United States

Department of

Agriculture

Forest Service

Pacific Northwest

Research Station

General Technical

Report

PNW-GTR-687

March 2007

Necessary Work: Discovering

Old Forests, New Outlooks,

and Community on the H.J.

Andrews Experimental Forest,

1948–2000

Max G. Geier
The Forest Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture is dedicated to the

principle of multiple use management of the Nation’s forest resources for

sustained yields of wood, water, forage, wildlife, and recreation. Through forestry

research, cooperation with the States and private forest owners, and management

of the national forests and national grasslands, it strives—as directed by

Congress—to provide increasingly greater service to a growing Nation.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) prohibits discrimination in all its

programs and activities on the basis of race, color, national origin, age, disability,

and where applicable, sex, marital status, familial status, parental status, religion,

sexual orientation, genetic information, political beliefs, reprisal, or because all or

part of an individual’s income is derived from any public assistance program. (Not

all prohibited bases apply to all programs.) Persons with disabilities who require

alternative means for communication of program information (Braille, large print,

audiotape, etc.) should contact USDA’s TARGET Center at (202) 720-2600 (voice

and TDD).

To file a complaint of discrimination write USDA, Director, Office of Civil Rights,

1400 Independence Avenue, S.W. Washington, DC 20250-9410, or call (800)

795-3272 (voice) or (202) 720-6382 (TDD). USDA is an equal opportunity provider

and employer.

Author

Max G. Geier is Professor of History and Chair of the Social Science Division,

Western Oregon University, 345 N Monmouth Ave., Monmouth, OR 97361.

Photo Caption

On cover (front and back)—two panarama views of Lookout Creek drainage and

surroundings on the Willamette National Forest, as seen from Carpenter Lookout

in 1963 (top b&w) and the same view, six decades later (bottom color). Originals

in Forest Science Database.
i

Abstract

Geier, Max G. 2007. Necessary work: discovering old forests, new outlooks, and

community on the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest, 1948-2000. Gen. Tech.

Rep. PNW-GTR-687. Portland, OR: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest

Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station. 357 p.

The H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest (Andrews Forest) is both an idea and a

particular place. It is an experimental landscape, a natural resource, and an ecosystem that has long inspired many people. On the landscape of the Andrews Forest,

some of those people built the foundation for a collaborative community that fosters

closer communication among the scientists and managers who struggle to understand how that ecosystem functions and to identify optimal management strategies

for this and other national forest lands in the Pacific Northwest. People who

worked there generated new ideas about forest ecology and related ecosystems.

Working together in this place, they generated ideas, developed research proposals,

and considered the implications of their work. They functioned as individuals in a

science-based community that emerged and evolved over time. Individuals acted in

a confluence of personalities, personal choices, and power relations. In the context

of this unique landscape and serendipitous opportunities, those people created an

exceptionally potent learning environment for science and management. Science, in

this context, was largely a story of personalities, not simply a matter of test tubes,

experimental watersheds, or top-down management sponsored by a large federal

agency or university. Ideas flowed in a constructed environment that eventually

linked people, place, and community with an emerging vision of ecosystem management. Drawing largely on oral history, this book explores the inner workings

and structure of that science-based community. Science themes, management

issues, specific research programs, the landscape itself, and the people who work

there are all indispensable components of a complex web of community, the

Andrews group. The first four chapters explore the origins of the Forest Service

decision to establish an experimental forest in the west-central Oregon Cascades in

1948 and the people and priorities that transformed that field site into a prominent

facility for interdisciplinary research in the coniferous biome of the International
ii

Biological Programme in the 1970s. Later chapters explore emerging links between

long-term research and interdisciplinary science at the Andrews Forest. Those links

shaped the group’s response to concerns about logging in old-growth forests during

the 1980s and 1990s. Concluding chapters explore how scientists in the group tried

to adapt to new roles as public policy consultants in the 1990s without losing sight

of the community values that they considered crucial to their earlier accomplishments.

Keywords: Andrews Forest, LTER, IBP, watersheds, adaptive management.
iii

1 Chapter One: Building an Experimental Place for Science and

Community, 1948–1955

2 Discovering Life in a Place of Work

7 Early Perceptions of Place and Opportunity at Lookout Creek

13 Origins of the Experimental Forest Designation

22 Personal and Institutional Traditions Intersect at the Blue River Experimental Forest

31 Work and Community at the Blue River Experimental Forest, 1948–1953

33 Science and Community at the Blue River Experimental Forest, 1951–1955

36 Experimental Priorities for Roads, Watersheds, and Regeneration

43 Landscape Legacies of Early Research and Perceptions of New Opportunities

46 Community Legacies and Administrative Restructuring

50 Conclusion: The Andrews Forest as a Humanized Landscape

53 Chapter Two: Envisioning Long-Term Research and Innovative Science,

1955–1964

56 Leadership Traditions of Vision and Detail

59 Management Priorities and Distant Relations With Research

65 Pacific Northwest Research Station and Management Priorities on the Andrews

Forest

67 Watersheds Research and Urban Priorities for the Andrews Forest

70 Urban Growth as a Stimulus for Research and Cooperative Effort at the Andrews

Forest

78 The Transition From Research Centers to Research Laboratories

83 Opening the Floodgates and Facilitating Research at the Andrews Forest

91 Chapter Three: Basic Science Priorities and the International Biological

Programme, 1964–1975

95 National Policy and Growing Public Concern About Environmental Issues

103 The Flood of 1964 and Perceptions of Research Potential at the Andrews

109 The PNW Station and Adjustments at the Andrews Forest After the Flood

112 The International Biological Programme and Interdisciplinary Initiatives

118 Scientific Community and Coordination of IBP Science

126 A Crowded Landscape of Science and Community

130 Interdisciplinary Traditions and New Generations of Leadership and Community

134 The Reconstructed and Humanized Landscape of the Andrews Forest

135 Chapter Four: Fostering Cooperation Between Research and Management,

1970–1980

135 New Priorities for the Andrews Research Community
iv

136 International Biological Programme Shortfalls and the Problem of Long-Term

Ecosystem Studies

141 Modeling Research and Community During the IBP

146 Reference Stands and the Community Ideal of Long-Term Research

152 Transitioning From IBP to the UNESCO Model of Collaborative, Intersite

Monitoring

158 The Stream Team and the Transition to Long-Term and Applied Research

163 Social Cohesion and Awareness of Community

165 Community Ideals and Forest Policy in the Late 1970s

167 Building an Autonomous Subculture With Interagency Support

175 Conclusion

177 Chapter Five: Integrated Science and Long-Term Programs of Research

179 Long-Term Research and Clearcut Legacies

184 Woody Debris in Streams and the River Continuum

190 Legacies of the Andrews Forest and the Mount St. Helens Catharsis

193 Long-Term Modeling Concerns and Terrestrial and Aquatic Legacies of Mount

St. Helens

199 Log Decomposition and the Convergence of Individual and Community Experience

203 Watching Puddles Dry Up and Logs Fall Apart

211 Wildlife Studies and the Reconstructed Landscape

215 Conclusion

217 Chapter Six: The Old-Growth Debate and the Andrews

221 Modeling Sustainable Networks of Science and Community on a Managed

Landscape

225 Management Transitions and Implications for Studies of Forest Ecosystems

229 Linking Personal and Professional Priorities With Experimental Forestry on

the Andrews

233 Implementing Old-Growth Theory on the Blue River District, 1983–1989

240 Long-Term Site Productivity, Problems of Scale, and Coordination of Effort

247 Stepping out of the Fire and Into the Frying Pan of the 1990s

252 Conclusion

253 Chapter Seven: Mainstreaming the Andrews and Transforming the

Mainstream

255 Personal and Community Pathways to the Cooperative Ethic of Adaptive

Management

261 Management Transitions and Institutionalized Innovations at Blue River

Ranger District
v

267 Facilitating Collaboration With a Foot in Both Worlds and a Home in Neither

271 Adaptive Planning and Collaborative Initiatives on the Willamette National Forest

277 The Andrews Group, “Necessary Work,” and the Northwest Forest Plan

287 Ecosystem Management and the Andrews Group

289 Conclusion

291 Chapter Eight: Managing Data and Building a Collective Memory of

Science Through Time

292 Data Management: Institutionalizing a Collective Memory of Research

and Community

299 The Human Variable: Fitting In and Winnowing Out at the Andrews

303 Personality and the Limits of Organic Community

315 Community Concerns About Significance, Scale, and Focus, in Retrospect

318 Privilege, Access, and Authority in a Science-B ased Community

321 The Paradox of Structured Informality and the Myth of Accidental Community

322 Conclusion

324 Conclusion: An Ecosystem of Ideas Grounded in a Place of Inspiration

325 The Andrews Forest and Community, in Retrospect, 1948 to 1998

329 Scientific Method and the Spirit of Inquiry

331 The Real World of the Andrews Forest

332 Acknowledgments

333 Metric Equivalents

333 Notes on Sources

341 Afterward (by Fred Swanson)

341 The Place

341 The People

342 Leadership and Organization

343 Shifting Context

344 Study Themes: Persistence–Flexibility

345 Financial Picture

346 Accomplishments

346 The Future

347 Literature Cited

348 Index
vi
vii
1

Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

Chapter One: Building an Experimental Place for

Science and Community, 1948-1955

On a late September day in 1997, nine people climbed out of stuffy vans into the

clear summer air high in the Cascades. Their path wound through high-elevation

stands of noble fir (Abies procera Rehd.), across mountain meadows, and over

rocky outcroppings. They continued upward, past the treeline, to a windswept,

summit building known as Carpenter Lookout, the highest point of the H.J.

Andrews Experimental Forest (Andrews Forest). Most people in the group had

known each other for more than three decades and spent much of their professional lives within sight of that mountaintop. One of them, Roy Silen, was returning to the peak for the first time in more than 40 years. The Lookout itself was a

rickety old structure with splintered railings dating back to the 1930s, but it commanded a panoramic view of forested and logged slopes in the Willamette National

Forest, including the 16,000 acres of the experimental forest to the south and west.

The group included people who had variously managed, studied, and criticized logging and reforestation practices on that landscape. They were there to remember

Figure 1—The people who gathered at Carpenter Lookout for this oral history

group interview in 1997 represented a cumulative time of engagement (in person

years) of more than 150 years of scientific, administrative, and technical leadership

at the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest. From left to right (standing), they include

Art McKee, Roy Silen, Martha Brookes, Robert Tarrant, Fred Swanson, Ted

Dyrness, Max Geier (the interviewing historian), and (seated) Al Levno and Jerry

Franklin.

Art McKee, 1997
2

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

the past and to go on record with their memories. Their combined experience at the

Andrews Forest spanned from before that research facility was first established

through that day in 1997.

The oral history exercise that began that day at Carpenter Lookout was an

ongoing, casual conversation that demonstrated how a science-based community

functioned at the Andrews Forest. The exercise continued in the afternoon on a

gravel bar along Lookout Creek, followed by a dinner at the headquarters site and

a concluding, evening session in the Andrews conference room. The way these

scientists and forest managers connected as human beings, on this and other occasions, was at least as important as the ideas they expressed about their work at the

Andrews Forest. As a group of leaders and thinkers, they listened to each other,

volunteered ideas, asked questions, and challenged ideas that didn’t seem to fit

known facts. The view from Carpenter Lookout inspired but did not limit the range

of their conversation. They disagreed on many points, but those disagreements led

to more discussion, reconsideration, and revised ideas, rather than recrimination.

The day ended in a tragedy that underscored their humanity and their spirit of

community. When the group reassembled in the Andrews conference room after

dinner to begin their third oral history session of the day, they learned—with Roy

Silen—that his wife of 43 years had died in an automobile accident. For the rest

of the night, everyone in the group struggled to provide comfort, sympathy, and

respectful support to a friend suffering an inconsolable loss. It was an unforgettable day that stripped away the façade of scientific detachment and forced people

to think about how their lives intersected with their work and with each other in

this remarkable place.

Discovering Life in a Place of Work

People connect with human beings for varied and often mysterious reasons, and

in that sense, this book is the product of a collaborative effort to explain how a

particular place inspired a community of people who built a common ground

for communication between scientists and managers struggling with public lands

issues in the late 20th century. The 50-year history of the Andrews Forest shows

the importance of individuals acting in a confluence of personalities, personal

choices, and power relations. The unique mix of people and serendipitous opportunities at the Andrews Forest created an exceptionally potent learning environment

for science and management. Science, in this context, was largely a story of personalities. It was not simply a matter of test tubes, experimental watersheds, or

The oral history

exercise demonstrated how a

science-based

community functioned at the

Andrews Forest.
3

Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

top-down management sponsored by a large federal agency or university. Ideas

flowed in a nurturing environment that eventually linked people, place, and community with an emerging vision of ecosystem management.

This book is primarily but not exclusively an oral history of the Andrews Forest and the community associated with it. The group meeting on Carpenter Lookout

in September 1997 was one of several oral history interviews during 1997 and

1998 in which people met to discuss their memories of a past they helped create.

These and other people also discussed their memories of the past in individual

interviews, and before the end of 1998, more than 40 people contributed their

memories in an oral history project to commemorate the 50-year anniversary of the

H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest. The book also extends beyond that date to

consider more recent developments. Hundreds more people have contributed to the

collective knowledge from their experience as managers and scientists on this

landscape. This book also relies heavily on their written accounts, as preserved in

an assortment of archival records and other primary and secondary published

works that provide interpretive context for oral accounts of the Andrews Forest.

This documentation is especially important for the chapters dealing with the early

years (1930s-1970s) because relatively few people survive to substantiate, refute,

or illuminate other oral accounts from that period. In later years, the surviving

voices of people associated with this place are more numerous, and they provide a

Figure 2—Mike Kerrick, pictured here with the interview group along the

lower reaches of Lookout Creek, was a forest manager whose involvement at

the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest spanned five decades. Discussing the

management-science interface and how that had evolved over the previous

half-century are (clockwise from left), Jerry Franklin (reclining), Max Geier,

Martha Brookes, Robert Tarrant, Roy Silen, Mike Kerrick, Ted Dyrness, and

Al Levno (back to camera).

Art McKee

A nurturing environment that linked

people, place, and

community with an

emerging vision

of ecosystem management.
4

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

wider variety of perspectives and perceptions of causality, consequence, and

significance. People who participated in both group and individual interviews often

emphasized different issues, events, or people, depending on whether they were

speaking alone or in a group. The chapters of the book dealing with later years

(1970s-1990s) draw on a wider array of oral history interviews and, therefore, are

less dependent on archival records.

This book explores the inner workings and structure of a science-based community widely recognized—and sometimes criticized—for its visible role in many

controversial issues about management policies for public lands in the Northwestern United States. The oral history project was prompted by the 50th anniversary

of the Andrews Forest, the rapid pace of change at that facility in the late 1990s,

and the realization that many of the original players in the Andrews story were

still available for interviews. This project was an opportunity for people in the

Andrews group to consider their accomplishments and evaluate their methods in

critical hindsight. It was also an opportunity to regroup and think about the future.

Sidebars in each chapter outline the group’s perspectives on major science

themes that weave together many different strands of work at the Andrews Forest.

Each sidebar begins with a brief outline of a perceived management or science

theme, various science-based insights into that theme, and the evolutionary stages

of an emerging synthesis of scientific theories related to that theme. Science

themes, management issues, specific research programs, the landscape itself, and

the people who work there are all indispensable components of a complex web of

community, described in this book as the Andrews group. The book, however, is

not designed to demonstrate the broader significance of the science or management

initiatives linked with the Andrews group. It primarily follows the threads of people

and place through the web of activities at the forest. It is intended to convey the

perceptions, priorities, and accomplishments of people in the Andrews group,

rather than perceptions of the group by people who were not part of that community. Meeting minutes, internal correspondence, oral history interviews, newsletters, and published writings generated by people in this group provide context and

insight into the assumptions and priorities of scientists and managers associated

with the Andrews Forest. These sources also convey, to various degrees, the

personalities of the people who made this community work.

The linkage of the Andrews Forest with the USDA Forest Service complicates

the history of this research facility and community because, in recent years, many

Sidebars in each

chapter outline the

group’s perspectives on major science themes.
5

Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

historians have pointed to that agency as an example of misguided bureaucracy,

challenging other, more positivist studies. Since the days of Gifford Pinchot, the

Forest Service emphasized its commitment to “scientific” forestry, and it offered

secure employment to scientists from many different disciplines. Paul Hirt has

argued that the Forest Service, wittingly or unwittingly, embraced a Conspiracy of

Optimism (1994) in which even well-meaning management practices wreaked

ecological catastrophe on the national forests after World War II. Forest managers

optimistically assumed “scientific management” would improve conditions on the

national forests and produce more timber for a longer period. However, too often,

Hirt argued, the optimistic dream of sustained-yield, scientific forestry turned into a

nightmare reality of cut-and-run logging. Nancy Langston’s Forest Dreams, Forest

Nightmares (1995) argued along similar lines with a narrower perspective on the

Blue Mountains of eastern Oregon. These and other authors, in noting the long

record of management practices that Forest Service managers devised over the

years with advice and support from prominent scientists, emphasize the unintended

but no less disastrous ecological consequences of those practices. Numerous

authors have detailed the historical geography of American forests (e.g., Michael

Williams, 1989), the evolution of forestry priorities in the United States (e.g.,

William G. Robbins, 1985) and the implications of American policy and culture for

forest ecology in the United States (e.g., Char Miller, 1997). Many others have

examined the ecological implications of federal and corporate policy in forests of

the Pacific Northwest (e.g., William Dietrich, 1992), and even for specific forest

stands in that region (e.g., Jane Claire Dirks-Edmunds, 1999).

This book focuses on one experimental forest and the people who worked

there as a way of understanding how and why people generate new ideas about

forest ecology and related ecosystems. It examines how people who worked

together on a particular experimental forest generated ideas, developed research

proposals, and considered the implications of their work. It explores how individuals functioned in this particular science-based community and how that community

developed and evolved over time. It examines how and why people followed unique

paths of research and to what end. Some, but not all, of their work challenged

common assumptions about forest ecology and standard practices of scientific

forestry. A related book provides a journalistic account of science discoveries at the

Andrews Forest (John Luoma, 1998).

The idea of a common, if unstated, set of core values runs deep in the

Andrews group, and this book explores how that idea originated and evolved into

This book focuses

on one experimental

forest and the

people who worked

there.
6

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

its present form. As a historian who studies resource-based communities in the

North American West, I am particularly concerned with how people reconciled

their ideas about science and natural resources with the landscape and people they

encountered at the Andrews Forest and how that dialogue among people, place,

and natural science evolved over time. The book is arranged in chapters that first

explore the various building blocks of community at the Andrews Forest, and then

examine the functioning of that community. It begins with the origins and background of the Forest Service decision to establish an experimental forest in the

west-central Oregon Cascades in 1948. The first four chapters explore the people

and priorities that transformed that little-used field site into a prominent facility for

interdisciplinary research in the coniferous biome of the International Biological

Programme in the 1970s. Between 1948 and 1970, the few scientists who worked

at the Andrews Forest were preoccupied with laying out roads, planning “experimental” clearcuts and watershed studies, and otherwise making the facility more

accessible for field research. They struggled against numerous efforts to curtail

research on the site and open it to more commercial logging.

Figure 3—Roy Silen, pictured here during

the group interview at Carpenter Lookout, was

the first research forester in charge at the H.J.

Andrews Experimental Forest (Andrews Forest)

from the time it was first established in 1948

until he married Ethel Arthur in 1954 and accepted reassignment in Corvallis, Oregon. This

1997 visit was Silen’s first return to the Andrews

Forest since his marriage. Among other accomplishments during his earlier career managing the

landscape he viewed from this site, Silen laid out

the road structure that later encouraged the retention and study of old-growth forest stands at the

Andrews Forest. While meeting with the interview group in the library conference room at the

headquarters building later the same evening, Roy

Silen learned that Ethel, his wife of nearly 50

years, had died in an automobile accident in

Corvallis.

The book is arranged in chapters

that first explore

the various building

blocks of community

and then examine

the functioning of

that community.
7

Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

The original voices of the group, as preserved in the oral history recordings,

convey the contagious enthusiasm of people who learned how to share their own

ideas and to listen when other people presented alternative views. The group plans

to make their original voices accessible via the Internet. They are committed to the

principle of making their work accessible to other people as they continue their

efforts to encourage multiple dialogues and the free flow of ideas. These are

adaptable people who prize individual autonomy but have learned how to work

closely and collaboratively with other people. This book is their story. It is a

portrait of their community, and it explores links connecting individual experience

with group initiatives and collaborative insights. The book is not primarily about

science or about the ecological transformation of a particular landscape, although

those concepts do play a role in the narrative. It is mostly a story about people

connecting with a place and with each other to build a community. That community was inspired but not contained by its connection with the Andrews Forest in

the Cascade Range. The community functioned well beyond the mountain sanctuary of the Andrews, and it survived the departure of many close friends and

associates. In the end, the people, science, and place adapted to new circumstances and challenges in ways that no one in the group could fully understand.

Early Perceptions of Place and Opportunity at Lookout Creek

The landscape that visitors to the Andrews Forest saw in the late 1990s was a

managed forest that other people had painstakingly constructed over the preceding

50 years, but it was a patchwork landscape where unanticipated processes blended

human actions and intents with unrecognized realities and unpredictable events,

yielding unintended outcomes. The experimental forest was first an idea, later a

place. Before linking the idea with the Lookout Creek drainage, people passed it

back and forth, tweaking it into shape according to their personal and professional

priorities. The idea evolved as people drew connections between the places where

they lived and worked in the Pacific Northwest and the landscapes they valued.

On the timbered slopes of the Cascade Range, people who worked for the Forest

Service and the Army Corps of Engineers implemented the public policies that

governed land use priorities in that region, and that effort influenced the personal

and professional values people brought to that landscape. Public policy imposed

limits and created opportunities, but people accomplished things because they

acted in concert with other people. When his work on a Forest Service survey

The Andrews Forest was a managed

forest that people

painstakingly

constructed.
8

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

of resources in the Cascade Range took Forest Service forester Phil Briegleb to

Carpenter Saddle in the early 1930s, he got the idea that the Lookout Creek drainage was a good site for an experimental forest. Action on that idea, however,

originated with a suggestion from the Army Corps of Engineers and a negotiated

agreement within the Forest Service between the Willamette National Forest and the

Pacific Northwest Forest and Range Experiment Station (later shortened to Pacific

Northwest Research Station and, hereafter, PNW Station). That agreement defined

the territory and mission of the experimental forest, translating the idea into policy.

Converting the idea of a research forest into reality on the Lookout Creek drainage

required human effort and individual initiative.

The Andrews Forest includes all of the area drained by Lookout Creek, a

tributary of the Blue River north of its confluence with the McKenzie Fork of the

Willamette River. This Andrews Forest is a triangular drainage on the west slope of

the Cascade Range near the town of Blue River, Oregon, in the Willamette National

Forest, within a 1-hour drive from Eugene and a 2-hour drive from Corvallis. On

Figure 4—Aerial oblique of the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest, as photographed by Al Levno

in July 1991. By the time of this photo, nearly 40 years of management decisions had transformed

the Lookout Creek drainage (center) into a research landscape that, by comparison with surrounding national forest lands, included a relatively high proportion of contiguous, old-growth stands

readily accessible for scientific studies.
9

Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

the western point of that triangle, Lookout Creek flows into Blue River. On the

eastern leg of the triangle is Carpenter Saddle, located between Carpenter Mountain

on the north and Frissell Point on the south. The northern and southern legs of the

triangle rise toward Carpenter Saddle in diverging ridgelines, embracing the drainage of Lookout Creek and its tributaries. The PNW Station and the Willamette

National Forest jointly administered this federally managed land, beginning in

1948, and in cooperation with Oregon State University since the early 1970s. It

is a 16,000-acre landscape filled with small details that people can touch, smell,

see, hear, and taste.

The mountainous terrain is an essential starting point for understanding both

the Andrews Forest and the group centered on that landscape. Most of the attributes people examine at the place build on the geological features of the drainage.

Rocks of volcanic origin, some formed from eruptions as recent as 4 million years

ago, provide the foundation for the watershed that ranges from lower than 1,300

feet along the valley floor to more than 5,000 feet along the ridges rising toward the

eastern boundary of the drainage. Since the volcanic episodes that shaped the

rough outline of this drainage, glacial, alluvial, and mass-movement processes

formed the modern topography of the Andrews Forest. At one point in its glaciated

past, for example, ice dams may have blocked Blue River and flooded the lower

0.62 mile of the Lookout Creek valley, resulting in sedimentary deposits in that

portion of the experimental forest. The modern landscape includes a flood plain and

terraces with numerous, small, alluvial fans accumulated from tributary watersheds. Deep and shallow mass movements are common in the Andrews Forest,

particularly in the steep headwall or midbasin regions of the many small watersheds

that drain into Lookout Creek. In this respect, it is a landscape that resembles many

others in the western Cascades.1 Fires, floods, and the vagaries of climate shaped

the landscape in more recent years, influencing human perceptions of potential uses

for this drainage. A series of major fires of unknown origin swept through the area

1 Frederick J. Swanson and Michael E. James, “Geology and Geomorphology of the H.J.

Andrews Experimental Forest, Western Cascades, Oregon” (Portland, OR: U.S.

Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Forest and Range

Experiment Station, Res. Pap. PNW-188, 1975).
10

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

about 500 years ago, leaving behind a charred landscape on which various species gained a foothold and spread across the drainage over the last half of the

millennium.2

2 “Blue River Experimental Forest: Representing the Old-Growth Douglas-Fir Type of

the Central to Southern Cascades, Willamette National Forest, Oregon, [1948],” H.J.

Andrews Memorandum of Understanding Folder, H.J. Andrews Files, File Box F, Storage

Vault, Corvallis FSL, PNW Station, Forest Service, United States Department of

Agriculture.

Figure 5—This map of the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest shows the location of the facility in

relation to the city of Corvallis, major transportation corridors, and prominent natural features of

the Oregon landscape.
11

Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

Looking at that landscape from the early 1930s through the mid 1940s,

Briegleb, his boss Horace J. [Hoss] Andrews, and other scientists and administrators with the Forest Service perceived a place they described as best suited for

experimenting with how to most efficiently transform old-growth timber into a

managed forest, by using clearcut logging and other methods of removing aged

timber, and then studying how those changes affected water runoff and the process of growing new trees on cleared slopes. To that end, they established the

Blue River Experimental Forest (the name of which was later changed to the H.J.

Andrews Experimental Forest) on the Lookout Creek drainage in 1948, the year a

major flood struck the western Cascades.3

Published guides to the experimental forest describe a place of “relatively

steep” slopes with “frequent outcroppings” of bedrock. They report mean temperatures ranging from 35 °F in January to 65 °F in July. Precipitation is concentrated

from November through March and ranges from 89 inches per year in the lower

reaches of the drainage, mostly in the form of rain, to more than 140 inches per

year at higher elevations, including a snowpack that lasts into late spring. Streamflows usually peak from November through February, particularly when warm

rainstorms melt the snowpack. Unusually high streamflows in 1948, 1964, and

1996, for example, flooded the Lookout Creek drainage, caused landslides, washed

away big trees, and carried much debris downstream. Those floods inundated

creek channels, riparian-zone vegetation, and flood plains. The resulting landscape

is complex and diverse, but the big trees initially attracted the most attention.

Before the Forest Service opened the area to timber harvest in 1950, Douglasfir (Pseudotsuga menziesii (Mirb.) Franco) trees older than 400 years cloaked 65

percent of the drainage in old-growth conditions. Much of the remaining 35 percent included younger stands regenerating from fires since 1800. One guide to the

Andrews Forest, published by the Forest Service in 1959, identified Douglas-fir as

the “predominant forest type,” found “in a complete range of size classes—from

seedlings to large, overmature timber.” Other tree species prominently identified on

the experimental forest by that time included silver fir (Abies amabilis Dougl. ex

Forbes), noble fir, and white pine (Pinus albicaulus Engelm.). A later guide published in the 1990s identified the most common tree species at lower elevations:

in order of mention, they were Douglas-fir, western hemlock (Tsuga heterophylla

3

 Ibid.

They perceived the

place as best suited

for experimenting

with how to transform old-growth

timber into a managed forest.
12

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687
13

Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

(Raf.) Sarg), and western redcedar (Thuja plicata Donn ex D. Don), with noble fir,

Pacific silver fir, Douglas-fir, and western hemlock as the tree species prominent at

higher elevations.4

Much early work at the Andrews Forest focused on large trees, but scientists

gradually developed a composite portrait of the Andrews Forest that included other

details compiled from many different studies. By the late 1990s, scientists had

accumulated lists that identified and described about 500 vascular plant species,

more than 3,000 invertebrate species, and an extensive list of vertebrates, notably

including the northern spotted owl (Strix occidentalis caurina), pileated woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus), osprey (Pandion haliaetus), black bear (Ursus

americanus), bobcat (Lynx rufus), mountain lion (Felis concolor), coyote (Canis

latrans), black-tailed deer (Odocoileus hemionus), and Roosevelt elk (Cervus

elephus roosevelti). Studies of riparian zones listed cutthroat and rainbow trout,

Pacific giant salamanders, and other vertebrates, invertebrates, and streamside

vegetation, including many deciduous, coniferous, and herbaceous species.5 Even

this detailed cataloguing of species, however, was incomplete. It was the limited

result of research that focused mostly on species closely related to specific studies.

Even after a half century of intensive study, much about the Andrews Forest

remains a mystery. Detailed records supported research in that place, but people

who went there seeking answers to questions about forest ecosystems usually

discovered more work was necessary to unlock the forest’s secrets.

Origins of the Experimental Forest Designation

An interagency movement to expand the number of outdoor laboratories, or “experimental plantations” in the Pacific Northwest took root during the depression

years of the 1930s. The focus of forest research shifted during this period from

earlier studies of stands regenerating from wild “burns” to forests managed for a

100-year rotation of timber production. The regional influence and practical, field

orientation of the forestry school faculty at Oregon Agricultural College (OAC)

encouraged this trend, leading to the development of a school forest. Close professional ties and administrative links with the OAC School of Forestry encouraged

4

 Carl M. Berntsen and Jack Rothacher, “A Guide to the H.J. Andrews Experimental

Forest” (Portland, OR: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Forest and Range Experiment Station, 1959); Pacific Northwest Research Station,

“H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest [Brochure]” (Portland, OR: U.S. Department of

Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station, June 1998).

5

 Ibid.

The focus of forest

research shifted

to forests managed

for a 100-year

rotation of timber

production.
14

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

similar trends at the Pacific Northwest Research Station (PNW Station) in the

same period. George Wilcox Peavy, a Michigan native who worked for the Forest

Service in California, first joined the OAC faculty to head the forestry department

in 1910 and served as dean of the new school of forestry, beginning in 1913. Peavy

gained direct influence at PNW Station after 1929, when he took over as chair of

the Forest Research Council. Station Director Thornton Munger had founded the

council 3 years earlier to guide priorities at PNW Station. Weyerhauser executive

C.S. Chapman chaired the council for the first 3 years, with the support of an

executive committee consisting of Peavy and Munger. The larger committee

included leading foresters from state and federal agencies, private industry, and

regional forestry schools. On the advice of this committee, PNW Station had

established experimental plantations near Bend, Oregon, and at the school forests

of Oregon State College (OSC), Washington State College, and the University of

Washington.6

 Peavy, as chair of the committee after 1929, gained further influence

after 1932 when he accepted appointment as president of the renamed Oregon

State College.7

The PNW Station, operating under guidance from Peavy’s Forest Research

Council during the early 1930s, also established several experimental forests and a

natural area program8 during this period. These trends strongly affected how people

perceived the Lookout Creek drainage. The place clearly had aesthetic appeal for

6 June A. Wertz, “A Record Concerning the Wind River Experiment Station, July 1, 1913

to June 30, 1924 and the Pacific Northwest Forest and Range Experiment Station, July 1,

1924, to December 30, 1938, with Supplements 1939 through 1943.” Unpublished

typescript, History Files, Portland Office, PNW Station, 10 April 1940, pp. 19-20, 30.

7

 Marvin L. Rowley. “School’s Forest Lands Serve as Classrooms.” In: 75 Years of

Continuing Progress in Forestry Education, Albert Arnst, ed. (Corvallis, OR: School of

Forestry, Oregon State University, 1981), 58-59, 61-62. Oregon Journal 24 Jan 1926.

8 In October 1932, the Chief Forester approved establishment of the Wind River

Experimental Forest, about 10,000 acres in extent, with extensive stands of Douglas-fir

and western hemlock. Two years later, Cascade Head Experimental Forest was

established on 6,500 acres of spruce-hemlock stands in the Siuslaw National Forest on

the Oregon coast. The natural area program was closely related to the experimental forest

program, which had greatly expanded because of emergency-funding support. The

Metolius Natural Area was established in June 1931, followed by five additional natural

areas established by 1936 and six more under consideration that year. Selection and

official designation of experimental forests and, especially, natural areas, was subject to a

prolonged review process, including final review and approval by the Regional Forester

and the Chief Forester. Former PNW Station Director Cowlin observed virtually no

scientists made use of the natural areas designated during this period. Robert Cowlin

(n.d.) Federal Forest Research in the Pacific Northwest: the Pacific Northwest Forest and

Range Experiment Station. Unpublished typescript, in the Portland Office History Files,

101-102, 119-120, 139-140.
15

Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

campers, day hikers, and horse riders by 1930, but it inspired more pragmatic

visions for Briegleb, a PNW Station employee who first encountered the drainage

that year when Andrews, who headed the forest survey for PNW Station, sent his

subordinate, Briegleb, into the western Cascades of Oregon. From the crest of

Carpenter Saddle, Briegleb gazed down the Lookout Creek drainage, observing an

extensive expanse of old-growth Douglas-fir. Briegleb privately considered the

place ideally suited for an experimental forest in old-growth Douglas-fir, but his

official report on the drainage instead emphasized its value as a source for timber.

The survey data provided, for the first time, a quantified profile of timber resources

in the drainage: 3,005 acres of large, old-growth Douglas-fir; 4,375 acres of small,

old-growth Douglas-fir; 2,425 acres of second-growth Douglas-fir; 2,030 acres of

small second-growth Douglas-fir; 2,685 acres of large mountain hemlock; 65 acres

of small mountain hemlock; 265 acres of meadows; 80 acres of burns; and 60

acres of rocky, noncommercial forest land, with an estimated total volume of

802,150 thousand board feet of timber.9

Alternate visions of the Lookout Creek drainage vied for attention against the

survey’s depiction of the place as a cluster of economic potential. A photographic

panorama taken from Carpenter Mountain in 1933 (see cover photo, top), as part

of a national effort to document the views from every fire lookout in the United

States, for example, depicts a landscape fading away into the surrounding forested

slopes and rocky outcroppings of the Willamette National Forest. This panorama

view reveals virtually no visible evidence of human activity, boundaries, or borders.

The photograph itself, however, is evidence of the human hand on that landscape.

During the early 1930s, the Forest Service constructed two fire lookout stations on

what eventually became the Andrews Forest: one on Carpenter Mountain and one

on Lookout Mountain. Carpenter Lookout was a permanent structure, but the one

on Lookout Mountain was a temporary facility with a tent, rangefinder, and other

portable equipment.10 These structures were intended to facilitate early location and

suppression of forest fires. Firefighting priorities created the need for access roads

and trails, and depression-era programs supplied the labor force needed to build

that infrastructure.

9 Cowlin, 70-76. Interview with Roy Silen by Max Geier on 9 September 1996 as

transcribed by Jeff Fourier, 24; “Blue River Experimental Forest: Representing the Oldgrowth Douglas-Fir Type.”

10 Andrews group interview by Max G. Geier, en-route to and at the H.J. Andrews

Experimental Forest with Bob Tarrant, Roy Silen, Jerry Franklin, Ted Dyrness, Al

Levno, Art McKee, Fred Swanson, and Martha Brookes, 22 September 1997, 12, 30.
16

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

The PNW Station and other Forest Service units directly benefited from several

New Deal programs. In addition to a large number of new employees hired through

the Unemployment Relief Act of March 1933 to support research programs at the

Station, the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) delivered other workers housed in

camps on the national forests.11 The CCC projects gave thousands of people a

chance to live and work in the forests of western Oregon. The CCC located work

camps in areas where their charges could experience the virtues of hard work that

many Americans associated with rural life. In essence, however, CCC camps were

places where people lived in large groups and worked for wages, and CCC crews

supplied the labor the Forest Service needed to build trails and other facilities. In

the McKenzie Ranger District, which included Lookout Creek, CCC crews worked

to make the Willamette National Forest more accessible for other people. More than

200 crewmen worked out of Camp Belknap, currently the site of the McKenzie

River District Ranger Station. Roy Engles, District Ranger at the time, reported that

in addition to their other duties in camp, workers completed 14,108 hours of forest

work between June and October 1933. They built 29 miles of telephone lines, 17

miles of roads, 35 miles of horse trails, six lookout houses, four firemen’s cabins,

two horse shelters, a garage, and five bridges. Near Lookout Creek, CCC workers

from Camp Belknap built trails from McKenzie Bridge to Carpenter Mountain, and

up the Blue River Ridge to Carpenter Mountain. These trails were the first improved-access routes into the immediate area of Lookout Creek, and as late as

1948, they were the only regularly maintained trails reaching that drainage. The

CCC operations at Camp Belknap ended in 1938, but camp facilities continued to

house seasonal Forest Service workers connected with the McKenzie District and

the nearby experimental forest through the next three decades. The first person

assigned to the new experimental forest, Roy Silen, for example, lived in the CCC

cookhouse in his first years at Blue River, and other Forest Service people using

the facility through the 1950s included Don Wustenberg, Jay Gashweiler, Brit Ash

(then district ranger at McKenzie Bridge), and Mike Kerrick, then a college student

on a fire-control unit based out of McKenzie Bridge.12

11 Cowlin, 113-114.

12 Leaburg Library, Historic Leaburg and Vicinity (Leaburg, OR: Leaburg Library, 1987),

70-71. Interview with Roy Silen, 9 September 1996, 13-14. December 1992 discussion

with Roy Silen, 1-2. Interview with Jerry Franklin by Max Geier at 3:00 p.m. on 13

September 1996 in a Forest Service cabin near the Wind River Canopy Crane facility as

transcribed by Jeff Fourier, 6-7.

In Lookout Creek,

CCC crews

worked to make the

Willamette National

Forest more accessible for other

people.
17

Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

The CCC labor improved access to the Lookout Creek drainage just as frequent

flooding along the Willamette River began to attract public attention. Concerns

about flooding prompted a renewed focus on watershed studies at PNW Station

about the time the Forest Research Council began to press for an expanded network of experimental forests. Lookout Creek subsequently emerged as a likely

site with good potential for supporting the priorities of PNW Station and other

agencies engaged in flood-related research. During 1936 and 1937, Horace J.

Andrews headed initial efforts at PNW Station to coordinate a flood-control survey

with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in a joint program funded under the Flood

Control Act of 1936. The next year, Acting Station Director Andrews assigned E.G.

Dunford to head the flood-control survey program at PNW Station.13 The Portland

District of the Army Corps of Engineers subsequently issued a report (House Document 544, 75th Congress, 3rd Session) predicting a major flood in the Willamette

Valley once every 5 years, on average. That report stressed the need for storage

reservoirs to avert damage to property and loss of life in the valleys. World War II

and related concerns, however, diverted public attention from flood-control concerns from the late 1930s through 1948. The major flood that devastated Vanport,

Oregon, in spring 1948, refocused public attention, and the PNW Station secured

additional funding to support flood-control research.14

The renewed emphasis on flood studies at PNW Station complemented an

earlier initiative near Blue River. The winter before the 1948 flood, the Army Corps

of Engineers designated 5,000 acres of the Blue River valley immediately north of

Lookout Creek drainage as a snow laboratory for gathering data on potential flood

levels. Army Corps of Engineers selected that location because it was an area with

a “good range of elevations and ... virgin timber.” The Corps also encouraged

PNW Station and the Regional Forester to develop an experimental forest nearby to

promote logging so they could “... start getting some of the answers on the effect

of logging on run-off.”15 These actions encouraged a closer look at the drainage

Briegleb recalled as an ideal site for an experimental forest in an old-growth forest.

13 The Flood Control Act of 1936 asserted that flood control on navigable waters or their

tributaries was a proper activity of the federal government in cooperation with states. It

provided for “investigations and improvements of rivers and other waterways, including

watersheds thereof, for flood control purposes ...in the interest of the general welfare.”

Heritage Research Associates, 142-145. Cowlin, 151-152, 155.

14 Heritage Research Associates, 142-144. Christina McPhail, “The Supplements to the

Station History, 1944 through 1953, compiled from the Station annual reports and news

items from the Station News Notes and the R-6 Administrative Digest,” unpublished

typescript, History Files, Portland Office, PNW Station, 20 October 1954. Supplement

for 1948, 1.

15 “Blue River Experimental Forest: Representing ...,” 7-8; Cowlin, 270-271.
18

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

The Blue River valley suddenly became a major center for flood-related research in 1948, mostly because PNW Station, the Pacific Northwest Region

(Region 6), the Army Corps, and the OSC School of Forestry had begun to take

some tentative steps toward closer cooperation a decade earlier. Those efforts

initially focused on the effects of logging on timber and watershed production. At

least in this arena of applied research, these state and federal agencies had a common interest in finding practical answers to common questions.

On other matters, relations were often more contentious, particularly between

PNW Station and Region 6. Thornton Munger, for example, favored clearcutting

over selective cutting in old-growth Douglas-fir. In a paper he presented before

the Puget Sound Section of the Society of American Foresters meeting in Seattle

on 6 January 1939, Munger criticized Region 6 managers for their tendency to

use selective-cutting methods where he thought clearcutting was more appropriate.

The Regional Forester reportedly attempted, unsuccessfully, to block publication of

Munger’s paper.16

Hoss Andrews wove his career carefully around the rivalries that tended to

discourage interagency and, as in the case of Munger’s conflict with the Regional

Forester, intra-agency cooperation. As of 1948, Andrews’ professional background

included multiple assignments in the research and management branches of the

Forest Service and in academia. He not only worked as Munger’s close associate at

PNW Station, including a brief stint as acting Station Director, but he also served in

various administrative capacities with Region 6, and held an appointment as a

research scientist at the University of Michigan. His broad professional networks

were especially useful during the flood control survey, an interagency initiative that

he helped lead. Relations between the PNW Station and Region 6 also reportedly

began to improve after a new regional forester, Lyle F. Watts, recruited Andrews

from Michigan late in 1938 to serve as his assistant regional forester in Portland.

Five years later, Andrews succeeded Watts as regional forester, a position he held

for the rest of his life. When the 1948 flood stimulated a renewed interest in

watershed studies, this regional forester could draw on a full career of interagency

experiences and professional networks.17

16 Munger’s conference paper was entitled “The Silviculture of Tree Selection Cutting in

the Douglas-Fir Region,” Cowlin, 193-199.

17 Cowlin, 175-177; “Andrews Joins Regional Forester Staff,” Press Release, U.S. Forest

Service, 2 Aug 1939, from H.J. Andrews History File, Corvallis Forestry Sciences

Laboratory (FSL), PNW Station; “Andrews Named Regional Forester,” Press Release,

U.S. Forest Service, 26 Feb 1943, from H.J. Andrews History File, Corvallis FSL, PNW

Station.

Relations between

the PNW Station and

Region 6 improved

after Lyle F. Watts,

recruited “Hass”

Andrews in 1938.
19

Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

From the end of World War II until 1948, Forest Service administrators at

PNW Station and Region 6 negotiated a compromise arrangement for managing the

Lookout Creek drainage. Those negotiations produced a memorandum of understanding between the PNW Station, the Willamette National Forest, and Region 6

that created the Blue River Experimental Forest in July 1948. Regional Forester H.J.

