Richard Rodgers oral history narrative

              MR. RICHARD RODGERS AND HOPE RODGERS

…To provide a complete picture, it is necessary to go back some considerable distance in

history. I need to go back and mention my father, and where I came from. My father

grew up in North Dakota. His folk’s homestead was just north of McKenzie, which is

about eighteen miles east of Bismarck. They homesteaded there in 1882. My father

naturally, grew up in that area. His parents were farmers, as was he for a long time.

Then, in the early 1930’s, 1934 to be specific, he was hired by an individual called M. O.

Steen, who was involved in the early days of acquiring refuges from lands that had been

returned to counties or states for taxes. ‘Resettlement lands’ I believe, was the correct

terminology. My father was involved in the acquisition phase. Actually they were the

evaluation of these wetlands that had potential to be part of the National Wildlife Refuge

system. At that time it was the Bureau of Biological Survey of course. And Steen was

charged with locating these lands. My father was involved with evaluating these lands for

their potential as Wildlife Refuges. That was in 1934. A logical question of course would

be ‘why was my father involved?’ with this. He had no formal education in the biological

sciences, but he was an avid hunter, as were many of the people who grew up in North

Dakota at that time. He was one of the best ‘wing shots’ I ever saw. He definitely knew

what it took to constitute a waterfowl area, and that’s why he was involved. For record,

my father’s name was Wilbert A. Rodgers. In the years that followed he and the family

moved first to Billings, Montana. He had office up in Billings, which was involved with

the construction phase of various works that were performed on the Refuges largely by

WPA crews, The Works Progress Administration crews. My father was involved with

these first at Billings, and then he was moved to the Regional Office, which was in Denver

at the time. He was there for several years and them moved back to Billings, Montana.

At about this time was when the two organizations; the old Bureau of Commercial

Fisheries and the Bureau of Biological Survey were fused to form the new Bureau of

Sport Fisheries and Wildlife. As part of this, there was the move to Billings, and then a

move to Roundup where he was involved with the management of some of these what are

now called easement Refuges. There were a number of satellite Refuges. He was there for

a number of years. Then he moved to Fort Peck, which is now Charlie Russell, where he

was involved in the administration for several years. Then he moved as manager to the

Deer Flat Refuge just outside of Napa, Idaho. Then finally to the Turnbull National

Wildlife Refuge just outside of Spokane, Washington. This is where he retired in either

1966 or 1967.

I was born on the eighteenth of January 1928. So it’s event that from about the

age of six onward, I was directly involved with Refuges. Primarily living on them, or

living with someone who was directly involved with Refuges in an administrative way,

specifically, my father. So my involvement goes back a long, long way. Growing up as I

did on Refuges, my interests were very much as to be expected. I thoroughly enjoyed

hunting and to a lesser degree, fishing. At a very early age I learned to operate such things

as tractors and so forth that would be completely impossible to do in this day and age

because there were Refuge tractors. I learned what it takes for equipment maintenance

and how things were built. Many of the things that people learn later in life nowadays, I

picked up simply because I grew up on the Refuges. I went to High School at Napa,

Idaho. Napa was the town adjacent to the Deer Flat Refuge. I came of age, and when to

High School there. That’s where I met Hope. I finished High School in Napa in 1946.

World War II was just over and the best way to get a college education was to go in the

Service [military] even though the hostilities had just briefly ended. The GI Bill was still

in force. This, I did. I graduated in June of 1946 and entered the Army in August of

1946. I spent two years as an enlisted person as an airplane engine mechanic with the

Army. The Air Force has not been split off as of yet. It was an Army liaison unit.

Then, I came and entered Utah State University. At that time it was Utah State

Agricultural College. I entered into the Wildlife Department and spent four years there. I

graduated in 1952. In the mean time, Hope and I were married. We had our first daughter

while we were still in school. When I went into the Military, Hope went into Nurse’s

training. She completed her training in Napa at Mercy Hospital and various other

locations where she took some special courses. When we moved to Logan, for school, she

went to work as a R.N. That’s when I was completing my schoolwork.

As the end of the senior year approached, the usual flurry of applications for jobs

occurred. Mine was a small graduating class. There were something like sixteen or

seventeen people. Those that had positive responses and accepted positions got ready to

leave. And those that didn’t largely stuck around and decided to go to graduate school or

do something else. We had an offer for the Federal Entrance Examination, and squeezed

by. I was offered a position at Fort Peck as a member of the Range Survey team. It was

still Fort Peck. It hadn’t been changed to Charlie Russell National Wildlife Refuge yet. In

mid June Hope and I loaded up a horse trailer with all of our worldly goods. There was a

horse trailer and our little Chevy sedan. With our daughter, we headed northward over

the passes towards north eastern Montana, and the town of Fort Peck. We were lodged

right in the old town of Fort Peck, which was constructed when the dam was being built

in the mid 1930s. The houses were supposedly temporary houses at that point. But

they had been patched and repatched, and were still being used, so we were assigned one

and we moved in. It was somewhat primitive, but the basics were there. We were able to

settle in and I settled into the routine of the Survey, which in the initial phases meant a

week or so in the field, and back on the weekends. As it went on, the eight hundred

thousand acres, or whatever it was, of the range; as we got out into distant areas we’d

stay out for ten days, and come in for four. I settled into that routine. And Hope settled

into the routine in the town. One of the positive aspects was that the Manager of Fort

Peck at that time, was Frederick Staunton. He is a long time friend, and a personal friend

of my fathers. We had known each other for a long time so it was fortuitous, and perhaps

some special privilege was shown someplace along the line. But anyway, it was nice to

be there with someone I knew on my first duty station. Then shortly thereafter, our

second daughter arrived on December 29, 1953. The temperature in Glasgow, where

Hope was in the Hospital was forty-nine degrees below zero. It was a chilly welcome.

