Mendenhall Glacier near Juneau. (Miner

collection)

era. Together, they directed station scientists through a

period that placed the Northern Station at the cutting

edge of research in the interior forests of Alaska by the

mid 1960s, and they expanded the range and focus of

research in southeastern Alaska. Helmers favored a seatof-the-pants style of administrative direction that sometimes conflicted with the bureaucratic traditions of the

Forest Service and other cooperating agencies and institutions. He generated a lot of energetic enthusiasm,

and was well liked by his research colleagues (which

was often not true for Hurd), but his blunt style often

conflicted with the traditions of cooperating agencies

and occasionally alienated people in positions of power.

Hurd, who was reportedly more aloof than Helmers and

who was often abrasive in his dealings with fellow researchers, was nonetheless somewhat more cautious and

diplomatic in his bureaucratic exchanges with the Forest Service hierarchy and outside agencies. These conflicting personal styles contributed to a degree of tension between the two men that Helmers

characterizes as "controlled latent friction," but, ironically, their administrations jointly fostered

an era of experimentation and innovation in the direction and planning of the research program.4

Helmers gained his outlook on forestry from a lifetime spent in association with the National

Forests in the North American West. He was born in one of the flattest states in the country at

Rock Rapids, Iowa, but Helmers grew up in the mountains of the Big Sky Country in northern

Idaho and Montana, where his father worked as a forest ranger. His childhood memories read

like a page out of the larger-than-life folk tales of Paul Bunyan. Helmers claims he got his training

in forestry by walking along the chutes and riding logs down the flumes in northern Idaho. He

spent his earliest years living with his mother in a small shack on a steel-wheeled wagon that his

father towed from site to site in the forests of Montana, and he grew up at his father's "moderately

isolated" ranger station in northern Idaho. As a youth, he developed an early curiosity about the

biggest thing in the West (Alaska) by reading everything he could find about the subject. Two

friends of his father at the ranger station in Idaho later brought the subject a little closer when they

moved to Fairbanks for a couple of years and then returned to the station in Idaho full of stories

from the frozen North. When he eventually got to Juneau years later, Helmers developed a

4Author's assessment derived from interview with Austin Helmers 4 August 1993 in Palmer, Alaska, and

from various documents and interviews with Helmers' contemporaries and colleagues at the Station;

Correspondence from |im LaBau to Ken Wright March 1995; Forestry Research News, 11 Aug 1970;

Correspondence from Don Schmiege to Ken Wright. The Helmers quote is taken from correspondence

from Austin Helmers to Ken Wright 27 November 1995. Helmers emphasizes that despite this "latent"

friction, he and Hurd "got along well on most matters and we were friends socially."

79

This file was created by scanning the printed publication. 

Text errors identified by the software have been corrected; 

however, some errors may remain. 
This Forest Service duplex in Fairbanks illustrates

the kinds of facilities researchers endured before

the University of Alaska at Fairbanks authorized

constructing a research laboratory on the campus

in the early 1960s, (Juneau Archives Polaroid)

fascination for the big glacier just beyond the city,

and he spent so much of his time exploring its

reaches that his supervisor finally had to order him

to stay off the glacier and get to his assigned work.5

This fascination for the country and innate curiosity

about the vast scale in Alaska carried over into the

professional atmosphere of inquisitive research that

Helmers helped create at the Northern Forest Experiment Station during the 1960s. He embodied

the "idle curiosity" or "instinct of workmanship" that

progressive-era social critic Thorstein Veblen once

argued was necessary for scientific progress6 but he

was also practical in his outlook and utilitarian in

his views on forestry.

Helmers was also a product of the academic West and the system of state-supported colleges

and universities. He earned B.S. and M.S. degrees in plant ecology at the University of Idaho by

1942, and then joined the Forest Service Branch of Research in 1943 as a temporary worker in

timber management studies at the Northern Rocky Mountain Station in Missoula, Montana.7

Helmers recalls that he was classified 4F (ineligible for service) in the military draft, and notes

that he tried to enlist in the Marines, Navy, and Army, but was turned down each time. As he

recalls, many permanent workers had gone off to war at that time, and he worked his temporary

position into a permanent assignment by the end of World War Two, while enduring stage whispers of "4Fer" on the home front. After the war, he worked as a forester with the Northern Rocky

Mountain Station on flood control surveys of the upper Missouri River. Helmers considers that

experience good preparation for working in Alaska. Working on a tight deadline, he and his

survey partner once spent an evening in a bar in the county seat eliciting information about flood

damage from a county commissioner, and the next morning, he was on the phones milking local

farmers and ranchers for additional information. As Helmers recalls of this and subsequent assignments with the Columbia River survey and as snow physicist with the Army Corps of Engineers in Greenland, "These projects were the opposite of long term in-depth, narrow scope studies. For all of them you worked against a time limit, and for some you learned in a hurry how to

paint with a broad brush— at times something we still have to do."8

5Interview 4 August 1993 with Austin Helmers; Interview 13 July 1993 with Ken Wright.

6Thorstein Veblen, The Place of Science in Modern Civilzation and Other Essays, (New York: B.W.

Huebsch, 1919). 29.

7The Northern Rocky Mountain Station was short-lived, and the Intermountain Station (now headquartered at Ogden, Utah) soon absorbed its research program. Communication from Ken Wright to Max

Geier December 1995.

8Interview 4 August 1993 with Austin Helmers; Professional Biography Files, Central History Files,

Portland Office, PNW Station; correspondence from Austin Helmers to Ken Wright 27 November 1995.

