Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

About the Crater Lake NP Oral History Series

We’re in Section B, Landscape Architecture in the National Park Service and the U.S Forest Service.

Professor Peck used to tell student of landscape architecture at Oregon State about his consulting work with the U.S. Forest Service. He used to talk with me about it, because I had expressed my desire to do design projects while in college that would relate to the National Park Service. That’s when he explained to me that I had to go through the process of the design as set up by the curriculum and doing all the various types of design projects that were typical for landscape architects in studying the course. So I was able, though, in the School of Forestry as one of my projects in forest silviculture to plan a new entrance to the Peavy Arboretum at Corvallis (11). Then also I did a plan for one of the areas in the Arboretum as a day-use development. One time, I entered a ASAL design competition, which accredited schools of landscape architecture in the country, and won a second mention in the national design competition. Actually, I took fifth place among all the students in the country in this design competition. The design had to do with two adjoining country estates and integrating one new development into the old homestead development.

My earliest projects with the Forest Service as a landscape architect had to do with several of the campgrounds that were something like the Rim Village campground, where there was just nothing to it but a big dust bowl.  So many of those early developments were that way. I think we’ve learned from a forest pathologist by the name of E.P. Meinecke, who came up with the concept of control roads and parking, to minimize the impact on the forest trees. Many of the trees in the popular recreation areas were dying because of compaction through human use. But along with that in the Forest Service, I was able to get involved in the Timberline Trail around Mount Hood, which we started in 1933.

Then there were a number of special use permits like at Olallie Lake. The special use permit for a summer resort, boat docks, and the lake. That was one of my early projects. I was given the job of planning the brand new ranger station at Parkdale, Oregon, on the north side of Mount Hood. The ranger station, at that time, was in the home of the district ranger. This was a complete ranger station with new residences, office, truck and trail warehouse, fire warehouses, and things of that nature that made a complex of about 24 buildings. That had to be designed. I remember the ranger station at Parkdale, in particular, because it was alongside a fast flowing cold stream of water and there were a number of Indian huts that had been used for steam baths and firepits outside where they’d get the rocks hot and then put them in these little shelters. You could just barely crawl into them. Then they’d throw water. They’d put a lot of brush over them, throw water on these hot rocks, and they’d get all the steam. After they had gotten their skin all cleansed with this hot steam, they’d step out and about three feet away was this cold running stream that they’d dive in. If they didn’t have a heart attack, they would survive. That was an interesting project.

At the same time, I had a project up on Crater Rock on the south side of Mount Hood to build a climbers shelter up there. So I designed a shelter that was built at Crater Rock. I had to design the lookout on the summit of Mount Hood to determine if that could be rehabilitated and strengthened as another shelter for climbers. I remember, particularly, this trail on the old historic Barlow Road, coming over the mountain, and we made a bridal trail out of it. We had rustic signing incorporated in it. There were a number of very interesting projects while I was there at Zigzag Ranger Station. I even drew up a plan for the development for a local school. Where it is now, a major condominium and recreation area by the Welches golf course. Things like that would come into being. We did a lot of work with the local communities around the forest. I had some interesting field trips up to the Oak Grove Ranger Station by taking what we call a speeder car up through one of the city of Portland dams and electrical projects. But you’d take this little speeder car and you’d sit on the side of this speeder car and you’d go over these trestles and then all of a sudden you’re looking down between your knees and there was a drop off that looked like several hundred feet. You were up high on the trestle above the river. Then a lot of backcountry horseback trips. The Forest Service type of work was quite interesting in that there were a lot of backcountry campgrounds and hot springs like at Bagby Hot Springs. It was first about a 12-mile speeder trip and then a 17 mile horseback trip into the backcountry to Bagby Hot Springs, where we planned the development of campgrounds and the development of the hot springs itself. On the matter of shelters on the Timberline Trail, I had to come up with the design of stone shelters that would be on the 32-mile length of the trial. In scouting that out, it was quite interesting because I had to climb up over the Zigzag and then the Reed Glacier, and finally up to the Sandy Glacier. At one time, looking back where I had been, I was just right up above a yawing crevasse with about 2,000 foot drop off just below it. I didn’t realize that I was walking across terrain like that until I had gotten over into a glacial moraine on the Sandy Glacier.