Andrews approved the intra-agency agreement on July 7; on July 28, Acting Forest

Service Chief McArdle announced the establishment of the experimental forest.

McArdle’s brief statement was appended to an establishment report that outlined

the mission and goals of the new facility. That report, to which McArdle referred in

his announcement, observed of the old-growth Douglas-fir forests in the southern

and central Cascade Range, “The need for study of problems in this virgin area,

relatively untouched by research, is great. Therefore, the conversion of these

overmature forests to managed young-growth stands in the most orderly manner

with the least delay and most complete utilization of existing material has become

one of the primary objectives of the Station.” One criterion for selecting a site for

the new experimental forest, the report noted, required that it be “large enough so

that it will give the answers needed for managing entire watersheds or cutting

units.” The experimental forest primarily would be used “to test logging methods

and techniques on commercial-sized operations.” The report, however, also confirmed the interagency origins of the agreement, noting, “An additional objective is

to provide a suitable area for the study of forest influences on streamflow, run-off,

snow melt, and other hydrology, in cooperation with the U.S. Army Engineers.”18

Plans for cooperatively administering the Blue River Experimental Forest

required representatives of the Willamette National Forest and the PNW Station to

meet on the forest at least once each year to review accomplishments and plan

future programs. The report specified that the new experimental forest would be

devoted primarily to “large-scale experimental cuttings.” That managerial mandate

was the joint responsibility of PNW Station, the Regional Office, and the Willamette

National Forest. The agreement stipulated, however, that any management plans

“should specify the removal of approximately 20 million board feet of logs per year

for the first 15 years ... to fit in with the cutting budget for the Blue River drainage

as established by the Willamette National Forest.” Signatories to this agreement, in

18 “Blue River Experimental Forest Establishment Report,” 1 June 1948, appended to

Memo 29 July 1948 from E.I. Kotok, Assistant Chief in Charge of Research to PNW

Station; H.J. Andrews Memorandum of Understanding Folder, H.J. Andrews Files, File

Box F, Storage Vault, Corvallis FSL, PNW Station, Forest Service, United States

Department of Agriculture. This document includes a copy of McArdle’s establishment

order, dated 28 July 1948.

The PNW Station, the

Willamette National

Forest, and Region 6

created the Blue

River Experimental

Forest in July 1948.
20

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

chronological order, were J. Alfred Hall, PNW Station Director (21 June 1948);

J.R. Bruckart, Willamette National Forest supervisor (6 July 1948); and H.J.

Andrews, Regional Forester (7 July 1948). Under the terms of this agreement,

PNW Station would determine what to cut and in what order, provided the total cut

met these minimum targets. Responsibility for laying out the sales initially fell to

Roy Silen, a Research Branch scientist with little seniority in the agency and limited

experience laying out sales.19

Initial efforts to make the experimental forest a reality at Lookout Creek forced

one man into intimate dialogue with the landscape. Silen spent long hours alone in

the woods between 1948 and 1953 laying out logging roads and timber-sale units

on the Blue River Experimental Forest. By the time Silen arrived at the experimental

forest in 1948, production-oriented, scientific forestry was in full swing in western

Oregon. In the postwar era, the Forest Service opened public lands to private timber contractors who cut timber in accordance with Forest Service guidelines to

implement large-scale clearcuts in old-growth timber, as Munger had previously

advocated. Silen followed those guidelines on the Andrews Forest, in keeping with

the mandate in the original memorandum of understanding to “test logging methods

and techniques on commercial-sized operations.” The intent of this policy was to

replace slow-growing, older trees with younger and more “productive” stands

of scientifically managed timber. Silen had to balance his manager’s mandate to

produce timber against his scientist’s ethic to conduct research and his private

ethic as a citizen. As he grappled with these sometimes conflicting priorities during

his 5-year career as forester-in-charge at the Blue River Experimental Forest, Silen

laid the foundation for a future of cooperative relations among researchers at PNW

Station, scientists at OSC, and foresters with Region 6 and the Willamette National

Forest.20

19 “Blue River Experimental Forest Establishment Report,” 7; “Agreement between the

Regional Forester, Forest Supervisor, and Experiment Station Director ...in the

administration of the Blue River Experimental Forest,” H.J. Andrews Memorandum of

Understanding Folder, H.J. Andrews Files, File Box F, Storage Vault, Corvallis FSL, PNW

Station, Forest Service, United States Department of Agriculture, 5.

20 “Blue River Experimental Forest Establishment Report,” 1 June 1948. In their early

1990s history of the Willamette National Forest, Lawrence and Mary Rakestraw quoted

then-Supervisor of the Willamette National Forest, Mike Kerrick’s recollection of the

postwar years as “... the years of confidence, when we had our laws and manuals [and

were] rapidly converting the forests; we knew what we had to do; we were experts in

doing it. The public, for whatever reason, had not got involved. It was fun; we didn’t

have the controversies you have now—at least that is my recollection.” Lawrence and

Mary Rakestraw, “History of the Willamette National Forest” (Eugene, OR: U.S.

Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Region, Willamette

National Forest, 1991[?]), 93.
21

Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

Silen filtered Forest Service plans to cut and grow trees on the experimental

forest through his own, personal ethic of reverence for the landscape, respectful

stewardship over the old-growth Douglas-fir, scientific professionalism, and a

sense of duty to the agency and its mission. Silen recalls very few personal reservations as he translated the Forest Service mission to revitalize the postwar timber

economy of the Pacific Northwest onto the landscape of the new experimental

forest. His low-level position with the Forest Service and the terms of the establishing agreement limited Silen’s options for managing the experimental forest, but

he did experiment with road location and design, as well as the size, shape, and

placing of cutting units. He struggled with severe shortages of manpower, equipment, and supplies, but he also discovered the value of community support. Interpersonal and professional networks helped Silen work around the institutional

limitations he faced, and he thereby left a legacy that redefined priorities for subsequent generations of scientists and managers at the experimental forest. Chief

among those legacies was an innovative “ladder” road system that made the place

more accessible with less disruption to the landscape than the “standard” design for

Forest Service roads. He also discovered the value of communicating his ideas

Figure 6—From the beginning, research foresters with the Pacific Northwest Research Station

took a hands-on approach to fieldwork. This 1954 photograph shows Roy Silen working with

two assistants (Chew and Gretz) seining a hole below the concrete bridge in Lookout Creek.
22

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

directly to forest managers who visited sites on the experimental forest. By the time

he left the experimental forest in 1954, Silen had substantially converted the place

into an accessible site for applied research. It was a humanized landscape where

people could test scientific theories about forests.

Silen could not, ultimately, control the future of the place he had transformed.

The Forest Service detached Silen from the experimental forest, renamed it, redrew

its boundaries, initiated paired watershed studies, and redefined the mission of the

facility between 1953 and 1954. Even as paired watershed studies got underway on

the Lookout Creek drainage, Silen moved on to other places and different responsibilities at PNW Station. With his departure, the future of the experimental forest

temporarily became an institutional concern rather than a personal priority. Perhaps

as much as any other single person, Silen shaped future patterns of land use on the

experimental forest, and he established the precedent of rigorous, pragmatic field

research that shaped the community culture of future scientists and land managers

at this forest. That legacy, like the man and the place, was at once straightforward

and complex, but it is perhaps best explained by Silen’s simple observation: “I was

in love for the place.”21

Personal and Institutional Traditions Intersect at the Blue River

Experimental Forest

Community culture at the experimental forest built on the foundation of personal

experience and institutionalized traditions spanning more than half a century, from

1948 to beyond 2000. In one person, Silen brought to the forest local traditions

of timber-dependent communities that he absorbed growing up in western Oregon,

an emphasis on applied research derived from his training in the OSC School of

Forestry, close ties with New England academies of higher education, and the

progressive ethic of applied research and scientific management that he absorbed

on his first professional assignment at PNW Station. His personal background

was deeply rooted in the interwar years of economic development in Coos Bay,

Oregon—the logging and shipping community where he was born and raised

through high school.22 He graduated from North Bend High School in 1937, and

then worked for 2 years with a logging company as a bookkeeper. The timber

21 Interview with Roy Silen 9 September 1996, 25-26.

22 Interview with Roy Silen 9 September 1996, 1. For a profile of the timber-dependent

community of Coos Bay, Oregon, in these years, see William G. Robbins, Hard Times in

Paradise: Coos Bay, Oregon (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1988).

Silen brought to

the forest local

traditions of

timber-dependent

communities that

he absorbed

growing up in

western Oregon.
23

Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

industry, he recalls, was an obvious career choice for a young man of his background: “[There] couldn’t be any other job.” After an abortive effort to pursue

secondary studies elsewhere, he went “back to woods” in Oregon, where he

attended OSC, majoring in forestry.23

Silen’s forestry career took an abrupt detour into federal service during and

after World War II, and he secured a position with PNW Station by 1946. The

work environment at PNW Station encouraged relatively close, daily interaction

among senior managers and staff, and this raw recruit worked directly with the

former Station Director, Thornton Munger. Silen credits the camaraderie of coffeeroom gatherings for promoting an atmosphere of informal exchange among junior

and senior colleagues at the Station in those postwar years. He carried that style

into his interactions at the experimental forest when he was assigned there as

“Research Forester-in-Charge” after working barely 2 years at the Station.24 As a

person who grew up during the depression and served with the infantry in Europe,

Silen brought a pragmatic ethic of “making do” and “toughing it out” to his career

as a scientist with PNW Station, and he built that ethic into the community culture

at the experimental forest from 1948 to 1954. In his Army reserve days near North

Bend, early in the war, for example, Silen recalls how an ill-conceived Forest

Service effort to economize on the cost and weight of field equipment placed him

with a colleague on a mountain peak in experimental sleeping bags. The bags were

made of paper, and they generated more noise than warmth. Late at night, as the

temperature dropped at high elevation, Silen and his friend improvised: They taped

the bags together so they could keep each other warm and survive the night.25

The war diverted funding and labor to military programs, even as it created

new markets for construction-grade timber from the forests of the Pacific Northwest. The Station struggled through a major labor shortage as workers were called

away for military service and depression-era programs ended. More than 85 percent of the remaining resources at the Station went to support projects directly

related to the war effort.26 Amidst wartime rhetoric warning of a need for improved

forest protection,27 Station personnel diverted their energies to a “Douglas-fir job

23 Interview with Roy Silen 9 September 1996, 1.

24 Andrews group interview 22 September 1997, 53-54. Interview with Roy Silen 9

September 1996, 2-3.

25 Andrews group interview 22 September 1997, 3-4.

26 Cowlin, 219-228.

27 For examples, see the Oregonian, 17 May 1942, 02 May 1943, 03 May 1943.
24

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

classification study.” That work identified more than 188 distinct job classifications in the logging and timber industries of the Pacific Northwest considered vital

to securing timber resources for the war effort. Station scientists also cooperated

with colleagues at the Oregon State College School of Forestry and the Oregon

State Board of Forestry to publish Forest Resources of Oregon, including an assessment of forest protection and management issues. Despite these concerns, however, funding shortfalls during the war forced administrators at PNW Station to

temporarily close experimental forests at Blue Mountain, Port Orford, and Pringle

Falls.28

By the last year of the war, plans for postwar building ran up against limited

supplies of lumber, and public attention focused on the valuable timber resources

on the national forests. As the war ground to a close, the Forest Service faced a

host of forest management problems. The Sustained Yield Forest Management

Act of 29 March 1944 revised the federal mandate for the agency, and administrators at PNW Station responded by reassessing research needs and potential uses

for experimental forests.29 As the ongoing war continued to drain human resources

and distort budgets, the Forest Service retrenched, and between 1944 and 1946, a

new Station Director, J. Alfred Hall, reorganized the PNW Station. Hall refocused

Station resources on research centers committed to the principle of field-testing

experimental theories with commercial-scale logging. This model prioritized applied

research and required Station administrators to establish or identify large experimental forests that represented a specific forest type. They expected research

programs at each facility to address management concerns related to commercialscale logging in forests of that type. The PNW Station research priorities in 1947,

for example, called for studies on how best to manage second-growth Douglas-fir

in western Washington, old-growth Douglas-fir and spruce-hemlock in western

Oregon, and ponderosa pine in central Oregon. These plans required Station

28 Cowlin, 237-240. McPhail, “The Supplements to the Station History, 1944 through

1953,” 9.

29 The stated purpose of the Sustained Yield Act was to promote “the stability of forest

industries, of employment, of communities, and of taxable forest wealth through

continuous supplies of timber.” In the Pacific Northwest, which had emerged as a vital

source of timber during the war, this mandate to manage for continuous supplies implied

the need to study how PNW forests responded after harvest. Cowlin also notes that

scientists at PNW Station also benefited from a general climate of renewed respect for

professional expertise in the postwar era, as wartime experiences displaced depressionera suspicions about the industrial economy. Cowlin, 243; McPhail, “The Supplements

to the Station History, 1944 through 1953,” 1.
25

Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

administrators to locate new experimental forests with large acreages of the

appropriate species within a larger expanse of national forest lands that were

accessible to logging. The PNW Station lacked sufficient experimental forests to

support this model when the reorganization went into effect in 1947, and Station

administrators adopted a two-pronged, fall-back strategy. On the one hand, they

negotiated cooperative agreements to establish long-term studies on private, state,

and other federal forests. On the other hand, they escalated plans to establish new

experimental forests administered directly by the Station. During this period of

readjustment, the Station reopened three experimental forests closed earlier in the

war, and Hall also negotiated the intra-agency agreement to establish the experimental forest at Lookout Creek.30

Cooperative arrangements among PNW Station, Region 6, and Oregon State

College, in the context of the postwar priorities of 1948, built from the premise

Munger first laid down in 1924: forest research should address issues of immediate

economic importance, and the national forests should be managed for efficient timber production. Bob Tarrant, a soil scientist who joined the Station the same year as

Silen, was the Station Director who had to confront the environmental legacy of

this policy some 30 years later. He recalls that through World War II, “the bulk of

the research” had to do with “What’s in the nation’s woodpile? How much is

there?” In later years, Tarrant argues, the ecological implications of that outlook

took the Station leadership, including himself, somewhat by surprise.31

In this period of shifting federal mandates, administrative changes at PNW

Station, and interagency initiatives, Silen drew on the resources of his research

colleagues as he worked to transform the experimental forest from an agreement

on paper to a reality on the ground. Despite his relative inexperience, Silen brought

impressive credentials to the new experimental forest. He had recently returned to

PNW Station from an educational leave to attend Yale, where he earned a master of

forestry degree from the premiere forestry school in the country. Perhaps more

importantly, however, PNW Station offered expert advice. Under the new administrative structure, Silen’s immediate superior was Robert Aufderheide, who transferred from the Siuslaw National Forest in November 1946 to head the newly

30 Cowlin, 255-259.

31 Andrews group interview 22 September 1997, 24-25.

Bob Tarrant, recalls

that through World

War II, “the bulk of

the research” had to

do with “What’s in

the nation’s woodpile? How much is

there?”
26

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

established Western Oregon Research Center at Corvallis. Aufderheide was one of

several people who joined the Station that year and later became prominent leaders

in the Forest Service. This leadership cohort supplied crucial support at a critical

stage in the development of the experimental forest and the research community

linked with that place. Briegleb, for example, rejoined the Station in 1946, after a

3-year stint in Chile and at the Northeastern Forest Experiment Station, to head the

PNW Station Division of Forest Management.32

Aufderheide’s philosophy of immediately applicable research, Silen suggests,

directly guided his own early efforts at the Blue River Experimental Forest. As

cutting escalated on the Willamette National Forest after 1946, Silen recalls, the

forest supervisor and his staff shifted management priorities from fire to timber

management. The problem, Silen notes, was that the Forest Service “was very ill

prepared for this level of cutting.” Up until this time, agency managers generally

laid out only the rough boundaries of staggered-set units in a timber sale, and the

contractor who successfully bid for the sale handled the details of road design,

landings, and extraction of timber, with very little oversight from Forest Service

officials. Aufderheide, however, was convinced that the Forest Service should not

let the loggers lay out the cutting pattern, because, as Silen recalls, “they had no

idea what silviculture really meant.” Aufderheide argued that the location and design

of roads and landings were vital to silvicultural planning.33

The production quotas stipulated in the establishing agreement for the experimental forest, together with the Station’s emphasis on studies of commercial-scale

logging, meant that Silen was primarily a forest manager at Blue River. He adopted

as his operational guide the philosophy that Aufderheide brought over from the

Management Branch: long-term planning and careful implementing of a comprehensive logging plan would shape the entire future of a forest. In keeping with that

management philosophy, Silen developed a system of roads and logging units that

eventually distinguished the Lookout Creek drainage from other experimental forests managed by the Forest Service in this period (see sidebar 1.2). Silen also

worked with Robert H. Ruth, his counterpart at Cascade Head Experimental Forest,

and Aufderheide to incorporate their ideas into a PNW Station publication, Getting

More Forestry Into the Logging Plan. That publication, he recalls, “was the best

seller in the Station for several years.”34 Silen stresses, however, that Aufderheide

32 McPhail, “The Supplements to the Station History, 1944 through 1953,” 1-3.

33 Interview with Roy Silen 9 September 1996, 3-4.

34 Interview with Roy Silen 9 September 1996, 4.
27

Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

was the driving force behind his efforts to implement those ideas on the Blue River

Experimental Forest, and that his position at the forest had more to do with his

practical training at Oregon State College, and 1 year of experience working under

the tutelage of Leo Isaac, than with his own ideas or theories about silviculture.35

He also notes that the ideas he used at Blue River Experimental Forest in the late

1940s and early 1950s were not unique and resembled those guiding Bob Ruth at

Cascade Head Experimental Forest during the same period. Ruth, however, had to

contend with the legacy of more than a decade of management activities and an

existing road structure at the Cascade Head facility. Silen enjoyed the relative luxury

of laying out the original road system at the Blue River site. He recalls that his initial

planning for management activities included a personal commitment to long-term

involvement in monitoring those activities over 30 to 50 years: “I felt that I would

have a rather permanent spot here. I was prepared to do it.”36

Silen began, in 1948, his own gradual, personal journey from a jobs-andrecreation Forest Service employee who actively pursued social ties with the

local community in Blue River, to a professional steward of aesthetic, physical,

and scientific resources at the Blue River Experimental Forest. That personal

transition happened in an era when institutional support for long-term, commercialscale, place-centered, field-oriented research at PNW Station was both recent and

eroding. Initial plans for the Blue River Experimental Forest virtually ignored those

aspects of local community that Silen recognized as helpful, and plans for the

facility casually ignored any potential effects on local residents. Public sentiment

about the new experimental forest was not explored, or invited. The Forest Service

acted on the assumption the local community would naturally support an experimental forest, or at least would not oppose it.

The agency’s characterization of the physical and biological resources of the

forested slopes was similarly impressionistic and dismissive. The initial establishment report for the new experimental forest, for example, explicitly addressed both

recreational and wildlife matters, and rejected them as insignificant concerns. It

claimed, for example, “There is no recreational development on the proposed area

nor is any contemplated. The only recreational use this area has ever had is a small

amount of trout fishing in Lookout Creek and in the fall an occasional deer hunter.”

The report further noted the presence of “the usual animal and bird life found in the

35 December 1992 discussion with Roy Silen, 18-19.

36 Andrews group interview 22 September 1997, 33. Interview with Roy Silen 9

September 1996, 18-19.
28

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687
29

Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

Cascade Mountain region although neither is abundant.” Finally, at a time when the

Forest Service did not even have detailed descriptions or maps of Lookout Creek

drainage, the establishment report nevertheless concluded, “The deer population is

very light due primarily to the lack of suitable forage in dense timber stands. ...

Getting logging operations underway will greatly improve forage conditions.”37

The Forest Service saddled the new experimental forest with a contradictory

mandate. The agency’s stated goal of modeling commercial-scale logging efforts

was in direct conflict with its fledgling natural area program. Forest Service policy

in 1948 called for designating a portion of each experimental forest as a natural

area, but the establishment report for the Blue River facility noted a lack of “sufficient detailed examination” to make such a determination. It further observed that

the Willamette National Forest “has under consideration other proposed Natural

Areas in this locality. The establishment of the Blue River Experimental Forest will

probably make it unnecessary to have any additional natural areas in this general

vicinity.” The accompanying management plan for the new research forest, however, specifically required an annual production of 15 to 20 million board feet of

logs from the Lookout Creek drainage over the first decade of the experimental

forest (1948-1958).38

Silen notes that the contradiction in purposes at the Blue River facility was

more apparent than real. Everyone knew which mandate took priority for onsite

implementation. Where plans to log the experimental forest at an accelerated rate

conflicted with the claim that this research facility negated any further need to

designate natural areas on the Willamette National Forest, Silen’s mandate was

clear. He recalls that Bruckart, the Willamette forest supervisor, was “going after

the record for cutting more timber than any other National Forest,” and he refused

to relinquish control over the Lookout Creek drainage until the Station agreed to log

the maximum allowed under the management plan. Silen argues that, as a relatively

inexperienced forester with less than 2 years with the Station, he could do little

other than follow orders.39

Roy Silen’s modest assessment of his accomplishments at the experimental

forest understates the theory and methods of progressive forestry in the postwar

era. Research foresters of that period diligently generated data that supplied professional forest managers with the details they needed to represent extensive timber

37 “Blue River Experimental Forest,” 1a, 6.

38 “Blue River Experimental Forest,” 8.

39 December 1992 discussion with Roy Silen, 1.

The Forest Service

saddled the new

experimental forest

with a contradictory

mandate.
30

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

harvests as “scientific” forestry. The stated goal was to convert “degenerate”

forests of old-growth Douglas-fir into “productive,” managed stands of secondgrowth timber. Few professional foresters questioned this characterization of oldgrowth forests in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and both Silen and Tarrant agree

with Ted Dyrness’ later observation that scientists at PNW Station accepted this

premise without qualm or question, well into the 1960s.

In an era when the job-conscious concerns of the depression years still burned

fresh in the memories of these scientists, the forest was a place for productive

work that would transform and improve both man and nature. At Lookout Creek,

between 1948 and 1955, Roy Silen led a skeletal staff on a mission that combined

the managerial impulse to change the face of the land and the scientific compulsion

to study the consequences of those changes. The unrelenting work ethic and

energetic enthusiasm that Silen brought to his mission, however, also introduced

him to the forest on a more intimate level. By the end of his assignment there in

1954, he found himself more attached to the forest he had first encountered than

to the forest he helped re-create. By 1954, he recalls, he was selling timber all the

way up Lookout Creek, “almost to the head of McRae Creek and up to the head

of Mack Creek.” Describing his decision not to go back after he left the place,

he observes, “It’s kind of a personal thing. You get to where you love a piece of

country and you don’t want to see it hurt, you know. I love that piece of country.”

In his mind, Silen remembered the place he first encountered as a “forest primeval”: “I don’t know how many people have actually been in primeval conditions,

but here’s an example of what you could find on the Andrews: The crew that

surveyed the access road had worked as far as McRae Creek, so that area had

been fished some. Beyond McRae Creek, I remember one time going down to a

fairly deep hole coming in from the south side and looking over this bank 4 or 5

feet into this hole, which had a lot of logs in it fairly deep, I took a little twig and

tossed it out there. It looked just like a fish hatchery as fish streaked toward the

spot from all directions—you don’t see that anymore. I don’t know where in the

world you would see that anymore.”40

40 December 1992 discussion with Roy Silen, 2-3, 4 -5; interview with Roy Silen 9

September 1996, 16; Andrews group interview 22 September 1997, 19, 24.
31

Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

Work and Community at the Blue River Experimental Forest,

1948–1953

The Blue River Experimental Forest was as much vision as reality during the first 2

years Silen worked alone at his job at the site. During those years, Silen lived as a

bachelor in a trailer at Belknap Camp, and he walked to work in the Lookout Creek

drainage. At the time, no improved roads or trails led into the valley of the experimental forest. The closest access road in 1948 stopped just short of the south side

of Lookout Ridge, where a timber sale brought a road almost to the top of the ridge

near the sites later designated watersheds 1, 2, and 3.41 Silen recalls that the 4-mile

hike to Frissell Point from McKenzie Bridge was a grueling climb on a steep, hot,

dry, south-facing slope that exhausted even his dog, Rusty, who he acquired to

keep him company in the field.42 Silen ate breakfast and supper with the family

of a plumber who lived in McKenzie Bridge, and his local renown as “the plumber’s

friend” was a more likely basis for recognition in the community than his work on

the forest.43 McKenzie Bridge was a close-knit community with an extended, seasonal pattern of rotating invitations to dine with local families through most of

Silen’s tenure at the Blue River Experimental Forest. He recalls, “I got plenty from

the community. ... we were all waiting for school starting and the roads, particularly when the roads closed over the pass. And then the social season started.

Everybody visited everybody else. ...”44

The snow-bound isolation of McKenzie Bridge in winter cemented Silen’s ties

with local residents, but people in that community were largely oblivious to his

purpose on Lookout Creek and the town was remote from the forest. Even official

visitors from the upper echelons of the Forest Service seemed mostly interested in

the local color at McKenzie Bridge in the early 1950s, which included evening

poker games in Silen’s trailer and fishing on the McKenzie Fork. Silen recalls, “Oh

yeah, ... I had numerous Washington Office visitors wanting to see this wonderful

work that was going on on the Andrews Experimental Forest as long as it involved

opportunities to fish and play poker.”45

41 December 1992 discussion with Roy Silen, 1-3; interview with Roy Silen 9 September

1996, 16-17.

42 Andrews group interview 22 September 1997, 30.

43 Andrews group interview 22 September 1997, 3.

44 Interview with Roy Silen 9 September 1996, 15.

45 Interview with Roy Silen 9 September 1996, 14-15.

The snow-bound

isolation of

McKenzie Bridge

in winter cemented

Silen’s ties with local

residents.
32

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

Silen himself largely avoided the experimental forest during his off-hours,

preferring recreational pursuits, especially fishing, closer to McKenzie Bridge, and

effectively maintaining a distinct separation between work and leisure.46 He reserved the Blue River Experimental Forest as a site for productive work in the

woods, and it was the locale for his strenuous efforts to lay out timber sales

between 1949 and 1954. Silen’s solitary work, however, was a central part of his

life, and forays into the forest were often prolonged expeditions that offered their

own rustic rewards. On a typical Monday morning, he would “go out with the

pack. Pack all the way out to the falls, and walk across the canyons on windfalls.”

Then he would set up a 9- by 12-foot “silkolene” fly, roll out his sleeping bag, take

the food down to the creek, and place it underwater in big pots with rocks piled on

so bears would not get into it. He concludes, “You could say I spent some of the

best days of my life out there.”47

Working conditions at the experimental forest were dangerous and lonely, even

after Hank Gratkowski joined Silen in 1951 to assist him in laying out the timber

sales. Silen and Gratkowski often spent the entire day apart, each alone in the

forest and far from assistance. Silen recalls one harrowing experience when

Gratkowski got lost near Carpenter Saddle while working with an analog barometer

and air photos, in an effort to develop the first detailed contour map of the Lookout

Creek drainage. The process involved pinpointing a location on the air photo, going

out there to record 15 minutes of barometric readings to correlate with concurrent

barometer records at a base camp, and then repeating the process at other points

around the valley. Silen directed Gratkowski to a point on Blue River Trail where he

could follow a ridge out to a good picture point, but Silen mistakenly sent him out

on the wrong ridge where the photo reference point didn’t match the actual terrain.

Gratkowski figured out the problem after about an hour and a half of confusion,

but the delay put him behind schedule for the rest of the photo points that day, and

he missed a planned rendezvous with Silen in the late afternoon. Silen became

increasingly concerned as the daylight hours slipped away. He recalls, “We were

supposed to meet at this little lake in this basin down here. ... I came all the way up

to Carpenter Mountain and back down, and reached the lake about 5 o’clock . ... I

expected Hank to be there before me, because he had a shorter leg [of scheduled

hiking]. No Hank. And it got more and more nerve-wracking to think that he might

46 Andrews group interview 22 September 1997, 16.

47 December 1992 discussion with Roy Silen, 1-3; interview with Roy Silen 9 September,

16-17; Andrews group interview 22 September 1997, 16.
33

Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

be injured out there.” As darkness descended, Silen decided he would have to wait

until morning and then go out and search for Gratkowski. He headed up out of the

basin onto the trail on Blue River Ridge, and was just beginning to head down

the trail in the direction of Blue River, when he gave “one last yell.” Gratkowski

responded from way down at the bottom of the Lookout Creek valley, and Silen

waited for him to climb up to the trail on the ridge. As Silen recalls, “It must have

been after 7 o’clock when we started down the Blue River Trail, and it got quickly

dark. ... we just had to make our way in the dark. You could feel the trail. ... 7 or 8

miles! ... all switchbacks and everything. We made it!”48

Science and Community at the Blue River Experimental Forest,

1951–1955

Gratkowski’s dogged determination to find the correct photo location and then

complete the full cycle of readings despite the impending gloom of twilight epitomized the spirit of these early years of effort at the Blue River Experimental Forest.

His 8-mile stumble through the dark with Silen as they struggled out of the wilderness into the primitive comforts of a base camp is also an apt metaphor for the

nature of forest research in that time and place. They were engaged in a process of

redeeming a usable resource from a landscape Silen describes as a “forest primeval.” Mapping, delineating, and cross-referencing the landscape was the first step

in the journey from a perceived wilderness to a managed forest, and these early

research foresters mostly operated in a vacuum of professional interest from

colleagues in forest management. Their primary directive was simply to “get the

cut out.” As motivation, they relied mostly on their own blind faith in the long-term

value of the work and on their professional commitment and passion for research.

In the short term, Silen paints a picture of unrelenting, hard work that was largely

unappreciated: “We were aiming our research to be used by the Forest Service, and

... they weren’t a very ready customer.”49

Silen’s close ties with former Forest Supervisor Aufderheide, however, eventually ensured that the experimental forest was drawn closer to the center of management concerns in Region 6. That was especially true after Aufderheide resumed

his career in forest management, first as forest supervisor of the Umpqua National

Forest in 1950, and later as Forest Supervisor of the Willamette National Forest

48 Andrews group interview 22 September 1997, 17-18.

49 Andrews group interview 22 September 1997, 43.

They were engaged

in a process of

redeeming a usable

resource from a

landscape Silen

describes as a

“forest primeval.”
34

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

from 1954 until his death in 1959. Both Silen and Aufderheide, a graduate of the

Oregon State College School of Forestry who spent his entire Forest Service

career in the Pacific Northwest, were avid fly-fisherman who frequented the

McKenzie. Their personal connection established a tradition of close relations

between PNW Station scientists who worked at the experimental forest and this

forest supervisor.50

One of the practical research issues that began to interest forest managers

in the immediate postwar era involved problems with reforesting after clearcut

logging. As timber harvests in the region advanced southward from the Columbia

River and into higher elevations in the Cascade Range, forest managers noticed a

dramatic increase in the percentage of logged land that did not naturally regenerate.

The failure to regenerate stands of marketable softwoods by natural means meant

that broadleaf species rapidly displaced conifers. People and their actions reshaped

forest succession. Silen observes that early forest researchers assumed that a

logged stand would re-grow in natural succession, starting with annuals, then

perennials, then broadleaf brush, then conifers. On about 30 percent of the acreage

of Douglas-fir forest logged after World War II, however, broadleaf brush was a

lasting stage.51 This concern, together with watershed issues highlighted in the

aftermath of the 1948 floods—and Silen’s college training in forest management

and forest engineering—guided early efforts to develop a comprehensive logging

plan for the Blue River Experimental Forest.

Given the scale of expected timber yields from the Lookout Creek drainage,

one of Silen’s more important decisions was not what to cut, but in what order to

schedule logging of existing stands of old-growth Douglas-fir. Timber cutting plans

set one goal for the entire Blue River watershed for the period 1949 to 1964, but

the Army Corps of Engineers’ snow laboratory, which encompassed drainages in

the Blue River watershed adjacent to the experimental forest was exempt from any

cutting between 1947 and 1957, as specified in the Army’s cooperative agreement

with the Willamette National Forest. The Blue River Experimental Forest was expected to make up the difference. The cooperative agreement governing the establishment of the experimental forest spelled out how it would happen and how it

would be enforced: The PNW Station Director agreed to subordinate research

interests to production goals and to acknowledge that “... to fulfill obligations

50 December 1992 discussion with Roy Silen, 2-3. Rakestraw, 95; interview with Roy

Silen 9 September 1996, 3-4.

51 Silen, R.; Doig, I. The care and handling of the forest gene pool. Pacific Search. 10(8):

7-9. Cowlin, 275-279.
35

Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

incurred in accepting access road money for opening up the Blue River watershed

it is necessary that the full cut for the next 15 years come from the Lookout Creek

drainage according to the plans contemplated prior to the designation of this area as

an experimental forest.” The Director further agreed to develop “ ... experimental

cutting plans for the Blue River Experimental Forest so that this planned rate of

cutting can be maintained in an orderly fashion.” In the event PNW Station failed to

meet those goals, the agreement authorized the supervisor of the Willamette National Forest to make “regular timber sales,” completely bypassing the PNW

Station’s protocols, if necessary.52

Through 1959, the research forester-in-charge at the experimental forest was

responsible for planning and initiating management activities but lacked the power

to control or enforce guidelines governing how to implement those plans. The

supervisor for the Willamette National Forest wielded final control over all management activities on the Lookout Creek drainage, including negotiations on sales or

permits, but he could designate “some properly qualified member of the Station

staff” to fulfill this function, subject to his approval. In a small concession to PNW

Station, the agreement required the forest supervisor to furnish the Station Director

with a copy of all agreements and plans. The agreement also included restrictions

on control over receipts from timber sales, which were to be “collected by and

credited to the Willamette National Forest.” In addition to timber sales, this restriction extended to all receipts from the sale of grazing permits, firewood, or other

special uses. Research personnel were responsible for initiating and supervising all

experimental work, but requests to make timber sales or issue permits for grazing

or other special uses were to be routed through the Station Director to the Forest

Supervisor.53 Silen adapted to this combination of responsibility without authority

by developing and nurturing a network of support among forest managers, loggers,

and the local community, to supplement his links with PNW Station.

52 “Agreement between the Regional Forester, Forest Supervisor, and Experiment Station

Director ...in the administration of the Blue River Experimental Forest,” H.J. Andrews

Memorandum of Understanding Folder, H.J. Andrews Files, File Box F, Storage Vault,

FSL, Corvallis, 3.

53 “Agreement between the Regional Forester, Forest Supervisor, and Experiment Station

Director [1948].”
36

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

Experimental Priorities for Roads, Watersheds, and Regeneration

Personal and professional networks enabled Silen, in a span of less than 5 years,

to design and implement a system of roads and landings on the Lookout Creek

drainage. The system he implemented included experimental culvert designs,

routes, and locations intended to minimize erosion and sedimentation in streams

adjacent to cutting units. One important advantage of this strategy was that it often

minimized the miles of road per square mile because all timber harvests could be

done from parallel, level roads.54 He based this “ladder-road” system on what he

had observed from other logging road sites, where runoff problems were most

serious on climbing roads, and where the level, connector roads had fewer problems. At Blue River Experimental Forest, where he had the luxury of designing all

the roads, he could locate them anywhere he wanted, and he designed a plan that

simply avoided the steeper parts. He also initiated experimental cutting units of

54 Interview with Roy Silen 9 September 1996, 10.

Figure 7—The Army Corps of Engineers constructed this 8- by 8-foot cabin on the upper Blue

River in the early 1950s, hauling building materials in by pack train from Santiam Highway.

Located just outside the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest (Andrews Forest), the cabin was a

satellite refuge for workers who supported a nearby gaging station as part of the Corp’s snow

study. After the Corps abandoned the facility in 1957, researchers with the Andrews Forest

thereafter maintained records from the site until the flood of 1965 destroyed the gaging station.

Dick Fredriksen is the Pacific Northwest Research Station researcher in the photo.

Jack Rothacher in March 1964
37

Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

larger and smaller acreages and in unusual shapes to study the effect those variations had on natural regeneration.55 Some of his other studies measured seedling

mortality in areas subject to slash burning after logging. He developed close working relations with a logging contractor who successfully bid on virtually every

experimental sale,56 and his road system won grudging respect from initially hostile

forest managers and loggers, as well as later scientists at the experimental forest.

Logging contractor Mike Savelich was one of six contractors who toured the

proposed site before Sale 1, but Silen recalls Savelich outmaneuvered other bidders

and effectively secured a working monopoly on experimental sales at Blue River

Experimental Forest: “He contracted with Associated Plywood, and as I understand

it, he had quite a thing going on.” Silen explains that when Savelich bid against

other contractors on various timber sales, “He was a good poker player, and he’d

never get stuck with the sale, he would always bid the price up a little higher than

... some [bidders] really wanted to pay, and then he got out of the bidding.” To

avoid the higher costs that Savelich was forcing them into, Silen recalls the other

contractors made a deal with Savelich that he would get all the sales out on the

experimental forest, provided he stopped bidding against them on sales elsewhere

on the ranger district.57

The research that Silen accomplished while pursuing his management goals

was the product of a prolonged effort to reconcile elegant theory with ugly fact.

Silen observes, for example, that Aufderheide’s idea to complete the logging plan

for the entire drainage before opening the first sale was unrealistic, given the

governing agreement and its imperative for immediate returns from timber. Silen’s

effort to lay out an initial sale in 1948, moreover, failed to attract a single bid. He

argues that this failure was fortunate because he was able to adjust the logging plan

to minimize the effect on watersheds near the confluence with Blue River. The

proposed sale would have interfered with the paired watershed study later implemented on the three small watersheds there. The initial failure delayed Silen’s first

55 Andrews group interview 22 September 1997, 32-33. December 1992 discussion with

Roy Silen, 3-4.

56 Andrews group interview 22 September 1997, 1. Blue River Sale 1 was shown on 13

Dec 1949 to representatives from 6 companies: Cliff Pool of South Fork, Wayne Hale of

Hale Brothers Logging Company, Brown Ziolkowski of Springfield Plywood, Roy Cronk

of Springfield Plywood, S.A. Cuttyback of Cuttyback Logging Company, E.J. Nyholm of

Associated Plywood, and Mike Savelich of Savelich Logging Company. Britt Ash, Rex

Wakefield [Forester, Willamette Forest, Eugene], and Roy R. Silen represented the Forest

Service at the showing. Memo 14 December 1949 from Roy R. Silen to Britt Ash,

Ranger, McKenzie Bridge. Sale 1 Folder, H.J. Andrews Files, File Box C, Storage Vault,

FSL, Corvallis.

57 Andrews group interview 22 September 1997, 24-25.

He was able to

adjust the logging

plan to minimize the

effect on watersheds near the

confluence with

Blue River.
38

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

successful sale until his second year at the experimental forest (1949). This later

success, which Station records designate “Sale #1”, required the logger to build the

road system into the area up to 3,000-feet elevation. Silen adhered to the spirit, if

not the letter of Aufderheide’s vision. He notes, “We actually laid out about 80

million board feet of ... area to get 20 million board feet [for harvest], because we

... would have a complete layout of the sale for the entire area before we sold the

units that would go out first. ... we cut one unit out of four, ... so that you were

completely surrounded by timber each time.”58

Any hopes Silen harbored that foresters would translate his applied research

into management policy on the Willamette National Forest depended on opening

channels of communication with lower level administrators like McKenzie District

Ranger Brit Ash. Some administrators higher in the Willamette National Forest and

at Region 6 were openly hostile to ideas Silen introduced at Blue River Experimental Forest. He observes, “It was a relationship that started off badly with

[Forest Supervisor Bruckart] watching that cut [the failed first sale]. He was not

friendly to the effort there and they watched every move I made.” Personal and

political issues aside, the elegant ideal of laying out 100 percent of the drainage

before initiating sales collided with the ugly fact of limited fiscal and human resources at the McKenzie Ranger District. Forest managers viewed the plan with

some skepticism because safety considerations prevented them from requiring their

people to work alone in the field without support, as Silen often did. In practice,

Silen and Gratkowski laid out timber sales on the experimental forest with far

fewer human or fiscal resources than district crews typically deployed for sales

of similar scale, but they struggled with difficult working conditions that imposed

limits on the accuracy of their work. Sale layouts were always well beyond the

last road into one of the watersheds on the experimental forest, and Silen or

Gratkowski had to walk in at least a mile or more before they began to lay out the

sale. They prepared packs supplied with everything they needed for a week in the

field and then carried those packs 2 or 3 miles into the forest before establishing a

base camp for that week. They organized their equipment to do everything in oneman crews. Using a stapling gun and aluminum tags, they ran a survey line by

stapling a tag to a tree, and then tilting it so the reflection could be seen from a

distance. That system permitted them to run a “p-line” (preliminary line) without

the usual surveyor’s assistant. At the end of each leg of the p-line, they stapled

58 Interview with Roy Silen 9 September, 7.
39

Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

up a tag and began the process for the next leg. Rather than using a chain, they

surveyed the 10-chain lines with a 10-foot pole for a rough estimation that, Silen

concedes, was “a little off in places.”59 This system was sufficient for Silen’s

needs, but the national forests held district rangers to a stricter standard, and implementing Silen’s 100-percent proposal while adhering to those standards would

have required about three times as many people to lay out each sale.60

Silen often struggled to reconcile his scientific impulse to be precise with his

mandate to efficiently and expeditiously manage timber sales on the experimental

forest. His work with Gratkowski demonstrated ingenious strategies and methods

for minimizing both time and expense, but his road standards taxed the patience of

forest managers hard-pressed to simply “get the cut out.” He could count on himself and Gratkowski to maintain strict quality controls, even while using rough

methods and tools. District rangers who managed a large staff with a more diverse

commitment to quality control could not expect that all of their employees would

successfully implement Silen’s methods without close supervision. Silen concedes,

“It wasn’t that there was anything wrong, it was just they were objecting to a

slowdown. I was starting strip clearcuts and small clearcuts to try to find more

reliable methods for natural regeneration, but it was interpreted as the way future

cutting was proposed.”61 Silen did manage to implement the ladder system of roads

despite some initial friction with Ash, who regularly reported Silen’s activities to

the Regional Forester. Silen commonly complicated his sale layouts with requirements that carefully kept any activity out of the “leave” units between clearcuts.

