5. McDonald Forest

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Were girlfriends or spouses allowed to go to these functions, McDonald Day or the "A" Day?

William A. Davies: At first, I think, none ever went; but then they started. Some of the girlfriends and wives would go out and watch the activities, chopping and so forth. Of course, there were no women at the Forestry Club meetings, because there were no women students. Not too many of the students were married in those early days. Later students started getting married younger. Got married and let their wives put them through school

5. MCDONALD FOREST

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Were most of the labs in class, or did they go to McDonald Forest, or did they go someplace else?

William A. Davies: Mostly McDonald Forest, the field labs. Some of the Silviculture labs, I know, went over to eastern Oregon once a year to look at the pine timber. But most all the field labs were on McDonald Forest.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: What about the Spaulding Tract? When you were here, did any of the students go to that area for field exercises?

William A. Davies: No, they didn't. It's farther to go, and they have everything on McDonald Forest that they have at the Spaulding Tract.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Tell me about McDonald Forest at the time you came in 1946. What's your recollection of it at that time?

William A. Davies: Well, it was a large area. What was it, 6,000 acres or something at the time? 6 or 7,000 acres that had been acquired primarily through money furnished by Mrs. McDonald. Whenever Peavy found some cheap land, he'd call up her attorney and he'd send up the money to buy it. All that land was land that nobody else wanted; it either had been logged over, or it was considered unmerchantable. A lot of people left said paying two dollars an acre for that stuff is stupid, the school's stupid, you know. So that's what it was, just a place to go, and some of the faculty used to try to do a little commercial stuff out there. I think T. J. Starker had a post cutting deal to sell fence posts, sell wood, or something. The forest was not actually operated as a real commercial forest until I became manager, and I couldn't see that forest just sitting there. Those trees, they had a lot of salvage. The trees were dying and falling down, and the young stands were getting so thick, grown together. They needed thinning for improvement of the stand, and we started cutting three or four million board feet a year. Nothing but salvage and thinning for the first five to ten years to try to get the forest into shape. And we started making all the money they needed to run McDonald Forest. In fact, I think I had a fund of three- quarters of a million dollars, besides keeping the roads up and maintaining the forest, and paying for a lot of the research, and everything else when I retired.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: What was the management of the forest like when you came in 1946?

William A. Davies: Well, there wasn't any.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Who was the manager? Nettleton?

William A. Davies: There wasn't any.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Oh, no manager at all?

William A. Davies: No, some of the faculty used to go Out there and try to do a few things, but there wasn't any management at all. It was just there.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Well, when was Harry Nettleton the forest manager? Was that after you?

William A. Davies: See, Harry Nettleton was teaching here when I came, and he came here for the second time about the time I came. Then Paul Dunn was responsible for getting the area that we call the Dunn Forest now.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: The Adair Tract?

William A. Davies: Adair Tract, and the forestry parts in the Dunn Forest. Well, when we got that, the first thing we did was to sell some old growth timber that was left after a previous logging, because it was defective and so forth. They sold that and got two hundred and some thousand dollars for it, and on the strength of that they hired a forest manager. That must have been in about 1947 or 1948, or something like that. I don't remember exactly; somewhere along there.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Who was hired?

William A. Davies: Nettleton.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: That's when they hired Harry Nettleton?

William A. Davies: Paul Dunn would know those dates much better than I - somewhere along there. Anyway, they hired Nettleton as the manager; and he was manager until 1959. Did I say I became manager? I worked a couple of summers with him, two years before he retired, to get better acquainted with the forest.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: But the management could be described as passive up to the time that Nettleton came? Not much at all was done?

William A. Davies: No, the only thinning that was done was just as a standard improvement measure by some of the faculty people. Take the students out there and thin, and show them how to thin, as kind of a demonstration deal; some of that went on. There was nothing really commercial until the first commercial thinning that we did when Nettleton and I set it up in 1957 and hired Marv Rowley, who had a small operation, to come and do it.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: What was done to manage McDonald Forest in the years that Harry Nettleton was manager?

William A. Davies: It was primarily a custodial type management. That was his sole job as manager, and he spent a lot of time riding around the roads out there to see that people didn't run off with anything, I guess, and just to see that it was there and to worry about it.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: What kinds of things would people run off with?

William A. Davies: Go in and cut down trees for wood - things like that; vandalism of various types. We're still having it, I guess. But there was very little actual commercial management; you might say, no commercial management. Very little until, as I say, in 1957 when I talked Nettleton into setting up this commercial thinning program.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Why didn't he do that before that time?

William A. Davies: I don't know, I just don't know why he didn't do it. He figured, I guess, that it was just a demonstration forest for the students to go out there and play around and do their lab work and surveying. Of course, at that time the timber from that land out there was not too valuable because it had been picked over and everything. It's turning into a good forest, but it wasn't then, and so now we feel that it was commercially feasible, I guess.