80
Robert Gregory (facing camera) and Austin

Helmers eat lunch enroute to George Lake in

1961. Photo taken by Bob Funsch. (Helmers

collection)

Front entrance to the Northern Forest Experiment

Station on the campus of the University of Alaska,

Fairbanks. In keeping with the optimism of the

1960s, this building was designed to accommodate

the addition of a second floor for later expansion,

but the lab was never expanded and it was closed

in 1995. (Juneau 349)

Helmers' colorful manner and his penchant for opportunistic and innovative methods of problem solving seemed to fit the optimistic mood prevalent in Alaska in the heady years after statehood when the economic boom fueled by national defense spending was at its peak. That mood

was apparent in his account of how Congress allocated money for establishing a research center

in Fairbanks and an experiment station at Juneau shortly after John F. Kennedy's New Frontiers

campaign of 1960. Helmers recalls, "I remember reading in the Congressional Record, how

when [Mississippi's Senator, )ohn| Stennis was making this speech getting all these billions of

bucks, getting these research centers all over the [southern and central] states, [Alaska's Senator,

Ernest] Gruening made a pitch for the research center up here [interior Alaska], and by golly, it

flew." Shortly after Gruening and Stennis secured Congressional support for their proposal, the

Washington Office instructed Helmers to ''start looking for a lab site." This directive placed

responsibility for initiating a new research facility squarely on the shoulders of an interim director

with limited administrative experience. In a comment evoking both the "can-do spirit" of his

generation of Alaska scientists and the sense of personal isolation sometimes caused by the pressures of administrative duty, Helmers reflects, "...that was during that period when I was all by my

lonesome |as administrative director) at Juneau...so I've gotta get busy and get this thing started."

Helmers, obviously, was surrounded by other scientists in Juneau at the time, but he bore the

onus of responsibility for bringing the new facility on-line. Ken Wright, who later assumed responsibility for research at the Fairbanks Lab (as Assistant Director at PNW Station), notes: "I am

personally thankful that we had Austin in AK at that time! I have long been convinced that

without Austin we would not have a Lab at Fairbanks!!"4

9Correspondence from Ken Wright to author June 1995. Quotations from Austin Helmers originate from

the author's 4 August 1993 interview with Austin Helmers in Palmer, Alaska. Bracketed insertions in the

quote derive from correspondence from Austin Helmers to Ken Wright 1 7 March 1 995 and correspondence from Austin Helmers to Ken Wright 27 November 1995.

81
Senator Ernest Cruening speaks at the dedication of the

Forestry Science Laboratory at Fairbanks in 1963, with

Dick Hurd (right) and William Wood (left). Wood was

hired as President of the University of Alaska in 1961,

the same year that Hurd replaced Austin Helmers as

Director of the Northern Forest Experiment Station;

together, they negotiated the agreement to build the

new lab on the University campus. (Portland Office

History Files)

The image of the lone administrator facing down the challenge of work in Alaska was in

keeping with the New Frontier theme of the early 1 960s. Helmers evoked that theme in an article

published in the journal of Forestry entitled "Alaska forestry—a research frontier,"10 and he approached the issue of negotiating with the University of Alaska Board of Regents for space on the

campus near Fairbanks like a lone gunfighter going up against the Dalton Gang (with the expected results). Helmers recalls that "the first thing I had to do was to cross swords with the Board

of Regents...", and in his first meeting, "...they looked at the campus long-range plan and noted

no sites designated for a forestry sciences lab. A short time later, they offered a site on the black

spruce-permafrost side of the north ridge, near the muskox enclosure. This is when I decided,

how about in Palmer in cooperation with the Agricultural Experiment Station?"10

Robert Gregory apparently convinced Helmers to stick with the original plan to locate the

research center in Fairbanks, but not before Alan Mick, Director of the Agricultural Experiment

Station in Palmer, Alaska, offered space on the University Farm area. Helmers recalls that he and

Gregory "actually lookeci at this possibility" and he still argues that the lab would have been

better off in Palmer, where it would have been closer to the Matanuska Valley settlements and

could have shared facilities with the Experiment Station. It also would have been closer to the

insect flareups on the Kenai Peninsula. Others at PNW Station, notably Ken Wright, remain

convinced that Fairbanks was the best choice for the lab, and administrators in the Washington

Office also seemed determined that the lab should be located on the University of Alaska campus.12

9A.E. Helmers, "Alaska Forestry—a research frontier," lournal of Forestry 58(6): 465-71.

10Interview 4 August 1993 with Austin Helmers; correspondence from Austin Helmers to Ken Wright 27

November 1995.

12 Communication from Ken Wright to author June 1995; correspondence from Austin Helmers to Ken

Wright 27 November 1995.

82

The people who walked down this temporary ramp

atter witnessing the Fairbanks FSI dedication in 1963

probably expected the laboratory itself would remain a

permanent fixture on the campus ( Portland Office

History Files)
Helmers made little progress in the negotiations for locating the lab on campus until the University of Alaska hired a new president just before Richard Hurd arrived on the

scene in early 1 961. Helmers recalls that the

new president, Dr. William A. Wood "...understood what we were trying to accomplish

and enthusiastically welcomed the prospect

of the new lab."13 Support from the university

president was not sufficient to move the proposal past other influential opponents of the

plan, including the Board of Regents, the university architect, or the university engineer,

and Helmers actually gave up on the original

plan to establish a lab on the campus. He

selected an off-campus site on BLM land

across the river on Airport Road and hired an

architect from the Regional Office in Juneau

to draw up the plans. Helmers was brought

up short in his efforts, however, when Chief

of Research George Jemison called him in Juneau and said "meet me in Fairbanks." Jemison's first words when he met Helmers at his

hotel room were: "The lab is going to be on the campus!"14 As Helmers relates the story,

"...that was a bad position to be in." Shortly thereafter, Hurd took over the negotiations as

Director of the Northern Forest Experiment Station and "...wheeled and dealed...and by

golly, he ended up with that little plot we got [on campus]."15

Austin Helmers measures an Alaska-cedar at Cape

Fanshaw Research Natural Area in 1963. Helmers

encountered this stand of cedar unexpectedly during

routine field work, and he identified it as a candidate

for RNA designation, (Juneau 1215)

13 Helmers c redils Wood's enthusiasm to the new president's experience at the University of Nevada,

Reno, where the Forest Service had established a new lab just before Wood's move to Alaska. Correspondence from Austin Helmers to Ken Wright 10 March 1995.

14 Interview 4 August 1993 with Austin Helmers; correspondence from Austin Helmers to Ken Wright 27

November 1995.

15Interview 4 August 199 3 with Austin Helmers.

