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.
