5. Field Trips to McDonald Forest

William A. Davies: Forestry Club Cabin one time and they alerted us on that. If they'd have gotten in there, you know, you can't get them out very easy. So we liked to have them up there.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Did that actually happen, that the hippies moved into the cabin?

William A. Davies: No, they didn't. But they hiked up there - they'd heard about it - they hiked up from Lewisburg Saddle.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: This was Peavy's Cabin or the Forestry Club Cabin?

William A. Davies: I don't know which one they were going to move into, but they came up there and wanted to know where this cabin was; they asked the fellow that was up there. It may have been just after we burned the other one down. He told them this was a closed area, private, and the gates were locked, and they couldn't do that. Never heard anymore about it, but they'd heard about that Forestry Club Cabin and were about to move their commune right into it. They get in there and established, you know, you're an old meany if you run them out.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: So that was the KOAC people that helped you on that?

William A. Davies: Oh yes, they were a big help, they were up there. I talked to them a lot, and they said they'd keep watch for fires. They had a telephone there at that place - that was the only telephone they had on the forest - and they wanted to give me a key to the place to get in so that I could use the phone. But I refused to accept it because I might have been suspect if somebody had broken in there and stole things, and so forth; and so I didn't want a key to a lot of valuable equipment.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Well, they keep it manned, don't they? Or just during the day?

William A. Davies: Well, it's manned whenever they're broadcasting. I guess that's most of the time now.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Daily, Ithink

William A. Davies: Yes, they didn't broadcast all the time when they first put it in.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: No one stays overnight, do they? There isn't a permanent resident there? Did they put the road in that goes up to that tower? Road 5010?

William A. Davies: No, there was a road right up there to Peavy's Cabin, right along side of Peavy's Cabin.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: That road was already there?

William A. Davies: Yes, we may have improved it for them a little bit, I don't remember.

5. FIELD TRIPS TO MCDONALD FOREST

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Marv's got this "Harwood Spring: old hunting cabin" marked. What do you know about that?

William A. Davies: That was a favorite place of Harry Patterson, whom I replaced as Head of the Forest Engineering Department. He'd always take his senior crew out there on field trips and show them that spring, which is wonderful water. They all had to go down and have a drink out of that spring.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: It's called Harwood Spring?

William A. Davies: Yes, I always wanted to change the name. There's another spring down there we always called Patterson Springs. That was another place he'd take the students to get a drink of water. I don't remember just where it was. I imagine Marv would know. You see, Marv was a student of Pat's, and you can ask Marv about that. Patterson Springs, I used to call it that. It's just off the road there, we could walk down to it right in there, just below the road, the main road.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Tell me about Harwood Springs. How did it get its name?

William A. Davies: I haven't any idea.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Was there a cabin there? What's that old hunting cabin Marv's got listed?

William A. Davies: There was an old cabin there at one time, I think, but it's gone now.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Right on the springs, right by it?

William A. Davies: Near there.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: You don't know who built it?

William A. Davies: No.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: But Patterson liked to take his people down there to get water? Why do you think he thought that was so good?

William A. Davies: I don't know, he used to have a place out there where he'd take the students to practice running curves on the roads. He'd always go down there and get water out of the springs.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: The one you call Patterson Springs?

William A. Davies: At noon, yes, and they'd boil up coffee. Pat always made coffee in a great big old black coffee pot. They used to kid Pat about his strong coffee, and said the way he made coffee was to put some boiling water on and put a rock in it and keep putting coffee in until the rock came to the top, then the coffee was ready. (laughter)

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: You mean on afield trip he'd make coffee?

William A. Davies: Yes, they had eight-hour labs in those days.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: The students brought their own lunches?

William A. Davies: They brought their own lunch. And about 11:30 a.m. Pat would assign one of the students - that was a big ritual with him there - to go over and get the pot, and build a fire, and get ready to put the coffee on. Pat would usually make the coffee, and they'd sit around the lunch fire and talk about their work. Actually, I think more instruction went on around that danged lunch fire than in the classroom.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: The students felt like they were really learning?

William A. Davies: Yes, they were relaxed, you know. I used to do the same thing a lot of times, when we had six-hour labs. In fact, somebody from the Oregonian got wise to it and came down and did a big two-page spread for the Sunday Oregonian on it one time.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: I'd like to go look that article up. Do you have any idea where I'd start looking, what year?

William A. Davies: Gosh no, I don't remember; I think it was the Oregonian. It was kind of a glamorized deal. They even took a girl out there and took a picture of her on the road. They took some pictures of us sitting around the campfire, and me talking to the students, and students running lines with the transit, and things like that. It was a long time ago.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Fifties?

William A. Davies: Fifties or sixties, or something like that.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: You wouldn't have a clipping of that article at home, would you?

William A. Davies: Probably not, my wife throws all that stuff away.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: That's a shame, should have kept it.

William A. Davies: Yes, but I don't remember who it was that did it. I think it was a graduate student or a senior in journalism here, and he did that for one of his projects or something. If it got published in the paper, then you got a double "A", or something, but he got that published.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: It was done through the journalism department probably?

William A. Davies: Yes, well Pat used to go down to that spring and get water, and I always called that Patterson Springs.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Evidently the name didn 't stick; there's nothing marked on here called Patterson Springs.

William A. Davies: No, I'm the only one who ever called it that.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: What about this right here, "Oak felled along these foothills to feed livestock during the winter of 1883"? Did you ever see the stumps or logs, or anything that was left from that period?

William A. Davies: Yes, out in the Dunn Forest there's another place where they did that. I could see the old logs and stumps down there. Funny thing, they had a sign on one of them saying just that. There was a trail out here from the Forestry Club Cabin.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Well, here's the Pine Race Trail, is that...

William A. Davies: Where's the Forestry Club Cabin?

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Here's Memorial Grove; here's Cronemiller Lake; there's the Forestry Cabin, right here.

William A. Davies: Yes, this trail. Now there was a stump right in here some place.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: The trail leading from the Forestry Cabin...

William A. Davies: Went right by that stump and there was a sign on it; somebody put a sign there, "Felled in 18", whatever it was.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Who would put that up, do you know?

William A. Davies: I don't know, somebody on the faculty here, I suppose. When we thinned in there, one of the loggers, on one of the stumps that we cut, took some cardboard and he made a sign there, "Felled in 1950 or 1960", whatever it was, "to feed loggers". (laughter)

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: A little logger humor, huh? How about this early fire lookout? Did you ever see that?

William A. Davies: What's this?

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Looks like a radio antenna, Marv wrote that. Did you ever see that fire lookout? Marv said it was up in a tree.

William A. Davies: I don't remember that. I remember the antenna because that's when they had the state forestry department's division here. And they moved it later to Philomath, but they had their offices here.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: By here, you mean at the Nursery?

William A. Davies: Yes, by the Nursery, where the Peavy Lodge is now, that was state forestry, and they had that up there for radio communication.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: But that lookout, who put that up there? Did you ever see it?

William A. Davies: I don't know, no.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Did you ever hear about it?

William A. Davies: I think I did, something about it. But it wasn't there when I came.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Marv claims he's seen something in a tree up there: a lookout, a little plaiform or something.

William A. Davies: Could be, maybe I just thought it was a little platform to get at the antenna. They had just a straight, tall antenna going out of the tree there.

[Withheld from this edition pending review. The page keeps its printed number and its permanent link, so a citation to it still lands here.]