Ed Anderson and Mike Kerrick Oral History Interview, August 28, 1996

Max Geier: Anything that you wanted to get started with? To begin with, I think we're just going to talk a little bit about your background, and how you came to be involved working at the Andrews and working with people at the Andrews.

Ed Anderson: I came here in 1955, and was ranger on the McKenzie [Ranger] District, which was on the McKenzie [River]. It wasn't called the Andrews then.

Mike Kerrick: It was Blue River Experimental Forest back then. The name change 00:01:00occurred in 1953 [Blue River EF, 1948-53; H.J. Andrews EF, 1953-Present].

Anderson: You know, it was named after H.J. Andrews, when he was killed in Washington, D.C.?

Geier: That was in 1951?

Anderson: 1951.

Kerrick: That was 'Hoss' Andrews. Yeah. [Horace J. "Hoss" Andrews]

Anderson: H.J. Andrews. I came down here in '55, yeah, that's when it was. It was the McKenzie Bridge District, then in '56, the Blue River District was formed, and the Andrews was all on my end [Within Blue River District, 00:02:00Willamette National Forest].

Geier: Hmm.

Anderson: There was no housing, no building, no nothing there [H.J. Andrews E.F. territory].

Geier: Were any roads in place at that time?

Anderson: Oh yes, they were up in there. As I recall, you had so much of "the cut" on the forest, we had to "get the cut out," and I talked to the guys from the station [PNW] about why we sold so much timber then, and then, Jack Rothacher came on. He left the station in 1956, I think it was, and rented a 00:03:00house by the district headquarters [in town of Blue River].

Kerrick: Right. He was my next-door neighbor there.

Anderson: Yeah. He was the only person who lived there as a resident at the time. He carried on with watersheds research. [Basis of data gathering/studies at HJA, carried on today in LTER context.]

Geier: So, he was the only person that was living on the forest, it sounds like?

Anderson: Yeah, he, Jerry Dunford, and Jerry Franklin.

Kerrick: Yeah, but they stayed in trailers.

Anderson: They lived up at the --

Kerrick: -- Up at the trailer park [Near Blue River Ranger District Headquarters].

Anderson: No, they lived in Corvallis.

Kerrick: Well, they may have commuted in those early days. I can't remember, either.

Anderson: Nobody lived up there then.

Kerrick: But Jack was the only resident researcher on site in '56.

Anderson: We did everything in contact with Jack then.

Geier: How did the experimental forest fit into your overall management plans for the Blue River?

Anderson: We managed it and laid out a whole plan for them. We laid out timber sales according to his [Roy Silen -- first USFS person on experimental forest] design. We were part of that. We laid out sales. We did some things. We put 00:05:0050-foot fire lines, pretty much outside of the Andrews.

Kerrick: Had some operational things.

Anderson: Yeah, laid out sales. Jay Gashwiler?

Kerrick: Gashwiler, yeah, Jay Gashwiler, right.

Anderson: He was in wildlife management. Particularly, a mouser.

Kerrick: A wild-lifer, yeah. A "mice guy," right?

Anderson: He was a mice guy. I looked one day, he'd been talking to the mice, and he was on a first-name basis with all the mice. I mean, he'd catch the same 00:06:00mouse 3 or 4 or 5 times, in the same traps. (Chuckles) Yeah. And then he travelled on.

Kerrick: Yeah. Do you know where Gashwiler is? Have you heard the name?

Geier: Yeah, I've heard the name quite a bit. I haven't talked to him yet.

Kerrick: Yeah, yeah.

Anderson: Another guy, Jerry Dunford.

Geier: Who?

Anderson: Jerry Dunford? [USFS hydrologist]

Geier: That name, I don't think has come up.

Anderson: He was there, and George Meagher [USFS forester]. George was a timber beast, though.

Kerrick: George Meagher. I don't remember him.

Anderson: We went to an NSF meeting one time, me and Jerry Dunford, Jerry Franklin, too.

Geier: Jerry Franklin, he wasn't there in 1956. Was he? When you first came, was he working there already?

Kerrick: I don't think so. I'm not sure when Jerry arrived [Summer 1957].

Anderson: No, Jerry didn't know that we were there. (Laughter). He was very ambitious, he was ready to learn. No, he wasn't there yet.

Geier: That's kind of an interesting angle. What was your perception of research in relation to your management concerns at that time?

Anderson: It all related to timber sales. Units were cut all at one time, 200 acres at one time. George had to cut a watershed. Which one, I can't think of it. Do you remember anything about that?

Kerrick: That was the first watershed, Watershed 1?

Anderson: Yeah. Watershed 1, and Watershed 2.

