Above: Vicinity map of 

Smith River and the Smith 

River Road project. 

It was one thing to live in 

a construction camp if 

you were part of the crew 

– your work took you out 

into the field every day 

and the tent or trailer 

where you lived provided 

a place to relax at the end 

of the day. For spouses, 

however, the camp was a 

different experience. 

It was 1954 and Jack 

Johnson had just gotten 

married when he was 

assigned to the Smith 

River Road project. “I 

was working for Ray 

Westby,” he said, “and 

just a week after I moved 

my wife into that camp, 

everyone else who was 

married got transferred 

out.” 

It had not been an intentional slight, he admitted. 

“It had already been prearranged... Of course nobody told me: I didn’t tell 

anybody I was getting 

married.” 

At the time there were 

about 35 men in the 

camp, “So she got indoctrinated real quick like 

into the life of the BPR... 

She was only 18 years old 

at that time, so she was 

not used to being isolated 

from other people.” 

His wife had spent the 

previous summer working 

in the plant office of a 

cannery. “There were 

100 people through her 

area every couple of 

hours,” he said, “and then 

to show up down there 

(and be) the only woman, 

and nobody to talk to... 

“We had no telephone at 

the camp; there was no 

mail delivered. We had a 

mail run going to town 

two, maybe three times a 

week.” 

With as many as 50 people in camp at a time, 

“someone would have to 

go into town and get groceries and stuff...at least 

twice a week. The groceries were more important 

than getting the mail, but 

we would get the mail 

when we went into town.” 

The camp had “its own 

water system,” and a generator for power, but that 

didn’t mean that every 

electrical appliance 

worked well. “My wife 

said, ‘I’m sitting down 

here, (I can’t) even listen 

to the radio!’ 

Life in the Camps: 

The Smith River Project, 1954 

From an Interview 

with Jack Johnson 

Fall 2012 

The Smith River Camp was 

one of the biggest camps 

used by the Bureau of Public 

Roads in the 1950’s. Its 

remote location and difficult 

access made it a lonely 

assignment for the spouses 

of BPR employees. 

Western Federal 

Lands Highway 

Division 

June 2015 

Article 56 

A Glimpse into 

an Earlier Era 
would get to where the mud started in 

Smith River, it was eight or nine at 

night; then they would get stuck and 

couldn’t get any farther. By the time 

they walked that 20 miles into camp, it 

would be 3:00 in the morning. 

“For some reason or another, I guess 

because Ray liked me,” (17:25) Jack 

winked, “I always got the three in the 

morning call...Ray would come in and 

wake me up and (whisper), ‘we got 

somebody stuck down here. Would you 

go down and help them get out?’ I got 

acquainted with quite a few people” 

that way, he added. 

That fall, when Thanksgiving rolled 

around, Ray started working on the 

Johnsons to remain in the camp over 

the holiday. “They had to have someone stay in camp to keep the generators 

going so the refrigerators would keep 

running,” Jack said, and “Everybody 

wanted to go out for a four-day weekend. 

“The Saturday before the four-day 

weekend, we got together at the cook 

house.” Many of the crew had left, but 

a few people were still there, “and Ray 

kept staying, you know, if I had my 

wife down here I wouldn’t mind staying 

down here for four days. 

“My wife also was very well acquainted 

with Ray,” Jack said, and she told him 

later, “I was sitting there (listening to 

that, and) I was ready to hit him over 

the head.” 

“He kept that up for about three or four 

hours,” Jack said, and “at the end of the 

“We had the old rotary calculators,” 

Jack explained. “Every time they hit a 

button on the calculator, it buzzed in 

the radio.” 

His marriage worked out, he reflected, 

but “divorce was not an uncommon 

situation for the nomads that we were.” 

Many of the wives agreed to move, 

“until they found out where they were 

going and what they had to do.” Even 

if they were near a town, it may have 

been a town of only 30-40 people, “So 

you were not really in what (you would 

think of as) a town.” 

His wife did a lot of reading, he said, 

but she also made at least one friend. 

“We had a cook by the name of Cecil 

Willister, I believe it was. He was an 

old time cook; he cooked for the Corps 

of Engineers and he cooked at several 

(of our) camps over the years. My wife 

would go over there and talk to him. 

He was a very friendly person and he 

always had time to talk.” 

There were other reasons the camp 

seemed less than hospitable. “It 

seemed like it rained every day that I 

was there for that whole year. Anytime 

that you came out of there that you 

weren’t covered with mud...was a very 

unusual day.” 