Any salvage sales within those leave units required logging with mobile yarders

from very low-grade roads to minimize sedimentation problems. Silen recalls Ash

“was just, almost an enemy when I came here [laughing].” He claims that Ash,

however, was a grudging convert to Silen’s road design. Some years after he was

reassigned to Alaska, Ash returned to the experimental forest for a visit, and Silen

recalls the former district ranger told him, “You know, before I left, I began to see

some sense of what your program was going to be, but before that,’ he says, ‘I

was just against it. The things you were doing, we were already doing, and you

were trying to say you were doing them better, and we couldn’t see it.’” The

problem, Silen explains, was more in the timing than in the personalities involved:

59 December 1992 discussion with Roy Silen, 9-10.

60 December 1992 discussion with Roy Silen, 6-7.

61 Communication from Fred Swanson 28 January 1998; December 1992 discussion with

Roy Silen, 7.
40

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

“You can’t get something going in a year or so, it takes 3 or 4 [years], and by that

time, ... I think we had a superior road system in, and ... we had as much planning going into the leave units as we had going into the cut units, and we could

tell them, this was something that the National Forest didn’t do at all.”62

Silen struggled to reconcile his research goals with the limited resources

available for sale layouts on the experimental forest and with the federal guidelines

governing road design on national forests. A professional relationship of grudging,

mutual respect with the logging contractor on those sales (Savelich) helped his

cause. Silen argues that existing standards for roads on Region 6 in the early 1950s

lacked clear direction or coherence, and he concluded, “if I’m going to improve

sale layout and do it with minimum impact, these standards are in the way.”63 As a

research forester, Silen was able to reach beyond the limits of the usual standards,

but only by shouldering responsibility for constant oversight and close interaction

with Savelich, who was also initially resistant to the unusual design. Savelich, Silen

recalls, often left notes scrawled in a blaze on the side of a tree, saying things like,

“Roy, this is a fine place for a road, but I want no part of her.’” After a few years

of working on the experimental forest, however, he reportedly gained a grudging

respect for the design. Silen recalls a roadside conversation with Savelich’s

roadbuilder who reportedly confided, “You know, there was a guy that wanted

to propose a change in this curve that you put through here and in the next site,

... and [he said] ‘If we do it this way, we can save a lot of money,’ and Mike says,

‘Damn it. Everytime I change Roy’s plans it costs me money.’”64

Those few cases in which Silen successfully translated his research results at

the experimental forest into management practice in the Willamette National Forest

were direct products of his habit of working closely with forest managers and

logging contractors onsite at the experimental forest. Silen, for example, recounts

as a “success” one such encounter with Alan Winer, who did the timber cruising

for the Willamette National Forest. Silen intentionally planned timber sales on the

experimental forest so that the “most deteriorated stands” of old growth were in

the first sales. He adopted this strategy after noting that some old-growth stands

were virtually brush patches after many trees had fallen from butt rots, while other

62 Interview with Roy Silen 9 September 1996, 6-7. “Working plan for Blue River harvest

outings (Sale #1) [1950],” H.J. Andrews Files, File Box C, Storage Vault, FSL, Corvallis.

Andrews group interview 22 September 1997, 24-25.

63 Interview with Roy Silen 9 September 1996, 20-21.

64 Interview with Roy Silen 9 September 1996, 8-9.
41

Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

stands of similar age were “better preserved.” As Silen recalls, Winer complained

after one particularly stressful bout with Silen’s sale layout, “You know, that was

the damndest country to cruise. It was ... just so darn brushy. What’s going on?”

As Silen explained his reasoning to Winer, he recalls thinking, “Well, I’ll hear from

the higher-ups about this.” The standing rule at the time was to cut the concentrations of old growth to “pay for the roads.” Silen reasoned that 500-year-old stands

typically had only a few Douglas-fir stems per acre, and only the best-preserved

stands would still have enough standing fir to provide sustained yield late in the

rotation.65 The result of this strategy from the perspective of Winer, however, was

that it raised the cost of cruising the proposed sale areas. Silen expected a negative

reaction from Winer’s superiors, but as he recalls, the next thing he heard on the

issue from the Willamette National Forest supervisor’s office was a statement that

said, “we’re changing our policy ... henceforward, we will put the most deteriorated old growth into the cutting units.” Silen concludes, “I SOLD him on it!”66 The

key to this exchange was Silen’s ability to think on his feet under field conditions

and effectively communicate to Winer onsite at the experimental forest.

The incompatibility of long-term research goals and short-term harvest targets

left Silen and the experimental forest vulnerable to criticism. Silen, for example,

tried to adjust the design standards for logging roads so that roads located farther

from the main roads could be constructed at lower standards to better fit the

topography. This meant more remote roads could be narrower, with sharper

curves, and a shorter line-of-sight around corners. Silen made these changes on

an ad-hoc basis with onsite revisions to the road standards that governed sales

elsewhere in the district. District staff, however, were more concerned with

“getting the cut out” than with testing Silen’s theories about the long-term benefits

of a more flexible system of road standards. Silen observes, “the engineers didn’t

like it. I was always complaining that ... these road standards were forcing us to

do dumb things, ... and then they came back and said, ‘If you don’t lay them out

to our standards then we won’t maintain them.’”67

65 Communication from Roy Silen, 9 November 1999.

66 Interview with Roy Silen 9 September 1996, 18-19.

67 J. Herbert Stone succeeded H.J. Andrews as Regional Forester [R-6] in 1951 and

served in that capacity through 1967. Rakestraw identifies John Ray Bruckart, who

served through 1953 as forest supervisor for the Willamette National Forest, as “the last

of the old time supervisors whose skills came from the ‘University of Hard Knocks’

rather than formal education in forestry ...” Aufderheide replaced Bruckart in 1953, and

was succeeded by David R. Gibney, a graduate of the University of Minnesota, who

served as forest supervisor from 1959 through 1970. Rakestraw, 93-94. Interview with

Roy Silen 9 September 1996, 20.

District staff, however, were more

concerned with

“getting the cut

out” than with testing Silen’s theories

about the long-term

benefits of a more

flexible system of

road standards.
42

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

Silen’s effort to design roads that would minimize sedimentation in the Lookout

Creek drainage was closely related to watershed studies at the Blue River Experimental Forest. By the time logging began on Sale #1, in 1950, the experimental

forest was already dedicated to the study of watershed problems, with stream

gauges established on both Blue River and Lookout Creek. The Army Corps of

Engineers had also established Snow Laboratory facilities at various sites on and

around the experimental forest. After his initial sale failed to draw a bid, Silen redesigned Sale #1 to accommodate paired watershed studies on three small drainages on the lower portion of the experimental forest. His sale layout located roads,

landings, and cutting lines on those drainages to “demonstrate good practice from a

water management standpoint.” He began with the hypothesis that the sale layout

was the “greatest step in cutting down stream sedimentation. ...” His design

included detailed instructions on building methods to minimize cuts, disruption, and

soil movement, notably including a requirement that culvert installation be at least

partially completed before road building continued beyond any stream crossing.

This requirement provided at least a temporary road surface to support traffic

involved in logging the right-of-way, and it avoided the common alternative of

driving construction equipment and trucks directly through the streambed. Silen’s

reports also stressed the need to educate forest managers and loggers about culvert

design, landing placement, and alternatives to yarding logs down creek banks with

tractors.68

Silen’s efforts to minimize sedimentation in streams during logging operations

at the experimental forest were more successful than his efforts to communicate

those ideas to forest managers. He was proud of his strict guidelines for installing

culverts, but federal guidelines governing agency contracts prevented Forest Service managers from adopting his standards. Sale-layout officers at Region 6 did

support Silen in his efforts to draft sale contracts for the experimental forest

specifying strict procedures for operating near streams. Silen also worked directly

with District personnel and contractors to ensure strict enforcement of his requirement that contractors build a “barely passable,” temporary road at the top of each

cut, before clearing the right-of-way for each road. This temporary road allowed

crews to work down from the top of the cut, clearing the road right-of-way while

moving logs away from the stream to a cleared area higher on the slope. He recalls

that getting contractors to build roads in that fashion was hard, but he wrote it into

68 “Working plan for Blue River harvest outings (Sale #1) [1950],” 15; communication

from Roy Silen 9 November 1999.
43

Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

each timber-sale agreement, and he relied on support from Region 6 and district

staff to ensure the legal framework was accurate and enforced. He was pleased

with the results on the experimental forest, and he expected other forest managers

in Region 6 would adopt his ideas, but he concedes that for the most part, they did

not.69

Silen considered the road system an integral component of his research, but it

was also an infrastructure development that supported subsequent logging. The

result was a strikingly different landscape that broadened the range of potential

research activities on the forest. Silen was among the first to take advantage of the

emerging opportunities for research. He used wax pellets to measure temperatures

lethal to seedlings, in an effort to show how shade and heat influenced seedling

survival on staggered-setting clearcuts. He found that lethal temperatures were

common on south slopes and the valley bottom throughout the growing season,

but not on adjacent north slopes until early July. Silen experimented with timbersale layouts in different sizes and shapes of cutting units designed to support

studies of how shade and heat influenced seedling survival. He laid out a series of

clearcuts aligned in north-south strips, ranging in width from 200 to 400 feet, to

“see how they regenerated.” He recalls, “They ALL regenerated [new seedlings

were established, survived, and thrived]. That was never a problem.” He experimented with other, larger clearcuts where he could leave lines of trees about 180

feet apart so that the tops of the trees would shade the ground that was cleared,

limiting their exposure to about 4 hours of full sunlight. Those clearcuts also

regenerated. Larger clearcuts, however, he found to be “much slower in regenerating.” In one study of a clearcut 3 years after logging, Silen observed seedlings

were most numerous in the stand shadow along the south border of the units, and

seedlings were more numerous on unburned than burned seedbeds.70

Landscape Legacies of Early Research and Perceptions of New

Opportunities

Silen’s experimental clearcuts and road-building activities altered the landscape

in ways that attracted more people to the experimental forest. The road system

made the place more accessible than much of the surrounding national forest, and

the clearcuts offered opportunities to study the effects of logging in old-growth

69 Interview with Roy Silen 9 September 1996, 20-22.

70 Interview with Roy Silen 9 September 1996, 23; McPhail, “The Supplements to the

Station History, 1944 through 1953,” 15; interview with Roy Silen 9 September 1996,

22-23.
44

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

Douglas-fir. These changes made the place seem more relevant to human concerns

beyond the Lookout Creek drainage. Silen observes, “... once we got into this

large-scale cutting, we began to get cooperators and other guys coming in.” Two

scientists from the Oregon Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit were among the first

people to conduct fieldwork at the experimental forest on a regular basis. Don

Wustenberg and Jay Gashweiler worked on plots at the experimental forest during

summer and fall for most of the time Silen was in charge there. As a result of their

work, Silen observes, “we had a good line on what was going on from the wildlife

and fish standpoint.”71 Wildlife studies and recreation activities on the experimental

forest also led to innovative methods for describing the landscape at remote locations on the national forests. Silen recalls, for example, how a casual conversation

with Dick Wilson (a planner with the Willamette National Forest) during “our barely

successful deer hunt” prompted their efforts to draw topographic information

(contours and section lines) on a mosaic of air photos depicting the experimental

forest. Silen and Wilson hoped this method would reduce the cost of accurately

and efficiently planning timber sales, believing it would support research needs.

Silen argued in a subsequent memo to Victor Flach in the cartographic section of

the Willamette National Forest that this use of remote sensing could be used for

spotting clumps of old growth with airphotos, adding, “I am quite enthusiastic to

try the idea. ...”72

Early efforts to gather baseline information from ground observations also

refined the focus and mission of research at the Blue River Experimental Forest.

Precipitation records for the Lookout Creek drainage began in 1951, after Silen

installed three gauges, and he collected data and maintained the instruments until

he left the forest.73 The Army Corps of Engineers also escalated its activity on

neighboring drainages of the Blue River watershed during the early 1950s, building

a snow cabin just off the experimental forest. The cabin was built of aluminum

sheets packed in with mules and staffed during the winter with Army recruits

from a base cabin 7 miles farther up Blue River. Just staying alive in that cabin was

the primary challenge facing the Army recruits who staffed it during the 1950s. In

the next decade, Station crews working under the direction of Al Levno refitted the

cabin with bunks and a small wood stove that made it more habitable for crews

71 Interview with Roy Silen 9 September 1996, 5.

72 Memo 15 Oct 1951 from Roy R. Silen to Victor Flach, Cartographic Section.

Silviculture Mgmt. Folder, H.J. Andrews Files, File Box F, Storage Vault, FSL, Corvallis.

73 December 1992 discussion with Roy Silen, 14.
45

Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

gathering research data in winter.74 As data from Silen’s gauges and from the Snow

Laboratory began to accumulate at PNW Station, the roaded and logged areas of

the experimental forest attracted other scientists. The place gradually gained

recognition as a leading site for watershed studies, and this emphasis displaced

forest management as the primary focus of research.

The new facilities for watershed studies at the Blue River Experimental Forest

fulfilled the requirements of the establishing agreement and interagency cooperation

with the Army Corps of Engineers, just as Silen’s forest management studies

fulfilled the intra-agency agreement with Region 6. As PNW Station geared up to

address the watershed concerns that had contributed to establishing the experimental forest, E.G. [Jerry] Dunford returned to the Portland office in 1952 from the

Rocky Mountain Station “to appraise critical watershed problems in Oregon and

Washington.” He developed a problem analysis and implemented a program of

research, beginning with field studies already underway at the experimental forest.

The Station, which acquired responsibility for flood control research in Oregon

during this period, also recruited Donald R. Gedney and his colleague, a Dr. Hale,

both of whom transferred from the Northeastern Station to join Dunford in Portland in 1952. Gedney and Hale supervised installation of modified trapezoidal flume

stream gauges in the three small watersheds at the experimental forest that year.

Hale subsequently transferred to the Northeastern Station. Two years later, George

Meagher, an assistant director at PNW Station, directed Roy Silen to leave the

experimental forest in 1954 to join the forest genetics team in Corvallis, overruling

Silen’s vehement objections. The PNW Station, in other words, simultaneously

moved to reemphasize watershed studies and terminate Silen’s forest management studies at the experimental forest. Silen recalls, “Yeah, they wiped it out. The

program stopped.” When Silen asked Meagher to explain the reasoning behind this

administrative move, the assistant director informed him that, henceforth, the Blue

River Ranger District would handle timber sales, and watershed management would

continue as a separate program administered by PNW Station. The Station subsequently contracted with the United States Geological Survey to periodically service

stream gauges at the experimental forest, with financial support from Region 6.

The Station’s support for Silen’s legacy of forest management studies, however,

was not completely terminated. Dunford hired Jack Rothacher, formerly a district

ranger in the Pacific Northwest, to provide onsite support at the Andrews Forest.75

74 Andrews group interview 22 September 1997, 40-41.

75 Andrews group interview 22 September 1997, 16-17, 39; Cowlin, 314-315.

Watershed studies

displaced forest

management as the

primary focus of

research.
46

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

With Rothacher, the community of scientists connected with the experimental

forest had a solid connection with timber management concerns, even as they

branched out in new directions. That characteristic of adaptive innovation was a

critical factor that attracted a small nucleus of young scientists to the Lookout

Creek drainage, where they formed a close attachment to Rothacher in the late

1950s and formed the nucleus of an emergent group of cooperators and researchers centered on the experimental forest, whose association with each other and that

place gradually evolved into a long-term and sustained engagement over the next

few decades.

Community Legacies and Administrative Restructuring

The experimental forest attracted the attention of a more diverse group of scientists

and administrators by the mid 1950s, when the Station redefined the purpose of the

facility. That administrative move was both a product of evolving priorities at the

Station and a catalyst for change at the experimental forest. The Station substituted

a more remote, institutional framework for Silen’s personal connections with the

Lookout Creek drainage and with local people in the McKenzie valley. The transition began with a formal dedication ceremony at the site on 26 July 1953, when

PNW Station administrators renamed the experimental forest for H.J. Andrews,

their former colleague who had died 2 years before the ceremony. His wife and

daughter joined the 100 people attending the dedication. Before his assignment as

Regional Forester, Andrews had alternately worked with the PNW Station and with

Region 6. Among other accomplishments, he directed the early survey efforts that

brought Briegleb to Carpenter Saddle in the 1930s, and he served in various administrative capacities with PNW Station and as a forest manager in the national forests

of the Pacific Northwest. By the time of his death, Andrews personified an emerging tradition of close collaboration between scientists and managers in that region.

When the agency renamed the Blue River Experimental Forest in his honor, the

facility gained a name that linked the place with a dynamic personality well known

to scientists at PNW Station and to forest managers who worked in the surrounding national forest. Before his death, Andrews had very little direct involvement

with the facility at Lookout Creek, but after 1953, his name symbolized the intersection of people and ideas in that place.76 The previous name, Blue River Experimental Forest, had linked the place with a local geographic feature, and with the

76 “Blue River Experimental Forest: Representing the Old-Growth Douglas-Fir Type.”
47

Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

nearby town named for that river. The new name linked the place with a person

who, aside from putting his name to the interagency agreement establishing the

experimental forest, was most remarkable for his role in a series of administrative

decisions in a federal agency. The next step was to reassign away from the experimental forest the person who knew it best. Roy Silen reluctantly accepted reassignment in 1954, but he left behind a more humanized landscape than the one he first

encountered 5 years earlier.

The Station decision to redefine the purpose of the experimental forest and

reassign Silen to Corvallis had more to do with a remote bureaucracy than with the

local place or person, but it did shift the focus of the scientific community closer

to the Lookout Creek drainage. In the 1950s, people at the experimental forest did

not yet have any real control over the place or its community. The people who

defined priorities for the Andrews Forest had virtually no direct experience at the

place itself.

The reorganization originated with an internal review at PNW Station that was

prompted by a report from the Region 6 Investigative Committee. This committee,

which convened in 1952 for the first time in 6 years, identified “shortcomings” in

specific fields of work at the Station: forest influences, forest soils, forest genetics,

and the slash-disposal phase of forest management and fire research. Resources

were scarce for funding new research or hiring the additional scientists that would

be needed to address those concerns, but the Director of PNW Station initiated an

internal review of Station programs and work at field centers and noted a need for

more technical aides “to relieve professionals of low-grade tasks.” The resulting

report identified as a leading concern the inadequate physical facilities at researchcenter headquarters. The Station subsequently joined Region 6 in selecting and

organizing a Regional Forest Service Advisory Council, composed of leaders from

the Pacific Northwest who represented “major geographic, governmental, and

economic segments of the region,” and charged the council with addressing broad

policy issues.77

The Station reorganization was part of a broader restructuring in the Forest

Service that elevated the status of research in the agency. The transition was at

least partly due to a change of leadership at the top. Richard E. McArdle replaced

Lyle F. Watts in June 1952 as Chief of the Forest Service. Until his appointment as

Assistant Chief 8 years earlier, McArdle’s entire Forest Service career was in the

77 Cowlin, 307-308.
48

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

Research Branch. In his first year as Chief, McArdle directed a thorough revamping of the organizational and personnel structure at the major research Stations,

including PNW. An internal review and reorientation of research programs at the

Station, together with advisory group discussions, resulted in an administrative

decision to focus investigative efforts on “urgent problems.” The renaming and

dedication of the Andrews Forest was part of this broader reorganization.78

The changes at the Lookout Creek facility were just one part of a general

reassessment and restructuring of experimental forests and their function in the

revised mission of PNW Station. The immediate effects differed considerably from

site to site. The Station deactivated John Day Experimental Forest in 1954, for

example, only 5 years after it was originally established, and moved its headquarters buildings to Unity, Oregon. Cascade Head Experimental Forest, by contrast,

gained a boost from external funding in the same period. The Station negotiated a

cooperative agreement with Publishers’ Paper Company that supported road

building well in advance of actual logging at Cascade Head.79 In comparison with

these examples, the changes at the Andrews Forest were relatively modest, although they were certainly wrenching from Silen’s personal perspective. A “followup memorandum of understanding” reduced the required annual cut at the Andrews

Forest to its estimated “sustained-yield capacity,” or “roughly 7 MM bd ft” (an

amount consistent with Forest Service regulations governing other national forest

lands). Despite this change, timber production was still the top priority for the

Lookout Creek drainage, and the language of the agreement stipulated that any

reduction in the annual harvest must be “consistent with overall cutting plans for

the McKenzie Working Circle.” The memo further recognized that “actual volume

sold and cut may vary considerably from year to year.” Signatories to the agreement included, in chronological order, R.W. Cowlin, Director of PNW Station

(5 May 1953); J. Herbert Stone, Regional Forester (7 May 1953); and J.R.

Burchart, Willamette National Forest Supervisor (11 May 1953).80

This “follow-up” memorandum of understanding clarified the transfer of

authority for management activities at the experimental forest from PNW Station

78 Cowlin, 318-321.

79 McPhail, “The Supplements to the Station History, 1944 through 1953,” 8, 13-15.

80 “Follow-up Memorandum of Understanding [1953]...for the administration of the H.J.

Andrews Experimental Forest (formerly the Blue River Experimental Forest),” H.J.

Andrews Memorandum of Understanding Folder, H.J. Andrews Files, File Box F, Storage

Vault, FSL, Corvallis, 1.

A “follow-up memorandum” reduced

the required annual

cut to its estimated

“sustained-yield

capacity.”
49

Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

to the Willamette National Forest. Even if the Station had not reassigned Silen, he

would have lost the authority over sales that he previously wielded. The memo

noted concerns about preparing and administering timber sales on the Andrews

Forest, and it conceded that the original estimate of timber volume that could be

removed from the experimental forest was “too high.” Silen’s planned Sale 5 was

“fairly well along” at the time of this memo, which called for PNW Station to

complete the layout of that sale, and then hand it over to the Willamette for cruising, appraisal, advertising, and “all further administration.” Sale 6 was the first one

handled entirely by the Willamette National Forest. The 1953 memo emphasized

that full responsibility for administration of all future sales on the Andrews Forest

would rest with the Willamette. In a notable exception to this transfer of authority,

the three small, gauged watersheds near the mouth of Lookout Creek were excluded from the cutting commitment, and the memo of understanding specified that

Figure 8—Horace J. “Hoss” Andrews, for whom

the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest (formerly

the Blue River Experimental Forest) was named in

1953, directed the forest survey during the 1930s

that brought the Lookout Creek drainage to the

attention of forest researchers at the Pacific Northwest Research Station in Portland, Oregon.

Vince Puleo collection
50

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

they would be left undisturbed for 6 to 10 years to “complete their calibration

period.” After that period, the memo explained, the timing and volume of timber

harvests would be based “entirely on research needs.”81

Conclusion: The Andrews Forest as a Humanized Landscape

The dedication ceremony of 26 July 1953, in the context of the revised memorandum, was more than a simple renaming. In the preceding 5 years of planning and

management, Silen and his associates superimposed a management template of

built and planned roads and logging units. Those plans effectively subdivided the

forested slopes into discrete administrative parcels. The new agreement effectively

divided the same drainage into two large units with different management goals:

one 800-acre unit with three gauged watersheds would be managed for “research

needs,” and one larger unit including everything else would be managed for “sustained yield.” This management overlay was virtually invisible to casual observers.

The changes Silen had implemented were more obvious, including the system of

central access roads extending halfway up the drainage along McRae Creek and

Lookout Creek.82

The Forest Service endowed the Andrews Forest, in 1953, with an official, but

brief, history of human efforts to reconfigure that landscape since 1948. The

Station printed that history on a dedication program and distributed it to a wider

audience in the form of press releases. That narrative, as represented in promotional pamphlets and flyers, shaped the preconceptions people later brought to the

place. The original purpose of the experimental forest, according to this official

story, was “to serve as a pilot plant where the most promising timber growing and

watershed management practices could be tested on a commercial scale.” The

narrative described the place as “representative of the old-growth forests in the

Oregon Cascades.” Since 1948, the Station had transformed the area from a “near

wilderness reached by a single fire road, and a few ridgetop trails” to a managed

site with a forestry-logging plan and a permanent road system. As of 1953, the

narrative observed, “Sixteen miles of road have now been completed and the

mature timber harvested on 18 clear-cuttings.”83

81 “Follow-up Memorandum of Understanding [1953], 2.

82 Pacific Northwest Forest and Range Experiment Station, “Dedication of H.J. Andrews

Experimental Forest [Program Flyer and itinerary, 1953],” Andrews History File,

Records Vault, Corvallis FSL, PNW Station, U.S. Department of Agriculture.

83 “Dedication of H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest [1953].”
51

Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

Silen consciously distanced himself from activities at the experimental forest

after 1954, preferring to remember it the way it had been.84 Shortly before he

moved to Corvallis, he married Ethel Arthur in a ceremony at First Presbyterian

Church in Portland, and he left behind his bachelor days and the experimental

forest in almost the same breath.85 He notes that his understanding of the place was

“a very personal thing,” and he claims he knew “something on almost every acre

out there.”86 The place he remembered, however, was rapidly changing, largely

owing to his efforts. Others who later worked at the forest could talk to Silen about

what he remembered, but the landscape they saw was more humanized than the

one he recalled as a “forest primeval.” Fragments of Silen’s life and work at the

experimental forest lingered on in the scientific papers and reports that he and his

associates produced, and he left a legacy of physical changes to the landscape and

a tradition of principled, applied research that later supported rediscovery and

reacquaintance with the place. Silen continued his career with the Forest Service in

Corvallis for nearly 50 years, sharing his memories of the forest that was with

scientists exploring the potential of forests that would be.

84 Interview with Roy Silen 9 September 1996, 13.

85 McPhail, “The Supplements to the Station History, 1944 through 1953,” [1953].

86 Interview with Roy Silen 9 September 1996, 16.

His understanding

of the place was

“a very personal

thing.”
52

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687
53

Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

Chapter Two: Envisioning Long-Term Research and

Innovative Science, 1955–1964

The institutional authority that ended Silen’s role at the H.J. Andrews Experiment

Forest (Andrews Forest) in the mid 1950s also accelerated the pace of change

on the Lookout Creek drainage through the next decade. By 1953, Silen and his

assistant, Hank Gratkowski, located and marked more than 72 miles of road and

about 580 log-gathering points (landings) on the landscape. Only a small fraction

of the facilities Silen planned were built before he left the next year, but by 1956,

more than 30 miles of all-weather, gravel-surfaced road were completed. In 1959,

the Forest Service claimed, in a brochure designed to attract more scientists to the

experimental forest, that the original road design was intended “to provide access

to a generous variety of study areas,” even though Silen recalls that his primary

design consideration was simply to “get the cut out” with “least damage to the

resource.” In that brochure, Pacific Northwest Research Station (PNW Station)

foresters Jack Rothacher and Carl Berntsen noted that development work at the

Andrews Forest had produced a road density on the Lookout Creek drainage of

4.97 miles of road per square mile by 1959, or about 115 linear miles of roadway

on those 23 square miles of the Willamette National Forest that were designated as

the experimental forest. The density of roads for the entire 1.7 million acres of the

Willamette National Forest, by contrast, increased from only 0.36 miles of road per

square mile in 1954 to 1.42 miles of road per square mile by 1970. For most of the

20th century after 1950, this drainage was one of the most road-accessible on the

Willamette National Forest. Designs for roads and timber sales initially followed

Silen’s plan for the drainage, but he notes that the district ranger’s office made

many changes after he left. Regardless of intent, the reality of roads and clearcuts

began to attract more people to the place because they provided access and opportunity to those interested in studying the effects of clearcuts in an old-growth

setting, as well as many other topics.1

The accelerated pace of road building and clearcutting on the Andrews Forest during the 1950s and 1960s highlighted the difference between management

priorities and research goals for the drainage. As a result, conflicts often broke

into the open, and the division of authority for reconciling those differences caused

1

 Berntsen and Rothacher, “A Guide to the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest,” 3-4.

Rakestraw, iv-vii, 101.
54

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

conflict between district staff and Station scientists at the facility. The Station’s role

at the Andrews Forest was sharply diminished after 1953 under the terms of the

revised memorandum of understanding approved that year. The agreement assigned

the district ranger clear authority and responsibility for administering Forest Service

policy on the experimental forest. Station interests had no direct representative at

Blue River for the first 3 years after 1954, when the district ranger directly managed the experimental forest as part of the McKenzie Bridge Ranger District.

Beginning in 1956, the newly created Blue River Ranger District assumed direct

responsibility for managing the Andrews Forest. Station authority over the place,

thereafter, devolved upon a PNW scientist-administrator at the Corvallis center,

and beginning in 1957, a research forester-in-residence at Blue River also monitored field projects at the experimental forest for the Station. The person who filled

this latter position, initially Jack Rothacher, was also a local liaison linking research

people with the district office in Blue River. Rothacher lived on the compound of

the Blue River Ranger District and dealt directly with District Ranger Ed Anderson,

who moved from his position as district ranger at McKenzie Bridge to become the

first district ranger at Blue River. Rothacher could not represent research interest

on equal terms with Anderson because he was only a site manager, not the responsible authority representing the PNW Station interest in the Andrews Forest.

Relations with Anderson were somewhat strained, but Rothacher and his wife,

Jean, lived on the compound next door to Assistant District Ranger Mike Kerrick.

Despite their different roles at the experimental forest, Kerrick, Rothacher, and

their families became close friends, and that friendship helped Rothacher cope

with an often disinterested or dismissive district ranger.2

 By the end of the 1960s,

Rothacher and Kerrick were part of an established Andrews group tradition of

multiple leadership roles that built on informal paths of communication strengthened through face-to-face contact and daily life in the vicinity of the Andrews

Forest. That tradition also involved formal structures of authority with distinct roles

for Station and district staff. Those who built personal and professional networks

around this place, were willing to work around unresolved tensions and irresolvable

differences. In doing so, they constantly tried to balance conflicting ideals and

multiple perceptions of opportunity on the Lookout Creek drainage.

2

 Interview with Ed Anderson and Mike Kerrick by Max Geier on 28 August 1996 at

Anderson’s home in Springfield, OR, 1; interview with Jean Rothacher by Max G. Geier

at her Corvallis, OR, residence on 29 August 1997, 1; interview with Mike Kerrick by

Max Geier at Kerrick’s home near Springfield, OR, on 28 August 1996, 13-14.
55

Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

Watersheds research was one of the more obvious opportunities that scientists

perceived at the Andrews Forest in the 1950s and 1960s. Urban concerns about

how best to manage the Bull Run watershed that supplied Portland’s water encouraged PNW Station leaders to make watersheds research the leading priority at the

Andrews Forest. Scientists could readily study apparent linkages between oldgrowth conditions and watershed quality on this road-accessible drainage, and after

the reorganization of 1953, the three lower watersheds draining into Lookout Creek

were more fully under the control of PNW Station than the rest of the experimental

forest. Station scientists who established study plots in this area could be relatively

confident that management activities would not disrupt their plots. Installation of

research flumes on the three small watersheds during this period further encouraged such studies. By the early 1960s, forest scientists, like the society in which

they lived, relied on urban services and amenities. Urban outlooks also influenced

Oregon State College and other research institutions that expanded funding and

facilities for laboratory-based research. By comparison, relatively fewer funds and

other resources were available to support facilities and programs for field research,

including the experimental forests and natural areas.

Figure 9—Jack Rothacher (right) who succeeded Roy Silen as

Pacific Northwest Research Station research forester-in-charge

at the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest, lived with his wife

Jean Rothacher (2nd from left) at the Blue River Ranger

District compound where their closest daily interactions were

with district employees and their families. In this 1958 photo

by Jack Rothacher, family friend Marty Fox and her children

pose with the Rothachers.
56

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

As the cost of building and staffing laboratories escalated, some administrators at

PNW Station proposed closing the Andrews Forest and other field facilities in

the region. Two scientists already accustomed to working with Rothacher at Blue

River, however, promoted the Andrews Forest to their colleagues as an “outdoor

laboratory.” These scientists were Ted Dyrness and Jerry Franklin; together,

they cultivated their professional and personal contacts to build the nucleus of an

“Andrews group” at Oregon State University in Corvallis. As part of that effort,

they portrayed the Andrews Forest as a valuable and scarce resource that should be

used to support studies that would continue for a long time. The coincidental timing

in 1964 of a major flood in the Willamette River basin and the global startup of the

International Biological Programme (IBP) provided unexpected opportunities that

Dyrness and Franklin quickly exploited in an effort to establish the Andrews Forest

as a long-term resource.

Leadership Traditions of Vision and Detail

The joint efforts of Franklin and Dyrness followed a pattern established a decade

earlier by Silen and Gratkowski. Gratkowski’s penchant for rigorously focused,

detailed planning and by-the-book implementation balanced Silen’s tendency to

adapt his plans to problems or concerns that arose along the way. Silen struggled

to translate his broadly defined logging plan into daily assignments and goals for

Gratkowski, who worked independently of Silen for prolonged periods in the field.3

Russ Mitchell, who worked one summer as a field assistant with both men, argues

that they had different but complementary personalities. Both men were schooled

in forestry at Yale University, but aside from that common link, they had little else

in common. Silen, a bachelor, was born in Oregon and trained at Oregon State

College before he went to New England as a graduate student, while Gratkowski

was a newly relocated family man from Pennsylvania when he first began working

at the Andrews Forest in 1951.4 Mitchell grew up near Pacific University in Forest

Grove, Oregon, and later graduated from Syracuse University in New York. He

argues that the academic culture of forestry schools in Oregon during the 1940s

and 1950s was less interdisciplinary than comparable programs at eastern schools

3

 Cowlin, 300-301; McPhail, “The Supplements to the Station History, 1944 through

1953.”

4

 Interview with Russ Mitchell by Max G. Geier on 20 September 1996 at Mitchell’s

office in the Bend FSL, 15-16, 21-23.

Ted Dyrness and

Jerry Franklin;

cultivated their

professional and

personal contacts to

build the nucleus of

an “Andrews group.”
57

Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

like Yale or Syracuse. Silen learned applied forestry at Oregon State College and

combined it with his native understanding of timber communities in the same

region. His native comfort with folks in McKenzie Bridge helped him work with

local timber contractors and forest managers.

As a recent migrant to the Pacific Northwest, Gratkowski was less interested

in going along with local wisdom in Blue River. According to Mitchell, he was also

a “very organized” and “very intense guy” who had a reputation for getting “very

upset” when things didn’t go the way he planned. By contrast, Mitchell observes,

Silen tended to plan broadly and make up his mind about the details as he went

along. That approach, Mitchell recalls, “just used to drive Hank [Gratkowski]

crazy,” though it was a good fit with the shoestring budget the Station had allocated for large-scale work at the Andrews Forest. Silen’s folksy approach tempered Gratkowski’s “Old World style” and eased otherwise tense relations with

district staff and loggers. Gratkowski’s perfectionism, meanwhile, was a systematic counterweight to Silen’s pragmatism.5

 This balanced blend of broad planning,

pragmatic adaptation, and rigorous attention to the details of good science is an

early example of the Andrews group’s formula for successful and productive

innovation.

An ability to balance reverence for the landscape with curiosity and good fun

is an important, second component of the Andrews group’s formula for success.

People differed in the way they balanced fun and reverence, however. In the early

years at the experimental forest, for example, Silen demonstrated more emotional

attachment to the Andrews Forest than did Gratkowski or Mitchell. Mitchell recalls

how he and Gratkowski once amused themselves during a midday break by pushing boulders off a ridge and watching them roll downhill. At the bottom of the

slope, the rocks crashed into a stand of Douglas-fir saplings, seriously damaging

the young trees. When Silen chanced upon the scene a few weeks later, Mitchell

recalls, “He was really mad that somebody would go scarring up those trees with

these damn rocks.” In a second example, Mitchell and Gratkowski rolled cable

spools from logging sites down one of Silen’s experimental clearcuts on a long,

downhill slope. Mitchell recalls that the heavy, Volkswagen-size spools bounced

as high as 100 feet in the air when they hit the trees at the bottom: “It just popped

out of there, popped clear out of the damn trees!” Even though Mitchell claims it

was “fun” to send those spools bouncing down the slope, he and Gratkowski were

5

 Russ Mitchell, 4-5, 11-16
58

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

careful not to tell Silen about either incident. Mitchell observes, however, that they

hadn’t given a second thought to the damage they were causing.6

Silen and Gratkowski eventually went their separate ways at PNW Station in

1954,7

 but the pattern of complementary pairs leading research, as well as the

subordination of research to management goals, continued at the Andrews Forest. After 1954, Carl Berntsen and Bob Ruth assumed responsibility for managing

the experimental forest. Berntsen previously was Gratkowski’s counterpart, and

Bob Ruth was Silen’s counterpart at Cascade Head Experimental Forest. When

Aufderheide moved on to become forest supervisor at the Willamette National

Forest, Ruth replaced him as Silen’s superior at the Western Research Center.8

Unlike Silen and Gratkowski, both Berntsen and Ruth worked in Corvallis and

were only remotely involved with day-to-day events at the Andrews Forest. Under

the terms of the revised agreement, moreover, their input was subordinate to the

district ranger’s. Even without that constraint, Berntsen and Ruth did not demonstrate a high degree of personal attachment to the landscape or traditions of research before or after they assumed control over the Andrews Forest. Silen

observes that Ruth implemented a system of roads and clearcuts at the Cascade

Head facility that were “nothing like” the system he himself established at the

Andrews. He further notes that Berntsen and Ruth mostly pulled the plug on the

forest management research that he and Gratkowski initiated. Ruth and Berntsen,

for example, recruited Boy Scout volunteers who replanted virtually all of the

clearcuts Silen designed to study natural regeneration. Exceptions included some

east-west strips where naturally regenerating seedlings were “so thick the scouts

couldn’t fight their way through to plant new seedlings.” It was a period, Silen

concludes, “... when the [Blue River Ranger] District took over the activity on the

forest.”9

6

 Interview with Russ Mitchell, 13-14.

7

 Gratkowski, who initiated preliminary studies of brush control at the Andrews in the

early 1950s, secured a reappointment to the PNW Station lab at Roseburg, where he

continued his studies of brush control and herbicides on the South Umpqua Experimental

Forest, established in 1951; interview with Russ Mitchell, 16; Andrews group interview

22 September 1997, 16-17; Cowlin, 300-301.

8

 McPhail, “The Supplements to the Station History, 1944 through 1953”; Cowlin, 257-

258; interview with Roy Silen, 4. Andrews group interview 22 September 1997, 9.

9

 Andrews group interview 22 September 1997, 16-17.
59

Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

Management Priorities and Distant Relations With Research

Forest managers with the Willamette National Forest operated under a different

mandate than scientists with PNW Station. One important difference in the mid

1950s was the new Forest Supervisor, Robert Aufderheide, who made community

outreach a leading priority on the Willamette. District Ranger Anderson recalls that

Aufderheide initially told him his “primary job” at Blue River was to “restore

confidence in the Forest Service by people in the McKenzie River area.” Local

residents lacked confidence in the agency and accused district staff of favoritism in

handling timber sales. Anderson responded with public-outreach programs that

placed officers from the Blue River Ranger District in every class from elementary

through secondary schools in the local school district. He hired high school students for weekend tree planting and adjusted work schedules on the district to

accommodate local school schedules. Anderson considers the effort a success,

observing that by the time he left the district, “We were pretty well known and

liked.”10

The Willamette National Forest public relations effort boosted local support

for forest managers in Blue River, while scientists with PNW Station in Blue River

focused more narrowly on their research with less concern for how it related to

local concerns. As a result, local people were virtually unaware of the work at the

experimental forest, and research began to focus on more basic questions. Research at the Andrews Forest had never been closely relevant to the immediate

concerns of local people in the towns of Blue River and McKenzie Bridge, but

community ties were an important part of Silen’s early success with applied

studies. Silen did devote considerable personal time to cultivating social connections with local residents, but he and his research colleagues intended their work

for other professionals and forest managers, not for local folks. He tried to answer

two broad questions: “How does nature work? and “How can we use that information?11 These two questions summarize the distinction between basic and applied

research in the Andrews group. Scientists in this research community often argue

that their work addresses both of these components, as compared with other

research centers that often emphasize either basic or applied research at the expense of the other.

10 As quoted in Rakestraw, 95.

11 Interview with Roy Silen, 31.

Local people were

virtually unaware

of the work at the

experimental forest.
60

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

The distinction between basic and applied research, however, made little

difference to forest managers like Anderson, who recalls that for him, the work

at the Andrews Forest was a distraction, at best, from more pressing management

concerns. He draws a much sharper line than scientists usually use to distinguish

between research that produces findings managers can use, and research of merely

academic interest. More often, Anderson argues, research created problems for

himself and other forest managers. As an example, he recalls how University of

Oregon Professor Carl Onthank publicly pressured him to leave all the snags in

place on sites slated for clearcut logging during the 1950s. That public pressure,

Anderson claims, interfered with his authority to manage the forest in a professional manner. In the end, Anderson had little use for research at the Andrews

Forest, basic or otherwise. He claims he had virtually no direct contact with scientists working at the facility, observing, “I was only there once a year anyway.”12

Anderson’s arms-length approach to activities on the experimental forest

underscores the cultural distance between Research foresters and National Forest

12 Interview with Ed Anderson and Mike Kerrick, 5-7.

Figure 10—An outing to Carpenter Mountain Lookout was often a family event for Forest Service

employees who lived with their families at the Blue River Ranger District compound in Blue River.

Here, District Ranger Ed Anderson poses for a self-portrait with Jim Marshall (lookout) and

Anderson’s son, Mike, and daughter, Ginna in August 1956.
61

Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest
62

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

System managers during the 1950s. The Andrews Forest figured prominently in the

newly created and relatively small Blue River Ranger District, recently carved out

of the much larger Mackenzie District, and the establishing agreement called for

a disproportionate amount of the district’s allowable cut from the Blue River drainage to be taken from the experimental forest, but Anderson was pointedly dismissive toward that administrative unit. Anderson claims that Station scientists at the

Andrews Forest offered little of interest to forest managers concerned with meeting

the administrative mandates of the 1950s. One reason for the lack of interest, he

suggests, was the perception that Research was reinventing the wheel: “We [the

NFS] used to do studies for 30 to 50 years. And we could go in there and tell

you, if this was in a wild fire, it would burn up.” Kerrick, who became district

ranger at Blue River in 1967, agrees with his predecessor on this issue. Noting

that some scientists had proposed to study the effects of fire on succession, he

observes, “ALL of this forest came in that way. I mean, yeah, it’s vast laboratories

that already exist out there. That, in fact, HAS been studied.” Anderson concludes,

moreover, that the necessary research was already done: “They’re in books, they

could go to the library and find all the answers they want.”13

Anderson’s tenure at the ranger district was about as long as Silen’s with

the Blue River Experimental Forest, and his effects on community traditions and

the physical landscape were arguably as important. By the time Anderson left the

district in January 1960 to take a position on the Malheur National Forest, the scale

and pace of cutting activities at the Andrews Forest had expanded dramatically over

Silen’s last year in charge. Scientists from PNW Station and other agencies who

established studies at the experimental forest had to adapt to the dismissive attitude

of district staff and to the rapid pace of change at the research facility. Anderson,

as the founding administrator of the Blue River Ranger District, set the tone for

interactions between district staff and scientists working at the site. Anderson’s

description of Jay Gashwiler epitomizes that attitude. He describes Gashwiler, who

worked with Oregon Fish and Wildlife on pioneering studies at the Andrews Forest

during the 1950s and 1960, as nothing more than a grown man who talked to mice:

“He was a mice guy. I looked one day and ... he’d been talking to the mice, and he

was on a first-name basis with all the mice. I mean, he’d catch the same mouse 3

or 4 or 5 times, in the same traps. [chuckles] Then he traveled on.”14

13 Interview with Ed Anderson and Mike Kerrick, 9-10.

14 Interview with Ed Anderson and Mike Kerrick, 1.
63

Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

Gashwiler’s work at the Andrews, it should be noted, resulted in some 15

publications between 1959 and 1977, including studies of small mammals, the

harlequin duck (Histrionicus histrionicus), Cooper’s chipmunks (Eutamias

townsendi cooperi), the Townsend chipmunk (Eutamias townsendi), the deer

mouse (Peromyscus maniculatus), the California red-backed vole (Clethrionomys

occidentalis), pine siskins, seed survival and abundance, plant and mammal

changes on clearcuts, and seedling mortality. Dyrness notes that Gashwiler’s

approach to studying natural regeneration in relation to small mammals and birds

was to ask the question, “What are the most important factors of limiting sufficient

seed for natural regeneration?” In an effort to answer that question, Gashwiler

established plots with fenced-in areas designed to exclude small mammals, but not

birds. In contrast to Anderson’s ridicule of Gashwiler and his work, Dyrness

emphasizes Gashwiler’s attention to the standards of rigorous scientific methods

and hypothesis testing.15

Kerrick, Anderson’s assistant district ranger, gradually began to support closer

involvement with research scientists at the Andrews Forest. He recalls, for example, that studies of erosion after logging on the Andrews Forest helped the

Forest Service answer some of its critics during the French Pete controversy of

the late 1950s and early 1960s. Mostly, he observes, the information from the

Andrews Forest tended to support Forest Service practices and discredit the

arguments protestors presented in that case. From his viewpoint, “They [the

protestors] had this different view of how the national forest should be managed,

and ... they didn’t rely on good information in that regard. I mean, they were just

very interested in not having any more harvest. Period.”16

Kerrick’s gradual conversion was important because, over the course of a

career with the Forest Service that stretched across five decades, he looped in and

out of four different positions that linked him with the Andrews Forest. In his early

days along the McKenzie in 1952, he assisted Silen as a seasonal student worker

from the University of Minnesota. Two years after completing his forest management degree, he returned as the first assistant Anderson hired to help him set up

the new ranger district, staying on until 1959. He returned in 1967 as the new

15 Arthur McKee, Gary M. Stonedahl, Jerry F. Franklin, and Frederick J. Swanson,

comps., Research Publications of the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest, Cascade Range,

Oregon, 1948 to 1986 (Portland, OR: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service,

Pacific Northwest Research Station. Gen. Tech. Rep. PNW-201, 1987), 16-17; interview

with Ted Dyrness by Max Geier on 11 September 1996 at Dryness’ office at the

Corvallis FSL as transcribed by Jeff Fourier, 2-3.