83
Richard Hurd and Research Priorities for the Experiment Station

Richard Hurd brought a certain degree of bureaucratic detachment that sharply contrasted

with the romantic frontiersmanship and passionate disregard for the "bean counters" that was

more common during the administrations of Helmers and Taylor. Helmers, who had come up

through the ranks of hands-on research, favored a hands-off management style that emphasized

free-wheeling experimentation and innovation in the field:

I had more dang fun than a barrel of monkeys...always figured, you know, you

keep too close of control on them, you're gonna tend to stifle their imagination

and their ingenuity, and you know, that's what you hired these guys for, was to

be ingenious and imaginative."16

Hurd, by contrast, was a military man with Washington Office experience, a strong background in ecology, range management, and wildlife, and an established record as a successful

administrator at research stations in the West and in Washington, D.C.17 He was also a product of

the utilitarian tradition of research in the Forest Service at mid-century, and his academic and

professional background leaned heavily toward resource management, although his Forest Service background was solidly in the Branch of Research. He earned a degree in forestry and range

management from Iowa State University in 1939, and served with the Forest Service in Utah as an

ecologist with the Intermountain Forest and Range Experiment Station in the range reseeding

programs. During World War Two, he volunteered for the U.S. Navy and returned to the Intermountain Station after the war. Hurd transferred to the Washington Office in 1950, where he

served as Assistant to the Chief of the Forest Service Range Research Division for 5 years. In

1955, he became the leader for the Research Center of the Rocky Mountain Forest and Range

Experiment Station in Laramie, Wyoming, and he developed, directed, and coordinated programs in forest utilization, timber, range, wildlife habitat, and watershed management for the

Rocky Mountain Station at Rapid City, South Dakota, until 1961.18

Hurd, who frowned on some of the more extreme antics of Austin Helmers and his loose style

of management,19 took a firm hand as director of the Station and expanded operations in the

interior. Hurd encouraged Helmers to refocus his energies on field research, where he could

apply his energy and scientific curiosity in a way that would not bring down the wrath of the

16

 Interview 4 August 1993 with Austin Helmers.

17

 Professional Biography Files, Central History Files, Portland Office, PNW Station; Forestry Research

News 11 Aug 1970.

18

 Professional Biography Files, Central History Files, Portland Office, PNW Station; Forestry Research

News 11 Aug 1970.

19

 Helmers recalls one conversation he had with Assistant Chief Arthur W. Greeley, who he knew from

his youth when Creeley worked for Helmers' father. Helmers argued that landslides on clearcut slopes

simply hastened a natural process of erosion in u-shaped, glaciated valleys, and he suggested: "...one of

the best things we could do here in this valley is log the hell out of it, get these damn slopes down to

something reasonable, because they're too steep, you see, and so we log it and just hasten the process,

and get the land down to a reasonable gradient, hell, we can do something with it, instead of fighting

the damn thing up here where every time you do something it's unstable..." Helmers recalls that

Greeley went back to Hurd and said, "Well, Helmers says logging the landslide is ok." and Hurd

"...went up through all the rest of the floors when he heard that (hearty laughter)..." Interview 4 August

1 993 with Austin Helmers.

84
federal bureaucracy. Hurd also made the Fairbanks research facility a priority in his administration. Under his direction, the building was designed with one story but structurally engineered to

support a second story so the lab could be easily expanded at a later date. Construction began in

1961 and was completed in July 1963, providing office and laboratory space for scientists and

support staff with the research program for interior forests. Some of the faculty with the Forestry

Department at the University of Alaska located their program and offices in the new facility soon

after it opened, and the mid-1 960s were characterized by close cooperation between the University and the new Forestry Sciences Laboratory.20

Development of the Research

Program at Fairbanks

Dedication of the new facilities on 1 July 1963 coincided with dedication of the Bonanza Creek Experimental

Forest and brought together a group of research scientists

committed to the study of forests in the interior of Alaska.

Research Forester Robert Gregory had already established

an office in Fairbanks and was working with Paul Haack

from the inventory unit in Juneau to prepare growth and

yield tables for the interior. Gregory directed operations

and recruited several young scientists to the new facility.

Botanist Les Viereck and fire research scientist Von Johnson

moved into the building when it opened in 1963, and Wilbur

Farr moved with his new bride to Fairbanks from Juneau for

the 1964 field season. Joan Foote, a botanist, also joined the staff that year as a technician

working with Gregory and was the first woman in the office other than clerical support staff.21

This new research team arrived on the scene in the wake of some of the worst fires in the

history of interior Alaska, and much of their work revolved around fire effects. Wildfires burned

over 1.2 million acres in the interior in 305 different flareupsfrom 1956 through 1960, attracting

attention to the area and accounting in part for the sudden surge of support for forest research.

Stands of black spruce suffered the most damage. Black spruce generally was not marketable

timber, but the fires threatened the livelihoods of trappers and subsistence residents in the region,

Bill Farr photographed this view of

Bonanza Creek Experimental Forest from

a vantage point overlooking the Tanana

River and black spruce study sites in the

interior in 1976. (Juneau 5016)

20Memo 11 October 1961 from C.E. Weller to R.M Hurd, located in Historical Files, Fairbanks Office,

PNW Station. Interview 1 8 December 1992 with Keith VanCleve at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks;

Interview with Les Viereck 30 July 1993 at the Institute of Northern Forestry, Fairbanks; Interviews with

Joan Foote 15 December 1992 and 1 8 December 1 992 at the Institute of Northern Forestry, Fairbanks;

Richard M. Hurd, "Forward," Biennial Report 1960-1961 (Juneau: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest

Service, Northern Forest Experiment Station, 1962); Richard M. Hurd, "Forward," 1 962 Annual Report

(Juneau: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Northern Forest Experiment Station, 1963);

Richard M. Hurd, "Forward," Annual Report 1963 (Juneau: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest

Service, Northern Forest Experiment Station, 1964).

-' Interview with Les Viereck 30 July 1993; Interviews with Joan Foote 15 December 1992 and 18

December 1992.

85
Les Viereck's training in plant ecology at the University

of Colorado and his established networks in the

academic community broadened the multidisciplinary

reputation of the work unit at Fairbanks in the 1960s

and 1970s. Here, he examines an experimental burn

on the Kenai Peninsula in 1976 (Dyrness collection)

and these concerns influenced the range and

nature of research at the Fairbanks Lab over the

next several decades. Von Johnson, who led the

newly established Alaska Fire Control Methods

project at Fairbanks, beginning in 1963, moved

into the lab from his previous position with the

Bureau of Land Management in Fairbanks.