Kerrick: And Watershed 3. No, that was done in-between my times there.

Anderson: That was when you were gone.

Kerrick: When I was there in '56, I remember we got a grant from research to build a trail down as access to Watershed 2, which was the control watershed. And we built that trail down to there.

Anderson: Did they ever do any research on that? We did a lot of disturbance on that trail.

Kerrick: Yeah (Laughing). Well, I don't know that they ever did.

Anderson: Maybe it didn't hurt anything.

Kerrick: Yeah. Yeah.

Anderson: On the third one, I guess we built the roads. We built the road into Watershed 3.

Kerrick: Right. It was supposed to represent the staggered-setting harvest methods, which were developed there in the Andrews. I guess they were the policy in the region [6] at that time.

Anderson: I guess one or two [timber sales] were 200 acres.

Kerrick: Watershed 1 is, well, I don't know what the exact size is, but it was 00:09:00all cut at one time.

Anderson: They put a machine on top, and a machine on the bottom, alongside it [for logging]. And before that, they built quite a lot of flumes [to study runoff]. That was rather important. We wanted all those set right in the middle of the stream, so that you could read anything that you wanted to.

Geier: So, the whole stream was diverted right into the flume, is that what you're saying? To read the flow?

Anderson: Yeah.

Kerrick: And there was a sediment pond at the bottom there. Actually, those were built in the early '50s, I think, and they were calibrated several years prior to the treatment process.

Anderson: Yeah, I guess so.

Kerrick: So, they knew what the background was.

Anderson: Right.

Kerrick: And then, the treatment [logging] was done, and they measured the effects.

Anderson: I believe there was no ground contact; it was all sky-line logging.

Kerrick: Uh-huh. No high-lead.

Anderson: Wasn't Watershed 2 high-lead?

Kerrick: No. 2 was the control watershed. There was no harvesting in 2. And 3 [watershed] was the staggered setting, and that had a new set of roads. From that episode, we learned that this wasn't a very good place to put roads. In the '64 flood, that whole thing came out. It created more problems than Watershed 1 did, even though the entire watershed was harvested.

Anderson: That was when I was at Malheur [National Forest], and when you were gone.

Kerrick: So, when did you move, in '60? Something like that?

Anderson: Yeah, January, the beginning of '60.

Kerrick: The beginning of '60?

Anderson: And then I lost track of what was going on at the Andrews. And then Denver, and Missoula. After that, I was getting tired of moving.

Kerrick: I remember, Ed, you talking about Bob Aufderheide. He wasn't part of the original team that went in there, or was he?

Anderson: Yeah. Bob Aufderheide and Phil, what's that guy's name?

Geier: Briegleb?

Anderson: Yeah. He was an important forester.

Kerrick: Phil, wasn't he involved, somehow?

Anderson: Bob Aufderheide and that other fellow; they were two important guys in that first big sale of one big clear-cut, which was completed right there. They 00:12:00were interested in what the effect of the clear-cut unit size would be. Anyway, we had to logger on there, Bob, he was the major coordinator.

Kerrick: Yeah, that's right.

Anderson: The clear-cut units were circular.

Kerrick: They were circular, strip, and all kinds of different sizes.

Anderson: I think they had an eighth-of-an-acre, and everything they had fell out of it. (Laughter)

Geier: What was driving that kind of research? Were there problems you were facing in the forest management arena that was encouraging people to do that?

Anderson: No. They didn't have anything to do with what research was required.

Kerrick: I think they were responding to trying to develop the best scheme for 00:13:00converting the virgin forests to managed forests. I think that was probably driving it. [Forest Service was looking at natural Douglas-fir regeneration by seeding in relation to cutting-unit size.]

Geier: Uh-huh.

Anderson: They would do 50 acres, 50 each in a strip, and about 400 feet wide, cutting down the slope, across the slope. Nothing in particular happened to them.

Kerrick: Yeah, that was the formula. They wanted to look at the effects of landslides, measure the velocity, and the internal mechanisms of those things. You've not been up to the sites up there?

Geier: No. Actually, I'm going there, taking a tour tomorrow.

Kerrick: Well, one of the issues that very recently happened, in the late '80s, early '90s, has been to look at land-flows and the mechanics of land-flows, all 00:14:00that sort of stuff.

Anderson: A bunch of debris would fall into the water and cause problems for the fish.

Kerrick: But the strips that you were talking about were designed to see how rapid natural regeneration came back in, and various orientations north and south and east and west, and various widths. And then, those circles were where you had different distances to the edge of the opening.

Anderson: They were in different locations.

Kerrick: Yeah, they were in different locations in the Andrews. That stuff was done way back in the '50s.

Anderson: You go back there now and there are plants and stuff all over.