There was a number of interesting experiences on those trips. We supervised crews at different levels from about the 1400-foot elevation on the mountain up to around 7000 feet, where we had these trail shelters built. Of course, on the summit of Mount Hood, you had to be quite a rock climber on some of the work. I didn’t expect to do that as a landscape architect. But I learned in the Forest Service you had to do a lot of things that weren’t customarily done by landscape architects. The work up at the Columbia Gorge was quite interesting because at that time the Bonneville Dam was under construction. We had a number of projects like at Eagle Creek where we acquired additional land, because the Corps of Engineers acquired property on both sides of the river for what they call their flow-line acquisition. The Forest Service was able to change property to acquire this land, like at Eagle Creek, where we had all this upper plateau country above the main Eagle Creek. [This was] where we developed day-use facilities and observation buildings and things of that nature.

I enjoyed being on the Mount Hood Forest tremendously and then in October, 1934, the regional forester assigned me to his office to open up and be the first regional landscape architect for the North Pacific Region (12). With that [job], I was able to return to Crater Lake through my trips to the Umpqua and the Rogue River national forests. So I reacquainted myself with Crater Lake. On one of the trips we had one of our junior staff foresters and his wife ride the Oregon Skyline Trail from Mount Hood to the Lake of the Woods below Crater Lake. So I drove down to Crater Lake with this junior forester’s car so that when he finished his ride down to Lake of the Woods, he’d have his car to come home. We had trucks to bring the horses and the pack animals back to the Mount Hood Forest. I was on the Umpqua and the Rogue River and the Siskiyou forests, and over to the Fremont and all of that southern Oregon country from east to west at least once and maybe a couple or three times each year. While I was at Crater Lake in 1930 and 1931, I made acquaintance with a man by the name of Ike Davidson. Ike Davidson was superintendent of construction, I believe at that time, and he did a lot of rock work (13). They were building, I believe the superintendent’s residence out of rock. Then one of the projects they were doing with rock, of course, was the parapet walls. Ike Davidson was hired to do the major rock work at Timberline Lodge, so I came into contact with him again.

We had lots to talk about because what was done at Crater Lake was being repeated at Timberline Lodge (14).  At that time, the WPA Director for Oregon, E.J. Griffith, wanted to have a name distinctive of Timberline Lodge for its style of architecture. The only other style that was being discussed was rustic and the like. So somebody on the staff came up with the term Cascadian. Well being of course in the Cascade Range, it was decided that maybe the nomenclature Cascadian would be identical and almost just strictly for Timberline Lodge. It’s been called that ever since (15). The landscaping at Timberline Lodge reflected what I learned at Crater Lake. My relationship at Crater Lake had a lot to do with what we did at Timberline Lodge. I find that very interesting. Of course, I can’t say much about the way it looks now. I don’t want to criticize, but Timberline Lodge was completed in 1937. When it was dedicated by the President, and all the site development work was finished, it never looked any better. It was really a fine alpine Cascadian project. But unfortunately, I have to say that I am not pleased with the way it looks today. The Lodge itself has been beautifully maintained on the inside. The outside, the terraces, which were meant for real nice public use, are nothing but places to store wood. They have done so many things that have been opposite of what I think should have been done, but originally it was done just right, just according to our plans and the direction of Regional Forester C.V. Buck.

Along come World War II and I was directed by the Corps of Engineers to report to the Portland District. I was no loan from the Forest Service to organize the camouflage planning program, which I did. I was all over Oregon and eastern Washington and into Idaho on different airbase projects and the like getting projects toned down so that, at least, on first strike, the Japanese might have to take a moment to figure out where they were. And the objective was to deter them from their first strike. After the Battle of Midway, why, I then found my work to be on a maintenance basis because we didn’t fear the invasion of the Japanese on the west coast even though we had been bombarded in several places by Japanese submarines. This included their lightweight autogiro planes they assembled on the subs, which dropped incendiary bombs on the southwestern coast that were deployed mainly to get people away from the shipyards and the aircraft factories to fight fire. But that never panned out because our Forest Service lookouts put out those fires.

I went back to the Forest Service at Mount Hood after the war. They needed someone up there to take over the Project Work Budget planning. I was there for six months and the only time I ever sat down was when I had dinner. I was in the field all over that million-and-a-half acre forest, either by trail or on horseback coming up with the Project Work Budget. This consisted of thumbnail sketch studies of projects, how they could be planned, and estimates of man hours of labor and project costs. I was then sent back to the regional office to take over again that Project Work Budget planning for the whole region.

