GOLD BEACH RANGER DISTRICT

 

                                                GOLD BEACH RANGER DISTRICT

                                                          Siskiyou National Forest

                                                                     1979-1988

In the spring of 1979, we traveled from Greenville, in northern California to Gold Beach, on the southern Oregon coast for a job interview.   I had applied for a vacant position here in timber sale administration.  It would be a lateral transfer at my present grade of  GS-9.   The interview was with the acting District Ranger and the Timber Management Staff Assistant (TMA) by the name of Bill, who would be my supervisor.    During the interview, they informed me of two recent personnel changes involving the removal of the last District Ranger, who had been here 16 years, and my predecessor, who was transferred to a remote duty station in eastern Oregon, at Heppner, I think.   I could sense some serious management problems but did accept the job right after it was offered to me at the end of the interview.   Later I learned nobody else had applied for the job and I could see why.   It would be the greatest challenge of my career with the Forest Service.   There was a government house available with the job, where a monthly amount was deducted from my pay for rent.  I don't remember the amount.  My wife and I, with our two young children, lived in this house until 1981 when we purchased our first home south of town on two acres next to Hunter Creek.  (There is a separate story titled Living on Hunter Creek about life there) 

Most of the buildings on the ranger station were originally constructed by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) in the 1930's and the station is recognized as a historical site.   There are two large warehouses, three office buildings, and five houses.    There was a permanent staff of about 25 people with an additional seasonal workforce of 15 to 20 more people.  North of Gold Beach was the Zone II Westside Engineering office that served all three of the westside ranger districts, including Gold Beach, Powers, and the Chetco District in Brookings.   There must have been 40 to 50 people working in this office doing road survey and design, road construction administration, and road maintenance.   The Zone I Engineering office was in Grants Pass serving the Galice District and Illinois Valley District.

At the time Gold Beach had a population of about 1500 people and Highway 101 is the main street through town with motels, gas stations, and restaurants all catering mostly to tourists, that come to fish or take the jet boats up the Rogue River into the Scenic Rogue River Wilderness Area.   Compared to Orleans and Greenville, Gold Beach was a big city to us.   There was even a grocery store within walking distance of the ranger station and the ocean was just across Highway 101 from the station. 

My desk was located next to another sale administrator, by the name of Clay on the ground floor of a two-story office building.   Two ladies, the resource clerk, and a log scale clerk had their desks nearby.  They were all smokers and it was another year before smoking was not allowed in the office.   In an adjacent room was Bill, the TMA, our supervisor.   Upstairs was the presale crew of eight people, including a planning forester, a timber appraiser, NEPA coordinator, logging engineer, and three field technicians under the supervision of a lead presale technician, and it was all under the supervision of Bill, the TMA. 

During my first morning on the job, Clay went over a list of sales that had been assigned to my predecessor and now were mine.   As he went down the list of about 10 or 12 sales, he informed me of those sales that were active and those that were not active.   On some of the non-active sales, he would say to me," you will have problems with that one" and later he was right as some required contract modifications mostly for inadequate protection of fish-bearing streams.   Clay was pushing 60 years of age and was going to retire within a year after 20 years of service.  He had started work with the Forest Service as a log scaler at the age of 40 and before that had been a timber faller.   For the first week, I rode around the District with Clay learning the road system and location of some of my active sales that Clay had been watching over, in addition to his own sales.   This would be the biggest District I would work on during my career with the Forest Service.    Due to the steep terrain, most logging was done with big yarders using long-span skyline systems and there were a few sales requiring helicopters.  It was all clear-cut logging with a few salvage sales of mostly windthrown trees using small yarders.       

While driving around with Clay in his Forest Service pickup, he would spend a good amount of time on the two-way radio talking to loggers about work needing to be done, non-compliance with branding of logs or how soon somebody would be moving to a new landing, and when he would be able to meet with a logger on a sale to inspect this or that.   This was the first District I worked on where administrators had multi-channel radios to communicate with loggers and other sub-contractors doing slash work, road maintenance, or constructing hand fire lines around clear-cut units.  During my travels with Clay, he filled me in on what happened to my predecessor and how the former ranger of 16 years was told to retire or be fired.  It had something to do with a timber trespass by a timber operator and how the ranger had tried to cover it up.   Clay confided in me that he had a problem with the lead presale technician telling me he would do as he pleased with getting all the timber he could get into a unit when locating cutting boundaries on the ground, especially in riparian areas that should not have been included, which I experienced later.    Clay said Bill did not spend enough time supervising the presale crew and spent more time in the sale administration end of the business.   

By my second week on the job, I was on my own without getting lost too much.   Over the next few years, there were times I was assigned sales in the Elk River drainage of the Powers Districts since this was closer to Gold Beach than to Powers.  Some days I spent more time driving from sale to sale on both Districts than being on the ground inspecting operations.  The workload was too much at times and upper management was made aware of the problems, including the presale layout problems.

By the end of my first year Clay retired, Bill resigned by request from upper management for poor supervision of the presale crew and a new District Ranger took over leadership of the District.   The presale crew was made a separate department under the supervision of a new TMA and sale administration became a separate department under the supervision of a sale administrator from the Chetco District, by the name of Earl, who was promoted to the GS-11 grade and given the authority of Forest Service Representative (FSR) under the timber sale contract.   This authority was usually held by the District Ranger.   Another sale administrator was hired to replace Clay and a year later a third administrator was brought in to help handle the workload.  In 1985 Earl had to transfer to Grants Pass in order to be closer to Medford where his wife could get treatment for cancer.    The District Ranger temporarily promoted me to acting FSR at the GS-11 grade for 90 days until the position could be filled permanently.   The ranger asked me to apply for the job, but the Regional Office in Portland filled the position with an unfunded person from a Forest in Washington.  After that, I was moved into the presale department as lead technician at the GS-9 grade to supervise the field crew.    In August of 1986, my wife and two children moved to Eugene where she was going to attend the University of Oregon.    In the spring of 1988, I was given a transfer to the Cottage Ranger District on the Umpqua National Forest to be closer to my family and our house on Hunter Creek was sold a few months later. 