We were there at Fort Peck until February of 1954. At that time I transferred to Red

Rock Lakes, near Menida, Montana, a Trumpeter Swan area. Initially, I was the only one

that moved up because our daughter was a bit too young to go there. Hope spent a few

weeks with my parents at the Turnbull Refuge in Washington. The trip in was somewhat

interesting. The household goods were transferred by commercial transport and they

went from Fort Peck to Menida. At that time of the year everything beyond Menida out

into the Centennial Valley is snowbound. There was no way that the commercial vehicle

could make the trip, so our goods such as they were, and they were all we had, were

offloaded and stored in a small garage adjacent to one of the saloons in Menida. That’s

about all there was in Menida. I think there were three saloons, and one grocery store. It

was necessary to bring a V8 Cat from the Refuge which was twenty some miles up the

valley into Medina. It was necessary to bring it cross-country because the roads in many

places had simply disappeared under the snow. I walked the Cat into Menida followed

by a two and a half ton truck. The household good were loaded onto the truck and we

followed it back in. There was a snow, ground blizzard at the time and you had to keep

the tractor in view because a short distance behind you the road was blown shut again. It

was an interesting trip across country, over frozen streams etcetera, into the little town of

Lake View. During the trip, our goods were fairly shaken of course, but only one thing

was lost and never found again. That was a small desk of our daughters. It’s still out

there someplace in the wilds I assume. We arrived in Lake View, and moved into a

private cabin; that’s actually what it was. It was in on the north side of the one street

that went down the middle of the old cow town, which is actually what it was. It was

exactly what you see in the old western movies. At one time, the main activity in the

valley had been cattle, in fact, it still was. This cabin had one room in front. It had been

separated down the middle lengthwise with a partition. One side passed for the living

room. The other side was the girls bedroom, and ours altogether. Along the back of the

cabin another area was partitioned off, and this was our kitchen. The plumbing was out

behind in a little shed a short distance away. The water supply was a roaring spring out

in the other direction, outside of the house. Electricity had arrived in Lake View just a

few months before. In fact, the previous fall. The power to this cabin via an armored

cable. It was simply strung over the snow drifts into the house with a couple of bulbs

hanging from the ceiling. That was it. It was somewhat primitive. We heated the cabin

with a barrel heater in the front room, and a big old cook stove in the kitchen area. At

night you would stoke the stove up with wood until it got red hot. There was a fire in the

stove in the kitchen also, but not that warm. We’d go to bed, and on many nights we’d

have to get up in the middle of the night and do the process all over again. The cabin was

such that the logs on the inside were exactly the same logs that you would see on the

outside. There was simply some chinking between the logs, but no insulation. It was

right on the edge of being primitive. But we survived. That was with one daughter

several years old. And when my wife was able to arrive and we got her into the valley,

the youngster was young and Hope was having some health problems. We were up there

by ourselves. The Manager of the Refuge was “Win” Bankle, and his wife Connie and

their sons. At the little town there was still a Ranch Headquarters. And there was a

Ranch on one edge of the little town. The Headquarters held the Lewisons, and several

ranch hands for the winter. There was also a small school on the edge of the town. They

did have a schoolteacher. Several youngsters attended there. It was out in the country,

definitely. The mail arrived by what was called ‘snow plane’ at the time. They were

home built contraptions consisting of skis, usually two in the back. With an airplane

engine mounted backwards with a pusher prop installed and some kind of very primitive

cabin in front to keep out the coldest of the blast. That’s the way mail arrived. And

that’s the way we got around in the wintertime to the degree that we had to. It was a

Trumpeter Swan area, and there were some springs up at the upper end of the valley

where the Trumpeters were fed grain. In the wintertime it was necessary to make the trip

up there several times a week. This was done with Refuge snow planes. We had two at

the time. They are also built by the Refuge. And they were interesting contraptions.

Safety people would simply go away and hide these days to see something like that; with

those huge, big engines and those big props with very little protection between the people

running the machines and the parts rotating with great vigor a short distance behind. That

was our station. We arrived there and there were many interesting occurrences. We were

at Red Rock until October of 1956. At the urging of Refuge Supervisor McDonald, who

said that one Rodgers in the Region, specifically my father, was probably all we really

should have; I was encouraged to look at a different Region to spread things around a little

bit. To was to take away any view that there might be undo favoritism, or that sort of

thing. It was implied, but never really said that way. And it was for the good of the

order. At the time I was not too happy with it. But anyway, I had the opportunity to

go to Crystal Lake in Nebraska. We did this in October of 1956, and we stayed there for

eight years. It was very interesting. I’ll touch on that a little bit later. We left there in

about 1964 when we had the opportunity to go to Arrowood in North Dakota. The

address was Kentsel. The Refuge area and the associated wetlands were all part of the

responsibility of Arrowood. I went there as the Manager. I had been the Manager at

Crystal Lake. And I had been an Assistant Manager when I was at Red Rock. When I

was at Arrowood it was interesting also. It was a different part of the world, and a

different country. I was there until the summer of 1966. I then transferred to the William

L. Finley National Wildlife Refuge complex located just south of Corvallis, Oregon.

There, our daughters graduated from High School and started on to College. The oldest

was married there. It is a fascinating area. I’ll touch upon some of the details of that

later. On June 22, 1977 I reported for work in the Portland Regional Office as one of the

individuals involved in the BLHP program. At the stage I was also involved with the

youth programs for a short time. Most of the time, I was in a staff position in Refuges in

the Regional Office. I retired on the 3rd of January in 1988. The last six years that I was

in the Regional Office, I was on collateral duty as the Director of the Refuge Management

Training Academy. My direction came from the Washington office, but the actual duty

station was still retained as Portland. It was the best of all worlds, but it did involve

some commuting. After I retired, I was directly involved very heavily with the National

Wildlife Refuge Association. I had been a member since its inception. I became involved

and went through the various officer positions and was with them for about nine years

after I retired. The last four years of those, I was the President of the organization. That

ended my direct involvement.

