Chapter 1.
The Trail We Will Follow
T
here was no organization known
as the Intermountain Station until
1928, but its origins were in earlier
times.
The first predecessor was the
Priest River Experiment Station in
the Panhandle area of northern Idaho.
Research began there in 1911. The
second location was on the slopes of
the Wasatch Plateau in central Utah,
where the Utah Experiment Station was
established in 1912 (Rocky Mountain
Research Station 1999).
Forestry research started in the
Northern Rocky Mountains in 1911
when a small tent was pitched at
Priest River.
In 1916 the Priest River Station headquarters moved to Missoula, Montana,
although the original location remained
as an experimental forest. The Station
was known by a variety of names until
1925 when it became the Northern
Rocky Mountain Forest Experiment
Station.
In Utah, after a few years of
operation, the organization’s name was
changed to the Great Basin Experiment
Station. Heavy snows forced the
small staff to spend winter months
elsewhere. They moved to Ogden each
fall, probably to be near the District 4
headquarters. In 1928 Congress passed
legislation recognizing research as an
Great Basin was
lovely in winter,
but not a good
place to live
after the weather
turned cold. Snow
had to be shoveled off the roofs
periodically to
keep them from
collapsing.
entity within the Forest Service. The act
formally authorized a Station for Utah
and adjacent States. The Intermountain
Forest and Range Experiment Station
thus was conceived, with the Great
Basin organization as its foundation.
In 1953 the U.S. Department of
Agriculture announced a series of
major Forest Service consolidations.
Among them was the merger of the
Northern Rocky Mountain Station and
the Intermountain Station, effective
January 1, 1954. Ogden was designated
as the headquarters site and the new
organization assumed the Intermountain
Station name.
The early experiment Stations bore
little resemblance to today’s Stations
in terms of staffing, funding, and scope
of the research program. For example,
in the early 1920s the Great Basin
staff consisted of a director and two
temporary field assistants. Research was
confined to a few range and watershed
experiments and work on establishment
and growth of three tree species. At
about the same time, limits on funding
reduced the staff of the Priest River
Station to one person, who served as
the director and the only investigator.
When the first full-time forester was
assigned to begin fire research in 1922,
total Priest River Station funding was
increased to $18,920 for all of 1923.
In contrast, in April 1997 shortly before it merged with the Rocky Mountain
Station, the Intermountain Station directory listed 241 full-time employees. In
addition the Station had a large number
of seasonal and part-time workers, plus
people working in special programs,
such as the Senior Community Service
Employment Program. Several
dozen administrative employees of the
Intermountain Region also did Station
business through a shared services
arrangement. A substantial number of
volunteers contributed many hours of
useful work in many program areas.
Laboratories, which were crude or
nonexistent in the early days, were
homes to a variety of research units.
Labs were located at Reno, Nevada;
Boise and Moscow, Idaho; Ogden,
Provo, and Logan, Utah; and Missoula
(two) and Bozeman, Montana. Six
of them were on or near university
campuses. The Station maintained five
experimental forests and two experimental ranges. Twenty research units
conducted studies that spanned a wide
range of natural resource protection and
–
management topics. The Station budget
was $15.5 million.
Fortunately, excellent histories of the
Priest River and Great Basin Stations
have been published. Chuck Wellner,
a retired Assistant Station Director,
wrote of events at Priest River up to its
65th anniversary year (Wellner 1976).
Wellner worked at Priest River in the
1930s and was closely associated with
activities there for many years. In 2004
the Rocky Mountain Station published a
history by Kathleen Graham, who took
a somewhat different approach to the
Priest River story. Graham’s work added
coverage of the years from 1976 to 2003
(Graham 2004). Wendell Keck, retired
Intermountain Station editor, wrote
a Great Basin history as a volunteer
(Keck 1972). Keck acknowledged
technical assistance by Bill Laycock,
Perry Plummer, Jim Blaisdell, and Joe
Pechanec, all of whom were personally
involved in research at Great Basin.
Incidentally, Pechanec is pronounced
Pah-hah-nek. Blaisdell described him
years later as “the nice guy with the
funny name” (Blaisdell 1989).
