Part III. February 6, 1979

PART III - February 6, 1979

[Interview conducted by Royal Jackson and Jennifer Lee at Peavy Hall, Oregon State University, Corvallis.]

Royal Jackson: You were saying that the management plans in the forests now are better formulated and written down?

Marvin Rowley: Yes. As I worked on the job, and have been here in the School of Forestry, where I’m not just a contractor, I’m trying to get some of these things down in a concrete manner. As we go on, one of the things we see in the nation is dissatisfaction with the forest-management decisions. I get somewhat uptight with this type of a philosophy, in that you compare it to a committee telling a doctor when he should operate for appendicitis. No way we should do that, so the forester is a professional person that can make land-use decisions, where the public are not experts, although they have certain views. Historically, they like the green trees, and they look at them from a certain category, but they’re not the ones to make that decision. On our forest here, we have the basis for demonstrating land-use decisions to the public, and I think that’s one of the key places our research, our education, and everything should point—that McDonald Forest and Dunn Forest should be a model forest. We should have examples of what we can do in the field of management, field of timber harvesting and regeneration, and recreation, and preservation, and the animals and the plants that are important to our basic philosophies of life to exist there, and still use it. This forest has that ability. It is there, if we do it right. John and I, in looking at our land planning, are looking to make an inventory.

Royal Jackson: John Beuter, you mean?

Marvin Rowley: Yes, John Beuter.

Royal Jackson: The forest supervisor?

Marvin Rowley: Yes. We’re looking at an inventory of the forest, and our inventory of the forest is an inclusive inventory, rather than a restricted one. It includes the history, like you’re doing now. We would like to have the historical uses of every area, and we’re looking at maybe down to five-acre land types, island types, of forest cover. We’d like to have on that inventory past uses. We’d like to have any harvests or anything that was done on it, all of them on the record. The ground cover, the soil type, underneath the ground cover—from the mosses right on up to the timber type. The animals, possible animal use. If we’ve got an endangered species somewhere that’s out on the forest, for instance, we’d like to have that specified. The flowers, for instance—where the ladyslippers are. So it’s a comprehensive inventory. We’d like to have the inventory so it’d fit into the TREES model, which is the computer program that John Beuter used in coming up with the timber harvest supply in western Oregon, by the year 2000. So our timber inventory system would fit that, but would also resolve some of the problems of herbicide uses, of which we’ve done a lot of work on there. But I think there’s a lot more we can do. We can manipulate a stand where a herbicide is not nearly as necessary. Lot of it, the use of herbicides now, is because of neglect. We’ve harvested and not, haven’t got a good regeneration back because we didn’t know how, or we let it go by chance, or economics were a factor sometimes—in the ‘30s, especially. You just couldn’t afford to regenerate land when timber was 50 cents a thousand.

Royal Jackson: I was told by one staff member in the School of Forestry, that’s been here a long time, that Harry Nettleton’s technique of management was to drive through the forest about once a week.

Marvin Rowley: Yes, Harry’s basic management was more protective than operational, and, of course, this is his background. It’s not just Harry Nettleton’s management, but, if you look back to the ‘20s, and the ‘30s and the ‘teens, in the USDA Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Indian Affairs, the first managers of the forests were basically preserving the forests. The harvesting was of minor importance. To look back at that history, the private ownerships in the nation were cutting their lands off. They had an abundance of old growth in Oregon up to the 1940s even. It just depended on whether they got to it with a railroad or a truck load or a skyline, or how you’re going to get it. As new methods developed, we had new timber supply. We’re in that area now, the transition between the old-growth and second-growth management, actually. The timber companies that are the producers of wood, from their standpoint, the quicker they cut their old growth, the better off they are. It’s not growing, it’s stagnated, and they’ve got to get that into production in order to supply wood for a multimillion-dollar investment in a sawmill. Of course, the society as a whole can’t afford to have them go down the tube any more than they can other branches of society. We need wood. We not only need the sawmill to saw the lumber that we need, if we come to zero-growth economy even, we’re going to need replacements. And the Forest Service sits kind of in between there, on their old growth. Anyway, we learned out here, now we can see how these transitions can be made.

