Part IV. February 7, 1979

PART IV: February 7, 1979

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

Royal Jackson: Marvin, why don’t we start by using the year 1950 when you got out of Oregon State University’s School of Forestry, and pick up the story from there.

Marvin Rowley: Okay. I think we covered some of this, but in 1950 I graduated in Forest Engineering and went to work for Umpqua Plywood Corporation based in Myrtle Creek. I worked for four years as a field engineer in various capacities in southern Oregon. Then, in 1954, I went to work as a contract logger with my brother-in-law as a partner. Our main activities were tree farm service-type of operations. We were doing thinning, salvaging, stand regeneration work. We started on Beaver Creek out south of Philomath that year on a Dr. Davidson’s ranch. He was an absentee owner, and his forest was managed by a forester from Portland by the name of Vernon Good. He laid out the logging for us, and supervised the contract. When we finished that contract, that took us about a year and a half to finish that contract, we did several small jobs during that second year. Probably the low year of our existence, we probably logged 60,000 or 70,000 board feet the whole year. That was all that we took out. But, in the fall of 1955, I think the spring of 1956, we had been working closely with the Extension Service, and about that year they hired a part-time forester position in the Benton County Extension, who was Martin Thingvold.

Royal Jackson: He just retired this year?

Marvin Rowley: He just retired. And, as part of what they were looking at, they were wanting to set up a demonstration plot somewhere in the county where they could take farm or small woodland owners out into the forest to show them what they could do on their property. The Spaulding Tract was a piece of property that the School of Forestry owns. It’s managed along with McDonald Forest, and it’s 160 acres of cutover with various stages of timber growth on it, on the east side of Marys Peak. It straddles the Old Peak Road. This road was the original road to the coast out of the Philomath area. One of the earlier roads went up along the slope of Marys Peak, and down into Elk Creek, and on through the Harlan country into Elk City and Toledo. This 160 acres had been logged. Probably it was nearly finished logging by 1921. I think they gave it to the School, the University, in 1921 or 1922.

Royal Jackson: Who did that? Do you know?

Marvin Rowley: Spaulding Logging Company, which was one of the early predecessors of Willamette Industries. I think they, some way or other, went from Spaulding Logging Company to something else, and eventually what they owned ended up as part of Willamette Industries.

Royal Jackson: Why did they give that to the University?

Marvin Rowley: Well, it was given I think, probably due to contact by the professors here—Dean Peavy and others with the Spaulding Logging Company, and they gave it as a research forest for the foresters to see what they could do to regenerate it, to grow timber.

Royal Jackson: Was the president of the company an associate of Dean Peavy?

Marvin Rowley: I don’t have any idea. I have an idea, all right, but it’s just that—not based on any fact. But, as I say, knowing Dean Peavy, I got an idea that almost everyone around this neck of the woods was his friend and associate, and he raised funds anywhere he could get them. And I imagine he convinced them that, when they got all the merchantable wood off, it was almost worthless, and that, “If you’d give it to us, you wouldn’t have to pay taxes on it anymore, and it might be a good deal.” And they did it. But, anyway, we got started on this tract in 1956, logging a 40-acre demonstration plot, and that 40 acres in itself had all kinds of interest to it. I followed the old skyline skid roads around on that place. You can see where they logged it over, find the deep grooves, and where they had their swing-tree, and the skyline that ran down to the railroad landing at the northwest corner of the property. This area that we were working was part that was cut over then, and part of it had never been logged, because it was probably a fern patch about 1921. And, when we were working, it was a small, pole-sized—the average DBH [diameter at breast height] in that 40 acres in the young growth was probably 14 inches. It was rather thick, had a lot of broken-top trees from ice storms and snow-break from snow storms in the past. Most of it, from the ice storm in 1936, or 1939—I mean January of 1940. I’ll get it right. That winter. We logged that area, set it up as a demonstration plot.

Royal Jackson: Now was this under the direction of Peavy or Nettleton?

Marvin Rowley: No, this was under the direction of Martin Thingvold. The School leased that 40 acres to the Extension Service as a demonstration plot. They could do anything they wanted on it. The School got all the funds, just like they do now. If they sold anything, the School got it, but they let the Extension County Agent do the managing on that area. When the University saw what kind of work we did.... I was acquainted with Bill Davies, and he was, at that time, active in the summertime in the management, as a kind of coworker with Harry Nettleton.

Royal Jackson: Was he the department head in Forest Management at that time?

