Women Working in the Forest Service

 During my career with the Forest Service from 1969 to 1995.

In my early years of working as a seasonal employee for the Forest Service I remember women only working in clerical positions.   In the summer of 1970, I worked as a recreation aide on the Summit District of the Stanislaus National Forest and again only women working in the office.   In the fall of 1970, a 20 person fire crew, including myself was put together on the Stanislaus to respond to a large fire burning on the San Bernardino National Forest in southern California.   This crew was all men.  We took a plane from Stockton and flew into Ontario where the fire camp was located near a large orange tree orchard.   There could have been 200 to 300 people in this camp from different agencies all over the west.  

The camp was operated by the National Guard, who provided trucks for transportation, the kitchen and a shower unit.  Convicts did the cooking.   The shower unit must have been 80 feet by 80 feet with wooden slats or many pallets on the ground to keep our feet from getting muddy as the water just went on the ground.   The entire unit had a 10 foot high canvas wall around it with shower heads on the interior spaced out every 6 or 8 feet along the edge of the canvas.   The canvas opening at one corner is where we would enter, remove our clothing and proceed to a vacant shower head.   I don’t remember the number of people in the unit at that time, but happened to look across the wooden flooring and to my amazement there was a woman taking a shower.   Not wanting to stare I quickly turned away, finished up and got out of there.  

When I went to work on the Orleans District of the Six Rivers National Forest in 1971 there was one woman working as a seasonal on the fire crew.   If I remember correctly she got romantically involved with another crew member, got pregnant and believe they got married afterwards.   There were a few other women that came from the Supervisor’s office in Eureka and worked with road engineering doing survey work.  Some stayed in the Orleans Hotel and in one instance had to barricade their doors to keep some single men at bay with whom they had been drinking beer with in the adjacent lounge.  

There was only one woman I remember that worked in the field on the Greenville District of the Plumas National Forest from 1977-79.  She was a seasonal employee working on a timber stand improvement crew.  

On the Gold Beach District of the Sisikiyou National Forest there was a woman working in silviculture.  I do not remember if she was permanent or seasonal.  There were a few women working at the Zone 2 engineering office north of Gold Beach doing a variety of field jobs related to road survey and design work, most were seasonal. 

Before I transferred to Cottage Grove in the spring of 1988, Pete Brost, the Gold Beach District Ranger transferred to the Tahoe Forest in California.   His replacement was a woman, who had been a wildlife biologist with the state of Washington.    She was the first female ranger on that Forest and some male egos, especially on the District staff were not excited about this.   Shortly after her arrival she had a meeting with her staff assistants that were all men, and she asked how many of them had a problem with working for a woman?   Two of them acknowledged they did, the timber management assistant (TMA) and fire management officer (FMO).  The FMO quit and went to work for the Oregon Department of Forestry and the TMA eventually transferred to the Willamette National Forest.   

A year or more after I transferred to the Cottage Grove District on the Umpqua Forest I learned the woman ranger at Gold Beach developed a brain tumor and died shortly thereafter.  At Cottage Grove there were women working in many field positions, both seasonally and permanent.

Today there are many women in management positions, including the Chief of the Forest Service.   They also have their own shower units at fire camps now.