16 Interview with Ed Anderson and Mike Kerrick, 8-9.

Kerrick’s gradual

conversion was

important because,

across five decades,

he looped in and out

of four different

positions that linked

him with the

Andrews Forest.
64

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

district ranger at Blue River, and he became more broadly responsible for the

Andrews Forest, among his many other responsibilities as forest supervisor for

the Willamette National Forest from the early 1980s through the early 1990s.

Kerrick’s personal and professional experience as Anderson’s protégé and as

Rothacher’s personal friend and neighbor placed him squarely between two conflicting perspectives on the Andrews Forest. His personal ties with Rothacher and

his love for the region helped Kerrick reconcile those perspectives. He notes, “I fell

in love with Oregon when I first came out. I was blown over by the size of the

trees and the opportunities to practice forestry here.” He also credits the professional ethics he learned in the forestry program at the University of Minnesota for

his evolving appreciation for the value of research efforts at the Andrews Forest.

The University of Minnesota program, he notes, was “... focused a lot on ...

preparing you for learning more. You know, the learning process didn’t stop the

day you got your degree.”17

17 Interview with Mike Kerrick, 13-14, 21-22.

Figure 11—As evident in this 1950s photo, the Blue River Ranger District

compound was an institutional setting with limited amenities for the Forest

Service families who lived there. The Rothachers regularly drove into Eugene,

nearly 2 hours away by mountain highway, for entertainment and socializing.
65

Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

Kerrick is an example of a recurring pattern of people whose lives intersected at the

Andrews Forest, then branched away only to circle back to the place later in their

careers. In Kerrick’s case, he was drawn to the Willamette National Forest because

of his interest in Oregon, not because of any interest in building bridges between

research and management at the experimental forest: “... the Andrews didn’t have

that reputation in those days.” If anything, he observes, the place was more known

for the animosity between district staff and Station scientists. He argues, however,

that animosity was not rooted in personal conflict between researchers and managers but simply resulted from larger, uncontrollable forces: “Hell, they weren’t

stupid. ... they [just] didn’t have all the information that they needed ... and that’s

the way the world is.”18

Pacific Northwest Research Station and Management Priorities

on the Andrews Forest

On the surface, the outlook for amicable cooperation between researchers and

forest managers at Blue River seemed promising when Jack Rothacher started

working at the Andrews in 1957. Rothacher moved from a promising career in

forest management to accept the position with PNW Station in the Research

Branch of the Forest Service. That move was not unlike H.J. Andrews’ similar

move in earlier years. Unlike Andrews, however, he never returned to the National

Forest System. His move was more of a conversion experience, and like many

converts, he became fiercely loyal to his new faith. Rothacher came to the experimental forest directly from his previous position as district ranger at Steamboat,

Oregon, on the North Umpqua. An avid outdoorsman, he was also a recent convert

to married life. He met his wife, Jean, 2 years earlier during a hiking expedition in

the mountains near Shelton, Washington. They lived in that town until Jack secured

a Forest Service position as district ranger at Steamboat. Jean recalls, “I don’t think

he liked being a ranger very much. He didn’t like ... being responsible for people

who were not responsible.” Rothacher’s friend, Jerry Dunford, who headed the

watersheds program at PNW Station in Portland, convinced him to accept the

position at the Andrews Forest, and Jean recalls Jack took it “because he liked the

idea of ... [research forestry] better than being in the regular Forest Service and

being a ranger.” He and Jean moved to their residence on the district compound

sight-unseen, largely on Dunford’s advice.19

18 Interview with Mike Kerrick, 25-26.

19 Interview with Ed Anderson and Mike Kerrick, 1; interview with Jean Rothacher, 1-2.
66

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

Rothacher arrived during the first full year of operations for the Blue River

District and for the new District Ranger, and his prospects looked bright. He was

relatively oblivious to the earlier tension between Silen and forest managers at the

district, and the newness of the physical setting and administrative framework

encouraged an optimistic outlook. These circumstances suggested strong potential

for a fresh start for the experimental forest and for the Rothachers. Jean Rothacher

recalls that the forest and general locale made a good first impression when she

arrived in 1957: “I thought it was a lot neater than the North Umpqua road which

went into Roseburg. A little farther away, a little less civilized. But ... our main

town for shopping was Eugene. The roads were better kept and ... you were

getting into the recreational areas. ... The houses were brand new.”20

The Rothachers were culturally distant from the local community, its traditions,

and their predecessors at the Andrews Forest, and they arrived at a time when the

Blue River District Ranger had gained new authority over the place. The PNW

Station’s interests, priorities, and authority at the Andrews Forest were severely

curtailed. In earlier years, programs of study at the experimental forest included a

wildlife unit, forest management research, and the hydrology group. Of the three,

the only one that survived after Silen’s departure was the hydrology group, and

that was the focus of Rothacher’s assignment.21 The new administrative boundaries separating research personnel from day-to-day management decisions at the

Andrews Forest were clearly evident. When Dick Koenig, of the Blue River District, asked Bob Ruth, of PNW Station, to obtain cruise data for the Andrews

from Roy Silen, for example, Bob Ruth responded to that request with a curt note:

“Roy does not have any cruise data for the Andrews. All data is in the ranger station files. ... ”22 Rothacher began his daily responsibilities in this climate of a

present disengaged from the recent past, and his work centered on the watershed

program that was unquestionably within the purview of his authority from PNW

Station.

20 Interview with Jean Rothacher and Ted Dyrness, 1-2; “Follow-up Memorandum of

Understanding [1953],” 1-2.

21 Andrews group interview 22 September 1997, 46.

22 Memo 8 Aug 1955 from Robert H. Ruth, Willamette Research Center, to Dick

Koenig, Silviculture Mgmt. Folder, File Box F, H.J. Andrews Files, Storage Vault, FSL,

Corvallis, OR.
67

Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

Watersheds Research and Urban Priorities for the Andrews

Forest

Watershed management research at PNW Station was elevated to full divisional

status in 1955 amidst a flurry of public demands for greater attention to the role

of forests in managing municipal watersheds. The first chief of the new division,

Jerry Dunford, worked to coordinate the Station’s various watershed studies, and

the Station supported those efforts with a small, but dedicated budget line, thus

elevating the visibility of those studies within the agency and in the public eye. In

November 1955, the Station entered into an agreement with the City of Portland

Water Bureau to establish a jointly funded study on the Bull Run drainage of the

municipal watershed. This agreement called for a 20-year study of watershed management conditions and problems “with the objective of determining an informed

and sound basis for management of this 102-square-mile drainage.” Specific goals

included a charge to explore the possibility of increasing water supply by cutting

the old-growth stand, and to determine methods of maintaining water quality.23

City commissioners entered into the Bull Run watershed study at the urging of

Marshall Dana, who was the former editor of the Oregon Journal and an official

of U.S. National Bank. Dana, who visited the experimental forest with Regional

Forester Herbert Stone in the 1950s, had long been a strong supporter of forest

resource “conservation and utilization” efforts. By encouraging the 1955 agreement, Dana facilitated PNW Station’s efforts to enhance its visibility and reputation among conservationists in Portland and in Oregon, while also advancing the

Station’s emphasis on applied research.24 Even before this agreement was approved, however, the Andrews Forest was well positioned as a site for exploring

the relation between old-growth timber and watershed management.

Watershed management studies at the Andrews began with the original working

plan, which focused on “three comparable side drainages on the south side of

Lookout Creek ... located between the experimental forest boundary and the end of

the access road.” If Silen’s initial, failed sale had gone forward, the working plan

observes, two of these watersheds “would have been spoiled for study purposes as

they have to be calibrated for about seven years before cutting starts.” The original

sales plan included a road into the first drainage “about where it started up steeply

23 The Bull Run reserve was established in 1892, excluding all human use, including

livestock grazing from the watershed; Cowlin, 349-350.

24 Andrews group interview 22 September 1997, 42; Cowlin, 350-351.

Watershed management studies

focused on “three

comparable side

drainages.”
68

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

and curved back.” From there, the road would have wound around the point into

the second watershed and, finally, risen up to the landings on the third watershed.

By the time Silen redesigned the logging plan for the area, the access road was

completed farther into the drainage, and he designed a “very easy road” into the

same area that came in at midlevel and eliminated most of the design problems in

his original plan.25 In 1952, Dunford, who had recently returned to PNW Station

from a 7-year stint directing watershed studies at the Southeastern Station, directed

Hale and Gedney to supervise installation of modified trapezoidal flume stream

gauges on the three small watersheds at Blue River Experimental Forest.26

Dunford’s experience at the Southeastern Station linked the Andrews Forest

into state-of-the art watersheds research. Dunford worked with ecologists who

pioneered watershed research at the Coweeta Hydrologic Laboratory, including

Charles R. Hursh, who founded the Coweeta facility and still directed it during

Dunford’s time there. Dunford’s move from Coweeta to direct watershed studies

at the Andrews Forest in the early 1950s initiated a long chain of interaction among

scientists at these two sites for forest hydrology research. By 1959, scientists and

technicians working for Dunford at the Andrews Forest produced continuous

records providing data about streamflow “under natural conditions.” Analysis of

those data revealed peak flows of “as much as 140 cubic feet per second per

square mile” in December and January. Streamflow data for September was

dramatically less, approaching barely 0.1 cubic foot per second per square mile.27

The study plan for the watersheds program that Hale and Gedney installed at

the Andrews Forest called for calibrating and then clearcut-logging Watershed 1

with a skyline system that required no roads across the drainage; leaving Watershed 2 undisturbed for comparative, “control” purposes; and logging Watershed

3 “in the conventional manner [small clearcuts], with normal road construction.”

They laid out small plots on each drainage to study key sources of erosion, with

the goal of minimizing soil movement from those sources. Debris basins installed

25 December 1992 discussion with Roy Silen, 22; “Working Plan for Blue River harvest

outings (Sale 1) [1950]” File Box C, H.J. Andrews Files, Storage Vault, FSL, Corvallis,

OR, 2.

26 W.T. Swank, J.L. Meyer, and D.A. Crossley, Jr., “Long-Term Ecological Research:

Coweeta History and Perspectives,” (typescript from Wayne Swank, 22 August 1997),

1-7.

27 Andrews group interview, 16-17, 39. Cowlin, 253-254, 314-315.
69

Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

at lower ends of the three small watersheds were designed for “measuring stream

bedloads.” Debris accumulation in these basins, for the 3-year period of 1956-59,

averaged 1.5 cubic feet of sediment per acre of drainage.28

Preliminary results from early watersheds research at the Andrews Forest

seemed to support the premise that logging old-growth timber on the Bull Run

reserve would increase water production, but Station scientists also stressed the

need to study the broader implications of this management activity. The Station’s

1959 brochure and bibliography also marketed the experimental forest as a site

available for those kinds of studies. In this guide to the Andrews, Rothacher and

Berntsen reported, “... old-growth Douglas-fir forests prevent a sizeable proportion of rainfall from reaching the ground. Apparently, the forest intercepts about

a quarter of the gross rainfall during summer and early fall, and about 15 percent

during the wetter part of the year.” The report noted that cooperative studies of

the effects of timber harvesting on fish and wildlife were underway in 1959 by the

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Oregon Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit.

28 Berntsen and Rothacher, A Guide to the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest, 15-16.

Figure 12—From left to right: Jerry Dunford, Pacific Northwest Research Station

(PNW) watershed assistant director; Jack Rothacher, PNW watershed project leader;

Ted Dyrness, PNW soil scientist; and Dick Fredriksen, PNW soil scientist having

lunch by the old swimming hole on Lookout Creek just above WS 3 confluence in

August 1963.
70

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

From Gashwiler’s studies of small-animal populations before, during, and after

logging, and in relation to seed fall, this guide concluded, “... apparently, chipmunks and red-backed mice do not like logged or burned units, and quickly move

into green timber. ... deer mice continue to live in logged units and show signs of

population increase.” Studies of fish and large game animals by the Oregon Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit showed “a noticeable increase in black-tailed deer

populations since logging began.” Studies of native fish indicated limited home

ranges for their life-cycles, and indicated sedimentation “temporarily reduced the

trout population in small streams. ...”29

Urban Growth as a Stimulus for Research and Cooperative Effort

at the Andrews Forest

The PNW Station secured increased funding in 1956 to study problems resulting

from rapid urban growth and booming timber harvests in the Pacific Northwest.

The Station fielded demands for information from an increasingly urban population seeking more access to forest resources, including water, timber, recreation,

and aesthetic experiences. The new supply of funding and increased demands for

research prompted a Station-wide review that revealed a serious shortage of trained

professionals. State agencies and the timber industry, meanwhile, also initiated new

programs of research and competed with PNW Station for qualified staff. Forestry

schools in the region responded with programs that focused more on preparing

their graduates for careers in research. The PNW Station responded by cooperating

with universities to support more projects designed to gather “basic forest information,” and the Station began to support graduate training for research-oriented foresters. This trend toward highly trained specialists with more emphasis on “basic

science” also answered public demand for multiple-use management of the national

forests during the late 1950s and early 1960s.30 It was an opportunity for innovative thinking in the area of forestry research, and two young scientists who met

at the Andrews Forest during this period seized the moment, combining their

resources to study forest ecology.

Rothacher’s family, home, and station as research forester-in-residence drew

Ted Dyrness and Jerry Franklin together at the Andrews Forest at a critical juncture in the history of PNW Station. These two Station scientists brought very

29 Berntsen and Rothacher, A Guide to the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest, 17.

30 Cowlin, 354-355.
71

Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

different backgrounds and experiences to the experimental forest, but they were

both graduates of Oregon State College who eventually pursued common interests

in forest ecology. Dyrness, who first visited the Andrews in 1955 as a graduate

student on a field trip with leading soil scientists, initially joined PNW Station in

1959 and worked on the Alsea River Basin soil vegetation survey for the next year

and a half. He frequently visited the Rothachers for fishing expeditions on Lookout

Creek in those years. He spent much of the summer of 1961 touring national forests in western Oregon and Washington with Rothacher, collecting information

they needed to write a problem analysis of soil stability issues in that region. By

the end of that summer, Dyrness notes, “I was thoroughly up on what was going

on in the Andrews.” That same year, Rothacher moved to Corvallis, where he

directed the watershed program from the Willamette Research Center.31 Through

the Rothachers, Dyrness met Franklin, who was also a frequent guest at their

house.

Franklin and Rothacher first met at the Andrews Forest several years before he

teamed up with Dyrness. Jean Rothacher recalls that early in 1957, “the first summer we were there, [Jack] had a college assistant who lived in a trailer above our

house. That was Jerry Franklin.” Franklin was the person Jack interacted with

most frequently at the experimental forest.32 He began working there as an undergraduate and was employed by the Forest Service through the Oregon State College

cooperative extension office in early 1957. Ruth, who headed the Research unit

at Corvallis, hired Franklin shortly after Rothacher signed on, and Berntsen escorted Franklin to the Andrews, where he helped Rothacher monitor stream

gauges. Dyrness recalls, “He [Franklin] had really good rapport with Jack and

Jean Rothacher, and so it was natural that he would do his master’s [thesis] on his

work on the Andrews.”33

Later in the 1960s, Dyrness and Franklin emerged as leaders of a science team

at the Andrews Forest, although Dyrness notes that initially, “We definitely were

not in leadership positions.” Their partnership, like the earlier pairing of Silen and

Gratkowski, combined diverse backgrounds in the Eastern and Western United

States, and they mixed their personal attachment to the region with visionary

31 Interview with Ted Dyrness by Max Geier on 11 September 1996 at Dryness’ office at

the Corvallis FSL as transcribed by Jeff Fourier, 1-2.

32 Interview with Jean Rothacher, 2-3.

33 Andrews group interview 22 September 1997, 48; interview with Jerry Franklin by

Max Geier on 13 September 1996 in a Forest Service cabin near the Wind River Canopy

Crane facility as transcribed by Jeff Fourier, 2-3.

“A college assistant

lived in a trailer

above our house.

That was Jerry

Franklin.”
72

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

enthusiasm and cautious, pragmatic research. Dyrness, who was born and raised

in Wheaton, Illinois, grew up amidst the academic trappings of Wheaton College,

where his father was an administrator. He credits his mother with instilling an

artistic ethic and for cultivating an early interest in plants and animals. He also

traces his early interest in ecology to his experience as a high-school student building a family cabin in the Wisconsin woods with his father and grandfather, and to

his father’s interest in outdoor activities, “... things like fishing and going out on

the lake and sitting. Not any fancy fishing, ... you know, a meat fisherman

[laughs].”34 He headed West in 1951 as a young college student seeking summer

employment and adventure in the forests of the “evergreen” Northwest. That

experience inspired a life-long appreciation for the scenic wonders of the forested

slopes of

the Cascade Range. Dyrness notes, however, that he decided to pursue a career

in ecology because of his college experience at Wheaton, where the liberal arts program required at least one laboratory course: “I sat down and said, “What’s the

most Mickey-Mouse laboratory science that I can take, and get it out of the way

as a freshman, you know, thinking very logically. [laughter] And I thought: ‘Ah,

BOTANY!’”35

34 Interview with Ted Dyrness, 7-8.

35 Interview with Ted Dyrness, 7-8.

Figure 13—Ted Dyrness inspecting revegetation plot at the H.J. Andrews

Experimental Forest on road fill at Watershed 1, 22 April 1966.

Jack Rothacher, 1966
73

Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

That botany course set Dyrness on a career path that wound through the

Pacific Northwest and eventually brought him to the Andrews Forest. Dyrness got

more than he bargained for when his botany instructor taught the introductory

course with an ecological emphasis. Dyrness was hooked, and he subsequently

changed his major from ancient history to botany, setting him on the path to a

future career in Forest Service Research. He worked as an itinerant employee in the

timber industry of the forests of the Pacific Northwest during the summer after his

freshman year of college, including a stint pulling the green chain and running the

trim saw at a mill near Packwood, Washington. He also fought forest fires near

Randall, Washington. Meanwhile, he lived in a makeshift home in a converted

chicken coop and explored the countryside in his free time. He lived for the summer with the college buddy who lured him West with grand images of country life

on a family ranch that didn’t quite live up to its billing. The surrounding countryside, however, was all that he expected, and more. During one overnight visit to a

fire lookout near Goat Rock Wilderness in the western Cascades that summer,

Dyrness decided to pursue a career in the Pacific Northwest.36

Gazing out from the fire lookout, Dyrness saw an inspiring wilderness landscape, and when he went back to Wheaton College, he told his academic advisor he

wanted to go to graduate school in the Pacific Northwest. He was bored with the

farm country of Illinois where he grew up, and he had always been fascinated with

mountainous terrain, beginning with family excursions to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. His experience in the Cascade Range, however, eclipsed even

his memories of the Smokies. His major advisor at Wheaton was close friends with

Chet Youngberg, a graduate of Wheaton who secured an appointment at Oregon

State College and was looking for promising new graduate students. Dyrness

followed up on that contact and began graduate work in Corvallis in the late 1950s,

about the time Jerry Franklin completed his undergraduate work at Oregon State

College and began his graduate studies.37

Where Dyrness was a transplanted Midwesterner with academic roots,

Franklin was a native Northwesterner with a working-class background. He grew

up in Camas, Washington, where his father worked as a foreman at the local mill.

Like Silen, Franklin’s appreciation for the local woods was based on regular, everyday experience from early childhood through his adult life. When he was a young

36 Interview with Ted Dyrness, 5-8.

37 Interview with Ted Dyrness, 6-9; communication from Ted Dyrness March 1998.
74

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

boy near the end of World War II, the Franklins purchased a car, and the family

began taking frequent camping trips to the woods near Wind River, at Mineral

Springs, Washington. Franklin cites those family outings as inspiration for his lifelong interest in trees and forests: “This is where it all began for me as far as an

interest in trees and forests is concerned. ...”38

Franklin, like Silen, began his college career assuming he would eventually

wind up in a job in the timber industry, and he spent most of his academic life

bouncing back and forth between the state colleges of Oregon and Washington.

He started out at Clark College as a freshman and then transferred to Washington

State University in his sophomore year, planning to go into forestry. He notes,

however, “I got distracted, as people often do. But then in my junior year, I went

to Oregon State University and settled down.” He completed his B.S. (1959) and

M.A. (1961) degrees in forest management at Oregon State College and eventually

earned a Ph.D. (1966) in botany at Washington State University. Bill Ferrell,

Franklin’s advisor at Oregon State College, “made the connection” between the

Forest Service and Oregon State College Cooperative Extension (then called the

Student Trainee program) in the 1956-57 academic year. Ferrell told Franklin,

who was enrolled in his course that fall, that PNW Station was looking for a

student “interested in a career in Research.” Franklin notes the shift from forest

management to forest Research was a real “risk” because the government “didn’t

pay very well” and he was “totally dependent” on his own resources at the time.

He had been working at the Crown Zellerbach paper mill in Camas, where he

made more than three times as much money as PNW Station offered in 1957,

but he decided, “I’ll take the risk and hope I get a scholarship the next year. Which

I did.”39

Franklin initially planned to become a park or forest ranger, but once he began

working with the research program at PNW Station, he discovered it was a “lessstructured situation” than other jobs in the Forest Service. He found people there

doing “exciting” and “interesting” work with minimal supervision, and by 1961,

he followed their lead and shifted his goals to pursue a career in forest research.

“I like freedom,” he observes, “I like options.” He mostly serviced and maintained

gauging stations in his early days at the Andrews Forest, and he helped Rothacher

install a forest regeneration study. He notes, however, his first big job of the

summer” was to run boundary surveys on Watersheds 1, 2, and 3 with another

38 Interview with Jerry Franklin, 1.

39 Interview with Jerry Franklin, 1-2.
75

Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

technician who supervised his work. When Rothacher encouraged him to start his

own research project, Franklin developed a guide for identifying tree seedlings.40

Franklin, like Dyrness, was excited to be working in the old-growth timber of

the Andrews Forest. He recalls it was a novel experience, despite his familiarity

with the woods around Camas, Washington: “ ... wow it was neat! I hadn’t seen

so much old growth in the Oregon Cascades up until then.” Franklin was interested

in more than aesthetics, however. Working at the Andrews Forest was an adventure: “I think that’s the first time I’ve ever been ... anywhere on snow shoes. So

it was [an] exhilarating experience. ... it was my first real experience working

regularly in the big woods, a lot of time on my own, and I did a lot of backpacking

on weekends.”41

The “wow factor” that Franklin and others emphasize when describing their

first encounter with the Andrews Forest also helped them recruit other scientists

for research programs during the 1960s. It was, however, a constantly changing

ally. Each generation of scientists encountered a forest transformed by their predecessors but impressive as an apparent example of relatively intact old growth

40 Interview with Jerry Franklin, 3-4.

41 Interview with Jerry Franklin, 3.

Figure 14—Jerry Franklin, shown here measuring streamflow with a velocity head

rod at the weir, experimental Watershed 1 gaging station in July 1957, was one of

Rothacher’s earliest associates at the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest.

Jack Rothacher
76

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

(for an experimental forest). Arriving on the scene 3 years after Silen left the

Andrews Forest, Franklin was impressed with the place as a relatively untouched

landscape: “the only clearcuts that were visible at that time, really, were at the head

of Deer Creek. ... there were none of the cuttings out in the High Cascades at all,

there wasn’t anything out there, so it was an incredibly pristine landscape. ... Blue

River drainage was essentially pristine.”42 The place Silen had worked so hard to

make more accessible still seemed remote and untouched by comparison with the

forests near Camas, Washington, and other places this native of the Pacific Northwest had seen.

People and research were relatively sparse at the Andrews Forest when

Franklin and Dyrness first began working there together. Scientists walked a

curious line between monitoring the effects of human activities on the watersheds

and defining the degree to which the landscape remained “pristine” or apparently

free of human disturbance. Anderson recalls that Franklin, whose career soon

moved beyond the Andrews Forest, was initially somewhat impatient and detached

from the legacy of previous work on the experimental forest: “Jerry didn’t know

that we were there [laughter]. He was very ambitious, he was ready to learn.”

Anderson recalls that from his perspective as district ranger, research at the

Andrews all related to timber sales, and Anderson, Kerrick, and Franklin all recall

working to lay out trails on the control watershed [Watershed 2]. The process,

Kerrick observes, created “a lot of disturbance” despite the absence of roads.43 In

an account reminiscent of Mitchell’s experience with Gratkowski, Franklin cites his

work on the Watershed 2 trails as an example of Rothacher’s reputation for meticulous attention to detail. He notes that Rothacher made him lay out the trails three

times before allowing he was satisfied with the results. Like Silen, Franklin also

developed a sense of stewardship for the pristine character of the place, but with

more of an emphasis on maintaining that character. He recalls coming down out of

Watershed 2 at the end of the day and diving for cans at the bottom of Lookout

Creek where it pooled near a gauging station: “People would leave cans in that pool,

and so, I took ‘em out, one at a time.”44

Franklin was reassigned to Cascade Head Experimental Forest in the Coast

Range of Oregon in the summer of 1958, and he was not happy about the transfer.

Most of his work at the Andrews Forest had been in watershed research, but as he

42 Andrews group interview 22 September 1997, 19.

43 Interview with Ed Anderson and Mike Kerrick, 1-2.

44 Andrews group interview 22 September 1997, 29.

“It was an incredibly

pristine landscape.

... Blue River drainage was essentially

pristine.”
77

Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

recalls, “Cascade Head Experimental Forest was all timber management research.

Cutting, ... regeneration, spruce hemlock type, a different forest type.” He didn’t

mind working on timber management research, but he missed the Cascade Range

and he missed working with Rothacher: “I’ve always liked the Cascades environment better than the coastal one. The guy I worked for at Cascade Head ... wasn’t

near as much fun as working for Jack [Rothacher].”45 The year after his summer

at Cascade Head, Franklin joined PNW Station as a permanent employee and took

over Berntsen’s responsibilities at the Corvallis center, which included administrative authority over the Andrews Forest. Franklin recalls that from then through

the mid 1960s, the object of management was to “road the Andrews. And we

DID it.”46

45 Interview with Jerry Franklin, 4.

46 Andrews group interview 22 September 1997, 27.

Figure 15—Ted Dyrness (left) and Jerry Franklin worked

together at the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest during

the early 1960s, while Franklin was staying with the

Rothachers at Blue River. In this photo, they reminisce at

Carpenter Saddle in 1997 about their professional association of more than three decades.

Art McKee
78

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

Franklin’s impression of district priorities mirrored Anderson’s view that

Research had little relevance to forest managers, and research scientists who

worked at the Andrews Forest after 1954 seldom interacted with district staff or

other people in Blue River through the 1960s. When Franklin married in 1958, for

example, he and his family lived in Corvallis and he visited the experimental forest

for brief stays of only 2 to 3 days, living in a trailer camp near Blue River. “Once

you got into the trailers,” he recalls, “unless your work brought you together, you

didn’t [interact]. I didn’t drink, and so I didn’t go down to the bars, pool room, or

anything like that, hang out.”47 Their priorities, he recalls were “pretty heavy duty

... go-for-broke management. ... they weren’t much interested in research.”

District managers, Franklin notes, often acted on the Andrews Forest without

consulting anyone at PNW Station: They would put up a timber sale and build a

road [up] there ... and drop it down on the Andrews side, ... and we wouldn’t

even know about it.”48

Scientists with PNW Station also worked on more compartmentalized and

specialized projects during the late 1950s and early 1960s, and less commonly

interacted with other scientists at the Andrews Forest than in previous years. In

his first year at PNW Station, Dyrness discovered an institutional culture of strictly

defined limits. He had studied soil-vegetation relations near Klamath Falls for his

Ph.D. thesis, but his boss reprimanded him for presenting that work at a conference that focused on federal plans to terminate the Klamath Tribe and Reservation.

Dyrness recalls, “I took the ... Greyhound Bus to Klamath Falls, and stayed overnight and attended the meeting. And when I got back, I was in trouble [with PNW

Station administrators]. You know: I was a west-sider. I shouldn’t have gone to

that meeting, etc. ... ” Station leadership expected Dyrness to work on the west

side of the Cascade Range, meaning he should no longer engage in east-side

studies. The Station subsequently assigned him to work with Rothacher at the

Willamette Research Center in Corvallis.49

The Transition From Research Centers to Research Laboratories

The PNW Station’s diminished role at Lookout Creek was painfully obvious by

the time Dyrness began working there, and by mid decade, the facility teetered on

the brink of formal termination. The few scientists who did any field work at the

47 Interview with Jean Rothacher, 3-4; interview with Jerry Franklin, 6-7.

48 Interview with Jerry Franklin, 6.

49 Interview with Ted Dyrness, 9-10.
79

Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

facility during the early 1960s did not seem to justify the costs of keeping it open,

but Dyrness, Franklin, and Rothacher scrambled to preserve it as an irreplaceable

resource. Congressional funding specifically earmarked to build new facilities for

forest research in 1960 actually made their effort more difficult, because it shifted

the agency’s focus from field studies to scientific laboratories. The allocation

reversed a 15-year trend. After World War II, the Forest Service had reorganized

research into “problem areas,” mostly emphasizing studies “in the woods” or “on

the forest ranges.” Field studies in the agency were organized into 11 geographical

forest regions, each with a forest and range experiment station supplemented by

several experimental forests. This framework supported research in some 80

“problem areas” or “research provinces.” Each province had at least one research

center, and each center had at least one experimental forest. At PNW Station, this

structure produced the Willamette Research Center in Corvallis and other similar

centers elsewhere in the Pacific Northwest. In 1960, however, PNW Station

opened its first research laboratory in Olympia, Washington, and deemphasized

experimental forests.50 Oregon State College also shook off Dean Peavy’s legacy

of field-oriented training and planned a new laboratory for forestry research in the

early 1960s. These parallel developments at PNW Station and at Oregon State

College encouraged closer cooperation between scientists with PNW Station and

faculty at the state college. The growing emphasis on laboratories at both Oregon

State College and PNW Station came at the expense of institutional support for

experimental forests, but the new climate of academic cooperation in Corvallis

rescued the research facility from a proposal to terminate it.

Station scientists at the Willamette Research Center and faculty with the

Oregon State College School of Forestry cooperated more closely after the state

of Oregon concentrated its forestry research programs on the Corvallis campus

during the 1950s. Walter F. McCulloch, who served as Dean of the School of

Forestry at Oregon State College from 1952 to 1966, managed the transition from

a program that emphasized field training and applied skills to one that emphasized

more basic research, and he committed institutional support to laboratory-based

research in Corvallis.51 Four years into McCulloch’s term as Dean, the state authorized funds for a Forest Research Laboratory (FRL) on the Corvallis campus and

50 Cowlin, 406-407.

51 Arnst, A., ed. 1981. 75 years of continuing progress in forestry education. Corvallis,

OR: School of Forestry, Oregon State University. 9.
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General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

placed it under the administration of a state committee that McCulloch headed, and

it operated independently of the state college. The new FRL was completed in

1957, and the Forest Lands Research Division of the Oregon State Forestry

Department moved from Salem into the new building. State silviculture and forest

products researchers already in Corvallis also moved into the new building. This

consolidation, together with the federal Research Center, made Corvallis a regional

center of laboratory-based forest research.52

Laboratory-oriented scientists who initially expressed little, if any, interest in

field work at the Andrews Forest, converged on Corvallis during this period, and

the number of scientists studying forest-related issues in Corvallis reached critical

mass by the late 1950s. The transformation of Oregon State College into Oregon

State University (OSU) in 1961 helped make the Corvallis campus seem more

inviting to research scientists just beginning their professional careers. That same

year, the Oregon State Legislature transferred authority over the Forest Lands Research Division from the State Forestry Department to OSU, merged it with the

Experiment Station, and in 1965, redesignated the combined program the FRL (as

distinguished from the building by the same name constructed 8 years earlier).53

Robert Tarrant, whose career in the region’s forest re-search community included

stints as PNW Station Director and as Forest Science Department Head at OSU,

argues this concentration of forestry programs and scientists in Corvallis created

an unsurpassed climate for forest-related research in the last third of the 20th

 century. Research at the university’s Forest Experiment Station included programs in

forest management, forest products, soils, botany, plant pathology, and entomology. The School of Forestry was also well funded with sales of timber from stateowned forest lands.54 This convergence of people and programs created the

potential, at least, for well-funded interdisciplinary research.

One young scientist who found the academic climate in Corvallis appealing in

1963 was Dick Waring, who completed his doctoral work at Berkeley and joined

the OSU faculty that year. Waring saw OSU as an institution with enhanced national

prestige and good opportunities for growth. He was initially attracted to the programs at Corvallis, but he soon emerged as a leader in the effort to develop field

52 Arnst, 6, 12-13; George W. Bengston, “Forest Research Programs Stimulate Progress in

Forestry.” In: Arnst, A., ed. 1981. 75 years of continuing progress in forestry education.

Corvallis, OR: School of Forestry, Oregon State University. 47.

53 Bengston, 47.

54 Interview with Robert Tarrant by Max Geier on 24 July 1997 at Tarrant’s house in

Corvallis, as transcribed by Keesje Hoekstra, 14-15; Andrews group interview 22

September 1997, 23; Bengston, 46-47.

Robert Tarrant

argues this concentration of forestry

programs and scientists in Corvallis

created an unsurpassed climate

for forest-related

research.
81

Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

research programs at the Andrews Forest. He was a midwesterner, originally from

Chicago, but with B.S. and M.S. degrees in forestry at the University of Minnesota

and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, where his preparation included botany, physiology, and soils. Waring, like Dyrness and Franklin, cites an

early involvement in the outdoors with his father as inspiration for pursuing a

career in forestry, but his career path into research was less circuitous than theirs.

One of his father’s business associates in Chicago was a lawyer who purchased

land and then dedicated it to research. Waring, consequently, grew up surrounded

by scientists practicing their craft, and he viewed that as a natural career path.

As a high school student, they were his role models, and he began his own research projects even before he enrolled as a freshman in the forestry program at

the University of Minnesota. His path through graduate programs at the University

of Minnesota and the University of California was similarly direct. Even as an

undergraduate, Waring secured summer assignments as a research assistant at the

University of California, where he worked on the Redwood Ecology Project, and in

Spokane, Washington, where he worked with the Inland Empire Research Station

Figure 16—Laboratory research gained new impetus during the 1960s at the Pacific

Northwest Research Station (PNW), and Franklin and Dyrness promoted the H.J.

Andrews Experimental Forest as a field laboratory in an effort to protect the facility

from a proposed closure. Here, Dyrness makes soil measurements in a laboratory on

the Oregon State University campus in 1962, a few years before PNW constructed

the Forestry Sciences Laboratory in Corvallis.
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General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

of the Forest Service on a pole blight project. As a freshly minted Ph.D. in high

demand, he could choose among several job offers, and Waring notes the centralization of state forestry programs at Corvallis was a major factor in his decision to

accept a position at OSU: “This was the one that was initially full-time research,

but with a potential to fuse the ... Forest Research Lab with the College of Forestry—at that time the School of Forestry, so that you could have some teaching,

at least, at the graduate level.55

When Waring arrived, Franklin and Dyrness were already promoting the

Andrews to Corvallis-area colleagues as a site for field research, hoping that if

more scientists installed studies at the experimental forest, Station administrators

would not close the facility. Shortly after Franklin and Dyrness began working

there during the early 1960s, George Meagher had floated the idea that PNW

Station should reduce its involvement with experimental forests. Meagher’s proposal called for returning the South Umpqua Experimental Forest and the H.J.

Andrews Experimental Forest to the National Forest System, except for existing

experimental watersheds programs in those places. Although Meagher’s proposal

simply recognized the Station’s already diminished role at the Andrews Forest,

his suggested restructuring would have closed down one of the largest facilities

available to support field research in old-growth stands of Douglas-fir. Given the

political climate at the time, there was little doubt that the Station, once it surrendered formal control over a drainage with substantial quantities of marketable, oldgrowth timber, would never again control a similar parcel of federal land.56 If the

proposal went through, scientists would have to adapt their studies to areas where

market forces and other management concerns took priority over scientific plots

without any requirement, whatsoever, for “consultation” with the scientists themselves, or even with PNW Station. Under such conditions, long-term studies would

be vulnerable to the impact of unanticipated management actions, thus rendering

field-tests of scientific hypotheses relatively useless. The governing memorandum

of understanding for the Andrews Forest had mostly gutted the PNW Station

Director’s authority over management activities on the Lookout Creek drainage, but

55 Interview with Dick Waring by Max G. Geier on 26 September 1997 at Waring’s office

in Peavy Hall at Oregon State University, as transcribed by Linda Hahn and Keesje

Hoekstra, 1-2.

56 Documentation for this proposal is elusive, but Tarrant, who later became PNW

Station Director, recalls conversations between Meagher and Cowlin concerning this

proposal during the early 1960s, and Franklin recalls Meagher circulated a letter

confirming the proposal during that period. Andrews group interview 22 September

1997, 20-21.
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Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

it still required “consultation,” even if it was perfunctory—or ignored. Termination

of the designation as an experimental forest would have eliminated even that thin

thread of security for the integrity of scientific research.57

Al Levno, who began working as PNW Station’s watersheds technician at the

Andrews Forest in 1963, notes that Meagher’s proposal to close the facility just

compounded existing problems with district staff who refused to support scientists

on the Lookout Creek drainage. Levno recalls that Gashwiler, for example, “had

a lot of trouble getting support from the district. And there was many a time he

would come in and complain about not getting any support.”58 Levno lived in the

house the Rothachers previously occupied at the Blue River compound and worked

out of the district offices, monitoring rain and stream gauges and forest plots at the

Andrews in his role as technician-in-residence. He recalls that, given the strained

relations with district staff, research use of the experimental forest was very low:

“The emphasis was that people needed to be here [Corvallis], that the center of

interest was at OSU, so their people were leaving the woods and going to the big

labs.”59

Opening the Floodgates and Facilitating Research at the Andrews

Forest

Dyrness and Franklin bucked the trend toward laboratory research with a “bootlegged” vegetation classification study at the Andrews Forest. They also accomplished other, funded research more directly related to their assigned responsibilities while working on the unauthorized and unfunded vegetation classification

project. Dyrness, for example, recalls he was studying effects of different logging

methods on soil conditions: “I just investigated high-lead, tractor, sky-line, and

balloon logging. So that salved my conscience a little. Then, I began to get interested in road-side soil stability and treatments to forestall erosion on newly constructed roadsides.”60 Informal collaboration with a soil survey crew working at the

Andrews Forest in the summer of 1962 also boosted the vegetation classification

effort. Dyrness and Franklin lived that summer next door to the trailer housing the

survey crew. Dyrness talked to them each evening about their work as fellow soil

57 Interview with Dick Waring, 4.

58 Interview with Al Levno by Max G. Geier on 12 September 1996 at the Corvallis FSL

as transcribed by Jeff Prater, 4-5.

59 Interview with Al Levno, 4-5.

60 Interview with Ted Dyrness, 12-13.
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General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

scientists, and by the end of the summer, he and Franklin had a broader understanding of soils on the Andrews Forest. It was a significant year in the development of the experimental forest for several reasons. Field work on the soil survey

ended that year, and logging began that fall on Watersheds 1 and 3, shortly after

Dyrness and a summer field assistant installed permanent vegetation plots on those

drainages. Then, on October 12, a major windstorm swept through the valleys of

western Oregon, including Lookout Creek, causing enough damage to be remembered thereafter as the Columbus Day Storm.61 Beginning in 1963, Dyrness and

Franklin began to supplement the knowledge they had gleaned from the survey

crews with their own reconnaissance studies of vegetation in association with

those soils. Finally, in 1964, Rothacher insisted they draw up a formal plan for the

vegetation study so that it would be officially listed at PNW Station and qualify for

research funding and assistants.62

Dyrness’ primary interest was always ecology, and he notes his specialization in forest soils was more a means than an end. Dyrness credits Rothacher for

61 Communication from Ted Dyrness, March 1998.

62 Interview with Ted Dyrness, 11-12.

Figure 17—Among his other responsibilities, Jack Rothacher maintained long-term

watershed records at the experimental forest. This photo shows Rothacher making

stream discharge measurements at one of the three small watersheds (WS 1, 2, 3), by

using a velocity head rod. This method was used to calibrate these 120-degree,

trapezoidal flumes.

Dick Fredriksen in August 1969
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Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

supporting his efforts at the Andrews Forest, despite resistance from both the district and the Station during the early 1960s. Rothacher, who directed their work

from the Research Center in Corvallis, required they adhere to Station policy, but

he also allowed them room to unleash their curiosity in the field, provided they kept

things in perspective. Dyrness recalls, “I should have been working on soil erosion.

And Jerry should have been working on just, ... higher elevation, upper-slope

silviculture.” Rothacher, however, allowed Dyrness to install permanent vegetation plots on Watershed 1 and Watershed 3, and he allowed Franklin and Dyrness

to work on a plant community classification for the Andrews Forest for about 3

years, starting in 1963. Dyrness emphasizes that it was more an example of active

encouragement than loose management: “It was a credit to Jack to recognize that

what we were doing was worthwhile. ... it was kind of a pioneer effort in vegetation classification. How to do it. What kind of units to come up with. ... figuring

out ... successional relationships among the groupings.” Rothacher, in other

words, encouraged scientists to look around when they were doing field work,

observe what was happening, and then decide what they could do. Once they decided something didn’t fit into an existing study plan, Rothacher supported their

efforts to draft a new plan. In short, Dyrness explains, Rothacher was “really

grass-roots oriented.”63

Franklin also credits Rothacher with encouraging his joint efforts with

Dyrness, and he emphasizes that their “normal assignments” at PNW Station did

not really permit collaborative work. The Station practice of assigning each scientist an approved area of work, he argues, limited opportunities for cooperative

efforts, and scientists were seldom free to follow their independent interests.

Franklin recalls, however, that the close quarters he shared with Dyrness at Blue

River broke down some of those institutional barriers. Living in a trailer with

Dyrness, he discovered they had “a lot of similar kinds of viewpoints and general

inclinations,” and they began to look for “opportunities to do things together” at the

Andrews Forest. The resulting vegetation classification study combined Dyrness’

expertise in soils with Franklin’s experience sampling vegetation.64

Their joint effort was remarkably successful and illustrated the pragmatic value

of collaborative effort for managers and scientists. They produced Natural Vegetation of Oregon and Washington, first printed in 1973 and later reprinted in the

63 Interview with Ted Dyrness, 9-10.

64 Andrews group interview 22 September 1997, 20; interview with Jerry Franklin, 11.

“It was a credit to

Jack to recognize

that what we were

doing was worthwhile. ... it was a

pioneer effort in

vegetation classification.”
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General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

1980s by Oregon State University Press, in response to strong and continuing

demand for a reference work that had become an indispensable “bible” for field

work in the area that it covered. This successful example of collaborative field

work also enticed Dick Waring to join Dyrness and Franklin at the Andrews Forest. The young Berkeley graduate had prior experience in, and enthusiasm for collaborative research. While at Berkeley, he worked with three professors and three

other graduate students on a joint project in the redwood region, and he was

familiar with the benefits and some of the problems that arise in joint research.

