During the summers of the early 1970’s there would be potluck dinners at least once a month on the Orleans Ranger Station for the employees, including seasonal employees living in the bunk house. Everybody was asked to bring something. The wives of the staff, living in the family houses on the station would provide hot dishes, fried chicken, salads, deserts and other items that single people would dream of. Seasonal employees usually brought bags of chips, can of olives, beans or a large bottle of pop. The local market did not provide much in terms of gourmet items or even deli food. It was pretty basic shopping there with bread, cold cuts, some dairy products, can goods, limited produce, soda and plenty of wine and beer. Serious grocery shopping was done by most people once a month in Arcata or Eureka, about a two hour drive from Orleans. Upper management would chip in and have a keg of beer available for all to enjoy. Since alcohol was not allowed in the barracks, most beer drinking was done at one of three bars in the community or down at the river. There was one fellow who lived in the bunk house that would always put together a dish of green jello with hot dogs lined up in it. He would place it on the long row of picnic tables lined up on the lawn in the center of the compound, where all the food was served. This dish was only popular with the young children of the families living on the station. The adults always got a few laughs seeing it there on display with all the other dishes. As the evening wore on and the beer consumption increased, most of the families retreated to their houses leaving the bunk house people to finish off whatever remained. By the time the keg was empty, and all the food eaten it was well into the night, and the seasonal employees slowly made their way back to the bunk house or stumbled down the highway to wherever home was. Even the green jello with hot dogs had been devoured.
Friday, March 27, 2020
Tuesday, March 24, 2020
A Lost Weekend
As we approached the fire from the south we could see the smoke rising from the green forest canopy on the steep slopes north of the Salmon River, just about a half mile from where it flows into the Klamath River. This is near the small community of Somes Bar, which consist of a store with a post office, the Ukonom Ranger Station and few scattered houses. Our first impression was this won’t take much time to extinguish and we can get back home by dark and enjoy our weekend off. It had been a 10 mile drive up the Klamath River highway from the Orleans Ranger Station where we had just completed a day of cruising and mapping timber on a proposed sale area. It
was a warm Friday afternoon in July of 1973 when we got back to Orleans
and looking forward to the weekend. A few minutes before quitting time the
radio speaker from the fire warehouse crackled with a fire dispatch for all
personnel to respond to a fire near Somes Bar.
We arrived and parked our truck along the highway where other Forest
Service and state highway vehicles were parked. The 6 of us were combined
with others to form a 20 man crew, assigned a crew boss and given a variety
of hand tools to start constructing fire line below the highway. It was about
1000 feet from the highway to the Salmon River below as we started cutting
brush and digging a 3 foot fire line. The fire was confined to the ground and
slowly spreading up hill where the highway would serve as the upper line.
Within an hour or so we had constructed about 500 feet of line when the wind
picked up causing the fire to explode up into the canopy of the large fir and
pine trees. This also caused spot fires to start outside our contructed line
where we tried to chase these smaller fires as the wind speed increased.
Soon the fire was spreading over the top of us and our crew boss yelled,
“head down to the river”. Within a few minutes the entire crew was safely
in the Salmon River where the stream flow meandered through a gravel bar
that was about 100 feet wide. A few seconds later the fire had jumped
across the river with a deafeny roar as the entire world around us went up in
flames. In addition, we could hear the explosion of the some of the vehicles
that were parked on the highway above. At this point we knew our weekend
was shot as we started walking up river toward the bridge.
OFF Fire July & August 1973 Klamath National Forest. Named after
Offield Mountain where a lookout is located.
Here is a summary of what happened before and after. There were 3 or 4 crew trucks with people and 1 tanker that responded from the Orleans RD, a tanker and not sure how many people from Ukonom RD and some people with the state highway department, who were doing road work at the time the fire started. (they may have caused fire?) More people arrived from the Happy Camp RD later, not sure how many and may have been another tanker. Our 20 person crew constructed fire line down the east side and another crew went down the west side. Only the tank truck operators remained on the highway to operate the pumpers as the tanker crews went down the fire lines laying hose line. When the fire blew up and over ran the highway the tank truck operators could only drive the tankers out. Some tried to go back and drive other vehicles out, some were removed, but ours and others were totally destroyed. The tanker from Orleans barley made it as the spare tire mounted on the back caught fire and the plastic on the rear tail lights melted. The hose leading off the truck burned as he drove away. There were some houses along the highway that were destroyed and we could hear the propane tanks explode.
About the weather: the winds in the heat of the afternoons goes up the Klamath River, and since we were on a south slope into the Salmon River, within half mile of the Klamath, the wind ran up the side canyon in all directions.
Our escape: walking up the Salmon River toward the bridge on highway 96 there were vehicles to take us back to Orleans, also our District Fire Management Officer with tears in his eyes thinking we were burned up.
This fire was turned over to a Regional team, a fire camp was set up in the Orleans school yard with kitchens, shower units and crews brought in from all over the region. I ended up being squad leader on a fire line crew, mostly on night shift on Somes Mountain. Took a month to contain, not sure number people assigned or acres burnt, maybe 80k. It did burned into the Marble Mountain Wilderness. There has been other fires over the years since the Off Fire over the same area.
Google earth might be the best place to see the geography of the area. The Ukonom Ranger station is no longer at Somes Bar, since it was built on Indian burial ground and the ground under it was moving as cracks were showing. The two Districts are now in one office in Orleans.
Monday, March 23, 2020
In Search of Bigfoot
The Orleans Ranger District of the Six Rivers National Forest was the center of Big- foot country. It was here where the Patterson-Grimlin film was made in 1967 of a female Bigfoot in the upper portion of Bluff Creek. A frame from this film was made into a popular post card, sold in many tourist traps and gift shops, showing the Bigfoot walking and looking at the camera. The Indian name for Bigfoot is Sasquatch and there has been a few stories passed down through generations of local Indians about their sightings of Bigfoot.
