Appendix B. Seventy-five Years with the Oregon State University School of Forestry’s Forestry Clubs

Appendix B.

Seventy-five years with the Oregon State University

School of Forestry’s Forestry Clubs

by Marvin L. Rowley

In the beginning, when a forestry curriculum was developing at Oregon Agricultural College under the tutelage of Professor Edward Lake, he and five students met on November 16, 1906, and officially formed the Forestry Club. The object of the Club was stated as: “Promoting forestry interests in the state.” Meetings were held twice monthly, with the main topics of discussion items such as current forestry literature and general progress in forestry. Also, a common topic was the latest legislative effects on the forest industry. Noted in the minutes of a 1907 meeting is an item that “girls” not be allowed in the club.

In 1908, there were five freshmen and five sophomore members, one of whom was T. J. Starker, freshly arrived from the big city of Portland. He made a motion to select an official club pin to be worn. The motion was passed. I don’t know just what this pin looked like, or if the motion was acted upon, but during the Peavy years a decoration that did take hold for more than 60 years was the wearing of a red tie on Wednesday. This custom was special on Fernhoppers’ Day. In 1910, 22 students registered in forestry and the future Dean Peavy arrived on the scene.

From the beginning, the Forestry Club provided a social and professional affiliation when the forestry profession was just spreading its wings and learning to fly. It provided a forum for expressing new ideas and arguing them out before they became public. Its membership was essentially the total student body and faculty, and this esprit de corps stayed with the Forestry School for over 40 years.

The close-knit group that developed challenged other campus groups over the years. There was an annual football game, started back there in antiquity, between the Foresters and the Miners, who fought it out on the gridiron in the days when a football field could pass as a corn field if you didn’t look too close. On down the years, there were other rivalries, such as a tug-of-war between the football team and the foresters, with the foresters winning more often than not. It wasn’t all blood and gore though, as an annual Foresters’ Ball was begun back in the ‘twenties, first known as the Peavy Hop and performed on the first floor of the then-new forestry building. At some later date, this event was moved to the Memorial Union Ballroom, and was one of the main social events of the year on campus—with some kind of cooperation between the foresters and the girls from Home Economics being a part of the gala affair. This event came to an end in 1954, when a dance was held at the Forestry Club Cabin in November. This fall dance gradually took on an all-day flavor of contest and party, and is now known as the Fall Frost.

Socially speaking, the forestry student and Club member was often the head of a family and a few years older than his rivals across campus. This was especially true after World War II, when the returning veterans brought their brides to Corvallis in record numbers. The 1948 Annual Cruise had pictures of 38 “second-growth foresters,” a part of the post-war baby boom.

Back there somewhere in the early years, singing was also a major part of any Forestry Club meeting, with a piano player and a song leader appointed, and the old ballads of yesterday rang out.

“Alouette” is one that survived many decades, with song leader George Schroeder as a student and later a faculty member leading the crew. Other songs were “Down under the Hill,” “In the Land of the Lassen,” “The Little Brown Jug,” and many others. It was custom to open the meeting with a few songs, just to get everyone loosened up.

Early-day field trips were a part of the forestry students’ life, with some of them being many days long and requiring the roughing it in the out-of-doors in the days before many of our modern conveniences. It was during these times, the fraternal group probably performed at their best with various practical jokers putting rocks in packs, various items in bunks and beds, and generally helping their fellow students develop a caution not readily attainable in the classroom. When forest properties became a part of the facilities, first the Spaulding Tract on the eastern slopes of Marys Peak, then Peavy Arboretum and McDonald Forest, these areas became the target of trips and improvement projects by the Club. Tree plantings, trail construction, and other down-to-earth jobs were a part of every forester’s life, and the Club pitched in to help develop the fledgling properties.

In 1925, the major project was the construction of a Forestry Club Cabin in Peavy Arboretum, just west of a knoll covered with young Douglas-fir trees. The project was carried out by 135 students and faculty under the direction of a student named Kelly B. McQuire. The cabin was constructed of hand-peeled Douglas-fir logs about 17 inches maximum diameter, 15 inches minimum diameter, and top diameter not less than 10 inches. There was not a stick of sawn material in the building. It was nine logs high to the eaves, and about 44 feet long and 26 feet wide. Kelly B. McQuire stated, “It was completed and stands on ‘our Arboretum’ as a monument to all who had a part in the making.” There was a large brick-and-stone fireplace at one end, with a second one added at the other end at a later date. Other improvements were electricity and a woodshed. Constant maintenance kept the cabin weather-proof and usable. This cabin served as a focal point of Club activities in the Arboretum area for 23 years. Then a fire burned it to the ground on February 13, 1949. The smoke was still drifting up and the ashes still warm when the Forestry Club went into action, cleaned up the mess, and planned a new cabin. Where 123 men labored 23 years before, 200-plus students and faculty labored anew. They designed, cut and hammered into existence, and dedicated a new, larger structure. The dedication plaques still hang on the walls of the cabin, signed by the Club officers and crew, and dedicating the building to the furtherance of forestry in the same spirit as the original cabin was dedicated. In 1980, the Forestry Club Cabin is still the focal point of Club activities at Peavy Arboretum. It has been maintained by students and the maintenance crew from the Forest Research Laboratory, with a few new improvements each year.