Marvin Rowley: He was the head of the Forest Engineering Department, and, of course, Harry Nettleton was the forest manager. As soon as we finished this Spaulding Tract, we negotiated a sale out on Oak Creek, there at the head of Oak Creek. We logged an area there on the forest in that same manner. The trees were marked by the forest manager when we did this thinning job. That was toward the fall and the spring of the next year, which I think would take us into the spring of ‘57. They

Marvin Rowley: liked what they saw, and they laid out several sales over the next couple of years and sold those on an oral-bid basis to whoever came in after they advertised. We bought every one of their sales. At all except one sale, I think, we were the only ones that showed up.

Royal Jackson: Why was that? Why did you have no competition?

Marvin Rowley: Because there wasn’t anyone in the logging industry in this area that was interested in handling small wood like that at that time. There weren’t any loggers that were doing this. We were in a rather new field, although there were a lot of loggers that had the equipment. They’d go out and look at these little trees, and they’d say, “Oh, we can’t make any money cutting those.”

Royal Jackson: Now, by little, do you mean maybe 40 acres?

Marvin Rowley: No, we’re talking about a large area. But I’m talking about the wood size, the average log size of 100 to 110 board feet. The mills were buying, paying almost as good a price for small wood as they were for the large wood—a little bit smaller. But this got the [Forestry] School started in the first really continuous thinning project. We’d run through this in ‘57 and ‘58. And then Harry Nettleton retired in 1959, and Bill Davies took over as forest manager.

Royal Jackson: As well as the head of the department?

Marvin Rowley: Yes, as well as department head. He was, I believe—30 percent or 25 percent of his salary came out of the forest, and he was supposed to be 25 percent forest manager. When Bill Davies took over, we explored the possibility. Because we hadn’t had any competition in bidding the sales, and because of the research and instructional nature of the forest, we wanted to cooperate, or integrate the harvest with the school activities—more than just to lay sales out.

Royal Jackson: And that hadn’t been done up to that point?

Marvin Rowley: No, it hadn’t been done. It had been done as much as you could, but you can’t do it when you put up sales that they give one year to cut, and you don’t know when they’re going to cut it and who’s going to cut it or anything like this. But, up to that point, there had been a couple of large sales, traditional type of sales, taken out by other people in the early 1950s. The Corvallis Logging Company took out, I think it was a six-million-foot sale on Dunn Forest, at the head of South Berry Creek, Section 21. Taylor-Hart Lumber Company bought a two-million-foot sale down lower on the South Berry Creek two years after that first sale went out, and cleaned up that area of residual stand of old growth. And they’d had a salvage logger that had picked up salvage for several years around wherever he could find it, on a kind of a $1,000-contract basis. We’d done some of that, too, in those intervening years. Just negotiate. A $1,000 contract was the largest one they could negotiate without putting it up for bid. So we worked on a series of $1,000 contracts there for a year or so. Anyway, in 1959, we negotiated a two-year contract. We called it a timberland rehabilitation, salvaging, and marketing contract. So we were basically looking at unproductive forest land, and we’d do what was necessary to rehabilitate.

Royal Jackson: By “we” you mean your company, you and your partner?

Marvin Rowley: Yes, this was our company, in conjunction with, and with the school, too—the combined group. In 1959, when we started this contracting, we’d sit down with Bill and decide what our scope of operations was going to be, where we were going to start, and how we would carry out the contract. At that time, we started on the north edge of McDonald Forest, north of Cronemiller Lake, and covered all the forest land in a pattern year by year, working southward toward Oak Creek, along the forest, so we covered the total forest ownership. We were aiming at covering that in a ten-year period.

Royal Jackson: By covering, you mean you were going to rehabilitate that?

Marvin Rowley: Yes, we were going to go completely across the forest in ten years, and do thinning, salvaging, whatever was necessary on this first time. And it just was an unmanaged forest—I mean, nothing. It was just as we’d purchased it, and, like I say, it was anything from clearcut to real old-growth patches.

Royal Jackson: The year you’re talking about that you started this would be what?

Marvin Rowley: It would be 1959. We were looking at finishing that by ‘69. We just got underway good, and we were also covering the Dunn Forest, which was the Adair Tract, in the same manner, starting at one end and working across it…. We just got underway, making good headway, and October 12, 1962, a storm hit. The storm came in without warning, with not much rain involved, but the ground was fairly dry.

Royal Jackson: The Columbus Day Storm?

Marvin Rowley: Yes. The ground was fairly dry, the winds were 150-mile-an-hour winds, and it hit our area from about south ten degrees east, just slightly east of south. It blew down seven million board feet in about two hours. And we immediately, like the next day, flew over the forest in a private plane, sketched in the areas of blow-down, the heavy concentrations.