From
1971-74, I worked on the Orleans District timber sale preparation crew, doing
harvest unit layout, mapping and timber cruising. Most of our work was on the northern portion
of the District where it was mostly a roadless area. Due to the daily driving time and the distance
it took to walk into the proposed sale areas, we were required to live in camp
trailers during the work week to save on travel time. These trailers were set up at the end of the
existing road. At the end of the week
we would drive back to the ranger station in Orleans, about a distance of 30
miles. On one of our return trips we
encountered a man wearing a black hat, no shirt, ammo belts strapped over his
shoulders, a revolver and a big knife walking along the Lonesome Ridge
Road. It was a hot day and he flagged
us down asking for a ride back to Orleans and a drink of water. Feeling a little sorry for the man not having
any water or even a pack with him we let him ride with us, plus he looked like
a man not to argue with. He informed us
he was a Bigfoot hunter employed by the University of British Columbia and
needed to get back to town to pick up his paycheck at the post office, buy
supplies and return to his camp somewhere in the upper Bluff Creek
watershed. The previous winter a plane flying over that
portion of Bluff Creek reported smoke coming from a large washed out culvert on
a snow covered gravel bar and this could have been his camp. We dropped him off at the Post Office and
returned to the station. We told other
Forest Service people of our encounter upon our return. The foreman of the silviculture crew informed
us that they encountered the same man one evening while eating dinner at their
camp, where they had been doing plantation surveys in the upper Bluff Creek
area. They invited him to have dinner
with them around the camp fire. During
the dinner he suddenly dropped his plate, stood up and said that he smelled
Bigfoot and had to go in search of it. The
crew came to the conclusion he had been smoking too much “Humboldt tobacco.”
Other
sightings our crew saw were foot prints in the snow on the Camp Creek
Road. They looked like large human
prints, but could have been bear. We
reported this and as the word got out the San Francisco Chronicle sent
reporters to interview us and our names appeared in the article. On another occasion, two of us were mapping
a harvest unit off Lonesome Ridge when we came across a large nest where
rhododendron branches had been broken off and bear grass was used to line the
nest. The Forest wildlife biologist was
called to analyze the hairs and his conclusion was they were bear hairs.
The scariest
episode for me was when I was working alone locating a harvest unit boundary in
the East Fork of Bluff Creek. I was a
mile from my work truck down a slope flagging the boundary when I stopped to
look at the aerial photo showing the proposed unit location. This was when I heard something tearing up a
log down in the ravine below me. At first
I thought it was a bear, then I could hear heavy breathing as it was coming up
slope toward me. As it got closer I got
behind a large fir tree to hide myself and soon it sounded like it was too
close for comfort, so in a panic I ran uphill. After running up to the ridge as fast as
possible through the dense brush, I stopped to look back, there was nothing. I figured it must have been scared when
hearing me and took off in a different direction. After telling my story in the office a timber
sale administrator said a logging crew near that location had seen a bear whose
breathing was abnormal due to an old head wound, probably caused by a hunter.
Who knows
what is fact or fiction on the existence of Bigfoot?
Thursday, March 19, 2020
The Brush Picker
Thinking back on some of the colorful characters that lived in Orleans, in northwestern California where I worked for the Forest Service from 1971-77, there is one that stands out by the name of Fred Starnes. He lived across the highway from where I lived, next to the brush shed in a small camp trailer. The brush shed was operated by Evergreen Flora, based in Washington State. It was a long old building with a covered deck, where trucks backed up to for loading or unloading their bundles of huckleberry. No fancy landscaping around the shed, just some oak trees and dry grass. The Evergreen truck would arrive once a month to collect the huckleberry to be used in floral decorations. Fred was a brush picker, a timber faller and a security guard during the night at the brush shed, which provided him a place to park his trailer free of rent. He was a tall skinny man in his 40’s and drove a VW bug with big tires for better traction on some rough forest roads. Fred had a family living in Willow Creek, about 40 miles south on Highway 96, where it intersect with Highway 299. Brush picking on the National Forest required a permit, and permittees were assigned an area exclusive to them. There were other brush pickers in the community and some acted as graders, working in the brush shed for Evergreen. Huckleberry had to be picked in a way that passed the grade and pickers were paid by the pound. It was hard work walking through the woods, searching for the perfect branches to pick and pack it on your back, usually up steep mountains slopes back to your vehicle. At the end of the day pickers would unload their bundles at the brush shed for grading and weighing. There were a few times when I saw Fred walking along a forest road with his pack frame so loaded down with huckleberry you hardly see him under it all. Whenever Fred had a timber falling job, he always worked by himself. He had a couple of power saws and timber jacks. He worked on some of the timber sales I had to oversee. After a day of cutting timber he would walk back up hill to his VW bug with a load of huckleberry on his back. This was not his permit area, but who really cared since it was going to be a clearcut eventually. Like many timber fallers, Fred would take some empty plastic jugs with him in the morning to place next to freshly cut sumps to collect the tree sap, which was sold to pharmaceutical companies.
On a few
summer evenings a couple of us would gather around Fred’s campfire by his
trailer and listen to his wild stories, while sitting on log rounds he provided
for chairs as we all contributed to his pile of empty beer cans. Some of his stories were a little on the far
side, such as sightings of Bigfoot or a man he called Garlic Man, that lived in
the woods and survived by eating garlic. The thought occurred to me at times that maybe
Fred had spent too much time alone in the brush. There
were a few times I could hear Fred talking to himself when I was at my place
across the highway. Looking back maybe
we all spent too much time working in the brush while living in Orleans.
Saturday, March 14, 2020
Shopping Madness
Went shopping at our local Bi-Mart yesterday in Sutherlin. Place was beyond madness with people stocking up, could hardly find a parking space, never seen that many people there at once. Got the last bags of Bob's Red Mill bean mix, so many ways it can be served; on toast, with veggies or just mixed with what ever, better known as swill. On the way home went through Oakland to check out the Oakland (Bart's) Market, lot of parking space, no crowds, good supply of beer and assortment of veggies, so loaded up.
