16. Forest Management and Hiring Marvin Rowley

William A. Davies: know, got a profit from that. But I think that's the way it stands now. The forestry school administers the forestry land, whether it is inside ag land or surrounded by ag land, or not. If the ag men wanted to expand for more pasture I don't think it would be too much of a problem for the forestry school to go ahead and clearcut it for them, and let them turn it to pasture if they wanted to. But, of course, it would be kind of foolish, because they don't make any money on that pasture land, and on that forest land they make a lot of money, like growing timber.

16. FOREST MANAGEMENT AND HIRING MARVIN ROWLEY

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: How did you happen to pick Marv Rowley as the person that would take the logs out?

William A. Davies: Well, he was a student of mine when he first came here, and I got him his first job when he left school as a logging engineer for an outfit down in the Umpqua, and he left that and went into business with his brother-in-law. They bought a cat and a truck, and they were doing thinning, and they were very honest, and sincere, and knowledgeable in this thinning of the young stands. Hardly anybody was in that business then. So I went to Marv and asked him if he'd be interested in doing some of that on the forest. His first job for us was on the Spaulding Tract, where the extension people wanted a demonstration thinning demarcated. Then he came over and started that first cutting in 1957. From then on I just kept him busy full time.

William A. Davies: Yes.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: So you worked very closely with Marv during 16 years?

William A. Davies: Oh yes, he was responsible to me for everything he did out there. And I was very, very fortunate, because Marv was so honest and so capable. I didn't have to supervise him too closely. Of course, I didn't have time, anyway. I'd go out there once a week, probably, and go around with him; and then he'd come in if he had problems in the office and we'd sit down and talk about it. It was a good relationship. When I retired, I told the dean, "You must appoint Marv as manager of that forest because he is so capable. He's so interested, and Marv thinks that's his forest, you know, and he handiles it just like it was his own." But he wouldn't make Marv fully responsible for it and responsible to him; he'd have to have somebody in the middle. So he put Beuter as Director of the Forest. Marv is responsible to Beuter, Beuter is responsible to the dean.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: You were really the director of the forest?

William A. Davies: Yes, director and manager.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Did things change after Dean Stoltenberg became dean?

William A. Davies: Not much, because he didn't have much time to look at it, anyway, and he was not too knowledgeable in the management of Douglas-fir forests. He'd never had any experience or anything; left it pretty much up to me. He just kind of ignored it unless I came to him with some problem that I thought he ought to be in on, and help make the decision.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Are there any activities that occurred in the forest that you haven't talked about?

William A. Davies: None that I can think of, but I remember thinking through the years that the forest is a true multiple-use forest. It's used for practically every use you can think of for a forest. Some of them a little conflicting, but most of them not conflicting. All of the things: timber

William A. Davies: production, education, research, demonstration, recreation. We used to have quite a few show-me trips. When they would have their annual meeting, the forest service employees would want to come down and look and see what we were doing in a certain area of thinning or something. Demonstration type thing. We had people that would come from Europe to here, and they'd heard of Oregon State demonstration forest in Europe. When they come over here, they'd want to come out and see it. Just about every use of the forest you can think of. More uses probably than any one other forest in the state.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: How about your own role in the history of the forest? What are you most proud of that you accomplished in your years of association?

William A. Davies: I don't know if rm proud of any of it, but I think I started, really, the commercial use of the forest.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Before you, they didn't really look at it from the standpoint of commercial harvest?

William A. Davies: Very little. Oh they cut a few trees here and there and so forth. They cut that one big clearcut just before I became manager - Dunn Forest - because they needed the money and it had been cut over once before. They went in and cut the trees that the first logger had left because they didn't figure they were merchantable; that's the only real cutting that was done. But when I became manager we set up a regular cutting budget and plan, and for years we cut nothing but thinning and salvage about 3.5 to 5 million, well 7 million the year of the blow down. Which can hardly be subtracted from the inventory. We set up another plan of going around once a year as soon as the dirt roads got dry in the spring and picking up every dead and downed tree on those two forests. Every one! Scout for them. Maybe it would be just one tree over here that had blown down in that winter; we'd pick that up and take it out. And the contractor made money, and we got stumpage out of it.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: How did you yard those out when you only had one? Did you go on horses?

