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Life in the camps: The Smith River Project, 1955-56 

Compiled from Interviews, Winter 2008 

During the 1950’s, Direct Federal construction management for the Northwest was 

housed in the Region Office in Portland, Oregon, with the head of the Direct Federal 

activity reporting to the Regional Engineer. Projects were often in remote areas, and 

during the construction season, project crews lived in tent camps close to the work. 

Ray Westby, who joined Bureau of Public Roads (BPR) in 1950, was Project 

Engineer around 1955 for a road going up the Smith River. “We had about 40 miles 

under contract,” he said, for this project near Reedsport, Oregon. The area “was all 

virgin timber.” Project Engineers were on the job for only one year. “Al Nelson was 

there the first year, I was there the second year, and a fellow from Oregon Division 

Office was there the third year.” 

 On the other 

end of the road, 

Willis Grafe, who 

had joined BPR in 

1948 under the Junior 

Engineer program, 

was Project Engineer 

for a different stretch 

of the road. During 

that era, he pointed 

out, a lot of the Direct 

Federal work was done on lands belonging to the Bureau of Land Management. “The 

BLM lands were all in sections that they called Oregon California Railroad Revested 

Lands.” The land had been granted to the railroad, but when the railroad went broke, 

those sections “reverted back and became BLM” lands. 

With the BLM money there also came some benefits, Ray recalled. The camp 

they used at Vincent Creek was built especially for the BLM, and, he said, “there’s still a 

Forest Service building there.” 

“We just had all kinds of problems,” Ray continued. “Today you spend as much 

money taking care of traffic. In those days, they didn’t do that. Federal Highways was 

very tight that way.” 

The area where they were working “was all sandstone, and it broke big and 

blocky. (We) never had any crushed rock or anything to handle traffic, and the farmers, 

consequently, got very disappointed with us.” 

Although local people were unhappy at the time, Ray learned many years later 

that the farmers apparently were aware of the difficulty of completing the work and 

appreciated the efforts made by BPR to keep everyone happy. “There was one farmer 

named Daly who recognized we had a problem and we were doing all we could to help. 

My son’s wife’s uncle was married to Daly’s daughter,” Ray said, and 25 years after he’d 

been on the project, she sent him “a letter that her dad wrote to her saying how hard we 
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tried to pacify them and the other farmers.” In fact, she invited Ray and his wife to come 

down for the annual summer picnic in the Smith River area, which they have attended a 

couple of times. 

BPR trucks at Vincent Creek Camp on the Smith River project. Photo 

courtesy Ray Westby. 

There were two buildings at Vincent Creek camp. One was a cookhouse – they 

had a full time cook – and the other housed the men’s bunkhouse and latrine. The Project 

Engineer’s office was at one end of the bunkhouse. They also had three tent frames and a 

trailer which were used by the men who had brought their families with them. Ray said, 

“I lived in a tent, myself – the wife and kid and I.” 

The crew also included a mechanic named Don Stonehouse, and Ray 

remembered that the tough sandstone provided him with plenty of work. “He kept busy 

all the time, just putting new brake linings on those vehicles. That sandstone just wore 

them out. It was a continuous job.”

 More than just a mechanic, Don Stonehouse was also responsible for 

maintenance around the camp – including keeping the electricity flowing. “If you used 

too much power, you blew a fuse.” One day, Ray said, “somebody wanted to heat water” 

– one of those heaters you plug in to heat tea water – “and it blew a fuse.” Don stomped 

into the office and told him, “‘If they blow the fuse again, I’m not going to fix it.’ 

“I said, ‘Don, don’t be like that...” he related. It blew again, and Don let it go for 

about an hour. Then, says Ray, “this lady who lived in one of the tents came over...and 

boy, she lit into me. She happened to be the one who was blowing (the) fuse, heating 

water. So really, running a camp is more work,” he said, than just managing the project. 

