The Unmarked Trail - Forest History

The Unmarked Trail

Managing National Forests in a Turbulent Era

Region 5 Oral History, Volume II: 1960s to 1990s

Compilation and Context by: Region 5 Oral History Project Volunteers

and Victor Geraci, PhD Regional Oral History Office, University of California, Berkeley

Forest Service--Pacific Southwest Region U.S. Department of Agriculture

September 2009

R5-FR-011

Copyright: When a source is listed with photographs a copyright exists. That item may not be used or reproduced in any manner apart from this book unless a separate approval is acquired. Cover photo-illustrations were created from Forest Service images taken on the Pacific coast, near Jenner, California. Photos by Steve Dunsky. Book design and layout by Mario Chocooj.

First published by the U.S. Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Region on September 1, 2009 ISBN 9781593514860

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) prohibits discrimination in all its programs and activities on the basis of race, color, national origin, age, disability, and where applicable, sex, marital status, familial status, parental status, religion, sexual orientation, genetic information, political beliefs, reprisal, or because all or part of an individual's income is derived from any public assistance program. (Not all prohibited bases apply to all programs.) Persons with disabilities who require alternative means for communication of program information (Braille, large print, audiotape, etc.) should contact USDA's TARGET Center at (202) 720-2600 (voice and TDD). To file a complaint of discrimination, write to USDA, Director, Office of Civil Rights, 1400 Independence Avenue, S.W., Washington, D.C. 20250-9410, or call (800) 795-3272 (voice) or (202) 720-6382 (TDD). USDA is an equal opportunity provider and employer.

Acknowledgments

The Region 5 Oral History Project brought together a working group that encompassed the diverse talents of numerous Forest Service professionals, retirees, volunteers and staff and researchers from the UC Berkeley, Regional Oral History Office (ROHO) led by Associate Director Vic Geraci. This rich "history by committee" evolved as a result of the hard work and talents of many passionate believers in the Forest Service and its role in conserving America's forests.

As if mustering for a fire call, Forest Service staff and volunteers assembled a sizable cadre to orchestrate and execute the project; they deserve special thanks. Regional Office leadership came from Steve Dunsky and Linda Nunes with help from the Retiree Oral History Program leadership of Bob Cermak and Doug Leisz. Bob Harris served as the Retiree Program Coordinator with the assistance of Bob Smart, and was instrumental in the editing and review process for all chapters. Bob Harris also oversaw the geographic area work completed by Janet Buzzini (Northern California), Bob Smart (Central Sierra/ Sacramento), Max Younkin (Southern Sierra/Fresno), Larry Schmidt (Eastern Sierra), Gail Wright Strachn and Al West, (Southern California), John Fiske (Bay Area), Enoch Bell (PSW), Alan Lamb (Region 3), John Marker (Region 6), and Dick Pfilf (Washington, DC). Interviewers for the project (in addition to those named above) were Phil Aune, Irl Everst, Steve Fitch, Jerry Gause, Glenn Gottschall, John Grosvenor, Phil Hirl, Larry Hornberger, Fred Kaiser, Jamie Lewis, Steve Kirby, Alan Lamb, Susana Luzier, Gene Murphy, Brian Payne, Del Pengilly, Bill Pliler, Joe Polselli, Dick Pomeroy, David Schreiner, Aaron Shapiro, Robert Van Aken and Nord Whited. We also benefited from interviews by Louise Odegaard with the Breakthrough Women Project and from interviews done for the Forest Service Centennial film The Greatest Good.

Each chapter had team leaders who helped shape its final form. John Fiske and Bob Smart for Timber with reviews by Jerry Jensen, Ed Whitmore and Bob Rogers; Bob Harris and Linda Nunes for Changing Workforce; Doug Leisz and Bob Irwin for FIRESCOPE with historical context drawn from the work of Bob Cermak; Jane Westenberger, Janet Buzzini, and Steve Dunsky for Communications.

We extend a special thank you to Regional Foresters Jack Blackwell, Bernie Weingardt and Randy Moore for their financial and moral support. Thanks to Regional Office staff Roxane Scales for copyediting, Winifred Weber for

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managing printing procurement, and Mario Chocooj for the layout and design. Claudine Shine and Brenda Kendrix managed the fiscal and other administrative details of the Oral History Project. Mim Eisenberg transcribed most of the interviews and offered insightful comments. Bill Merrihew, a Forest Service retiree and talented artist allowed us to use his humorous editorial cartoons. Former Public Affairs Staff Directors Marilyn Hartley, Janice Gauthier, Rick Alexander, Carl Holguin and current Director Sherry Reckler have all strongly supported the project over many years.

