Document 30: A Ranger Reminisces about the First Years of the Mt. Baker National Forest
Memoirs of C. C. McGuire, accession 1573, Special Collections, University of Washington Libraries.
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Early Ranger Examinations
In October 1909, sixteen potential rangers assembled at the Supervisor's headquarters in Bellingham for a three day test of their fitness to become Forest Rangers. The examination was conducted by Supervisor [Charles] Park and his assistant, A. A. Parker. It is interesting to compare the agenda with latter day requirements and qualifications.
As memory serves, the following tests were given: 1) From the foliage, identify ten species of trees grown on Mt. Baker—give common and technical names—if you can spell the latter, more power to you. 2) Fall a tree ten or more inches in diameter with an axe. In giving this test a stake was driven in the ground about 20 feet from the tree. The victim was allowed to select the point where the stake was driven. All he had to do then was to fall the tree so that it would drive the stake further into the ground. His skill was determined by the nearness of the tree bole to the stake. Only three candidates out of sixteen survived that test, one man actually driving the stake. Most trees went wide of the mark with some trees falling in the opposite direction. 3) Figure magnetic declinations on the four quadrants of the compass. In those days it seems no one thought of the idea of setting off the compass dial. 4) Run and pace a triangle, prepare field notes, and compute the acreage. 5) Demonstrate your ability to use a seven foot cross-cut saw. 6) Tell the boss man what ingredients and how much of each you would use in preparing a batch of biscuits. 7) Show how to build and put out a campfire (no accent on getting the last spark). 8) Pack a horse. This was a toughy—the pack consisted of two loosely tied sacks of oats, an axe, a mattock, a shovel and a cross-cut saw. Also, five days supply of grub for one man—all unpacked and a conglomeration of cooking equipment. Not only was your skill tested but you worked against time. Many would-be rangers fell by the wayside on this test. One bewildered candidate got the pack saddle on backwards. . . .
There may have been other tests but they are forgotten. Anyway only the following four men survived the three day test—namely, Ralph Hilligoss, Carl Bell, Grover Church and C. C. McGuire.
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Big Beaver Fire, 1926
The Big Beaver fire was the largest fire ever to hit the Mt. Baker [National Forest]. Larger and more destructive fires may have burned in the area, but if so, they were long prior to the creation of the Forest Service or Forest Reserves.
This fire, caused by lightning, started on July 4, 1926. . . . Before it ended, it spread to . . . 43,000 acres in all. . . .
Due to the isolated location of the fire only about 200 men could be worked [as firefighters] since enough horses to pack supplies for a larger crew could not be obtained. In addition to the original camp, the Flying Squadron [a nickname for the group that responded first to a forest fire] established two more camps, one on the east and one on the west side of Pumpkin Mtn. The two camps worked towards each other around the brow of the mountain, jumped the Skagit River and headed for Jack Mtn. The two camps were split by the fire and Camp 2 was burned out. Each camp started flanking the fire and the crews met on the lower slopes of Jack Mountain the second day. All one had to do was throw a burning match in the debris along the creek and the flames would leap up immediately and race to the east. Crews were then moved to Camp 4 to try and head off the fire on the north side.
The topography was too rough to climb, let alone put in lines. [Firefighters put in lines by burning swaths of vegetation in an effort to create fire breaks; they hoped the forest fire would not be able to jump the lines where they had already burned off all the vegetation.] Numerous attempts were made to get ahead of the fire but all ended in failure until the fire reached the Little Beaver [River] where it finally held. In the meantime, the fire again jumped the Skagit River. This jump was anticipated and 40 men were strategically located to meet it. The fire came across so fast that the crew had to flee for their lives. In less than 15 minutes, the fire formed a 3-mile front and had traveled five miles. (Try stopping that.)
From then on it became a case of putting lines around good timber instead of the fire. All together about 20 miles of fire line was built and held and 15 more [miles] were lost. Many valuable lessons on fire behavior were learned; many mistakes made and many blisters formed, relieved only by the extent of the blistery vocabulary [that is, by cursing with as much foul language as possible]. Incidentally, $50,000 was spent, or only about $1.25 per acre for the area burned, a few broken bones and one man dead from heart failure.