Waring became acquainted with Dyrness and Franklin through their interactions

with the forest research community on the OSU campus in Corvallis. He was

already working at a field site above Cougar Reservoir on the Augusta Creek drainage, a tributary to the McKenzie River. He was interested in the general area around

the Andrews Forest, but he also wanted to place his own work in a broader context, and collaboration with Dyrness and Franklin was a relatively fast way to do

it.65

65 Interview with Dick Waring, 4-6, 12-13; communication from Martha Brookes 28

August 2000; Andrews group interview 22 September 1997, 20.

Figure 18—Dick Fredriksen at Carpenter Saddle,

January 1962.
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Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

Collaboration at OSU did not automatically translate into cooperative efforts at

the Andrews Forest, but the chance to work closely with other people did encourage laboratory-oriented scientists to do more field work. During the mid 1960s, the

experimental forest began to attract scientists who wanted or needed to work with

other people. As Dyrness observes of the Andrews, “... what we had was at least

somebody that could help us down there. Because, starting with Jack [Rothacher],

we always had somebody stationed down there. ... after Jack it was Dick

Fredriksen. After Dick Fredriksen, it was Al Levno. After Al Levno was Ross

Mersereau. ... you know, in these kinds of studies, you need somebody to help

you.” Among their other responsibilities, Rothacher, Fredriksen, Levno, and

Mersereau monitored and maintained equipment that measured streamflow, and

they sampled storm flows. These people, who lived on site near the Andrews

Forest, also gained an appreciation for the place, and they encouraged other people

to consider doing field work there.66

66 Interview with Ted Dyrness, 12-13.

Figure 19—Jack Rothacher contributed to the reputation of the H.J. Andrews Experimental

Forest (Andrews Forest) as a place where scientists involved people with the landscape

as a way of explaining the interface of scientific theory and resource management. Here,

Rothacher describes the research program to members of the League of Women Voters

who toured the Andrews Forest in June 1960. The photo was taken from Lookout Point,

Unit 1-I.
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General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

The human touch included a sense of respectful stewardship for the Andrews

Forest as a research resource. Rothacher struggled to defend that outlook against

forest managers at the district who were moving ahead with extensive logging

activities on the experimental forest. He represented PNW Station in meetings to

review logging plans and to secure basic resources, such as housing and laboratories, needed to support scientists working at the facility. Rothacher, Dyrness

recalls, faced relentless pressure from forest managers, who claimed they needed

to accelerate logging on the Andrews Forest to meet timber-production goals for

the Willamette National Forest. Rothacher argued on behalf of Research scientists

like Dyrness and Franklin that unless it supported a purely research purpose, no

logging should be permitted on the Andrews Forest. Dyrness recalls the constant

battles for research facilities at the district ranger station were a source of great

stress for Rothacher, and by 1964, the outlook was bleak: “[Jack would] come

back [from meetings with district and Region 6 managers], you know, just really

worn out, saying: ‘Jimminy. I don’t know if we can hold ‘em off.’”67

67 Interview with Ted Dyrness, 14-15.

Figure 20—As scientists affiliated with Oregon State University (OSU) began to consider

the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest (Andrews Forest) as a venue for field studies, they

laid the foundation for the long-term association of Forest Service and academic researchers at the Andrews Forest. George Brown, who later served as Dean of the College of

Forestry at OSU through the 1990s, is shown here as a graduate student in 1964, when he

worked as a field assistant at the Andrews Forest.

Jack Rothacher in July 1964
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Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

Faced with a proposal from PNW Station to close the Andrews Forest, demands from the district for expanded logging there, and a general drift toward

laboratory-based research at OSU and in the Forest Service, Dyrness and Franklin

scrambled to identify a white knight. They found one in an international initiative

that began in the mid 1960s and became operational in the United States by 1968.

They found a second, unexpected ally in the flood of 1964, which left a legacy

of changes on the landscape that revitalized enthusiasm for field research at

the Andrews Forest. When Franklin learned about the International Biological

Programme (IBP) through the National Science Foundation (NSF), he told Dyrness

they needed to get involved, despite the fact neither one of them knew much about

systems ecology. Dyrness recalls Franklin telling him, “We gotta get on-board! ...

sure, we don’t know much about this systems ecology stuff, but we can learn.”68

Their biggest hurdle to attracting the IBP to the Andrews Forest was that very few

people were working there at the time. It was a Catch-22 situation: involvement in

the IBP would attract people to the Andrews Forest, but chances of including the

place in the IBP network of sites were remote, unless they could recruit more

people to work there. Dyrness observes, “... what really helped ... was the ’64

flood.” He and Franklin advertised the place to their colleagues in Corvallis, urging

them to “come down and see what happened on the Andrews in the ’64 flood.”

They put people to work, documenting all the flood-related slides and measuring

other effects on the landscape.69

By mid decade, a small, but vital nucleus of scientists had identified the

Andrews Forest as a valuable site for field studies, and they were experimenting

with marketing strategies to “sell” the Andrews to their colleagues in the burgeoning community of forestry research in Corvallis. The flood of 1964 provided a

hook for attracting more scientists to the Lookout Creek drainage, and by the late

1960s, the small, initial core of the Andrews group managed to put together a

successful bid to designate the experimental forest as one of three research sites in

the Coniferous Biome Project of the IBP. That accomplishment was due, in no

small measure, to the emerging prominence of Corvallis as a world-class center for

forest-related research, and it played into the political climate of the late 1960s and

early 1970s. The rapid growth of research capabilities at the FRL on the OSU

campus in that period coincided with increased recognition of tremendous problems with forest regeneration in Oregon and the need for fundamental knowledge

68 Interview with Ted Dyrness, 11-12.

69 Andrews group interview 22 September 1997, 21.

When Franklin

learned about the

International Biological Programme,

Dyrness recalls

Franklin telling him,

“We gotta get onboard!”
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General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

to address those problems. As a result of those concerns, OSU recruited more

faculty with expertise in forest biology during the 1960s and early 1970s, and that

expertise was a resource that helped the Andrews group secure their bid for

designating the Lookout Creek drainage as an IBP site.70

After a decade of difficult relations with forest managers at Blue River, people

like Franklin, Dyrness, and Rothacher responded by building a community of

scientists interested in long-term research at the Andrews Forest. They saw the

place as an irreplaceable, scarce, and threatened resource that should be protected

and promoted to other scientists. They did basic survey work to document the soils

and vegetation at the Andrews Forest, and they tried to shield the place, and the

scientists who worked there, from distant and arbitrary management decisions.

Their grass-roots effort laid the foundation for later collaborative research. Forest

managers like Kerrick, meanwhile, began turning to researchers for answers to a

broader range of management questions. Prospects improved for closer cooperation between scientists and managers at the experimental forest during the 1960s,

even as the Andrews group scrambled to include Lookout Creek in the IBP and

secure outside funding for research at the site. As of 1964, however, the IBP was

a remote vision, and the few scientists working at the Andrews Forest had little

influence, funding, or authority over the site.

70 Bengston, 47.
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Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

Chapter Three: Basic Science Priorities and the

International Biological Programme, 1964–1975

The Christmas flood of 1964 and full-scale logging on the surrounding Willamette

National Forest changed the Lookout Creek drainage from a familiar to an exotic

landscape. Curiosity about the flood and its effects brought more scientists to the

H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest (Andrews Forest) in the late 1960s than had

visited the place during the previous decade. Those who arrived after 1964 worked

at road-accessible sites on a logged drainage. The Lookout Creek drainage was

heavily logged by 1964, especially by comparison with the rest of the Blue River

Ranger District. By the time logging began in earnest on other drainages near the

experimental forest later that decade, the oldest clearcuts on the Andrews Forest

were already filling in with fast-growing, young trees. In those areas where later

managers followed Silen’s original plan and road design, extensive stands of oldgrowth Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii (Mirb.) Franco) surrounded relatively

smaller clearcuts. Some people, consequently, described the Andrews Forest as a

“pristine” landscape, despite the intensive management activities of the previous

decade. Despite those perceptions, it was a place much more intensively managed

and studied than the surrounding national forest precisely because it had been more

accessible, for a longer time, than most other drainages in the district. This combination of a relatively pristine and unusually accessible drainage open to “experimental” activity attracted new scientists to the Andrews Forest in the 1960s. They saw

it as an interesting and knowable place where scientific methods could extract

detailed information more efficiently than from the surrounding national forest.

Roads and clearcuts attracted scientists who needed to work at accessible field

sites, but the aesthetic appeal of the unlogged portions of the Andrews Forest made

it a place where people wanted to work. Many people who saw the experimental

forest for the first time during this period formed intense, personal connections

with the place. The boundary between professional and personal concerns also

began to blur during the 1960s. More people were increasingly aware of environmental problems and some of them campaigned to protect or preserve “pristine”

sites. The resulting political pressure eventually led to more funding for the environmental sciences and some of that found its way to the Andrews Forest.

When the Wilderness Act fueled public conflict over management decisions on

the Willamette National Forest, for example, forest managers seeking to address

criticism of their actions turned to the Pacific Northwest Research Station (PNW
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General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

Station) for scientific information that addressed their concerns. Scientists at the

Andrews Forest often had other priorities, but the Christmas flood of 1964 profoundly affected them. They saw powerful forces of nature reshaping landscape

features that previously seemed immutable. As they gained a new appreciation for

the changing character of the place, the group mobilized a landslide inventory to

document the scope and characteristics of mass soil movements on the drainage.

The 1964 flood prompted a small surge of scientific activity at the experimental

forest that helped the Andrews group gain credibility in advance of the International

Biological Programme (IBP). The timing of the flood was fortuitous. The First

General Assembly of the IBP convened in July, just 5 months before the flood, but

another 4 years passed before the IBP was implemented in the United States. Those

intervening years were a window of opportunity for marketing the Andrews Forest

to the international community. In that period, the newly emergent Andrews group

Figure 21—The 100-year storm of 1964 transformed the familiar landscape of the H.J.

Andrews Experimental Forest into a bewildering

terrain of torrential flooding. This photo shows

Blue River at Tidbits Creek during the 1964 flood.

Dick Fredriksen on 21 December 1964
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Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

created a niche for itself. The IBP was an opportunity to build the group into a

collaborative community of scientists that could transcend institutional barriers to

interdisciplinary cooperation among American academics. E.B. Worthington, who

chronicled the history of the IBP from the perspective of his personal experience as

an administrative leader in that 10-year program, observes, “The toughest biological

community into which to launch the scheme was that of the United States.” He

cites, as major stumbling blocks, the ingrained hierarchies of academic life in

America, particularly in the areas of field biology, microbiology, and molecular

biology. Those hierarchies, he argues, interfered with the IBP ideal of integrated,

international programs of scientific inquiry. An American culture of polarized

extremes, he concludes, contributed to a political standoff between people who

promoted a free-use ideology of unregulated access to public lands and people

who advocated a preservationist approach to protecting public lands by creating

national parks and wilderness areas. Conflict between those two groups, he suggests, poisoned the well for public support of ecological research and effectively

delayed implementation of the IBP in the United States until the end of the 1960s.1

The ultimate goal of the IBP was to overcome nationalistic boundaries while

gathering comprehensive data to describe biomes-broad-scale ecosystem types,

such as desert, tundra, and conifer forests, that would represent the global range

of ecosystems. With this information, the project would build predictive models

of natural ecosystems functioning in a global context. The IBP vision was that by

studying particularly stable systems (including old-growth, coniferous forests),

scientists could construct models to predict how a particular management action

would affect an ecosystem. The ultimate goal was to help people understand how

to avoid or otherwise manage problems resulting from human disruption of natural

systems, in effect, promoting more efficient human control over nature.2

The Andrews Forest was an understaffed, dark horse candidate for the IBP,

but in retrospect, it seems like an obvious place to include in an interdisciplinary

and international effort to catalogue and model ecological communities. By 1964, it

had been the focus of intensive monitoring and observation for more than 16 years,

and scientists linked with the place were energized and enthusiastic about the IBP.

1 E.B. Worthington, The Evolution of the International Biological Programme. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1975, 8-11.

2

 Peter Bowler, The Norton History of Environmental Sciences (New York: W.W. Norton

and Company, 1992), 516, 539.
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General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

Dyrness describes the IBP years as an era of innocent optimism at the Andrews

Forest: “We were naïve back then, I’ll tell you. ... We were going to grow [computer models depicting] an entire ecosystem.” Once they got started, however, the

group discovered they really didn’t know very much about the systems they were

trying to model. They lacked answers to basic questions about internal processes,

including “How limiting is soil moisture to our communities in the Andrews?” or

“How are nutrients cycled through this system?” or “How long do [needles] ...

stay on the trees?” Looking back, Dyrness concludes, “that’s what modeling

accomplishes. You don’t get all these sophisticated models up and running with

a lot of predictive capacity. What you do, you find out your stupidity.” In the effort

to develop predictive models, the group found they didn’t even know what they

needed to learn in order to understand how the system operated. They did discover,

however, the benefits of collaborative effort and interdisciplinary exchange.3

Although the IBP effort didn’t reach the Pacific Northwest before the late

1960s, some scientists who later became associated with the IBP at the Andrews

Forest sparked a spirit of community during that decade. They forged a group

identity and an enduring legacy of enthusiasm for collaborative research at that

site. The IBP also established the Andrews Forest as a globally prominent site for

studying forest ecosystems. The Andrews group, and the enthusiasm for collaborative research at the Experimental Forest, survived the end of the IBP, as scientists

adapted ongoing programs of research to meet the constraints of constantly

shifting sources of funding.4

The Andrews group made an early decision to rely on postdoctoral assistants

instead of graduate students and tenured professors, and that decision smoothed

the transition from the IBP to alternative sources of funding in the early 1970s.

Faculty cooperators from Oregon State University (OSU) initially played central

roles in the effort. Leaders in the Andrews group, however, notably Dick Waring

(OSU) and Jerry Franklin (Forest Service), soon shifted the focus toward more

reliance on postdoctoral assistants. That decision diverged from customary practices elsewhere in the Coniferous Biome Project of the IBP, which included links

with the University of Washington and study sites at Findlay Lake and the Cedar

River Experimental Forest in Washington. Postdoctoral assistants on grant-funded

3 Interview with Ted Dyrness by Max Geier on 11 September 1996 at 9:30 a.m. at

Dryness’ office at the Corvallis FSL as transcribed by Jeff Fourier, 16-17; communication

from Fred Swanson 27 April 1998.

4 Worthington, 164.

“We were naïve

back then, I’ll tell

you. ... We were

going to grow an

entire ecosystem.”
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Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

appointments could focus on their assignments, without the distraction of teaching,

taking classes, or dealing with academic committees, and their future employment

with the group depended on securing renewed funding from grants. Few of them

could rely on a regular salary if the grants didn’t come through. With a large number of people working under similar pressures, the group developed a common

culture of urgency to focus on the task at hand and produce results. This effort

drew them together across disciplinary lines to secure ongoing support for the

broader effort at the Andrews Forest. It was a formula for interdisciplinary collaboration, but it might just as easily have turned into a formula for disarray and rampant competitiveness.

A carefully structured core of salaried professionals held together the interdisciplinary group of scientists working on temporary appointments during the IBP.

These salaried professionals designed an infrastructure that supported over 100

people who lived and worked at the Andrews Forest for prolonged periods during

the field season. They built a tent city on a landscape they selected for its “pristine”

and “natural” attributes representing the coniferous biome for the IBP. Others lived

in rented trailers in nearby communities and commuted to work at the Andrews

Forest. Researchers who lived in this scientific boomtown, paradoxically, constructed a community committed to the concept of long-term research and human

occupation. In the mid 1970s, as that community weathered the transition from the

IBP to other sources of funding, a few of the scientists working on “temporary”

appointments at the experimental forest assumed more prominent leadership roles.

In this period of transition from one generation of leadership to another, the group

drew strength from those who were most vulnerable to the winds of change:

scientists on temporary appointments. Together, they completed the transformation

of the Andrews Forest from a Forest Service facility on the verge of elimination to

a functional, outdoor laboratory where scientists enthusiastically congregated to

support each other in their work.

National Policy and Growing Public Concern About Environmental

Issues

The emergence of the Andrews Forest as a major site for interdisciplinary research

was rooted in the contradictions of the political landscape and its influence on

public lands policy in the early 1960s. Americans were increasingly ambivalent

about science and technology in an era when the space race symbolized the hopes
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General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

of progress and the fear of nuclear destruction. Public concern about fallout from

nuclear testing and dangerous chemicals polluting the natural environment challenged official optimism about scientific progress. By the 1960s, the United States

was deeply mired in an international arms race and struggling with social unrest on

the domestic front. In his 1960 election campaign, Kennedy claimed the Soviet

Union had gained the advantage over the United States on several key fronts, but he

argued that Americans could win the Cold War by unleashing untapped reservoirs

of scientific talent and putting those skills to work on the “new frontiers” of

science and industry.

Scientists who founded the IBP were deeply concerned about the ways in

which science and technology accelerated ecological problems around the world,

but rather than rejecting science, they optimistically hoped to harness its methods

and technology in a global effort to catalogue and model “stable” natural systems

(see footnotes 1 and 2). In the United States, scientists were caught up in a flurry

of legislation, public debates, and administrative efforts to clarify how multiple-use

mandates would translate into management policy for the national forests. The

glaring lack of basic information about ecological processes and their effects on

forest resources, however, undermined those efforts. Scientists needed more staff,

resources, and funding to supply basic information to legislators and administrators, and the IBP was one way of structuring the flow of money to support that

effort.

The Andrews group included scientists who relied on funding from federal

agencies, from universities, and from outside grants. Each of these sources of

funds included distinct benefits and drawbacks. Scientists with the Forest Service, for example, had permanent, civil service appointments with relatively secure

prospects for long-term employment. That agency, however, disbursed funds only

to support research projects that met specific information needs of land managers.

This system required line-item approval for each proposed study. This meant that

people like Rothacher could approve or disapprove funding for projects that people

like Dyrness and Franklin required to support their field work. Their vegetation

classification study at the Andrews Forest initially lacked such approval, although

Rothacher unofficially allowed them to devote time and resources to that study.

Eventually, however, even Rothacher required them to submit a formal research

proposal for that work. Tenured university faculty also enjoyed relatively secure

prospects for long-term employment, but much like their colleagues in federal
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Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

agencies, they also relied on a hierarchical funding structure. Campus administrators set budgeting priorities for staff and funded assistantships, and faculty had

little influence over that process. Scientists with long-term appointments with the

Forest Service or with a university also wrote grants to supplement agency funding. Scientists who secured grant funding gained more control over hiring and purchasing decisions, but they also assumed the administrative burden of managing

those resources, and they could not guarantee long-term employment to the people

they hired with such funding. Scientists who were secure in their own careers

constantly struggled to procure the grants they needed to fund the people who

staffed their research programs. The people recruited with this “soft-money” support from grants contributed skills otherwise not available, and they often supplied

the innovative ideas and enthusiastic energy so necessary for securing additional

grants. One key to the success of the Andrews group in this period was their ability

to seamlessly integrate these different components (both “hard” and “soft” money)

of the funding structure for work at the experimental forest.

The IBP dramatically expanded the funding available through grants, but the

range of research that qualified for direct, budget-line funding from the Forest

Service also broadened considerably in the 1960s. In the waning years of the

Eisenhower administration, Congress responded to public enthusiasm for outdoor

recreation and automobile camping by allocating $2.5 million to fund an Outdoor

Recreation Resource Review Commission. The commission subsequently identified

wilderness as a recreational resource. This definition strengthened the argument

that wilderness was a legitimate management goal. The Multiple Use-Sustained

Yield Act of 1960 reinforced that argument, although it was the product of very

different forces. Forest Service Chief McArdle and industry leaders involved in

timber, mining, and grazing activities on national forests supported the act, and

subsequently interpreted its multiple-use provisions primarily as a guarantee of

future access.5

 Nevertheless, the act directed the Forest Service to give equal

consideration to outdoor recreation, range, timber, water, wildlife, and fish. In a

compromise designed to thwart potential opposition from preservationists, the act

also included the caveat that “establishment and maintenance of areas of wilderness

are consistent” with multiple use.

5 Paul W. Hirt, A Conspiracy of Optimism: Management of the National Forests Since

World War Two (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994), 171-242, explores the

evolution of this concept from the early 1950s through its application in the 1960s.
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General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687
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Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

The wilderness provision expanded the range of disciplines and specialized

studies that could be legitimately included in Forest Service Research budgets, just

as the IBP expanded grant-funded ecological studies. Congress proposed wilderness legislation about the time debate began on the Multiple-Use Act and 4 years

before it became law. When finally enacted in 1964, the Wilderness Act designated

some 9 million acres as wilderness and required the Forest Service to recommend

within 10 years whether an additional 5 million acres of national forest land should

be added to that total. It also included a provision that the total acreage of national

forest designated as wilderness under the terms of the act had to be substantially

less acreage than the Forest Service previously managed as “wilderness, wild, and

primitive.”6 In real terms, the Wilderness Act of 1964 actually required the Forest

Service to reduce the amount of land designated and managed as wilderness on the

national forests.

Growing support from the management side of the Forest Service further

encouraged funding for ecological studies by Forest Service scientists. Forest managers with the Willamette National Forest, including Mike Kerrick at Blue River,

faced immediate and vocal criticism when they initiated development in unroaded

areas adjacent to wilderness areas defined in the 1964 act. Among other concerns,

the Wilderness Act upped the ante in the long-simmering French Pete controversy

on the Willamette National Forest. The French Pete issue originated well before the

Wilderness Act of 1964. It began with public criticism of a Forest Service decision

to reclassify the Three Sisters Primitive Area as the Three Sisters Wilderness Area

and relocate the boundary of the unit. The boundary shift redefined a portion of the

French Pete drainage as a designated primitive area adjacent to the wilderness area.

The controversy was an “educating moment” for Kerrick because, despite

his argument that the decision to relocate the boundary was well founded, he

agrees it was “never supported” by people he describes as “radical environmentalists.” Thereafter, he began to look for new ways to substantiate his decisions with

concrete and “scientific” evidence that would convince even skeptics. In responding to subsequent preservationist challenges, Kerrick’s appreciation for scientific

research transcended Ed Anderson’s attitude. Rather than deriding or dismissing

scientific studies at the Andrews Forest, as Anderson was prone to do, Kerrick

6

 Hirt, Conspiracy of Optimism, 229-231; Harold K. Steen, The U.S. Forest Service: A

History (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1976), 311-313; Samuel Trask Dana

and Sally K. Fairfax, “Forest and Range Policy: Its Development in the United States,”

Second Edition (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1980), 196-199, 200-206,

217-221.

The Wilderness

Act upped the

ante in the longsimmering French

Pete controversy

on the Willamette

National Forest. The

controversy was an

“educating moment”

for Kerrick.
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General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

recalls he increasingly viewed those studies as useful tools. He argues that “good”

science was his best defense against those who questioned the policies he implemented as district ranger at Blue River, beginning in January 1967. Under public

pressure, this manager of public lands discovered the value of data from studies

at the Andrews Forest, even though the scientists who generated that data did

not necessarily agree how he used it or even his priorities of land management.7

Kerrick’s new appreciation for the Andrews Forest was a breakthrough in

thinking with the potential for opening a dialogue between scientists and forest

managers, but sudden managerial interest could not erase the effects of nearly a

decade of tense relations between forest managers and scientists. Given the emphasis on laboratory research at PNW Station, moreover, scientists in that unit had

little interest in closing the gap between researchers and managers at Blue River.

Scientists like Ted Dyrness, who began working at the Andrews Forest in the this

period, recall that in the early 1960s, interactions with forest managers at the Blue

River Ranger District were often less than cordial, and for that reason, he simply

tried to keep his distance while working there.

The Forest Service faced a rising tide of external criticism, close scrutiny,

and general mistrust from all quarters during the late 1960s. As part of the compromise that facilitated passage of the Wilderness Act of 1964, Congress established

the Public Land Law Review Commission (PLLRC) and charged it with examining

policies pertaining to all public lands except Indian reservations.8

 After a 5-year

investigation, the commission released a report that landed with a thud amidst Earth

Day preparations, passage of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), and

President Richard Nixon’s pronouncement in January 1970 that this would be the

“environmental decade.” It emphasized the need for Congress to reassert its constitutional authority to manage public lands, and it accused federal agencies of

withdrawing and reserving public lands without adequate consultation with Congress. The commission specifically argued that Congress should review all national

forest lands to determine which should be reserved to the federal government and

which should be transferred to state or private control. It proposed a “best-use”

policy that was heavily slanted in favor of timber production and favored an

7

 Interview with Mike Kerrick at his home near Springfield, OR, by Max Geier on 28

August 1996,15-16; interview with Ed Anderson and Mike Kerrick by Max Geier on 28

August 1996 at Anderson’s home in Springfield, OR, 7-8; Rakestraw, History of the

Willamette National Forest, 111-115.

8 Dana and Fairfax, Forest and Range Policy, 231-233.
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Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

accelerated program for building access roads. The report concluded that “conservative cutting practices” had resulted in “over-mature” forests, and it claimed

that the national forests were not particularly valuable for uses other than timber

production.9

The commission’s recommendations ran counter to public enthusiasm for

environmental legislation and concern about past management practices by the late

1960s and early 1970s. Federal action included the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act

(1968), the NEPA (1970), and the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency

(1970). Public protests against Forest Service strategies to promote reforestation

on the Bitterroot National Forest, including the practice of bulldozing terraces into

recently clearcut slopes, prompted a Congressional inquiry in 1969, with a particular focus on patterns of soil erosion and nutrient loss associated with clearcutting.

The Forest Service leadership, meanwhile, was preoccupied with PLLRC proposals

to move the agency into the U.S. Department of the Interior and create a new

Department of Environment and Natural Resources. The Sierra Club capitalized

on the public mood with a counter-offensive against PLLRC proposals for “bestuse” management on national forest lands. Its legal challenges vigorously defended

a broad reading of multiple-use legislation in an effort to secure wilderness designations on the national forests and to place wilderness on a footing more equal to

other mandated forest uses, such as logging or game management. These challenges further pressured the Forest Service to fund a broader range of ecological

studies. Dick Fredriksen’s earlier nutrient cycling and small watershed studies positioned the Andrews group to respond quickly to that challenge, building on those

earlier studies at the Andrews Forest and at Hubbard Brook.10

The NEPA requirements that studies of potential environmental impacts must

precede any major action by federal agencies11 expanded the range of issues the

Forest Service, by statute, was required to investigate. The PNW Station responded

9 Public Land Law Review Commission, One Third of the Nation’s Land (Washington,

DC: GPO, 1970); Roy M. Robbins, Our Landed Heritage: The Public Domain, 1776-

1970 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1976), 466-469; Dana and Fairfax, Forest

and Range Policy, 232-234; Philip Berry and Michael McCloskey, “The Public Land

Law Review Commission Report: An Analysis,” Sierra Club Bulletin 55: (October 1970),

18-30.

10 Dana and Fairfax, Forest and Range Policy, 221-222, 241-242, 311-315; Steen, U.S.

Forest Service, 328-329; Hirt, Conspiracy of Optimism, 245-247; communication from

Fred Swanson 15 September 2003.

11 Environmental Impact Statement requirements.
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General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687
103

Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

by increasing the level of support for ongoing studies and developing new programs. Station scientists scrambled to learn and use skills and methods from disciplines not previously considered relevant to the Forest Service mandate. The

Station, for example, initiated a new, multiproject research program known as

For-est Residues Reduction Systems, and it strengthened programs in recreation research and studies of biological methods for controlling forest insects. At

the Andrews Forest, the trend toward interdisciplinary research was evident in

the Forest Ecology project that Franklin headed, on the watersheds project that

Rothacher headed with Logan Norris, and in the IBP.12 When they first started the

drive to attract scientists to the Andrews Forest, however, Dyrness and Franklin

had no way of knowing these forces would converge to support their efforts. In

1964, the landscape itself was their best ally.

The Flood of 1964 and Perceptions of Research Potential at the

Andrews

Major flooding in the Willamette River basin in 1964, like the wilderness legislation

of that year, made the Andrews Forest seem more relevant to the priorities of the

Forest Service and of forest scientists. The flood was a force of nature that people

could not ignore, and it was a reminder that people could not completely control

nature, especially on an experimental forest. If the Andrews Forest was an outdoor laboratory, natural “disturbance” was an uncontrolled and unpredictable variable that could drastically affect the outcome of any experiment in that setting, no

matter how carefully it was designed. Natural disturbances were many and varied.

Two years before the 1964 flood, for example, the Columbus Day Storm downed

an estimated 140 million board feet of timber on the Willamette National Forest,

including the Andrews Forest. The downed timber caused logjams on rivers

throughout the national forest, threatening property downstream, and causing

localized flooding in riparian areas. Forest Service managers identified the downed

timber as potential habitat for bark beetles, and they scheduled salvage sales in

an effort to avert an expected beetle outbreak in commercial-grade timber nearby.

Managers of the national forest were still struggling with the after-effects of the

windstorm when the Christmas-week flood of 1964 began. That flood destroyed

12 Cowlin, 512-528; Dana and Fairfax, Forest and Range Policy, 221-222, 241-242, 311-

315; Steen, U.S. Forest Service, 328-329; communication from Fred Swanson 27April

1998.
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General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

six campgrounds, damaged seven others, washed out numerous roads, and

wreaked havoc on bridges and culverts throughout the Willamette National Forest.13

The Christmas flood had personal as well as economic and ecological consequences. It changed the physical appearance of the experimental forest, it endangered field crews at the Andrews Forest, and it left physical evidence of its passage and indelible, personal recollections of its power. People familiar with the

Andrews Forest suddenly found themselves on unfamiliar ground. Al Levno, then

working for PNW Station as a technician assisting Dick Fredriksen at the Andrews

Forest, had a view of the flood that was too close for comfort. He was working

on a round-the-clock sampling routine on Watershed 3 when the storms hit in late

December. The routine involved taking samples from streams at 3-hour intervals,

24 hours a day, using flashlights to climb down steep slopes after dark, crawling

out onto narrow boards stretched over a stream, and then dipping a milk bottle

into the water to get a fresh sample. Levno was driving out to the watershed with

Fredriksen to begin that routine during a windy rainstorm at 1:00 a.m. on the

13 Rakestraw, 101.

Figure 22—The second of three debris torrents in Watershed 3 during the Christmas flood of

1964 wiped out the gaging station, filled the lower channel, deposited a mound of logs and

debris on the Lookout Creek Road, and deposited an undetermined amount of material into

Lookout Creek.

Dick Fredriksen on 21 December 1964

The Christmas

flood changed the

physical appearance

of the experimental

forest.
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Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

morning of December 21, 1964, when he noticed an enormous pile of debris and

logs had piled up on the road where it crossed the stream, and he recalls, “we were

really concerned and thought we ought to get the hell out of that place.”14

Levno, who lived in Blue River and worked full-time at the Andrews Forest on

a year-round basis, recalls the flood suddenly transformed the experimental forest from familiar woods to nightmarish chaos. He knew the logging roads and the

landscape by heart, and together with Fredriksen, he plotted an escape route in the

pitch-black darkness of the early morning storm. They drove back from Watershed

3 toward home, but halfway between Watershed 1 and Watershed 2, a debris slide

blocked the road. It was 10 or 12 feet deep with mud and rocks, and it was too

wet and slippery to cross, even on foot. Instead, they drove back to the first slide

they had seen blocking the stream crossing on Watershed 3. They intended to climb

across the logs tangled in that slide, and then walk up the road to an old log bridge

that crossed Lookout Creek near that location. From there, they would be able to

climb through logging unit B134, up a 1,000-foot ridge to the B130 logging road,

and then walk to the main Forest Service Road 15. From there, it was a 4-mile

walk to the McKenzie highway and a 3-mile walk to Blue River. This well-considered plan was based on their intimate knowledge of the Andrews Forest, but it

didn’t work. Levno describes the trek as a “very noisy and confusing ordeal.”

His eyeglasses were fogged up and covered with water as he walked in the dark

through pouring rain in a driving windstorm. He heard big boulders “bouncing

along the bedrock bottom” of Lookout Creek. The creek itself was “roaring,”

old-growth trees crashed to the ground as they stumbled by, and Levno heard

“the roar of several landslides ... all around us.” Several landslides slumped away

in the logging unit as they climbed through, creating enormous sinkholes of mud

and debris. Levno stumbled upon one of these in the dark and would have fallen

in if Fredriksen hadn’t grabbed him by the collar and pulled him back.15

The nightmarish scramble through a shattered landscape continued after Levno

and Fredriksen escaped the experimental forest. They finally reached the McKenzie

Highway around 4:00 in the morning, 3 hours after they first realized their dangerous predicament, but floodwaters completely blocked their way. Fredriksen, Levno

recalls, was a “big strapping guy—6-foot-6 or something like that,” and he tried to

wade through the floodwaters. Levno, about half a foot shorter, followed behind,

14 Interview with Al Levno by Max G. Geier on 12 September 1996 at 1:00 p.m., at the

Corvallis FSL, as transcribed By Jeff Prater, 5-6.

15 Interview with Al Levno, 6-7; communication from Al Levno 3 November 1999.
106

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

with Fredriksen’s dog trailing him. As they waded in deeper, Levno suddenly

noticed the dog floating by in the rushing current, headed for the open river.

Fredriksen grabbed the dog by the tail, and they headed back to higher ground.

They eventually reached a nearby farmhouse, where they waited for the floodwaters to subside.16

The 1964 flood disrupted elegant theories about forest management as well as

physical infrastructure and research facilities at the experimental forest. On the eve

of the IBP, scientists discovered they didn’t know as much as they thought they

knew about ecological processes in the Oregon Cascades. The big storm tested the

group’s watershed management practices, and researchers and district staff at Blue

River gained pragmatic insights about the experimental roads, clearcuts, and other

projects previously installed at the Andrews. Anderson and Kerrick were surprised

at the consequences of the flood in areas where roads, flumes, and sediment ponds

were constructed on Watershed 3 during the early 1950s and then “calibrated” for

nearly a decade until the watershed was roaded in 1959 and logged in 1962. About

25 percent of the watershed was hi-lead logged in three staggered clearcuts averaging about 20 acres each. The experimental logging plan included an upper and

a middle logging road, along with the main road at the bottom. The 1964 flood,

Kerrick observes, showed that midslope “wasn’t a very good place to put roads.”

During the flood, the middle road failed, and Kerrick argues it “created more

problems than Watershed 1.” In comparison with the partial cutting on Watershed

3, Watershed 1 had been completely clearcut with a skyline logging system designed to minimize the dragging that scarred landscapes logged with high-lead

methods. Logging on Watershed 1 was recent and ongoing by the time the flood

hit, but it was relatively unaffected by comparison with Watershed 3, where the

stream flume installed in 1953 was buried beneath 14 feet of debris in the 1964

event. After the flood, technicians exhumed the flume, and it continued to generate

streamflow data for the next 35 years.17

Scientists at the Andrews generally agreed with the managerial lessons Kerrick

drew from the 1964 slides on Watershed 3, but the flood also created new research

opportunities. The fact that most of the erosion was connected with roads, rather

than logging, Dyrness observes, “was a real eye-opener.” After the 1964 event, the

16 Interview with Al Levno, 6-7; communication from Al Levno 3 November 1999.

17 Interview with Ed Anderson and Mike Kerrick, 2-3. Andrews group interview 22

September 1997, 39; communication from Ted Dyrness 15 April 1998; communication

from Fred Swanson 27 April 1998.
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Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

Andrews group initiated a full-scale inventory of landslides on the experimental

forest, and they concluded that mass soil movements of the type Levno encountered during the storm, rather than surface effects from rainfall, were the primary

mechanisms of erosion in that drainage. Fredriksen had reached similar conclusions

5 years earlier, and his brief paper on a slide he studied was published shortly

before the 1964 event. The postflood landslide inventory confirmed his findings,

and in the aftermath of the landslide inventory, PNW Station adjusted its recommendations for road location and design to reduce the threat of mass movement

associated with logging roads.18

The Andrews group reevaluated its data-gathering priorities after the 1964

flood and secured new funds to monitor stream levels, but technical problems

forced them to decide between new technology or the long-term integrity of the

data they were collecting. The PNW Station provided “flood money” that funded

the purchase of automated, digital recorders that registered stream levels on a

punch-tape. The group purchased scores of these recorders and connected them

with stream gages, but they soon discovered the new technology generated data

that was incompatible with research needs. Among other problems, field technicians could not read the punch tapes onsite, and the taped records were not directly comparable to hydrographic charts that earlier field workers had compiled

with simpler mechanical devices. When they realized the problem, the watersheds

team removed all of the new recorders and replaced them with the older, “A35”

machines that had worked since the early 1950s. The group preferred to admit

they had made a mistake in purchasing the new technology, rather than compromise the long-term integrity of the monitoring effort.19 Recognizing the need to

maintain and protect their A35s while preparing them for long-term, continuous

use, the group sent their technicians to train with the manufacturer of that device,

18 Interview with Ted Dyrness, 12-14; R.L. Fredriksen, A Case History of Mud and Rock

Slide on an Experimental Watershed, (Portland, OR: U.S. Department of Agriculture,

Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Forest and Range Experiment Station, Res. Note PNW29). R.L. Fredriksen, Christmas Storm Damage on the H.J. Andrews Experimental

Forest, (Portland, OR: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest

Forest and Range Experiment Station, Res. Note PNW-29, 1965). Small watersheds

group interview by Max G. Geier with interview subjects George Lienkaemper, Fred

Swanson, Don Henshaw, Ted Dyrness, Gordon Grant, Al Levno, and Ros Mersereau on

16 October 1997 at Oregon State University in Peavy Hall, 3-4. C.T. Dyrness, Mass Soil

Movements in the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest (Portland, OR: U.S. Department of

Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Forest and Range Experiment Station, Res.

Note PNW-42, 1967); small watersheds group interview, 3-4; communication from Ted

Dyrness 27 April 1998; communication from Fred Swanson 15 April 1998.

19 Andrews group interview 22 September 1997, 38-39; small watersheds group

interview, 13.

The PNW Station

provided “flood

money” that funded

the purchase of

automated, digital

recorders.
108

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

and they purchased and stockpiled a reserve of those older machines. Over the

next 35 years, technicians salvaged parts from damaged A35s and used them to

repair and replace other machines.20 The data stream, as a result, remained comparable across decades of record management.

Beyond generating new insights and enthusiasm for field research, the 1964

flood undermined management claims that Research was simply retilling old fields

20 Small watersheds group interview, 25-26.

Figure 23—Al Levno at the Soil Moisture Study site on Watershed

(WS) 3, plot 1, transect 1, Unit L 141. This photo was taken in

1964 shortly after logging and slash burning were completed on WS

3. Two soil moisture transects were established in WS 3 before

logging. Transect 2 was logged. Transect 1 remained undisturbed in

the timbered area.

Dick Fredriksen
109

Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

in search of answers to questions that had already been answered. It forced

scientists to consider how the Lookout Creek watershed itself was changing and

how apparent changes resulted from a chain of contingent events. That realization

opened the door for a new range of science questions.21 Among its other effects,

the flood prompted the group to shift the emphasis of research on the small watersheds from annual water production, streamflow, sediment, and nutrients, to an

event-oriented model, in which the chronology of disruptions in the past could have

an effect on the later characteristics of the ecosystem, and the sequence of events

could dramatically affect the outcome. The new model took into account, for example, whether a big flood, or a heavy, wet snow occurred in the 1st, 10th, or 13th

year after the most recent logging activities on a watershed.22

The PNW Station and Adjustments at the Andrews Forest After the

Flood

Proposals to close the Andrews dissolved after the flood reenergized watershed

management research on the experimental forest. The flood, ongoing efforts to

include the site as a component of the IBP, and Meagher’s retirement in March

1968, virtually extinguished the argument at PNW Station that the Andrews had

fulfilled its function and outlived its usefulness. Tarrant suggests that the initial

proposal for shutting down the experimental forest originated with administrative

concerns about staffing shortages, the pervasive “throw things out” mentality of

postwar American culture, and Meagher’s personal bias that studies of old-growth

were unnecessary because, in Tarrant’s words, “second growth is ... all there’s

gonna be left.”23 At one point, Franklin recalls, “Meagher told us to pull all the tags

on the permanent plots. ... He said, ‘... we don’t need those growth and yield plots

anymore, and I want you to go pull the tags on them, so that no one can ever go

back and remeasure them.’ [laughter] Of course, we didn’t do it.”24

Efforts to block closure of the experimental forest dovetailed with an opportunity to tap into funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for the U.S.

component of the IBP. The Andrews was “on the bubble” to be eliminated by PNW

Station between 1964, when the IBP was formally launched, and 1967, when the

21 Small watersheds group interview, 8.

22 Small watersheds group interview, 4-5.

23 [PNW] Forestry Research News (March 1968). Andrews group interview 22

September 1997, 23.

24 Andrews group interview 22 September 1997, 22.
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General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

first round of requests for proposals for the IBP in the United States went out from

the NSF. Franklin and Dyrness both credit Rothacher with leading the ultimately

successful fight to “save the Andrews.” During the same period, PNW Station also

targeted the South Umpqua Experimental Forest for closure and eventually reduced

its size to four experimental watersheds, collectively known as the Coyote Creek

watersheds. The successful strategy for saving the Andrews Forest from a similar

fate revolved around a plan to attract other scientists to the place while securing

NSF funding to support an interdisciplinary program of research there under the

IBP umbrella.25

The tentative proposal to close the experimental forest was aborted without

any direct statement or decision from PNW Station, and it may have died simply

because no one stepped forward to push it through. Franklin considers the proposal a trial balloon that would have gone through if no one had opposed it, but

25 Andrews group interview 22 September 1997, 21; communication from Fred Swanson

27 April 1998.

Figure 24—Watershed (WS) 7 was the first watershed to receive a gaging station in the “Hi15,” three experimental watershed set, which includes WS 6 (32.1 acres), WS 7 (38.1 acres),

and WS 8 (52.9 acres). These watersheds are located on a south aspect at around 3,280 feet

elevation. They contain 130-year-old Douglas-fir. An H-flume was installed at WS 7 in 1963,

with a FW-1 recorder with a 7-day chart that continuously recorded water levels. Technicians

built shelters over these H-flume installations shortly after they were installed to protect them

from snow “bombing” off overhanging trees during winter. Here, Al Levno checks the installation during the first winter after construction in 1964.

Dick Fredriksen
111

Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

Silen argues that in the particular case of the Andrews, it failed largely because it

lacked an advocate with decisionmaking authority: “I don’t think anybody was in a

position to do anything who was close to it.” The apparent lack of administrative

enthusiasm to return the Andrews to the national forest was far from a ringing cry

of endorsement or funding to support more research at the experimental forest, but

it was a significant improvement over previous attitudes of indifference, or efforts

to discredit the need for further research. By the mid 1960s, managers clearly

wanted Research on their side, if not in their corner, but mutual mistrust of motives

and purpose barred any rapprochement with the new generation of Corvallis-based

scientists whose interests centered on the Andrews Forest, through the 1970s.26 In

the interim, the group secured a greater degree of self-confidence in their methods

and abilities to secure funding independent of the Forest Service, and they subsequently avoided falling back into a management-support role.