Royal Jackson: Do you still have that sketch?

Marvin Rowley: Yes, I think I’ve still got it hanging up there in my map collection. On the fourteenth of—in fact, I think, on the thirteenth of October, we already had equipment out cleaning roads. We opened the county road across the saddle, and started working up the main roads in the forest. In about a week, we had the roads open to where we could drive them.

Royal Jackson: Were any students involved in any of this activity, or was this just your company?

Marvin Rowley: No, from our conception, it was a company operation. But we always hired more people in the summertime than in the wintertime, so this was students. From the very beginning, we had forestry students working for us on a part-time basis. During these times, about 1960 and ‘61, we had a fellow, Bill Lickey, who is one of the partners in Century West Engineering now. He worked for me as an employee. Then he wanted to do a little on his own. He subcontracted under our contract for a two-year period, in 1962, winter ‘63. In 1964, we ended that type of contract and Bill went to work with an engineer down at Oak Ridge. They eventually established Century Engineering, which they have about 70 employees—I mean, they’re a fairly good-sized organization. The Columbus Day Storm rather drastically altered the forest pattern on the forest. We really viewed it as catastrophic, which it was, as a devastation. It was probably one of the biggest eye-openers that I had in forestry. I’m a forester and I realize trees grow, and that they renew themselves. But, then, when we looked at this storm as being a catastrophe, and ten years later it had healed itself in many of the places where we thought that the stand was destroyed.... It still had an operational forest. It wasn’t growing as much wood as it could, but it had come along and healed itself. Anyway, our philosophy when we hit this storm—we decided, Bill Davies was the one that made the decision, that we would salvage everything that blew down as quickly as possible, and we would not touch any standing trees that looked like they would grow. So, it was just the downed material. We took out this seven-million board feet in about two years.

Royal Jackson: Do you think that was a good plan?

Marvin Rowley: Yes, I think it was an excellent plan. Actually, by the time we got back to it, I’m still getting

Marvin Rowley: back to some now, it had had a chance to heal itself to where we could see what we’d need to do when we came back to it.

Royal Jackson: You didn’t plant it, you let it heal itself, did you say?

Marvin Rowley: Well, we planted. If it was a clearcut, we planted. But, if it had enough trees standing among the blow-down, we didn’t. Like I say, most of my operation today is guided by what happened in 1962. That’s 20 years almost, that’s 16 years ago.

Royal Jackson: So, would you say, in the history of the management of the forest, that the Columbus Day Storm may have been one of the most significant events?

Marvin Rowley: Oh, it is. It was the most significant event that we’ve had. And, of course, with Rowley and Parker Tree Farm Service, it was probably the single most significant event that ever happened to us. Because, first thing, we didn’t have enough equipment to take out that volume that quickly. We were geared at a million, million-and-a-half board feet per year and a small crew, five or six men during the summer and three men during the winter, which was a nice, quiet, pastoral type of an existence. So, we bought equipment to get the salvage out as fast as we could. By 1964, we had it out, and we had equipment that was sitting around, or we were wondering what we were going to do with it. And, while we had done a few outside jobs and worked on our own property, we now had quite a little equipment and manpower. So we started doing work for other individuals. We worked for Larson Lumber Company, took out Forest Service, BLM sales for them over the few years. And we just carried on in McDonald Forest and Dunn Forest like we had.

Royal Jackson: You mean you continued with the ten-year plan started in 1959?

Marvin Rowley: Yes, we continued where we left off, and we continued that plan. Like I say, at the same time, with the extra equipment and the extra manpower we had, we had more men than was necessary to take out the annual cut on the forest. That’s about three million feet. And we were producing about six million feet annually by 1965. In 1965, Bill Davies and I took a trip to the Southeast. We spent a month in Arkansas and Alabama chiefly, visiting the southern pine areas, but basically timber companies or lumber companies. Georgia-Pacific had just bought out the Crossett Company then. We visited Dircks Forest in western Arkansas and two or three ownerships in Alabama, just looking to see what other people were doing in other forest cultures, and broadening our experience. We came away feeling pretty good about what we were doing ourselves, because in some cases we were ahead of them. Anyway, when, about 1966, my partner and I took a third partner, Gary Ferguson, we also purchased a tower. From 1966, January of 1966 to January 1, 1970, there were three of us in the partnership, and we logged high, wide, and handsome, you might say, all over the place. Climbed all kinds of ridges and logged all kinds of timber.

Royal Jackson: Is this because you had all this equipment now?

