Don James
January 24, 1995As told to Denison Thomas
Note: Don is a long time employee of the U.S.Forest Service and has kindly consented to give us some of his impressions of his many years with the Forest Service.
I was born in Longview, Washington. I started grade school in Longview and finished up grade school, junior high and high school in Kelso. From there I went to Washington State College which is now Washington State University. I completed a degree in agriculture with a major in forestry.
My first employment was with the Weyerhauser Timber Company where I had been promised a forester's job. There was none available at that time but I stayed with the job for a little over a year. Nothing happened, so I took a Civil Service exam for a Forest Service job. I passed the exam and was offered a job in Arkansas that I turned down and was then offered a job in Indiana, which I turned down.
If you turn down more than two job offers you're off the list. I took the next job offer which was in Prineville. That was my first job with the Forest Service. I moved to Prineville in October, 1953 and started working at the Ochoco Ranger Station with the title of Junior Forester. That title is given to first year employees who are on probation. I passed that probation and continued in the forest service for a little over 34 years.
My first three years were spent at Ochoco Ranger Station. I had a crew at Cold Springs, on the east side of Big Summit Prairie. We piled brush, seeded grass, pruned and thinned young trees. We had a camp cook and about 10 to 15 people in the crew.
And I worked timber sales with Barney Duberow who was my boss. We did most of the sale preparation on the district. We laid out the sale, cruised, and marked the trees to be cut. I scaled logs in the woods right behind the fallers. I scaled what was called the Ochoco-Howard Creek sale. Hudspeth Lumber Company logged the sale. The company built the dam that is known as Walton Lake. During the logging of that sale a road was built from Ochoco Creek to Walton Lake. The road was completed in 1954 a mile beyond Walton Lake to what was called the Ochoco-Howard Creek Summit. Later the road was completed from that summit down Howard Creek to Big Summit Prairie.
I dealt with quite a few sales for Hudspeth Sawmill and Ochoco Lumber Company. Not too many with Pine Products. Their sales seemed to be on some of the other districts of the forest. Then there were several small operators known as "gypos." The ones that come to my mind are Shirley Quant and John Collins.
Timber sales were cruised for volume, that is, for the total volume of the sale. The species in our forest were Ponderosa Pine, Douglas Fir, Western Larch and White Fir. The prime timber the local companies were after was Ponderosa Pine.
In the early 50's appraisals would run from between $20.00 and $30.00 per thousand on the stump. These sales were sold at an auction bid in the Supervisor's office in Prineville. A representative from each of the local mills would show up for the auction. Most of the time they would put in the appraised bid. That was the stumpage value we figured it was worth based on all the formulas we had and the government rules and regulations.
If there was more than one sealed bid, it was open to auction. Many, many times someone would raise the bid a nickel per thousand on a minor species (Fir or Larch) sale and he would be awarded that sale because no one else would bid.
We could just about predict who would get each sale based on where that sale was located on the forest. It seemed to be that one company had a cluster of sales in one part of the forest and another company had a cluster of sales in another place. Occasionally, somebody would buy one in the middle of the cluster just to make it look good.
In the early days I don't recall of any lumber companies from out of our local area involved in the sales. It was pretty much confined to the local companies. The Ochoco forest also included the Snow Mountain District, which was predominantly Edward Hines Lumber Company's area, and nobody seemed to want to bid against that company.
After three years at the Ochoco Ranger Station, I was transferred to the Prineville District where my primary duties were fire management. This included protection of the forest from fire, being prepared to fight fire, and fuel management. Fuel management included brush disposal behind timber sales as well as other things that created fuels. I was also in charge of many other small jobs. Fire protection in the warehouse and the other Forest Service buildings in town. Fence maintenance on cattle allotments. Hand road maintenance which is simply a nice term for cleaning out culverts. Most anything my boss on this district, Darrel Frewing, didn't want to do he had me do.
At that time we had both cattle and sheep allotments on the forests. But going back to my time on the Big Summit District, we had several cattle allotments and about four sheep allotments. Those sheep allotments were converted to cattle allotments. Allotments are described as cow units. A cow unit is one animal grazing 30 days. At that time the charge for a cow unit was twenty-five cents.
There was always kind of a cat and mouse game with loggers but we got along very well with the loggers. It was a matter of common sense and sitting down and working with those fellows. They'd work with us and we'd work with them. But they were in business to make money and if we allowed them to cut corners, they would. In my administration we did the best we could to keep the loggers meeting the terms of their contract. I'm sure a few logs went down the road someway or another that weren't accounted for, but we didn't have any scandals during my time.
People were generally honest. Loggers sometimes blamed the Forest Service for their troubles. Hudspeth had trouble coming up with enough cash many times. We'd have to stop the operation until cash money covered the stumpage payment. And they told their employees it was the fault of the Forest Service.