Control and proper use of wildland
fire have always posed challenges in
the Northern Rocky Mountains and
Great Basin. Fire research was a large
part of the early work at Priest River
and later became one of the most
important parts of the total Station program. Charles E. (Mike) Hardy wrote
two comprehensive histories of the
“Gisborne Era” of fire research, which
spanned the years from 1922 to 1950
(Hardy 1977, 1983). Hardy had a 22year career at the Fire Lab contributing
to development of the National Fire
Danger Rating System.
Material from the five histories is included here. However, to avoid needless
duplication the strategy was to extract
highlights from the earlier works, adding
such new information as could be found.
Although descriptions of a few events
are carried through to 2005 to complete
the account, this history emphasizes
the era that began in 1928 and ended in
1997 when the Intermountain Station
name was discontinued. Only the name
passed into history. The organization did
not die. It lives today as a vibrant part of
the Rocky Mountain Research Station,
which was established with the 1997
merger.
–
What’s In a Name?
Looking back on 86 years of research
history in the Great Basin and Northern
Rocky Mountains, one encounters a
somewhat bewildering array of different
names for sites, organizations, programs,
and the jobs of the participants. Many
labels for the same thing changed
several times. Were all these changes
necessary? Or, were some mainly caused
by the inclination of bureaucrats to
tinker with things?
Whether all the name changes were
needed or not, some were a reflection of
research strategies that were formed and
re-formed to meet ever-evolving needs
of natural resource managers. They
also reflect addition of new scientific
disciplines and administrative skills as
the world grew increasingly complex,
populations expanded, and there were
demands for new research approaches to
support ecosystem management.
Some of the names were cumbersome
in the extreme. The Intermountain Forest
and Range Experiment Station, official
name during much of the organization’s
history, was descriptive but a mouthful.
To anyone who had to write or type it
frequently, it was a real pain. Within
the Forest Service this problem was
minimized in a minor way by using
the acronym IF&RES. But few in the
outside world had any idea of what that
represented.
Later, Station acronyms were discontinued and “INT” became the official
brief identifier. Many people within
Forest Service Research used INT, and
when they were communicating with
other research personnel within the
service the meaning was understood.
But if you said, “I’m working at INT,”
to many National Forest managers, you
were likely to get a “Huh?” in response.
The Northern Rocky Mountain Forest
and Range Experiment Station name
was truly mind-boggling—two words
longer than the Intermountain Station’s
official title.
Several Intermountain Station people,
including the author of this history, were
unhappy with the lengthy or inappropriate unit names. Without devoting much
time to it, they made some changes. For
example, Publications and Information
Services in 1975 became simply
Research Information. Counterpart units
at several other Stations subsequently
adopted this name.
One theory shared by the label
reformers was that an important
consideration in selecting a good name
ought to be what most people called
the thing—common usage. Forest
Survey was called just that for many
years. Most people who had any contact
with the unit used the term and knew
what it described. In 1974 the Forest
Service changed the name to Renewable
Resources Evaluation (RRE). The
change was applied to units at Stations
as well as the national program. The
new name never took hold. Most people
continued to call the operation Forest
Survey. One who disliked the RRE label
was Dwane Van Hooser. When he came
to the Intermountain Station in 1979
as project leader he promptly proposed
changing the unit name back to Forest
Survey. Assistant Station Director Jim
Blaisdell approved, and “Forest Survey”
returned to common usage at the Station
(Van Hooser, interview 2004).
That name change probably should
have had national office approval.
Blaisdell took care of that by merely
neglecting to ask for approval. Van
Hooser recalled that a few people in the
Washington Office were “not particularly pleased” with the unilateral change
at the Intermountain Station, but no
formal protest was made. Currently, the
unit is known as Forest Inventory and
Analysis. Van Hooser said he believes
this label is a good one—descriptive
of the unit mission and accepted by the
people involved.
A more important name change did
get Washington Office approval. In 1990
the Intermountain Forest and Range
Experiment Station officially became the
Intermountain Research Station. Most
employees were pleased.
Those who have read this far may
have noticed a highly regarded administrator, Charles A. Wellner, referred to as
“Chuck.” A laboratory has been called a
“lab” and the Priest River Experimental
Forest shortened to just “Priest River.”