Johnson brought to the lab an extensive background in fire control and resource management,

and through his professional networks, the

Fairbanks Lab strengthened its ties with the fire

organizations administered through the local

BLM office and the Alaska Division of Lands.22

Les Viereck brought to the Fairbanks Lab a

personal and professional commitment to the

study of ecological issues that went far beyond

the utilitarian outlook of forest production more

common among his predecessors in Forest Service Research in Alaska. A graduate of the University of Colorado with a Ph.D. in plant ecology, Viereck was an established member of the academic community in Alaska before he joined the Fairbanks Lab. He served on the faculty of the

University of Alaska from 1959 until 1961, when he became a casualty of the Cold War. The

University contracted with the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) to study the possible effects of

Project Chariot, a plan to create a harbor in northwest Alaska with nuclear explosions. Viereck

served on the team of 80 scientists commissioned to work on the project, and with his colleague,

William Pruitt, Viereck was among a small group of scientists on the university commission who

opposed the project when their studies showed that it would damage the area's ecosystem and

disrupt the food chain. He resigned from the commission to protest official press releases that

contradicted his findings. He helped organize the Alaska Conservation Society (forerunner to the

Northern Alaska Environmental Center), and he toured Alaska, staging protests against Project

Chariot. The AEC eventually scrapped the project, to the dismay of business interests in the state,

and Viereck and Pruitt both lost their jobs at the University within the year.23 After a 2-year stint

with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, this environmental activist joined the Forest Service staff at the Fairbanks Lab as a research biologist.

22Bonanza Creek Experimental Forest Management Plan, 25 February 1987," (located in the Bonanza

Creek File, Central Files, Fairbanks Office, PNW Station), 8-; Interview with Les Viereck 30 July 1993;

Interviews with Joan Foote 1 5 December 1992 and 18 December 1992. Communication from Richard

|. Barney to Ken Wright 21 June 1995.

23The University of Alaska awarded Viereck an honorary degree in 1993 in recognition of his efforts to

halt Project Chariot. Interview with Les Viereck 30 July 1993; Naske, Alaska, 193-196; PNW Research

News June/My 1993.

86
Bill Farr, Boh Mattson, and Jim LaBau assemble a

collapsible boat for the first time at a site on the

Chena River in Fairbanks in I962. (Juneau 1273).

Scientists in Fairbanks enjoyed

ready access to field sites where

new equipment could be tested,

such as this "first trial" of a

collapsible boat assembled on

the banks of the Chena River in

Fairbanks and piloted on its

maiden voyage by Bill Farr and

Bill Funsch in 1962. (Juneau

1275)

Viereck considered the opening at the new Forest Service lab a "very good opportunity for

me—good freedom, Dick Hurd was director and it worked out very well—we had good relations

and adequate money—no worries..."24 Viereck recalls that Gregory gave him "free rein" in developing studies of white spruce on flood plains of the Yukon, Charley, Tanana, Chena, and other

major rivers of the interior. He did wide geographic surveys, but concentrated on the Tanana

drainage, where he established permanent plots in 1964 and 1965. He also made a detailed

study of the environment, climate, permafrost relations, and successional sequences on the Chena

River drainage in his first decade at the Fairbanks Lab.

Despite his falling out with university administrators, Viereck also helped develop close ties

between the university and Forest Service scientists at the Forest Science Laboratory. By the mid

1960s, the University's Forestry Department located offices in the Forest Science Lab, and operated a soils laboratory in the facility from 1965 through 1973. Keith VanCleve, who directed the

soils lab for the university, was a specialist in nutrient cycling and productivity who worked

closely with Viereck and others at the lab during this period. He continued this close cooperation

after the soils lab outgrew the available space and moved out of the building in 1 973.25

Viereck and the other botanist at the Fairbanks Lab, Joan Foote, contributed to the emergence

of a spirit of community among the small group of scientists that set the Fairbanks office somewhat apart from the established traditions of research at Juneau. Like Viereck, Foote was a graduate of the University of Colorado with an M.A. in alpine ecology. Like Helmers, she became

interested in Alaska as a youth, listening to the stories of her aunt, who taught school in western

24 Interview with Los Viereck .50 July 1993.

25Interview with Keith VanCleve 18 December 1992 at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.

87
Evidence of human occupation often surprised research

crew members who sometimes felt as though they were

"the first" human visitors to a remote locale. This

trappers' cabin on the Porcupine River was a reminder

of the ongoing human presence before and after

scientists visited the region. (Farr collection)

Joan Foote, who held a graduate degree in alpine

ecology from the University of Colorado, worked

closely with Viereck and contributed to the spirit of

community that emerged among scientists at Fairbanks

in the 1960s and 1970s. Foote, who is shown here

seated between "Skeeter" Werner (left) and Ted

Dyrness (right) at the Youngs Bay research facility in

May 1979, prized the cooperative spirit of "family"

evident at Fairbanks when she first joined the research

staff in 1964. (Dyrness collection)

Alaska. She visited Alaska while still an undergraduate at the University of Indiana in 1 958, and

worked as a biologist at Camp Denali in Alaska in the summer of 1963. Her appointment in

1964 as a research technician with the Fairbanks Lab was her first job out of graduate school, and

she later earned promotion to research botanist. At Fairbanks, scientists like Foote and Viereck

faced temperature extremes and field conditions often more difficult than those in southeast

Alaska, and they developed a strong sense of rugged outdoorsmanship. In contrast to the Juneau

office, however, the close proximity of the Bonanza Creek Experimental Forest facilitated a family

atmosphere at the lab, and isolation was less of a problem than might have resulted from extended research at other, more remote field locations. Les Viereck recalls, for example, that much

of their work on the experimental forest could be accomplished in 1-day, in-and-out trips, and

researchers often met each other daily in the Fairbanks Lab.26

Foote, who worked closely with Viereck on studies of floodplain succession, recalls that when

she first arrived in 1964 only five people worked in a facility that had no telephones, inadequate

heating for the winter, and little prior work to draw upon in developing field projects or studies.

When temperatures in the lab failed to rise above 32 degrees Fahrenheit one winter, the typewriters froze, everything stopped working, and they were forced to close the lab and take administrative leave. Fairbanks researchers faced similar problems with field equipment, and they hired a

jeweler to dismantle the clockwork mechanisms in data recorders, clean off the oil-based lubricant, and replace it with graphite lubricants so they would operate in sub-zero temperatures.