In the 1950's we planted 100% of all the ground that was logged. We seeded grass immediately behind the logging operation to put a cover on the soil so it wouldn't erode. We did small animal eradication. Porcupines, gophers and rabbits caused much damage to the trees. Rabbits eat the bark off. Mice eat the bark. Ground squirrels eat the trees. We did what we could to eliminate them.
That may not be the thing to do these days, but we did. Isaac Walton League in Prineville had a contest at one time for who could turn in the most porcupine noses. Prizes were offered, the first prize being a 30.06. So the community was behind the effort to eliminate porcupine damage. Porcupines eat the bark in the top two or three feet of young trees which causes a limb to take over and creates a permanent crook in the tree. The result is a very defective tree as far as lumber is concerned.
During my tenure on the Ochoco National Forest, there was no clear-cutting in the Pine forests. More recently there have been several areas of clear-cuts. It looks horrible and I don't believe it's the thing to do. It might be necessary in a large area of fire kill or bug kill for cleanup and replanting. But to go into a live stand, I don't think that's the thing to do.
When I first came to the Ochoco forest there were 100 permanent employees, about 20 to each ranger station and those in the Supervisor's office in town. During summers there were additional part time people who filled in various crews; fire-fighting crews, lookouts, survey crews. That figure has tripled compared to when I was in the forest. Now there are fishery biologists, soil scientists, archeologists, and so forth. They are so environmentally conscious that, in fact, the timber sales have not progressed very far because of those concerns. I don't want to comment on whether that's good or bad, but I don't like it.
When I started on the Ochoco, the allowable cut was just under 200 million a year. It is now less than 20 million. In talking with forest officials just within the last month, they have set a target of 50 million this year but they say it can't be met because so many people have been laid off. They say they would be lucky to meet half of that figure or 25 million. That's only enough to keep one sawmill going part time. I would think there would be some flow of timber but it will never be what we saw back in the 50's and 60's.
On the subject of fire fighting. After 17 years I became a member of a Fire Overhead Team. That is a group of personnel that manages large fires. My title was Service Chief. Now that I'm retired I am active on an on call when needed basis, and my title is Logistics Section Chief. Basically I do all the support services for fire-fighting personnel. When they are out on a fire they are my responsibility as far as housing, feeding, sleeping, first aid, transporting, and so forth.
In the early years on the Big Summit District we had lookouts on many of the high points: Round Mountain, Pisgah, Wolf Mountain, Paulina Butte, Hardscrabble; On the Prineville District there was East Maury (Tower Point), West Maury, Ingram Lookout at North, Wildcat up Mill Creek. Most of these lookouts have been removed or are not used today. The lookout on Pisgah is still in use. The lookouts were used as communication centers as well as fire watches. Since there now is a road system all over the forests, the trend is to let the public report fires. The fire crews are fewer in number because of the matter of economics. On high fire danger days they use aircraft. So, the old tradition of lookouts is fading away and it will never be the same.
I can recall the 1962 Columbus Day storm while I was District Ranger at the Ochoco Ranger Station. The ranger station is in a little valley on Ochoco Creek. The storm went right over the top of us at the ranger station. We hardly knew anything was happening. The next morning it was obvious that every road on the district was impassable with fallen trees across them. It was a major effort to salvage the timber that was blown down. There was about 10 million board feet of blowdown on our district. What we did is to get some lumber company timber fallers to buck open the roads. As the trees were cut they were cut into log lengths for the sawmills. The logs were pushed out of the roads, sold and salvaged. Before that salvage was complete the following spring we had another blowdown. It didn't have a name; people didn't even know that more trees had blown down on top of those from the Columbus Day storm.
My career in the U.S. Forest Service spanned a little over 34 years. As I said, I started here in 1953 and worked through a number of jobs. The Big Summit District the first three years. Prineville District the next three years. Then as an Assistant Fire Staff officer in the Forest Supervisor's office for two years. I was assigned back to Big Summit District as District Ranger for five years.
After that I moved then to John Day where I was District Ranger. The district was very similar to the Big Summit District but twice as large. We cut more timber, had more cattle allotments and more wildlife. The thing we did not have there was rockhounds, which were prevalent on the Big Summit District. After five years in John Day I was moved to Corvallis as fire, recreation and staff officer and assistant to the Forest Supervisor. One of the big challenges there was managing the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area, one of the first national recreation areas created. The big sand dunes are highly desired by recreationists and by environmentalists. Of course, there was a clash between the two. Our plan divided the area and gave some land to both groups.
After 15 years in Corvallis, we retired. We liked the Prineville area so much that in 1987 we moved back here, and we expect to spend the rest of our lives here.