Now, we’ll go back and have Hope give some recollections that she has from some

of the various places and maybe I’ll add a few more specific incidents that come to mind,

as we went through a long and interesting career.

MR. RODGERS: When did we first meet?

MRS. RODGERS: We knew each other in High School. And Dick was the ornery guy in

Biology class who argued with the teacher all of the time. I didn’t like him at all. I guess

we started dating when we were juniors in High School. He went into the Service. And I

went into nurses training in 1946. I was in that for three years. He came back after two

years and went to college at Utah State. When I graduated from nurses training I worked

at the Hospital in Napa until we got married in December of 1949. Then, we moved to

Logon, Utah where he was a student. He was, I believe a junior, and I got a job working

nights in the Hospital on the Maternity ward, which was great in a college town. We

were really busy. I worked there for a while and then I went to work in a Doctor’s office,

which I liked a lot more. Our oldest daughter was born September 9, 1951. When she

was nine months old, Dick went to work for the Service. We moved from Logan to Fort

Peck with all of our worldly goods in a trailer. It was pulled behind an old Chevy, which

we stopped every few miles so we could put water in it. When we got to Fort Peck we

lived in what had been government housing. While we were there we became very good

friends with the people who were on the Survey with Dick. We played cards a lot with

Bernadine and Casey Jones. They were real good to us. Any time we’d need a babysitter

or anything like that, they were right there. Casey taught Sheila to swear. So when

Dick’s mother came, why, she could surprise Grandma. On December 29, 1953 or

youngest daughter, Monica, was born in Glasgow, Montana. It was 49 degrees below

zero. We had to go about twenty miles to the Hospital. Dick fired up that old Chevy,

and just took us in there. I went home from the Hospital with Monica and about ten

days later I became very ill and had to back to the Hospital. Dick’s mother came to Fort

Peck to help take care of me and the two children. I went back to Spokane with Grandma

when Dick went to Red Rock. He was transferred to Red Rock. After about six weeks, I

went to Red Rock with the two girls, a baby, and a three year old. We lived in a two-room

cabin. Dick put the electricity in. He ran a wire from someplace into the cabin so

we had one light bulb. We washed with a pitcher and basin. We hauled water in from the

well. We had a big old stove. We had two stoves. There was a wood cook stove that I

cooked on. And we had a heating stove that he used to fire up at night. It got very hot. I

don’t remember how long we lived there. Then we moved into the cook shack, which was

a great big old house where they had cooked for the ranch hands. It had Bats in its belfry.

It was a big house. That’s where I got my first washing machine. I got an Easy Spin

Dry. It was my first washing machine. I still cooked on a wood stove, but I remember

that that wood stove made the best cinnamon rolls and bread. I made bread every week in

it. It cooked real well. We heated our water in a tank on the stove. One time, Dick’s

folks came to visit us. His dad was the Manager at Turnbull at that time. They came to

visit and brought Dick’s nephew who was six or eight years old. We were all sitting at the

dinner table and Grandma was holding Monica. Bruce, the nephew, picked up his hat and

a Bat flew out. Grandma screamed and jumped and almost dropped the baby! We lived

there, and we waited and we waited. They were building a new house. Supposedly, we

were supposed to get that new house when it was finished. Just before it was finished,

why, Dick was transferred to Crescent Lake in Nebraska. Again, as usual, every place we

went we made good friends with all of the Service people. The men worked of course,

and the women got together for birthday parties and things like that. I remember one

time; I took the baby and Sheila who was about two years old to a birthday party. I had

to pull them in a sled. Dick had made a sled out of an old dynamite box. We went to the

neighbor’s house to the birthday party. I came home and asked Dick how cold it was.

He said, “Oh, thirty-two below.” Here, I had had those kids out in that weather of

thirty-two below. That was our time when we met the Bancos. Wynn was a Manager

there and Connie was God’s blessing. Anything she could do to help us, she did. She

was so good. Then the next stop was Crescent Lake.

I worked in Logan until Dick graduated. Then, I didn’t get an opportunity to

work. I worked at Fort Peck a little bit. I was working for the Corps of Engineers, and he

was working for the Fish and Wildlife Service. Then, I didn’t get another opportunity to

work because we were so isolated, and I was also taking care of the girls. When we

moved to Corvallis, I went back to school. I was not registered. I didn’t have a license in

Oregon. So I went back to school. I got my license for Oregon. I never did actually work

for pay. I volunteered a lot. When we moved up to Portland I volunteered at the High

Schools. And I was accredited as a High School Nurse. The girls both graduated from

Corvallis High School. Sheila met her husband Ron, in Corvallis. He had lived in

Corvallis all of his life. He was on the Track team. They didn’t meet in high school.