Despite these annoyances, Foote recalls that everyone at the lab was like family and it seemed

like a good place to settle in for a lifetime career.27

-''' Interview with Les Viereck 30 July 1993; Interviews with Joan Foote 14 December 1992 and 18

December 1992.

27Interview with Joan Foote 14 December 1992.

88
Rivers served as virtual highways tor

research boats in the interior, but tor

shipwrecked scientists stranded on the

wrong side of a river such as the Tanana

(shown here in July 1974), the scenic

view became an impassable barrier,

(Juneau 1354)

Transport to field sites often involved cooperative arrangements

with other agencies, such as this crew shown unloading a BLM

aircraft at Swift River Lake in 1967. (Juneau 3144)

Researchers in the interior, despite the advantages of the easily accessible Bonanza Creek

Experimental Forest, also faced problems of difficult access and isolation similar to those in southeast Alaska. They often lacked the resources to contract for aircraft support and relied heavily on

boats during the field season. Foote had three riverboats sink underneath her in the course of

three decades of research. In one case, on the Porcupine River, she had been in the field for

about 6 weeks when shifting water levels trapped the boat on a sandbar and forced her crew to

evacuate. They managed to save everything but the rifle, but Foote and her crew were trapped on

the wrong side of the river without radio contact for 4 days before their colleagues back at the lab

got worried. Austin Helmers, who had been away on a trip, recalls that upon his return, he

learned that Foote and her crew were out on the Porcupine and had been out of contact for some

time. Project Leader Charles Cushwa was not at the lab at the time, so Helmers took it upon

himself to alert the BLM. The BLM supplied a Cessna 1 80 search plane that flew Helmers' search

party to Fort Yukon and then up the Porcupine Valley. As Foote relates the story, the plane happened to find Foote's party while one member of the crew was hunched over ''going to the John"

and, consequently, was not visible from the air. Helmers and the worried aircrew made a quick

headcount, concluded that one person was missing, hastily scrawled a note on a case of Crations asking if everything was okay, and then climbed for several thousand feet in altitude so

they could radio the location to the BLM airbase. Helmers recalls that the BLM dispatched a

Grumman Goose to pick up the stranded field crew, but the river boat remained stranded until

later that summer, when the Old Crow mailboat picked it up and returned it to Circle.28

Wilbur Farr, who worked briefly at the Fairbanks Lab in 1964 and made periodic forays to the

interior in later years, recounts a similar incident with a jet boat on the Tanana River. He hit a

28 Interview with Joan Foote 18 December 1992; communication from Austin Helmers to Ken Wright 10

March 1995

89
snag with the boat, hiked out of the woods back to Fairbanks, went out the next day with Gregory

to buy a new boat, took the boat out later in the day and sank it too; but this time, he and his field

assistant were forced to jump out and hit shore on the wrong side of the Tanana. With no bridges

across the river, Farr used waterproof matches to start a fire, and when he saw a C-47 heading his

way out of Fairbanks, he threw wet alder on the fire and sent up a huge column of smoke. The

plane spotted them and hung around for about an hour until the Army sent out a "banana"

helicopter that picked them up and dropped them at a nearby camp. At the time, Farr recalls,

nobody knew where they were, and they weren't expected back for another 1 0 days, so if the C47 hadn't spotted them, they might have been in "serious trouble".29

The Fairbanks unit rapidly developed a strong ecological focus that went beyond the more

traditional, utilitarian goals of Forest Research, but Gregory also directed scientists at the lab to

pursue pragmatic work, compiling volume tables and yield tables of marketable tree species and

exploring fire management issues. The Fire Research project came under new leadership when

Richard Barney replaced Von Johnson in February 1 965. Barney drew on his undergraduate and

graduate training in forest management and fire research at the University of Montana to compile

historical statistics and other information relating to forest fires in Alaska, and he reported that

study in the form of a problem analysis for the fire research project. This work laid the foundation

for initial efforts to adapt the standards of the new National Fire Danger Rating System to the

weather, fuel, and fire environments in Alaska.30

Bill Farr "boring a tree' in 1966. (Juneau

4077)

The Kuskokwim drainage as seen from the air in June 7 969. The

spectacular expanse of the forests of interior Alaska starkly

contrasted with the mountainous terrain and coastal inlets of

southeast Alaska, (Juneau 3348)

29 Interview with Bill Farr 22 December 1992.

30Interview with Ruth Murphy 14 December 1992; communication from Richard ). Barney to Ken

Wright 21 June 1995.

90
Barney continued the close ties with fire organizations in the BLM and the Alaska Division of

Lands that Johnson had facilitated over the past 2 years, offering his expertise in fire behavior. In

return, these agencies, which retained responsibility for fire suppression in the region, supported

research programs at the Fairbanks Lab with staff, transportation, and equipment. With this and

other support, Barney's unit developed, among other things, a root-feeder method to suppress

fires in the organic layers that harbored smoldering fires beneath the frozen surface of the taiga

forest. Barney also expanded the range of cooperation between his project and other agencies,

including support for fire-weather forecasting by the National Weather Service. In return, Bill

Trigg, of the Weather Service, worked with Barney's unit during the winter to boost the capabilities of the fire project. Research forester Nonan Noste, who joined Barney's unit at Fairbanks in

1966, came to the lab from the Northern Forest Fire Laboratory via the Lake States Experiment

Station, and his previous experience with the Fire Detection Project in Missoula, Montana. This

expanded unit pursued a research agenda over the next two decades that included fire history,

fire-danger-rating applications, fire suppression, instrumentation, biomass and fuel studies,

climatic studies, smoke occurrence and distribution, and fire management applications. Scientists with the fire project consequently broadened the scope of pragmatic skills at the lab and

strengthened the range of professional networks in an area of expertise vital to the mission of the

Fairbanks Lab.31

Scientists at Fairbanks continued the tradition of close cooperation with outside agencies, and

they worked with scientists and administrators at PNW Station in Portland to broaden the base of

knowledge about Alaska forests throughout the 1960s. Don Flora, who led the forest fire rating

project in Seattle for the PNW Station through 1966 and whose later responsibilities in Alaska as

Assistant Director at PNW Station included the forest survey, identifies Barney as his "primary

contact" in Alaska during the early 1960s. He recalls working closely with Barney to gain firsthand experience with fire conditions in the interior and the mystique of working in the far North.