Marvin Rowley: Yes, and we had more equipment after that. At one time, we had 50 men on the payroll. About 1969, I think, I had 50 men on payroll one summer, and, like I say, grossed $1,200,000, netted $15,000 apiece, which makes a guy kind of an automatic check-writing machine.

Royal Jackson: Marvin, let’s back up a second. Let me ask you, what was Harry Nettleton doing all this time you were doing the thinning and the rehabilitation?

Marvin Rowley: Well, Harry Nettleton retired in 1958 or 1959. I think he retired in 1958.

Royal Jackson: And that was just when you were starting the program of rehabilitation?

Marvin Rowley: Yes. He was out of the picture then, and he died, I think about, I don’t remember.... I don’t think he lived until the Columbus Day Storm. He died soon after he retired; he had sugar diabetes, and he had some complications from it when he was on the job. He had some complications from it that restricted some of his activities somewhat.

Royal Jackson: Well, then no manager was appointed?

Marvin Rowley: No. Bill Davies was appointed immediately on him retiring.

Royal Jackson: But you actually were running the forest operationally?

Marvin Rowley: Yes. Like I say, our operation was at that time—Bill made the management decisions, like the basic. We decided where we were going to start, and what type of operation it was going to be, and just what stand treatment was going to be in each case with each timber type, and we carried the work out on the ground. We did our own timber-marking, or trained a crew to do it. We laid the roads out. During this time, as we worked, like I say, the cooperation between the school and the contractor—in this case, most of the major road systems were designed by senior Forest Engineering classes, for instance, and then we went in and built the road. Sometimes, while they were still working on it, we’d be building it. Of course, we tried to look over the systems and make sure that we corrected mistakes that they put in. And sometimes we altered the mistakes and made our own.

Royal Jackson: How much did the students actually work with you?

Marvin Rowley: Well, they worked quite a bit, especially the Forest Engineering Department, on a road location. And the silviculture classes and the land-use planning type of class were involved in it, too, looking at some of the areas that…, usually after we had finished. Of course, the students did all of the planting.

Royal Jackson: Like they do now?

Marvin Rowley: Yes, like they do now. They’ve always had a student planting crew.

Royal Jackson: Were they always paid, or did they just volunteer?

Marvin Rowley: Yes, they were always paid. One-hundred percent of the regeneration on the forest has been the students . . . almost one-hundred percent. There’ve been times when we as logging contractors entered into the planting, too. Part of my logging crew would plant, on down time or this type of thing, but that was a minor part of it. It was just to get a certain job done as quickly as possible. Anyway, in 1970, we cut down on the size of our crew and basically pulled back. And, although we still did some outside jobs, we were back to where McDonald Forest was about 40 to 50 percent of our work. That partner we had during that period of time left and formed his own company. He’s still working and doing the job he was doing. Took part of our contract at the time he left, and just kept, continued on that with Boise Cascade. We had their contract to do all their logging, their high-lead logging, in the Valsetz area.

Royal Jackson: So how long did your company stay together then, after the partner left?

Marvin Rowley: Well, we stayed together then until 1973, July 1st, when I quit and went to work for the university as the full-time manager.

Royal Jackson: Why did you do that?

Marvin Rowley: Well, like I said, Bill Davies was retiring, and the school was looking at what we’d been

Marvin Rowley: doing—where we were going from here, and seeing the need for some change, because they needed somebody on the ground more than they had before. And, of course, I was looking from the standpoint that my children were basically gone, and I figured it was time for a change in my lifestyle. And my wife said I still had the same hours I’d always had, because I always left home at five and got home at eight before, and I just turned them around, leaving at eight and getting home at five now.

Royal Jackson: They didn’t want to have a manager of the forest and a department head in charge? They didn’t want to do that anymore?

Marvin Rowley: No. Actually under the set-up we’d had with our logging contract during these years, I fulfilled the part of—as land manager, as a contractor. I mean, Bill set the policy, and we discussed alternatives and how to do it, but, on the job, on the ground, land-use decisions were made by me, as they developed. Of course, during these years, like I say, I’d had 19 years of land-management decision-making experience by this time. I think my experience was unique, in that I had the whole School of Forestry and all the researchers behind me, and when I made a decision, I’d talk it over with Bill, and we could talk to the forest geneticists, we could talk to the silviculturists, the engineers. We had the pick of the brains of the university, and that was probably the elite in the United States, and it was a good working relationship.

Royal Jackson: Okay, why don’t we pick up the story of the transition between Bill Davies and you as the Manager of the forest?