Friday, March 13, 2020
Potato planting time
Time to plant those potatoes that have been way back there in the dark corners of the pantry along with other hidden surprises. Might be nice to have in a few months when you can't find em in the market.
Wednesday, March 11, 2020
GREEN GOLD: the cultivation of marijuana in Humboldt County
Short story of my experiences with the pot growing culture of the 1970's, while working on the Orleans Ranger District of the Six Rivers National Forest.
GREEN GOLD
Back in the
1960’s and 70’s Humboldt County, in northwestern California was known as the
pot growing capital of the country and the revenue it generated was a major factor
in the economy there. Much of the
marijuana was grown on the Six Rivers National Forest under the disguise of
mining claims, both legal and illegal. These
claims were established under the Mining Act of 1872, which is still applicable
today with some revisions. Other
marijuana or ‘pot plantations’ were established in remote areas of the forest,
where a good water source could be tapped and there was abundant sunshine
available during the growing season. It
was not uncommon to stumble across a black plastic pipe while working in the
woods for the Forest Service cruising timber or doing tree plantation
surveys. During the winter of 1972 the
tree planting crew I was working on came across an abandon greenhouse frame
located in an old tree plantation that we were replanting. The Resource Staff Assistant on the Orleans Ranger
District of the Six Rivers National Forest had the job of keeping inventory of
mining claims on the District, in addition to other duties of this
position. At times he would visit some
of the claims to see what progress was being made. On one occasion some of these claimants made
an office visit to the Resource Assistant and threatened to kill him if he ever
returned to their claim. These
characters were easy to identify in the small community of Orleans as most had
long hair, beards and the general appearance of being rough individuals,
sometimes packing guns. After having a
few beers in one of the three drinking establishments some of these people would
show off their big rolls of cash after harvesting their crop. There was an old building across from the
post office, known as wino hill where many of the pot growers would make deals
selling their goods. It was also a
place where some of the local Indians gathered to consume liquor, mostly in the
form of wine. My only encounter was on
a weekend, while hiking alone cross country back to my truck, parked at the end
of a logging road from a hike into the Trinity Alps Wilderness, when I stumbled
through a pot grower’s camp where the occupants were sitting around a camp fire. I was packing a 357 revolver and as I passed
through their camp they just said, “how you doing?” I don’t remember my reply, just kept moving
and nothing happened. They must have
thought I was another grower with the sight of my revolver. Who knows?
Saturday, February 29, 2020
Job Hazards with Logging
Today was a wet cold day, so got back to my writings. Came up with this one attached hereto, about the hazards I and others had to put up with on logging jobs and the fear of wrecking a Forest Service vehicle.
While
working for the Forest Service as a timber sale contract administrator for 20
years, I saw a few injuries to loggers and almost had a couple myself. Logging is considered one of the most
hazardous jobs there is, involving the falling of trees, yarding or skidding of
logs to a landing, loading logs onto trucks and driving those log trucks to the
mills. For myself, working alone most the time there
was always the daily challenge of being safe.
Driving forest roads with logging traffic was always a hazard. Knowing the location of turnouts was critical
to avoid a collision while driving to a logging operation. Listening to the CB
radio was important to know where the next loaded truck was or it was best to
follow an empty truck to the job. There were always the usual hazards, running
into a hornets nests while walking in the woods or falling and breaking a leg
or arm. I had my fair share of stings
from hornets and had one bad fall down over a rocky ledge while posting a
cutting boundary on the Orleans District of the Six Rivers National Forest. Took me a while to walk back up hill to the
truck with an injured knee as it was starting to snow.
When
walking downhill in a unit being cut from the bottom up it was vital to yell
out to let the timber fallers know my position.
Once on the Gold Beach District of the Siskiyou National Forest in 1985
the logging manager for the Champion plywood mill in Gold Beach and I walked
into a unit where the fallers were jacking trees away from a protected
stream. We did not hear saws running
and thought the two fallers were taking a break. As we got closer we noticed a tree top
moving in our direction and realized they had been jacking the tree to fall
alongside the tree we were walking on.
We both turned and ran, but I knew I would never out run it, so jumped
off the down tree and took cover under it as the big old growth fir fell along
side of it shaking the ground. Something
I will never forget. The logging
managers came running back yelling my name thinking I had been hit and was glad
to see me crawl back up from under the tree.
Afterward the four of us discussed our mistakes, especially not yelling
out to let the fallers know we were coming and the fallers for not yelling out
“Down she comes or timber!” On another
job where log cutters were bucking blow down trees into logs a log above rolled
over a cutter breaking both his legs in a couple of places. His cutting partner walked to their truck to
call for help on the two-way radio. An
ambulance arrived from Gold Beach when I got there and I assisted with five
other people transporting the injured cutter on a litter over down trees to the
road below where the ambulance was waiting.
He would yell out in pain as we made our way over the logs.
My first
encounter with an injured logger was on the Orleans District of the Six Rivers
National Forest in 1975. While driving past a unit being cut a timber
faller had walked up out of the unit to his truck, so I stopped to talk to
him. He was bleeding from the mouth and
was missing some teeth. He told me he
had looked up while falling a tree and a small branch came down hitting him in
the face. He was headed home to Happy
Camp, about 80 miles away and said he could make it. The next day he was back on the job. One of the most tragic incidents, that I did
not see was a cat operator clearing logs from a road right-of-way job and
setting his own chokers in order to skid the logs to a deck. While taking chokers off the winch behind
the cat it began to roll backwards, pinning him to a tree. He was found dead at the end of the day by
his foreman. The cat engine was still idling.
It was
important to know where cables were located when inspecting a unit during the
yarding operation, usually to check if required fire tools and clearings around
cable blocks were being complied with. All
movements of cables is under the direction of the rigging slinger, supervising
the choker setters or the hook tender doing layout of a new cable road. One whistle means stop, two means go back on
it, three means go forward, usually with a load of logs. There was a small quarter inch diameter cable
called the ‘hay wire’ used to pull the bigger cables during a road change. Sometimes it was hard to detect where this
cable was as it was usually laid out over down logs or in the brush. Once
on the Orleans District I walked over this cable as I heard a series of
whistles and shortly after crossing it the cable jumped up in the air six feet
and was moving faster than I care to remember.
