15. Dunn Forest and the School of Agriculture

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Avery girls, weren't they?

William A. Davies: I think so, yes. They had these whips for their horses, and they're - what kind of trees are they?

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Black locusts or something?

William A. Davies: I think Locusts. Yes, Locust trees, and they were hot and dry and thirsty, and they stuck their whips in the ground, according to him. They came in and they - you know the hospitality in those days - they probably had some cookies and a few other things, and they went on and left their whips. Those are the locust trees. That's the story that Blake told me.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Do you remember any other stories Blake told you?

William A. Davies: No, he told us a lot. The Indian story and that story are the only ones I can remember, that stuck in my mind.

15. DUNN FOREST AND THE SCHOOL OF AGRICULTURE

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: What about the land administered by the School of Agriculture? Did you ever have any trouble with them when you were the Manager of the Forest?

William A. Davies: Well, no real troubles. No, it was a very complicated thing. Maybe not so complicated, but unclear in that they gave that to the university. The Federal Land Bank is the one that handled it and classified it. They surveyed it and they classified it into three classifications: forest land, agricultural land, and the third one which they called marginal land which is forest land, kind of within the ag land. The agreement was, to start with, between Dunn and Price [F.E. Price, then Assistant Dean of the School of Agriculture]. You had this map, and this agreement, and I could never find the agreement after we were done. I don't know if anybody ever did, but they knew that the ag school would administer the ag land, the forestry school would administer the forest land, and the marginal land would be jointly administered and put into a fund for joint research in agriculture and forestry. We kind of left the forest land alone that was out in the ag land, because the ag people had the feeling, "that's inside our land so that's ours". We just left that alone. It came to a head when the fellow that was manager of the Berry Creek Fanns called Rudy Kallander one day and said, "Rudy, we want to cut our timber out here that's inside the ag land, so would you recommend a cruiser to cruise it?" They wouldn't come to me, because I was Manager of the Forest; they figured we'd have a little trouble or something. So Rudy told me about it. Well, I went to Stoltenberg and I said, "Say, this has come to a head. Now we've got to do something." So he called for a meeting of the Dean of Agriculture, and a couple of the managers of the ag land out there, and myself. We met over there and decided that the forest land is administered by the forestry school and the ag land is administered by the agricultural school. I guess, just since I retired, they agreed to pay the ag school $8,000 a year or something like that, toward their fence maintenance and so forth out there; then we take all the money from any cutting we do on those islands of timber out in there. But before I retired we cut some of it. They wanted to clear it for pasture so we cut the timber for their pasture and cleared it all up and burned it for them, and everything else. They got it done free and then we gave them money to build a fence. Of course, we came out on top, because we sold the logs; you