HomeMy Public PortalAboutLeonard, Ben CHAPTERS FROM THE PAST
USGS FIELD WORK IN IDAHO
B. F. LEONARD
HELICOPTERS
Helicopters and I did not get on well. Reconnaissance mapping in the Idaho
Primitive Area required their use in Fred Cater's Geological Survey party in 1966
and 1967. Since then, helicopters have been used for geologic mapping in and
near the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness as the need arose. Their use
always required a special dispensation from the Forest Service, which in allowing
the use still faces the wrath of self-appointed guardians of the wilderness.
Our copter pilots, no matter what their credentials on paper, ranged from
barely acceptable to superb. One flew with the first with heart in mouth as the
rotor scattered the sage brush and clipped the jack pines. With the second, one
knew that the pilot could fly through the keyhole of the trailer and land on the
table without causing a ripple in the morning coffee.
Two maneuvers, executed only by skilled pilots, were great time and lung
savers for geologists: one skid landings and toe landings. In a one skid landing,
the pilot, having spotted a geologist laboring up a steep slope to reach a level
spot, places one skid on a tree stump or large boulder, holds the helicopter steady
while the geologist climbs aboard, and takes off after the passenger is properly
belted and helmeted. In a toe landing, the pilot eases his craft up to an outcrop
or a steep spur, places both skid toes against it, holds steady and allows the
geologist to hop out, get a sample, and make a hasty observation. Getting out is
easy; getting back in may take a couple of chin-ups. The pilot then backs off the
outcrop and the bird whirls out and away. For safety reasons, skid landing and
toe landings have been banned. We always thought they were fun.
My distaste for helicoptering in the mountains stems from the difficulty of
getting back to the copter at the end of the day. Helicopters cannot land safely in
the narrow, brushy valleys. The pilot is obliged to land on an open ridge 3000-
4000 feet above the valley floor, discharge his passengers, and return to that site
or an equally high one to pick them up. Consequentially they musts spend most
of the afternoon climbing from bottom to top, doing this after making one or
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more arduous down-spur, down-creek, or cross—country traverses during the
morning.
During those early years of helicoptering, we on the ground had no
adequate contact with the pilot in the air. If we had radios, (and there were not
enough to go around), they worked only when the pilot was directly overhead.
The pilot, by instructions given in the morning, knew approximately where the
geologist should be at the appointed hour in the afternoon, but the only way to
get his attention was by waving a swatch of fluorescent-signal cloth. This worked
in open areas (not many of them) and was of course contingent on precise timing
(not always achievable). It did not work for me when I needed it most.
The helicopter pilot flew over a familiar ridge-top helispot, West of Rush
Creek, that we had agreed upon for the afternoon pick-up. He let me off near
Two Point, from which I traversed Northwest toward the creek. At the end of the
traverse, I descended to the creek on what I guessed was an appropriate spur. It
turned out not to be, because the 7000-foot contour label on the 1: 250,000
topographic map obliterated at least three spurs. Moreover, the point at which
reached the creek, or at least a creek was on the join between two map sheets, of
which I had only the one needed for the day's mapping. I spent an hour trying to
make sure of my position, then began climbing the densely forested spur that
should take me to the helispot. I climbed up a thousand feet or more before
reaching a clearing from which I could see out. To the North and below me was a
side creek, an unfamiliar one but pretty surely South of the helispot. Obviously I
had climbed the wrong spur; the right one lay at least a mile away. A mile off
course? Only a mile? In the flatlands, one could walk it in twenty minutes. In
canyon country, a thousand feet down then 3000 feet up, the trip would take at
least three hours on fresh legs. Mine were already tired. The prospect for a
copter pick-up before dark was dim.
I angled down slope toward the side creek. To my astonishment I found a
good trail leading westward up the creek. The time was now 6:30. I sat down,
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ate the sardines carried for emergencies such as this, and mulled over my
position. The map showed no name for the creek. By luck I had been mapping on
Lookout Mountain Ridge a few days earlier and had seen a trail sign pointing to
Telephone Creek. I knew that Telephone Creek had the only trail to Rush Creek; I
must now be on it. Great relief! I knew where I had to go. About six miles up the
creek and two miles along the ridge to a lookout.