Geier: Had there been much problems in the Blue River region with landslides, or was it just something that was a preventative study to try and identify 00:15:00[potential dangers]?

Anderson: Some things came out of it that I didn't expect. For instance, you leave stumps along the side of the road, and in about 5 or 6 years the road would collapse because the roots were rotting. When we were first up on Lookout Creek, there was this big stump, I guess, as big as this table. So we ask, "Well, what the hell did they do with it?" (Laughter) We did all the logging with a logger named Mike Savelich. He was a pretty good gentleman.

Geier: What was his name?

Kerrick: Savelich.

Geier: Savelich?

Kerrick: Yeah, Mike Savelich. S-A-V-E-L-I-C-H, I think.

Anderson: That's right.

Kerrick: Yeah, something like that. Savelich. He was from Croatia.

Anderson: Yeah, Croatia.

Kerrick: Yeah. Andrew Sabo [?] was the sale administrator, and he and Mike got along pretty well together. Andrew was Croatian too, but he was American-born, but his ancestry was, I think, from that neck of the woods. Mike would shake his head and wonder how in the world a contract required that all trees be felled within the unit, and on some "goofy" sites [for experimental research reasons]. Well, sometimes you just couldn't do that. (Laughing) That was always kind of a joke.

Anderson: I guess Savelich, over the years, did all the logging up there [Did many early sales in the HJA]. He bid for the contracts. These were part of those contracts and he had to things that couldn't be required outside [the 00:17:00experimental forest]. And the logging all had to be downhill. And he didn't want, some of them, didn't want skylines. In the end, it looked pretty good.

Kerrick: Timing was also critical for research. I remember that was always a problem.

Geier: The time it was cut, you mean?

Kerrick: Yeah, the researchers wanted it done boom, boom, boom, and right, because they had everything all set up. But for most loggers, the world doesn't work that way, with markets and all those kinds of things.

Anderson: No, it doesn't work like that. Sometimes it had 60 to 70 percent side-slope, and you can't do that with trees, as it doesn't grow right away.

Geier: Uh-huh.

Anderson: We did the best we could.

Kerrick: Yeah.

Geier: So, it sounds like the bid on it was not necessarily just a low bid, but that someone that would be able to work with the constraints imposed.

Kerrick: Yeah, I'm not sure how that happened.

Anderson: I forget how many times it worked that way.

Geier: It sounds like this guy Savelich kind of got used to the requirements, as far as research requirements, and worked well with the researchers in the Andrews.

Kerrick: Right, right.

Anderson: He had a bunch of Croatians that just couldn't speak the English language, so Mike hired all those and put them to work out there.

Geier: Yeah?

Anderson: And he would just as soon have a steep slope with a 60-70 foot culvert, as he'd put in a 30-foot [culvert]. And when they did, he had to change them all. He did a beautiful job. Just as good as could be. He was a logger, so you had to tell him what you wanted, as he wasn't going to do it himself. Once Mike had to do that, let's put it this way, when he wasn't there, they [his 00:19:00crew] wouldn't do it, but when the boss was there, he got in there and hollered at them.

Kerrick: Yeah, Balsiger [first name?], he was a different kind of a logger. He did it his way. He was a tough one to deal with, was my recollection, anyway.

Anderson: Yeah.

Geier: Savelich used mostly Croatians. Were these people his crew? Were they people that he brought in from outside this area, or people that were living around there.

Kerrick: Well, I think he found some of them in town. I don't know.

Anderson: Seemed he didn't know anybody around there, but he was industrious.

Geier: The second person you mentioned, the other logger, you said you had more difficulty with.

Kerrick: Balsiger.

Geier: Balsiger, yeah. It sounds like he wasn't hiring Croatians, but he was hiring mostly people from around there?

Kerrick: No, no. He was a promoter. He was also the guy that logged Watershed 1, maybe with the Wyssen system [European "skyline" system used at the HJA and elsewhere in Oregon/U.S.].

Anderson: Yeah, Wyssen seems right.

Kerrick: Yeah.

Anderson: Yeah. It took a long time to log that. I wasn't there when.

Kerrick: I wasn't there either.

Anderson: I came back into this country in '77. Nobody knew me. (Chuckles)

Kerrick: He was retired by then.

Anderson: Let's see, the logging was getting out towards Wolf Rock. That's far off the Andrews.

Kerrick: Well, yeah. Wolf Rock is outside the Andrews. Right. I thought I heard "Carpenter" in there, but you said Wolf.

Anderson: Well, you could get a good view out there in the neighborhood of Carpenter [Mountain].

Kerrick: Yeah, you can.

Anderson: I rode up there on a horse one time.

