 My name is Darlin Moore, and I'm a beautiful Zorgan. And that's your grandfather? My grandfather and my grandmother here. And they homesteaded out here? Yeah, they did have homestead above Rancheria to begin with. And then they moved into town. And this is a picture? Not that one. We'll just ignore that for a while. And so you grew up, you lived here, you lived in Jacksonville? Where did you grow up? I grew up here. I was only in Jacksonville for about a week or two. My dad was working on a dam up here, and we didn't have a house at the time. But my mother had me, so she moved over to my aunt's house in Jacksonville. That's where I was born. In fact, it was right across from the Corde house. It was a big house going towards Medford just across the valley. And then you came back here and you graduated from high school here in 1950? Yes. And then what did you do when you graduated? I went into service after a few jobs. I spent four years and one month in the service in the Air Force. So when did you start working for the Butte Falls Ranger District? Well, 1958, right in there. And I worked for them up for 30 years. Okay. So we'll go back to your family later, but let's talk about the work that you did for the Forest Service, because this is a unique book. We haven't talked to anybody yet. He's done Reforestation. Oh, is that right? And he had brush crews after a fire. So tell us a little bit about this burn. This burn. Well, the brush was about twice as high as a D8 cat when we first went into it. In fact, as you'd crawl out of the top of the brush and if you got out 50 feet, well, you'd drop through it and then it might take an hour or so to get out to the road again. And so anyway, well, we... What was the name of this burn? Cat Hill. And so the government decided to re-forced it after the 1910 burn. I mean, that's when it burned and then it had all this brush in it. And we ended up planting several species of trees in it. So this was in the 50s. So it had been a brush field since 1910? Yep. Wow. It burned in 1800s and then in 1910 was a big one. Then it burned a little bit in 1925 again. And then it was okay until... until we started to re-forced it. So what did you do before? Was this dug fur? In the planting hours, dug fur when it burned. And we put several species in, about 70% Douglas fur and then 30% all the other species. Like ponderosa pine and sugar pine. That kind of thing. Lodgepole? Some lodgepole. Pretty straight. Rose. Oh, yeah. This was pretty good with them cats. And I mean, these brushes were as high as the ceiling in those windrows when they were... and they would come along when they burned those windrows. How many cats did you have out there? We put it up by a contract and the guy that had the contract would have as many as he wanted, which would be one, two, usually. And we'd get so much clarity each year and we'd plant it and it started in 1960. I believe it was and ended in 1967 or eight. So it took you a long time? Yes. We had about 4,000 acres of plantations in there. So you cleared the brush and then cat came and then you planted. Yeah, the cats cleared the brush. Yeah, so how did you plant? How did we plant it? Did you have a hoe? We started out with a Michigan bar, which was slow and we got into a hoe after that. And with a hoe you can plant a lot faster. And you carried the seedlings on your back or did somebody... We had trays at that time. It looked like it was pretty flat. Yeah, some places, yeah. It wasn't real bad to cat hill. There was about 4,000 acres of planting and about 4,000 acres of brush field with rock that was left. And there was about 4,000 acres that was naturally replanted by itself. By the trees that were left? By the natural seeding coming in from the sides and some of the trees by itself. And were those mostly pines? There was a lot of shasta up higher and then it was dug for some pines down below and different species. I know there was sugar pines in there. Cedar. This is a picture of maybe 8 or 10 guys. How big was your crew? It ranged in different years. They had it anyway that were anywhere up from 6 or 7 people up to about 20 planting trees. So this was your first job for the Forest Service? No. You were getting into all the brush pines and all that stuff. Okay, so that was after a timber project? See, I worked up through the ranks. I'm not college. Right? And I got it. Well, I wasn't a professional. I was not what they call a professional. But you had the crew to work on for you? Yeah, I earned it right after I got up there without it. I mean, I got something after a while. I knew most of it. I worked it. So I had these big crews. But you mostly did planting and brushing and reforestation? Yeah, reforestation and timber stand improvement. Yeah. Which is a lot of pre-commercial thinning and a lot of weed release. If you know what that is. What's weed release? Weeding release, that's when the trees are coming up through the brush and the brush is crowding the trees. Two might say you want to release them a little bit in order to give the tree a little bit more room to grow. So we were going out there with power saws and going down through it and cutting a brush around the trees. So they had room to grow at that time. So was most of the control of the weeds done manually or did you spray it all? Well, we tried to spray in 1967 and then we got stopped. We did a little spraying before that time, but not much. They used 2-4-D on most of it, but one or two before they banned 2-4-5-T, we used it. And that's called Agent Orange. And it was really effective on brush. But like over in Vietnam, they used pure stuff, but we only used 2%. It makes a big difference. Whenever you get a full bait of that stuff, it hurts you. Yeah, did any of your crew get sick from it? No. So you knew how to handle it? Yeah, we was instructed pretty good on how to handle stuff. So did you quit using it because it was... It became illegal. We couldn't use it with the government. When it goes illegal, that's illegal. So we could use 2-4-5-T, which is quite as strong or not quite as effective. But it worked good enough that we could use it. Who are some of these guys? And do they still live around here? Well, Mitch Boone is dead. Al Foots dead. And this is Gary and Mike Harrington. And you probably heard of Gary. You probably heard of Gary Harrington. And that's Gary Harrington's in this picture too, right? Oh, Mike. So they were brothers? Yeah. Gary was the one that had the water hole down here. He went to jail over it and it all worked. They cleaned all the water in the