During my
career from 1988 to 95 on the Cottage Grove District of the Umpqua National
Forest there were two accidents. One involved
a small logging contractor, who was branding logs while they were being loaded
onto the truck. A small log rolled off the
truck killing the man instantly. The
other was on a thinning operation when a guy line on a small swing boom yarder
broke and the yarder fell on its side pinning the operator’s foot under
it. An ambulance was called for from
Cottage Grove and I had to guide it up a maze of logging roads to where the
accidents happened. They had to dig the
man’s foot free to get him out of the machine.
There were
other accidents and fatalities that happened on other jobs I was not associated
with. Usually two or three times a year
the state OSHA inspector would make a visit to our office and wanted to know
where any logging operations were happening and get a map of their locations. When
the word got out some small loggers would just shut down for a day or two to
avoid getting any citations for safety violations, usually for using frayed or
worn out cables, faulty safety equipment or personnel not wearing proper safety
gear.
One of the
most memorable accidents was when a Forest Service employee in the silviculture
department at Gold Beach was assigned a new Ford pickup and drove it onto a
landing to inspect a plantation. He
looked back at his truck to see it roll over the landing and tumble down to the
bottom of the unit. He had left it in
neutral and forgot to apply the brake.
He was walking back toward Gold Beach when my supervisor picked him up
and asked what happened to his truck. Even my boss had a hard time digesting what had
happened. The cost of that new truck was
deducted from the employees pay for many years.
At least in
all my years I never wrecked a Forest Service truck, but had my fair share of
close calls. I do recall the gear shift
stick coming out of transmission on a return trip to Cottage Grove and had to
leave it in 3rd gear all the way back to the station. Looking back I feel lucky to have made it this
far.
Sunday, December 8, 2019
Alaska Road Rule-Comments
Please consider my comments in the attached letter. I worked for the Forest Service at Rowan Bay on Kuiu Island in 1992 and saw first hand what it takes to construct logging roads on boggy ground to support the many off-highway loads and the numerous rock pits and clear cuts that occurred on this island.
USDA Forest
Service
December 8, 2019
Attn: Alaska Road Rule
P.O. Box
21628
Juneau,
Alaska 99802
The
preferred alternative to change the 2001 Roadless Rule is way too extreme for
the Tongass National Forest, where 70% of the old growth forests were removed
in the last half of the last century. It
takes 300 to 600 years for many of these clear cut areas to become the forests
they once were, with an overstory of spruce, hemlock and cedar. How much more rock will it take to pound
into the boggy ground to firm up the new roads in order to transport these logs
to the ocean where they will be made into rafts for delivery to mills or to the
export market.
This is the
last temperate rain forest in the world that is sequestering carbon dioxide, a
world being altered by a warming climate, as evident in Alaska, where native
villages along the Arctic coast are eroding away and the permafrost is
melting. Alaska today is more dependent on tourism and
commercial fishing, which makes up 25% of the economy. Logging only makes up 1% of the economy. Is it worth risking the last great salmon
fishery habitat by putting more sediment into the streams? This preferred alternative will only produce
a short-term economical gain and a long-term ecological disaster. Let’s not give in to the politicians with
their tunnel vision, focused on the bottom line and under the influence of big
money with no wider view of the environment that will be destroyed. Let’s consider more thinning alternatives to
restore the cut over areas of the past and utilize existing roads. What kind of world do we want to leave for
the next generations?
Mike Burke
855
Wildflower Lane
Oakland,
Oregon 97462
farmhand.mike@gmail.com
Monday, December 2, 2019
Alaska Roadless Rule
The following is a draft of my comments due by 12/16/19 to the Forest Service dealing with the Road Rules imposed in 2001. Basically this rule limited any new road construction on the Tongass National Forest, the largest National Forest in the U.S. The Trump administration want to change this and open up these forests for more logging. Note the link below for more information. Will forward a brief history of logging and what I experienced, when I worked there on a detail in 1992 or 93 (don't remember the year). The logging roads were constructed by pounding pit-run rock in to the boggy ground with Cats and other heavy equipment to support the off highway loads that had 16 foot log bunks, since most these roads had no public traffic to deal with. Hopefully UW can spread the word about this and individual members can read the draft EIS and make their own comments.
DRAFT COMMENTS:
Saturday, November 30, 2019
A Brief History of Logging on the Tongass NF
While
working for the Forest Service as a timber sale contract administrator for 20
years, I saw a few injuries to loggers and almost had a couple myself. Logging is considered one of the most
hazardous jobs there is, involving the falling of trees, yarding or skidding of
logs to a landing, loading logs onto trucks and driving those log trucks to the
mills. For myself, working alone most the time there
was always the daily challenge of being safe.
Driving forest roads with logging traffic was always a hazard. Knowing the location of turnouts was critical
to avoid a collision while driving to a logging operation. Listening to the CB
radio was important to know where the next loaded truck was or it was best to
follow an empty truck to the job. There were always the usual hazards, running
into a hornets nests while walking in the woods or falling and breaking a leg
or arm. I had my fair share of stings
from hornets and had one bad fall down over a rocky ledge while posting a
cutting boundary on the Orleans District of the Six Rivers National Forest. Took me a while to walk back up hill to the
truck with an injured knee as it was starting to snow.
When
walking downhill in a unit being cut from the bottom up it was vital to yell
out to let the timber fallers know my position.
Once on the Gold Beach District of the Siskiyou National Forest in 1985
the logging manager for the Champion plywood mill in Gold Beach and I walked
into a unit where the fallers were jacking trees away from a protected
stream. We did not hear saws running
and thought the two fallers were taking a break. As we got closer we noticed a tree top
moving in our direction and realized they had been jacking the tree to fall
alongside the tree we were walking on.