Some might argue that such informality
is inappropriate in describing the history
of an organization that had a serious
and important mission. But those are
the terms people used during the times
chronicled here.
Many oldtimers have fond memories
of their experiences as members of
the “Forest Service family.” Some of
the customs and traditions that caused
employees to feel like “family” began
to fade away in the late 1970s, but they
were nearly universal during most of
the history of the Intermountain Station.
People went out of their way to help
fellow employees, on and off the job.
It was common to invite out-of-town
Forest Service visitors home for dinner with one’s “real” family. Many
supervisors showed appreciation for
subordinates by hosting parties for them,
usually during the holiday season.
People who worked together participated in informal social events—picnics,
house parties, or get-togethers in restaurants or taverns. Unit Christmas parties
(see chapter 13) usually were fairly
elaborate affairs. Retirement parties
were considered equally important and
they were well attended. For many, the
Forest Service was the hub of their social life as well as the outfit they worked
for. As in a real family, arguments over
matters large and small could be heated,
but the antagonists usually patched
things up rather quickly.
It is not surprising, then, that “Forest
Service family” members were on
a first-name basis with each other.
This familiarity ran from the bottom
of the organization to the very top.
Intermountain Station Directors, for
example, were known to one and all
as “Joe,” or “Roger.” Assistant Station
Director Beverly C. Holmes was “Bev.”
Few ever called Dr. Albert R. Stage
“Dr. Stage” or even “Albert.” He was
“Al.” Similarly, Dr. Walter E. Cole was
“Walt.” Perhaps in consideration of others who held jobs at the same level but
did not have Ph.D. degrees, those who
had earned doctorates rarely used “Dr.”
in identifying themselves. In fact, “Dr.”
seldom was heard anywhere around the
Station.
When this history identifies a unit
informally—the Fire Lab, for example—
or uses the informal first name of an
employee it is not an effort to be folksy
or flippant. It is part of an attempt to
reflect the culture as it was.
The Intermountain Station territory, 1970-1997, included about threequarters of the National Forest System’s Region 1 (Montana and
northern Idaho) and all of Region 4 (Utah, Nevada, western Wyoming,
southern Idaho, and small areas of California and Colorado). Many
Station units worked in larger areas and much work was national and
international in scope.
What Was the Territory?
Forest Service research stations
traditionally have been assigned territories just as the management units had
National Forest and Regional boundaries. In the early days of research the
“territory” had considerable meaning.
Research locations were in remote areas,
communication methods were primitive,
and travel was difficult. Of necessity,
most studies concentrated on local plant
species and conditions and seldom
produced results that were transferable
to other areas (West 1990). For many
of the early years, research was under
regional administration, so, for example,
the territory of the Northern Rocky
Mountain Station corresponded to that
of the Forest Service’s Northern Region
(Region 1, known as District 1 until
1932).
After the Intermountain and Northern
Rocky Mountain Stations merged in
1954, the new Station territory included
northwestern South Dakota, eastern
Washington, a bit of eastern California,
western Wyoming, and all of Idaho,
Utah, Montana, and Nevada. By the
early 1970s, most of the bits and pieces
of States had been assigned to other
Stations. By then, it simply didn’t matter
very much because huge changes had
taken place in the work of the Station.
Many research units had responsibilities that went well beyond the
boundaries of the Station territory, and a
few were national in scope. Four
examples are given here. The Forest
Survey unit working from Ogden
conducted resource assessments in
nine western states. The Fire Lab in
–
Missoula was one of only three in the
Nation when it was established, and
many of the results of work there were
applicable nationally and internationally.
The Wilderness Research Unit was the
only such organization in the Nation and
its investigators conducted studies in
many parts of the country. Scientists at
the Shrub Sciences Lab in Provo worked
in cooperative programs that sought to
improve vegetation on millions of acres
throughout the Inland West.