Marvin Rowley: Yes. I think I was talking about the transition, about why the school was looking for a change, and that when Bill retired they didn’t know what type of person would take over. In fact, if he was overloaded….

Royal Jackson: Who is “they”?

Marvin Rowley: The administration, the dean and the....

Royal Jackson: Stoltenberg was the Dean at that time?

Marvin Rowley: Yes, Dean Stoltenberg was dean by the end. The operation had covered actually three deans. It started under Paul Dunn. We ended under Stoltenberg, and Dean McCulloch was in the intervening years there. But, looking at the needed..., we all felt that it needed more on-the-ground control, especially with Bill gone and the possibility of me not being there, or a different type of contractor. And so we…, the university looked at this situation, and Dean Stoltenberg and his administrators made the decision to go to a full-time manager and a part-time on the staff, who would be the go-between the dean’s office and the manager. Carl said he didn’t want the land manager coming to him and asking him about every little decision he made, so he wanted that person on the staff who could work with him closer than the manager would. When they were doing that, I was in kind of a position of proving myself. They didn’t know just how I would operate, and I thought that was probably a good move to have this other person.

Royal Jackson: So the chain of command would be the forest manger, the forest supervisor, to the dean of the school?

Marvin Rowley: Right, yes.

Royal Jackson: Who is the forest supervisor?

Marvin Rowley: Dr. Beuter was chosen as the forest supervisor, and has been for five-and-a-half years.

Royal Jackson: That was before he was department head of Forest Management?

Marvin Rowley: Yes, that was before he was department head. He was in Forest Economics then. Then, Dr. Beuter and myself have gotten along pretty well. We iron out differences and work together.

Royal Jackson: He was selected in 1973?

Marvin Rowley: Yes, he was appointed to that position at the same time I was to mine.

Royal Jackson: Well, will that continue? Is that a long-term thing, or just an interim arrangement?

Marvin Rowley: Well, that’s continuing until the administration changes. It’s part of our school set-up. If you look at the draft of the school, it has the dean at the top, and the assistant deans that have various categories of occupations and duties, and the department heads down with their staff underneath them and off to the side. You see a line runs out there, and it says “forest supervisor” and “forest manager”—that’s all fit in together.

Royal Jackson: How has the management of the forest changed in the years you’ve been associated with it?

Marvin Rowley: Well, as we look at the overall management, I have just a feel for the late 1940s. Basically, the management in the 1940s.... When I first came into contact with the school, they were still acquiring land. The basic philosophy was research and protection. They used it for field labs. As Harry Nettleton was appointed manager, they started these sales. The sales were laid out similar to the Forest Service, BLM, Indian Affairs sales, advertised. They followed the traditional method of sales. As we got further into this management plan and the operations of the forest, which were actually specified by Mrs. McDonald, Mary McDonald in her will that was leaving funds for a school forest.... It was to be used for research and education and operation, with the money from any sales of material to go back into instruction and research, and, so, anything that was left over for the development of the forest. This has been kind of a continual process, as it needs to change. I see one of the things that’s happening is…, back in the beginning, a big timber sale with a high price on it was $35 a thousand, you know. And much of the work we did, we paid $10 a thousand stumpage for it. We sold the logs. Now we’re selling it for ten times that amount. And, as the sale price of material climbed, it climbed a lot faster than the economy, and it gave us a better operating margin. As we came to a better operating margin—we see more detailed work that’s needed, work that I can accomplish rather than bypassing because it’s going to cost us too much.

Royal Jackson: The forest is in pretty good financial condition, would you say?

Marvin Rowley: Oh, yes. It pays its way.

Royal Jackson: Does it generate an excess of funds?

Marvin Rowley: Yes. It generates a margin that actually allows.... That’s one of the key elements in our research and instruction in the school as far as, you clear this with the dean, what you put in your report.

Royal Jackson: Marvin, how do you feel about changes from before 1973 and after 1973 in your life?

Marvin Rowley: Well, like I say, my lifestyle changed drastically from long hours to shorter hours, in that respect. It also changed from.... I suppose I spent a lot more time sitting on the seat of a pick-up, and I don’t now. But, as far as my basic lifestyle, it hasn’t changed too much. One of the reasons I’m land manager is that I.... Some people are, can read a book and remember it verbatim. Well, my expertise is reading landscapes. And I’ve always liked to explore this type of

Marvin Rowley: thing. And, as a logging operator on the forest, and knowing I was going to work in an area beyond some time, I was never satisfied with just working with this area and then finding out about the next one. I was always making little side trips, an hour or two at a time, looking for problems or potential, so that over a 20-year period I acquainted myself with the forest, and, like I say, some people can read a book, and can close their eyes and visualize what that book said. Well, I’ve walked over that ground so much that if somebody asked me about Section 6, I can say, “Oh, yes, Section 6,” and I start thinking about it and where I’ve been and what I’ve seen on it, and recall it. I think it’s probably just special interest.