We both turned and ran, but I knew I would never out run it, so jumped
off the down tree and took cover under it as the big old growth fir fell along
side of it shaking the ground. Something
I will never forget. The logging
managers came running back yelling my name thinking I had been hit and was glad
to see me crawl back up from under the tree.
Afterward the four of us discussed our mistakes, especially not yelling
out to let the fallers know we were coming and the fallers for not yelling out
“Down she comes or timber!” On another
job where log cutters were bucking blow down trees into logs a log above rolled
over a cutter breaking both his legs in a couple of places. His cutting partner walked to their truck to
call for help on the two-way radio. An
ambulance arrived from Gold Beach when I got there and I assisted with five
other people transporting the injured cutter on a litter over down trees to the
road below where the ambulance was waiting.
He would yell out in pain as we made our way over the logs.
My first
encounter with an injured logger was on the Orleans District of the Six Rivers
National Forest in 1975. While driving past a unit being cut a timber
faller had walked up out of the unit to his truck, so I stopped to talk to
him. He was bleeding from the mouth and
was missing some teeth. He told me he
had looked up while falling a tree and a small branch came down hitting him in
the face. He was headed home to Happy
Camp, about 80 miles away and said he could make it. The next day he was back on the job. One of the most tragic incidents, that I did
not see was a cat operator clearing logs from a road right-of-way job and
setting his own chokers in order to skid the logs to a deck. While taking chokers off the winch behind
the cat it began to roll backwards, pinning him to a tree. He was found dead at the end of the day by
his foreman. The cat engine was still idling.
It was
important to know where cables were located when inspecting a unit during the
yarding operation, usually to check if required fire tools and clearings around
cable blocks were being complied with. All
movements of cables is under the direction of the rigging slinger, supervising
the choker setters or the hook tender doing layout of a new cable road. One whistle means stop, two means go back on
it, three means go forward, usually with a load of logs. There was a small quarter inch diameter cable
called the ‘hay wire’ used to pull the bigger cables during a road change. Sometimes it was hard to detect where this
cable was as it was usually laid out over down logs or in the brush. Once
on the Orleans District I walked over this cable as I heard a series of
whistles and shortly after crossing it the cable jumped up in the air six feet
and was moving faster than I care to remember.
During my
career from 1988 to 95 on the Cottage Grove District of the Umpqua National
Forest there were two accidents. One involved
a small logging contractor, who was branding logs while they were being loaded
onto the truck. A small log rolled off the
truck killing the man instantly. The
other was on a thinning operation when a guy line on a small swing boom yarder
broke and the yarder fell on its side pinning the operator’s foot under
it. An ambulance was called for from
Cottage Grove and I had to guide it up a maze of logging roads to where the
accidents happened. They had to dig the
man’s foot free to get him out of the machine.
There were
other accidents and fatalities that happened on other jobs I was not associated
with. Usually two or three times a year
the state OSHA inspector would make a visit to our office and wanted to know
where any logging operations were happening and get a map of their locations. When
the word got out some small loggers would just shut down for a day or two to
avoid getting any citations for safety violations, usually for using frayed or
worn out cables, faulty safety equipment or personnel not wearing proper safety
gear.
One of the
most memorable accidents was when a Forest Service employee in the silviculture
department at Gold Beach was assigned a new Ford pickup and drove it onto a
landing to inspect a plantation. He
looked back at his truck to see it roll over the landing and tumble down to the
bottom of the unit. He had left it in
neutral and forgot to apply the brake.
He was walking back toward Gold Beach when my supervisor picked him up
and asked what happened to his truck. Even my boss had a hard time digesting what had
happened. The cost of that new truck was
deducted from the employees pay for many years.
At least in
all my years I never wrecked a Forest Service truck, but had my fair share of
close calls. I do recall the gear shift
stick coming out of transmission on a return trip to Cottage Grove and had to
leave it in 3rd gear all the way back to the station. Looking back I feel lucky to have made it this
far.
Don't remember many dry days, usually some form of rain most the time. At the end of my tour toward the end of September it started snowing. Most logging prior to WW2 (1920's-30's) was done by permit with the FS. A good book about this is called, 'Handloggers.' It is a story about a married couple who lived on a boat and during the day the man would take his hand saw and axe and search the steep slopes along the ocean channels for a large spruce that would fall into the waters below. They would use the boat to gather up the logs he would buck up, usually in the water and make a raft that they pulled to the mill at the end of the season. Some trees would hangup and not make it to the water, so he would use jacks to free up the tree. Sometimes the tree would let loose like a freight train just a few feet from him--talk about dangerous work...
Tuesday, September 3, 2019
Orleans
Orleans Ranger District
Six Rivers National Forest
1971-1977
Orleans is
located along the Klamath River in northwestern California. In the gold mining days of the 1850’s it was
known as Orleans Bar when the only access was by horseback. Today state highway 96 goes through this
small community, and if you don’t have to stop for food, gas or information at
the Ranger Station you might not even notice the posted speed limit.
In the
spring of 1971, I accepted a job with the Forest Service as a GS-4 Forestry Aid
on the Orleans Ranger District. Without
any knowledge of this community I loaded up my old 1963 Ford pickup and made
the big move. It was an eight hour drive from Stockton,
California up through the Klamath Mountains to Orleans. As I drove up highway 96 the sun was
setting. When I arrived in Orleans it
was dark, and I could only see a few lights from houses scattered along both
sides of the highway. I looked for a
place to spend the night, like a motel or a side street where I could park and
sleep in my truck; there was neither. I
ended up in a campground just outside of town.
The next morning I reported for work thinking there might be temporary
space to stay in the bunk house until I found a place to stay permanently. The bunkhouse was full. Somebody informed me there was a small house
for rent next to the tackle shop. After
work I made contact with the owner, who lived next door to the small house for
rent. Since I quickly saw there was not
much to this town, I decided to take it for $70 per month. Half of this house was an old trailer making
up a bedroom and kitchen attached to a wooden structure containing the bathroom
and small living room, maybe for a total of 200 square feet of living space all
under one roof. I spent four years
living in this place until I was promoted to a position that included a
government trailer to live in located in a community trailer park.