valley and Mike had a pond down there and they made him empty it. I guess I have read about him. Yeah. They both become schoolteachers and Gary teaches at Eagle Point and Mike taught up here. Yeah. So how come this guy's name was standing Doug Little? Oh, because he's standing. He's standing at Doug Little. I thought he might have been a Native American or something. I had some of those, but... Some Native Americans, were they Klamath tribe? Oh, yeah. See, yeah. Most of them are Klamath or MoDoc or something. I think Terry Bettles, he must have been MoDoc because one day out there, he was sneaking out to the brush with his knife and there was a deer out there and he was going to kill it. It was getting hard to stop, but he was after him. That wasn't allowed, huh? No. It would have been a good dinner. Okay, so these were the guys you worked with? Yeah. We'll scan those pictures. And then you have a picture of... So you did this until how long? Now you're in an office. Oh, yeah. Did you move from the woods to an office? Yeah, that was... The office was a trailer sitting right over here, a mobile home. And we had all our paperwork and stuff in there. And these guys are all dead, but that's two. Manningpool, Mitzvun and Verne and Oberg. So did you always work for the Bute Falls? Yeah. Ranger District? Right, this... We had an athletic group and that's what this was. Is that a softball or...? Basketball, man. Basketball. So those were all people that worked at the district? At one time or another. Yeah. They all worked there. A lot of trophies. Oh, yeah. Yeah, we were not too bad. Was there also a softball team or...? Yeah, we had a softball team. In fact, this we used to... Just like me, I've been in and out of four state championships. I reached a hole and I went to two western worlds. Wow. Yeah. See, that's... That was quite an area there. See, the wind blew all these tops out. Wow. Where was that? That was up towards Fish Lake up there. That's what I was guessing. Yeah. Oh, boy. I just... I was right at the end of my... I got out, see, 50, 60... See, I got out in 63 and it happened just after that. On that airborne sail. So what's this about? Okay, that was a camp too flat. Up here by Willow Lake. Mm-hmm. And we said... We couldn't keep trees in here. So we set up these plots, one-acre plots. Come find out, well, the rabbits were so heavy in there they'd go through and they'd... under the brush and stuff and they'd nip these trees off. And then you wouldn't have any more trees. So we had... That's when we ended up clearing it because they went and ventured out in the opening and they were afraid to... Oh, I see. Coyote or something would get them. Wow. So that's how you kept the bats up? This is how... Yeah, this is... Well, this is how we found out what was doing it. Because this was a study plot. Yes. Wow. We had three of these in the open areas and three of them in the brush field like that. So you figured that out on your own? Yeah, we... We checked it all the time until we found out what it was exactly doing it. And so then we changed our method and we got trees to grow out there. And if you've been up by Royal Lake well, you know what they are. They're big. Yeah. Yeah. So on the Dead Indian Plateau they have gophers and things like that and they put bait out for them. Did you ever bait the rabbits? I didn't. Yeah, we baited rabbits. Did you have gopher problems, too? Oh, yeah. In fact, as I trapped gophers after I got out of the Forcer for, well, I quit in 2008. And I trapped eight years up on the Dead Indian. And believe me, there is gophers up... There are. There's a million of them out there. Did you have metal things that you stuck in the holes? Yeah, but they're not like that. They're only traps about this long. And they've got a deal like this and they go for wonders through this way and it catches them this way. Yeah, we've got some of those. I got one out there. I could show you what they look like. Yeah, I know what they look like. I think it's just treating the land and getting it to regrow. Does that make sense? Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. You've got a brush field and then you have a forest. Yeah. You were part of that? Yeah. I had about 12 years of that actually. I was headed to the Reforestation. Did you go back? I've gone back and looked and they've logged a lot of that up there now. And up there along the 37, up there you can see where they logged it and they've logged it out to about 25 feet apart with a lot of these trees and they're growing well. Yeah. And this is the only area because like I said I was in a brush field like a reclamation. So I had Camp 2 and I had MNOHA, that and Rustler Peak and this was all brush fields and several, you know, several more of them. And we used a, I took a track map in it later like in Catt Hill and cut the brush all the way down until it was about that high and you could have heard about five years there the animals really used it. The deer? Yeah, deer and whatever was there. Cats? Yeah, everything. Yeah, they was all in there. That was pretty neat. Okay, I found the picture of your office. Okay. So that was in the 90s or the 80s? When was that? Well, I got out in the 80s, 86. So this was before then. So you quit? Oh, this is, this is approximately here was 1970. It's written writing on the back. So you were working in an office then? Yeah, I was, like I said, I was in charge of Reforestation TSI and I had different people doing different jobs and then I'd go out and check on it and see what they were doing and how they were doing it. And if we had any suggestions, well, we talked it over and figured out what we ought to do. How many guys did you say had your crew at that point? Well, I had maybe 100 and maybe 100, 125 or 30 people, but I only had, I only had six or seven, six, seven people that was permanent. The rest of them are all temporary, but this is another point that I liked was I could take all the people and put them busy out here and they had a transportation to work and back. And these people that I hired for form and they kept them pretty busy. They didn't screw off too much. Did they get paid for the hours that they were on the road? Yeah, they do. The government always paid. When I first went to work there, we didn't get any. But then we got halfway and then we all of a sudden was getting both ways. So actually, actually we was only getting five and a half to six hours work. And the rest of it was the right time depending on where you went on the district. Sounds like a great career. I enjoyed it.