Royal Jackson: Well, the forests have had a special part of your life. When you begin to look back as a student and again as an adult, you’ve come back and worked here over a long period. It’s had an effect on your life, hasn’t it?

Marvin Rowley: Yes. McDonald Forest, this particular piece of property, has been…. I’ve been associated with it for 33 years, more or less. Of course, I’ve had widening interests at the same time, and, while I started out as basically a forest engineer with a forestry background, as I worked in this area, the silviculture of the area, of the trees, the watershed management, the recreation, all the other things associated with this forest have been a key part of our operation for years…, to begin to integrate them. One of the things that’s interesting is, when I first came on the staff here, we had a meeting with the landscape architecture/ planner of the Siuslaw National Forest in a seminar where he was explaining how they planned visual management of timberland and what roles it took in laying out timber sales. I got to talking to him after the seminar, and I invited him to go on a trip of the forest with me. As we looked at the forest and what’s happened in it, over the years of development, he viewed our operation as being a model example of what he’d like to accomplish. We’ve done this without a big splash or anything. We just fit it in as a matter of course. Some of it accidentally, but some of it, as it happened back then, well, it looked good to us, and we followed through with it.

Royal Jackson: Let’s talk about some of the multiple-use ideas in the forests. We haven’t mentioned hunting at all, and I know that hunting is allowed. When did that start?

Marvin Rowley: Well, hunting started in the early, when they started acquiring the forest. I don’t know at what stage they decided that they couldn’t tolerate hunting because of the student use, which is critical. So, they negotiated contracts with the State Game Department, at that time, and now it’s the Fisheries and Wildlife Department, to set aside the McDonald-Dunn Forest as a refuge. Up to 1953, it was a game refuge with no hunting allowed. But, about that time, as it became a refuge, the deer population built up because of no harvest. Population built so they couldn’t plant a tree without it getting eaten. And this was almost 100 percent of their plantations that were being devastated. So, they worked out a program with the State Game Commission at that time to have controlled hunts. They coordinated this with the Fisheries and Wildlife Department on campus, so the students there would have a learning experience out of this besides having data, collecting data that they didn’t have from anywhere else. In 1953, they started this controlled hunt, and from 1953 to 1973 it was set up to where we had a well-regulated hunt, and an average of 300 deer were harvested per year. Some of these statistics they gathered from these hunts are invaluable in black-tailed deer management. They tell you, for one thing, that black-tailed deer are similar to other wildlife, that they respond rather quickly to habitat, food population—I mean the food supply and population. And, when you hunt a heavy hunt, you get a big response, the new fawn crop jumps almost immediately, and the deer are bigger and healthier. It was an

Marvin Rowley: either-sex hunt for the 20-year period. Real good statistics. It showed that, in order to grow timber, if we hunted heavy, we could grow timber and have a good hunt, too. Now, during those years, I don’t have any real close observation on the browse that took place in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s. But, from 1965 to 1973, I was pretty close to it. And the deer browse dropped down to almost nothing, five–ten percent, which is tolerable. Some of our young forests, that we have established now, came in that period, until way up out of the deer’s reach.

Royal Jackson: Did you ever protect the seedlings with anything?

Marvin Rowley: Well, we’re trying that now, because in 1973 there was a drastic change in management. If you remember back to 1973, the mule deer population in eastern Oregon had been decimated for a variety of reasons. And the political response to this low hunt in eastern Oregon was against all hunting. Shut the hunt down, you’re killing all the deer. Well, since then we have never been able to get enough hunting days to get back to 300 deer a year on the forest. We’ve averaged 100 deer a year for the last five years, and with an average of 100, we’re now having 52 percent of the seedlings browsed last year. On the forest area up on the Spaulding Tract, I had almost 100 percent browsed.

Royal Jackson: Does this recent accident death....

Marvin Rowley: Well, it’s sure to affect it, probably several ways. The Game Commission, Fisheries and Wildlife Commission, is going to be motivated politically to look at that, because it happened on the forest, where they have a controlled hunt. That’s going to be used by the opponents to hunting to try to limit hunting further.

Royal Jackson: Is that the only case you know of, of a hunting accident in the forest in those years?

Marvin Rowley: Yes, that’s the only fatality. There were a couple of accidental woundings that were the self-inflicted type.