In addition
to the Ranger Station, Orleans consisted of two gas stations, two stores, a
post office, an elementary school, a veneer mill, three trailer courts, three
bars, a hotel and a church. The
population was about 600 people in the summer, including all those that lived
within a ten mile radius and a seasonal work force of contractors and their
employees. The Ranger Station was made
up of an office, seven homes for the staff, a shop, warehouse, bunk house and a
small house for a crew foreman. There
were about 14 permanent people assigned to this station and a seasonal work
force of about 20, including a fire crew, a brush disposal crew, a silvicuture and
timber crew .
The local
economy was based on logging, road construction, recreation, and the
cultivation of marijuana. It was not
uncommon to come across marijuana plantations while working out in the forest
or seeing shifty looking characters in town showing off their big rolls of cash. Social events consisted of floating on inner
tubes down the Klamath River, fishing, potluck dinners on the Ranger Station, baseball
games with local loggers, drinking beer and fighting. The nearest law enforcement officer was a
deputy sheriff 30 miles away in Hoopa and was never known to patrol after dark
in or around Orleans. There were some citizen deputies appointed to
keep a watchful eye on any local mischief, especially at any community
functions. In most cases some of these
people were in no better condition than the local Indians in regard to their
alcohol consumption
There was an
Indian population here that had a hard time controlling their use of alcohol,
which usually led to fights in one of the drinking establishments called the
Ishi Pishi Bar. Some of these fights
resulted in the death of some people over the years I lived here. Sometimes it was closed down by the state,
but usually opened again in a few weeks.
Seems the windows to this place were always covered with plywood. Most white people stayed away and gathered at
the Orleans Hotel Bar across the highway or the Fisherman’s Inn across the
river.
The first
three years of my career here involved doing a little of everything from
performing plantation surveys in the spring, timber cruising and mapping in the
summer, falling hardwoods and burning logging slash in the fall, planting trees
and assisting with timber sale appraisals in the winter. Within the first year I was promoted to a
GS-5 Forestry Technician after becoming a certified timber cruiser and by the
end of my second year was promoted to a GS-7 Lead Forestry Technician in charge
of timber sale layout. By the spring of 1975 I was promoted to a GS-9
Forestry Technician doing timber sale administration which became a year-round
job. This District had a hard time recruiting
people due to the remote location which made it not that attractive to many professional
people with families. In the six years I
worked here I saw three District Rangers come and go. It was relatively easy to get promotions as
a technician, plus it was a good way for management to keep you from looking
for transfers in order to get a promotion.
This District
had an annual timber cut of 80 million board feet, mostly in the form of
clearcuts. Most timber sales were purchased
by Fortuna Veneer that had the mill in Orleans, Humboldt Fir Lumber Company in
Hoopa or Sierra-Pacific Lumber Company in Arcata. Many of the logging and road construction
contractors came from out of the area, such as Willow Creek, Hoopa or Happy
Camp and one as far away as Medford, Oregon.
The three trailer courts in Orleans were filled in the summer where many
of the employees of these contractors took up residence. After the first fall rains District personnel,
except the clerical staff were divided into two slash burning teams. One team was assigned all completed logging
units south of the river and the other everything north of the river, about 800
acres for each team to burn. It usually
took a week of 12 to 14 hour days until the job was done in preparation for
tree planting contractors to begin their work on the many clearcuts ranging in
size from 10 to 80 acres.
The biggest
project on the District was the construction of the Gasquet-Orleans Road,
better known as the G-O Road that was to open up the timber supply in the
Klamath River to mills in Crescent City where much of their timber supply was
cut off by the formation of the Redwood National Park in the 1960’s. The G-O Road was designed as a two-lane paved
highway from Orleans up over the summit of the Siskiyou Mountains and down into
the Smith River to state highway 199.
Much of this road was financed by timber sales along the proposed
route. In addition to construction from Orleans
toward the summit road construction was also in progress from the Gasquet District
up the south fork of the Smith River toward the summit.
The local
Indians protested the proposed route through their sacred grounds near a high
peak called Doctor Rock located along the summit ridge. Because of the concerns of the Indians,
environmental groups and a ruling by the Supreme Court the G-O Road was never
completed. Today parts of the
uncompleted road is included within the Siskiyou Wilderness Area as a very
expensive walking trail.
In the
winter of 1975 a young woman by the name of Christine was hired on as a receptionist.
One thing I had learned in my four years
before she appeared on the scene was there was a definite shortage of single
women here and a man had to move quickly because of the many available
bachelors. By August of that year we
were married and in October of 1976 our son Jason was born in Eureka, the
largest city, a two hour drive from Orleans.
We lived a small cabin that we rented a few miles out of town until we
moved.
It was
common to look at the Forest Service vacancy notices posted in the main office
from time to time and dream of working in a location that was a little more
civilized, and not so steep and brushy.
In the spring of 1977, I applied for two job vacancies that I qualified
for, one in Prairie City, Oregon the other was in Greenville, California. After visiting Prairie City and scoping out
that community Christine was not too excited about moving there, so we agreed
on Greenville. The Orleans District Ranger informed me he did
not want me to transfer due to the heavy work load. About a week later, after much thought and a
few personal tragedies, like my dog getting run over, I confronted the Ranger
one Saturday morning in front of his residence on this issue. Without me getting too confrontational, he could
tell I wanted this transfer and agreed to it.
After living
in Orleans for six years, I learned the following—there were no ugly women
here, all the local natives were related to one way or another, so if you had a
disagreement with one you better be ready to deal with the others and the end
of the world was not far away.
Today the
Orleans Ranger Station is combined with the Ukonom Ranger Station which is a district
on the Klamath National Forest to the east of the Orleans District. There is much less logging now, the veneer
mill is gone and the Ishi Pishi Bar has passed into history liked many of us
who worked there.
