresters. If they came up here, they seemed to think that this was uh, worth doing, and it was furnishing, particularly, uh, people in the watershed area, like city watershed people, were kind of interested in what we were doing with the roads. For example, we were making a very high effort to keep the sedimentation from the roads from hitting the creek. A lot of effort, there was a lot of work on, on how to put in culverts, for example, so that you wouldn't have any sedimentation, sedimentation from it, and that was the main source of sedimentation, and we got, uh, contract items into the, even into the Willamette Forest contracts to, uh, handle, uh, tractor logging, and that kind of thing, where they would limit the time of year that they could, or the amount of precipitation that they could, uh, where they had 01:45:00to stop logging. And uh, it seemed like they were, uh, had a clientele at the time.

Levno: Roy, I watched the logging they were doing out here in 1963. At that time I was the only full time person on the Andrews. It was just me and a pickup and then everybody else there, you know, were only four, mainly concentrating on the watershed stuff. But, uh, it was pretty negative to me in the Ranger Station. They were telling us, when we'd go in there and, 'I think we should go in there and cut the whole damn Andrews, and nobody could do a thing about it!' [laughter]

Franklin: You know, McKenzie Bridge District did some of that.

Levno: Is that right?

Franklin: They called up the Regional Forester, [unintelligible names, JF is uncertain about who it was] but at some point, they, back at the Station, drew the line and uh, the Regional Forester wanted the Andrews to be put under his 01:46:00uh, allowable cut. [pause] And he was stopped.

Dyrness: When was that?

Franklin: Oh, shortly after the Andrews was established.

Silen: Yeah, it must have been the agreement between the two.

Tarrant: Yeah.

Dyrness: But you know, when Jack was there, I remember him going to meetings at Willamette, coming back, oh, the stories, he said, 'They just browbeat me', because they just said, 'you guys aren't contributing your fair share of the allowable cut. You're gonna just have to shape up.' You know, and Jack said, 'No, we won't have any cuttings that aren't tied to legitimate research purposes.' But he'd come back all beat out, beat up, you know, black and blue.

Silen: Were there any sales made after Sale, uh, Sale 5?

Franklin: Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

Silen: Who, who laid those out and who was allotted?

Franklin: The District laid them out, and they followed a lot of your plan, but you know, when I came here, you know, when I graduated in '59, Carl Berntsen went to, went to Bend. And I got his job, which included the Andrews, and at that point, you know, the timber sale to get the road out, clear up Lookout Creek and up on [Frissel?] was in place, and this timber sale was in place, and I think this was [trail?] 13, if I remember right, and uh, they went up into the High 15 country and so on, and so, the object of management at the end of the '50s and the early part of the '60s was to road the Andrews.

Dyrness: Road the Andrews, that's right.

Franklin: We DID it. And that heavy cutting went on, well into the mid-60's, and 01:48:00finally began to slow down at that point.

Silen: Bob Mealy told me at one time that he'd, they'd changed a lot of things in my plan, but that every time they did they made a mistake. [laughter]

Franklin: Yeah, I think they pretty well followed your road line. I think they began to drift away from some of your landings, though. [long pause]

Geier: Okay, well, Al and Art haven't gotten a chance to talk about their first experience at Carpenter yet. Al, do you want to?

Levno: Well I, I don't think I can remember the first time I was up here, but it must have been when I was scrambling around with my kid, who must have been 5, 01:49:006, 7 years old then. We were always up here, all the time. The thing I can remember is that, uh, 10 years later, my daughter, came back and we came up to Carpenter Lookout to stay overnight. Well when we first got here, there were a few shutters on the lookout, and they would open it up a little bit in the summer time, but night, we came up here through the snow, and got up here, there wasn't a shutter that was up, there wasn't a window in its place. [laughter] Planks were all tore up, stovepipe was out [laughing], and then the wind started to blow. We crawled down below, behind there [laughing], we didn't about half an hour. It was too cold, so we had to get up and pound some shutters up, put 'em up against the window, and [laughing] it would blow in on us. We got through the night, but it was [laughing].

Dyrness: The place had run down a lot?

Levno: Yeah, but now, yeah. It wasn't anything like this. It was, uh, it was 01:50:00just about done for.

Franklin: They came real close to bringing it down.

McKee: Yeah, in fact, there have been several runs on it in the last 20 years. Gratifying to see the recent interest in having it restored and staffed. I think it was about, uh, 6 or 7 years ago, it was a make-or-break decision, whether to tear it down or leave it, and one of the monthly meetings, several of us thought it would be a neat place for us, for the research community to take over and maintain as a writing retreat. And uh, shortly after that, the uh, uh staff on the District decided that they wanted to keep it and, and there's been slow, but pretty good refurbishment of the facility.

Levno: I think it was done pretty much by volunteer labor, though.

McKee: A lot of, well [Lynn Burditt?] might have a better feeling for that, how 01:51:00much was volunteer and how much was District staff, but there has been a lot of volunteer effort.

Geier: Are these volunteers from the Forest Service, or just volunteers from the community?

McKee: Yeah, volunteers, from what I knew, it was the community.

Levno: Several weekends, people from McKenzie Bridge, uh

Geier: Oh, really?

Levno: That, uh, spent their weekend time on it.