In 1947, I decided that a continued career in the Park Service was to my benefit. I had been in contact with Red Hill and other park service people in connection with a coordinated Forest Service/National Park planning and development program. The Park Service, at that time, had the concept of trying to move the major use areas out of the park and letting the surrounding national forests take care of the camping, many of their administration buildings, and the communities for park personnel. So I was involved in that and then I found out there was this opening at Coulee Dam for a resident landscape architect. Along with an increase in a pay rating, why, I went up to Coulee Dam in March of ’47. That was a wonderful experience. I enjoyed doing the National Park Service type of master planning. Then it was a wonderful place to live, Coulee, and most of the people there were college-trained people. The work on designing the master plan from Coulee Dam up to the Canadian border was very challenging. Coulee Campgrounds and special areas for resorts, boating facilities, and things of that order. So I finished the master plan study for Coulee Dam and Newton Drury was the director. He approved it and, at that time, funds were running pretty low in the Federal Government. Many of the engineering personnel at Coulee Dam were being let go. I thought I saw the handwriting on the wall. So I elected to return to southern California, where I grew up, and opened up a private practice in landscape architecture, which I did for about six months.

I was so busy I didn’t have time to see my family, and it dawned on me that this wasn’t the career I wanted. And, lo and behold, I had a call from Dam Hull, who was the first chief landscape architect for the National Park Service. He had retired as the chief landscape architect for the California State Parks System and he told me the job was open and suggested that I take the next exam, which I did. Then I was asked to be the chief landscape architect for the California State Park System. It took several months before I moved up there [Sacramento] in August 1949. My family came up about six months later after we had sold our home. I had a career there from 1949 to when I retired in 1973. The first year I was the only landscape architect in the California State Park System.

That was an associate position. Then a senior position opened up in the Office of Architecture. There was only one other senior, so I took the exam for that and was appointed as the second senior landscape architect for the Office of Architecture, which was an entirely new facet of landscape design for me: mental hospitals, state prisons, office buildings, and I even had the National Guard armories. It was a major program because there was quite an appropriation for all these new state buildings. I was involved in it from the Oregon border down to the Mexican border.

Then Newton Drury had been assigned as the new director for the state park system after being the director of the National Park Service. I talked with him and he had a job for me to come over as the landscape architect in charge of master planning for the state parks, which I did. That was a very delightful job because I traveled throughout the state, and being my native state, I knew a lot of it. I’d take horseback trips in Mount San Jacinto and looked over the area where the tramway from Palm Springs goes up to the summit and selected generally the site where the upper terminals should be. We were in the Redwoods one week and down in the desert the next. A lot of projects were along the Colorado River. What I liked most were some of the major projects in the Sierra.

I got involved in the 1960 Olympics at Squaw Valley. The legislature appropriated funds for the Olympic development and as part of that several million of it came from state park funds. So we were involved, but the idea was I was to work with the Olympic Commission to determine what private lands we should acquire at Squaw Valley. Once we started talking with the people involved in the Olympic Commission planning, they told us to bug off. They had an Olympics to put on and they weren’t going to be worried about whether they bought any land for the future state park or not. So we had to take what we could get when the Olympics were over. All we took was a lot of litigation. We had everybody that was supposed to sue the Olympic Commission suing the state. Paulson and Cushing were the two principal landowners. Paulson was suing the state because of the fact that the meadow that he owned had been covered with sawdust and had to be used as the parking area during the Olympics, with the idea that the sawdust would freeze and form the base. Well, all the sawdust did was enhance the meadow sod, but the state had to pay out several million dollars for so-called deterioration for the meadow.  There were several instances where that happened.

I was then appointed to supervise all planning and development for the state parks from Yosemite to the Oregon boundary, including all the Sierra, all the Redwoods, the valley parks, and the like. We had projects at Lake Tahoe, where we did a great deal of land acquisition and development. We had substantial appropriations from the legislature to do both design and construction. So I was supervising all of that work.

After that work calmed down, we didn’t have quite the appropriations we had, why, my job with the state was to go in and review some of the major park projects and do general development. You might call it master planning of these parks, along with additional land acquisition studies. We were getting limited appropriations for land acquisition. At Castle Crags, for instance, up by Mount Shasta, I was working on an arrangement with the Forest Service where I’d set up lands to be acquired, private lands, and then we would work out a tri-party exchange whereby some of the land that the state would purchase would be exchanged with the Forest Service for National Forest land that we integral to the state park development.

We had a program up at Lake Tahoe at Sugar Pine Point where there was a private estate owned by one of the early banking families of Los Angeles. This was about a 2,000-acre project. I had made a study of the Lake Tahoe Basin for land areas to be acquired for state parks. Sugar Pine Point was one of them that had excellent lake frontage and went back up into the canyons with ample opportunities for campground development, things of that nature. We were working out a tri-party arrangement with the Forest Service and the private owners to acquire land next to Emerald Bay at Cascade Lake, but that project fell through. Originally the Forest Service was to acquire the property through a timber exchange. They would exchange timber rights with a private timber company and that private timber company, in turn, would buy the property from the private owner and then it would be turned over to the state for a park.  Well, we worked out a number of arrangements like that in the area on the north shore of the lake.