Any rapprochement, such as it was,27 focused more on relations between

individual scientists with PNW Station and OSU than between the Research Branch

and the NFS. Dyrness, for example, argues that the IBP was the turning point for

initiating constructive engagement with forest managers at the district and forest

level, primarily because it increased the visibility of scientific research for students

in forestry programs that trained future managers for the Forest Service. Tarrant

also argues that, although events like the 1964 flood may have stimulated a change

in thinking about the experimental forest as a Research resource, individuals and

academic networks played a larger role.28

One of the more obvious differences between scientists and forest managers

at Blue River was simply a matter of corporate culture. Station scientists at the

Andrews operated with fewer constraints on their day-to-day activities, whereas

forest managers at the Blue River Ranger District had to follow rules and regulations that were more narrowly defined and more closely monitored. Dyrness, for

example, recalls a feeling of relative freedom at the experimental forest, observing,

“Sometimes, Jerry and I were surprised at what we could do with no repercussions.”29 As the number of scientists working on study sites at the Andrews Forest

increased with the advent of the IBP in the late 1960s, however, Rothacher recognized the need to coordinate activities to avoid situations where one study might

26 Andrews group interview 22 September 1997, 26.

27 Interview with Ted Dyrness, 16-17.

28 Andrews group interview 22 September 1997, 22.

29 Andrews group interview 22 September 1997, 43.

The IBP was the

turning point for

initiating constructive engagement

with forest managers at the district

and forest level.
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General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

damage another. In an effort to maximize opportunities for complementary studies

while minimizing the potential for studies that conflicted with other research

efforts, he set up a map at the ranger station, with “verboten” areas marked on

it in green pencil, delineating established study areas. With the advent of the IBP,

the group planned to focus on Watershed 10, and they implemented a bewildering

system of colored flags to delineate different study sites and avoid conflicts on that

watershed. This concern, among others, eventually led to the decision to hire Art

McKee as site coordinator, and McKee recalls he struggled to get a grip on the

“chaotic” situation when he first arrived on the scene.30

The International Biological Programme and Interdisciplinary

Initiatives

The eventual proposal to include the Andrews Forest in the Coniferous Biome of

the IBP named Franklin and Waring as co-principle investigators for a major grant

from the NSF. This pairing brought together OSU (Waring) and Forest Service

(Franklin) interests for a cooperative effort at the Andrews Forest. Dyrness notes

that Franklin led the charge in rounding up campus-wide support at OSU for the

IBP initiative. Franklin arranged a meeting of all interested faculty on the Corvallis

campus to explore the possibility of supporting the Andrews Forest as “the” intensive study site for the Coniferous Biome Project of the IBP. The most important

obstacle to that plan was a similar proposal from the University of Washington that

sought to pre-empt the leadership of the Coniferous Biome and exclude the site

backed by OSU.31

Any initial hopes for establishing the Andrews Forest as the exclusive study site

for the Coniferous Biome of the IBP dimmed in 1968 when Franklin, Waring, and

others from OSU met at Pack Forest, near Seattle, with Dale Cole, Stan Gessel,

and other scientists from the University of Washington. In that meeting, Waring

recalls, he and everyone else who represented sites beyond the Seattle area

began to realize that the University of Washington had the upper hand and “there

wouldn’t be much off-site.” Waring concedes “there were some good people at the

University of Washington,” but he didn’t think a proposal centered on University of

Washington facilities was broad enough to develop the kinds of models needed for

30 Andrews group interview 22 September 1997, 21-22; small watersheds group

interview, 17.

31 Small watersheds group interview, p. 17.
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Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

the IBP. He and other attendees, consequently, quickly organized a counter-proposal that would produce a more balanced model of the coniferous biome.32

The counter-proposal that Waring and Franklin engineered at the 1968 meeting

included the Andrews Forest as one of three major sites for the Coniferous Biome.

That outcome, however, required a risky move on the part of the Corvallis group.

As Franklin explains, the Andrews group was “willing to hold it hostage if we

didn’t get a significant piece of the action.” Relations between the University of

Washington and OSU factions were so contentious, he recalls, that NSF administrators warned him, “either Seattle and Corvallis get it together or there will be no

Coniferous Forest Biome.”33 Franklin’s group subsequently issued what amounted

to an ultimatum, threatening to scuttle the entire biome proposal if the Andrews

Forest was not included. Ultimately, it was included, along with Findlay Lake and

Cedar River Watershed, which were located more conveniently for scientists based

in Seattle.34

The human legacy of respectful stewardship, ongoing research, and scientific

potential at the Andrews tipped the balance toward the Lookout Creek drainage

during negotiations over the location of sites for the Coniferous Biome. Waring

notes that Gashwiler’s wildlife studies, among others, gave the Andrews Forest an

important edge over some other proposed sites. Norm Anderson, who represented

the OSU Biology Department at the Pack Forest meeting, however, also argues that

he and his OSU colleague, Jim Hall, together with Rothacher, “dreamed up” the

aquatic component of the Coniferous Biome Project and proposed to locate it at

Mack Creek on the Andrews Forest. These features strengthened Franklin’s efforts

to slow down the “UW juggernaut” during the 1968 meeting.35 McDonald Forest,

which was administered by the OSU College of Forestry and located nearby on the

outskirts of Corvallis, was a possible alternative as an intensive study site for the

Coniferous Biome Project. The Andrews Forest, however, had ongoing wildlife

studies, including exclosures to keep out birds, deer, and rodents, and it also had

gauged watersheds. Cost considerations, moreover, drove management decisions at

the McDonald Forest, where the College of Forestry frequently scheduled timber

32 Interview with Dick Waring by Max G. Geier on 26 September 1997 at Waring’s office

in Peavy Hall at Oregon State University, as transcribed by Linda Hahn, 3-4.

33 Small watersheds group interview, 16-17.

34 Interview with Jerry Franklin, 13.

35 Interview with Dick Waring, 7.
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General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

sales to generate revenue for the school. “It was much more difficult,” Waring

concludes, “to control an experiment on McDonald Forest than on the Andrews,

even though the Andrews was much farther away and on federal land.”36

The forced merger between the contending research groups at the University

of Washington and OSU essentially divided the Coniferous Biome into two groups

with separate administrative centers in Seattle and Corvallis governing three intensive research sites in Oregon and Washington. Fred Swanson, who joined the

Andrews group in the early years of the IBP on a postdoctoral appointment at the

University of Oregon and later rose to a leadership position at the Corvallis Forestry

Sciences Laboratory, notes that despite the forced merger, the two groups took

36 Communication from Fred Swanson 27 April 1998. Riparian group interview of Linda

Ashkenas, Art McKee, Stan Gregory, Norm Anderson, George Lienkaemper with Max

Geier on 21 November 1997 at the FSL, in Corvallis, OR, as transcribed by Elizabeth

Foster, 1; interview with Dick Waring, 2-3.

Figure 25—Short course participants at Gypsy Camp in late

1970s. Located about a mile from the headquarter site near the

“Y” in the main road on the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest,

Gypsy Camp was the Andrews group’s solution to the problem

of running out of space for people to stay during the International Biological Programme.

Rollie Geppert
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Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

divergent paths. The Seattle group, he observes, “were hunkered on a lake [Findlay

Lake], and hunkered on stands on glacial outwash [Cedar Creek] where there

wasn’t an aquatic component.” Both of those locations, he argues, were “pretty

limited” in their potential for ecosystems research as compared with the more

diverse landscape of the Andrews Forest. That physical advantage, Swanson concludes, may help to explain why a more interdisciplinary ecosystem team developed

at the Andrews Forest, although he suspects that the reason for that different outcome may be more sociological than geographical.37

The Coniferous Biome Project dramatically changed the sociological profile

of the Andrews in ways that distinguished the Andrews group from other IBP

sites, and those changes help explain the gradual emergence of an interdisciplinary,

pragmatic emphasis at the Andrews Forest. Waring, Franklin, and Dyrness scrambled to recruit people who could fill the particular niches required for the Biome

Project because, as Dyrness observes, “We needed people with new expertise and

interests that we didn’t have in our little group.”38 They had few options, because

Waring and other OSU faculty associated with the Coniferous Biome were mostly

junior faculty. Graduate students tended to gravitate toward more senior faculty,

but postdoctoral associates followed the grant money, not the personality. The

University of Washington component of the Coniferous Biome relied more heavily

on tenured faculty and their graduate students. Over the first 5 years of the Biome

Project, Waring weeded out some full professors and graduate students from the

OSU contingent and replaced them with an interdisciplinary group of postdoctoral

recruits that included Chuck Grier, Kermit Cromack, Phil Sollins, Fred Swanson,

Jim Sedell, and Frank Triska. Stan Gregory, who began working with the group as

a student in this period, later continued on a postdoctoral appointment. These

people, Waring suggests, were more willing and able to work across disciplinary

boundaries than the people they replaced.39

Waring admits that interdisciplinary cooperation was an accidental consequence, not the driving motivation of this demographic restructuring—he was

simply operating in a crisis mode: “You know, if we don’t do this, then we can’t

go to the national meeting, we can’t renew the grant. ... I mean, we had to show

what ... [we were] doing. ... ‘cause these were BIG grants.” The first grants

37 Communication from Fred Swanson 27 April 1998; small watersheds group

interview, 16-17.

38 Small watersheds group interview, 16.

39 Interview with Dick Waring, 3, 6.

The sociological

profile of the

Andrews distinguished the

Andrews group

from other IBP sites.
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General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

totaled upwards of half a million dollars at a time when a full-time, tenure-track

assistant professor at OSU was earning about $12,000 a year, and the NSF sent

reviewers to Corvallis to talk to all the research assistants and verify how they fit

into the larger project. It was a closely monitored process, and Waring considered

postdoctoral associates a safer risk than graduate students, because they were

more interchangeable and would begin with a stronger initial base of knowledge,

with more self-confidence and experience in developing hypotheses and story lines,

while enjoying more freedom and time to interact with other members of the project. Most importantly, they could be recruited for skills specific to the needs of the

research project.40 The down side, of course, was that overreliance on postdocs

would limit opportunities for graduate students to participate in funded, professional-caliber research, and this tendency might gradually distance the project

from the central mission and purpose of the university and thereby limit access

to permanent, tenure-track appointments or state funding for its participants.

Budget-driven concerns and the need to show NSF reviewers concrete results

also drove much of the early thinking about how to structure IBP research at the

Andrews Forest. Lead scientists at the experimental forest had little experience

administering budgets of that size and limited training or experience in conducting

integrated ecosystems research. The early IBP work at the Andrews Forest, consequently, focused mostly on descriptive analysis. This orientation served the

modeling emphasis of the program, but it also was a derivative of long-term field

studies at Lookout Creek and of more established programs elsewhere in the United

States. Small watershed studies already underway at the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest (near Woodstock, New Hampshire), Coweeta Hydrologic Laboratory

(near Otto, North Carolina), and the Andrews Forest, Swanson notes, were “somewhat parallel and continue that way today,” and they included “some inter-site comparative studies” during the IBP. Franklin particularly credits scientists at Hubbard

Brook with showing the way, observing, “... a lot of it started there with a refinement and an expansion of the small watershed idea.” During the IBP, he notes,

“everybody got into it, but they came at it, initially, through [hydrologic and nutrient] budgets. Because no one had any intelligent questions to ask about ecosystems, so, ‘Okay, let’s describe them.’” From that base, he concludes, “we very

quickly found very interesting kinds of things about which we could make hypotheses and about which we could experiment.”41

40 Interview with Dick Waring, 3, 6, 7; communication from Fred Swanson 27 April 1999.

41 Communication from Fred Swanson 27 April 1998; Andrews group interview 22

September 1997, 33.
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Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

The concept of long-term research and its goals and methods evolved from

these early interactions among the research group at the Andrews. Franklin notes

that the climate for long-term research had improved by the late 1960s: “The only

vision of long-term, ecological research [in 1962],” he observes, “was probably the

vision of the small watershed studies and permanent plots.”42 Gordon Grant, a Forest Service hydrologist involved with the watersheds program at the Andrews in

later decades, agrees with Franklin’s assessment, crediting Hubbard Brook scientists, notably Likens and Bormann, with “putting these forest issues out there, and

having them blessed as major science issues in their own right.” Dyrness adds that

Fredriksen’s interest in the chemical composition of streamwater originated when

Likens visited the Andrews Forest in 1966: “I remember taking him [Likens]

around out at the Andrews, and he was saying what they were doing, and of

course, they were concentrating on nitrates ... in the water.” He remembers Dick

[Fredriksen] becoming interested, and saying, “Hey! We can do the same thing

here. We should be doing it.” Fredriksen proceeded to set up a 4-year study on

Watersheds 9 and 10 as part of his Ph.D. thesis.43

After securing IBP support with a proposal modeled after other sites, the

Andrews group moved in a more independent direction, challenging provocative

theories with place-centered testing at Lookout Creek. Dyrness, who notes the

community of watershed hydrologists in the United States was “fairly tight-knit,”

recalls thinking the Hubbard Brook area was “very much different than the

Andrews in terms of soil conditions and so on.” The work at Hubbard Brook was

not just logging and then allowing natural revegetation, as Silen had done at the

Andrews Forest. Scientists at the New Hampshire facility found vast amounts of

nitrates in a logged watershed where researchers applied herbicides for several

years to suppress vegetation in an effort to better understand its role in regulating

nutrient release in that system. Their scientific findings seemed to support environmentalist arguments that clearcutting was an inappropriate and ecologically harmful

management practice. Scientists at the Andrews Forest, however, argued that these

findings from New England were not necessarily applicable to conditions in the

Cascade Range. They did not defend clearcut logging, but they did argue that

scientists had not studied the ecological effects of clearcut logging in the Oregon

Cascades sufficiently to provide an informed and scientifically credible assessment

42 Andrews group interview 22 September 1997, 33.

43 Small watersheds group interview, 3-4, 18.
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General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

of its ecological effects in that region.44 The Andrews group stressed the need for

studies designed specifically for the unique attributes of these Douglas-fir forests,

noting that western conifer forests may respond differently than eastern deciduous

forests. They were also concerned that several years of intensive herbicide treatment may not accurately mimic clearcutting. In part, theirs was a pragmatic move.

As activist groups, including the Sierra Club, began to file lawsuits challenging

Forest Service contracts for clearcut logging on national forest lands, both sides

in the legal dispute demanded more detailed and more credible scientific studies of

specific Western forests.

Scientific Community and Coordination of IBP Science

The people who converged on the Andrews Forest during the IBP had to reconcile

the pragmatic, timber-management traditions of the forestry program at OSU with

the emerging priorities of ecosystem research during the IBP. Scientists involved

with the Coniferous Biome Project worked to develop the niche they had established for the Andrews in relation to other sites in the IBP, and in relation to OSU,

the Forest Service, and their colleagues at the University of Washington. Applied

science traditions in the OSU College of Forestry unavoidably shaped their sense

of purpose, as the Andrews Forest gradually attracted a “critical mass” of personnel, recognition, and interest. The result was a science-oriented, research community where personal networks and loyalties were at least as important as institutional affiliations. The core of that community was a small group of scientists

who recruited support through close colleagues and mentors. Those personalized

patterns of recruitment tended to perpetuate and reinforce established traditions

and priorities, rather than rootless experimentation. People whose graduate work

included studies with leading scientists like Don Zobel and Chet Youngberg,

Dyrness observes, tended to recruit others with similar experiences. The recruitment process, he notes, often originated with a scientist who had identified an

interesting research question on the Andrews. That scientist, Dyrness recalls,

would then telephone one or more contacts, asking, “’Do you have graduate

students who would be interested in working on it?’ ... That’s the way it went,

but very, very personalized.”45

44 Insertions in Dyrness quotes from communication from Dyrness 15 April 1998;

interview with Al Levno, 7-8; small watersheds group interview, 5-6.

45 Interview with Jerry Franklin, 12; Andrews group interview 22 September 1997, 26.
119

Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

The Andrews group used the big-budget funding of the IBP to support their

strategy of recruiting new associates, and that strategy reinforced later perceptions

that field research at the Andrews Forest was a relatively unstructured social experience. They recruited people with a common scientific bent and philosophical

orientation of scholarly curiosity about scientific processes and informal, unstructured, and spontaneous, interdisciplinary exchange, but who specialized in rather

different fields. Dyrness observes, “... that was the fun of it. You got to have

people working on different things. Small mammal people talking to ... the silviculturists and ... measuring fire intervals and talking to the vegetation classifiers, and

... all that kind of stuff.” Members of the Andrews group later drew on their positive experiences with the high-energy, interdisciplinary, group-oriented research of

the IBP years as they tried to consciously replicate the IBP model of “unplanned”

col-laborative interaction. Franklin, for example, rallied a subset of the group to

participate in a series of focused, professional field experiences that members of

the group refer to as “pulses.” Dyrness explains the “pulse idea” originated in 1973

with the concept “that we could go other places [away from the Andrews] and

have this same kind of interaction going on. ... and we worked together all day,

and then [sat] around the campfire at night, saying what you’d observed and what

questions you had.”46

Waring also emphasized the socializing benefits of the IBP in an internal paper

he wrote at the time. Clarifying his perception of the primary benefits to be expected from participation in the Coniferous Biome, Waring predicted, “... the most

valuable product of the International Biological Program in the United States will not

be the systems models that will aid in making decisions concerning land and water

management but the training of the people that will bridge the communication gap

between disciplines and institutions.” Referring to that report two decades later,

Waring cautions, “... it wasn’t necessarily a consensus from ... [the] University

of Washington. ... [but],”that’s what we put out at that time so people could see

how the thing was organized.” He notes that it was important to convey the structure of the group and its program to NSF reviewers in the political climate of the

early 1970s, when “... most people didn’t think it [the IBP] was going to be a good

investment.” Among other concerns, Waring concludes, critics argued the models

were “too complex,” and he agrees, “all of that’s true, okay? [chuckle] It’s only

when you look at the legacy of the next generation and how they were able to do

46 Interview with Ted Dyrness, 24-25.

“The International

Biological Program

in the United States

will not bridge the

communication gap

between disciplines

and institutions.”
120

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

better and integrate and ... begin to see applications where other people didn’t ...

that you could really evaluate it.” The IBP, in his view, was “sort of like bringing up kids. ... you’re not sure when they’re in high school whether you want

them to grow up [chuckles]. But you better wait a while because you have a big

investment.”47

Decisions about where and how to allocate funds were more restrained. The

amount of money involved, and the professional interest that the IBP and Coniferous Biome Project attracted, forced project leaders to refine and focus their mission, and even to exclude funding for people considered outside the scope of the

project’s purpose. After the Andrews group was successful in “elbowing their way

in [to the IBP],” Franklin notes, “... We had to work through what we were going

to do to allow for a piece of the action.” He asserts, “I had always been looking for

ways to get money to study old growth,” and, he argues, “There wasn’t any question that a lot of the scientists that were involved in the initial workshop in 1968

were interested in old growth, were interested in natural forests. And clearly, ...

that was what we were interested in by the time we got our first money in 1969.”48

47 Interview with Dick Waring, 6-8.

48 Interview with Jerry Franklin, 13-14.

Figure 26—Art McKee joined the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest group during

the International Biological Programme to manage site administration issues. Here, he

views the results of a test of explosives to fell trees in June 1984 on Log Decomposition Site 4.

 Mark Harmon
121

Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

Other scientists with the Andrews group argue that Franklin tends to overemphasize the role of conscious planning in positioning the Andrews for the oldgrowth debates of later years. Art McKee, who was the first person Franklin

and Waring hired with funding from the IBP grants, suggests for example, that

accessibility and not foresight positioned the Andrews Forest as a place relevant

to research questions dealing with the old-growth debate in later years. Fredriksen,

he observes, “invested a lot of energy and time into describing watersheds, which

were being set up for manipulation so we could do energy flow [and] nutrient

[analysis] on those watersheds. The stage was set and he had chosen them because

of their ease of access, not because of what kind of vegetation they have.” McKee

further stresses that during the early IBP years of the 1970s the group committed

much of its budgetary resources to studies in plantations or young stands, rather

than in old growth, despite the fact that less than one-third of the Andrews was

young stands. Neither the prominence of old growth on the Andrews, he contends,

nor the predisposition of scientists necessarily led in the direction of old-growth

studies. Rather, people like Fredriksen established study sites near well-traveled

roads that provided wintertime access to gauging stations. Watersheds 9 and 10, he

points out, had the advantage of being adjacent to a major logging road that was not

even on the Andrews Forest: “Nothing is plowed in the wintertime and this usually

had logging traffic and I suppose it [winter snow] was pounded flat or kept flat.”49

Even if early scientists were mostly concerned with problems of access and

convenience, when the group rapidly expanded the number and variety of research

activities during the IBP, they had to think more systematically about where and

how to structure study sites. Waring, who was the initial site director for the IBP,

found his time commitments at OSU conflicted with the need for careful management at the Andrews Forest.50 Together with Franklin, Waring decided to hire a

site-coordinator-in-residence at the Andrews. The person they selected to fill the

position was Art McKee—a graduate student from Vermont and Maine, by way

of Georgia. McKee worked with Yale ecologist George Woodwell on a nutrient

cycling study at Brookhaven National Laboratory before he entered the graduate

program at the University of Georgia, and he seemed a good fit with their evolving

plans for implementing the IBP at the Andrews Forest. McKee recalls he was in a

49 Interview with Art McKee by Max Geier on 12 September 1996 in McKee’s office at

the Corvallis FSL as transcribed by Jeff Fourier, 1-2.

50 Interview with Dick Waring, 9-10.
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General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

“pretty tight financial bind” at the time, and he accepted the position more for the

paycheck and the promise that he would be free to pursue his own research

interests than for any other reason.51

McKee is a good example of how the personal networks of recruitment operated in the early 1970s. Waring and Franklin wanted someone with an established

51 Interview with Art McKee, 4, 7, 12.

Figure 27—Continuity of personnel is one of the key

attributes at the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest

(Andrews Forest). Dick Fredriksen, who played a

key role in recruiting Art McKee into the group during the International Biological Programme (IBP),

bridged the earlier era of watershed studies and the

later IBP era. This photo of Fredriksen at plot 9 Unit

L 141 on the Andrews Forest was taken on 26

October 1963, shortly after logging and slash burning

were completed on Watershed (WS) 3. Two soil

moisture transects were established in WS 3 before

logging. One transect was logged, the other remained

in the undisturbed timbered area.

Jack Rothacher
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Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

record in the IBP who could hit the ground running and help them get the Coniferous Biome operational at the Andrews. Although McKee had not completed his

doctoral program at Georgia, leading scientists connected with eastern components

of the IBP recommended him highly. His sponsors in the IBP establishment, in fact,

contacted Waring and Franklin before they even began their search, asking, “We

have a person ... who’d like to come west and [he is] interested, are you?”

Waring recalls, “I said, ‘well yeah!’”52 McKee’s introduction to the informality

and spontaneity of the Andrews group occurred in a bar near the University of

Georgia. Franklin and Waring had asked Fredriksen to “sound out” McKee during

a visit to Georgia and the Coweeta laboratory. McKee, who was seated at a table in

the bar, recalls that Fredriksen, whom he had never met, “... staggered up there to

the table and bellowed, ‘Are you Art McKee?’” McKee recalls thinking, “Who is

this guy?” He later discovered Fredriksen’s drunken act was a put-on, and that

some mutual acquaintances associated with the group had put him up to it. It was

his first indication that he was a candidate for the position.53

From McKee’s perspective, he arrived at the Andrews Forest almost by

accident, but personal networks tied him to the Andrews group even before he

realized they were in operation. Once there, he served as a “scientist in the field”

who was expected to coordinate and support research activities at the experimental

forest. He describes his responsibilities as “... sort of a super-technician’s position,

where people already had these ideas, and ... I was ... trying to organize myself

and other technicians to collect the numbers.” At the time, he recalls, he had “no

intellectual investment in the program.” He initially saw his job as a series of relatively “menial” tasks limited to building “support mechanisms,” although it “very

quickly became more professional.”54

The Andrews Forest gained a stable presence and long-term advocate over the

next three decades with the appointment of McKee, who embodied a complex mix

of continuing traditions dating back to Silen’s time there. McKee eventually gained

faculty appointment at OSU, and after 1978 he moved into the Site Director’s role

at the Andrews Forest. His deep, personal roots in New England and professional

experience in the northeastern and southeastern centers of ecosystems research

added depth to the growing assortment of scientific pedigrees in the Andrews

group. His background at the University of Georgia included work in the Arctic

52 Interview with Dick Waring, 10.

53 Interview with Art McKee, 3-5.

54 Interview with Art McKee, 8-9.

McKee embodied

a complex mix of

continuing traditions dating back

to Silen’s time.
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General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

with plant physiologist Philip Johnson, who was his major professor, and he also

had worked with Dick Wiegert, studying thermal ecosystems at Yellowstone. His

pragmatic attention to detail and enthusiastic enchantment with the aesthetic appeal

of the forested public lands of the Pacific Northwest resonate with the best attributes Silen and Gratkowski brought to the Andrews Forest. His emphasis on

applied research also dovetailed with ingrained traditions at OSU and at the experimental forest. Like Franklin, his family tree included ties to the timber industry, and

he observes his mother’s family, “nearly lost a fortune in lumber.” He also brought

a Yankee commitment to craft and workmanship to the Andrews group.55

Over the next three decades, McKee emerged as one of several prominent

leaders who first joined the Andrews during the IBP. His personal characteristics

strongly influenced the way new recruits perceived the group and the experimental

forest. Several generations of scientists relied on his expertise as they acclimated

themselves to that community over the next 30 years. Another long-time associate

of the Andrews Forest, Andy Moldenke, who worked with McKee in the IBP at

other sites before they both wound up at Lookout Creek, argues that McKee is one

of the most critical factors behind the long-term success of the Andrews group. He

argues that scientific community tends to arrive at “fundamental realizations ... a

lot easier than most other interdisciplinary groups,” and he attributes that characteristic primarily to McKee’s role as a dominant personality: “He is the one element

who is really responsible for the way different people talk to one another in ...

different disciplines. ... he is the glue that holds it together.”56

The reputation of the Andrews Forest and the group associated with it were

scarcely sufficient to recruit and hold world-class scientists in the early 1970s.

The place was less than compelling for someone stepping onto the scene fresh

from the more plush appointments of established programs like Hubbard Brook,

Woods Hole, Coweeta, or Yale University. Idealized images of the pristine Northwest also conflicted with McKee’s initial impressions of what he describes as a

“Neanderthal environmental ethic” in the Pacific Northwest at that time. In the

context of the wave of environmentalism that was sweeping the country in the

early 1970s, McKee recalls thinking that Franklin and others in the Andrews

55 Interview with Art McKee, 7.

56 Interview with Andrew Moldenke by Max Geier on 14 Nov 1997 in Cordley Hall at

Oregon State University, as transcribed by Elizabeth Foster, 13.
125

Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

group were “sympathetic, but not sensitive. They were listening to it and it resonated, but they weren’t actively engaged.” In comparison with other IBP sites

where he worked before 1970, McKee suggests, the Andrews group tended to

be reacting to environmental initiatives, not leading the way.57

Scientists working at the Andrews Forest after McKee began working there in

1970 benefited from his efforts to improve its substandard support facilities. When

McKee first arrived at the Blue River from the University of Georgia and saw the

ill-equipped office assigned to him in the ranger station, he started brainstorming

solutions to the problem of inadequate research facilities: “I was thinking mobile

home, prefab homes.” It was, he recalls, an overwhelming problem: “Big program,

big ideas, and zero facilities to work in.” McKee improvised an administrative

center for the scientific boomtown near the confluence of Lookout Creek and Blue

River: “We bought one trailer one year, one trailer the next. Put up the warehouse

to house things at the site, got a couple of camper trailers on extended rental for

people to work out of out in the field.” McKee also purchased a variety of camping gear “... so that people could work out of tents and so on. [We] designated a

campground area on the forest.”58

The campground was a low-technology strategy for meeting human needs and

building a sense of community at the forest during the field season. McKee built

kitchens and outhouses in and around the many windthrows in the old-growth

setting of a headquarters site located near the entrance to the Andrews. This

improvised solution simply bypassed management guidelines and did nothing to

soothe the already tense relations with the district: “... the Forest Service,” he

notes, “... woke up one day and suddenly there was this defacto campground on

the Experimental Forest.” The improvised facilities wedged between fallen oldgrowth trees successfully converted the mundane, daily routines of camp life into

memorable experiences that helped forge a spirit of shared adventure at the

Andrews Forest. The camp facilities, for example, included kitchens that used the

root wads of windthrows as a framework for shelves, and McKee recalls that

people even seemed to enjoy using the outhouses: We’d nailed a couple of planks

between some windthrow trees and ... put up a toilet seat. ... It was very informal.

People loved the open air, actually. Most of them loved it a lot.59

57 Interview with Art McKee, 1.

58 Interview with Art McKee, 8-9.

59 Interview with Art McKee, 9.
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General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

A Crowded Landscape of Science and Community

The aura of adventure at the improvised camp on the Andrews Forest promoted

a romantic, community ethic of “making do” and self-sacrifice in the name of

science. The group’s struggle to fit their ambitious plans for research into the short

field seasons, budgetary constraints, and temporary nature of the IBP heightened

the atmosphere of frenzied enthusiasm. At the peak of the IBP, upwards of 100

people swarmed over the experimental forest during the summer months, living

in a scientific boomtown that strained the capacity of the improvisational sewage

disposal system, kitchen facilities, and transportation network. The Coniferous

Biome was, by design, a project of finite duration that channeled funding from

the NSF and other cooperating agencies and universities to scientists working in

the field. The congregation of scientists at the Andrews Forest and the byproducts

of their encampment, however, were also a concentrated human presence with

environmental consequences on the landscape selected for the IBP as a “pristine”

example of the Coniferous Biome. The contradiction of a “pristine” landscape

attracting hordes of people echoed contemporary concerns about the environmental

impact of the expansive urban culture of the United States. The group’s activities

and priorities in this scientific boomtown, moreover, often deviated from local

standards in the nearby community of Blue River, Oregon.

The immediate effects of this sudden influx of people were obvious to people

with long-term, prior involvement at the Andrews Forest and in Blue River. Levno,

who worked at the experimental forest for nearly a decade before the Coniferous

Biome Project began, observes that it was a “real radical change.” He was accustomed to working in a landscape where there were seldom more than one or two

people at any given time, but with the IBP, he recalls, “all of a sudden 50 to 100

people showed up and were living in trailers and camps. ...” The sudden influx

of people caused problems with the staff at the Blue River Ranger District, but

Levno perceived it as a “good thing.” Among other concerns, he recalls a generational and cultural gap between district staff, who adhered to the paramilitary

standards of the Forest Service, and the academic community of young college

faculty, postdoctoral associates, and graduate students, who were steeped in

the culture of antiwar protests and campus activism. As Levno observes, “This

influx of kids, it was during the hippy days, I guess you could say, and if you went

swimming anywhere in the Andrews you didn’t wear clothes. I remember at one of

The contradiction of

a “pristine” landscape attracting

hordes of people

echoed concerns

about the expansive

urban culture of

the United States.
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Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

our meetings Jerry said ‘well we need to clean up our act a bit, better not skinny

dip right out in public places.’ It was a radical change.”60

The science community at the Andrews had few ties with local customs or

culture in Blue River. Levno observes that little in the town catered to the interests

of researchers, and scientists at the experimental forest mostly avoided Blue River,

“almost to a point of avoiding the townspeople.” Other scientists tend to agree

with Levno’s assessment. The one feature of the town that did attract scientists

did little to dispel district concerns about relaxed standards at the scientific encampment. Dyrness observes that many researchers occasionally visited a local

hangout in Blue River known as the Cougar Room—a tavern “with Go-Go Dancers

and everything”—until it burned down in the early 1990s. Levno emphasizes, however, that for the most part, reciprocal disinterest prevailed: The townspeople were

not very aware of activities on the forest, and researchers mostly avoided the town

and paid little attention to affairs in that community.61 The camptown culture of the

60 Interview with Al Levno, 8-9.

61 Interview with Ted Dyrness, 25-26; interview with Al Levno, 9-10.

Figure 28—During the International Biological Programme, a more diverse array of

personalities crowded onto the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest to support research activities there. In this photo, Ray Beug (and Steve Running, at right, with

hand on Rusty) stand in Watershed 6 on 30 June 1975, one day after crews completed logging and slash burning on the site. The 32-acre watershed was entirely

clearcut, and 90 percent of the resulting logs were yarded up hill with a high-lead

cable system. The other 10 percent of the logs were yarded with a tractor.

Bill Emmingham
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Andrews group was centered on the landscape of the Lookout Creek drainage,

but people in that community were more closely tied to the urban center and academic culture of Corvallis, than to nearby forest-oriented towns like Blue River or

McKenzie Bridge. The encampment was not an isolated community, but it was also

not integrated with nearby townfolk, and this was a distinct change from the era of

Roy Silen’s leadership at the experimental forest.

Scientists, technicians, and other support staff at the Andrews Forest during

the IBP era also differed from their predecessors in their scientific priorities. Their

areas of specialization were more varied than those of earlier scientists at the

Andrews, and they also included more people from different ethnic backgrounds

and genders. Ross Mersereau, who replaced Levno as technician-in-residence at

the Andrews Forest during the late 1960s,62 argues that in the scramble to provide

sufficient staffing to support the proliferating number of field studies, hiring standards began to decline. Some technicians, he claims, were hired despite their weak

understanding of scientific method: “Al [Levno] got permission to hire a couple of

new technicians. And that was a real experience because ... up until then, almost

everybody that we had ... was, uh, pretty well educated, you know. Yeah, I had a

degree, Al, by this time had a degree. ... Under different circumstances both of us

would have been scientists rather than just technicians. ... and then we get two

guys that, I don’t even know that they finished high school.”63

62 Mersereau continued the earlier tradition of close ties linking the Andrews group and

community traditions in Oregon, despite the otherwise widening gap between the town

of Blue River and the science group at the Andrews. At the time of his first assignment to

the Andrews, he was a disabled military veteran who became involved with the group as a

graduate student at OSU. He had served in the U.S. Marine Corps during World War II,

serving in the South Pacific theater with the Marines from 1943 until the end of the war.

He was released from service under the GI Bill in 1946 after suffering a gunshot wound

on Iwo Jima. That injury forced him to quit his prewar career as a laborer and return to

school under a vocational rehabilitation program at Oregon State College from 1946 to

1951. After a brief, unsatisfying stint as a general science teacher in Springfield during the

1950s, Mersereau returned to Oregon State College as a graduate student in the fisheries

program. Gashwiler recruited him out of the fisheries program and recommended him to

Fredriksen for the technician-in-residence position at the Andrews, where he began in

1966. By 1969, Mersereau observes, he and his family, including nine children, were

well-integrated into the community of Blue River, and they secured most of their day-today needs from local establishments, except for occasional runs into Eugene to buy

groceries in bulk. They moved to Corvallis in 1978, however, when his oldest son was

still in high school. Interview with Ros Mersereau by Max G. Geier (with Ted Dyrness)

on 3 September 1997 at Mersereau’s house in Corvallis, as transcribed by Brooke

Warren, 2-5, 10-11.

63 Interview with Ros Mersereau, 19.
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Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

The number of scientists increased faster than the number of technicians at the

Andrews Forest because postdoctoral associates did much of the technical work.

Between 1968 and 1978, Waring and Franklin recall hiring some 16 postdoctoral

associates, including Kermit Cromack, Bill Emmingham, Robert Fogel, Charles

Grier, Joan Hett, Dick Holbo, Ron Nussbaum, Ken Reed, Jeff Richie, Jim Sedell,

Phil Sollins, Mary Ann Strand, Fred Swanson, Gordon Swarzman, Frank Triska,

and Bob Wissmar. The career path for postdocs recruited to the Andrews during

this period, Waring recalls, typically involved prior experience as graduate students

working with other IBP groups. The people in this cohort were typically hired on

3-year appointments.64

With IBP funding, the Andrews group built a nucleus of scientists and ongoing

programs of research that snowballed into a self-activated recruitment mechanism.

Dyrness explains that once people began to realize that there was at least a chance

for funding at the Andrews Forest, people were “attracted in.” One of those people

was a young geologist named Fred Swanson, then completing his graduate work at

64 Interview with Ros Mersereau, 18-19; interview with Dick Waring, 1; communication

from Franklin and Waring 10 February 1998.

Figure 29—Fred Swanson, shown here at the first Ecosystem

Management Workshop at Watershed 2 on the H.J. Andrews

Experimental Forest (Andrews Forest) in summer 1979, later

emerged as one of several scientists in a new leadership group

that began to emerge from among those recruited to the Andrews

Forest during the 1970s.

Bill Emmingham
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General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

the University of Oregon. Dyrness recalls he and Franklin first met Swanson when

they presented an evening seminar at the University of Oregon to an audience of

“mostly geologists,” and he observes, “Fred, from the very start said, ‘Oh, gee,

this is neat! You get to work with guys in biology and silviculture, geography,

whatever!’”65

Interdisciplinary Traditions and New Generations of Leadership

and Community

Three prominent leaders of the Andrews group who exemplify the trend toward a

diversity of scientific specializations first became involved at the Andrews Forest

during the early 1970s as graduate students or as postdoctoral assistants. These

three scientists—Swanson, Sedell, and Gregory—all emerged as leaders before

the end of the decade, and then guided the group through much of the remainder

of the century. Sedell and Gregory both arrived in 1971, and Swanson began

working for the Coniferous Biome in 1972. They added intergenerational depth

to the demographic profile of the group’s leadership, and their combined efforts

were largely responsible for transforming the temporary community of interdisciplinary cooperation into a long-term tradition for the Andrews group that survived the

eventual departures of Franklin, Dyrness, and Waring. By the end of that decade,

the leadership of the group was more diverse and less centralized in any one

person, although Franklin remained the central figure holding the group together,

and they were experimenting with various forms of consensus-oriented

decisionmaking.

The unique combination of academic backgrounds and personal networks that

Swanson, Sedell, and Gregory brought to the community help explain why those

traits became prominent features of the Andrews group during their involvement

and eventual leadership.

Swanson, like Gratkowski, came to Oregon by way of Pennsylvania, pursuing graduate studies at the University of Oregon after completing undergraduate

work at Pennsylvania State University and two summers of field experience at

the Bermuda Biological Station, where he reportedly hung out with “... a group of

very interesting, top-notch grad students who were taking a course on organismsediment relations in a modern environment of carbonate (limestone) depositions.”

Swanson cites this interdisciplinary experience with “geochemists, sea-water

65 Interview with Ted Dyrness, 18-19.

Three scientists—

Swanson, Sedell,

and Gregory—added

intergenerational

depth to the group’s

leadership.
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Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

chemists, biologists, and geologists” as a formative influence on his own priorities

for scientific research. He recalls they all worked together with some “really impressive people,” including Stephen J. Gould. He went on to work with the U.S.

Geological Survey on the Oregon coast, making professional contacts that eventually led him to pursue graduate studies at the University of Oregon. There, he

“helped lead a project to the Galapagos that involved plant-geology interactions

and geologic history. ...” When he completed his graduate studies, in 1972, he

began working on the IBP, studying the geology of the Andrews with Alan Kays,

a University of Oregon geology professor who previously worked with Dyrness.66

Sedell, like Silen, was born and raised in Oregon. He attended Willamette

University as an undergraduate philosophy major, but like Swanson, he also arrived

at the Andrews by way of Pennsylvania, where he did his graduate work in Biology

at the University of Pittsburgh while developing professional research networks

with scientists at Hubbard Brook, at Michigan State University, and at the Oak

Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. His interest in fishing the lakes and

streams of Oregon drew him into aquatic studies, and he attracted the attention

of OSU fisheries professor Jim Hall and entomologist Norm Anderson through

their mutual acquaintance with Ken Cummins, at Michigan State.67

Gregory came to the group with similarly strong links in his home state of

Tennessee. He started his graduate career at OSU in 1971 after completing an

undergraduate program in fisheries biology at the University of Tennessee, where

he worked with Dave Etnier. He previously spent a summer in a multidisciplinary,

NSF-sponsored program in geology, water chemistry, hydrology, and biology at

the School for Marine Biology in Mississippi, before his senior year in high school.

Etnier’s zoological interests and involvement in the IBP program at Oak Ridge and

his contacts with the IBP program at Seattle drew Gregory into closer involvement

with the Pacific Northwest. In 1971, he began working with his major professor,

Jack Donaldson, at OSU, where he soon fell into close professional association

with Sedell.68

66 Interview with Fred Swanson by Max Geier on 6 September 1996 at his home in

Corvallis, as transcribed by Sara Rogers, 2-3.

67 Interview with Jim Sedell by Max Geier on 14 February 1998 in Sedell’s office in the

FSL in Corvallis, OR, as transcribed by Keesje Hoekstra, 1-3.

68 Interview with Stan Gregory by Max Geier on 7 October 1997 at Nash Hall, Oregon

State University, as transcribed by Keesje Hoekstra, 1-3.
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General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

The long-term involvement of Swanson, Sedell, and Gregory with the Andrews

group, along with the ongoing roles of McKee, Levno, and Mersereau, laid the

foundation for the first gradual transition of science leadership at the experimental

forest since it was first established in 1948. Their mentoring into the group, their

experience working under the leadership of Waring and Franklin, and their integration of graduate student, postdoc, faculty, and agency scientist roles, contrasted

with the experiences of their predecessors. Previous science leadership was

more centralized and administered far fewer researchers and programs. Silen

and Rothacher, for example, both were assigned to the Andrews Forest without

any prior involvement there, and Silen was summarily reassigned, with virtually no

opportunity to transfer his knowledge to his successor. The PNW Station hierarchy, in fact, actively discouraged his continued involvement with decisions governing the Andrews. The new cohort of future science leaders arriving at the Andrews

in the early 1970s, therefore, represents an unusual development. For the first time,

the scientists most directly involved in managing and directing research at the

Andrews were directly recruiting and mentoring their immediate and long-term

successors.

During the early 1970s, Waring had emerged as the go-to leader of the Corvallis

component of the Coniferous Biome. Franklin’s role at the Andrews was more

sporadic because he took a 10-month sabbatical in Japan in 1970, just as the

Figure 30—Jim Sedell and Stan Gregory, shown here at Mack Creek in 1973, infused

new energy into aquatics research at the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest.

Frank Triska
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Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

Coniferous Biome was getting underway, and then accepted a 2-year appointment

at NSF in Washington, DC, where he hoped to shore up support for long-term,

continuous funding at established IBP sites, while also expanding the concept of

ecosystem research into new venues. Franklin, who began his stint at NSF in

summer 1973, emphasizes he was determined to “convert IBP funding to [budget]

line funding, continuous funding to ecosystem research, so instead of disappearing

into just regular ecology or biology funding, the line item that had been there for

IBP was rolled over into the ecosystem science program.” He set, as one priority,

the goal of continuing to fund “sites like the Andrews.” Franklin also worked to

ensure “that some new, related kinds of activities that hadn’t been able to make it in

under the IBP banner” would get funded. In that vein, he worked with Dyrness and

Keith Van Cleve, of the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, to establish the Taiga

Research Project that later developed into the Bonanza Creek Long Term Ecological

Research. Shortly after Franklin began working for NSF, PNW Station Director

Bob Buckman tapped Dyrness to lead a multifunctional unit in Fairbanks, Alaska,

and Dyrness carried the vision of interdisciplinary, collaborative research into his

new, 16-year career in the far north, where he quickly linked up with Van Cleve.69

Waring, while still a relatively junior faculty member at OSU, stepped into the

local leadership breach and led the growing cohort of postdoctoral associates and

cooperating scientists into one of the most prolific periods of scientific inquiry in

the history of the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest. Franklin, meanwhile, broadened his personal and professional networks in Washington, D.C., eventually

returning to the Andrews in the latter part of the decade to resume a somewhat

diminished leadership role in a more diverse program already greatly transformed

by the prospect of long-term, continuous funding for ecosystems research. He

was still a prominent, even dominant leader in the group, but a broader system

of decisionmaking and a more complex set of constraints and incentives guided

the research effort through the end of the IBP. The number of people with professional connections and personal commitments to the Andrews Forest had greatly

expanded, and the sheer numbers of people working at the place had left their

imprint.70

69 Interview with Ted Dyrness by Max Geier at Dyrness home in Albany, OR, 17 July

1995; correspondence from Ted Dyrness to Ken Wright, 19 June 1995.

