Membership in PRPA inspired me to go to a rail restoration conference at the California Railroad Museum and to become active with rail history groups all over the country. One person I met, Benn Coifman, was a student in transportation engineering at UC Berkeley. On the side, he had designed a variety of railroad fonts, including both lettersets such as the unique font used by the Great Northern’s streamlined Empire Builder as well as graphics of such objects as locomotives and railcars. He soon added an SP&S 700 to one of his graphic fonts.

I even inquired about getting a master’s degree in the history of technology at a major university, thinking I could become a museum curator of some type. After visiting the school, however, I decided I was no longer willing to put up with all the red tape involved with being a student that I had accepted as a necessity two decades before.

After the 700’s triumphant return from the Washington Central, the Sacramento Railroad Museum invited PRPA to join them for a railfair they were planning for 1991. One way to help pay for such a trip would be to sell space on passenger cars. The 4449 had a fleet of ex-Southern Pacific cars that it used for such trips. Except for our crew car, we didn’t have any passenger cars, but the Pacific Northwest Chapter of the National Railroad Historical Society did, so we met with them to plan the trip. Continue reading →

In 1975, I set out to replace Gordon Robinson’s “if it’s pretty, it’s good; if it’s ugly, it’s bad” mantra with a more scientific approach to environmental issues such as wilderness, timber cutting, and public land management in general. I was fortunate to work with James Monteith, whose background in biology gave him a similar approach, as well as other experts and specialists.

By 1990, it was clear that we had changed the environmental movement from one based on emotion to one based on science and technology. It was also becoming clear just how successful we were, as national forest timber sales were declining and people inside the Forest Service, from top to bottom, were trying to reform the agency from the inside. We had no idea that, by 2001, timber sales would fall by 85 percent, but we could still feel good about our work.

Unfortunately, two events would undo the revolution that had taken place within the environmental movement: the fall of the Soviet Union and the election of Bill Clinton to the White House. When the Soviet Union fell, it appeared to be a victory of free markets over government planning. “Socialism” was considered a tainted idea, just like communism and fascism. Polls showed that the vast majority of Americans agreed with the statement that “government messes everything up.” Continue reading →

Starting Forest Planning magazine was exciting, but after six years of 16-hour days on practically no pay, I was burnt out. Receiving the Neuberger Award was an indication that I was on the right track, but my actual accomplishments had been nearly nil.

The Forest Service had rejected the Oregon State Board of Forestry’s plan, but I had little to do with that. The state legislature had rejected my bill to reform the board and the governor had refused to appoint me to the board. The BLM had responded to my criticisms by building a brick wall around itself. The Forest Service was more open to discussion but hadn’t made any visible changes in response to my reviews of unit plans and timber management plans. On top of this, flunking the exam required to go on to get a Ph.D. in economics was dispiriting.

My friends James and Ellen, grateful for me getting the Forest Service to cancel the timber sale in their watershed because it was in a roadless area, offered to fix up one of their cabins for me to live in and recuperate. By this time, Miss Vickie, the woman I had met on the San Francisco Zephyr, and I were a couple, and she agreed to move down with me. Continue reading →

Growing up in Portland, I was taught that the city had the cleanest water in the world because it came from a watershed on the Mount Hood National Forest that had been set aside exclusively for Portland’s use. The Bull Run Trespass Act of 1904 closed the 102-square-mile Bull Run Watershed, along with a 41-square-mile buffer around it, to all public entry, and only Forest Service officials and employees of the Portland water bureau were allowed to enter the area.

This belief was so well known that a medical doctor named Joseph Miller bought a piece of land on the edge of the buffer strip and built a home. There he and his wife lived for many years, content in the knowledge that behind their house was 143 square miles of pristine wilderness that, unlike most wilderness, wasn’t even open to public recreation.

I was in Corvallis studying forestry when this myth came tumbling down in the form of a landslide in 1971. Portlanders woke up one morning to find their “pristine” water to be muddy brown, and they were advised to boil it before drinking it (as if anyone would want to drink brown water). The Forest Service hastened to announce that the landslide that had polluted the city’s water wasn’t caused by one of the clearcuts in the watershed. What it didn’t say was that the landslide was caused by a road leading to one of those clearcuts. Continue reading →

While studying the BLM, I learned some valuable lessons about Oregon forests. Private timber companies that owned a large portion of Oregon’s forests practiced sustained yield but not non-declining even flow. Many of them were running out of old-growth timber and were counting on national forests and BLM lands to keep their mills running while waiting for their second-growth forests to grow back. But mills that didn’t own their own lands were already buying most of the federal timber on the market, and they feared being pushed out of business when the big timber land owners started competing against them.

The Forest Service and BLM had dramatically increased their allowable cut levels between 1950 and 1973. At first, this was possible simply because they had so much timber available, but in the last few years before 1973 they were increasingly relying on tricks like the allowable cut effect and genetic improvement. The agencies were clearly at their limit and couldn’t increase their allowable cut levels further without violating the non-declining even flow rule.

The timber industry had what it thought was an elegant solution to this problem: when the Forest Service and BLM calculated their allowable cuts, they should take nearby private lands into consideration. If those lands were growing second-growth timber, under the allowable cut effect the federal land managers could increase their allowable cuts. This would appear to satisfy the political need to protect local community stability. Continue reading →