William A. Davies: No, small cat, small tractors, and they had a portable loading machine, kind of, on a truck with a boom on it. They would just run that down the road, and what they'd do is two men would go out when we decided: "Well, the roads are dry enough now. We're not going to have any more severe weather and so forth. Let's get that salvage out of there." So these two men went out, one with a power-saw and one with a tractor. Through the year, Marv in his travels, and I in my travels, would spot all these dead trees, downed trees. Sometimes in two weeks we would have it all cleaned up. But we picked every tree, every one. And I go out and look at the national forests and some of those places with those trees, salvage trees, dead trees, downed trees, everything else, rotting, you know, and I think they should be doing the same thing. They say; "Oh, we can't do it. It isn't economically feasible. But, by golly, it is! I know it is!

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Well, you've had a long career. Is there anything that stands out in your mind that you're most satisfied about?

William A. Davies: No, some of the things that stand out in my mind as being the most interesting, I guess, is 56 or 57 years ago, my first job in the woods. I was 14 years old, just got out of grammar school. Didn't have any child labor laws then. I got a job working and punking whistles in a logging camp. It was a small operation and a truck logging operation. That was 1920; I was 14, I remember; born in 1908. What's eight and fourteen? 1922. On a truck logging outfit. I can remember those old trucks. They were straight up and down, and

William A. Davies: Macs. They didn't have any brakes on the front wheels, no brakes on the trailers, and we didn't have any tractors and bulldozers in those days. We built a road across a wet place and planked it. The history of logging says truck logging first began in 1923. Well, I worked on one in 1922, O I know it started before then.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: You started with truck logging then?

William A. Davies: Well, that was the first year, I think, that they did truck logging. That's one of the interesting parts of my life. And then another thing that I always thought put me in good stead in my teaching is the variety that I had. I worked every summer in logging camps then. I punked whistles, I set chokers, I felled timber and got banged up in camp, and everything else, and then I worked for private surveyors. I worked for the forest service for quite a few years. I worked for Weyerhaeuser for six or seven years, doing a variety of things, and then I came here to the university.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: So the last dean you worked with was Dean Stoltenberg?

William A. Davies: Right.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: And then you retired?

William A. Davies: Right, I worked for three deans.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: And you didn t know Peavy?

William A. Davies: I knew him, but I didn't work with him. He was around for the first couple of years that I was here. He was around the building a lot - in the old building, you know - because he'd come in just to visit. He was looking for more timber land for Paul Dunn. Paul wanted to build that up to 20,000 acres, that timber land; thought we needed that much for a school forest. But Mac got in. He decided that we didn't need any more land; there were too many problems taking care of it.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: How do you feel about that now? Do you think we should have gotten more?

William A. Davies: Oh yes, I was with Paul all along. I argued with Mac, and Mac said, "We cannot justify to the public, to the State of Oregon, taking more land out of taxes unless we absolutely need it." But see, we're putting more money back in there than they'd ever get in taxes. Oh, yes, that was a crime they didn't get more land. Gosh, we could have gotten itso cheaply then, even if they got it cheaply then and sold it now.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: How was Carl Stoltenberg? Did he support the McDonald Forest activities from the dean's office?

William A. Davies: Oh yes, quite a bit. Of course, Carl's whole experience had been in spending money and not making money. I know he told me several times when I had this account built up... 1 ran the thing like a business, sort of; I didn't blow the money just because it came in. But he said, "We're not in the business of making money; we're in the business of spending money."

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Did you get along well with him?

William A. Davies: Oh yes, we had our differences, but Carl is a politician. He is pretty easy to get along with. He gets his own way at the end. (chuckle)

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Finally, how would you compare the forest now with the way it was when you took over in 1959?

William A. Davies: I think it looks more like a managed forest now instead of just a neglected forest. I think there's more timber volume on it now than there was then. They have been cutting 3 to 5 million every year and increasing the volume.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: You think Marv Rowley has done a good job, then, of managing?

William A. Davies: Oh yes, of course I haven't been out there for three or four years. I don't know now. I think there is more timber volume on that forest now than if we hadn't done any cutting.

PART II

SEPTEMBER 18, 1979 INTERVIEW