By 1960 it was becoming common
for Intermountain Station scientists
to travel to the four corners of the
globe, often at the behest of the Forest
Service’s International Forestry staff in
Washington, DC. They consulted with
research counterparts and resource managers in friendly countries, participated
in international meetings, and even
collected plants. When the Iron Curtain
opened a crack, a Station scientist was
among the first Americans to be allowed
to travel fairly freely in the Soviet
Union. When the Bamboo Curtain lifted
a little, Station personnel were among
early western visitors to communist
China. Others worked in Nepal, Taiwan,
Australia, Mexico, Brazil, Canada,
Israel, and many other places.
Over the years the Station developed
international mailing lists that delivered
notices of new publications written by
its scientists and cooperators to natural
resource organizations around the world.
Publications were sent to anyone who
asked for them, with the exception of requests from a few countries listed by the
State Department as ineligible for technical assistance. Key natural resource
libraries and some major organizations
automatically received copies of every
publication. In 1989 the Station filled
orders for more than 100,000 copies of
publications, and about 15 percent went
to international clients. Increasingly,
Station scientists published results in
international journals and the Station
published proceedings of international
symposia that included papers whose
authors came from many lands.
In 1911 the Station’s territory
basically was defined by a line on a
map around some 4,500 acres at Priest
River. By 1997, although strong emphasis was placed on meeting the needs
of managers in Forest Service Regions
–
1 and 4, clients were everywhere and
the territory in essence had become the
world.
Who Made Things Work?
One former Chief of the Forest
Service was fond of stating, “The Forest
Service is its people.” The statement
applied at the Intermountain Station.
Occasionally, successes in research
come about through serendipity—
unexpected discoveries that seem due to
good luck more than anything else—but
more often success results from hard
work by good people pursuing welldefined objectives within a sound
framework.
Good people who got good results
were abundant throughout the Station’s
history. The key people, of course,
were those who planned and conducted
research and reported the findings. No
one, however, worked in isolation. A
host of technicians, support personnel,
and administrators who guided programs
and reviewed results helped in fulfilling
the Station’s mission. Also important
were a great many people who were not
Station employees.
Cooperators—Literally hundreds of
cooperators contributed to Station programs over the years. Sometimes they
did so through long-standing formal
arrangements such as the partnerships
between the Station and the Utah
Division of Wildlife Resources and
the Idaho Fish and Game Department.
The Care Takers
One group of Station employees who often got less recognition than they deserved
were the technicians and professional support people. Some were caretakers in the
classic sense; they were superintendents of major experimental areas, for example,
John Kinney at the Desert Experimental Range and Bob Denner at the Priest River
Experimental Forest. Others were assigned to specific research units or labs. They all
had one thing in common. They took care of things, whether the task was shoveling
snow, hosting visitors, operating sophisticated equipment, recording data, planting trees
and shrubs, or showing new scientists where
old study plots were located and describing
the studies that applied to them. Some had
remarkably long careers with the Station. Paul
Hansen (see “A New Role for Great Basin,”
chapter 11) devoted 47 years to “taking care of
things” at Great Basin. Many were remarkably
versatile people. Steve Briggs was one
example.
Briggs earned a forest management degree
at Utah State University but in 1993 was
working at the Shrub Lab in Provo. He had
been stationed at the Moscow Lab (1979-82)
the Boise Lab (1982-86), and had done some
work at every experimental area in the Station
territory except Tenderfoot Creek and the Davis
County Watershed. In addition to his “normal”
duties, Briggs served as property officer and
safety officer for the Provo unit. He also listed
“snow relocater” as a duty.
Forester Steve Briggs’ years at the
Briggs had plenty of variety in his personal as
Station featured valuable service
well as professional life. A Vietnam veteran, he
and a wide variety of activities.
had been commander of the American Legion
Post while at Boise. He was a junior warden
of his church, taught hunter education at the local Elk’s Lodge, and was active in the
local chapter of the Society of American Foresters. Versatility and a service attitude
were common characteristics of technicians and professional support personnel at the
Station. Several of them are featured in this history.
Research cooperators came
from many organizations and
brought diverse skills and
knowledge to the Station
program. Here Australian
Range Scientist Ron Hacker
(left) worked with Shrub Lab
Technician Tom Monaco in
1995 to record mule deer diet
preferences for different species of kochia collected from
around the world.