Back at the time of acquiring Peavy Arboretum, a special day was instigated by the Club—Arboretum Day. It was a work-and-play day and holds many a fond memory for those old times of the ‘20s and ‘30s. Crews were picked and jobs assigned ahead of the day. Jobs performed were varied, but had one thing in common—they were all hard, physical work, such as a common timber beast could carry out without much brain power. There were trail construction and maintenance and building repairs. Poison-oak grubbing was always assigned to anyone who proved they were immune to the pest, and this is where I got my own first experience on Arboretum Day.

At noon, the crews came trailing in from the scattered points of labor, ready for the main meal of the school year. It rivaled the old Fourth-of-July picnics and Thanksgiving feasts. It was then that Harry Patterson’s Bean Hole Beans were dug out of the trench where they had been simmering since the day before, and were dished out to the hungry crews—along with major portions of salad, bread, and black coffee from the large pots boiling over the fire.

After this meal was concluded, the officers and faculty presented awards and prizes to the outstanding members of the Club, honoring them for the extracurricular efforts of the year just past. These presentations lasted long enough for the food to settle, and then it was off to the contests. The students reverted back to the days when a timber beast was king because he was best with spurs and ax, or could make an old misery whip sing through the Douglas-fir. Or they proved they could walk on water after Cronemiller Lake became available in 1937 and log-burling was added to the sports.

After the games, the crew drifted off toward town or sat around swapping lies and dreading going back to the classroom for another couple of weeks of classes. Sometime in the late 1950s, the need for the work crews changed with the arrival of a full-time logging contractor and a steady road and forest maintenance program, and the spring day of Arboretum Day changed to the Spring Thaw. The coming of Spring Thaw ended such traditions as work parties, Bean Hole Beans, and presenting awards, and signaled the advent of a new look of skirts and feminine foresters competing at the games, followed by a dance in the cabin at the end of the day.

About 1929, the forestry curriculum on the major campuses of the West had developed in a number of states, and clubs were formed paralleling the development at Oregon Agricultural College. Along with this development came a desire to share with other schools through field trips, social events, and contests. This led to the forming of a loosely knit group called the Association of Western Forestry Clubs. This group sponsored a yearly get-together of representatives of the various clubs, with the host school being rotated among the member clubs. The host school was responsible for providing regionally unique tours, intercollege logging sports competition, and communication in the form of an accumulation of articles from member clubs and information about the conclave details as they developed.

This seventy-fifth year marks the return of the Association of Western Forestry Clubs conclave to the Oregon State University campus, and it is planned to be a major event in the celebration of this milestone year. The dates of this year’s conclave are April 21 through April 25, 1981.

Another tradition established back in 1930 by the Forestry Club and the alumni of the Forestry School is the Fernhopper Banquet. This event usually takes place in February each year, and has been the tie between the new and the old. It has been and is the place where the man on the job meets the recruit who is looking for his place in the profession. This event has been planned mainly by the Forestry Club in earlier years. As the Forestry Alumni Association gained members, a sharing of some of the planning has taken place, but mostly in an advisory capacity on the part of the Association.

The word “fernhopper” has been used to describe the forestry student at Oregon State University from way back at the beginning, and, whether it came from a School of Mines student trying to be derogatory or from a forestry student bragging about his ability to traverse the slope in giant steps, the term stuck and is still used. We fernhoppers are rightly proud of the dubious title.

The Fernhopper Banquet was born to fill a need brought on in the Great Depression, when many were unemployed and earning of a few bucks for next year’s stake was the main reason summer was invented and inserted into the forestry curriculum. This banquet gave the student a chance to meet prospective employers and make a pitch for a place on the payroll next June. Also, the employers, as loyal Fernhoppers, were more than anxious to find a man or two who could carry a tail block to yonder stump or take on a timber-cruising job that was taxing the regular crew. Fire-fighters were needed, and lookouts, and an assortment of crew men whose jobs ended about the time of the fall rains. These same needs exist today, and the 1981 Fernhoppers’ Banquet will see a few students breathe a little easier because, “I know where I’ll be come June.”

