Deschutes & Ochoco National Forests
Crooked River National Grassland

History of Deschutes N.F.

Since its creation in 1893 as part of the Cascade Forest Reserve, the Deschutes National Forest has played an important role in Central Oregon's economic and social history. A major supplier of timber during the decades when mills formed the core of Central Oregon's economy, the Forest has proven equally important as a destination for the millions of recreationists who visit Central Oregon each year.

Creation

Officially, the Deschutes National Forest was created on July 1, 1908. However, much of the land within the original Deschutes' boundaries had been withdrawn from the public domain earlier, by President Grover Cleveland on September 28, 1893 and by President Theodore Roosevelt on July 31, 1903. It was known as the Cascade Range Forest Reserve. The land included in those two withdrawals makes up 78 percent of today's Deschutes National Forest. In the years since 1908, the other 22 percent has been acquired through purchases and exchanges, mostly of cut over timber lands.

The first forest withdrawals were administered by the Department of Interior; however, on February 1, 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt signed a proclamation transferring them to the Department of Agriculture. The first "national forests" by name in this area were created on September 17, 1906.

The name "Deschutes National Forest" was officially given on July 1, 1908, and included the area east of the Deschutes River (then in the Fremont National Forest) and the present Ochoco National Forest. The headquarters were in Prineville with A.S. Ireland as the first Forest Supervisor.

Boundaries between the Deschutes, Fremont, Ochoco, and Winema National Forests have been adjusted several times. In addition, parts of today's Deschutes National Forest were once included in the short-lived Cascade and Paulina National Forests. The latest boundary adjustment took place in 1961, when a southern portion of the Deschutes was transferred to the newly established Winema National Forest.

First Supervisor and Buildings

First Supervisor of the Deschutes National Forest was Addison Schulyer Ireland. He served from 1908 until July 1, 1911 when the Ochoco area was eliminated from the Deschutes.

At the time of the elimination of the Ochoco area and the addition of the Cascade and Oregon National Forest area to the west and north on July 1, 1911, the headquarters of the Deschutes was established in Bend. The forest office was established upstairs in the wooden building which housed the Bend Co., the Bend Abstract Co., and the Bend "Bulletin". The Bend Co. and the Bend Bulletin offices being downstairs.

Ranger Districts

The original ranger districts on the Deschutes in 1911 were:

• The Metolius, with headquarters at Allingham.
• Sisters, with headquarters at the Squaw Creek Ranger Station (on Squaw Creek southwest of Sisters).
• Big River with headquarters at the Big River Ranger Station (on river at site of present General Patch Bridge).
• Lapine with headquarters at the Rosalind Ranger Station about two miles north of Lapine.
• Pine Mountain, with headquarters at Antelope Springs.

Early "Ranger" Pioneers

A historical writeup of the area now in the Deschutes National Forest would not be complete unless it recorded the activities of Cy J. Bingham, who was probably the first forest ranger in the area. Cy got his appointment around 1900, when all the public domain land was administered by the General Land Office, Department of the Interior. The exact boundary of Cy's district is not known, but it must have included practically all the Cascade portion of the Deschutes as well as the upper Willamette immediately to the west. Cy was quite a poet. One old timer Bill Brock, from the Crescent area, produced part of a poem which he claims was composed by Bingham and read as follows:

"In this grand old State in which we dwell,
There's a spot called Lake Odell,
No prettier lake, was ever seen,
Where the hunters killed the spotted fawn,
And speared the dollys as they spawned."

Bingham was transferred from the Cascade area sometime in 1908 and promoted to supervisor of the Malheur National Forest with headquarters at John Day. He served as supervisor of the Malheur for many years until he resigned and became sheriff of Grant County.

C.H. Overbay, who was first ranger on the Bend District when it was formed in the spring of 1933; served until March 1935, when he went into the Supervisor's Office to handle timber management activities. He took over the timber management work in March 1935, and served until June 1936, when he was transferred to the Wallowa Forest. He again took over the timber management work in November 1942.