Geier: You said you rode up on a horse?

Kerrick: To Carpenter Mountain, yeah.

Geier: Oh, I see.

Kerrick: Back to Aufderheide. I think he was part of the original team that rode into that country and rode the boundaries [of experimental forest]. I forget what Bob was doing. He was in research at the time, wasn't he, on the Umpqua [National Forest]? This was before he was supervisor here.

Anderson: Yeah he was. I worked for Bob on the Siuslaw [National Forest] when he was assistant supervisor. That was what they called him then. He was there, and 00:22:00then, down on the Umpqua later.

Kerrick: That was my understanding; that he was down on the Umpqua.

Anderson: Anyhow, he wasn't here very long.

Kerrick: Yeah. From '55 to, he died in '59, I think.

Anderson: Yeah.

Kerrick: Early '59. Because Dave Jessup came after he died.

Anderson: Well, that's longer than I thought.

Kerrick: Yeah.

Anderson: After Aufderheide was there, he and, dang it, remember that fellow by the name of -- ?

Geier: Not Roy Silen?

Anderson: -- Roy Silen. Roy Silen. Yeah.

Kerrick: Oh, was that Roy Silen?

Anderson: Yeah. He and Bob worked real closely. Roy Silen was down there [1948-54].

Kerrick: Yeah. Roy was one of the principal investigators or researchers in the early '50s.

Geier: I was trying to remember. I think he said he was there from '48 to '54, something like that.

Kerrick: Oh, really?

Geier: Maybe '56, I can't remember.

Kerrick: Yeah.

Anderson: Well, he showed up here, and --

Geier: -- He what?

Anderson: He'd show up here, and he sure did a lot.

Kerrick: Yeah, he laid out the roads, and the design, I guess. The notion was that they had two different ways of roading the drainage. One was a "ladder" design, and the other, I don't know.

Anderson: It didn't fit the ground.

Kerrick: What?

Anderson: It didn't fit the ground.

Kerrick: Yeah. That's right. It didn't fit the ground very well. (Laughing)

Geier: They were trying to get a good fit with the ground?

Kerrick: The basic question was, what was the most efficient way to road and convert these virgin, old-growth stands, into a managed forest? That was the basic objective in the early '50s, and that was also the period when the national forests followed getting into harvesting in a big way. They'd been harvesting timber for a long time, but not in a very big way. But, during the war, and especially following the war, most of the national forests in the west, at least in western Oregon, were beginning to really move into development. That's what this research really was kind of geared for.

Anderson: How you can manage old growth, I think, the first fifty years of old growth.

Geier: So, figuring out a road system and access to the forest, those kinds of things were important?

Kerrick: Silviculture, regeneration, all the various effects of operations on soil compaction and erosion; those things were part of this research design, to try to determine the effects of management, and to try to help managers do a better job of managing those resources. That recycles my notion.

Anderson: That's right.

Kerrick: Along the way, there was always tension between researchers who were inclined to have some wild ideas, and the managers who had to live with them, and tried to put that thing into motion. But, I think that was a creative 00:26:00tension that we had.

Geier: So, you're saying that one of the road systems didn't fit the land, somehow? Was that the ladder system?

Kerrick: Yeah, in steep canyons like in the Andrews, it didn't fit. It might have worked in flatter terrain, but in the Andrews, it didn't fit. What fit the Andrews was to try to stay on the lay of the land, to put the least impact on the land.

Anderson: Not just the Andrews, they'd do it over here.

Kerrick: Yeah, it was pretty typical of western Oregon. It still is.

Anderson: One of the other questions we had was a problem with slash. There was a terrific amount of slash, and we'd try and drag it in, and we would burn a side, and all the wood in the sale.

Kerrick: Yeah, maintain the roads, protect from fire, all that sort of stuff.

Geier: There was a tremendous amount of slash, so there was a disposal problem, then?

Anderson: Oh, yes. In '54, they were taking eleven or twelve inches down, the tops, and now they're taking down it to three [inches], and we'd go a couple inches below that. We were getting down to six-inch tops, but there was still an 00:28:00awful lot of slash. Today, they take every damn inch into the chipper. But we would top it then.

Geier: What was the role of private foresters in that period in thwarting or encouraging certain kinds of research? What was the National Forest system doing in relation to private forestry in Oregon?

Anderson: Discouraging research?

Kerrick: Well, no.

Geier: Were they promoting it or were they encouraging it, asking for particular kinds of research to be done, or was it somehow something different by the 00:29:00Forest Service?

Anderson: No, we were a long way ahead of them. We had some ideas. I remember that Savelich wouldn't do it. We asked him when he started, as we went down and in the first timber sale to 6-inch tops, and they didn't object to it either.