At UC Berkeley, ROHO Director Richard C?ndida Smith and Editor Shannon Page established the initial cooperative working agreement and provided strong support as well. David Dunham developed the Project website.

Finally, we wish to thank the many individuals who shared their life stories with us. Our greatest regret is that space limitations prevented us from using all of the wonderful, insightful material. The main purpose of the project, however, is to record these experiences for posterity. We encourage readers and scholars to explore the full text of the interviews which are available at the Region 5 Regional Office and online at the ROHO website.

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The Unmarked Trail: Managing National Forests in a Turbulent Era

Contents

Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vi Introduction: "A Crack in Time" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . viii CHAPTER I The Rise and Fall of the Timber Program . . . . . . . . . . . 1 CHAPTER II Changing Workforce . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 CHAPTER III Point of Departure--FIRESCOPE and a Brief History of Fire Management in Region 5 . . . 153 CHAPTER IV Communications: Telling the Forest Service Story . . . 217 Interviewees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271 Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286 Timeline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289

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Foreword

T his second volume of Region 5 oral histories addresses four themes: Timber, Changing Workforce, FIRESCOPE, and Communications. In different ways, these were critical issues for the Forest Service in California during the latter decades of the 20th Century.

In 2003, Forest Service retirees, with financial and staff support from the Regional Forester, initiated the Region 5 Oral History Project. The primary purpose was to record the life stories of retirees who had spent some portion of their career in the Region. These interviewees were intended for use by scholars in the future, but the steering committee also decided to publish edited portions of these interviews.

The first volume, The Lure of the Forest, was published for the 2005 Centennial of the Forest Service. It focuses on the older retirees who worked in the years before and just after World War II. I compiled those interviews and wrote the contextual material. In all, the oral history committee utilized members of the region's past workforce and conducted and recorded over 150 oral interviews that were professionally transcribed.

For Volume II, I worked with the Region 5 Oral History Project volunteers/ retirees to shape the interviews and contextual material into a narrative that is, we hope, both interesting and informative. In the following pages, the stories of these interviewees are synthesized into sections based upon the four themes and reflect the individual and collective memory of how the Agency navigated difficult policy, personnel, scientific, legal, and legislative changes to arrive at a modern version of Gifford Pinchot's maxim of "the greatest good." From their stories and established historiographic sources, the following four-part history emerged.

The Region 5 Oral History Project loosely fits into the Community History format that historian Linda Shopes has described as, "doing serious history for and with non-specialists outside of the academic setting."1 This approach is meant to enhance our understanding hereto only relayed by written documents and artifacts with stories recalled by the actual actors in events. Placing the burden on any one discipline or research methodology to capture all the fine nuances of past events is problematic. To help in this matter many scholars in the later half of the 20th Century turned to the oral narrative as a means to broaden the historical message. At the same time detractors of the validity of oral history have questioned the role of personal recollection in writing history.

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The Unmarked Trail: Managing National Forests in a Turbulent Era

Western historians have found that oral history can preserve or re-present the past for groups or organizations wishing to address issues of personal recollections of history. On the down side, utilizing oral history to support personal views can sometimes become divisive. Projects designed to pay homage to past events and participants have become a battleground for culture wars on which divergent groups struggle to claim their version as the "true" story. In America, this can be best shown by the representation of the Enola Gay at the Smithsonian Institution. It resulted in heated battles between WWII veteran groups, Japanese-Americans, progressive public historians, and ultra-conservative groups who all claimed to own the true story of the plane that dropped the first Atomic Bomb on Japan.2

Also problematic for analyzing the role of oral narratives is the reliability of individual memory. Scientists are grappling with the workings of the brain whereby humans store and recall memories. In the absence of a complete scientific theory, historians are left with the task of interpreting the interrelationships between long and short term memory, the life review process in latter years, nostalgia, and the role of societal or collective community memories.

The members of the Region 5 Oral History project offer up this themefocused edited collection as an introduction to complicated stories in the hope that historians and those with a general interest in conservation history will read the transcripts and listen to the audio stories of the men and women who managed California natural resources in the last half of the 20th Century.

Victor W. Geraci, PhD

Regional Oral History Office University of California, Berkeley

Notes 1. Linda Shopes, "Oral History and the Study of Communities: Problems, Paradoxes,

and Possibilities," The Journal of American History 89:2 (September 2002): 597.

2. David Thelen, "History After the Enola Gay Controversy: An Introduction." The Journal of American History 82:3 (December 1995); 1029-1035; Richard H. Kohm, "History and the Culture Wars: The Case of the Smithsonian Institution's Enola Gay Exhibition," The Journal of American History 82:3 (December 1995); 1036-1063; and William S. Pretzer, "Reviewing Public History in Light of the Enola Gay," Technology and Culture 39:3 (July 1998); 457-461.

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