In the midst of one particularly severe fire season, for example, Barney and Flora flew up the

Yukon Valley in a light plane seeking a fire reportedly near the small community of Chandalar at

the north bank on the confluence of the Chandalar and Yukon rivers. The fire burned itself out

before their arrival, but Flora recalls that this expedition qualified him for membership in Barney's

"exclusive" Arctic Fire Research Society, purportedly open only to those who had served on a fire

mission north of the Yukon River.32 This initiation, of sorts, illustrates the distinctive sense of

community carefully cultivated among scientists in Alaska who often viewed themselves, their

situation, and their work as, perhaps, something a little bit out of the ordinary.

Gregory directed the small staff at Fairbanks to focus on the ecology of white spruce, which

the Forest Service targeted as the most marketable timber resource in the region. Richard [Skeeter]

34Interview with Ruth Murphy 14 December 1992; Richard ). Barney, "Root Feeder Suppresses Fires,"

Fire Control Notes 30 (1969) 3: 11-12; Interview with loan Foote 1 5 December 1 992. Communication

from Richard ). Barney to Ken Wright 21 June 1995.

32

 Communication from Don Flora to Ken Wright 6 June 1995; Cowlin, "Federal Forest Research," 483.

91
Werner, an entomologist at Juneau, had made several studies of insects associated with white

spruce as a visiting scientist at Fairbanks earlier in his career. Research entomologist Roy Beckwith33

extended Werner's early studies of insect relations in white spruce when he joined the Fairbanks

staff in 1966 as project leader for forest insect research in interior Alaska. Viereck's early work

with Foote explored the relation of white spruce to lenses of perennially frozen ground, or permafrost. Farr returned to Juneau after his brief stint at Fairbanks, but research forester John Zasada, a

University of Michigan graduate with earlier experience on the Tongass National Forest, made

several forays into the interior before he transferred to Fairbanks in 1968. Zasada, who was a

second-generation scientist in forest research with the Forest Service, was a specialist in tree

physiology and tree-soil-water relations at the time he joined Gregory at Fairbanks in studies on

the regeneration of white spruce.34 With the addition of Zasada, the small research facility at

Fairbanks began to approach critical mass, in terms of the research skills, talent, and personnel

needed to tackle major research problems from a multidisciplinary perspective, but their research

centered on a region remote from any National Forest in Alaska.

Cooperative Research on the Bonanza Creek

Experimental Forest

With no National Forest in the interior of Alaska, Forest

Service researchers at the Fairbanks office interacted less

with Region 10 than did their counterparts in Juneau, and

they developed closer cooperative agreements with agencies outside the Forest Service. The Bonanza Creek Experimental Forest, for example, was established in 1963 on state

Forest land in a 55-year-lease agreement with the state of

Alaska, Division of Lands. University of Alaska scientists

cooperated with the Forest Service in conducting research

on the experimental forest throughout the 1960s and expanded the range of studies to include wildlife and soils.

Paul Heilman, professor of forest soils at the University of

Alaska, studied nutrient relations of birch and black spruce

Keith Hutchison stands next to an

instrument shelter established by Austin

Helmers on the Bonanza Creek

Experimental Forest in June 1976. (Farr

collection)

33 Beckwith is a good example of how the Northern Forest Experiment Station was beginning to attract

top researchers with little experience in Alaska who were drawn by the professional opportunity the lab

offered as opposed to a personal fascination with Alaska. Beckwith was a Navy veteran of World War

Two with an M.S. in forest entomology from Syracuse University and 14 years of combined experience

as an entomologist with the Bureau of Entomology and the Forest Service. Professional Biography Files,

Central History Files, Portland Office, PNW Station.

34 Zasada's father also had a long career in Forest Research at the Lake States (later North Central) Forest

Experiment Station. Cowlin, "Federal Forest Research," 499; R.A. Werner, "White spruce seed loss

caused by insects in interior Alaska," Canadian Entomologist 96 (1964): 1462-1464; interview with Les

Viereck 50 July 1 993; Roy C. Beckwith, "Scolytid flight in white spruce stands in Alaska," Canadian

Entomologist 104 (1992): 1977-1983; John C. Zasada and Robert A. Gregory, Regeneration of white

spruce with reference to interior Alaska: a literature review, (Portland: U.S.Department of Agriculture,

Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Forest and Range Experiment Station, Research Paper PNW-79, 1969);

Professional Biography Files, Central History Files, Portland Office, PNW Station.

92
on the experimental forest between 1964 and 1967, and a cooperative agreement between the

Fairbanks Lab and the Wildlife Department at the University supported a 6-year study of red

squirrels from 1962 through 1968. Graduate students and faculty members participating in the

squirrel study included C.H. Brink, Frederick C. Dean, Michael Smith, Donald Streubel, and Paul

Krasnowski. Richard S. Fleming, a graduate student in botany, studied vegetational composition

of birch stands on the Tanana uplands of the experimental forest from 1966 to 1968, with support

from the lab, and Keith Van Cleve and his UAF graduate students in the Forest Soils Laboratory

studied the ecology of river bottom sites with Les Viereck along the Tanana River on the Bonanza

Creek Forest.35

Watershed Research and the CaribouPoker Creeks Site

Another cooperative agreement with federal and state

agencies after a disastrous flood in the mid 1960s involved the Fairbanks Lab in a unique watershed project

near the Bonanza Creek Experimental Forest. Larry

Dingman, a research hydrologist working with the Department of the Army, U.S. Cold Regions Research and

Engineering Laboratory (CRREL) out of Fort Wainwright,

Alaska, initiated a small watershed study in 1964 on

Glenn Creek Basin near Fairbanks. Dingman's study

terminated in 1967, ironically, the same year that a major

flood swamped Fairbanks without warning, and a new

surge of interest in flood-control research for interior

Alaska surfaced as the waters receded. Families fleeing the floodwaters in Fairbanks found refuge

at the Fairbanks Lab,36 and the efforts of Dick Barney and other lab personnel were acknowledged by the editors of the Fairbanks News Miner. This positive publicity merged with more

pragmatic concerns about the need for advance warning of flooding conditions on the Tanana

watershed and led to strong support for watersheds research in the interior. Background information was sketchy because rivers and streams in watersheds with permafrost (such as the Tanana)

freeze for more than half a year and behave differently than do watercourses of similar size in

watersheds without permafrost. In an effort to bridge the gap, the Inter-Agency Technical Committee for Alaska organized a Research Coordination Subcommittee in spring 1969 to coordinate

A Sno-Cat crosses the Chatanika river during a

study of permafrost hydrology on the CaribouPoker Creeks Watershed near Fairbanks in

1975. Scientists at Fairbanks enjoyed ready

access to nearby study sites, but winter

conditions posed logistical problems for field

research. (Helmers collection)

36Memo 7 October 1969 from Les Viereck to Richard M. Hurd (located in the Bonanza Creek File,

Central Files, Fairbanks Office, PNW Station).