They met in college. I think Sheila was twenty-one when they got married. Monica

graduated from Corvallis High School in 1972 and graduated from the University of

Oregon. Then, she went to the University of Kansas in Russian Literature. We were in

Corvallis for eleven years. That was a lot of time on the road. It seemed like I was

always in the car going some place. I was taking the girls here and there, or something.

We enjoyed Corvallis.

MR. RODGERS: We lived on the Refuge.

MRS. RODGERS: It was fifteen miles from the house to Corvallis. We used to go to

concerts at Gill Coliseum. We went to all of the football and basketball games at Oregon

State University. We became Oregon State fans and couldn’t stand the University of

Oregon. Eleven years later, we moved to Portland and that was the first time I had ever

lived in town.

After we moved to Gresham, we bought our first house in Gresham. It’s a suburb

of Portland. We had real nice neighbors. Dick was gone all of the time because he was

commuting between; at first Corvallis and Portland. Then he had the training school in

Nebraska. He was gone an awful lot. I started to play golf, and bowl, and a few things

like that. Then we moved out here, where we live now. It’s close to Sandy, Oregon.

MR. RODGERS: We’re about twenty-two miles from downtown Portland.

MRS. RODGERS: I still bowl, but I don’t golf any more. We now have three

grandchildren. The oldest one is Casey. He is twenty-seven and lives in Corpus Christy,

Texas. Shawn is twenty-three. She lives in Washington up near Bremerton. And Grace,

the youngest one lives in Silverdale, Washington. Casey is an Assistant Manager for the

car rental company Enterprise. The girls are still trying to find their way. We’ve been

married for; it will be fifty-one years in December.

MR. RODGERS: Because this is for the record, I’ll add a few thoughts that occurred to

me about the various stations. Just some things that will give those who are interested

the flavor of just what it was like to be on Refuges during that era. Starting with Fort

Peck, which was our first duty station out of college; Fort Peck which is now Charlie

Russell, of course. The game range stretched for something like one hundred and eighty

miles along the Fort Peck Reservoir, which was formed in the mid 1930s when the Fort

Peck Dam was constructed across the Missouri River. It had several reasons for being. It

was actually built during the period when the government was trying to make any kind of

job it could. It sounded like a good idea to dam the river and control some of the flood

surges, etc. But it was a huge reservoir. It was very long. It was built in an area that had

relatively little human population. The value as a Refuge was somewhat questionable.

The original reason for its establishment was for something like Sharptails and Pronghorn

Antelope. It did have waterfowl values in some of the bays. And there were other values

later on such and Elk and Deer along the breaks. Actually, the reservoir was formed in

what is called ‘the Missouri River Breaks’ which are the eroded lower area, which comes

of the high lands. The surrounding highlands could be looked at as a pool table and then

the various watercourses eroded down and made gullies and canyons that lead down to

the river below. There were a whole series of these. It was wild and rugged country.

There was grazing on the area that was assumed to be in conflict with some of the wildlife

uses. But there was no real handle on it. Range survey mapping was in its infancy at that

time; or range survey evaluation was. The range survey that I was assigned to when I

arrived was an attempt to get some kind of a handle on just what was there as far as

grazing potential as it related to wildlife and domestic cattle. The procedure was to use

aerial photography with acetate overlays on the photographs. On these photographs we

would find the reference marks, or the things we could identify on the photos. We would

‘ground truth’ them. The photo would then be used to walk the photo. It usually

amounted to four square miles on each photo. We’d map the gross vegetation and

communities. Of course we had to be able to identify the vegetation and those that were

predominate where broken down into types. Then we’d get some idea of the density of

the various types. It was an inexact science. We kind of learned, as we would go along.

It was a rather huge undertaking. As I indicated earlier on, there was a crew chief, an

assistant crew chief, and three of the rest of us who worked on the details. Everyone

mapped, but that was kind of the breakdown. Our equipment in the field was a Dodge

Power wagon. It was a successor to the old military M-37. There were also a couple of

ex-GI ambulances, which we used to live in actually during the time when we were in the

field. We were mobile. We didn’t have any facilities to stay in because there simply

weren’t any. In that part of the country, any kind of resident ranch or anything else were

few and far between. This is what we were doing. We’d work during the summer time

and then during the nasty weather in the winter, and there was a lot of that, we’d pull in

and do the mapping. We’d reduce the material that we gathered in the field to a form that

was hopefully useful for evaluation. Most of the country was indeed very attractive. It

would get very dry in the summer time. There were various wooded species in the

‘draws’ or in the gullies and the canyons leading down to the river. In many places there

were very large, seldom disturbed Deer. The Prairie Grouse, or Sharp tailed Grouse were

there. The smaller birds that you would find on the prairie were there in abundance. As a

note of interest; on the south side of what is called the Hacksby Triangle, which is

essentially south, across the reservoir from Fort Peck; a reputed character of ill will you

might say, called Benny Binion lived. He was a large individual in Las Vegas at the time.

He had a ranch on some private property. It was one of the ones that the gates were all

guarded and they had their own airstrip, etc. We occasionally had to go through edges of

his property to get where we needed to go. We had no problem on our survey, but we

were treated with degree of suspicion. We had all kinds of fantasies about what was going

on Benny Binion’s ranch out there in the as near nowhere as possible to get. This area

had been, in the time of antiquity one of the wintering areas for a migrating herd of

Buffalo. During the winter the Buffalo would move into the more sheltered canyons and

so forth to get out of the nasty prairie winds. Very often the lower part of the draws

would be covered with snow, and the animals would simply fall through and be trapped.