Kerrick: The loggers didn't object?

Anderson: No. We were encouraged. We wanted to get in there with our sales. Well, we had arguments with some environmentalists. They wanted all the snags left.

Geier: This was in the '50s?

Anderson: Yeah.

Geier: Really?

Kerrick: They wanted what left?

Anderson: All the snags left.

Kerrick: Really? I'll be darned.

Anderson: I have a weird sense of humor, (laughing) and I had this university doctor, Onthank.

Kerrick: Onthank, yeah.

Geier: Onthank?

Kerrick: Onthank. Carl Onthank [Early environmental activist in region].

Anderson: He was outside the Forest Service.

Kerrick: Yeah, he was a University of Oregon prof., I think [U.O. Law School].

Anderson: Yeah, this Onthank was quite a bird. "You cut this snag down, and 00:31:00where will the woodpeckers live?" And I got mad, as I had to make a lot of decisions. All the other woodpeckers, you know, could go to another tree. (Laughter)

Kerrick: Yeah, there was always a contingent of environmental folks.

Anderson: They're following you around all the time.

Kerrick: Yeah, yeah.

Geier: So these people were based in Eugene, it sounds like.

Anderson: I went to talk at the high school, and the doctor, who was it? I forget. The thing is that these people would tell you things that were bald lies, just outright lies. These things that I could tell.

Geier: That's something I want to get into a little bit. What is your perception of how local residents in the valley perceived the purpose of the research forest? Or, did they even realize that it was there? What was the interaction between management of that forest and local communities?

Kerrick: In the '50s?

Geier: Yeah. The '50's and '60s, over that period.

Anderson: Well, there was no one who would check in on you. And, that whole time they say the Forest Service is thought so well of by the public, who thought, if they tell it to me, I believe it. I hope they didn't tell me any falsehoods.

Kerrick: As far as the H.J. Andrews Forest, I don't if there was a lot of involvement there, necessarily.

Anderson: No, I was only there once a year, anyway. I was commenting about that woodpecker guy, and you know, I just laughed at him. He wanted a row of snags along the ridges. He wanted to leave it, he wanted to have it.

Geier: It sounds like you were involved in some outreach programs at the high schools, and going around up there and talking to people?

Anderson: Yeah. We had trees all over that were planted by high schoolers. They would come on Saturdays and Sundays and plant trees.

Kerrick: You had to supervise them.

Anderson: They were off Monday or Tuesday, or something like that.

Geier: Was the research branch [Forest Service] involved in that, or was that mainly management?

Anderson: No, no. I don't think that researchers had any role.

Geier: I know they've done some of that recently.

Kerrick: Oh sure, they're deeply involved with that now, but then, I just can't recall. At least not at the district ranger level. Yeah, at the other levels, and I don't know if there was less outreach. I'm sure there was some involvement with the students at the university.

Geier: You were saying there was generally a positive impression of the Forest Service at that time? Did you have a sense that this began to change at some point in that period?

Anderson: No, no change.

Kerrick: That was into the '60s, that that pattern began to change. Although there was the big debate about the Three Sisters Wilderness, which took place 00:36:00beginning in the early '50s. [1950s-1960s]

Anderson: I was forest ranger in the district [Blue River R.D.], representing the Forest Service, and we had to reclassify the Three Sisters Primitive Area to the Three Sisters Wilderness Area.

Kerrick: Under the Secretary's [of Agriculture] regulations.

Anderson: Yes. The wilderness area was over 100,000 acres, and the primitive area [zoning name of Forest Service lands for preservation use before Wilderness Act of 1964] within that 100,000 areas. Now, it's all wilderness area. There's no distinction anymore.

Kerrick: Yeah, there's no distinction, I don't think.

Geier: What was the controversy involved then?

Kerrick: Well, in moving from the "primitive" category, which I think was more of a study category.

Anderson: That's right, it was more a study area.

Kerrick: It was designed to kind of put it in a holding pen, and manage it until such time as you have a better understanding, and make a sharper distinction between primitive and wilderness. It was under the secretary's regulation in those days. This was all part of the Wilderness Act. We were doing that in the early '50s, I guess. Were we in the 1950s?

Anderson: Yeah.

Kerrick: And the secretary's decision, I think, came down in '55 or '56, maybe '57, I don't know. [Final wilderness designations across nation did not become official until the 1960s and later.]

Anderson: During my period, anyway.

Kerrick: Yeah.