Utah Wildlife Resources employees
located at Ephraim worked so closely
with Station scientists that everyone
considered them to be part of the
Intermountain Station family. Other
formal cooperation, usually with university professors or graduate students,
was fostered by financial support from
the Station. This was significant. Of
the $15.5 million total Station budget
in 1997, $1.4 million was allocated to
fund research grants and cooperative
agreements.
Many other scientists and resource
managers worked with Station people
at experimental forests and ranges.
Manuscripts intended for publication
by Station authors were given peer
review by countless fellow scientists and
resource agency staff people. This voluntary work helped ensure the accuracy
and credibility of the products of Station
research.
A tremendous debt of gratitude
is owed to all the cooperators. No
attempt will be made to list them all.
Any such list would omit so many as
to be completely inadequate. But some
cooperators will be mentioned from time
to time. The intent is not to assert that
they were among the most important,
but to cite them as examples of a much
larger group that was vital to conducting
the Station’s work.
Special Employment Programs—
Another important group of people
worked within Station units but were not
Forest Service employees. Earlier, the
Senior Community Service Employment
Program (SCSEP) was mentioned.
This program was financed by the
Department of Labor. SCSEP enrollees
were people over 55 years of age with
limited incomes. They were assigned
directly to units in need of help and
worked side-by-side with the Station’s
“regular” employees. Many SCSEP
enrollees were highly regarded. They
brought the skills and good work habits
of mature people to the organization,
and as a group were considered to be
reliable and conscientious. One of the
goals of the program was to help prepare
enrollees for higher paying jobs. Several
who worked at the Station successfully
made the transition.
A somewhat similar program
known as “Green Thumb” provided
much-needed labor for fieldwork that
helped Station scientists at the Shrub
Lab conduct studies. Participants had
a well-deserved reputation as hard
workers.
The “College Work-Study Program”
supplied needed help to several Station
units. This program allowed college
and university students to earn money
through part-time work to help finance
their educations. The educational institutions administered the program and
provided individuals to fill jobs defined
by the Station. The students worked
parts of days between or after classes
and sometimes only a few days each
week. They brought the enthusiasm of
youth to the units in which they worked,
and learned something about natural
resource research in return.
Notable People—A strong case can
be made that three individuals—Harry
Gisborne, Arthur Sampson, and Chuck
Wellner—were giants among all who
labored at the Intermountain Station
and its predecessor organizations. These
three stand out because of the profound
influence their ideas had on major segments of natural resource science and
management. However, just as we will
not presume to say some cooperators
were more valuable than others, with
the exception of the three standouts,
we believe it would be foolish to try to
rank all the distinguished individuals
among hundreds who appeared on the
Intermountain Station’s rolls over the
years.
Some individuals became famous,
at least in natural resource circles. For
example, Bob Marshall’s status as a
champion of wilderness preservation
was acknowledged when a premier
Wilderness within the National Forest
System was named for him. Some,
like Gisborne, were at the Station or
its predecessor organizations for all or
a great part of lengthy careers. Others
worked at the Station only in the early
years of their careers and moved on to
high positions within the Forest Service,
other resource management and research
organizations, or the academic world.
This history will mention some of
the “notables” briefly, and describe
the activities of others in some detail.
Neither the brief mentions nor the
detailed descriptions should be taken
as suggestions that these were the most
important Station people. In some cases,
they are included simply because information about them is readily available
in historic documents. A few, like Perry
Plummer, had very long and fruitful
careers at the Station and might be
said to have become legendary figures.
Somewhat detailed descriptions of the
work of others are included mainly to try
to show the successes (and sometimes
failures) of Station people in human
terms. Regrettably, chances are high
that many who were notable have been
overlooked.
Successes were many throughout the
Intermountain Station’s history. They
were of many different types. As with
descriptions of the work of outstanding
individuals, this history will describe
some of them, but make no attempt
to include them all or to rank them or
declare one “the most important.”
–
How Did the Staff
Change?
As the Intermountain Station staff
grew in numbers from a handful to
more than 200 it was evolving in terms
of educational levels and diversity. The
number of personnel with advanced
academic degrees increased gradually
throughout the organization’s history
until the 1960s, when its growth accelerated. Diversity was a different matter.