37Barney recalls that he and Nonan Noste literally lived in their offices because they were cut off from

their homes by the flood for more than a month. Barney did manage to take his river boat from the

street below his office and tie up in front of his house, but the river had flooded so high, he was unable

to pass the bridges and had to go around them over the floodplain. Communication from Richard ).

Barney to Ken Wright 21 June 1995.

93
flood-control research and explore the need for

establishing a research watershed. Agencies represented on the subcommittee included the College of Biological Sciences and Renewable Resources at the University of Alaska, the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska, the Institute of Water Resources at the University of

Alaska, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and

the CRREL, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, the Alaska Water Lab of the U.S. Federal

Water Quality Administration, the U.S. Geological Survey, the U.S. Soil Conservation Service,

the U.S. National Weather Service, the Division

of Lands for the state of Alaska, and the Institute of Northern Forestry.37

Austin Helmers photographed this view of a milesquare clearcut on the Mayheso Experimental Forest as

an example of "soil mass movement. " (Juneau 1519)

The Interagency Subcommittee selected the Caribou-Poker Creeks drainage near the Bonanza

Creek Experimental Forest as the site for a research watershed on the basis of criteria similar to

those Helmers had used in selecting a site for the Young Bay Experimental Forest years before.

Committee members sought a site large enough to have several discrete subdrainages that were

reasonably accessible from the city (Fairbanks), relatively undisturbed by human activities, reasonably "representative " of the surrounding region, preferably encompassing a wide range of

environments within the drainage basin (orientation, elevation, vegetation cover), and located on

public land owned by the state or federal government.58 The selection of both Caribou-Poker

Creeks and Young Bay Experimental Forest emphasized the scientific ideal of studies conducted in

isolation from human or natural factors considered unrelated to the phenomena under scrutiny.

Charles [Chuck] Slaughter, a forest hydrologist with CRREL who happened to witness the

1 967 flood while in Fairbanks on a research trip, moved to Fairbanks in 1 968. He was the only

resident hydrologist with the Department of Defense when the agency moved to establish the

watershed project between 1968 and 1970. By 1970, the Caribou-Poker Creeks watershed project

was operational over 40 square miles, and research on the project focused on developing a realtime flood-warning network. Slaughter described the watershed as "...the only complete catchment in the permafrost-dominated subarctic of the U.S. which is dedicated to hydrology and

environmental research." This pioneering project was a completely voluntary effort on the part of

the participating agencies, and the coordinating committee had no budgetary authority. Projects

on the watershed were "bootlegged" with funding from the participating agencies. By 1971, the

37Charles W. Slaughter, Caribou-Poker Creeks Research Watershed, Interior Alaska Background and

Current Status, (Hanover, New Hampshire: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Cold Regions Research and

Engineering Laboratory, Special Report 157, May 1971), 2-3, 11; interview with Charles [Chuck]

Slaughter 16 December 1992 in Fairbanks Office, PNW Station; Communication from Ken Wright to

author |une 1995.

38 Slaughter, Caribou-Poker Creeks Research Watershed, 3.

94
PNW Station reassigned its resident expert on watersheds, Austin Helmers, from the Juneau office

to Fairbanks, and Helmers worked closely with Slaughter and other researchers on the watershed

for the next 5 years.39

Expansion of the Research Agenda in Southeast Alaska

Extensive landslides and mass [soil] wasting on steep, cutover slopes in the Maybeso Valley in

the early 1960s led to a reassessment of research priorities in southeast Alaska, much as floods

and fires led to the development of cooperative studies in the interior, and Hurd recruited a new

generation of scientists who remained in Alaska through most of the 1960s. This third wave of

forest researchers broadened the array of skills and experience available for research projects in

southeast Alaska, but unlike those in Fairbanks, they joined established research programs staffed

with scientists who worked closely with Region 10 on the Tongass National Forest. The forest

survey moved ahead during the 1 960s with Karl Hegg, Tom Laurent, David Born, Robert Mattson,

and Jim LaBau under the direction of Keith Hutchison, who was a graduate of Oregon State

University with a master's degree in agricultural economics from Ohio State University and 13

years of experience in the Forest Service before his arrival in 1 959. Austin Helmers continued his

work with watersheds and salmon habitat, and also glacial geology; Al Harris and Bill Farr continued their work on forest regeneration, growth, and yield.40

Forest Service Research

crew repairing a cabin in

exchange for free use of

the facility in 1967.

These kinds of adaptive

arrangements were

crucial to the success of

doing research on a

limited budget in an area

that required high

expenditures for logistical

support. (Juneau 3151)

Reconnaissance of

a landslide in 1962

showing effects of

logging along a

stream. (Juneau

1032)

39 Interview with Chuck Slaughter 1 6 December 1 992; interview with Austin Helmers 4 August 1 993;

Letter 16 April 1975 from Charles W. Slaughter to Brian Bedford, EER Project Manager at The Institute of

Ecology, W.K. Kellogg Biological Station (Located in Central History Files, Portland Office, PNW Station).

40Interview with Bill Farr, Karl Hegg, Tom Laurent, and Al Harris 22 December 1992 in Juneau Office;

Hurd, Biennial Report 1960-1961.

95
Nearly 70 landslides and debris flows on steep, logged slopes of the Maybeso Experimental

Forest during heavy October rains in 1961 led to a concerted effort to study the relation between

logging practices and mass movements of soil and a renewed interest in various methods of reseeding to encourage regeneration after logging. Similar slides developed on heavily logged

slopes on other parts of the Tongass National Forest, and many of the slides affected uncut timber.