Anderson: There was a lot of interest, always, in the primitive area along the Horse Creek divide, and it was an educating moment. As soon as we got into that controversy, we got to know these people, and that's when we could tell their word was worth nothing. Right away, they demanded that anything you'd do here, 00:38:00they wanted over there. You'd put it over here along that ridge, but they wanted it clear down to the lake. French Pete, I knew it really well. It was French Pete itself, and there was a lot of dead timber there. They rode all over it, and I took the lower half-mile. I personally laid out the deal on that. Then, I got transferred. As soon as I got transferred, they started to tear it apart. I heard all kinds of stories from the other side of the mountain, and they'd 00:39:00[environmentalists] go, "Well, that's not true, and that's not true," when they didn't know if it was the truth or not.

Geier: They were questioning the location of the road?

Anderson: The road location. How everything was going to fall in that creek, all that kind of crap.

Kerrick: The basic issue, though, had to do with after all the studies and hearings, was the boundary location. They put the boundary for the Three Sisters Wilderness along Horse Creek. And they excluded in that area about 42,000 acres, as I recall, which included the east fork of the South Fork of the McKenzie, Crawford Creek, Rebel Creek, and French Pete Creek; all of the country there. There was a road laid out up the east fork, and that connected to all of the routes that you rode over out on the ridge here, but all of that decision was 00:40:00never supported by these radical environmentalists, who probably by today's standards, are pretty tame. (Laughs) But, they had some of the same techniques of "anything justifying the means." And the means were somehow to bring this land back into a wilderness state, that portion of it, anyway, that hadn't been already developed.

Anderson: This guy rode up the east fork to the very top, almost into --

Kerrick: -- Mosquito Creek.

Anderson: Oh hell, they met up there at --

Kerrick: Oh yeah, at Quaking Aspen.

Anderson: Quaking Aspen, right. Over on the northeast side. They sued over that. They logged on that anyway, didn't they?

Kerrick: Yeah. All that wasn't roaded, came in, I don't know, in '74, or whenever that was.

Anderson: I started a road going in. I guess they quit that, didn't they?

Kerrick: Well, the first piece of that was built. But the whole area was planned for development.

Anderson: Tie-in to that east fork.

Kerrick: Now this didn't have anything to do with the research forest [the H.J. Andrews], but we were talking about environmental stuff.

Geier: No, that's interesting.

Kerrick: Yeah, this was back in the '50s, and the issue here was determining the final boundaries of the Three Sisters Wilderness Area.

Geier: Yeah.

Anderson: They haven't changed the boundaries of the Andrews, have they?

Kerrick: Of the Andrews? No, I don't think so. I think that's still the same.

Anderson: Are they cutting anything in there?

Kerrick: Oh, very limited. But I don't know, as I haven't kept up to date, either.

Geier: Sounds like the issue here was similar to what it is now, where they're concerned about roads being put into areas.

Kerrick: Yeah, this was the same deal. Harvest versus no harvest, and development versus no development.

Geier: In all the arguments pro and con on this issue, was there any reference to the kind of studies that were being done on the Andrews in that period of time?

Kerrick: Well, we used some of the concerns about erosion and all that sort of stuff. We relied on information that would come in. Now, this was in my day.

Geier: Yeah.

Kerrick: We had information coming out of the Andrews that supported a certain view, but that was in opposition to many of the things that these folks were saying. So yeah, I used information from the Andrews and published reports, that 00:43:00sort of thing. They talked about regeneration, and you couldn't regenerate if, you know, blah, blah, blah. (Laughing) Well, anyway.

Geier: It sounds like some of the arguments involved here were not so much involved with bringing people into the area as it was possible erosion on the forest and things like that, so you were able to use the research from the Andrews to show that this was probably not going to happen?

Kerrick: Yeah. Yeah.

Geier: Well, that's interesting.

Kerrick: But in the '50s, when there hadn't been much stuff published on the Andrews, the studies that had been initiated by then, like the compaction studies --

Anderson: -- Most of the cutting in the Andrews was staggered-settings, so there was much more that hadn't been cut.

Kerrick: Yeah, the initial entry was not more than 25 percent of the drainage, I think. And that was standard practice for the region [U.S. Forest Service Region 00:44:006] as a whole. They were modeling that policy within the Andrews, and measuring the effects to see if there were problems.

Anderson: They were working with the staggered-settings, and they could look pretty near ruined or destroyed, after only five years. Then we got people going, "Well, hell, we've got 50 or 60 years left after these have been cut, so I can show you this hill here that was cut in '60 or something like that, and that's all been planted and is growing.

Kerrick: Pretty freshly harvested at that time.

Anderson: Yeah, yeah. How long has it come back now?

Geier: About 20 years.