70 Interview with Jerry Franklin, 16.

Waring led the postdoctoral associates

and cooperating

scientists into one

of the most prolific

periods of scientific

inquiry in the history

of the H.J. Andrews

Experimental Forest.
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General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

The Reconstructed and Humanized Landscape of the Andrews

Forest

By the mid 1970s, the Andrews Forest and programs of research linked with that

place were already larger and more permanent than any one person could manage.

To promote the place and protect it from closure, Franklin and Dyrness moved it

from relative obscurity into national prominence. Their campaign to include the

experimental forest as an intensive study site for the Coniferous Biome Project

of the IBP humanized the landscape in ways that went beyond Silen’s system of

roads and clearcuts: large numbers of people lived and worked at the Andrews

Forest during the 1970s, and it became a place where scientists went to interact

with other people. It went from being a place that Dyrness and Franklin had

perceived as underpopulated, to a place that district staff at Blue River and others

described as overrun with out-of-control people or even the wrong kind of people.

It was a place that had become so popular with scientists that Waring finally had

to admit he couldn’t manage the place without assistance. Finally, it was a place

so crowded with people and their habits, that McKee began to perceive it as dismally lacking in human amenities. This humanized landscape, ironically, was the

end-product of the decision to include the Andrews Forest as a “pristine” example

of the Coniferous Forest Biome designated for “intensive study.” Much of the

Andrews Forest remained relatively remote, and much of its potential as a research

resource remained untapped. The most remarkable change resulting from the IBP

at the Andrews Forest was the emerging spirit of collaborative effort and the

tradition of pragmatic adaptation that became hallmarks of the Andrews group

over the last quarter of the century.
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Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

Chapter Four: Fostering Cooperation Between

Research and Management, 1970–1980

The Andrews group capitalized on the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest (Andrews

Forest’s) growing popularity as a site for field research throughout the 1970s.

Scientists found inspiration and new respect for each other on a landscape they

described as pristine, although it was more intensively developed than the surrounding national forest. The sudden popularity of the place forced leaders of the

group to become managers of people and other resources, but it also killed the

proposal to close the Andrews Forest. During this decade, the most immediate

threat to its long-term viability was the possibility that different studies at the site

might begin to interfere with one another. The group formalized an administrative

structure for coordinating research efforts, but they also tried to preserve the

informality and spirit of the group’s “make-do” tradition.

In the last half of the decade, the Andrews Forest and the group entered a new

era of prominence as a pilot program in a permanent, global network of field sites

dedicated to ecosystem research. It was a daunting experiment in collaborative

management of people, place, and process in a decade of increased public concern

about the environment. These people expanded their activities beyond the Lookout

Creek drainage and began annual, community-building exercises modeled after their

previous experiences at the Andrews. As they became more accustomed to their

national prominence, they also gained self-confidence. They began to draw forest

managers into the group’s inner circle, and they began to supplement the basic

science orientation of the International Biological Programme (IBP) with more

applied research, culminating in a pathbreaking collaboration with the Willamette

National Forest to develop new guidelines for managing forests and streams.

New Priorities for the Andrews Research Community

The Andrews group forged a community ideal of interdisciplinary, cooperative,

long-term research amidst swirling political debates and social tensions. In the

decade that began with the first Earth Day celebration in April 1970, those who

managed public resources had to pay more attention to the ecological context of

their actions. At the Andrews Forest, more than two decades of continuous monitoring of streams and permanent plots supplied the data needed to support longterm studies of ecological processes. The self-defined limits of the Andrews group

expanded during the 1970s to include more academic scientists not connected with
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General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

the Forest Service, more nonscientists, and more sites away from the experimental

forest. Their focus, however, was closely centered on the Lookout Creek drainage.

The rising public concern about environmental issues, and the political expression

of that concern, also made the group’s research more relevant to the priorities of

forest managers. As the IBP drew to a close, Forest Service scientists and Oregon

State University (OSU) cooperators associated with the Andrews Forest pioneered

a strategy of independent funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF).

That strategy left them well positioned, by the mid 1980s, to explore with relative

autonomy the long-term implications of policy alternatives to clearcut logging in the

old-growth forests of the Pacific Northwest.

The long-established ethic of stewardship-for-future-use continued as a core

value of the Andrews group, but preservationist priorities for managing the forest

also became more apparent during the “environmental decade.” The new generation of scientists who joined the group early in the 1970s gradually moved from

assistant to leadership positions by the 1980s, while exploring hypotheses that

challenged and advanced previous thinking about ecological processes. At the same

time, a stricter test of scientific relevance virtually halted nonsalvage timber sales in

the Lookout Creek drainage, even as timber harvests and road building accelerated

on neighboring drainages of the adjoining Willamette National Forest. By the early

1980s, roads and clearcuts were less common on the Andrews than on the surrounding landscape. Relative to nearby, logged drainages, the experimental forest had begun to live up to its previous image as a pristine place. In this comparative context, scientists reimagined potential uses for the Andrews. They perceived

and managed the Andrews Forest as an accessible reserve of intensively studied,

regenerating, older clearcuts and stands of old growth in a larger, patchwork landscape of more recent timber harvests, road projects, recreational developments,

and other uses of the Willamette National Forest. They expanded their focus above

and below the forest floor, and they explored ways to integrate ideas from their

work at the Andrews with management practices on the adjacent national forest.

International Biological Programme Shortfalls and the Problem of

Long-Term Ecosystem Studies

The sheer quantity of effort and funding focused on the Andrews Forest during

the Coniferous Biome Project attracted national attention and skilled scientists to

the site, but the IBP failed to fully meet its goals before the planned end of the

program. By the time that international effort was scheduled to end, in 1974, the
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Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

U.S. component of the IBP had absorbed about $50 million, most of it channeled

through grants from the NSF. These monies mostly funded studies of five biomes:

grasslands, tundra, desert, western coniferous forest, and eastern deciduous forest. As the program neared its scheduled end, the National Academy of Sciences

commissioned a report of the entire American component. That report, when finally

released to the public in January 1975, drew harsh criticism. An unnamed reviewer

in the 21 February 1975 edition of Science (Vol. 187), for example, observed that

unspecified “critics” of the program questioned “whether IBP did anything that

wouldn’t have been done anyway, and for less money.” The same critics suggested

the program provided research funds to “second-rate researchers who wouldn’t

have qualified for grants under the regular NSF grant programs.” The Science

review also reported claims that “the biome studies have accumulated masses of

data while failing to establish chains of cause and effect that could lead to deeper

understanding of how ecosystems work.”1

From the outset, Franklin, Waring, and others wanted predictive models that

would structure the research effort and determine data needs. The group’s top

priority for the first full year of the Coniferous Biome (1970-1971), was “to review

available information for the development of preliminary models with an emphasis

on the terrestrial-aquatic interface system.” Their second objective was “to initiate

studies of poorly understood processes and elucidate functional relationships.”

Second-year objectives (for 1972) reversed the order, with a stronger focus on (1)

completing “selective ecosystem descriptions at the intensive sites,” (2) developing

“additional information for modeling of transfer mechanisms and pathways of

nutrients, particulate matter, energy, and water ... ,” (3) modeling “assembled

information ... ,” and (4) developing “the coordination program.”2

Predictive models were elusive, and Waring admits much of the criticism of

the IBP was well founded. Part of the problem was that the technology of computing could not handle the volume of data that the large assemblage of scientists had

generated. The group struggled to pull together “just enough so we could see how

1

 National Academy of Sciences, U.S. Participation in the International Biological

Program: Report 6 of the U.S. National Committee for the International Biological

Program (Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences, 1974). Science 187 (21

February 1975).

2

 Jerry F. Franklin, “Why a Coniferous Forest Biome?” In: Proceedings—Research on

Coniferous Forest Ecosystems—a Symposium (Bellingham, WA—March 23-24, 1972);

“Coniferous Forest Biome Ecosystem Analysis International Biological Program

Proposal for 1973 and 1974, Vol II” (bound typescript in Coniferous Biome files,

Publication Room, FSL, Corvallis, OR, July 1972), 4.1.

Predictive models

were elusive, and

Waring admits much

of the criticism of

the IBP was well

founded.
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General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

the pieces fit together and get something out [published].” They rushed many reports into print as “gray literature” that didn’t measure up to the standards of peerreviewed journals like Science. These caveats notwithstanding, the Coniferous

Biome Project generated more than 45 contributions to the “open literature” by

early 1975, including Waring’s own work with K.L. Reed and W.H. Emmingham

to develop an environmental grid for classifying coniferous forest ecosystems.3

Unplanned spinoffs from IBP turned out to be more important than its shortcomings and arguably more significant than anything the group published as part

of that effort at the time. Even its failures had long-term payoffs not fully recognized until much later. Work at the Andrews Forest, for example, provided initial

data for characteristics not previously considered, including the amounts and functions of dead wood on land and in streams. These data were the foundation for

later, experimental work in that area. The IBP work also linked the group with

young scientists working at other sites, including Hubbard Brook and Coweeta.

Reciprocal, intersite meetings with those scientists strengthened the group’s

reputation for accomplishing significant results with minimal facilities.4

The Andrews group made a virtue of minimal physical improvements at the

experimental forest in their dealings with NSF reviewers during the early 1970s.

After visiting the Andrews, NSF officials could hardly accuse the group of wasteful spending. McKee and Waring, for example, blithely cited as a “major overhead”

expense the cost of acquiring and installing a single mobile home unit that they

acquired from Forest Service surplus stocks and designated as a combined meeting

space, sleeping quarters, kitchen, and dining hall. This single unit supported more

than 100 scientists who otherwise relied on the temporary camp facilities.5 McKee,

Levno, Mersereau, and others supported a world-class science effort with a

garage-sale mentality of making do.

The skeletal program at the Andrews Forest, relative to some other IBP sites,

was obvious even to the most casual observer. Overnight guests crammed into a

surplus trailer could not help but notice the enthusiastically efficient opportunism

of the group. Scientists and staff volunteered their time, and cooperative arrangements with various OSU departments and the Forest Service covered the material

3

 Interview with Dick Waring, 8-9; J.F. Franklin, L.J. Dempster, and R.H. Waring (eds.),

Proceedings—Research on Coniferous Forest Ecosystems—a Symposium (Portland, OR:

USDA Forest Service, 1972), 79-92.

4

 Communication from Fred Swanson 12 November 1998.

5

 “Coniferous Forest Biome Ecosystem Analysis ... Proposal for 1973 and 1974, Vol II,”

4.20-4.21.
139

Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

cost of vehicles, equipment, and laboratory facilities. They hosted visitors from

around the world, including representatives from Japan and Austria, U.S. delegates

from the Grasslands and Deciduous Forest Biomes, and other visiting scientists

who conducted seminars and workshops at the experimental forest.6

 Together, they

founded a community ethic of unpaid volunteering, and their human capital subsidized the group’s scientific programs.

Individual scientists and staff paid a high price for their volunteerism. They

sacrificed personal time with their families to support programs at the Andrews

Forest, and the time they donated seldom translated into lines on a résumé. It was

time they might otherwise have invested in opportunities for professional involvement at more traditional venues in their own disciplines. The opportunity cost of

their involvement at the Andrews Forest often exceeded their professional return,

in terms of career advancement, but people found alternative outlets for their creative energies within the cooperative culture of the group.7

The group promoted the failures of the early models as opportunities to rethink

the goals, purpose, and approach of research at the Andrews Forest. They eventually rejected the idea that predictive models applicable elsewhere could be developed

from the localized, intensive research sites of the IBP. The group’s initial models,

Waring observes, “basically described what we measured.” They did not accurately

predict how timber harvests or changes in climate would affect the ecosystem.

That realization encouraged Waring to work with other scientists at the Andrews

Forest and at other sites to devise broader, more generalized models built around

physical processes, rather than site-specific observations. They began with models

of hydrologic processes because, Waring observes, those are “the most physicalbased and least biological-based of all the processes that go on in watersheds and

in ecosystems.” The goal was to demonstrate generalities among the biomes of the

IBP and build quantitative models based on the actual processes, rather than statistical correlations. Before that effort, Waring observes, most models of watersheds

were tuned to data on how much water flowed in and how much flowed out,

rather than on processes in the watersheds themselves. The Andrews group

worked with Wayne Swank of Coweeta, who also had links with the University

6

 “Coniferous Forest Biome Ecosystem Analysis ... Proposal for 1973 and 1974, Vol II,”

4.20-4.21.

7

 Interview with Andrews IBP group including Jerry Franklin, Dick Waring, Fred

Swanson, Jim Hall, Martha Brookes, Don Henshaw, Art McKee, Al Levno, Bill Denison,

and Ted Dyrness by Max G. Geier on 10 February 1998 at the Siuslaw National Forest

Headquarters, as transcribed by Keesje Hoekstra, 2.
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General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

of Washington, to develop a general model that could be tested in Arizona, Oregon,

and North Carolina, and they worked with Dale Cole and others at the University of

Washington to develop nutrient-cycling models.8

The group’s shift from descriptive to process-oriented models is an example

of their tendency to convert apparent setbacks into opportunities for innovation.

People in the group used the failure of the initial models as a powerful rationale for

aggressively expanding intersite networking. They pinned their hopes on a guiding

principle of the IBP: to encourage greater integration across national, disciplinary,

and institutional lines. They responded to local constraints by broadening the range

of their interactions with people at other sites and expanding their field of inquiry.

In that sense, Waring suggests, the IBP was phenomenally successful: “We did

reach out ... [to] other biomes, particularly the Tundra and Eastern Deciduous

[biomes].” They worked with other people who were also studying decomposition,

water, and carbon cycling, and they constantly sought opportunities to share and

learn new methods.9

A sense of desperate urgency drove the opportunism and adaptive style of

research at the Andrews Forest during the 1970s. People who became involved

with the Andrews Forest during the IBP knew that the Coniferous Biome, by

design, was a finite project. That knowledge gave them a common purpose and

unusual focus that encouraged effective teamwork, but it also set them up for a

wrenching readjustment at the end of the project. Bill Denison, a cooperating

scientist from OSU who worked on the Biological Processes team of the Coniferous Biome, notes that the IBP disrupted previous working relations and habits of

thought among his colleagues on campus, and it left a legacy of heightened expectations that were difficult to meet. He describes the IBP as a lost opportunity to

discard the traditional pattern of departmental rivalries and forge an interdisciplinary

tradition at OSU: “People were reluctantly transformed. Once they were transformed [pause], we sort of [did not have] the resources ... available to follow up

on it.” He and his colleagues, Denison recalls, “got fired up and were excited about

it.” They were excited partly because the money was available to support their

research, but Denison remembers they were also attracted by the lure of “interaction across departmental lines and disciplinary lines.” He observes, however, that

their initial excitement “proved to be very naïve” because the program ended, and

8

 Interview with Dick Waring, 2-3.

9

 Interview with Dick Waring, 4.

The group used

the failure of the

initial models as a

powerful rationale

for aggressively

expanding intersite

networking.
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“to have that evaporate, was [pause] a blow [long pause].”10 The dislocation and

sense of abandonment that Denison recalls was real, but while some elements of

the IBP abruptly ended, others continued and even expanded after that program

formally ended at the Andrews Forest.

Modeling Research and Community During the IBP

Computer modeling was one area of remarkable success that helped reenergize the

Andrews group. Dyrness, who observes that their early leaders were neophytes in

the field of integrated ecosystem research, recalls that Joan Hett initially introduced

him and Franklin to the concept of computer modeling at an orientation to ecosystems theory they all attended at the University of Wisconsin in the mid 1960s. Hett,

who later joined the Modeling and Integration Team of the Coniferous Biome as a

scientist at the University of Washington, demonstrated the potential of computer

modeling at the Wisconsin session, which Dyrness recalls as a “gee-whiz thing.”

That awakening to the potential of ecosystem science, Franklin ads, “led directly

into our old-growth characterization and all our [subsequent] involvement with

policy analysis.”11

With the IBP field site at the Andrews Forest members of the group were

full participants at the cutting edge of ecosystem research. They joined an interdisciplinary effort to model whole ecosystems, bringing in specialists from many

different academic backgrounds. As a result, Waring explains, “We began to look

at decomposition as a process.” They examined the details of how organic material

actually decomposed, including the biological organisms and chemical exchanges

involved in that process. In so doing, they furthered the goals of the IBP in which

the Andrews Forest was just one site of many potential reference points for building a comprehensive model of how ecosystems function. That overarching model

remained elusive, but the Andrews group benefited in other, unplanned ways.12

The IBP initiative at the Andrews Forest was more successful as an exercise

in human development than as a breakthrough in scientific thinking: it modeled new

job possibilities for scientists interested in studying forest ecosystems in the postIBP era. As new opportunities for interdisciplinary professionals in forest science

became more apparent, Waring, at least, had a clear conscience when he recruited

people from other disciplines to fill short-term niches in the Coniferous Biome: “At

10 Interview with IBP group, 29.

11 Interview with IBP group, 2-3, 17.

12 Interview with Dick Waring, 3-4.
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that time we could see jobs on the horizon either at the Forest Service or at the

University, so we didn’t feel guilty about exploiting the talents of people from other

fields when you could see that there was an opportunity to move them into classically forestry enterprises where you had to have a degree in forestry, otherwise

you wouldn’t be accepted. ... we broke that convention ... big time. We did it!”13

The postdoctoral and graduate student assistants that Franklin and Waring recruited

to jump-start the computer-modeling program gained valuable experience and built

networks with other scientists and funding agencies that helped them launch professional careers elsewhere.

Those who hoped to establish a long-term program of ecosystems research

at the Andrews Forest needed to convince a substantial number of cooperating

scientists not to leave at the end of the Biome Project. Those who stayed later

argued that the transition toward a more sustainable, collaborative group at the

Andrews Forest began with an informal process of “self-selection” during this

phase of the project. That belief emerged as a core value among survivors of the

Andrews group in the post-IBP era.14

The recruitment and winnowing of participants was more self-conscious than

the natural evolution that the group’s preferred term for the informal process seems

to imply. Franklin observes that he and Waring “made decisions about people and

activities which brought some in and pushed others out.” A prolonged disagreement

between Franklin and statistician Scott Overton during the early days of the IBP,

for example, led directly to Overton’s departure. Overton was an OSU scientist

who cooperated with Hett and others on the Modeling and Integration team of

the Coniferous Biome. His innovative work during that period didn’t mesh with

Franklin’s vision, and McKee recalls Overton eventually left the group amidst

evident displays of “bad blood” between the two men. The terms of Overton’s

departure, he adds, had some long-term consequences for scientific exchange at

the Andrews, including McKee’s sense that he “couldn’t use the term that Scott

used” to describe the hierarchical statistical models on which Overton later

worked.15

Franklin describes his break with Overton as a struggle for control within

the group and as an example of deep-rooted disagreements over the direction of

13 Interview with Dick Waring, 2-3; interview with IBP group, 29.

14 Interview with Ted Dyrness, 19-20.

15 Communication from Jerry Franklin 6 December 1999; interview with Art McKee,

13-14; communication from Art McKee November 1998.
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the modeling effort. He notes, “We gave him some major opportunities and responsibilities in IBP,” but relations between Franklin and Overton reached a “breaking

point” over a dispute involving the sampling design for biomass on Watershed 10.

Overton, Franklin observes, favored an innovative sampling model emphasizing

statistical estimates, while Franklin himself preferred a “more traditional” sampling

design emphasizing allometric relations. He admits Overton “really wanted to

pioneer some new statistical ground” and that approach was “probably right” for a

biomass estimate of Watershed 10, if that had been the sole purpose of the sampling design. Franklin argues, however, that he was concerned about the broader

application of the sampling results while Overton was more concerned about the

broader application of the sampling design. In Franklin’s view, “This biomass sampling was going to be very expensive, we weren’t going to do very much of it, and

it had to be designed so as to be useful in many other places and in the future—

even if it was less than perfect from a biometrician’s view!”16 Franklin wanted

the work to generate results that accurately described the actual functioning of

the ecosystem in ways that met the needs of forest managers. Presented with

Franklin’s ultimatum, Overton subsequently left the group. The episode demonstrated a hard-earned lesson for the group that Swanson summarizes with the

phrase, “personality matters.”17

Dennis Harr, a hydrologist who worked closely with Overton, recalls the

statistician was “a very sharp and brutally frank systems person,” and, he suggests, “Scott’s brutal frankness ... put him at odds with those in control of IBP.”

With Overton’s departure, McKee argues, the Andrews group lost an opportunity

to lead the way in one important arena of ecosystems research. Overton’s later

work in hierarchical modeling involved compartmentalized processes that operated

at different timeframes, each providing input to the model at a higher level. At that

higher level, the model could interrogate other models for input on specific conditions. In this way, models nested within other models could communicate with

each other in an interactive system. That concept, McKee notes, was the basis for

16 Communication from Jerry Franklin 6 December 1999.

17 Jerry F. Franklin, “Why a Coniferous Forest Biome?” In: Proceedings—Research on

Coniferous Forest Ecosystems—a Symposium, 3-5; communication from Art McKee 7

December 1999; communication from Jerry Franklin 6 December 1999; communication

from Fred Swanson 16 December 1998.
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“a lot of high profile, hierarchical modeling work that came out in the mid eighties,”

and 20 years later, he concludes, the group revisited the approach and found it

“conceptually very useful.”18

Overton’s role in the Andrews group, like his hierarchical models, illustrates

how complex systems function at various levels simultaneously. Despite the rift,

Overton nonetheless played a critical role in recruiting Don Henshaw into the

group, and he guided Henshaw’s early involvement with modeling ecosystems

and information management at the Andrews. Henshaw, who continued as a longterm associate of the group through the next three decades, recalls that when he

first mentioned an interest in “doing something related to ecology” as a new student at OSU in 1974 he was “immediately” directed to Scott Overton, who became

his major professor. He began working as a liaison between Overton and Boyd

Wickman, Dick Mason, and other Forest Service people who were working on an

insect population model, and he learned about the IBP through Overton’s cooperative effort to develop hydrology models with Harr.19

Dennis Harr’s experience of recruitment, priorities, and interactions at the

Andrews Forest during the IBP and through the 1980s demonstrates some of the

more pragmatic reasons why people joined or left the group in these years. Harr,

a native of northwestern Washington, studied forest management at Washington

State University from 1959 to 1963. He recalls the curriculum proceeded from the

assumption that, “The simple objective of forestry was to convert the decadent,

overmature, rotten old-growth to vigorous, fast growing new growth for the

benefit of all.” He secured a National Defense Fellowship to support his Ph.D.

work in watershed management at Colorado State, and after serving a tour of duty

in Vietnam with the Navy, he worked for 2 years at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation near Richland, Washington. Desperate to “escape the situation I was in at

Hanford,” Harr recalls, he applied for a soft-money position funded with a grant

that George Brown (then a forest engineering professor and later the Dean of the

College of Forestry at OSU) wrote under the broader umbrella of IBP funding at

OSU in 1971. Harr recalls of that appointment, “It didn’t fulfill some life-long

dream.”20

18 Communication from Dennis Harr 27 August 1998, 1; interview with Art McKee,

13-14.

19 Interview with IBP group, 11.

20 Communication from Dennis Harr 27 August 1998, 1.

Overton guided

Henshaw’s early

involvement with

modeling ecosystems and information management

at the Andrews.
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Harr’s work initially focused on subsurface hydrology of a forested slope on

Watershed 10, but his recollections revolve around his experiences with people on

that landscape. He worked most closely with Darrell Ranken, a graduate research

assistant, and the time they spent together lugging equipment up and down the

steep terrain on Watershed 10 left an indelible impression on Harr. He especially

emphasizes the excitement of meeting people who later emerged as prominent

scientists in a variety of different fields, all collaborating at the Andrews during the

mid to late 1970s: he learned about spotted owls from Eric Forsman, old-growth

forests from Jerry Franklin, canopy communities from Bill Denison, soil science

from Ted Dyrness, nutrient cycling from Dick Fredriksen and Phil Sollins, and

aquatic ecosystems from Jim Sedell.21 It was a veritable smorgasbord of ideas and

approaches to ecological systems.

Mobility from soft-money, postdoctoral appointment to a permanent, funded

position and a leadership role in the group was possible, if not common, during

the IBP. Harr, for example, quickly secured a permanent position with the Forest

Service in 1973, when Rothacher’s retirement left a vacancy at PNW Station. He

“inherited all the watershed studies” from Rothacher about the time Swanson

began his first geomorphologic study on soft-money funding at the Andrews Forest. Harr began to explore the relation between aquatic and terrestrial systems, and

over the next 10 years, his studies focused on snowmelt in relation to watershed

dynamics in western Oregon.22 In 1983, he became project leader of the Forest

Service scientists assigned to the watershed group at the Pacific Northwest Research Station (PNW), which by that time included Swanson, Fredriksen, Doug

Swanston, and Duane Moore. That year, the watershed group decided to abandon

studies at Fox Creek (in the Bull Run watershed near Portland, Oregon) and Coyote

Creek so they could concentrate their energies at the Andrews Forest.23

Harr left the Andrews on good terms in 1988, when he transferred to a

new position in PNW Station that required him to relocate to the University of

Washington. There, he continued his snowmelt research through his retirement in

1994. He recalls with fondness his 15-year experience with the Andrews group: “I

think a characteristic common to the Andrews Group is an outstanding, collective

sense of humor. ... Members of the Group have taken themselves very seriously

21 Communication from Dennis Harr 27 August 1998, 3.

22 Harr, R.D. Some Characteristics and Consequences of Snowmelt During Rainfall in

Western Oregon. Journal of Hydrology. 53: 277-304.

23 Communication from Dennis Harr 27 August 1998, 5-6.
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over the years—and the success of the Andrews shows that—but they’ve also

done it with a great sense of humor.” He relates, for example, how Art McKee once

stopped a “runaway” snowmobile by “risking life and limb” to direct it harmlessly

into a clearcut area downslope from the road, observing, “This sounds more

responsible than what really happened.”24

Excellence in science was an expected, but not sufficient qualification for longterm involvement in that group. People had to be able to work together, and they

had to be able to produce. A community spirit of collegial good humor emerged

during the IBP and fostered a productive environment of collaborative exchange

and mutual goodwill. That characteristic was, potentially, a powerful force that

could support innovative science, and the Andrews group cultivated that community ethic throughout the 1970s. The group recruited, in a spirit of consensus,

people to replace those who left, though McKee observes that, on occasion,

Franklin “cleverly gave people the feeling we were coming to a consensus and ...

we would go to a decision that he had already made.” In the process, he notes,

“Sometimes a majority would be ignored, and, ... that caused some heartburn and

there were several people who left the group for that reason over the years.”25 The

Andrews group of the 1970s and early 1980s was by no means utopian, but people

in the group had begun to value a shared spirit of community.

Reference Stands and the Community Ideal of Long-Term

Research

As people in the Andrews group developed close personal and professional ties with

others in that science community, they were more willing to get involved in longterm research at the Andrews Forest, even without long-term funding. The group

developed a network of permanent study plots on and around the Andrews Forest

during the Coniferous Biome Project, when they designated specific “reference

stands” slated for long-term measurement and monitoring efforts. The vegetation

studies Franklin and Dyrness completed the previous decade provided the baseline data needed to identify and lay out 19 reference stands by 1972 (12 on the

Andrews, 4 on adjacent drainages, 2 on Wildcat Mountain Research Natural Area,

and another reference stand located 1 mile west of Blue River). Each site represented a different ecological community, including the spectrum of stand productivity, moisture variability, and other attributes associated with that community.

24 Communication from Dennis Harr 27 August 1998, 5-6.

25 Interview with Art McKee, 14.
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Data collected from the reference stands, which initially measured 164 by 164 feet

each [later expanded to 328 by 328 feet], included species composition, density,

biomass, leaf-area index, structure, and, through time, forest succession. The

intent, Dyrness notes, was to initiate long-term measurements on the reference

stands.26

The reference stands were a tangible accomplishment, but the group still

needed to secure institutional support for long-term research at the Andrews Forest. Abrupt changes in administrative authority and management priorities thwarted

most previous efforts to promote long-term research in the Lookout Creek drainage.27 Those efforts were mostly obscure, internal battles waged by Forest Service

employees directly involved with the Andrews Forest. Franklin’s 2-year appointment as program officer with the NSF in Washington, DC, (in 1973), however,

moved the venue for that struggle outside the Forest Service and linked it with a

broader, global effort. Franklin mostly wanted to find a way to fund long-term

research at the Andrews Forest, but toward that end, he energetically supported

broader efforts to establish the Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) program at

NSF. Franklin stresses that his colleagues at NSF designed the program to support

“everybody” interested in long-term ecosystems research, but his own efforts to

initiate that program “came out of a desire to have it here in the Northwest.”28

Between 1973 and 1977, Franklin linked the Andrews Forest more closely with

the long-term ecological research movement at the United Nations and at the NSF.

He chaired the U.S. component of United Nations Educational, Scientific, and

Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO’s) Man and the Biosphere Committee on Project

8 (Conservation of Natural Areas and of the genetic material they contain), and he

led the effort to identify natural areas that would represent the major biomes or

biotic divisions in the United States in 1973 and 1974. Over the next 3 years, the

U.S. Project 8 committee identified 27 sites, including the Andrews Forest, as

biosphere reserves in the United States.

Its designation as a biosphere reserve linked the Andrews Forest with regional

as well as international interests. The UNESCO committee that Franklin chaired

selected, for each biotic province, a site representing an outstanding natural or

conservation-oriented reserve (or “control” site). The committee then paired each

26 Interview with Ted Dyrness, 16-17. Franklin recalls he was involved in establishing

reference stand 2 in 1957, noting it was “a highly technical job;” Andrews group

interview 22 September 1997, 41; Rakestraw, 138-139.

27 Andrews group interview 22 September 1997, 32; interview with IBP group, 21.

28 Interview with Jerry Franklin, 15-16.

Between 1973 and

1977, Franklin linked

the Andrews Forest

more closely with

the long-term ecological research

movement.
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Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

of these natural reserves with the leading center for field research (or “experimental” site) in that province. Their intent was to encourage collaborative programs.

They paired the Andrews Forest (experimental) site with the Three Sisters Wilderness (control) site, together representing the Sierra-Cascade (north) Biotic Province. Franklin, in his summary description of the Andrews Forest as a field research site worthy of this status, highlighted the extensive, long-term, “Forest

Service studies of management practices on water yield and quality and ecosystem

analyses” at the Andrews. He also cited, as part of this rationale, the Andrews

previous designation as an intensive study site in the IBP.29

29 Other biosphere reserves in the United States at that time included the Aleutian Islands

National Wildlife Refuge, Big Bend National Park, Cascade Head Experimental Forest

[currently managed by the same group that administers the Andrews Forest], *Central

Plains Experiment Station, Channel Islands National Monument, Coram Experimental

Forest, *Coweeta Experimental Forest, Desert Experimental Range, Everglades National

Park, Fraser Experimental Forest, Glacier National Park, Great Smokey Mountains

National Park, *Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest, *Jornada Experimental Range,

Mount McKinley National Park, Noatak National Arctic Range, Olympic National Park,

Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, Pawnee National Grassland, Rocky Mountain

National Park, San Dimas Experimental Forest, San Joaquin Experimental Range,

Sequoia-Kings Canyon National Parks, Stanislaus Experimental Forest, Three Sisters

Wilderness, and Yellowstone National Park. Sites marked with an asterisk (*) later were

included in the LTER network. Jerry F. Franklin, “The Biosphere Reserve Program in the

United States,” Science Volume 195 (21 January 1977), 262-267; Jerry F. Franklin, “The

conceptual basis for selection of U.S. Biosphere Reserves and features of established

areas” (typescript, LTER archives, Corvallis FSL, PNW Station, 1979). See http://

www.lternet.edu/ for a updated profile of the network.

Figure 31—The Andrews group designated “reference stands” on the

H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest during the 1970s as a network of

permanent plots slated for long-term measurement and monitoring

efforts. Here, Joe Means takes notes at RS 20 [HJA Reference Stand

20], Plot 2, on 23 August 1977.

Bill Emmingham
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The Biosphere Reserve network linked the Andrews Forest and group with

the Global Environmental Monitoring System of the United Nations Environment

Programme (UNEP) Earthwatch network and committed them to a long-term

research emphasis.30 Franklin’s Project 8 committee, he later observed, considered

“long-term baseline studies of environmental and biologic features” necessary for

effectively managing the biosphere reserve. The committee wanted to encourage

research that would “assist in determining management policies for the reserve,”

and they also favored “experimental or manipulative studies” that explored the

“ecological effects of human activities.” In an article published in 1977, Franklin

stressed the need to locate a source of funding sufficient to support baseline

surveys, studies, and monitoring efforts in the biosphere reserves, and he urged

“ecologically oriented scientists” to design studies that would make “more effective” use of those sites. The key, he suggested, was interagency planning and

cooperation to ensure that the system of linked sites would be “managed and used

as unitary biosphere reserves and not as isolated tracts.”31

The move toward long-term ecological research also took place in the context

of a shifting political and social environment in the United States during the 1960s

and 1970s. The 1962 release of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in the New Yorker32

and the appearance of Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb in 1968 helped mobilize

public opinion to support ecological initiatives and legislation. The Santa Barbara

oil spill of 28 January 1969 further demonstrated that the price of a technologydependent world might exceed the supposed benefits of engineering “fixes” to

human problems. The spill, and its aftermath, also exposed the relatively toothless

federal Clean Waters Act, approved less than 3 years earlier. Also in 1969, reports

that the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland had caught fire and burned added an air of

ridiculous insult to dismaying injury. Heavy concentrations of flammable industrial

chemicals in the river spontaneously combusted, and an astonished public demanded government action.

Congress responded with a flood of legislation that changed the legal footing

for environmental regulation, beginning with the National Environmental Policy Act

in 1969. President Richard Nixon established the Environmental Protection Agency

the following year, announcing in his February 1970 State of the Union message

30 Interview with Jerry Franklin, 15.

31 Franklin, “The Biosphere Reserve Program in the United States,” 262-267.

32 Silent Spring was later republished in book form, and has appeared in several editions,

most recently the 25th anniversary edition (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Corporation,

1987). Opie, Nature’s Nation, 414; Shabecoff, 100-148.
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Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

that the 1970s “absolutely must be the years when America pays its debt to the

past by reclaiming the purity of its air, its waters and our living environment. It is

literally now or never.”33 In the next 6 years Congress added The Federal Water

Pollution Control Act (1972), the Endangered Species Act (1973), the Safe Drinking Water Act (1974), the Toxic Substances Control Act (1976), the Federal Land

Management Act (1977), and the National Forest Management Act (NFMA)

(1978).34 These measures dramatically expanded the federal mandate to monitor

and regulate the environmental impact of natural resource industries.

Ecological monitoring efforts also accelerated on a global scale from the late

1960s through the mid 1970s. The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and

Cultural Organization sponsored the 1968 biosphere conference in Paris. Participants painted a grim picture of pollution, deforestation, and overgrazing, and they

warned that natural resources would soon become critically scarce. They urged

33 As quoted in Philip Shabecoff, A Fierce Green Fire: The American Environmental

Movement (NY: Hill and Wang), 112. Opie, John, Nature’s Nation: an Environmental

History of the United States (Ft. Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace, 1998), 404-433, and Hal K.

Rothman, The Greening of a Nation? Environmentalism in the United States Since 1945

(NY: Harcourt Brace & Co., 1998), 101-128.

34 Some other major pieces of federal legislation enacted during this decade include

Shabecoff, 131-132.

Figure 32—An early pattern of long-term, continuous data collected in a consistent fashion was

an established tradition by the time Roswell

(Ross) Mersereau made these measurements of

streamflow in Watershed 6 at a gaging station

equipped with a 2-foot H-flume and the venerable Stevens A-35 recorder on which the group

relied for consistent data comparable across

multiple decades. Al Levno, December 1980
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General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

the United Nations to sponsor environmental inventories, monitoring, and training

worldwide, but that agency initially did not immediately support such efforts.

Other, ongoing programs such as the IBP, however, continued ecological monitoring efforts (independent of the United Nation) through the early 1970s. Among

other accomplishments, those efforts documented DDT contamination in Arctic

fish and Antarctic penguins, and they dramatized the global character of ecosystem

issues.35

Delegates at the 1972 United Nations conference on the human environment

held in Stockholm formalized the global monitoring movement by authorizing the

United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). This new agency provided an

institutional focus for the global ideal, if not reality, of integrated research. It rapidly

gained influence after the IBP ended in 1974, despite an initially weak record of

support in the United States. The UNEP, for example, established an Earthwatch

network that included environmental data surveys and an international registration

and referral system. One UNEP goal was to promote interdisciplinary and intersite

cooperation through a global, information-sharing network. During the 2-year

transitional period between the beginnings of the UNEP and the end of the IBP in

1974, Franklin joined other scientists at the National Science Foundation in building

a U.S. component for that global effort. Their combined efforts built a network of

LTER by the early 1980s.36 Noel Brown, the North American director of UNEP,

reflected in 1982 at the second United Nations conference on the environment in

Nairobi, that, “In ten years, environmentalism has become a global value.”37

Transitioning From IBP to the UNESCO Model of Collaborative,

Intersite Monitoring

The Andrews group’s experience with intersite collaboration, interdisciplinary

cooperation, and long-term monitoring during the IBP helped them understand what

it would take to sustain a focused program of long-term, collaborative research.

Among other things, Denison notes, they learned that it required personal sacrifice

and collegial interaction: “You had to have colleagues willing to come to the table

with something to really make a commitment.”38 Diane Tracy, for example, walked

35 Opie, Nature’s Nation, 468, 480; Shabecoff, A Fierce Green Fire, 190-191, 198.

36 Nature’s Nation, 481; Shabecoff, A Fierce Green Fire, 191.

37 Shabecoff, A Fierce Green Fire, 190-191.

38 Interview with IBP group, 36.

Franklin joined

other scientists at

the National Science

Foundation in building a network of

LTER by the early

1980s.
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into Denison’s office one day during the early 1970s while she was still an undergraduate at OSU, and volunteered a way to help researchers study the question of

whether lichens in the canopy were fixing significant amounts of nitrogen. Scientists were stymied by their need to obtain intact samples of lichens at that height.

Tracy suggested that with modified rock-climbing techniques and equipment, she

could ascend into the old-growth canopy and collect samples of lichens for researchers at the Andrews Forest. Denison agreed to try her suggestion, and Tracy

followed through by assembling a volunteer crew of tree-climbers, mostly undergraduates. Their collaboration led to path-breaking research in the old-growth

canopy at the Andrews Forest.39

The group’s informality and community spirit modeled on a small scale the

ideas that Franklin proposed in his 1977 article. Sedell, for example, recalls how

Denison and his OSU colleague, George Carroll held “brown bag seminars” that led

to impromptu, interdisciplinary discussions where participants enjoyed taking “any

wild, hairbrained idea and tossing it around.” One of the more remarkable seminars

explored the relation between neurological networks, highway networks, treebranch networks, and stream networks. Sedell, who notes, “I never did anything

with that group other than [attending these informal seminars],” observes that he

had had similar experiences at graduate seminars at the University of Pittsburgh,

but his interactions with the Andrews group had an important difference: “This was

the first time where you knew what you came up with, you could put down on

paper and get funded to check [it] out or actually do something with what you

had.”40

Although the UNESCO model, in theory, required more structured, collaborative strategies and more conscious linkage of theory with managerial methods,

the Andrews group moved in that direction for reasons more personal and local.

Kerrick, whose involvement with the group spanned more than three decades,

first as district ranger at Blue River, and later as forest supervisor of the Willamette

National Forest, nudged the group in the direction of stronger interaction with forest managers when he recruited Steve Eubanks as district ranger at Blue River.41

39 Interview with IBP group, 15, 36.

40 Interview with Jim Sedell by Max Geier on 14 February 1998 at Sedell’s office in the

FSL, Corvallis, OR, as transcribed by Keesje Hoekstra, 7-8.

41 Interview with Al Levno, 8-9.
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He also contributed a personal appreciation for the Andrews group from his wideranging experience as a forest manager in the far West. After his tenure as district

ranger at Blue River ended in 1970, Kerrick had served as “the Timber staff” on

the Six-Rivers National Forest in northern California and then as deputy forest

supervisor for the Mount Hood National Forest. By the time he returned to the

Willamette National Forest as forest supervisor in 1980, he recalls, the legacy

of IBP and the heightened awareness of ecological issues during the previous

decade had already improved the potential for closer relations between managers

and scientists at Lookout Creek. He returned from the Southwestern United States

with a new appreciation for those possibilities at the Andrews Forest.42

Apart from the designation as a biosphere reserve, the research infrastructure

at the experimental forest included other efforts to link the Andrews with a regional

network of designated research natural areas on national forest lands. This network

of satellite sites broadened the venues for scientists sampling vegetation types and

environmental conditions in the Pacific Northwest. Early in the IBP, Dyrness and

Franklin had jointly prepared a descriptive summary of the natural vegetation in

Oregon and Washington,43 and they collaborated on the Research Natural Area

Committee at PNW Station. That committee identified and designated potential

research natural areas on Pacific Northwest Region forests and elsewhere in the

Pacific Northwest, beginning in 1970. Research natural areas ranged from hundreds to thousands of acres of native ecosystems with minimal evidence of human

manipulation since the time of recorded European contact with North America.

These sites are restricted to nondestructive research. They were intended to

provide future opportunities for research spanning the range of biological conditions in the United States.

Franklin and Dyrness, in collaboration with other scientists on that committee,

produced a guide to research natural areas in the Pacific Northwest in 1972. Their

intent was to inform scientists and educators about the sites and their potential for

42 Interview with Mike Kerrick, 22-23.

43 Jerry F. Franklin and C.T. Dyrness, Natural Vegetation of Oregon and Washington

(Portland, OR: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Forest

and Range Experiment Station, Gen. Tech. Rep. PNW-8, 1973). Interview with Ted

Dyrness 17 July 1995; communication from Ted Dyrness to Ken Wright 19 June 1995.
155

Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest
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supporting research,44 partly in an effort to counter critics who claimed that no

one ever used the sites for research. As Dyrness recalls, “What we were facing,

you see, was land managers [who] would say, ‘gosh, you guys run around, set up

these things, withdraw them from mineral entry and logging, and nobody ever goes

to [use] them, that we can see.”45

The Research Natural Area (RNA) committee, Franklin notes, faced difficult

obstacles and intense criticism from all sides at the time: “They [were] asking us

again and again, ‘... How many of these damn things do you need?!’ And so, it

became obvious, we needed to develop a comprehensive list.” The PNW Station

eventually published Research Natural Area Needs in the Pacific Northwest, by

Dyrness and Franklin, et al. in 1975. That publication went far beyond a simple

catalogue of existing sites. It built a template of “cells,” each representing a specific

ecosystem type in Washington and Oregon, and it stressed the need to expand the

existing network to fill in the “gaps” where a given cell lacked a corresponding

RNA. The report suggested guidelines for selecting future RNA sites and noted

the need to address concerns relating to rare and endangered organisms and aquatic

areas.