Royal Jackson: Is there much old growth left in the school forests?

Marvin Rowley: About five percent of our ownership is in old growth yet. Of course, this is not too much different than it was in the year zero. The ecology of the area—in 1850, we were looking at a savanna-type of forest in oak. And oak forests were grassy. The timbered ridges, as far as Douglas-fir, the evergreen forest was on the north slope there in the protected areas where they didn’t burn.

Royal Jackson: Marv, does this long-term plan involve other departments on campus? Like the Botany Department?

Marvin Rowley: Yes, it does in a sense. When we recognize a need in those areas, we go to them for expertise that we need in that area. It does in that sense, and then they’re involved in using the forest for their classes. Probably they come through the back door more than others. If I was, if my operation was destroying their instructional area, they’re either going to come to me all hot under the collar or look for an alternative place to go without saying anything. The chances are good that they’re going to give me a call on the telephone and say, “Hey, you’re ruining something.” So, by now we have listed every class on the campus that uses the forest. I have a record of them in my inventory, and we try to upgrade that each year. We’re right now in the process of making the annual report. My secretary calls each one of these individuals and asks them if they’re still using the forest this way. And at the same time we try to fill out the information by checking with departments and saying, “If you have some other use that’s come up that we don’t know about, if you do then you’d better register it with us, or you won’t be protected if it’s not a legitimate use.”

Royal Jackson: Marv, what about the special arrangements with the School of Agriculture lands? When McDonald gave those lands to the University, part of those went to the School of Agriculture, didn’t they?

Marvin Rowley: Well, this is the Dunn Forest. It’s a different situation in that the money for the closing of the deed was taken from McDonald Forest funds, which, in a sense, come from Mrs. Mary

Marvin Rowley: McDonald, but it was from the operating budget of the forest. At the time they acquired the Dunn Forest—the Adair Tract, it was called—it was military surplus land. It was offered to the university on a pay-for-the-closing-costs basis plus use it properly for 25 years, then it’s yours. They were approached with this possibility. The School of Agriculture at that time said they didn’t have the funds and they didn’t see how they could use it anyway.

Royal Jackson: This is in the ‘40s, now? Post World War II?

Marvin Rowley: Yes, this was the late ‘40s, 1948 or so, when they started negotiating on this. Well, Dean Dunn, when he got wind of this, he said, “We’ve got the funds, we’ll pay for the closing costs.” Well, I call it the fiasco that went on in the University Ivory Hall from then until it became a reality. The Federal Land Bank designated which was forest land and which was ag land, which I don’t know if we had any choice in that.

Royal Jackson: Was it designated erroneously, in your opinion?

Marvin Rowley: Well, yes. Much of the ag land in there, we paid for the whole. All the costs of acquiring the land were to come from Forestry. There’s over 1,300 acres that was forest land that was designated, that went in the land that was designated agriculture.

Royal Jackson: So, does the School of Forestry own that land administered by the School of Agriculture?

Marvin Rowley: No, we control it. The original agreement, then, was drawn up between the School of Forestry and the School of Agriculture. They drew a boundaries description that said this is forest land, this is ag land, and all the forested land within the agriculture area will be managed jointly by the Forestry School, and the income will go back onto the property. But it didn’t say how it would go back onto the property, it just said it would. Now, when Harry Nettleton took over as Manager, he just played ignorant of the ag area, and stayed away from it as much as possible. They built their fences where they wanted them to be. There were no controls from our standpoint at all as far as managing those areas. When Bill Davies took over—it was pretty much fenced by that time. He backed off from doing anything within those areas. They had one sale area that Harry Nettleton put up in the ag area. It was the only one that I knew that took place up there. Then, when I took over, I’d been looking at it all those years anyway, and I started asking questions. And I started an operation in the ag area. And, with John Beuter, we brought the thing to a head, and negotiated an agreement with the School of Agriculture that these lands within the ag area were indeed forested areas, that they were ours to manage, and that we would pay them an annual fee for five years at a set amount. At the end of that five-year period, we would reexamine the potential on those lands and draw up a, arrive at a new five-year fee. So, every five years, we reexamine the potential and the market and come up with a new fee to pay them. That’s the way we’re operating now. And this week I’m working on a report, a five-year report.