Laird Logging
Gold Beach Ranger District
Siskiyou National Forest
During the
1970’s and into the 1980’s Laird Logging was the second largest logging company
in Oregon after Huffman and Wright Logging based in Canyonville. Laird was based in Gold Beach and was the
principal logger for Champion International Corporation, which had a large
plywood mill there along with extensive timber lands. Laird had his shop, equipment yard, and fleet
of yellow log trucks on property owned by Champion next to the mill. In addition to his fleet of trucks, he had
three yarders, logging tractors, mostly Cats, road construction equipment and a
helicopter with a pilot.
Laird’s first name was Shirley. He had been raised in the Coquille Valley,
south of Coos Bay. His dad had been a
logger and Shirley spent many years working for him and eventually inherited
the logging company. Shirley had a rough
voice and reminded me of a drill sergeant I encountered when I went through basic
training in the Army. Shirley’s voice
was always noticeable while talking over the Curry County radio system, which
most loggers as well as Forest Service personnel had while dealing with timber
sales. He would not hesitate to chew out
one of his own employees over the radio, which we could all hear. It was never pleasant. Shirley had been a Marine during the Korean
War and in many ways was still fighting the war. He carried a hand gun in his pickup because
as he once told me he did not trust some of his employees. Due to a labor shortage in the area some of
his employees were inmates from the local county jail under a work and release
program, where they were picked up in the early morning and returned to jail
after a hard day’s work in the woods. Shirley usually kept one yarder and some
tractors busy logging on Champion’s land.
His other two yarders were used
on Forest Service timber sales purchased by Champion on the three Westside Ranger
Districts of the Siskiyou National Forest, including Powers, Gold Beach and the
Chetco Districts. When Champion did not
keep him busy he would bid on jobs for South Coast Lumber Company with a mill
in Brookings. His equipment was good--
you seldom saw any broken-down piece of machinery in the woods with Shirley Laird’s
name on it. Even his fire trucks were
top notch, in contrast to some loggers who put these on the bottom of their maintenance
list.
In my years
working as a timber sale contract administrator on the Gold Beach District from
1979 to 1988 I had four timber sales for which Shirley Laird was the contract logger. The
first was the McLobster Sale, purchased by Champion with 12 million board feet of
timber consisting of five clearcut units ranging in size from 20 to 60 acres in
the head waters of Lobster Creek, a fish-bearing stream that drained into the
Rogue River about 10 miles up from Gold Beach.
Some of the riparian buffers
along the stream below these units were inadequate because they did not provide
the necessary protection required by the stream protection provision of the contract. There were slopes exceeding 100% or greater
than a 45 degree angle and many of the large trees on these slopes would have
ended up in the stream after being felled.
By contract modification,
requiring agreement by both Champion and the Forest Service, these buffer areas
were extended upslope from the stream by 100 to 200 feet depending on the
terrain. This deleted an estimated
amount of timber from the original sale volume which had to be made up by
adding an additional 20 acre unit on the sale area under the modification
agreement.
Laird logged
with two yarders, one being a 110-foot tower on a Skagit yarder reaching out
2500 to 3000 feet with the skyline cable to achieve the necessary log
suspension for soil and stream protection.
A motorized carriage was used to yard one to four logs at a time
depending on the weight of the logs.
This system employed four men on the landing, a yarder engineer, a log
loader operator and two men, called chasers, that released chokers, cut limbs
off logs, branded and painted log ends.
Usually six men worked in the brush on the rigging crew, including a
rigging slinger supervising 3 or 4 choker setters and the man in charge of the entire
operation, called the hook tender, whose name was Jack. He was a tough supervisor and it was common to
hear him yelling at the rigging crew from the landing. If a man got fired or quit on the job he had
to ride in a logging truck back to town.
It was very dangerous work and accidents were frequent, sometimes
fatal. There were incidents when Laird’s
helicopter was used to move injured people from the woods to the hospital in
Gold Beach. The helicopter also was used at times to fly cable from the yarder
to the other slope beyond the clearcut unit to save time of rigging cables on
the ground by hand. There was a water
bucket available for fire suppression if needed. Also, the helicopter was made available to
the entire community for emergencies.
Laird use to
employ a cage that would hook to the carriage to transport the rigging crew out
of the unit at the end of the day. This
practice stopped after a near-fatal accident where the yarder engineer was not
paying attention and the cage flipped over the skyline. This practice was not looked upon highly by the
state health and safety people either, and after that one incident the crew
preferred to walk out at the end of the day, for their own survival.
The other
yarder Laird used was a 50-foot swing boom using a running skyline system
reaching out 800 feet to complete logging out the upper corners of the
units. The hook tender for this
operation was Pete, a quiet man, who seem to be suspicious of his crew and kept
a low profile.
Like most
loggers Laird’s priority was to get as many loads a day off the landings as
possible; any other work requirements were secondary. In order to keep up with erosion control and
slash piling requirements it was customary to allow the logger no more than
three landings pending completion of cleanup work before moving to a new
landing. Laird had pushed the limit as
he was moving to his fourth landing leaving three with uncompleted work. The logging manager for Champion had been
notified of this non-compliance. The
remedy was simple; the logging manger took away the log branding hammers for
both yarders and told Laird he could have them back when the Forest Service was
happy again. After two days of no
hauling while doing the required work Laird went back to logging.
All logs
required a brand, assigned by the purchaser on each log end to identify them as
to what sale they were from for log scaling and payment purposes; also, loggers
and sub-contractors were paid according to the log scale. A spot of yellow paint was also required on
one log end for export control since no National Forest logs were allowed to be
exported, except for Port Orford cedar which did not have a domestic market at
the time.
At least
once a week log trucks were inspected as they left the sale area for branding,
painting and load receipts. If loads
were found to be in non-compliance they were parked until the situation was
corrected. This usually involved a
person leaving the landing with a branding hammer and can of yellow paint. This definitely slowed down production and
got the logger’s attention quickly. Laird could hear the truck driver call back to
the landing over the radio for someone to come and brand and paint logs. Laird would enter the conversation with his
rough voice in frustration with it all. It would not take him long to be on the job
giving some people on the landing his advice on what they should be doing or
else, and it was never a friendly exchange.