There were places where you could see Buffalo bones in the bottom of these draws for

just as far as you could see. There were skulls and bones. They must have died in these

areas in the hundreds of thousands over the many, many years. Also very interesting on

some of the higher head lands which were part of that flat, ‘pool table’ that I talked about

which hadn’t been eroded away; if the light was just right, you could see teepee rings.

There were just one after another for great lengths. They were obviously traditional

camping areas for the Native Americans who called that part of the world their home for

many thousands of years. The question that we had all of the time was; because these

were teepee rings on the high flatlands where there was very little water, how in the world

did the people get the water that they needed to simply live? Probably, they simply had

to haul it up by whatever means, from the draws and canyons adjacent. It’s probably

that they built on these uplands for security, so that they could see what was coming

around. And also, to escape the insects because on the uplands, there were always

breezes blowing across the prairie, which was certainly not that case down in these

canyons. This was interesting. You would see the teepee rings, and if you looked very

carefully you could find the fire pits in the middle and speculate on who had been there

before.

Red Rock National Wildlife Refuge is located in the Centennial Valley, with an

elevation of something like seven thousand feet. It’s in the area immediately to the west

of Yellowstone National Park, about fifty miles from the Park. It is a high valley with a

series of lakes, leading eventually down the valleys to the west. This is the area where

the remnant population of Trumpeter Swans was discovered in the mid 1930s. The

Refuge was made specifically in an effort to save some of the habitat for the Trumpeters.

It had been, and still is, I assume primarily a cattle grazing, with some sheep economy.

There had been a number of small ranches in the homesteading days. These of course, as

a general rule had been reduced to a comparatively few large ranches. By the time we

were there, some of the old log ranch houses, which were falling down, were still visible.

But the Trumpeters nested in and lived on the Red Rock lakes. During the winter they

would go over one of the divides into Idaho and winter along one of the various branches

of the Snake River, and sometime over on the Madison River. These areas would stay

open during the very severe winters and kept running water. There was one pond, two

ponds actually, on the Refuge itself that also had some warmth in them. They stayed

open during the winter. A number of swans stayed on those. It was the policy at that

time to feed grain to these birds to kind of help them. Because they are big birds, and

they would rapidly go through the natural vegetation that existed on the ponds in the

Refuge. Almost everything was frozen over, so they needed some kind of supplement,

and that was provided. I suspect that that is no longer the case, doing that sort of thing.

It was a harsh duty station, as far as living. It started to usually snow in late September.

By late October the roads could be impassible and quite likely, they would stay that way

until March or April in the spring. There were no track vehicles in use at that time.

Snowmobiles or bombardier-type vehicles were not available. Home made air sleds were

used. They were simply skis with an airplane engine prop turned around. And it was a

real experience to run one of those over the snow and try to keep them controlled and

prevent the torque from twisting you around in a circle, tipping you over, and many other

things. There were many interesting rides. One of the problems with them was the icing

of the carburetor because of the conditions. You’d end up with a stalled engine sitting in a

minor blizzard, which was not the most pleasant experience. To my knowledge, no body

was lost, just a lot of people got quite uncomfortable at times.

The normal staff complement at Red Rock at that time was a Manager, and an

Assistant/Clerk, one or two maintenance people. Wynn Banco who was the Manager

when I was there was working on what became the monograph of the Trumpeter Swan.

This occupied the majority of his time. Consequently, I learned the intricacies of Refuge

administration in the field at that station because that sort of thing fell to me. There was

everything from the correspondence, to keeping the books, etc. Those were the days

when it was necessary to reconcile your financial records to the penny, even if it took

days to find where you were off one penny. But I learned about the rules, regulations,

manuals, etc, etc. It was a fine learning experience. And Wynn was a true jewel as far as

being helpful and being the sort of person that you want to have when you are learning

that sort of thing. One interesting little note: at that time it was quite common on

isolated stations when you had visiting people, why, they stayed with someone on the

staff. There were no other facilities. You didn’t go running off into town. Town was a

long ways away, over a nasty road. On one occasion, a private organization that has

some leases on some phosphate land in a valley above the Refuge; it was necessary to

cross the Refuge to get there, had been making noises about building a spur railroad into

the valley to haul out the phosphate for processing for fertilizer. Salyer, in his way of

course, often dealt with things directly. He showed to deal with this directly. He met

with one of the representatives from Union Pacific and before the man from the railroad

could even give his name, Mr. Salyer berated him and accused him of all sorts of things

that people should never be accused of. The man simply left. Mr. Salyer was still there

and he did not have a place to stay. At that time the Bancos had no extra room. Wynn

Banco was the Manager and he had the only Refuge house. We, at that time were living in

the Red Dog Saloon, which was the second place that we had lived in after we got to Red

Rock. We first moved into the little cabin that Hope described. Then, we ended up living

in the cookhouse that she described. In between, for a while we had lived in the Red Dog

Saloon. And that’s exactly what it was. Lakeview was what was originally called a ‘cow

town’. It was the place that had a store, a livery stable and a bar or two. That’s what it

was, an old ‘cow town’ much like you see in the movies. The place that we moved into

which was privately owned, because there was no Refuge housing, had originally been a

saloon. It consisted of a long room, with a “t” at the end. It was all made out of logs.

The long room toward the front had been partitioned to make a bedroom. At the other

end, there was the bedroom for Hope, I, and the kids. We had a kitchen. The decision

was made to ask Mr. Salyer to stay with us. Hope cooked a meal. For those of us that

knew Mr. Salyer, knew that he loved to eat. He indeed showed that that was true. Hope

cooked a meal that he complemented her on greatly. Then it was time to go to bed. It

happened to be in early fall. But up there in that part of the country, it gets cold early.