Royal Jackson: When were those, do you recall?

Marvin Rowley: No. One of them.... When they first started hunting, they had bow hunts for a couple of years, and the bow hunter had shot himself in the hip with an arrow. I think what he did was, he had his bow strung up, and he stumbled and fell. And, as he fell, he in some way or manner got the bow stuck in his thigh—the rod and head. Then he had to be hauled to the hospital and sewn up. And they had some guy who’d shot himself in the thigh or the leg or something, the same way, with a pistol. These things happen. The statistics show that about two percent of the fatalities from hunting come from somebody shooting another person as a mistake. But the rest, the 98 percent of fatalities, come from either self-inflicted or partner-inflicted, usually at close quarters because it’s carelessness of handling a weapon— either putting it in a car, or loading it, or crossing a fence when it is loaded, slipping and falling, this type of thing.

Royal Jackson: I was going to ask.... That reminds me of vandalism in the forest. I understand there are a lot of problems?

Marvin Rowley: Yes, there is. Of course, vandalism and hunting go together somewhat. Partly because they leave the gates open at the time they’re hunting. We’ve had different vandalism problems, as the society values have changed, that we’ve seen coming about in the ‘50s, ‘60s, ‘70s—a change in family structures and values. We see an increase in vandalism up through the present time, but I think we’re seeing a slight decrease now. I don’t know whether that decrease is because we keep a closer tab on it, or whether the vandal’s changing his patterns of lifestyle or his values, too.

Royal Jackson: What have been the principal types of vandalistic acts?

Marvin Rowley: Damage to the equipment used on the forest is probably the number one vandalistic act. Number two would be breaking and entering into the Forestry Club Cabin, and the old Dean’s Cabin, when it was around, any buildings on the forest. Third would be damage to the structures, fences, roads, this type of thing. And I suppose the fourth would be little malicious acts like damage to signs or shooting something up, signs and this type of thing. But I’d say the first and foremost is the damage to equipment. Shot up, bullets through radiators, attempts to break the engine with bullets. We’ve had them misuse and overturn, intentionally get on them to start them up, and try to destruct them.

Royal Jackson: Has this decreased in recent times?

Marvin Rowley: No, I don’t think so. I think that this is rather constant. I think that the decrease comes only with an increase in vigilance by the owner or the operator. We don’t leave fuel out in the woods anymore. We take it home.

Royal Jackson: Do you have any regular surveillance system of a person that drives the roads to check for things?

Marvin Rowley: Yes, Ivan Cutsforth. He’s a technician that has worked for me ever since I took over as forest manager. He’s the resident technician out at Peavy Arboretum. Part of his job description is to be there on evenings and around weekends, and just to be a person that could stop vandalism if he could catch a person in the act. In 1974, I believe it was, we had a rash of vandalism, and illegal uses that prompted the sheriff to deputize me. So, I’m a deputized member of the sheriff ’s department and I can issue citations and make arrests on the spot.

Royal Jackson: Have you ever done that?

Marvin Rowley: No, I never did. Come awful close to it, and sometimes I should have. I let them get by with things. Some of these, I guess a minor type of vandalism, things like drinking parties and things. And the main part of those is littering the area, and misuse of the area sometimes to the point of minor destruction of the site.

Royal Jackson: Well, the entrances to each of the roads are now gated, are they not? And locked?

Marvin Rowley: They’re all types. There are people that walk in, that ride in, that ride in illegally. They break in through a fence, or they find an alternate route in. This is one of the games that we play. They find a way in, and I find a way to keep them out. I block it, I find a way I can keep them out continually, and they look for another way in. When they find it, my job—I find it, I block it.

Royal Jackson: Is this any particular group you can identify? Is it teenagers? Are they students?

Marvin Rowley: Some of them. They’re students. I have an idea that probably the vast majority of them are students. The other category is just criminals. For instance, we have a criminal element of the society that vandalizes loggers continually. They steal their equipment. What they do with it, they probably sell it down the road to some other logger. This is one of the elements. The student element is high on the list. Adjacent landowners that are dissatisfied with what’s going on in the forest are, enter into it to a certain amount, especially in cutting fences and deciding that they can have their own way, and that we’ve got no right to fence them out or tell them how to get in. Vineyard Mountain Estates, for instance, before it was a part of the development it is, had a road that came up to the boundary and had a metal lifetime gate with a lock on it with access for the Consumer’s Power Coop. These illegal-entry people found that gate. They could tear it down easily, lift it off its hinges. They did that a few times. Each time they did it, Consumer’s Power put it back a little stronger, until it got to the point that they’d just hook

Marvin Rowley: onto that gate with a four-wheel winch of some kind, I don’t know what it was, and rip it completely apart, pull it out, throw it aside, and come through. At that point, I dug a trench across that road and told Consumer’s Power they could look for another entry. The trench gradually got filled. By the grapevine, I found that one motorcyclist tried to jump the ditch and broke an arm. But they eventually, in about three years, they had enough of it filled so they could cross it with a four-wheel drive. The next time we went in there, we put a log barricade that was two logs high with a dirt embankment four-foot wide by four-foot deep against it, a trench behind it. And no one ever broke that barricade.