Kerrick: Yeah. So, the same naysayers current now were then, too. They had this 00:45:00different view of how national forests should be managed, and they didn't rely on good information in that regard. They were just very interested in not having any more harvest, period. They would put forward all kinds of dire predictions to support their rationale, when really, they should have relied on the point that future generations might need something like this, and that this was a very 00:46:00basic, core value.

Geier: Well, it sounds like what you're saying, is that the goal of research at that time was to model, on the Andrews, what was being done, or what should policy be? And then, identify different ways of doing it. The question was, "What will happen if we do it in this fashion?" Is that accurate?

Kerrick: Yeah, that's how I would characterize the early '50s. I characterize the Andrews as a series of decadal kind of works. The whole notion changes over time. Initially, in my judgement, what was driving research was to try to find out what effects [to various treatment methods] there were going to be. There were some innovations in terms of different kinds of slash treatments and this 00:47:00sort of thing, practices that weren't commonly used in the region, but were being tried out in the Andrews. But soil compaction, from cat-logging versus high-leading, and things like that, were going on in the 1950s.

Anderson: I had looked forward to attacking the Andrews pretty soon [logging old growth].

Geier: You said, what? I'm sorry?

Anderson: We were going to "attack" the Andrews, you know, it was all old-growth in there.

Kerrick: Okay. Hmm.

Anderson: We hadn't attacked the Andrews yet.

Kerrick: Hmm. Yeah, I don't know.

Anderson: I don't either, but we were still gonna hire dirty crooks and -- (Laughter)

Kerrick: -- (Laughing) Yeah.

Anderson: Sometimes they would.

Kerrick: There was a continuum of those guys out there, the extreme, who were 00:48:00absolutely dirty crooks, and there was probably some that would say they just didn't realize what they were doing, poor devils, (laughs) on up to those who were supportive of some kind of forest management. Way over on this end of the spectrum, being very supportive, wondering, why aren't we doing more. Over on this end of the spectrum, you're kow-towing to these guys over here. At least there was that continuum of beliefs along that line. That's been my experience. And that's great, that's what makes the world go around. It gets a little stressful when you have a room full of these guys that aren't being balanced by anything over here. And these folks believe that everyone thinks like they do.

Geier: On this Three Sisters feud, from a management standpoint, did you see lessons that were learned from that, or research questions that needed to be answered, to help when these kinds of issues came up in the future?

Anderson: That's the only reason research stays the same way. You know, what would happen if --. (Laughs)--study this for fire, study that for cutting. We used to do studies for 30 to 50 years. And we could go in there and tell you, if this was in a wild fire, it would burn up. Kerrick: Yeah. Are you familiar with the controversy on Warner Creek?

Geier: Yeah.

Anderson: Of course, Mike, you inherited it.

Geier: What you were saying, is that fire moves in if it's [forest and natural resources] not taken care of, if it's not managed, and it will be struck by fire? Is that the point?

Kerrick: Well, no. It's that folks on this end of the spectrum [more "progressive"] will say, "Gosh, we need to study that to see what natural effects follow the fire," and all of this forest came in that way [after fire]. It's a vast laboratory that already exists out there, that in fact, has been studied.

Anderson: They're in books. They [scientists, environmentalists, etc.] could go to the library and find all the answers they want.

Kerrick: Well, maybe not all the answers. There's new questions always arising and new technology to answer those questions, but a lot of the basics, I think, are becoming understood. Some of the issues raised in the early '50s regarding 00:51:00this particular controversy [Three Sisters Wilderness, French Pete area] that became "research questions" [U.S. Forest Service lexicon], were modeled here and elsewhere in the research community. Now that's an assumption on my part, but that's probably true.

Anderson: These groups, they'd camp up there at Andrews, and they'd take each other down and show each other to see where the dam hollows out up there. (Laughs)

Kerrick: Oh, Yeah.

Anderson: And they'd tell you why you can't touch that. And then, they'd tell you they've spotted an owl here, and why, you can't cut that. (Laughs)

Geier: In the late '50s, if you had a problem as a manager that you needed an 00:52:00answer to, what would be the pathway that you would go through to get that request or suggestion across to the research branch from the district? Would you go from the district to region, and then from there to the PNW Station, or would you go directly to somebody from the station?

Kerrick: Hmm?

Anderson: My throat's getting kind of dry. I know there's been a big change in leadership in the Forest Service. Mike might agree that a lot of it wasn't real formal.

Geier: I'm sorry, you said that a lot of it was not worth it?

Anderson: Oh sure, to some it's worth it, but to me, it isn't. I've had a stroke.

Kerrick: Just from a pure history standpoint, I was at a very early point in my career [student at University of Minnesota on summer hire], and I can't recall what the pathways might have been in those early days. I expect interaction with a guy like Jack Rothacher, who might have influenced that to some degree. My guess is the policy issues probably came from much higher levels than that.