Royal Jackson: Who is the principal personality from the School of Agriculture that was involved in that early period? Do any names stand out in your mind when the initial arrangement was made, the division of ag and forestry lands?

Marvin Rowley: No, I don’t. Is it Dr. Oldfield might have been? I’d have to go up and look at the records. I think I could dig them up. As I say, looking at it from outside in, from here back, and it’s real easy to say, but it looked to me like they left a lot of things unanswered and in a kind of a nebulous condition that should have been answered rather quickly. One of these points, as long as it doesn’t have anything to do with ag land, but it has to do with Dunn Forest—early in the management of the forest, and looking at boundaries, they found that one property

Marvin Rowley: description didn’t fit. In the late 1950s, Russ Dix—who’s now Assistant to the Registrar, isn’t he? Working on his master’s degree in engineering, Russ did a survey and a search of the deed description, and came up with a recommendation which Bill Davies sent in to the higher-ups, and nothing ever happened on it. In 1966, I was involved in a resurvey of the area to check all this data. I had a graduate forest engineer working under me, and we surveyed, ran about four miles of transit traverse, and checked. And I became satisfied in my mind as to what had gone on. We turned in a written report of about 20 pages to Bill Davies, and nothing ever happened. So it’s still there. I’m going on the assumption that what’s right now, whether it’s written in there or not, I think, when I can get time to do it, I need to sit down and have the deed description corrected. Some of these problems like this, the University had just let slide, because it was, really it didn’t matter in some ways. It was what was on the grounds that counted. But, if they had been diligent in putting them together, it would’ve been easier to operate later on. I don’t blame anybody for it. I’ve got an idea that— knowing the government and when Paul Dunn was working on this, the federal surplus property people, whoever they were, probably told them that, “We’ll divide this land, but the Federal Land Bank will make the decision of whose is whose.” But I think probably we had an option of not giving the money if it didn’t come the way we wanted it to. So all we’d have had to say is, “It’s all our money, it’s all our land, and we’ll negotiate with the School of Agriculture and make the surplus property that doesn’t fit our uses available to them and they can have them.” I think they could have done that. I don’t know whether, how it worked out. What we’ve done, John Beuter and I, we’ve assumed some things. We’ve assumed, for instance, that where they’ve put their fences up to now is where their property lines will be. And everything outside of that fence line is forest land. While that’s not where the Federal Land Bank designated, in some cases, that’s what we’re going to go by.

Royal Jackson: Is that error in the School of Forestry’s favor or in the School of Ag’s favor? What do you think is right?

Marvin Rowley: Oh, both—give and take. In one area, there’s several hundred acres that’s outside their fence that they’ll never fence, and it’s all timberland. And we went ahead, we’re not paying them for growth on that area because we felt like that fence that they put in over a 30-year period is a designation that pretty much designates what they’re interested in. And, on the outside, we’ve had all the expenses of road building, and land development, and planting, regeneration, reforesting.

Royal Jackson: Let me shift for a final comment to one last question this morning. The school forests have been real important in the development of the School of Forestry from what I read in the history of this era. It’s got a great deal of esprit de corps expressed by student foresters and faculty members, and a lot of it is centered around the use of the forest and activities that happen in it. Has anything changed since you were a student, and, from what you remember, as far as the way people in the school feel about the forest or treat it?

Marvin Rowley: Yes. Student use has. When I showed up here on the scene in 1946.... What I remember my uncle telling me, back in the ‘30s, they had what they called an Arboretum Day. This was the day set apart on a Saturday where all of the forestry students were involved. They were put into work details, and they worked, they did free gratis work around the forest, cleaning up the pine plantation, Arboretum plantings, maintenance of the cabin, road maintenance. They did things all over the forest, and then, on noon that day, they got together for the bean hole beans lunch. Harry Patterson was the one that made the beans every time.