Jack said that in later years his wife 

often reminded him that the only way 

in and out of camp was in a Power 

Wagon. “You couldn’t go out for an 

evening. If you were lucky, you could 

get out of there and back in a weekend, 

(but you were) always fighting the mud 

every bit of the way.” 

The way they made it work, he said 

was to set up a schedule. They would 

meet a Power Wagon, near the mouth 

of the Smith River. “One rig would 

leave at 6:00 and another one at 8:00 

and another one at 10:00 and the very 

last one left at midnight.” 

Jack and his wife spent one weekend in 

town, and “We got the midnight run 

going back one night. There were probably six or seven of us in the Power 

Wagon.” 

The vehicle was equipped with only two 

seats, plus benches in the back. “You 

had propane tanks, your groceries that 

you bought for a week or more...all that 

stuff thrown in the back.” From where 

they had parked their own cars, it was 

about 25 miles to the camp. 

“We were driving up the road back to 

camp...and we were the only ones on 

the road. No one else used it; you 

couldn’t even call it a road – it was two 

tracks, full of ruts – and we got stuck 

this one night going in there.” 

The Power Wagons were equipped with 

winches on the front, and “The only 

way you could get out is to...pull yourself out.” That night, however, “We got 

stuck down below a major cut, so there 

were no stumps or trees or anything 

there to hook to. 

The river was about 15 feet below 

them, and “the only place we could go 

was down over the bank. (All we could 

do was) just wrap the cable around a 

boulder and hope that it held enough to 

pull the truck through. We winched 

about five times to get through this one 

really bad muddy area. 

“By the time I got back in, and (we) got 

ready to go on, my wife said, ‘where’s 

your shoe?’ I had lost a shoe and didn’t 

even know it; it was (that) muddy.” 

On the occasions when inspectors came 

to the camp, they, too, had to contend 

with the mud. With no telephone and 

with mail pick-ups only once or twice a 

week, he noted, “Unless they planned 

their trips a month ahead of time, we 

had no idea who was going to come in 

or when they were going to get there. 

“They would usually leave Portland 

8:00 in the morning. By the time they 

“You were always fighting the mud...” 

Article 56 Page 2 

You couldn’t even call it a 

road – it was two tracks, 

full of ruts. 

This Marchant calculator may have been 

similar to what was being used on the 

project. 
The crew stayed at the camp that fall 

until the first part of December, “when 

it got so muddy and so wet you couldn’t 

get in and out anymore. (That’s when) 

“I’d give almost anything to go back to that solitude” 

they closed it all down for the winter. 

Thank goodness I never got assigned 

back there again.” 

Jack reflected that his wife’s view of 

the experience softened as 

time went on. “My wife 

passed away 13 years ago,” 

he said, but after some 

time had passed, she told 

him, “I’d give almost anything to go back to that 

solitude. I was all by myself and didn’t have to do 

anything. I didn’t have to 

talk to anyone; didn’t have 

to make any decisions. But 

at the time it wasn’t that 

nice.” 

conversation, I says, ‘OK, we’re staying 

here, but I’ve got to be paid for overtime for every day, because I have to go 

check the road to make sure it is open 

every day. I have to run 

down the road, and that 

takes 8 hours...so I have to 

have 8 hours of overtime 

for every day. 

“Next weekend,” he added, 

“I (want) to get two more 

days off and have a fourday weekend.” 

“They thought it over and 

said ‘well, that’s probably 

the only way we’ll get anybody to stay in.’” 

Jack Johnson first joined the Bureau of Public Roads in 

1949 and was assigned to a survey crew on Hurricane 

Ridge. He left within a year for a job at Bonneville Power 

Administration, then answered the draft and spent two 

years in the Army. He tried to get back on at Bonneville, he 

said, but “they’d hire a survey crew for a certain project, 

and then they’d get rid of the survey crew, so it just didn’t 

work out.” He returned to BPR in 1953 and worked a season on Stevens Pass before being assigned to Smith River. 

He would return to Smith River for other assignments in 

1959 and 1965-66. 

The stories in this series have been developed by 

Marili Reilly from interviews, correspondence, and archive 

files.

A Glimpse into an Earlier Era 

610 East Fifth Street 

Vancouver, Washington 98661 

http://flh.fhwa.dot.gov/about/history/articles.htm 

Western Federal 

Lands Highway 

George Humphreys (back), Jack Johnson, and Paul Anderson 

share memories during an April 2014 retiree gathering at WFLHD.