One of my
most memorable encounters with Laird was on the Camp Victoria sale where he was
logging for South Coast Lumber. The
crew operating the 110- foot tower had completed yarding operations on one unit
and moved to another unit leaving a mountain of slash on the landing. Pete, the hook tender of the swing boom yarder,
was ready to move on to this landing to complete yarding the upper corners of
the unit. He called me on the radio
telling me he could not operate with all the slash piled on the landing and was
going to push it over the side into the unit with a bulldozer. I arrived on the landing and said he could
not do that. At the moment we both looked down the hill to see a cloud of dust
behind Shirley’s pickup truck coming toward us.
Pete replied to me, “Well, let’s see what Laird has to say about it.”
Shirley jumped out of his truck and wanted to know what the holdup was. Pete told him the situation with the slash
and Shirley said to push it over the side.
Pete replied that the Forest Service wouldn’t allow that. Laird turned to me and barked, “Then what
should I do with it?” I told him if he
pushed it over the side he would have to yard it back up and pile it again or
he could burn it under a permit. Laird
elected to burn it, so I requested a burning permit over the radio from the District
fire management people which they granted with the condition that Laird provide
two fire trucks on the job with a hose lay around the pile. He agreed, got two fire trucks and put his
crew to work laying out fire hose and wetting down the area around the pile as
it started to burn. About an hour into
the job one of the pumper engines ran out of gas. Since all the crew was busy I took it upon
myself to fill the tank from the five gallon gas can provided on the fire
truck. Just as I was getting ready to
pour the gas into the tank Laird came up from below the landing yelling, “Don’t
do that!” He told me he had put sugar in all the extra gas tanks because he
thought employees were stealing gas from him.
He had some good gas in his pickup that was used and in the end all that
slash went up in smoke with no spot fires.
The big
Skagit yarder was moved to a long clearcut unit and after yarding the first sky
line road reaching out 3000 feet Jack, the hook tender said he could not find any
more adequate tail hold trees on the far slope across the stream below to
anchor the skyline to. After looking
into this I agreed and permitted him to use the north bend system which involved
leaving the skyline in place on the first road and highlead yard to it. When I returned to my pickup to write up the
agreement for this change in yarding systems I went to place a copy in Jack’s company
pickup. Upon opening the door I noticed somebody
had left a BM on the driver’s seat! I
did not hang around to see what was said at the end of that day.
By 1984-85
Champion had cut all the mature timber on their lands and could not compete
with other purchasers for National Forest timber sales under a declining lumber
market and the mill was closed. Laird
was out of a job and had to close up shop and move. He moved his entire operation to Lakeside,
north of Coos Bay where he went to work for International Paper Company until
they closed down a few years later.
Laird retired after that, sold most of his equipment, laid off his
permanent employees and moved back to Gold Beach.
By the end
of the 1980’s other mills were closing due to an inadequate log supply,
conflicts with labor unions or the decision by corporate boards to move operations
to southern forests in the U.S. where there were second growth plantations
ready to harvest. It was the mill and
logging employees that got the short end of the stick with no pensions and no other
jobs to go to in their small communities.
Some relocated to other areas for work, some qualified for job training programs
at local community colleges and some could not cope with the change, like Pete
the hook tender, who committed suicide.
Laird died in 2002 at the age of 72 and was
buried with full military honors as a Marine Corp staff sergeant.
Today the
only remaining mill on the south coast that I know of is South Coast Lumber. All
the others are gone, including Champion, Moore Mills, Rogge Lumber, Westbrook,
and Georgia-Pacific. The Siskiyou National Forest is now combined
with the Rogue River National Forest and the Chetco Ranger District has been
consolidated with the Gold Beach District.
The timber management and engineering staff now is only a small fraction
of what it was in the 1970’s until the 1990’s.
For example, there was a Westside Engineering office north of Gold Beach
which closed sometime in the l990’s. It had 50 to 60 permanent and seasonal
employees serving the three westside Districts doing road surveys, design work,
construction inspection and road maintenance consisting of graders, dump
trucks, backhoes and other equipment.
It is all
history now.
Friday, August 23, 2019
Tractor Payment Frustrations
The attached letter to John Deere only expresses some of my frustrations with trying to make electronic payments on my new tractor. With many phone numbers for customer service, addresses and emails for their financial branch you never know who is the real customer representative or what kind of response you might get. Some have been helpful, some say they would get back to me, and never did and one that cut me off, which could have been my phone. I know John Deere is having a rough time due to a lack of sales of large agricultural equipment and many mid west farms not able to make equipment payments because of adverse weather conditions preventing planting, a loss of export markets and the declining price of some crops/products.
John Deere
Financial
August 23, 2019
P.O. Box
5328
Madison,
WI 53705-0328
ATTN: Customer Service
Account
No: 510001716322
I have tried
unsuccessessfully to make a payment electronically using MyJDFAccount.com. Set up my account on 8/8/19 attempting to
make a payment of $204.24 (Confirmation No. 1292388017841) which was due
8/19/19. Called JD customer service
three times (1-800-634-9662 and 1-800-541-9053) asking for advice. Have been informed by customer service that
my account does not exist. Have used
the same routing and account numbers over the years for tax return deposits
with no problems. Again, tried to make
payment on 8/20/19 (Confirmation No. 1242389159703), even tried a phone
transaction on 8/20/19 with no success (Confirmation No. 1272369234720, for
what it’s worth).
As of this
date 8/23/19, I have mailed in a check for $204.24, which must be my only
option for making payments in a timely manner.
Frustrated!
Wm Mike
Burke
855
Wildflower Lane
Oakland, OR
9746
Email: farmhand.mike@gmail.com
Phone: 541-729-7786
Cc: SELCO Credit Union
Samuel Allen, JD CEO