The temperature started to drop, and as was our custom we built; there was also a barrel

stove in the front room and a cook stove in the kitchen, we fired up the barrel stove and

got it nice and popping hot. We all went to bed. An hour or so later we heard a rustling

from the front part of the saloon, in Mr. Salyer’s direction. It turned out that he felt like

he was freezing to death. So we hunted up all of the extra blankets that we could find, re-stoked

the fire, and were able to get through the rest of the evening without completely

freezing our Chief. In the morning, he, in his conversations with Wynn Banco said, “I

want to have, in that private dwelling, a hot water heater, and a new stove”. In those

days, that being a private dwelling not government property, that was a detail. We very

shortly had a new stove and a hot water heater, which we had not had previously. That’s

how things were done. It was a fascinating time, and one of several when I had the

opportunity to meet and work with Mr. Salyer. That is one of the interesting incidents.

While at Red Rock, I was involved with the early stages of moving some

Trumpeters to various places; specifically, to Malheur, in Oregon. We would capture and

band the birds and then we moved, hopefully family groups to attempt to establish

populations elsewhere. The ones at Malheur persisted for some time and then they

moved on to the Summer Lake area in Oregon. While there, I helped developed a

particular locking, stainless steel band for use on the Trumpeters. The normal aluminum

bands were no problem for them [to get off]. They would simply reach down and spread

them apart and take them off. It was an extremely interesting exercise. We lived the year

round in the sort of thing that people now spend all year working so that they can spend

two weeks in the same kind of location; if that makes any sense.

When we moved from Crescent Lake from Red Rock the change in scenery was

quite dramatic. Crescent Lake National Wildlife Refuge is located in the Sand Hills of

Nebraska, and they are exactly that. The sand is the material that was deposited over the

geologic ages from the lands farther to the west in Wyoming. They are literally wind

deposited material that had blown out of Wyoming and dropped in Nebraska. The areas

closest to Wyoming are more course sand. As you get farther the east, they are a more

fine material that floated longer before it settled out. It’s quite that simple. But literally,

there are several hundred thousand acres of rolling sand dunes. From the air, you can see

them and they look like ripples on the beach. They were one of the last areas to be

homesteaded in that part of the country because it was almost impossible to grow crops.

Those were the provisions of the original homesteading laws. You had to grow crops to

improve upon your land. You’d try to grow a crop there and it would simply blow

away. There are very few watercourses in the Sand Hills because they are much like a

large sponge. There is lots of water, but that water really is the ground water that

appears in the low part between the sand dunes. So rather than having connected

watercourses, usually, you would have isolated lakes much like the area farther north that

were scowered by the glaciers. They were simply a series of potholes. They did at times

attract very large numbers of waterfowl. This was especially the case before many of the

lakes became fouled with carp, and other types of rough fish. But especially the carp that

simply eliminated the native food supply and made it less attractive to waterfowl than it

once was. But there was still a degree of nesting. They were located at a latitude that

was located right on the edge of the northern nesting area. Many birds that attempted to

nest there were late birds of the year before that had only made a short migration. All of

this added up to a lesser production of waterfowl than would seem evident by looking at

the land, which looked like it would be very attractive for waterfowl production. Over

the years, after the initial homesteading, grazing was the common industry. And as often

happens, it was abused. Heavy grazing simply took the native vegetation, the tall grass

off. Once that was removed the sand would start to blow and there were great areas that

were completely denuded and were moving sand dunes. Part of this unfortunately, was

the Refuge. That’s one of the reasons that they were able to purchase it for a Refuge. It

was about forty-six thousand acres of rolling sand dunes, much of it covered with grass,

Yucca, the Spanish bayonet, and various other indigenous plants. The Refuge, because of

the grazing still had a residue of grazing use on it. It was much in demand by ranchers.

When I arrived, unfortunately, the grazing was completely out of control. It was more of

a grazing refuge than any attempt at a waterfowl refuge. So there was some period of

adjustment. One of these was an attempt to reduce the grazing down to a more

manageable level, which resulted in an attempt to get me moved or fired, or whatever by

the ranchers. This was forced, if you will, by the ranchers who contacted their local

political types. There was a hearing at which I was in the “hot seat”. But I was backed

up very eagerly by Mr. Harvey Nelson. We got some unexpected help from another one

of the Senators, other than Mr. Miller who was the one that called me. We were able to

hold our ground, and make the reductions that we had indicated; up to between a half and

a quarter of what the previous usage was. We got very much into the grazing management

with the assistance of Dr. Donald Berzloff of the Soil Conservation Service. We

developed a program of grazing which nowadays is called “rest-rotation”. We worked on

that, and put it in play before it even had a name. In fact, I gave a paper on it at the

Range Society meeting in New Orleans shortly after we put it in force. It was an

interesting time. From the ranchers, there was a degree of hostility early on, after the

change in grazing rights. But once they saw that the “rest-rotation” grazing had some

merit and that it did indeed, not put them out of business but helped to restore some of

the overused pastures, they became friends. And to this day, many, many years later, we

still hear from some of the folks back there at Christmas time. The ranks are getting very

thin, but the point was made and rather than getting us moved, we stuck around for about

eight years. Driving in the sand hills was something. And as Hope indicated in her

discourse, she went over it lightly. But traveling over those sand hill trails with

youngsters when most of the draws are covered with snow; and you don’t know whether

if you slow down you’ll get stuck in the sand, or the snow, it’s not something that’s

encountered very often in this day and age. At this time we can look back on it with

fondness. That sort of thing simply doesn’t exist any more.