One of the early-day guards was Billy Vandevert, who served as guard under Supervisor Clyde Seitz at Eugene when the area west of the Deschutes was in the Cascade Forest. Vandevert was one of the oldest residents of the Bend area. He took up a homestead on the Deschutes River south of Bend in 1893 and lived there until he died in 1944, at the age of 90.

Duties of Early-Day Rangers

Rangers who watched over Central Oregon woods prior to the renaming of the Cascade Range to the Deschutes National Forest on July 1, 1908, had many exacting duties. These were carefully outlined in "The Use Book," prepared by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

"A ranger of any grade must be thoroughly sound and able-bodied, capable of enduring hardships and of performing severe labor under trying conditions. He must be able to take care of himself and his horses in regions remote from settlements and supplies. He must be able to build trails and cabins, ride, pack, and deal tactfully with all classes of people. He must know something about land surveying, estimating and scaling timber, logging, land laws, mining, and the livestock business."

Saddle horses or pack horses were necessary in the performance of their duty, Rangers were required to own and maintain them. On some of the early Deschutes Districts, Rangers lived in house tents. Next came a barn for horses, and finally a house was built. Apparently, Ranger A.R. Davis had few accommodations at Antelope Springs serving the short time Pine Mountain Ranger Station. Davis was sent there because of the land rush to the high desert and the demand by early settlers for forest commodities to be used on farms taking shape in the sagebrush. Davis moved into the area in 1911, before a station had been set up at Antelope Springs. He was accompanied by his wife.

Land Use

The Forest Homestead Act of June 11, 1906, provided that forest land chiefly valuable for agriculture could be listed, occupied, and eventually patented as a homestead. The claimants would vociferously hold that the claims had great agricultural value. The Davis Lake and Crane Prairie cases are examples of these land problems.

The House case at Davis Lake. One of the most troublesome group of claims was on the shores of Davis Lake. The House family claim was one of these. The applicator had been rejected, appealed, and again rejected, but he moved on it anyway and built a fair log house. He managed to gain the ear of Senator Lane who apparently told him to go back to his farm and stay there. The next move by House was to refuse to let the L.L. Jones' sheep pass along the lakeshore in front of his residence. Jones made one more try to get his sheep accross the meadow, determined to disregard House entirely, but House was in the road with a rifle valiantly backed up by his wife, so Jones retreated and sent for Forest Ranger Mahn, who was at the nearby ranger station. Mahn arrived and argued with House regarding the matter. Here House made his mistake. He and his wife jointly attacked Ranger Mahn. Mahn kept away from Mrs. House and gave House the licking of his life. The sheep passed by and the next morning House hitched up his one horse to a wagon, loaded their household belongings aboard, put his wife on the seat with him and then left for parts unknown. He was never heard from again.

The Crane Prairie Incident. One summer the Crane Prairie ranger was amazed to find that a small traveling caravan of several families was settling at Crane Prairie. This being in the days of the early Ford cars, the supervisor rushed in to see what was going on and found they intended to build their homes and live there by farming and stock raising. The Supervisor hurried to a phone and called the District Forester George Cecil at Portland. The homestead era was still on at that time. There were settlers and homesteaders pressing on the National Forests on all sides. Mr. Cecil was engaged in an conference at the time and merely shouted into the phone, "arrest them right now for cutting trees and take them to the United States Commissioner", and hung up. The local Commissioner's evident panic was transmitted to the trespassers and they wanted to know what they could do to escape. The Commissioner then told them that they should go back, pile up the brush from the trees already cut and leave immediately. The Commissioner sternly bade them to walk and not to dally along the road, to get the work done, and to leave the country. All of which they did, and no settlers ever thereafter bothered the Forest Service at Crane Prairie.

Fire Control

Many people thought light burning of the forest did not do any harm, so public cooperation and fire consciousness did not exist as it does today. Most of the early fires burned along the desert fringe where no stock had grazed. A 1915 fire covered about 10,000 acres in two days on the Fort Rock District. In August 1914, a bad crown fire also covered seven or eight thousand acres in the lodgepole flats south of the Stage Station road and near the present Fremont Highway. In 1915, a sagebrush fire from the desert spread over practically all of the Pine Mountain area and some to the west.

