From Camps to Lodges to Per Diem - 

Part Two 

Compiled from interviews, Winter 2008 

The tents and trailers described in Part One were one kind of camp experience, 

but there were often other options. On many projects, vacation inns and hunting lodges 

became the crew’s home away from home -- until the convenience of Motel 6 and per 

diem allowances came along. 

 “I started out in 1950 for Bureau of Public Roads,” said Ray Westby. “The next 

summer, we had about a six mile job just west of Leavenworth on 2. It started at the 

Merritt Inn, (and was a part of) the State Primary System,” he said. “At that time we did 

quite a few jobs on the State Primary System.” 

“When I first started in ’50, they never paid per diem. You went to the job and 

the project engineer had to get a contract for a place to stay, and also for a restaurant....” 

His first job was on the Loup Loup Highway near Okanogan. “I worked for a fellow by 

the name of Curly Gowan (who) was the project engineer....We stayed in a hotel up in 

Okanogan, and we ate in a restaurant.”

Unlike those working today who 

could receive a set amount of per diem no 

matter how little or how much they pay for 

their meals, in those days, if you didn’t eat 

the meal, you couldn’t just pocket the 

change. Most of the time that worked all 

right, but the arrangement was less than 

perfect if there were no suitable restaurants 

nearby, such as Ray’s project near Merritt. 

“(There) was nothing but an old lodge there, 

(and) it wasn’t operating.” An elderly lady 

owned and lived in the lodge, and the project 

manager contracted for the cabins on the 

property for eight to ten men. 

Roadside lodges like the Summit Inn on 

Washington’s Sunset Highway at Snoqualmie Pass 

could sometimes serve as crew quarters during 

their off-season. Postcard from WFLHD Archives. 

It was too far to travel to Leavenworth for meals, and the only place to eat was a 

roadside restaurant next to the Merritt Inn. The couple who owned the diner, however, 

were barely making enough living to raise their four children. “They didn’t have 

anything,” Ray said. “They signed a contract to take care of us for meals, but they never 

had any money; never had any groceries. You’d go in and order something, and they’d 

say, ‘We don’t have that.’” 

LeRoy Borstad was his Office Man: “He’d get so mad!” Ray said. “The Region 

would send her a check for the meals, and then she’d go out and spend it on her kids or 

whatever. We had an awful time with her....they never had any groceries. 

“Finally they got rid of that (system) and started paying per diem.” 

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Vern Ford recalled an arrangement that was more remote, but was more 

convenient because they could hire their own cook. It was 1957, and he’d been with the 

BPR about three years when he was sent to work with a survey crew in the Wallowa 

Mountains in 1957. The project was Gumboot Road, and it ran “from Sheep Creek, over 

the top, and then down to the Imnaha River.” On one side of the mountains, they used a 

Forest Service camp at Lick Creek, but at the other end, they leased a ranch that had once 

been owned by the actor, Eugene Palette. 

Palette, a rotund, froggy-voiced character actor, had been 

in many 1940’s movies, including roles as Friar Tuck and as one 

of the Three Musketeers. “Palette was kind of an eccentric,” 

Vern remembered. After World War II, “he was sure that we 

were going to be invaded...so he had bought this ranch down on 

the Imnaha River...The Imnaha River is about as remote as you 

can get in Oregon.” 

 Palette Ranch had once hosted movie stars for hunting 

Eugene Palette as Friar 

Tuck in “The Adventures 

of Robin Hood” 

and fishing trips. “It had a house and a bunkhouse and a 

cookhouse. There was a slaughterhouse and a garage and a great 

big storage (building that) looked like a barn....He’d bought out

a bankrupt hardware store some place and took all the hardware and moved it over 

there....He had a huge propane tank,” Vern said, and “that run the power source for the 

ranch. And he had a big underground gasoline tank that he put in there. So he was pretty 

much self-sufficient. As long as his supplies of propane and gasoline held out, he was 

OK. He had his own cows there and everything. Anyway, we leased that because it had 

the bunkhouse, and cookhouse.” 

Willis Grafe also got a taste of the “resort” life. He had left BPR after the 

training program, but had been enticed to return and was working in the office in 

Portland. “I’d just got married in ’52. I had come back to work from the Corps of 

Engineers,” he said, when he received a call on the weekend from the Region Office. 

“He says, ‘I want you to go up to Glacier Park. Pick up a vehicle from Carl 

Chamberlain in Missoula.’...My bride and I loaded up and away we went. 

“In the 1930’s when they 

built...Going to the Sun Road, 

they had, at McDonald 

Lake...quite a good sized camp. 

(We) got into one of those 

buildings. (There were) beds in it 

and a little stove like the look-outs 

have....We had a light bulb. No 

refrigeration, of course – she had 

trouble keeping milk from going 

sour during the thunder storms. 

“It was a good life; we 

look back on it with a lot of good 

reminiscences. It was practically a 

whole summer long honeymoon.”

Willis Grafe’s living quarters during his assignment at 

Glacier National Park were not quite as comfortable as the St 

Mary’s Lodge on this 1950’s postcard. WFLHD Archives

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Fred Rogers came to this office in 1961, and spent several years on surveys. One 

summer he was working on Galice Creek, which was “an old road that goes up from the 

Rogue River to the south (toward) Gold Beach. 

 “I worked for Jack Rickard and we stayed at what’s called Morrison’s Fishing 

Lodge,” Fred said. “People pay to go (there) during the season.” The Lodge was still a 

good distance from the project. They’d leave at six in the morning, drive up the road as 

far as they could, then hike downhill for a half hour to reach the work. At the end of the 

day, he said, “it would take us an hour and a half to come back to the top.” 

It was on this project that Fred discovered that the new guys sometimes had to 

face a certain rite of passage. They had stopped at the Galice Creek Store one day, which 

was a convenient stop to gas up the government trucks. “Being green,” Fred said, he was 

sent off to let the proprietor know they wanted to buy some gas. “This old guy’s sitting 

in a rocker, there on the porch, and here’s the gas pump down this gravel road. I thought, 

‘Why are they doing that?’ Well I found out – I walked out and this police dog sitting by 

him leaps up and rushes out....Grabbed my leg, tore my pants...He was playing, he 

wasn’t rough. He wasn’t trying to kill me or anything,” Fred said, but the dog did draw 

blood. “So that was my introduction to the survey.” 

Vern Ford also remembered there were often shenanigans on the projects. 

“There’s a lot of things that we did...I don’t even remember half of it any more. Crews 

back then were pretty much a wild bunch. Most of the guys were single – I know I was 

– so if you got into a town, that was a real luxury. Out in the camps, you didn’t have 

much comfort.” 

If you have comments about people or projects in this story, or other stories about 

the camps, please email me at marili.reilly@fhwa.dot.gov. 

-- Marili Green Reilly 

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