Lake Tahoe became one of the major project area studies, and the Grover Hot Springs area on the summit of the Sierra on the east side was another major project. We had quite a variety of beach projects along the coast. At the time we had the big tsunami (16) that wrecked a lot of Crescent City and came down along the Oregon Coast was when we were making a study under the direction of Pat Brown, who was governor, for a study of the redwoods. We made a study of what existed and what redwoods were being logged, and then what redwoods were in danger of being logged so we could set up a program for land acquisition. We were able to accomplish some of this. The timber companies were almost like enemy number one.  They didn’t want to even see us on their property. It was a hectic period of time. The National Park Service had just made a study prior to our study in connection with the National Geographic Society which provided funds for a study of the redwoods (17). I met with the landscape architects of the Park Service who were doing that study and it was a lot of help. I had a lot of help from them to come up with our study and our report to the director, which then went on to the governor and then on to the Legislature.

The state park planning system grew quite substantially from the time I entered in 1949 as the chief landscape architect until I retired in 1973. It went from me being the only landscape architect and I think we must have had about 75 at the time I finished. I was in the field and in the Sacramento headquarters office. Then, of course, as things often happen, feast and famine set in and they had to let a lot of the personnel go after I retired because the Legislature didn’t come up with the appropriations that were needed. They didn’t have enough taxpayers anteing up into the treasury. Well, the whole state system was having a difficult time with finances. The state grew to the point where they had so many different divisions and divisions within divisions that I used to say that it’s getting to the point where it’s like the doctor that’s so specialized that he specializes in the lower lobe of the left ear. That’s about the way the state was. They’d set up a landscape architect group that studies just National Guard armories and another group that would study signs. I explained to them I felt a landscape architect should be like the family doctor. He should be capable of doing everything and anything that came his way. But there were a lot of people that were looking for careers in some specialty and this is the way they felt they could get a career going. That went on for a while. There was one group that just specialized in studying the reservoirs.

There are still additions to the state park system, which is simple great. At one time, I proposed facetiously that the whole state of California ought to go back to being publicly owned and having to have justifications made for every kind of development. In particular, not allowing cities like Los Angeles to grow the way it’s growing because then it gets a preponderance of legislators who control Sacramento and whoever holds the most votes, of course, gets the most money. So many of these projects were going to southern California. But so far there’ve been good additions to the state park system, all to the public’s benefit. There was a change of three directors when I was in the division. At first, it was a division of beaches and parks. My former commanding colonel in the Army Engineers during the war became the chief after he retired from the Army Engineers. And his commanding general was General Hannum, who became the director of resources for California after he retired. The colonel in change of the Pacific Division had become what was called a beach erosion control engineer for the state park system. He’s the one that hired me. At that time, Governor Earl Warren was in office and they had the director of natural resources taking change of the state parks. This was General Hannum. From there, former supervisor Nelson, who had been Supervisor of the Tahoe National Forest, was made chief forester and became the director of natural resources. He supervised the state park system. Then Newton Drury came from, I guess, it was Chicago at that time to become our new chief of state parks (18). When he retired, Charlie De Turk, who had been director of parks in Indiana and then later became one of the chief planners for the Washington State Parks System, came to California as the new director of parks. When Charlie De Turk retired, we got a new director, Fred Jones. He eventually went to Washington with the change of administration when Pat Brown lost out to Ronald Reagan.

We had of course, as every political party changes, new personnel handling the different divisions. They became what personnel handing the different divisions. They became what were called secretaries under the governor.  They originally had about 12 divisions that all reported to the governor, but that was cut down to about a half a dozen. We were in the Resources Agency. When I retired in 1973, William Penn Mott was the director of state parks. Bill stayed on until several years after I had retired and then he went to Washington as the director of the National Park Service (19). Bill has passed away, as have so many of the men that I have known in the Forest Service and the State Park system. I’m now 85 and I don’t know whether I want to live to be a 105 but, at any rate, I’m glad I’m still surviving. I attribute a lot of that to the fact that I had my career in the National Park Service and the Forest Service and was not of doors so much of the time. But I came from a family of good genes where  all my uncles lived to be almost 100, and my great grandmother lived to be over 100. So who knows, I may outlast George Burns.  Well, Steve, that do you think? Is there anything else that we might discuss while I have the microphone here?