Soon after I started out, I heard the helicopter approaching. I scrambled up
the slope, waving red signal cloth. The helicopter, flying high, passed overhead
and was soon gone. The act was repeated several times before the pilot turned
back to Big Creek. He had already flown well past the required seven o'clock
shut-down. This relieved me of the need for further scrambling. All I need do
was push on up the trail.
It was dark when I reached the summit. My flashlight was of so little help
that I let my feet feel the trail to the lookout. It was after 10:00 o'clock when I
reached it, banged on the door and roused the keeper, and asked if I might get a
bite to eat and shelter for the night, He grudgingly gave me a few crackers and a
spare mattress for the hard floor. I asked him to radio the ranger station at Big
Creek to report my whereabouts, but he refused to turn on his radio, saying that
no one at the station would be up at that ungodly hour. It turned out that the
young girl operator at the station had stayed up at the radio all night, waiting to
make contact with the lookout, where the Survey party was sure I would be if
were not bivouacked under a fir tree.
At seven the next morning, I think before the keeper had manned his radio,
the helicopter landed at the lookout, took me aboard, and let me down at the
ranger station.
So for the keeper of the lookout on Lookout Mountain, he is the only surly
Forest Service worker I ever met. Forest Service people, both regular and
seasonal, have been unfailingly helpful during all my years in Idaho. They set a
high standard for performance in the public interest.
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HORSES
Clyde Ross, my boss in Idaho in 1953, told me before we went to the field,
that the only way to get about in the back country was by horse. A horse needs a
saddle, so Clyde pawed through a bin full of surplus tack that the Conservation
Division in Montana had recently turned over to the U.S. Geological Survey's
warehouse in Denver. Clyde found a saddle that had a suitably short tree and a
high cantle, but the leather was old and brittle. He surmised that the saddle had
been built in Montana Territory some seventy years earlier. Our satisfaction in
finding it was strongly conditioned by the knowledge that surplus was free. Fred
Mueller's saddler in Denver let the saddle soak in neatsfoot oil for some days,
replaced the sheepskin, stirrup leathers, tienta, and latigos, and presented me
with a usable article that was almost handsome. To this day I use that saddle for
pleasure riding.
The first horse assigned to me in Idaho was a great, wall sided gelding
named Blue. Larry Garner, who had the contract for packing in 1953 and 1954,
had bought Blue for a song from Charlie Pickens, at the Yellow Pine Merc, on the
way to work for us. My saddle looked like a pimple on a pea on Blue, and I could
barely get up without a stump for a mounting block. Blue knew a green rider
when one was aboard, so he pleased himself instead of the rider until we had it
out one evening at a trail fork along Beaver Creek on the way back to camp. The
left fork went back to Yellow Pine; he wanted it. The right fork went to camp; I
wanted it. After some moments of indecision on my part, I kicked what I could
reach of his sides till my legs hurt, and pointed him toward camp. He never gave
me trouble thereafter. For what I suppose were good and sufficient reasons, Blue
was not part of Garner's pack string in 1954.
That year I had a new saddle built for me by Fred Mueller's saddlers.
Mueller had five or six men working for him in the saddle loft, and they took great
care in building a square-skirted saddle to specifications. Mueller saddle no. 1803
is still in my care after more than 30 years of service in the field.
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But let us get to the 1954 season. Larry added two horses to his string.
One was a sturdy Palomino named Pal, the other a Morgan mare named Dolly.
Pal fell to my lot. He was a heavy-footed walker, had a rough trot, and could keep
it up all day. Dolly went to my field assistant, though I wished later, after many a
jolting ride on Pal, that Dolly had been assigned to me. Nevertheless, my
assistant complained of a sore tailbone all summer, a consequence of resting too
much on his seat and using his knees too little.