The first large fire of record occurred on August 1, 1908, and burned over all of East Butte, much of China Hat, and several thousand acres to the north. Another large fire burned on the east side of the Metolius River in July 1910. It covered the area from the mouth of Jefferson Creek down the river for four or five miles and to the top of Green Ridge.

Edison Ice Cave fire of June 6, 1910, burned 7,000 acres in the lavas around the caves. Two fires burned over Fox Butte; 1,830 acres in 1920 and the other 9,872 acres in 1926. Other large fires were the Lost Man which burned 9,000 acres in August 1918; Wasco Lake which covered 2,400 acres on August 10, 1924; Spring River of May 9, 1924, which burned 2,200 acres; the Arnold Ice Cave which covered 2,500 acres in July, 1924; and the Cultus Mountain of 880 acres on August 12, 1926.

Black Butte, Walker Mountain, and Maiden Peak were the first lookouts in 1913. Paulina Peak and Pine Mountain were added a year or two later.

The number one cause of forest fires on the Deschutes NF has always been lightning. Shortly after the creation of the Forest, lookouts were built on many of the buttes in the area to facilitate early fire detection. Most remained active until the 1960s, when planes began replacing them. Whether from a lookout tower or a plane, the job was to spot thunderheads, detect smoke, and radio in potential forest fires. Now human-caused fires are a major concern.

Early-day fire suppression involved team-drawn plows, the only equipment available to build firelines. Today, fire suppression tools include large tanker planes that fly low over the fire front and drop fire retardant, helicopters with huge water buckets, smokejumpers, and hundreds of ground firefighters.

Because of its high desert climate, the eastern part of the Bend-Fort Rock District has seen many of the largest fires in the Forest's history. The largest fire to occur on the Deschutes was the Aspen Flat Fire in 1959. Lightning-caused, it burned over 21,000 acres of Forest land and 30,000 acres of BLM land. In early August 1988, another Fort Rock fire, the Paulina Fire, raged near Newberry Volcano and burned 13,000 acres.

Other fires of particular note on the Deschutes include the 1979 Bridge Creek Fire on the Bend District, which burned approximately 4,300 acres in and near the Bend Watershed, and the Awbrey Hall Fire, which burned on the outskirts of Bend in 1990 and destroyed 28 homes. Both of these destructive fires were started by abandoned campfires.

Timber Management

The tremendous value of Central Oregon's timber was recognized by eastern lumbermen in the early 1900s, and many of them acquired portions of the forest before they were withdrawn from the public domain. Deschutes' timber management activities began as early as 1912, when a timber survey party cruised west and south of Sisters and south of Crescent. In 1922, the first Deschutes NF commercial timber sale was made. Since 1922, an estimated 6.5 billion board feet of timber has been cut from the Forest for lumber and all other forest products.

The first timber management activities consisted chiefly of the securing of information regarding stands. Timber sales were very unimportant in the early days, however, free use was considerable. One typical free use permit was issued to the town of Sisters giving them enough logs to build a school house. The logs were sawed in the small Gist mill.

The two largest mills in early Bend were owned by Shevlin-Hixon Lumber Company and Brooks-Scanlon, Inc. and were first built in 1915. It was not until 1922 that the first recorded sale was made to Brooks-Scanlon, Inc. The first sale to the Shevlin-Hixon Company was made a year later and from that time the sale business increased rapidly. The first Chief's sale was made to the Brooks-Scanlon Company in the Fort Rock District on April 21, 1936. The sale of April 21, 1936, was for 66 million board feet at S1.50 per thousand feet for ponderosa pine. The one of September 16, 1939, was for 94 million feet at $2.60 per thousand. The highest price received for stumpage to date has been the $27.00 per thousand received from Leonard Lungren in February, 1950, for a small amount of timber south of Lava Butte.

