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WILLIAM W. MORRIS
Forest Assistant
Coeur d'Alene, l9O9-l9l4
EXPERIENCES ON A NATIONAL FOREST
1909
From Missoula I was soon detailed to the town of Wallace, Idaho. To be frank about it, I had never heard of the town of Wallace before, and as the train puffed up the beautiful valley of the Clark Fork River, over the summit of the Bitterroots, which marks the Montana-Idaho divide, then glided rapidly down into the Coeur d'Alene Valley, I wondered many times what kind of a town it was going to be my lot to strike. I was very agreeably surprised, for as the train sped into the station I saw a unique little city, set like a tiny jewel in the heart of the mountains, where five canyons meet.
It seemed like a toy city as I obtained better views of it later on from the high surrounding hills, but it was clean and spotless, and very much up to date, with fine homes and fine people. The hills on all sides of the town, coming down to the very doorsteps in fact, were covered with a beautiful young growth of timber. I had very little difficulty in locating the office of the Forest Service, as one can walk the entire length of the city in a few minutes. Here I met my supervisor, W. G. Weigle, under whom I worked for two years, and for whom I always had the greatest respect and regard.
A few days after arriving I was sent out on my first trip on the Coeur d’Alene National Forest. At that time this forest comprised about a million and one-half acres, and included the land drained by the St. Joe and Coeur d’Alene Rivers, in northern Idaho. As there were only a few rangers and forest officers on this forest at that time, it kept one constantly on the jump, attending to fires, timber sales, and other work that needed attention. Few were the trails in those days1 and much of the forest was unknown. Most of the trips were taken on foot with one1s blankets and supplies in a large Duluth packsack carried on the back. A walk of twenty five miles carrying from forty to eighty pounds was not uncommon and often the distance was even greater than this in a single day's trip.
The Headwaters of the Coeur d'Alene 1910
At the time of which I write the Forest Service had few trails on the Coeur d'Alene Forest, and many regions were not only inaccessible in case of fire, but almost unknown. One of the first things we wanted to know in order to make a working plan for the forest was how much timber we had, what areas were timbered or burned, and what areas might be profitably planted or restocked. A working plan is a detailed plan of running a forest. In the plan a certain amount of timber is allotted to be cut each year on a certain area, or during a certain period, so arranged that the forest will not be overcut. The plans also show the areas to be restocked, and the improvements to be made. In order therefore to get an idea of the timber located at the head of the Coeur d'Alene River I was detailed by my supervisor to take a party of three men, go up there and make a map of about a township of the timber, with a rough estimate. About the middle of May we started out. This party consisted of rangers George Hamilton and Allen, guard Millsap and myself.
Our supplies were sent from Wallace to the town of Prichard, which is located on the river. At this point we took boats. These were long flat bottomed affairs, pointed at both ends so that they could be more easily poled, if the term "easily" can be used as applied to pole boating. To all those who have never poled a boat up a swiftly flowing river, I would say that it is not the easiest job in the world, and requires a great deal of skill and endurance, a fact which I soon learned. I had with me three rangers, one of whom had charge of the district which we expected to examine, and two sort of general men assigned to various parts of the forest as the occasion demanded. We finally reached what is known as the forks of the river, above which the two streams are known as the East Fork and the West Fork. From here our work was done, and we camped the greater part of the time at this place.
It took us three days to reach this place, a distance of about twenty five miles, for it was in May and the water was high, from the melting snow that even yet remained on some of the timbered areas. Often we were compelled to jump out of our boat, wade the river and tow the boat by a rope fastened to the bow. It was slow hard progress. However as we got near the head of the river the fishing became good, and a good mess of trout tasted fine and cheered our drooping spirits after a hard day's work wading the river.
The return trip was worth all the hardships of going up. We glided by places in a few minutes that had caused us hours of toil on the upward journey. Swiftly we would shoot over narrow bars, where the water was bubbling and writhing, and where occasionally we could feel the canoe rub on some stone or hidden log, then into the deeper quieter waters, looking black and treacherous, with perpendicular rock cliffs overhead, and at these points we would almost stop. But we got through without a mishap, and were down to Prichard in less than a day, where we returned to Wallace by the one daily train.
Planting Work 1912
Late in the fall of 1910 the government sent to the Coeur d'Alene Forest about a ton and a half of walnut seed, red oak acorns, and hickory nuts. This seed was sent as an experiment to see if such deciduous trees would grow so far away from their eastern home, and in a country where their only neighbors would be mostly the conifers. It was a very interesting experiment, for there have been many conjectures, as to why the hardwood trees were not found to any extent in this mountain region of the west.
As it was too late in the season to plant the nut seed that fall, they were stored for the winter in a long trench, dug in the ground, where the nuts were laid several layers deep, covered over with plank, and then with earth, where they could keep cool and moist, but not rot. The following spring they were in fine shape for planting, the walnuts just beginning to sprout a little. They were planted in May in two large areas, covering altogether about ninety acres. A crew of fifteen to twenty men did the work. The nuts were planted four by four feet apart. The men had pointed sticks with a projecting iron piece near the pointed end, on which the foot was placed, to thrust the stick into the ground. The nuts were carried in bags hung around the neck. The head man or "Head nut" as he was nicknamed by the planters, obtained a straight line from a row of red flags, placed in line on long straight poles. The second man worked four feet from the first man, and a little in the rear of him. The third man worked in the same position from the second man, and so on down the line. When the head man came to a flag, he passed it down the line to the end man, who placed it in the ground four feet from the line he was planting. In this way the alignment was well kept, and the area necessary to plant any given amount of seed could be figured in advance,
The red oak and the walnut came up fairly well. It was strange a few years later to go there and see these little fellows growing so far away from their natural home, surrounded by strange neighbors. Especially in the fall were the red oak pretty, for they turned a brilliant red, and made themselves quite conspicuous. The cold nights of the Coeur d’Alene were apparently not the best thing for the black walnuts; nevertheless they grew fast in the summer, but many got winter killed. However the experiment is still going on, and the final outcome will be interesting.
After the fires much more attention was given to planting and restocking denuded areas. The tremendous 1088 through the non-use of vast areas of waste land began to make itself felt to some extent. In the fall of 1912 almost twenty four hundred acres on the Coeur d'Alene National Forest were seeded to white and yellow pine, the seeding being done with corn planters (the little red oak were so attractive that a potted one was soon seen in many of the Wallace homes). This area was rather inacessible, and it was necessary to build three miles of a trail over a high ridge to get to it, Many a farmer's boy has used a corn planter all day where the fields are level and free from obstructions, but it is quite another thing to work steadily all day long, climbing steep hills and rockulides9 and jumping over windfalls, all the time trying to keep a straight line, and an even distance apart. A small strip of western yellow pine plants were planted, this strip running clear across the seeding area, including all slopes. This was done in order to get comparisons on planting and sowing, and comparisons on the rate of growth on various slopes. At this camp our supplies were first shipped by rail to the town of Prichard, Idaho from Wallace, a distance of about thirty eight miles. From Prichard they were hauled by a wagon a distance of six miles up the Coeur d’Alene river, much of the road being in the river bottom, to the mouth of Lost Creek. From the mouth of Lost Creek, they were packed on horses and taken about five miles over the temporary trail, which we had built. The difficulty of getting supplies to these inaccessible places is one of the chief factors for a logging company to consider, when undertaking a logging operation in these regions.
The area that we were attempting to restock was almost completely denuded of tree growth. Several fires had run over it and the last one in 1910 had almost cleaned it up. Hardly a seed tree was left which might in time restock the area. It was an ideal place for such work.