Before we leave Crescent Lake, there is one other incident that perhaps gives an

idea of the type of operation in those times, two others actually. One of them was that

originally of course, Prairie Dogs were very common in the Sand Hills, but through the

diligent efforts of our then Predator and Rodent Control Division and the ranchers they

were completely eliminated from the area that was Crescent Lake. To me it seemed that

they were a part of what was originally there. Therefore, they should be returned. So in

the days before EIS or anything like that, I made a trip to the Fort Niobrara Refuge up

near Valentine, Nebraska that still had a resident population of Prairie Dogs. Using a fire

truck and hoses that were directed down into Prairie Dog burrows, we were able to flush

out a number of the little critters. We caught them in sacks and transported them back to

Crescent Lake. Here, I went to one of the meadow several miles east of headquarters and

turned them loose. Before long, there were Prairie Dogs scattering in all directions. There

were calls made to the Regional office of this crazy individual who had been bringing

Prairie Dogs back to the Sand Hills after the great effort to reduce them. Once in a while

they would set in one of the burrows and hurt themselves. Therefore, they should all

remain gone. [Prairie Dogs] I was instructed by our Regional office that this was not a

good idea, and that I should take a necessary measures to see that the Prairie Dogs no

longer existed. This was done by using direct methods. But it was one of those things

that kind of illustrates that there is some merit in getting a second opinion when one has

an impulse to do such a thing as this. Another incident: at that time it was very much

encouraged to reestablish such things a Canada Geese, which at one time nested in the

hills. We had a resident flock of Canada Geese as part of this effort. They were largely

brailed birds that were brought in from the creek and several other places on the Refuge.

They were kept in a flock, and were hoped to be the nucleus of a new flock. There were

several instances when they were kept in a large, fenced pen immediately adjacent to

headquarters. There were raccoon problems where they would get into the pen and run

the geese up into a corner and dine on ones that they could catch. And a time or two,

they escaped and being migratory critters, they started to migrate north, overland. They

couldn’t fly. Most of them had been wing clipped or brailed. They started to migrate

simply by walking north. At one time our primary Lab [retriever dog] who was a

fantastic animal retrieved almost the entire flock. I am not sure what the total number

was, but it was something like fifty birds. She’d run them down, bowl them over and

pick them up in her mouth, bring it back and go pick up the next one. So, we able to

recover almost the entire flock of birds. As part of this, we experimented with various

kinds of nesting structures for the geese. Perdition from Coyotes and Raccoons was a

serious problem. Nesting highlands of various types were developed. These included

structures built from sheet metal and 4’x4’s, and a few old logs. There were very few

trees in the Sand Hills, but sometimes there were few old Cottonwood trees that we used.

We’d piled them up and make a nesting island. Also, one of the less esthetic efforts was

that we simply obtained some wrecked automobiles and put them out on the ice. And

when the ice melted, they settled in and formed the base for the geese nesting platforms.

In connection with this; one time during the winter when we were building the islands we

were using a dump truck. We made a form and used to truck to haul out the soil. The

idea was that it would form an island in the spring. It seemed like a good idea, and

worked reasonably well until a little bit later on in the spring when the ice started to melt.

We had the unfortunate occurrence of dropping the rear end of a two and half ton truck

through the ice. The lake was quite shallow, something like between two and three feet

deep. There sat the truck with the rear end down on the bottom. Fortunately, it was

empty, or we made it empty by raising the bed. With the front up on the ice, the

question was how we would retrieve it? Again, fortunately it was pointed towards the

shoreline, and after much cogitation, and scratching of heads we ended up employing a

neighbors D-8 Cat. We had nothing of that side on the Refuge. The neighbors used the

D-8 to move haystacks in the winter for feeding the cattle. We used the D-8. We took a

long cable and hooked it to the front of the truck. Because we were afraid that we would

pull the truck in two if we tried to pull it up on the ice, we took some dynamite that we

had in the shed and blew a path through the ice to the shoreline. We dropped the truck

down on the bottom. There was a little problem getting the cable hooked to the truck but

this was done. We dropped it down on the bottom and pulled it out. The only damage to

the truck actually, was the bending of one of the front fenders where some of the ice was

not cleared away as far as it should have been. Pictures of this were taken and duly

recorded in the narrative. I later received a rather discreet note from Mr. Carpenter to the

effect that; these sort of things happened and it looked as though we had solved our

problem, but it probably was not the best thing in the world to record them

photographically and report them in a narrative report. That’s one of the things that

happen over the years.

The Sand Hills are a very unique area where there are very few roads and you

simply go across country. For instance, once when I got a long ways away from

headquarters and dislocated a knee. There was nothing to do. That was in the days

before radios. There was nothing to do but try to get the Jeep back and go through

innumerable gates. This required one to get out of the vehicle, go open the gate, drive

through, get out and shut the gate and drive to the next one; with a leg that was not

functioning. I got it done, but at the time it seemed like a long process. From Crescent

Lake, on to Arrowood and eastern central North Dakota. One thing more about Crescent

Lake; the staff at Crescent Lake at that time was this, I was the Manager, there was Clerk

and there were two maintenance people. That was the normal compliment of staff. At

Arrowood, the staff compliment was as follows; I was the Manager and at that time

Arnold Cruise was the Assistant Manager dealing primarily with the wetlands, which was

a relatively new program at the time. There was a Clerk and two or sometimes three

maintenance type individuals.