Originally, these two companies owned much of the land south and east of Bend, and they railroad logged it a few years after World War I. Between 1934 and 1944, however, the Deschutes NF acquired this cutover land, and foresters began implementing reforestation strategies. Today, most visitors would be surprised to learn that the thousands of forested acres they now see from the top of Lava Butte in Newberry National Volcanic Monument was practically barren of large trees sixty years ago.

Land Exchange

The first exchange on the forest was made with Anton Aune for 160 acres in 1924. The forest acquired most of the land owned by Brooks-Scanlon and Shevlin-Hixon in the Fort Rock District in the 10 year period 1934 to 1944.

This forest was the first in Region 6 to initiate a program of acquiring roadside strips along all major highways, this was thru the efforts of C.H. Overbay. The acquisition of the area along the Dalles-California highway north of Lava Butte from the Brooks-Scanlon Co. on March 21, 1930, was the first such acquisition. Others were for land along the Dalles-California highway south of Crescent; for land along the Willamette highway near Odell Butte; along the Fremont and the Dalles-California highway; for land along the Santiam highway, the McKenzie highway and the Metolius road. A total of 23 1/2 miles of highway strip was acquired by 1950.

By January 1, 1946, a total of 381,648 acres had been added to the Deschutes National Forest through acquisition of private timber lands.

Development work was started on the 234 acre East Side Forest Nursery site in 1947, and the first seeding was done in the spring of 1948. W.A. Engstrom was assigned as nurseryman in the fall of 1946.

Grazing

The newly created Deschutes National Forest dealt more with grazing issues than timber. The Forest Homestead Act of 1906 brought many settlers to Central Oregon, and most of the meadowland within the Forest boundary was claimed at that time. Cattle owners used the grass in the cool hills and timberlands as summer range. The original Deschutes NF, which included today's Ochoco NF, was headquartered in Prineville because of the large amount of livestock activity there. Small fires were common and often man-made in those early years, because light burning of the Forest was thought to produce more grass. There were not many problems connected with grazing in the early days except that there had always been pressure to authorize more stock.

Much of the Fort Rock District was not useable for livestock for many years because of the water shortage. Two Irishmen from the Lakeview area, one named Jerry Ahern, asked for and received the area south and east of Paulina Peak in about 1914. The Cabin Lake Well was drilled in 1916 and it opened up considerable additional range in the Fort Rock area. A depression hit the livestock industry along with everything else in the early thirties and many operators went broke. Beef and lamb sold for as low as 3 1/2 cents per pound in 1934. In the beginning, the number of stock that should be grazed on a national forest was authorized by the Secretary of Agriculture. For example: in 1921, the Secretary authorized the grazing of 10,400 cattle and 23,000 sheep on the Deschutes National Forest. This policy continued for many years with a gradual reduction in the number of stock authorized as more accurate information was received on the actual carrying capacities.

Fish and Wildlife

There was much game law violation, considerable winter killing of deer, and no adequate law enforcement. Deer and all other animals were also plentiful in the early days but diminished greatly in numbers with the heavy increase in settlement during the 1907-1912 period. However, by 1924 there were only estimated to be 1,250 mule deer on the entire Deschutes Forest. There were also only 25 antelope, 1,200 coyotes, and no elk at that time. The Metolius River was mentioned as one of the best fishing streams in Oregon as early as 1914 and people came from long distances to fish its waters. Many of the lakes of the Eastern Cascades, however, were without fish prior to 1912. Some of these were Sparks Lake, Elk Lake, Mud Lake, and East Lake.

Late in October 1912, a shipment of 60,000 rainbow trout fry were received in Bend and hauled to the outlet of Paulina Lake by Fred Shintaffer with team and wagon. From there they were carried in five gallon kerosene cans, with the loss of only about 100 fish, to East Lake. The fishing in the Crane Prairie Reservoir was exceptionally good in a year or two after it was flooded. The Deschutes Rod and Gun Club was instrumental in having this reservoir closed for fish propagation in 1925. It was not opened again until 1949.