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Claims Examination
In the Spring of 1911 I was transferred to Darrington and located on the old Blue Bird Ranger Station. No development had been done on the stations but there was an old shack adjacent thereto in which I made my headquarters. My first job was to start clearing the tract so ranger buildings could be built. When the fire season started I was kept on the jump with small fires. The Northern Pacific Railway ran through ten miles of my protective area and hardly a day passed that I did not have one or more fires along the right-of-way. One fire near Fortson got away and covered about 200 acres of cut-over land. This was my first large fire. Though we finally whipped it, if ten percent of all the misdirected energy expended on that one fire had been used for training, I would probably have licked it before it started. But in those days who was [there] to train you? We had to find out by experience and try not to make the same mistakes twice. . . .
That summer we were getting curious as to how much timber we had, so I spent several weeks on extensive reconnaisance. Brundage and Merritt [other forest rangers] had made a pretty complete inventory of the Suiattle River drainage in 1909. To carry out the work in the Glacier District I started at the west boundary near Glacier. The method used was to go to the summit noting timber enroute, then offset [move up] one mile along the summit, cross the valley to the opposite summit, sampling the timber enroute, then offset another mile and repeat. In this manner I worked out the Nooksack River, Canyon Creek, and Chilliwack Creek drainages. It was interesting work and I might have covered more territory if I had refrained [from] climbing every high peak enroute just to see what was on the other side. However, I did get a speaking acquaintance with most of my district and made mental plans of places where I might some day build a trail. . . .
During the winter of 1912-13, Rangers Thompson, Helligoss, and Bell were sent to my district to fall snags [snags are dead trees that are still standing] on the Bolcom Vanderhoof sale area. [Bolcom-Vanderhoof was a logging firm based in Lochsloy, Washington, a small town on the Pilchuck River in Whatcom County.] This sale I believe was the first full scale logging operation on the Mt. Baker [National Forest] and was made in 1907. This was before the days of high leads. [High-lead logging did not drag felled trees along the ground; it used a system of pulleys to move the logs through the air. For a picture of high-lead logging, see document 18.] Logs were made up in turns and ground dragged to the cars where they were loaded with a parbuckle [a rope sling]. The cutting operations were finished when I arrived on the scene. But to keep the rangers in working trim, I believe that it was Fred Brundage, Assistant Supervisor, who decided those snags should come down, as well as small patches of young growth which had been fire killed. [The logging company had not cut down these trees because they did not make good lumber.] Helligoss and Thompson teamed up, while Bell and I worked together. There was from three to five feet of snow on the area and to wallow through it on a steep hillside carrying saw, spring boards, axes, maul, and wedges was anything but child's play. As I remember now we averaged forty-four snags per day for the two sets of fallers. We were instructed to keep a record of numbers felled and diameter of each. What became of these records is unknown but like many statistics they went into the limbo of forgotten things. . . .
I think it was also in this year [1913] that we got a call from the Madison Laboratory wanting eight cords [a cord is 128 cubic feet, about the amount of wood that a large pickup truck can carry] of amabilis fir [also known as Pacific silver fir] for experimental purposes. Of course there was no money for the job. This was just a chore for the ranger to do in his spare time. I know I went back into the mountain, cut and split the eight cords and packed it out on my saddle horse and shipped it to Wisconsin. I waited in vain for an acknowledgement but to this day can only surmise what was done with the wood. . . .
In covering these personal experiences up to the year of 1915 it seems more then enough to get a picture of early days Rangers' work. . . . In looking back, however, one has the feeling of accomplishment and a satisfaction of doing a worth-while job. Sitting on the side lines watching someone else carry the ball makes one at times feel like jumping off the bench and at least running interference. Then you realize that the younger foresters are quite competent to carry on and improve on the crude work of yester years. Personally I would like to do it all over again.