Aerial photos taken in June 1 948, July 1952, May 1959, May 1961, and August 1962 provided a

visual record of previous landslides in the Maybeso Valley before and after the major clearcutting

of the mid 1950s. These methods revealed a 350-percent increase in the area subjected to landslides between 1959 and 1961, and the area subjected to landslides between May 1961 and

August 1962 was nearly 450 percent greater than the area subjected to landslides between May

1959 and May 1961. Initial research by Dan Bishop, and the realization that the heavy rainfall in

October 1961 was likely at least once every decade, lent a sense of urgency or even panic to the

apparent association between logging and massive slide activity, and Hurd recruited Research

Maybeso Valley in May 1962, seven years after logging.

(Schmiege collection)

This view of a landslide at Neets Bay in 1962

illustrates the hazardous conditions

confronting scientists who worked on the

landslide reconnaissance that year. Note the

smooth bedrock surface exposed in this slide,

(Juneau 1473)

Doug Swanston, shown here testing rool sheer strength, was

recruited in 7 962 to address concerns about soil mass

movements on areas of the Maybeso Experimental Forest

clearcut in the 1950s. (Schmiege collection)

96
Geologist Douglas Swanston to study the phenomenon. Swanston held an undergraduate degree

from the University of Michigan and a Master's degree in glacial geology-geomorphology from

Bowling Green State University (Ohio) at the time he began working in Juneau with Al Harris in

summer 1962.41

Swanston recalls that researchers in Juneau when he first arrived in 1962 perceived themselves as somewhat isolated from the mainstream of power and influence in forest research. In

contrast to Viereck, who joined the staff at Fairbanks the next year and reported no concerns

about funding or recognition, Swanston notes that although he, personally, was well received,

the mood among researchers in juneau was somewhat resentful, and scientists who had worked

there over the previous decade seemed concerned that their work was going unrecognized outside Alaska. Helmers, the former acting director who had been replaced when Hurd arrived only

a year earlier, warned Swanston in 1962: "If you're gonna stay here, you're gonna be forgotten.

Just go ahead and do the work you need to do up here, but nobody's gonna pay any attention."42

Swanston reports that "...it seemed true at the time...people were either crazy or sadistic types

who preferred the cold, cruel woods." He also notes that they had problems getting field people

who would stay on because of the isolated working conditions.

Swanston had arrived at a moment of deep concern that things had somehow gone very

wrong, and much of the earlier research that seemed to suggest that it was safe, or even beneficial, to clearcut drainages right up to the streambed now faced closer scrutiny. In contrast to

The researchers at juneau never

enjoyed the luxury of a

permanent laboratory facility

designed expressly for

controlled research. This view

of the Johnson Building on

Admiralty Way in I960 greeted

scientists who in earlier years

worked out of the old CCC

crewhouse, then in the Federal

Building downtown, and more

recently in a leased building

near the airport north of Juneau.

(Juneau 1381)

Research Entomologist John Hard joined

Don Schmiege in Juneau as a

replacement for Richard "Skeeter"

Werner in 1964. Here, Hard examines

twigs infested with hemlock sawflies and

seeks clues to their life cycle. (Portland

Office History Files)

Here, Hard lowers a sawflyintested branch from a tree near

MacKenzie Inlet, west of

Ketchikan. (Portland Office

History Files)

41 Hurd, Annual Report 1963, 15-16; Interview with Douglas Swanston 22 December 1992 in ) uneau

Office; Professional Biography Files, Central History Files, Portland Office, PNW Station.

42 Interview with Douglas Swanston 22 December 1992.

97
Fairbanks, where the mood through the 1 960s was one of optimistic innovation and cooperative

expansion, the focus in Juneau was damage control, retrenchment, and questioning of previous

assumptions and conclusions. This reassessment provided opportunities for up-and-coming young

scholars like Swanston who asked different kinds of questions and looked at different kinds of

issues, but those young scholars often challenged the methods, assumptions, and conclusions

undergirding earlier research conducted by scientists like Helmers. Helmers argued that the

mass movements in the Maybeso were simply a continuation of natural processes in the Ushaped, glaciated valleys of southeast Alaska. He pointed out that landslides commonly occurred

long before any logging developed, and he compared airphotos of the Maybeso Valley with photos

from other valleys, arguing that slope instability is just nature's way of leveling the land.43

Swanston's work during the 1960s focused on the underlying structures supporting the forested slopes in southeast Alaska, unlike his predecessors at Juneau, who tended to focus more on

the trees and surface events. Helmers notes that researchers in Juneau before Swanston lacked

the expertise needed to understand the geology and soil mechanics influencing debris avalanches

in southeast Alaska, and Swanston was hired to fill this gap. This expanded area of inquiry was

also a reflection of broader shifts in forest research and environmental issues in the National

Forest System as forest management practices came under closer scrutiny and uses other than

timber began to assume greater prominence in the mission of the agency. Unlike the earlier

generation of researchers, this "third wave" of scientists often came from backgrounds unrelated

to timber production and often not directly related to forestry. Swanston's background, for example, was in glacial geomorphology, whereas Helmers was, literally, born and raised in a forest

management family. By the mid 1960s, this tendency toward greater diversification in academic

background and experience became more pronounced at the Juneau Office.44

New Researchers and Retraining in the Juneau Office

Under Hurd's direction in the mid 1 960s, the Juneau research facility expanded its staff with

specialists in entomology, fisheries biology, and geology, and other scientists at the Station updated their knowledge with post-graduate studies. Don Schmiege, a native of Wisconsin, joined

the staff in 1961 with funding from the Washington Office while finishing his doctoral work at the

University of Minnesota. His background included a stint in the U.S. Army in the postwar period

and an undergraduate degree in forestry, an M.S. in economic zoology, and a Ph.D. in entomology, fisheries, and wildlife, all from the University of Minnesota. Research Entomologist John

Hard, a Navy veteran during the 1950s with an undergraduate degree in forestry and a graduate

degree in forest entomology from Syracuse University, joined Schmiege as a replacement for

Werner45 in 1964. Hard previously had worked for 2 years as research entomologist with the

43 Interview with Austin Helmers 4 August 1 993.

44 Professional Biography Files, Central History Files, Portland Office, PNW Station.

45 Werner transferred to the Southeastern Forest Experiment Station, where he worked while he pursued

graduate studies at the University of Maryland and North Carolina State University between 1965 and

1971. Interview with Richard ISkeeter] Werner 30 July 1 993; Professional Biography Files, Central

History Files, Portland Office, PNW Station.

98 CONTINUED