There were 42 people on the crew. One young man on the Junior Engineer 

Program – Dick Cowdery – would move on to become Division Administrator in Idaho 

by the time he retired. Most of the crew were young and single, and liked to get away 

from camp on the weekends. “Our road wasn’t good enough...for a car (to travel) – you 

had to have a four-wheel drive,” Ray said. But there was another way out – over the hill 

at Vincent Creek and down to Scottsburg. That road was also unimproved, and in the 

rain, the clay soil became “too slick – you couldn’t follow it.” So, as Ray related, “You 

get all these single guys in there checking out on the weekend – you get an unhappy 

camp.” 
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For awhile, they found a temporary solution which was workable, if not totally 

above board: The men could park their cars at the bottom of the hill, and could use them 

to drive from there into town. If someone also happened to leave one of the camp’s four 

wheel drive trucks at the bottom of the hill, it provided them a means to get back up the 

road to the camp. 

“Sam Cook was the boss man and used to come down once a month from 

Portland. He was a real nice guy, (so) I told him what we were doing. 

He was understanding. “He said....‘Let me talk to the people in the Region.’ 

“They cut us off – they wouldn’t let us do it.” 

The Region Office had their rules about what provisions were to be purchased as 

well. Don Stonehouse, who was really the camp’s “jack of all trades, would go down to 

Reedsport about once a week (and) bring groceries back up” causing expenses to 

gradually creep up. “The accountant over in Portland – Luckow was his name – he 

would see that the costs were getting built up and he’d want to know why the cook 

wasn’t making his own bread... instead of buying bread.” 

“That camp...was tough,” Ray recalled, “but we got along pretty well.” 

Sam Cook was one of bright spots during this period, particularly when Ray was 

separated from his family. Ray noted that “we had some pretty good people – 

supervisors – from the World War II era. The old guys....they really went all out to help 

you. When I was on the Smith River, I lived in Seattle and never got home but maybe 

once every six weeks or so. And Sam Cook out of the Region would come down. ‘Well, 

Ray,’ he says, ‘I want you to go back to Portland.’ and then I’d get on the train and go 

home. So he used to give me breaks.” 

The Smith River project, Ray 

remembered, was “probably the biggest 

development that Direct Federal had while I was 

here.” His crew worked on the western end of 

the road, but the contract was for about a 90-mile 

stretch, and he said “there was another guy 

working from the eastern end...I can’t remember 

now where they stayed.” 

 That other guy – at least for one season – 

was Willis Grafe. “In Smith River we were 

building for BLM,” Willis said. “Westby was 

over at the other camp on the other end of the 

Tualatin National Wildlife Refuge, 2005. 

WFLHD Construction Photo Archives. 

road. I had the contract on the east end and we went over the hill and down and 

connected with them on the west side. We had an awful lot of improvising to do 

sometimes.” 

Although Willis didn’t mention the name of the camp, Vern Ford, who started 

with BPR in 1954, recalled there was “a big camp on the Smith River in Oregon. There 

was a place up there called Cherry Brumitt – a tent camp – and that was a big camp. 

They were building a road up the Smith River and that road, a lot of times, was almost 

impassable.” 

Willis remembered that it was about that time that communicating with the 

Region Office had become a bit simpler. It was “the first time anybody had a telephone 

in their pickup truck. When I wanted to call, I could get up on the mountain and call 
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either a station in Portland or Eugene.” Increased communication had its trade-offs, 

though: “I learned that there are a lot worse things than being too far from headquarters – 

and one of them was being too close.” 

Still, as in any remote areas with limited access to resources, Willis said, “we 

operated pretty independently – we had to. You had to take charge of things. You 

couldn’t go back to anybody and get something.” 

From the Smith River, Willis Grafe left Direct Federal to become an Area 

Engineer with the Oregon Division, a job he held from 1957 to 1969. Ray Westby headed 

to the Olympic National Park in 1956 to spend the next four seasons on the Heart of the 

Hills project. Vern Ford spent much of the 1950’s on Oregon project survey crews. 

If you have stories about the Smith River project or other tent camps, please email 

me at Marili.Reilly@fhwa.dot.gov. 

-- Marili Green Reilly