Arrowood was and old, established area on the James River. There were a series

of impoundments along the river. Also under the responsibility of this area were the

easement areas through the good part of North Dakota and the wetlands areas that had

just been added. It was in the [sounds like] Coetoe country, the glaciated area of this part

of the upper plains. From the air you see potholes all the way to the horizon where the

glaciers had scoured out these low spots. This became the so-called pothole region. The

efforts at Arrowood were again, the newer efforts where there was an attempt to use

controlled burning. The Research Station at Jamestown was being built at the time when I

was there. The Substation out at Woodward, which was west of the Refuge towards

Chase Lake, which was also under the responsibility of the Refuge, was being built. The

research into the controlled use of fire on the Prairie was under way. Things were being

relearned. The Native Americans had known them long ago. The use of fire to attract

various animals and to regenerate the Prairie was being documented. The wetland

program was really new, and there were many, many things to be learned there. This was

a time of learning also, as far as I was concerned. I was learning to deal more with the

public and becoming more involved with diversity rather than simply one refuge area.

When the opportunity presented itself, we moved westward to the William L.

Finley Complex. The Finley Refuge is located a few miles south of Corvallis in the

Willamette Valley of Oregon. This particular also had responsibility for the Ankeny

National Wildlife Refuge just south of Salem, which is about twenty-five miles north and

east of the Finley Refuge. And the Basket Slough Refuge about thirty miles due north of

Finley. All of these were in the Willamette Valley. Their primary purpose was the

perpetuation of a subspecies of Canada goose, the Dusky Canada Goose. Before the

refuges were established, almost all of this subspecies were wintering on a series of

commercial hunting clubs. It was a small and not very bright subspecies and they were

taking terrific losses to hunting because they were very susceptible to decoying. They

were much easier than some of the other subspecies to take. So the refuges were

established and I was the second Manager. The first was Phil Laenbougher. We arrived

and there was a considerable amount of hostility because most all of the lands of the

refuges had been farmlands. It was possible to establish the refuges because of the

primary support of the academic types at Oregon State University just out of Corvallis.

There was a very, very active wildlife program on campus there. The people there were

extremely supportive of the effort and did a lot of work in spreading the word and

pressing the right political buttons, etc., to insure that the areas would be established.

The Finley Refuge is a relatively small area, some five thousand acres plus. But it sits in

an absolutely unique area of the Valley. It is unique in that it was preserving a little piece

of the Little Willamette Prairie. There was actually a piece that had never been plowed.

That’s all that exists any more. The rest of the valley is in heavy agricultural use. The

Finley Refuge had been a hunting club that had been under the control of a prominent

family out of Portland, the [sounds like] Phailling family. As a consequence, there had

been cattle and sheep grazing, but no, or little intensive plowing or that type of

agriculture. This little unique piece of what once was a vast prairie still remained. Even

though it’s a small refuge it runs from the foothills of the coast range that are on its

western boundary, down through the transition zone and in to the Willamette Valley. For

an ecological ‘piece’, it is a true jewel. There was intensive use of the area by geese. We

went through many interesting transitions from one type of activity to another. It had a

hunting program and we developed the very earliest computer selection programs. We

worked very closely with the University on this. I was involved each year with at least

three guest discussions in classes on Campus. I spent a lot of time on campus, and

received some excellent assistance from any number of specialists who were on the staff

at Oregon State for anything from Dendrology and the way to Entomology. We had a

whole series of graduate students who used the Refuge for part of their fieldwork for their

programs. It was an interesting experience. We also has responsibility for all of the

coastal islands that extended from the mouth of the Columbia which marks the area

between Washington and Oregon; all the way to the California border along the coast.

There were huge numbers of sea birds on some of these islands. In most cases, the

management consisted of protection to keep intrusions at a minimum to allow the birds to

do their thing. For me the growing experience during this period was additional levels of

outside involvement, outside of strictly Refuge activities. There were many additional

contacts outside of the Refuge. This was the period when the first real thrust of the

environmental movement outside was occurring. There was must interest and activity in

the areas that we were concerned with. One incident that remains in my memory was in

the days before environmental impact statements, etc. Along the Oregon coast, in one of

the large island areas was near one of the small towns on the coast. There was a

considerable amount of trespass on the island. It was a large rock island just offshore

from the little town of Cannon Beach. There was a lot of traffic by adventurous types

climbing the rock, trying to get up as high as they could. Because the edges were very

steep, it was simply a several hundred foot tall rock out there; often they would try to

climb up and very often they couldn’t get down. It was common to call assistance like a

Coast Guard helicopter. It happened several times. When this occurred, the backwash

from the helicopter would do huge damage to the nesting birds. The effort was made to

make access to the top more difficult. Because there was really only one way to the top,

I enlisted the assistance of a blasting specialist at Oregon State University. He was

actually an expert in blasting stumps. We journeyed over to the coast and proceeded to

make some loud noises and blow off pieces of rock that made it difficult to climb up.

But, facing this, and only a few hundred yards away up and down this whole facing beach

were many, many beach houses with huge windows. I am quite sure, to this day that we

vibrated many of those windows. I never heard that we cracked any. But you would

never dream of doing this sort of thing in this day and age. It would be like a sonic boom

for miles. Again, it shows the wisdom of getting more than one opinion when you intend

to do something. We were lucky in this instance, but perhaps things don’t always go that

way.

In 1977 we had the opportunity to move to the Regional office in Portland, to

help with the BLHP, The Bicentennial Land Heritage Program. It was one of President

Ford’s ideas. I really don’t know whose idea it was but it was one of the things that he

promoted during the campaign. It is a program that provided a ….. [tape ends]