Albert Hackert and Otto Heckert

I just thought since his dad worked for the park…

Maybe his dad got the job as carpenter being as how Pete was head ranger (10). Pete was his boy. Here’s more bear pictures. I don’t know if there are any duplicates there or not. (AH)

There’s a little cub. One time we were going to work and those cubs got so they’d come in the back door of the Mess hall in the kitchen and ol’ Bill would feed them cookies and stuff like that. We had a big wooden box which we’d fix up with sandwiches and all kind of canned stuff for taking on the road when we went out different places to work. These two little cubs were so tame that they got in the pantry and into our grub box. They really messed it up before we got away from there with a grader and the team from Government Camp. We were delayed about an hour waiting for Billy to straighten up that grub box and put stuff back in it. They really went to town when they got the lid up. Those little cubs never got full, I don’t think. I grabbed one and packed him up and Billy grabbed the other one and set him out on the porch, just like a couple of cats. That’s me feeding the bears  there. (OH)

There’s Billy standing at the back door of the mess hall. (OH)

Here’s me and the grader. Old iron-wheel grader. There’s the truck that went off the bridge. (OH)

This is Albert’s picture. You know what it says on the back. It says “Otto’s tip over”. (Dorland Offenbacher)

Yeah, that’s when we got it set up on its wheels. Evidently before we got it pulled up out of where it went in. In the back of that truck there was about a half ton of coal. It also had a box in there, which had 5,000 of these government permits they used to have to sign when they entered a park. When they paid the entrance fee, they filled out these permits. People came in later in the summer and said to the fellow who was working in the check-in place that if we’d known we were going to get a permit like this one, we’d have brought one with us. We got that word from some people that came from Grants Pass. That box broke open and 5,000 permits went down the Rogue River. No way they were ever getting those back. I was thinking that box wouldn’t break open and those things dissipate along the ban here, and there. They got clear to Grants Pass. Well, that’s quite a ways down the river. That’s before Lost Creek was in there by a lot of years.

Did you meet Fred Kiser, the photographer, when you were there?  

No, I don’t think so. (OH)