Royal Jackson: That’s still there?

Marvin Rowley: Yes. Then Vineyard Mountain Estates rebuilt the road, so that now there’s a vertical bank below that, but no entry. But, just up the road from that, they cut the fence and came in on one of our access roads. We rebuilt the fence along there, put fenceposts in this place so they’re four feet apart, strung the wire on it. They pulled that down. My next step was that little narrow road, with rather narrow access. We were cleaning out the Arboretum—cutting dead limbs and branches, and taking out undesirable plants. Well, we started hauling them in a pick-up and dumping them in that road until we had limbs and debris dumped on that road now for 50 feet.

Royal Jackson: Just a big slash pile, huh?

Marvin Rowley: Just a big slash pile, cut down through and filled it, so no more access there. And I think last year I didn’t have a break in there.

Royal Jackson: Why do people want in the forest so badly? Just for recreation, or what?

Marvin Rowley: Well, one of the reasons they want it is because it’s locked.

Royal Jackson: Is that highly fenced?

Marvin Rowley: Yes. All the roads are gated, and a locked gate is a challenge to some people. “By golly, I’m going to get in there and find out what’s in there.” And when they get in there, they find out that really, the challenge is getting through the gate. And I think another part then is that for drinking parties. And they get in there and know that the sheriff or nobody else is going to catch them. They can throw a wild party, they can go park on a lover’s-lane type thing and don’t have to worry about anybody catching them. So there are the shady type of recreation that you’d say is the reason for breaking in. Illegal hunting. They know this is a refuge, and there’s likely to be more deer there, and easier to spotlight, once they get behind the gate. The chances of having somebody come through and squeal on them are less.

Royal Jackson: Let me pursue that a second. I wanted to ask you a while ago, you mentioned deer hunting. Are there other kinds of hunting that occur legally in the forest?

Marvin Rowley: Not now. I suppose when it was called a wildlife, or game refuge, which it was until 1975, this protected only game animals. And, legally, I couldn’t stop anybody from hunting small game birds, or anything that wasn’t designated game animals. The new designation.... We’ve designated it a wildlife refuge, and the description of wildlife refuge protects all wildlife. So, under this designation, we could restrict hunting to nothing. I mean, they just can’t hunt out there, only with a permit.

Royal Jackson: What other wildlife have you personally seen in the forest?

Marvin Rowley: We’ve got all the wildlife of Oregon except the wolverine, I guess. And the wolf, maybe.

Royal Jackson: Do you have any endangered species there?

Marvin Rowley: Well, we’ve got some that are so-called endangered, like the spotted owl and the pileated woodpecker. We’ve had a good supply of pileated woodpeckers, and the spotted owl is not on the endangered list. I don’t think it’s endangered; it’s just endangered in the minds of a few people. But we have cougars. I saw cougar tracks Monday, last Monday, in the snow. We have bobcat, quite a supply. I think our cougar population is growing. Bear are occasional users of the forest. I’ve only found one den that I’ve got an idea was a bear den. Beaver, we’ve got hundreds of beaver, and, of course, the opossum, the raccoon, and all the small animals—the rabbits, the squirrels, flying squirrels, mice….

Royal Jackson: Why don’t we end this morning by having you tell us what you see for the future as far as the Paul Dunn-McDonald Forests go?

Marvin Rowley: Okay. Of course, my view of the future use of the forest is basically a continuation of the policy we have now. The forest is primarily research and education, probably in reverse order, but they go together so you can’t separate them. It’s an operation, and operation is a key part of the research and education of the forest. The forest is basically a dynamic community. I mean, it’s not static in any way, and, of course, that’s one of the basic mistakes we make in thinking of the forest—is how it was last time we viewed it. And it’s not that way, because it’s changing constantly. The changes are like laying line upon line and precept upon precept, like growing a whorl each year on a tree. But they happen and they continue to happen, and the storms and the influence of man, I think, change it. I view our future management of the forest; we’re gradually around to a better management plan.