There were few women in professional
positions (none in the top jobs) and no
ethnic minorities in the workforce until
the early 1970s. Then change came
rather rapidly.
Advanced Degrees—Pioneer
researchers in the Intermountain
Station territory seldom had academic
degrees beyond the bachelor’s level.
Resource conservation was a rather new
idea in the United States. Only a few
universities offered courses in forestry,
which was defined as “the preservation
of forests by wise use” by President
Theodore Roosevelt in his first message
to Congress in 1901. Range management was a concept, not yet a discipline.
It would be years before courses in fields
such as wildlife and recreation management were established in colleges and
universities.
The higher education system changed
quite rapidly. After establishment of
the first American professional forestry
school at Cornell in 1898, many other
universities started programs. Several
schools developed range management
curricula. As master’s and doctoral
programs emerged, more and more
graduates with advanced degrees joined
the ranks of Forest Service researchers.
By 1997 the formal education level of
Intermountain Station personnel had
evolved to the point that a scientist without a M.S. or Ph.D. was a rarity. Support
people with advanced degrees also had
become more numerous.
The same thing happened within
the National Forest System. Many
histories point out that the first forest
rangers were local men without college
training. Some did not have high school
diplomas. By the 1990s, nearly all
professional positions within the service
were staffed by college graduates. It was
–
not unusual to find personnel at many
levels in the organization with master’s
degrees or doctorates.
This general upgrade in formal
education certainly increased the sophistication with which research could attack
problems. Partly because the resource
managers who were the principal clients
also had higher education levels, the
nature of what was wanted from research also changed. So education levels
were one factor in the evolution of the
Intermountain Station research program.
In a way, the increase in educational
levels within natural resource management organizations is a tribute to
research. The professors who wrote
the books and trained the foresters,
ecologists, range managers, engineers
and other professionals got most of their
information directly or indirectly from
research as the state-of-the-art advanced
in each field through the years. There
is no question that progress would
have been much slower without new
knowledge generated by research. The
problem is that credit to the researchers
who create the new knowledge tends
to diminish and then evaporate over
time. It is hard for administrators to tell
those who hold the purse strings “what
research has done for you lately” when a
direct link between scientific studies and
improved management is not readily apparent. But a link always exists through
the educational system.
Diversity in the Workforce—For
more than a half century the U.S. Forest
Service was an organization dominated
by white males. All top management
positions were filled with men. With rare
exceptions, middle-management and
first-line supervisory and professional
jobs also were filled by men. Although
the men frequently acknowledged the
importance of women to the organization, the women by and large were
confined to clerical and secretarial jobs
at the lower pay levels. Ethnic minorities
were virtually nonexistent in any fulltime position at any level.
By 1970 there still were very few
female Project Leaders in Forest Service
Research and the same could be said
for other professions and for minorities
in any type of professional job. No
women or minorities held upper-level
scientific or professional positions at the
Pacific Southwest and Intermountain
Station Director’s secretaries Cynthia
Jacobs and Ollie Quirante exchanged a
traditional Hawaiian hug during Jacobs’
visit to participate in an Asian-Pacific
American program in Ogden in 1992.
Intermountain Station. This situation
came about, in part, because enrollment
in university natural resources training
had for years consisted almost entirely
of white males. The first Earth Day,
April 22, 1970, provided a “kick start”
that sent thousands of urban youth,
including many women, into natural
resource career training. In the ensuing
26 years the place of women in the
Station workforce changed dramatically.
Employment of minorities increased, although the progress made by minorities
was much less than that by women.
The Station directory for 1997 listed
women in 23 scientist and five research
forester slots. One Project Leader
was a woman, seven women headed
administrative units, and three women
directed administrative shared services
staffs. Two minority scientists were
listed; one had only recently been appointed a Project Leader. Several other
minorities were employed at the Station
or in shared services administrative
units. In a somewhat unusual example of
workforce change Ollie Quirante, a man
of Pacific Island heritage, had been secretary to the Station Director just a few
years before 1997. Throughout Station
history, until Quirante’s appointment,
the job had been held by a white woman.
Where it seems appropriate this
history will introduce you to some of
the women and minorities who gained
employment or earned advancement as
the workforce evolved.