Improvements - Stations

The oldest building on the forest Allingham Guard Station is still in use, although worked over many times. The site was first squatted on by Bob Pyett, who built a log cabin and fenced in a small enclosure early in the 1880's. A circular saw mill was erected on the Old Graham Ranch about 12 miles away. This mill was known as the To Stayton Mill and was operated by one of the Stayton sons, whose parents the town of Stayton, Oregon is named after. This was the first circular mill in this country.

The Fort Rock Station was first located in a small house rented by Ranger Harriman in the town of Fort Rock.

The first lookout building was the one Harvey Vincent built on the top of Black Butte a short distance to the northeast in 1913. The first house on Walker Mountain and Paulina Peak were built a short time later by Deputy Supervisor Vern Harpham.

Improvements - Telephone Lines

The first forest telephone line was from Sisters to the Allingham ranger station. It was built prior to 1912 with No. 12 hard drawn steel wire which was tied to solid insulators. It broke easily and was almost always out of order. However, by late 1915 the supervisor could talk to any ranger at will and they to a majority of their guards.

Improvements - Roads

Roads or wagon trails in most of the level Deschutes County were easy to construct and they led to most of the important points in and adjacent to the forest by the time it was created in 1908. A third road of equal importance was to East Lake which was constructed by Ranger Curl in 1913. The wagon road from Lapine to the Paulina Lake cutlet was blazed out by Ranger Curl, Fred Shintaffer, George Graft, and Bill Rogers (captain of the Portland Beavers baseball team) in the spring of 1912.

The first period of car use and of road buildings from 1913 to 1916 marked a real change in the travel problem and the methods of forest administration. Century Drive was started in about 1920 and so named at the suggestion of Judge Ellis.

Recreation and Special Uses

Roads or wagon trails, often no more than dirt tracks through the forest, had been constructed to most of the important points in and adjacent to the Deschutes NF by 1908. As cars became more common and roads were improved, recreational use increased on the Forest. The awesome natural scenery as well as the many trout and other wildlife in the area have attracted visitors for decades.

Even with the poor roads there was a surprising lot of pleasure travel in the early days. Fishing expeditions were always common. The first simple facilities such as tables were placed at camp spots in the early 20's; however, no large scale development was undertaken until the Civilian Conservation Corps program came in 1933.

One of the early special use permits was for a pasture of 100 acres to S.S. Stearns of Prineville in 1907. This included an area now in the Wickiup Reservoir in Section 11, T. 22 S., R,. 8 E. Another was to the Oregon State Game Commission for a fish hatchery on Odell Creek in 1913. A permit for the Black Butte school house, a log building still in use in 1993, was issued in 1919.

The first summer homes in the Deschutes Forest and also believed to be the first in Region 6 were established on the west side of the Metolius River opposite the present Camp Sherman Store. These were established by a group of wheat ranchers from Moro in Sherman County in 1916.

The first Forest Recreation Plan was not made until 1926.

The oldest resort permit still in use on the forest is the one of the South Twin Lake Resort which was issued to F.F. Robiceaux on April 1, 1928.

The Civilian Conservation Corps of the early 1930s began work on campgrounds and other recreational facilities and visitor use and demand for more and expanded facilities has steadily increased. In 1958, the Mt. Bachelor Ski Area opened its doors. It now welcomes nearly three quarters of a million skiers annually. Today, more than eight million people visit the Forest annually to camp, fish, hike, ski, and enjoy many other outdoor sports.

The value of the Forest as a place to play and enjoy has been reflected in recent years by the creation or expansion of the five Wilderness areas, the six National Wild and Scenic Rivers, the Oregon Cascade Recreation Area, the Metolius Conservation Area, and the Newberry National Volcanic Monument. Such special management areas emphasize the wide variety of values attached to the Deschutes NF and demonstrate Central Oregon's shift from a timber-based economy to an economy which balances timber, tourism, and special uses.