Another tradition of the Fernhoppers’ Banquet has been the main speaker. Leaders of the forestry field, national figures, governors, senators, poets, and writers have challenged and entertained the crew from Peavy Hall through the years.

This brings up another of the valuable contributions the Forestry Club has made from the early days until now. Their meetings have striven to bring professional issues to the school faculty and students alike. They have brought to the campus, industry and government leaders as speakers at the Club meetings and at special events. These speakers include such men as the Father of the United States Forest Service, Gifford Pinchot, presidents of corporations, educators, and controversial proponents of new ideas. In short, many of the sessions have been ones where new ideas were aired and molded into shape to be applied out on the job.

As the Forestry Club grew with the establishment of the School and their own building on the corner of 26th and Jefferson, communication with the forestry alumni, and even within their own group, brought about the establishment of two publications. The Annual Cruise was first published in 1920, and served as the school’s yearbook. It is available to the alumni and filled with current forestry-related articles, the happenings of the school year, current jokes making their way across the campus scene, and a directory of alumni. This last item helps the ex-Club members keep in contact with their old buddies from their respective neck-of-the-woods assignments out in the big wide world. The Annual Cruise continued until 1974, when it became difficult to finance the publication, and also to find enough students willing to take on the publishing and editing jobs.

Sometime during these early days another paper, aptly name the High Lead, was started to spread the word around the local halls, with a few copies being mailed to the Clubs on other western university campuses. This little paper has been published periodically for most of the Club’s history, and serves as a sounding board for new ideas, as well as supplying humor and prose to fit the occasions. It’s an adaptable little news bulletin that seems to always find a champion willing to serve his or her fellow students and badger them into contributing one more article.

These recollections are mostly about how it was in the beginning, but, with the coming of the ‘sixties and ‘seventies, a new type of student and new circumstances developed. The students didn’t always follow old traditions without questioning. They came from a society of television and computers, fast transportation and large cities. They saw a world in travail, with new concerns of pollution of the air and water, and destruction of the productive capacity of many an acre by the so-called advances of man. They didn’t follow the old order stating that “everyone should be a Forestry Club member,” and many became nonjoiners of everything. During these days, the Club struggled, membership dropped, faculty members got too busy to bother—became disenchanted and dropped their support of the Club. This period of time saw the women of our communities stepping into areas that had always been men-only professions, and forestry is one of these areas. The feminine viewpoint began to be voiced in matters of Club activities, and “No Women Allowed” has become a long-forgotten issue.

With the coming of the ‘seventies and into the ‘eighties, the students have seen that the idealistic approach won’t change the world by itself, but needs the practical touch of the old timber beast of yesterday. And they have moved back to a middle-of-the-road approach. Today’s student who is active in the Club is interested in more than just a good time, or asking, “What is the Club going to do for me?” Today’s student is asking, “What can I do for the Club?” They have been active in community projects during the last few years that rival some of the early-

day events. One that stands out for the City of Corvallis is the landscape plantings of forest trees around the new Good Samaritan Hospital. Each year, as they grow and fully occupy the field, there are those men and women who come back to Corvallis and say, “Hey, look at those trees. I helped plant them.”

Today in this seventy-fifth year of forestry, the student organization known as the Forestry Club is alive and thriving. It has changed from the good old days, even in name, to encompass the broader concept of citizen, forester, and student. This new concept and the desire to be more totally involved in the profession has led to the forming of a Society of American Foresters student chapter on the Oregon State University campus. This student chapter is oriented toward providing a bridge from student to profession, and is aimed at getting the students and professionals to rub shoulders more, much as was done in the so-called “good old days,” when men were men and women were glad of it. The Society of American Foresters student chapter is meant to fulfill the professional needs of the student with the Forestry Student Association (Club) existing along side, to fulfill the social needs on the campus scene. This new cooperative group also includes the forestry honorary society, Xi Sigma Pi, which has the role of coordinating the academic life of the student.

In summing up 75 years of Club activity, we have seen a move from a close-knit, special group groping for a profession to one that is playing a major role in the development of that profession. As the profession matured and curriculum blossomed to include Forest Management, Forest Engineering, Forest Products, Resource Recreation Management, Forest Science, with all their many variations, the Club diverged and the role changed to give a broad-based representation. The change hasn’t been all bad, and we can look toward the next decade confident that our student organization is going to produce the giants and workhorses of the profession, those who will be prepared to step into the shoes of the giants of yesterday and today. One thing is obvious as we look over the chronicles of the Club—those who led us during our student days are the ones who will lead us tomorrow. Three cheers for the Club!

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