Today the Siskiyou Forest is combined with the Rogue River National Forest and the Chetco and Gold Beach Districts are under one District Ranger.    There is no zone engineering offices anymore since there is very little new road construction anymore due to very little harvesting of timber.  

PS:   The following stories are included in this blog that go into more details about specific events while working on the Gold Beach District:

The Logging Fire,  Laird Logging,  Chaos in the Woods,  Turn Back Timber Sales,  The Christmas Party of 1981,  Mountain Fir Lumber Company,  The Silver Fire,  Paper Work and Living on Hunter Creek. 

Looking for a better job

 This story tells about my decision to remain with the Forest Service and the difference between how employees are treated by the government versus the private sector.   It is human nature to always be looking for greener pastures and sometimes we don't realize what we have until we look down the road at something else.  

LOOKING FOR A BETTER JOB

 

Sometime after graduating from forestry school at Lassen College in Susanville, California in 1970, I had an interview with the Weyerhaeuser Company in Klamath Falls, where they had a mill and large timber land holdings.   The job involved locating property lines, marking timber, mapping and timber cruising.   There was no housing provided and came with a monthly salary and a pickup truck.   I declined the job offer and don’t remember why.    Instead I took a seasonal job with the Forest Service on the Summit District of the Stanislaus National Forest.  The Weyerhaeuser mill in Klamath Falls shut down in 1992.

After getting married in 1975 while working for the Forest Service at Orleans the thought of working for the private sector intrigued me again after experiencing some management problems with the Forest Service.   I learned that the Diamond International Corporation with a large mill south of Red Buff, California had a vacancy for a forestry technician.  I was given an interview at their Red Bluff office with the chief forester and land manager.   Here again there was a monthly salary with benefits, a pickup truck provided and a company house available at their forest camp south of the small community of Paynes Creek, east of Red Bluff.   During the interview they advised me to drive up to the camp and take a look at the facilities and meet with the field forester in charge, who would be my supervisor.    The camp consisted of 4 houses, a shop used for maintenance of equipment and fuel storage tanks.   The houses were more like rustic cabins surrounded by a pine forest and dusty roads.    Three of the houses were occupied by the field forester, another forestry technician and an equipment operator that did road maintenance work.   The houses had no yards and there was not much privacy, it was basic living quarters. 

The field forester was very informative about what my duties would be, mostly locating property lines and marking timber.  He said I could do improvement work on the house with material provided by the company during my off time.   I could see there was a need for much improvement.   He also informed me of things that they did not tell me about at the Red Bluff office.  Such as the requirement to do fire patrols during deer season after work hours and weekends without compensation, in other words no overtime.    All I remember of Paynes Creek was a store, a state forestry fire station and maybe a small grade school.  Red Bluff was the nearest city for shopping about 30 miles from the camp.    

We drove back to Orleans thinking life in our little rented cabin eight miles downriver from Orleans was not that bad and how I could cope with the management problems, plus there was over time pay for burning slash and fire suppression work.   I declined the job offer.

In the late 1980’s or early 90’s the mill in Red Bluff closed putting many people out of work, including those working in the woods.   Guess I made the right choice.

Over time I learned management problems are universal, no matter who you worked for.   Many of these large forest product corporations are listed on the New York Stock Exchange and can be sold or taken over at any time.  There are more concerns for the shareholders than the employees.   I will never forget the young forester that went to work for Champion International Corporation that had the plywood mill in Gold Beach.   He had only been on the job a few weeks when they closed the mill and he was instantly out of a job.   He came into the Forest Service office looking for a job and the District Ranger told him there was nothing available.     It made me feel fortunate to have a job with the Forest Service.

Recluse, Wyoming

 After leaving the Forest Service in 1995 I did a variety of seasonal jobs, such as working for a property management company in Eugene and working for myself as a landscape/gardener.  I also took classes at Lane Community College studying agricultural and industrial equipment technology.  This course of study landed me a seasonal job on a grass seed farm as a mechanic and equipment operator for five summers from 1996 to 2000 near Harrisburg, about 20 miles north of Eugene.   Winter was a slow time of year for me and my thoughts would wander off to moving out of the big city to some rural environment.   Eugene was not my favorite place to live with all the traffic, neighborhood excitement, and also my two children had moved away to attend college.  Now there was just me and my dog Jack.

I subscribed to the Caretaker Gazette, a monthly listing of caretaker jobs offered mostly in the western part of the U.S. and some in other countries.   Many of these jobs involved working on remote farms or ranches.  I did apply to a couple of ads, both in Washington State.  One was on a small farm in southwest Washington, which did offer me an interview, which I turned down hoping for something better.  The second one was on a large ranch in the eastern Cascades of Washington where there was a house offered in return for watching the place while the owners went south.   I never received a response after applying for this job.  As time passed I looked forward to the monthly editions in hopes of finding Shangri-La.    Then I noticed a caretaker job being offered on a remote ranch near Recluse, Wyoming.   I looked on a map to see Recluse was located in the northeast corner of Wyoming and had a population of 10.   The average temperature in January is 20 above and can get down to 40 below.    About this time in my life I met Celia and life took a change for the better.    A few years ago we took a look at Recluse on Google Earth to see a small store with a Post Office, a few scattered buildings, some machinery looking in disrepair and a desolate flat landscape of no trees.    Thank God Celia came into my life.   Where would I be today without her?