Royal Jackson: Bean hole beans?

Marvin Rowley: Yes, bean hole beans. You never heard of bean hole beans? They bake them or cook them some to start with. And then they put them in a pretty much air-tight type of a can. They build a trench, build a fire in the trench, and keep it going for a couple of days. Then they’ll cover, throw a little dirt over those ashes and coals, put these beans in these cans in that hole, and then cover them up with dirt. And they leave them there for a couple of days—at least a day. Then, when you’re ready to eat, they dig these cans out, clean them off, open them, and you’ve got a slow-cooked bean. You’ve got a crock-pot bean, from antiquity. And this was the main part of the meal. After the bean hole beans, they usually gave all the forestry awards of the year, and then they went to Cronemiller Lake and the forestry contests.

Royal Jackson: Ax throwing....

Marvin Rowley: Ax throwing, hand-bucking.... Course they didn’t have power saws in there at all at the start of that. But logging skills, climbing, log rolling on the lake.... As the years have gone by, they’ve changed slightly on the contests. Well, sometime between 1950 and my return to the staff, or coming on the staff here, that Arboretum Day changed, became the Spring Thaw, and student involvement became not a total student involvement. The involvement of the faculty became less and less, to where now we still have the Spring Thaw, the forestry contests, the dinner. Lunchtime is no longer bean hole beans. It’s barbecued chicken or some other type of lunch. But they have a forestry contest and the involvement now centers around the Forestry Club. They’re arranging it. Some years it’s as few as 50 or 60 people there—except for the dance that they have afterwards. Then more come in. They’ve left out the involvement in the forest. They’re using the forest now, but there’s no free gratis work to speak of. They might do a little maintenance around the cabin.

Royal Jackson: How do you feel about that change in attitude?

Marvin Rowley: I think it’s rather poor. I think it’s developed along with a change of philosophies and attitudes of students and faculty. I don’t think it’s just students. I think the need to be involved and just donate, to do something for nothing has a lot of merit to it. I find a lot of the students that are in Forestry Club now still find this to be a vital part of their activities there, in that it’s not, “What can I get out of this?” but the attitude, “What can I put into this?” “What can I give?” rather than, “What can I get?”

Royal Jackson: There has been a loss of the cohesive feeling then. As I read the history books, when Dean Peavy was here, McCulloch and Dunn, during those eras, it seemed like there was more student-faculty cohesiveness centering around the forestry profession.

Marvin Rowley: Yes, right. I think that’s accurate. I think, as that changed, then this use of the forest that’s centered around the spring activities, especially, has changed, and it’s been a part of the change. Of course, I think some of it has been because of the leadership of the forest, of the University and the School of Forestry, in particular. Paul Dunn’s leadership, as he came on the scene, was—they had a lot of the old school there that were active, and Dean Peavy was still alive and active, and would be in the background in these traditional activities quite a bit, so that some of the things that he instigated as starting a University School of Forestry, even, were there. And then, as old faculty members dropped out, I think the change was a gradual change. McCulloch was another strong dean, but his philosophies and the way that he came on were a little more rigid. Like I say, knowing Dean McCulloch, he could turn a person off. If he didn’t like him, he didn’t make any bones about it. If he liked him, same

Marvin Rowley: way. So, you could get polarization fairly easily. And then Carl, coming on the scene after him—I view Carl as an administrator’s administrator type of a person. He administers easily. He looks at his overall program, makes decisions, and somebody else carries them out. But he can sit back and look at them. And, in doing this, he has somewhat isolated himself from the faculty and the students. They don’t get personal contact with the Dean.

Royal Jackson: Of course, if the School is much bigger than before, then it gets a little more difficult.

Marvin Rowley: Yes, it’s bigger. And it makes it more difficult. But, on the other hand, there’s a type of personality that can’t do with that..., but that’s not Carl’s. His philosophies, the Dean’s philosophies, have shaped the rest of the School. I suppose if you had a different dean, you’d get a different group of students and the way they’re involved in the whole affair.