Tarrant suggests the success of the RNA effort surprised Station administrators like himself. Speaking to a group of scientists involved in that effort who

assembled one summer at Carpenter Lookout, Tarrant observed, “It’s amazing

how successful you were. You know there’s not another network like it anywhere

else in the nation that holds a candle. Other regions are beginning to come on-line,

but what you accomplished over that short period is just astonishing.” Franklin

explains they moved with such urgency because “we realized, this landscape’s

being cut over real fast, and we’d better get with the program.” Others in the

agency, he observes, “were willing to encourage young folks like us to, ‘Well,

get out there. Run into brick walls.’ [laughter].”46

44 Jerry F. Franklin, Frederick C. Hall, C.T. Dyrness, and Chris Maser, Federal Research

Natural Areas in Oregon and Washington: a guidebook for scientists and educators

(Portland, OR: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Forest

and Range Experiment Station, 1972). C.T. Dyrness, Jerry F. Franklin, Chris Maser,

Stanton A. Cook, James D. Hall, and Glenda Faxon, Research Natural Area Needs in the

Pacific Northwest: A contribution to land-use planning (Portland, OR: U.S. Department

of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Forest and Range Experiment Station,

Report on Natural Area Needs Workshop November 29—December 1, 1973, Wemme,

OR, Gen. Tech. Rep. PNW-38, 1975).

45 Interview with Ted Dyrness 17 July 1995.

46 Andrews group interview 22 September 1997, 23; interview with Jerry Franklin, 8-9;

C.T. Dyrness and others, Research Natural Area needs in the Pacific Northwest (Portland,

OR: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Station, Gen.

Tech. Rep. PNW-38, 1975), 235.

Tarrant suggests the

success of the RNA

effort surprised Station administrators.
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Administrative changes at PNW Station also encouraged scientists to rethink

their priorities for the Andrews Forest. A new Station Director, Robert Buckman,

reorganized PNW Station during a general restructuring of the Forest Service in

1974. Buckman placed the Station’s 24 projects under the control of two assistant

directors (including Robert Tarrant) and three program managers. Franklin credits

Buckman with sparking his early concern about clearcut logging during a field

excursion to a proposed RNA at Wildcat Mountain in the early 1970s. “That trip

with Buckman,” he notes, “first got me thinking about the negatives. People had

started these clearcuts, and it took about a decade for the whole thing to bloom in

my mind, but ... I’m sure, today, he’d disown any responsibility for anything I’ve

been involved in, subsequently.”47

Buckman’s indirect influence on research priorities at the Andrews Forest far

exceeded his direct influence on Franklin. He was a strong supporter of research

in the Forest Service hierarchy, and he was particularly influential in supporting

Tarrant and PNW Station at the national level during a period when Tarrant directed

researchers like Franklin at the Andrews. Before taking over from Briegleb as

Station Director, Buckman served 10 years at the Forest Service research lab in

Grand Rapids, Minnesota, and another 5 years in the Washington Office. He held

graduate and undergraduate degrees in forestry, silviculture, and public administration from the University of Minnesota, University of Michigan, and Harvard.48 His

tenure at PNW Station was brief, but significant. One year after the 1974 reorganization, he transferred back to Washington, DC, where he served as Deputy Chief

for Research over the next 11 years. Tarrant, who followed Buckman as Station

Director, was a graduate of OSU and a soil scientist with 29 years of experience

in the Research Branch of the Forest Service at the time he was appointed to

head PNW Station. Tarrant previously worked at the Andrews Forest, where he

pioneered research in the nitrogen-fixing characteristics of alder. His experience

working there with other scientists, and his ties with Buckman, enhanced the

group’s standing with the Washington Office.49 Together with their stronger interagency and international networks, this indirect network of support within the

47 Andrews group interview 22 September 1997, 20.

48 Interview with Robert Buckman by Max Geier, 13 July 1995, at Peavy Hall, Oregon

State University, Corvallis, OR.

49 Forestry Research News (Internal memo) 15 Aug 1975; Pacific Northwest Forest and

Range Experiment Station, Research Progress 1974 (Portland, OR: U.S. Department of

Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Forest and Range Experiment Station,

1975), 1-3; 17; interview with Robert Buckman 13 July 1995; interview with Robert

Tarrant 11 July 1995.
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Forest Service bolstered the group’s confidence in their interactions with national

forest managers and their science peers at a crucial point in the global development

of long-term research networks.

The Stream Team and the Transition to Long-Term and Applied

Research

The Andrews group easily adapted to the UNESCO model of research linked with

management applications. One manifestation was the relevance of their studies of

woody debris in streams as a pragmatic solution to an expensive problem on the

Willamette National Forest. Prior to these studies, forest management guidelines

Figure 33—The “Stream Team” brought aquatics science

into the forefront of forest planning on the Willamette

National Forest. Jim Hall, pictured here in 1979 speaking

to a field group on a tour of Mack Creek worked with

Norm Anderson, Stan Gregory, and Jim Sedell to build

an aquatics program into the International Biological

Programme, forming the basis for the emergence of a

stream team that worked with Mike Kerrick’s staff at

the Willamette National Forest to develop new guidelines

for managing coarse, woody debris.

Rollie Geppert
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Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

required loggers to remove woody debris from streams on sale units, and that requirement increased the cost of cutting on those units. Research at the Andrews

Forest, however, demonstrated that riparian ecosystems needed woody debris.

Kerrick, as forest supervisor, quickly grasped the implications: “It was costing

money to take all this stuff off the slopes. And the process of doing it wasn’t

making any money at all. And ... we were spending big bucks. ... [laughing] I

mean, you could save a bundle, and make [ecologically] good decisions as a

result of it. I mean, my God, what could be better?”50

The woody debris issue was the first time the Andrews group successfully

translated a research finding into a major policy shift on the Willamette National

Forest. Woody debris studies originated with the Andrews-centered stream group

that worked with the lakes group at the University of Washington in the aquatic

project of the Coniferous Biome. Oregon State University cooperators Norm

Anderson and Jim Hall, along with Stan Gregory and Jim Sedell, formed the core

of that group in the early 1970s. Anderson, a professor in the Entomology Department at OSU, together with Hall, of the Fisheries Department, and Rothacher,

jointly convinced Franklin to include an aquatic project in the Coniferous Biome at

the Andrews Forest, and they hired Sedell as a postdoc to help them get the project

underway. Sedell was one of the new leaders who emerged when Franklin left the

group in 1973, and his “stream team” gradually shifted the focus of water-related

research from continuous hydrologic monitoring efforts to more broad-based,

aquatic ecosystem and thematically broader research funded with grants from the

NSF.51

The aquatics group developed a spirit of close-knit teamwork, personal commitment, and intersite cooperation to compensate for their initially marginal role and

isolation from other groups of the Coniferous Biome. They ignored the institutional

rivalries that sometimes divided the IBP leadership at OSU from their counterparts

at the University of Washington. They rejected the notion that the aquatics program

was peripheral to the central concerns of the Coniferous Biome, and their energetic

efforts to prove that point made their unit a uniquely cohesive “collective” (in

Sedell’s words). That characteristic, and their breakthrough success with the

woody debris studies, established the stream team as an effective model for the

larger Andrews Group.52

50 Andrews group interview 22 September 1997, 36-37.

51 Riparian group interview, 1, 6; interview with Jim Sedell, 3-4.

52 Interview with Jim Sedell, 4; interview with IBP group, 3; communication from Fred

Swanson 16 December 1998.
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General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

The interdisciplinary nature of the stream team and earlier studies of landslides

and debris flows at the Andrews Forest led to their breakthrough insight on the

woody debris issue. As the stream team struggled to understand how stream ecosystems worked, they focused on the storage and flux of carbon as a common

denominator of ecosystems. Their studies of standing-crop carbon and the transport of carbon in stream ecosystems primarily focused on leaves and other organic

debris, but Hank Froehlich, a professor of forest engineering at OSU, alerted them

to an alternative. Froehlich was particularly interested in whether logging slash precipitated debris flows and landslides in small drainages, and he developed a method

to measure the amount and siting of wood and slash in a stream after logging

operations. Froehlich’s forest management study coincided with the IBP aquatics

effort at the Andrews Forest and inspired an innovative method for studying stream

ecology.53

In an effort to determine what precipitated debris flows after logging, Froehlich

theorized that in cases where logging operations left slash piled up in small streams,

the water collected in ponds until, eventually, the stream broke out, producing a

large debris flow. Realizing that he needed to distinguish between the slash left

behind by loggers and the woody debris that was already in the stream prior to logging, Froehlich then applied the problem-solving methods of forest engineering to

the question of woody debris in streams: he broke the question down into discrete

components and then tackled each element as an independent problem.54

To determine how much logging slash from harvest activities in a particular

drainage was deposited in the stream, Froehlich needed a method to determine the

baseline amount of woody debris in the stream before logging. He independently

devised a census technique to establish that baseline, but, Gregory observes,

Froehlich was “still looking at it totally from a logging operation point of view.”

Froehlich’s attempt to document the amount of wood already in streams alerted

stream ecologists to the prevalence of woody debris and the need to study it. He

also alerted scientists to the relation between the width of buffer-strips and their

effectiveness in keeping logging slash out of streams. When Sedell learned of

Froehlich’s method, he invited the engineer out to the Andrews Forest to teach

members of the stream team how to use the census method in areas that had

not been logged. Froehlich demonstrated the technique in Mack Creek; shortly

53 Interview with riparian group, 14.

54 Riparian group interview, 14; communication from Fred Swanson 16 December 1998.

Froehlich applied

the problemsolving

methods of forest

engineering to the

question of woody

debris in streams.
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Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

thereafter, the group started applying the technique in other streams. They

sampled streams beyond the Andrews Forest in places as farflung as Washington,

California, New Hampshire, Alaska, and Tennessee. Gregory recalls they discovered “a huge amount of wood in the streams. ... any place there was an old forest

we found a lot of wood.” With their newfound ability to measure the amount of

wood in streams, the stream team also began measuring the biological activity in

that debris. The resulting research notably included OSU entomologist Norm

Anderson’s studies of insects associated with large wood.55

Scientists in the group found Froehlich’s method useful for studying stream

ecology in old-growth drainages, even though he intended it to solve a forest

engineering problem on logged sites. That pattern of management concerns influencing research at the Andrews Forest was nothing new. During the IBP, however,

it inspired a conceptual breakthrough that helped the group understand the ecology

of old-growth forests. That research insight, Gregory observes, established the

Andrews Forest as one of the first places where ecologists “recognized the importance of large wood.” The group’s conceptual breakthrough also inspired new

policies for managing large woody debris in forest ecosystems.56

The stream team first adapted Froehlich’s management-oriented techniques to

their research needs at the Andrews, and then they tested their findings at other

sites around the country. Sedell invited Froehlich to demonstrate his method of

surveying the amount of wood in streams to members of the stream team at the

Andrews, and then they applied his methods to their studies of carbon transport

and storage in streams. In Gregory’s words, they “found that there was a huge

amount of wood in the streams.” When they presented their findings at conferences and meetings, he notes, “people started saying ‘Oh that’s just an anomaly,

that’s just the Andrews, or that’s just the Northwest. So we started going around to

streams around the country.” Wherever they went, the stream team found the same

results: “Anyplace there was an old forest we found a lot of wood, and any place

that there was not an old forest the wood amounts to about 10 percent of what’s

... in forested areas.” As people in the Andrews group became more aware of

55 N.H. Anderson, J.R. Sedell, L.M. Roberts, F.J. Triska, “The role of aquatic

invertebrates in processing of wood debris in coniferous forest streams,” The American

Midland Naturalist 100 (1978), 64-82; interview with Gregory, 5-6; communication from

Fred Swanson 2 January 1999; interview with riparian group, 14-15.

56 Interview with Stan Gregory, 5-6.
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General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

wood in streams, they also became more aware of woody debris on the forest

floor, and their studies of woody debris linked terrestrial and aquatic research at

the Andrews Forest.57

The woody debris studies led the group from studies of stream ecosystems

into involvement with land management planning. Gregory observes that it “suddenly became an issue in how you manage the stream-side zone, not just [for]

shade.” Previous management concerns primarily emphasized the need to anchor

the banks and provide shade for fish. As Gregory explains, “If you could provide

bank stability and shade, [management activity] ... wasn’t an issue. But, suddenly

this [concern for supply of woody debris] ... pushed back riparian management

quite a ways up the slope.”58 Franklin also argues that the woody debris finding

was a turning point in establishing the reputation of the Andrews as a site for

productive, applied science, and he suggests it gave scientists associated with

the Andrews some leverage with the Forest Supervisor’s office at the Willamette

National Forest: “In a matter of two or three years ... there were some [major]

turnarounds.”59

The woody debris studies stimulated long-term thinking that branched into

other arenas of research, notably including the role of logs in forest ecosystems.

Sedell recalls, “We used to not think about logs as anything [significant] until we

did a carbon budget and found out that all this wood ... was the total dominant.” In

the short term, he argues, leaves were the “energetic driver” in a forest ecosystem,

but compared with logs, leaves were a “minor league part of the [total] organic

story.” The overall volume of wood was so dominant that even if the ecosystem

processed only a very small fraction of that wood, it would still be a “huge contribution” to the overall energy budget for the system. Large woody debris, Sedell

observes, went from being “something that we cursed when we tripped over it as

we went to gather our leaf packs or do our sampling” to an asset that the Group

recognized as “something really unique and ... worthy of study in itself.”60

District Ranger Steve Eubanks worked closely with the Andrews group on the

woody debris issue, testing their ideas on the Blue River Ranger District, and that

relationship spilled over into other projects. Franklin, who was rethinking the concept of forest fragmentation at the time, theorized that dispersed-patch clearcutting

57 Interview with Stan Gregory, 5-6.

58 Riparian group interview, 15-16.

59 Interview with Jerry Franklin, 23.

60 Interview with Jim Sedell, 13.
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Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

would minimize problems associated with forest fragmentation. When Franklin

explained his ideas, Eubanks quickly implemented them on the district, and the

scientist was able to see the management implications of his ideas in practice. The

enthusiasm with which Eubanks responded to research ideas helped scientists in

the Andrews group realize the potential benefits of working with people who could

translate theory into policy on a large scale. That feedback, Franklin notes, was

“very useful,” but sometimes their ideas moved from conceptual theory to practical

application before they fully analyzed the full implications of what they were

doing.61

Social Cohesion and Awareness of Community

The stream team’s studies of forest-stream interactions provided a focal point for

community involvement that went beyond mere working relations. People in the

group remember, for example, how Dennis Harr kept them entertained with his

12-string guitar after long, weary days in the field on Watershed 10. Sedell notes

there was a lot of “informal sharing” among group members, and he credits Stan

Gregory’s sense of humor, his “mouthiness,” and his “real sense of corporate

responsibility” for nurturing the “real openness” that keyed the stream team’s

success.62

The team also capitalized on the camp-town mentality of making do with

minimal facilities at the Andrews. In keeping with that “roughing-it” mentality,

team members, their families, and other volunteers staffed a storm watch that far

exceeded the normal call of duty for scientific field work and tested the commitment of the participants. To measure organic debris movement during the fall storm

season, the group ran Watershed 10 through a net to capture all of the particles that

flowed out the watershed. During storms, the net filled rapidly with debris and had

to be cleared or it would be swept away. Gregory recalls, “everyone on the stream

project—and daughters—were assigned weekends that they were responsible.63

In one case, a storm came through shortly after Thanksgiving. Sedell spent almost

the entire month of December on the storm watch, even though he and his wife

had just had a new baby. Gregory recalls telling him, ‘Jim, you got to at least go

buy some Christmas presents for your family.” When Sedell refused to leave,

61 Andrews group interview 22 September 1997, 37; communication from Fred Swanson

16 December 1998.

62 Interview with Jim Sedell, 5.

63 Riparian group interview, 2.
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General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

Gregory recalls, “Vicki and I went up, we decided to spend Christmas up there

tending the net and to be with Jim and help him out, and ... on the night before

Christmas Eve, suddenly it opened up and we saw the stars for the first time in

weeks, and he was able to get down to Christmas Eve with his family.”64

The storm watch had a short lifespan compared with many other activities

at the Andrews, but it had long-term implications for those involved. Many who

shared that experience were still close associates more than 20 years later. The

sheer physical and mental strain of the storm watch, however, eventually eroded

support for the duty, especially after logging began on Watershed 10 in 1975.

The group ended the practice that year, but the storm watch survived as a shared

memory of people who demonstrated personal commitment to their colleagues and

their work at the Andrews Forest. The cooperative effort served its immediate

purpose, and it yielded unanticipated benefits.65

The Andrews group experimented with other, planned events intended to

simulate the bonding experience of the storm watch. When Franklin returned to the

Andrews from NSF, he realized that “... the group was becoming bigger—35, 40,

45 people involved—a lot of them didn’t know each other.” He organized a field

excursion that the Andrews group later identified as a “pulse.” The idea was to

take the group away from their ordinary surroundings and get them out in a setting

where they had to live with each other for a couple of weeks of intensive fieldwork. Dyrness recalls he accompanied Franklin, McKee, and Bob Woodmansee, of

Colorado State University, on a minipulse to Steamboat Mountain Research Natural

Area, where Franklin wanted to establish permanent plots in 1973. All four of them

packed into one carryall, lived in tents in a campground, and ate meals in the mess

hall at Trout Lake Ranger Station. McKee recalls a similar event in 1976 near Waldo

Lake. The first event that Franklin describes as a pulse, however, was a 2-weeklong excursion he organized in 1978 to the South Fork of the Hoh River in Olympic

National Park. The primary purpose of this team-building exercise, he notes, was to

“go out and suffer together” (it rained most of the 2 weeks and the camp, located

on a Hoh River gravel bar, partially flooded).66

64 Riparian group interview, 3.

65 Riparian group interview, 3.

66 Interview with Jerry Franklin, 25; interview with Ted Dyrness, 24-25; communication

from Art McKee November 1998; communication from Ted Dyrness December 1998;

communication from Fred Swanson September 2003.

The Andrews group

with other, planned

events intended to

simulate the bonding experience of

the storm watch,

a field excursion

later identified as

a “pulse.”
165

Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

Community Ideals and Forest Policy in the Late 1970s

The successful transfer of theory into practice in getting woody debris in streams

included as a management goal helped overcome any misgivings that scientists may

have carried over from previous, more antagonistic interactions with Forest Service managers. By the late 1970s, despite the spartan research facilities supporting

their work, scientists associated with the Andrews had assumed a more independent, consulting role in their relations with district rangers and forest supervisors.

Forest managers themselves confronted increasingly complex expectations and

congressional mandates. The coincident involvement of the group with local,

regional, national, and international networks of ecosystems research created a

more authoritative, autonomous, and cooperative context for interactions between

managers and researchers at Blue River. The emerging self-confidence and selfawareness of this scientific community paralleled changes in public-policy and

management priorities for the experimental forest and for the surrounding districts

of the Willamette National Forest. Intellectual curiosity, an eagerness to test elegant

theory against the harsh reality of field conditions, and an interest in finding ways

to mitigate ecological problems encouraged these scientists to work more closely

with forest managers. Those managers, meanwhile, sought practical solutions to

the disputes that resulted when public values changed more rapidly than forest

Figure 34—The stream team’s collaborative spirit was a personal as well as professional

commitment, as evident in this view of Aquatic Researchers at French Pete Creek in 1987:

(from left) Al Steinman, Linda Ashkenas, Randy Wildman, Kelly Moore, and Stan Gregory.

Gary Lamberti
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General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

policy. The NFMA of 1976 reinforced these general tendencies with a Congressional mandate that pushed scientists and forest managers into more cooperation.

President Gerald Ford signed the NFMA into law in October 1976 as a measure intended to resolve a long struggle in the courts and in Congress against an

accelerated pattern of timber sales on national forest lands. A ruling by the Court

of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in the 1975 Monongahela case established a

precedent that temporarily halted clearcutting in the national forests. Senator Hubert

Humphrey’s subsequent bill, the NFMA, specifically authorized clearcutting, but it

directed the Forest Service to develop detailed land and resource management plans

in consultation with a committee of scientists, to be appointed by the Secretary of

Agriculture. The Committee of Scientists met 18 times between 1976 and 1979,

culminating in revised NFMA regulations by 1982. The law imposed a ceiling on

timber sales allowed each year, it required the Forest Service to initiate regional

and local planning programs, and it required the Forest Service to complete new

management plans by 1985. The agency subsequently established interdisciplinary

teams to prepare management plans for each national forest.67

The NFMA mandate for long-term, science-based, region-wide, forest planning resulted in a flurry of activity among the various national forest staffs to

comply with the new law. The NFMA’s more restrictive definition of sustained

yield (“nondeclining even-flow,” meaning timber output and other forest values

must be sustainable in perpetuity, without decline) effectively broadened the range

of considerations included in planning.68 The NFMA was implemented between

1976 and 1983, just as the Andrews group transitioned from the end of the IBP to

the beginning of the LTER. By the mid 1980s, the group was more secure, with

independent funding from NSF to supplement their ongoing support from the

Forest Service. The process of securing that status, however, was anything but

linear or final. It was the result of continuing and convoluted efforts to hold together a nucleus of scientists jointly engaged in cooperative, interdisciplinary, longterm research through a period of uncertain experimental grants of limited duration

and dubious precedent. By the early 1980s, group leaders had managed to turn an

impending crisis in funding into an opportunistic experiment in long-term research,

and the Andrews emerged as a flagship program of a fledgling network of research

sites supported with NSF funds as a LTER.

67 Charles F. Wilkinson and H. Michael Anderson, “Land and Resource Planning in the

National Forests” (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1987, 15-45).

68 Critics of the act observe, however, that the NFMA contained “...loopholes large

enough to drive logging trucks through...” Hirt, Conspiracy of optimism, 262-264.
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Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

Building an Autonomous Subculture With Interagency Support

The Andrews group broadened its base of support during the 1970s to include

three major legs of support: the Forest Service, OSU, and the NSF. As late as

1972, the Forest Service annually funded 14 of 19 major research projects at the

Andrews for a total of $100,000. Those funds supported six agency scientists,

their research assistants, and their staff. Aside from this direct funding for specific

research projects both the PNW Station and the university provided basic infrastructure and support for the Andrews group in the form of permanent staff

(including scientists, technicians, and faculty), office and lab facilities in Corvallis,

and other tangible and intangible support, not least of which was the way in which

the university provided an administrative structure for processing the grant and

routing it through the budgeting system to cover expenses and salaries. The

Andrews group also drew support from the broader research community that the

university and the Forest Service lab attracted to that city, including formal and

informal consultations, meeting venues and other networking opportunities. The

concentration in Corvallis of those university and agency resources was a tangible

asset that scientists could cite in their efforts to secure NSF funds through the

competitive grants process. The 1974 proposal to NSF for funding in 1975-76, for

example, included 69 “subproject” proposals with 139 cooperating scientists at the

various sites of the Biome. Local scientists clearly benefited from working in the

surroundings of an NSF oriented culture that encouraged and mentored broader

participation and involvement in these funding opportunities.69

By the late 1970s, this third leg of funding (NSF programs) was at once the

most important and the most tenuous. Through the competitive grants process,

the NSF funded programs at the Andrews Forest at an annual amount of $569,000

by 1975. As principal investigator of record, Waring channeled these funds through

OSU, but the program under which the NSF offered these funding opportunities

was scheduled to end in 1977. Additional NSF grants in the annual amount of

approximately $247,400 supported studies (variously scheduled to end in 1977 or

1978) of canopy subsystems, the incidence and significance of coniferous needle

and twig endophytes, and the structure and function of aquatic ecosystems (the

River Continuum project) at the Andrews Forest. During the same period, Forest

Service funding included $10,000 from the Pacific Northwest Region for a study

69 Coniferous Biome ecosystem analysis International Biological Programme proposal for

1973 and 1974 [prepared in 1972], 5.1-5.8; Coniferous Biome ecosystem analysis

International Biological Program proposal for 1975 and 1976 [prepared in 1974], 6.1-6.7.
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General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

of northern spotted owl ecology, and $115,000 from PNW Station to fund studies

of forest watershed management, the ecology and successional patterns in natural

stands and disturbed habitats of mixed-conifer forests, community-environment

relations in mixed-conifer forests, intensive culture of Douglas-fir, and genetic

variation in Northwest trees.70

Before 1975, the NSF funded research proposals only up to 3 years, but

Franklin and other national science leaders wanted to extend that funding over a

longer period. He and several associates at NSF cultivated support for the idea in

that agency by promoting the concept of “centers of excellence” as a mechanism

for funding place-specific programs to benefit sites that had flourished during the

IBP. Scientists at the Andrews Forest had compiled continuous records of monitoring efforts spanning more than two decades before 1975, and those baseline data,

along with other ongoing research at the Andrews Forest, Franklin argued, were

compelling reasons for converting NSF funding for the IBP into an ongoing program of support for long-term research.71

McKee worked closely with Franklin to draft a proposal they both hoped would

be the prototype for a broader network of National Field Research Facilities independently funded with long-term grants from the NSF.72 McKee’s effort produced

an initial, 16-page, draft proposal for an NSF grant to support the Andrews Forest

as a National Experimental Ecological Reserve. Franklin circulated the proposal to

six of his colleagues at PNW Station, OSU, and at the Blue River Ranger District

in December 1975. Franklin’s cover letter solicited their input on the draft, inviting

a three-way dialogue among scientists and managers directly involved with the

Andrews Forest. He addressed carbon copies of the memo and the attached proposal to an additional 24 colleagues from all three groups, and he invited “other

interested parties” to attend a meeting in the conference room of PNW Station’s

forestry sciences laboratory in Corvallis on December 22. As a leading agenda item

for that meeting, he stressed the need to carefully define the administrative responsibilities and limits of authority implied in channeling the money through OSU.73

70 “Current research [1975-6]” (unpublished typescript, NSF Proposal for Support File,

4060 Research Facilities Folder, Publications Room, FSL, Corvallis, OR).

71 Interview with Jerry Franklin, 16-17; interview with IBP group, 31.

72 Interview with Art McKee, 15.

73 Memo (8 December 1975) from Jerry F. Franklin to William Ferrell, James Sedell,

Thomas Moore, George Carroll, Robert Burns, Dick Fredriksen (4060 Research Facilities

Folder, Publications Room, FSL, Corvallis, OR).

McKee worked with

Franklin to produce

a proposal for an

NSF grant to support

the Andrews Forest

as a National Experimental Ecological

Reserve.
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Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

McKee structured the proposal in response to the formal request for proposals from the NSF (NSF 75-32) conforming to the National Science Foundation Biological Research Resources Program: Support of Field Research Facilities.

The Andrews group formally designated this effort as the Field Research Facilities

program in correspondence with the NSF, but commonly referred to it as “the experimental ecological reserve program” in internal documents, and they commonly

refer to this 1975-76 proposal as “the facilities grant” or the “bridge grant.” The

proposal identified as outstanding attributes of the site its long-term control by a

research organization, its representation of important and widespread forest ecosystems of the Pacific Northwest, its “pristine” and “virgin state,” its extensive

stands of mature and old-growth forests, its large size and suitability for large-scale

experimenting and control, its diversity of represented ecosystems, its legacy data

from past research and inventories of physical and biological features, and its

physical improvements and field sampling installations.74

The facilities grant outlined a 3-year budget totaling $443,000, with a starting

date of 1 June 1976, and it listed Waring (OSU) and Logan Norris (PNW Station)

as co-principal investigators responsible for administering funds channeled from

NSF through OSU. Forest Service “ownership” of the site was one complicating

factor for a proposal that implied OSU ownership of facilities improvements funded

with a federal grant channeled through that institution. The preliminary budget targeted improving the database and services for scientists at the Andrews, including

additional trailers for working and living space. Franklin’s cover letter also highlighted the need to fund at least two full-time positions: a site manager and a

technician.75

The NSF guidelines for the facilities grant forced leaders of the Andrews group

to develop a new agreement clarifying administrative responsibilities at the experimental forest. Previous memorandums of understanding had clarified the boundaries of responsibility for PNW Station and the Willamette National Forest. The

Facilities Grant, however, complicated matters. It included soliciting funds from a

third party (NSF), then channeling those resources through a fourth party (OSU),

which would formally authorize distribution of those monies for expenditures to

74 National Science Foundation Biological Research Resources Program, Support of Field

Research Facilities (Washington, DC: National Science Foundation, NSF 75-32); “Outstanding Attributes of the Site, [1975/6]” (H.J. Andrews Experimental Ecological Reserve

Proposal, 4060 Research Facilities Folder, Publications Room, FSL, Corvallis, OR).

75 “Possible budget for NSF proposal for support of H.J. Andrews as National Experimental Ecological Reserve [1975-6]” (H.J. Andrews Experimental Ecological Reserve

Proposal, 4060 Research Facilities Folder, Publications Room, FSL, Corvallis, OR).
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General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

update the physical infrastructure of federal property under the jurisdiction of the

Forest Service and jointly administered by the Research Branch (PNW Station) and

the National Forest System (Willamette National Forest). This convoluted structure

hinged on a self-appointed, interagency, advisory group of scientists and forest

managers directly involved with the Andrews Forest, and it erected a tangle of

potentially overlapping zones of legal responsibility. This arrangement with the NSF

implied the two branches of the Forest Service and the university had made a longterm commitment to support the programs linked with the facilities funded under

this grant. The group, however, never fully defined the boundaries of legal responsibility for all of the parties, thus avoiding the risk that turf wars among agencies

and among scientists might block the proposal.

The site-centered Facilities Grant stretched the precedent of program-centered

cooperative agreements between OSU and PNW Station during the Coniferous

Biome. Those earlier arrangements covered specific research efforts with no

guarantee of continued support after the program ended. The NSF funded the

Facilities Grant, however, as an effort to support an open-ended commitment to

long-term research.76 To protect the autonomy of the Andrews group, Franklin

and Waring negotiated a series of limited agreements between OSU and the Forest Service that clarified some limits of bureaucratic authority. Station Director

Tarrant facilitated their efforts. Together, they negotiated a three-cornered set of

agreements including OSU and regional representatives for both branches of the

Forest Service (PNW Station and the Willamette National Forest). Those agreements, which spanned 1976 through 1980, reaffirmed previous agreements that

withdrew the Andrews from allowable-cut calculations on the Willamette National

Forest. In the process, the group secured university funding for McKee’s position

as site manager.77

The group negotiated separately with NSF to meet program requirements for

specific agreements defining the responsibilities of all parties at the Andrews Forest. Scientists participating in that effort struggled to define the limits of bureaucratic authority and responsibility without surrendering control or forfeiting the

opportunity to secure NSF funding. Two participating scientists (Kermit Cromack

and Waring) met in March 1976 with William Sievers, who represented the NSF

76 Communication from Art McKee December 1998. Interview with IBP group, 10.

77 Interview with Dick Waring, 6-7.
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Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

Biology Research Resources Program, to discuss the Facilities Grant and the respective commitments of OSU and the Forest Service. Waring referred Sievers to

the PNW Station Director (Tarrant) or the Deputy Chief for Research (Buckman)

for confirmation of Forest Service intentions to continue the scientific dedication

of the site. He also stressed the size of that agency’s annual investment at the

Andrews Forest, citing the “draft supplement to the Master Memorandum of

Understanding between OSU and the FS [PNW] Station” as evidence of their

intentions. At the time, that draft supplement was completely devoid of signatures,

but Waring confidently conveyed to Sievers his expectation that small detail would

be resolved “by the time you arrive in July.”78

The three-page draft document to which Waring referred was circulated barely

2 weeks earlier to Dick Fredriksen, Logan Norris, Art McKee, Bob Romancier,

and Dick Waring with a marginal notation by “Lucy F.” indicating it was merely

“an idea draft” seeking input and suggestions on a draft document of ideas that

Lucy F. considered “vague enuf to fly in both institutions [PNW Station and

OSU]”.79 Even this document did not formally coordinate the three-way division

of authority among OSU, PNW Station, and Willamette National Forest. Instead,

separate agreements (memorandums of understanding) were approved between

PNW Station and Willamette National Forest on 21 December 1976,80 and between

PNW Station and OSU on 7 June 1977.81 Despite Waring’s assurances that any

loose ends would be tied up by July 1976, and despite repeated pleadings from

Franklin to the Station and the university, moreover, loose threads pertaining to this

agreement hung in the air until 22 February 1980. On that date, the OSU Business

Affairs Office forwarded a finalized memorandum of understanding to Franklin

78 “Letter 30 April 1976 from R.H. Waring, Deputy Director Coniferous Forest Biome,

Oregon State University Department of Forest Management, to William Sievers, Biology

Research Resources Program, National Science Foundation,” H.J. Andrews Memorandum

of Understanding Folder, H.J. Andrews Files, File Box F, Storage Vault, FSL, Corvallis,

OR.

79 “Idea Draft (16 Apr 1976) USFS PNW - OSU Supplement to Master Memo of

Understanding,” H.J. Andrews Memorandum of Understanding Folder, H.J. Andrews

Files, File Box F, Storage Vault, FSL, Corvallis, OR.

80 “Memorandum of understanding 21 December 1976 Between Willamette National

Forest and PNW re H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest, Robert F. Tarrant to Forest

Supervisor, Willamette National Forest, “ Master Memorandum of Understanding Folder,

H.J. Andrews Files, File Box D, Storage Vault, FSL, Corvallis, OR.

81 “Letter 7 June 1977 from R.M. Kallender, Assistant Director, Forest Research

Laboratory, to Charles J. Petersen, Assistant Director, Pacific Northwest Forest and

Range Experiment Station,” Master Memorandum of Understanding Folder, H.J.

Andrews Files, File Box D, Storage Vault, FSL, Corvallis, OR.
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General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

detailing the interagency agreement to jointly administer the Andrews.82 Until that

1980 memo, however, the Andrews group autonomously coordinated NSF funding,

site administration, and research from 1976 through 1980 on little more than a

handshake agreement not to inquire too closely into the matter.

The structure of support linking the NSF, PNW Station, OSU, and the

Willamette National Forest with a scientist-administered program was difficult to

explain to people outside the group. Franklin recalls that visitors to the Andrews

Forest often asked, “How the hell does this work? You got all these university

people down here on the Andrews and they’re calling a lot of the shots. And, you

know, you’re a Forest Service employee and you’re spending National Science

Foundation [funds]? And how the hell does this stuff work?” His common response was, “You know, we just do it.” Franklin theorizes the structure mostly

worked because, initially, OSU, PNW Station, and the Willamette National Forest

“probably didn’t have us far enough up on their radar screen to cause them to

really think that much about it.” That began to change during the 1980s, as the

capital invested in programs at the Andrews Forest began to attract more attention,

but Franklin notes, “some stuff never has gotten down on paper.” Unusual features

of the agreement, he observes, include a university employee (McKee) who wields

authority over a university facility on Forest Service property with no clear agreement on “who cleans up the mess when the party’s over.” Since that time, the

NSF has tightened its funding guidelines, with the result, as Franklin concedes, that

many of the proposals for which the Andrews group secured funding in previous

years, likely would not have been funded if current rules had been in force at that

time.83

The facilities grant funded the group’s plans to designate an experimental

ecological reserve (EER) on the Andrews Forest. The new EER included 23,588

acres of lands in and around the experimental forest and linked them with the

82 “Memorandum of understanding 22 Feb 1980 to J.F. from OSU Business Affairs

Office,” H.J. Andrews Files, File Box D, Storage Vault, FSL, Corvallis, OR.

83 Interview with Jerry Franklin, 19; interview with IBP group, 30-31.

The structure linking the NSF, PNW

Station, OSU, and

the Willamette

National Forest

with a scientistadministered program was difficult

to explain.
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Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

97,600 acres of the Three Sisters Wilderness.84 This structure of an experimental

area paired with a wilderness control area resembled the biosphere reserve concept Franklin helped develop earlier in that same decade. McKee and Franklin

expected the NSF would adopt the EER as a prototype for a more permanent and

far-flung program funding long-term ecological reserves across the country within

the next 5 or 6 years. They envisioned a structure of interagency funding tied to

place-centered monitoring, and site-specific research, all geared toward long-term

studies with short-term productivity. The NSF, however, actively discouraged the

Andrews group from referring to their site as an EER, preferring instead the formal

designation of the place as a National Field Research Facility.85

The Andrews group worked to coordinate their work at the experimental forest

with other sites, in an effort to convert the facilities grant into a more secure, longterm structure of support from the NSF. Between 1977 and 1980, the group’s

small-but-expanding circle of alumni and associates sent delegates to a series of

conferences and workshops. These conferences were precursors to the NSF’s

request for proposals for a LTER program.86 Ken Cummins (OSU Department of

Fisheries and Wildlife) and Franklin, for example, attended the Long-Term Ecological Measurements Conference at Woods Hole, Massachusetts, in March 1977.

Conference participants generated an NSF report that addressed the feasibility

of long-term ecological measurements and recommended measurement priorities

for terrestrial, freshwater, and marine ecosystems. The next year, Waring, McKee,

and Carl Berntsen (then with the Washington Office of the Forest Service) joined

Cummins (who subsequently moved from the W.K. Kellogg Biological Station at

Michigan State University to OSU) as participant and observers at a second conference at Woods Hole. Conferees at that February 1978 meeting considered what

84 In addition to the 14,943 acres in the Andrews itself, this total includes the Wildcat

Mountain Research Natural Area, Olallie Ridge Research Natural Area, Gold Lake Bog

Research Natural Area, Middle Santiam Research Natural Area, and two areas described

in the proposal as the “Mountain Hemlock Research Natural Area,” and the “SecondGrowth-Douglas-Fir Research Natural Area,” as well as the “Chemsheds” (watersheds 9

and 10) near the experimental forest. “Land Allocation for H.J. Andrews Experimental

Ecological Reserve Proposal [1975/6],” 4060 Research Facilities Folder, Publications

Room, FSL, Corvallis, OR.

85 Interview with Art McKee by Max Geier on 12 September 1996 in the Corvallis FSL.

Interview transcribed by Jeff Fourier, 15. The Institute of Ecology, Experimental

Ecological Reserves: a Proposed National Network (Washington, DC: National Science

Foundation, June 1977), 41.

86 Interview with Art McKee, 15.
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General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

would be needed to operate a program of long-term measurements in ecology. The

next year, at a June workshop at the Institute of Ecology in Indianapolis, Indiana,

Waring and 39 other participants exchanged insights from previous long-term

studies in different agencies. That workshop developed the structure for a new,

continuing LTER program. As a culmination to this series of meetings, the Institute

of Ecology issued a final report to the NSF in November 1979, and circulated it to

all participants.87

The LTER program went from initial conceptualization to operative reality in a

remarkably short time. The NSF issued the request for proposals for the first LTER

in late 1979, and applications for the first round of LTER funding were due back at

the agency by March 1980. The Andrews group responded by proposing, among

other ideas, a study of log decomposition slated to continue for 200 years.88 Ongoing EER funding at the Andrews Forest from 1977 through 1983 overlapped with

the LTER, beginning in 1980, and that overlap complicated the group’s initial proposal. The NSF renewed the initial, 3-year facilities grant for another 36 months,

beginning in March 1980, for a 3-year total of $683,798, ending in 1983. These

funds, averaging a little over $200,000 per year, included support for significant

expansion of facilities at the headquarters site, including the purchase and conversion of additional trailers that housed a laboratory, cafeteria, and sleeping quarters.

By comparison with the funds that NSF provided for the facilities grant, the agency

provided about $500,000 per year for LTER sites. The NSF, therefore, approved

the first LTER grant to the Andrews group with lower funding so that the combined funds from the LTER and the facilities grant totaled about $500,000. After

1983, when the facilities grant ended, the NSF boosted annual LTER funding to the

87 National Science Foundation Directorate for Biological, Behavioral, and Social Sciences,

Division of Environmental Biology, Long-term ecological measurements: report of a

conference, Woods Hole, Massachusetts, March 16-18, 1977 (Washington, DC: National

Science Foundation, 1977), 26; National Science Foundation Directorate for Biological,

Behavioral, and Social Sciences, Division of Environmental Biology, Biological Resources

Program, A pilot program for long-term observation and study of ecosystems in the

United States: report of a second conference on long-term ecological measurements,

Woods Hole, Massachusetts, February 6-10, 1978 (Washington, DC: National Science

Foundation, 1978), 45; The Institute of Ecology, Long-Term Ecological Research:

Concept Statement and Measurement Needs, Summary of a workshop, Indianapolis,

Indiana, June 25-27, 1979 (Indianapolis, IN: The Institute of Ecology, August 1979), 27;

The Institute of Ecology, Guidance Documents for Long-Term Ecological Research:

Preliminary Specifications of Core Research Measurements, Final Report to the National

Science Foundation, Grant DEB 7920243 (Indianapolis, IN: The Institute of Ecology,

November 1979), 54.

88 Interview with IBP group, 40.
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Necessary Work: Discovering Old Forests, New Outlooks, and Community on the Andrews Forest

Andrews group to $500,000.89 Technically, the group received no more than

other sites under the LTER, but they had a running start on the LTER concept

in the 3 years before other sites had access to that NSF program.

Conclusion

The Andrews group, by the late 20th century, was a self-conscious community that

supported interdisciplinary cooperation and mutual support for long-term programs,

and people in that community cooperated in joint efforts to secure funding and

other support from two different federal agencies and a state university. The resulting community was a refuge for scientists struggling to reach long-term goals in a

period of sustained instability. The group patterned its vision for the future on a

collective legacy from the IBP years: a composite portrait of remembered experiences conveyed through oral traditions and science data, including the landscape

89 “Support of the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest as a National Field Research

Facility, Proposal to the National Science Foundation,” 4060 Research Facilities FY1979

File, Publications Room, FSL, Corvallis, OR; Andrews History Project Workshop of 7

August 1996 at the Corvallis FSL. Workshop participants included Max Geier, Art

McKee, Fred Swanson, Cindy Miner, Ted Dyrness, and Kelley Allen, 11.

Figure 35—Jerry Franklin’s efforts to build an autonomous subculture with

interagency funding supporting collaborative research at the H.J. Andrews

Experimental Forest (Andrews Forest) promoted collaborative engagement

among scientists and forest managers. Here, Jerry Franklin, Steve Eubanks, and

Stan Gregory confer at the Andrews Forest in 1997.

Martha Brookes, 1997
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General Technical Report PNW-GTR-687

and publications rooted in research at the Andrews Forest. The community of the

LTER era, however, was not the same as the community of the IBP era. Those

who survived the transition from IBP to LTER funding, and those who joined the

group during those years, passed through a cultural filter that winnowed out a

significant number of their colleagues. Many people who worked on the Coniferous

Biome at the Andrews were disillusioned with the unfulfilled promise of the IBP.

They had rational concerns about whether alternative funding would materialize

after the IBP ended, and they were frustrated by the constant strain of trying to

make a living or raise a family while working in a professional environment of

ongoing uncertainty about future sources of funding and support. The temptations

of other opportunities for career advancement, consequently, seriously depleted the

core group of cooperating scientists. During this transitional period, the NSF

trimmed the proposed network of field sites from nearly 200 to fewer than 10

LTER sites—a 95-percent reduction of the sites in the original proposal—and there

were no guarantees the Andrews Forest would make the final cut.

People who stayed with the Andrews group had to be willing to work under

uncertain conditions at a facility with a long record of abrupt changes in staffing

and funding. Programs and facilities at the Andrews Forest survived in a nevernever land of overlapping, interagency responsibilities. The group’s leaders wielded

authority that rested on little more than bureaucratic indecision and vague assurances not to look too closely at what was going on. Under these conditions,

passion for the place and the endeavor was a more important variable attracting

people to the Andrews group than was common sense. These characteristics of the

Andrews Forest and group did, however, virtually ensure that the people who

remained in this community in the last two decades of the 20th century included

many scientists who were light on their feet, intellectually and academically nimble,

adaptive, and willing to take on daunting new challenges. People who remained

with the group through this period were whistling through a scientific graveyard

strewn with half-finished projects and ongoing responsibilities. They were ideally

suited for negotiating the opportunities and minefields of natural resource policy

and ecosystems research in the last two decades of the 20th century.

Programs and facilities at the Andrews

Forest survived in

a never-never land

of overlapping,

interagency responsibilities.

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