Geier: Does this get much recreational use?

Levno: Oh, yeah, I think there's a lot of people who come up every year and have been for, uh, 50 years. [laughs]

McKee: yeah, and [the lookout] Doug's got a log in here. How many visitors do you have this summer, Doug?

Doug [the Lookout]: I would guess somewhere between 200 or 300.

Brookes: Wow.

Lookout: And the neat part about it is everybody who gets up here is interested, and wants to be here, you know, it seems like.

Dyrness: No jaded tourists or anything, huh?

Lookout: Right. You know, 'I'd rather be at the mall.' [laughter]

McKee: Well, the last time I was here, there was a fellow up here with an 01:52:00artificial leg [who] had walked up and, uh, he, uh, had been here twice before, and uh, he knew what he was getting into when he came up, and he came up here for about 15 minutes, took a whole bunch of photos, breathed deeply, and headed back down. [unintelligible]

Lookout: Yeah, he would come up every year, and there was another one that was up here with an artificial leg, and he was up here faster than anybody. I mean, he's up here 15 minutes after I see his car, he's up here.

Dyrness: No kidding?

Lookout: Just incredible.

Brookes: Now I really feel bad. [laughter]

Tarrant: Oh, it wasn't that bad. [laughter]

Lookout: That's an overview of the types of people that come up. And I, people from all over the world somehow find it.

McKee: Maybe I should, uh, while we're talking about our first time here, my 01:53:00first contact with the Andrews as a place and a concept, it begins with a traffic jam in Burlington, Vermont as an undergraduate freshman at the University of Vermont, and getting to my elective class, Introduction to Forestry, because I was just a liberal arts major at the time, decided I'd try that, [I was] late, and there was only one topic left on the blackboard that I could take as a term paper, and that was the effect of fire on soils. [laughter] So, I sort of, well, I don't know anything about it, but what the hey. [laughter] Went over to the library, and the very first paper I found was one by Bob [Tarrant] on his work here at the Andrews.

Dyrness: Oh, yeah?

McKee: And, that began my collection of scientific papers.

Dyrness: And the Andrews was?

McKee: Oh, it was literature, but it was, uh, so even before I thought about 01:54:00coming West, I'd seen

Swanson: Was that about the year of the airstrip burn?

Dyrness: No, the airstrip burn was about, uh,

McKee: '67, wasn't it?

Dyrness: '67. '68?

McKee: I think this would have been '62.

Franklin: I recollect '66, but [sighs]

McKee: Well, my first trip up here was just a quick hump up. I had moved out here in, when there was a whole lot of snow on the ground, and I drove up to, oh boy, about half way up the actual Carpenter Mountain road, and had to stop at that one corner that's usually plugged with snow, uh, I can't remember the number of the unit. Hiked in here, it was early in the morning, and the snow was real crisp. You could stay right on top of the snow with no trouble whatsoever. [laughter] Got up here, and just enjoyed it so much, I stayed a little too long at the fair, and discovered that, uh, [laughter] that with my body mass and shoe size, I was sinking in real deep on the way back [laughter]. I was one tired 01:55:00puppy by the time I got back to the car. I didn't have snowshoes, or skies, or anything. But it was worth it. I enjoyed it. Had a good time up here. A year later, I was back with my first time up here with a camera. That would have been in '70, uh, late '71, and you still could take pictures off each of the cardinal directions with a 50 mm lens and a 35 mm camera and NOT have a clearcut in it. Which you sure can't do now. So, 25 years, its been altered.

Silen: Well, what are we going to do with the stand when it gets to be another 50 years and it's deteriorating? [long pause]

McKee: Jerry would probably want us to say, 'Not worry about it.' [laughter] But I'm not sure. [loud laughter]

Levno: WE won't be worrying about it.

McKee: Speak for yourself. [laughter, long pause]

Geier: Well, when you had Les AuCoin and Hatfield up here, showing them things like the 'ghetto in the meadow' and things like that, did you bring them up to this place too?

McKee: No, too much of a walk. But for VIP's now, at least I run them up to the Frissell Point and drive right there, and look off in either direction, or to the saddle. We don't hike them up here. Hike classes up here, though. We do that on a regular basis. [pause]

Levno: What do YOU think ought to happen in 50 years? [laughter]

Tarrant: Well, I know the answer most people'd say, "Well, they'll figure it out." [laughter]

Levno: And we will.

Dyrness: Yeah, we will. Yeah.

Levno: The next generation's always smarter than the last. [long pause]

Geier: That's what my daughter keeps telling me [laughter]

Tarrant: Yeah, kids are kind of fond of pointing that out.

Franklin: Well, at least they'll have a few options left, Roy.

Silen: Yeah.

Franklin: We won't have closed out all the opportunities for them. [pause] I don't think, you know, I don't know quite what you're thinking of, most of these Doug-fir stands certainly have the ability to go several hundred more years.

Silen: Well, some of the trees in them do.

Franklin: Yeah. So, they'll change, and you know, as

Silen: Of course, the higher the site, the quicker they come down.

Franklin: That's true. Absolutely correct. You'll find your oldest trees on the best sites. [pause, unintelligible comment from BT, laughter] It's the 01:58:00principle, isn't it? [Tape ends]