Geier: Uh-huh.

Kerrick: But I don't know. I can't remember.

Geier: It sounds like you did have some level of interaction with scientists like Roy Silen and others out there, so that kind of conversation make it possible to exchange ideas.

Anderson: We were using Jerry Franklin. He was a scientist, and he'd say, "I'm 00:54:00tired of having these clear-cuts. This kind of cutting."

Kerrick: Right.

Anderson: Well, he was very resistant to it [Franklin wanted alternatives to straight clear-cutting].

Kerrick: Although he's supportive of timber harvesting, he wanted to leave a lot more dead and down, and growing, living material, too. But, he's not against harvesting. No. Today, anyway. But I don't know Jerry today, either. (Laughing) He's probably changed his views along the way, but I know Jerry ten years ago was supportive of modeling nature's way in a totally different way than standard clear-cutting, but still harvesting.

Anderson: Yeah, but there'll be a lot more dead timber on the east side right now.

Kerrick: Yeah.

Anderson: When will they stop it?

Kerrick: Yeah.

Anderson: I think they know now why those divisions are there and what they are, but I don't hear any of them saying that cattle invading in 1914 or 1916, left that country as barren ground. That area was bare ground. Now, it's thousands of trees per acre. The trees grew. They raised cattle from California and drove 00:56:00them north, and then, they drove them back. A bunch of cattle grazed here. That only lasted a few years.

Kerrick: (Interrupting) Well --

Anderson: (Continuing) -- They changed the old stands of the forest when they'd do this logging. They did the logging of Ponderosa pine, and they put in some 00:57:00seedlings of Douglas-fir, white fir, and subalpine fir, that's come in now in this particular area. All the beetles came in, and they weren't there very long.

Geier: Were you concerned in the '50s about fire research, and the use of fire as a management tool? Was that something that was a concern?

Anderson: We weren't that worried about it, frankly.

Geier: Hmm.

Anderson: Over in Montana, it seems pretty wild-eyed. Of course, there's a group 00:58:00of environmentalists who want to stop the world over there, too.

[Tape Break]

Geier: You were talking earlier about Jerry Franklin. When he started doing work on the IBP program, several sites were designated as research natural areas [RNAs]. The 1950s was a period of real interest in establishing RNAs. Was that a priority when you were involved in management in that area? How did you view the Research Natural Area Program?

Anderson: Well, we had no particular interest in them. We had 6500-7000 acres to manage, and didn't have anybody who wanted to go in there with it [the RNA concept]. It didn't bother us.

Kerrick: Uh-huh.

Geier: What was done there was funded with timber sale dollars, I think, from the Andrews?

Kerrick: Well I don't know.

Anderson: No, they wanted us to do as much as we could. The foresters wanted us to do work there [experimental forests, RNAs, etc.]. They didn't have too many foresters.

Kerrick: Right. But funds for things like replanting, regenerating, and that sort of thing, were generated by the timber sales.

Geier: Yeah.

Kerrick: But there must have been some research funds, too. Obviously, they had to design the studies and to support the researchers there.

Geier: Yeah.

Kerrick: But the money for laying the timber sales out and so on, probably came out of our funds.

Anderson: I think so.

Kerrick: Yeah.

Geier: And they'd be counted under your allocated cut for that year?

Kerrick: No, I think it was always unregulated out there, but it would be part of the unregulated harvest.

Geier: Yeah, okay.

Anderson: Wasn't much designated to be used in the Andrews, either.

Kerrick: Hmm?

Anderson: Although sometimes they would give it to you with the understanding that you'd do some work in the Andrews [with the funds].

Kerrick: Right. Like the trail construction project in the Andrews.

Anderson: Yeah.

Kerrick: Some unique things like that.

Geier: So it sounds like your impression is that, essentially, research wasn't a major burden on management at that time, but it wasn't a major concern either. Is that an accurate characterization?

Anderson: Oh yeah. Well, our cutting had some research tied to it, all our cutting. Every year we'd do some of that. We were fine. Anything we wanted to do, we did it.

Geier: In terms of staffing, did it take much of your budget or available personnel to manage the Andrews?

Anderson: No.

Geier: [continuing] -- running the program?

Anderson: No.

Kerrick: No, there wasn't anything specifically set up on the Andrews, as there is now.

Geier: Yeah.

Kerrick: It wasn't then. Our sale administrator, he administered elsewhere in the district [Blue River R.D.] as well as there [H.J. Andrews].

Anderson: Yeah.

Kerrick: Well, we're probably (laughing) wearing Ed out. Yeah.

Anderson: Yeah.

Geier: Probably a good place to stop.