The 1954 season began in June with a 10-day pack trip to the head of
Quartz Creek near Yellow Pine. Larry Garner had the contract for most of the
Survey's packing. For this trip, Everett Knock led a string of 9 or 10 head rented
from Lafe Cox. In that banner year, I had two field assistants and therefore
needed more than the 8 animals that I was accustomed to using. My horse was a
small strawberry roan, appropriately named Strawberry. As we reached the first
ford of the creek, Strawberry began to buck—rather mildly but for me quite
disconcertingly. Not knowing the horse, I decided to leave him as quickly and
discretely as possible before the bucking got worse. Evidently the hair blanket
beneath the saddle blanket was tickling him. Once relieved of the irritant he
crossed the creek and caught up with the string, and proceeded to our campsite
without a single buck. Since then, I have sought to avoid hair pads, or indeed
saddle pads of any kind, though upcountry owners of horses insist that an
unpadded blanket is not enough to keep a horse's back from galling.
When we returned from the Quartz Creek trip, a message at the Yellow
Pine Post Office said: "Ruth Greenowk [Greenoak] Leonard born July 4. Weight..."
I have never lived down my absence from home for that important event.
My next horse was Silver, a gray-spotted white gelding, that, when
younger, had been the lead horse of Fay Kissinger, his owner in Yellow Pine.
rode Silver when I worked out by day from Yellow Pine after the packing season
had ended. Silver was smart, sure-footed and well mannered. He and I tangled
only once. A sting from a yellow jacket took Silver's mind off his business, he
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lurched against a sharp rock, and blood began to flow from a wound on his gaskin.
I dismounted to see what I could do for him and promptly received a well-placed
kick on my shin. I spent the next day in Yellow Pine soaking my leg in Epsom salts.
Silver recovered from his injury without need for more than hay and grain
Revising a long report kept me in the office in 1955. When I returned to the
field in 1956, John Gillihan packed me into Bear Lake and Cougar Basin from his
base at the Neal Ranch on Big Creek. My Gillihan horse was Angel. The name
was not entirely a fit, for Angel was hard to bridle. One fight a day was enough
for both of us, so I left the bridle on when I tied up for the usual geologic traverse
on foot. On alternate days I rode my own horse, Rac, which I had trailered from
Denver.
Rac was a half-Arab gelding, a gentle four-year-old bought from a
taxidermist in Pleasant View. Sleeping sickness had left Rac little more than ski
and bones, yet he was tough as nails. Though I rode him with a bridle, he needed
only the rider's legs for guidance and control. Easy wrangling made him a favorite
with packers. He would stand ready for the nosebag of oats when the wrangler
approached, the rest of the string scattering and playing hard to get. Once , in
mounting for a day's ride, I made a leap for the saddle, overshot it, and landed
prone on the off side. Rac stood unconcerned—merely gave me a look that said
"How gauche"—and waited for me to mount the proper way. Plenty of feed and
forage never improved his build, but under saddle he looked pretty good.
Rac was with me again on two short pack trips in 1957, one with Fay
Kissinger to Missouri Ridge, the other with Larry Garner to Hand Camp on Beaver
Creek, a tributary to Big Creek. Fay was put out that I didn't hire him for both
trips. When he said "Ain't I good enough for you?", I calmed him down
somewhat by explaining that, to keep under budget, I had to get a different
packer for the Beaver Creek trip. I think Fay forgave me because he liked Rac so
much. As did I, but I felt it prudent to get rid of Rac when I returned to Golden a
few months later. We were loping along on a smooth and familiar service road
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when the horse stumbled and fell, pinning me beneath him. We were unhurt
because he went down with characteristic grace and I was protected by the fork
of the saddle. But a stumbler is an unsafe horse, the stumble was hardly Rac's
first, so he had to go. I couldn't risk selling a stumbler to another rider; instead,
Rac went to the knacker's.
Some animals in a pack string are memorable, some are not. The sorrel
that I rode when Fay Kissinger packed me from Yellow Pine to Quartz Ridge in
1958 is long forgotten. However I remember a black pack animal, either horse of
mule, that caused us some inconvenience as we crested the ridge. The animal,
packing the kitchen boxes, stumbled and went down, upending the boxes. One of
them contained the crock of precious sourdough. The crock lost its lid; the
sourdough, made quite active on the trip, spilled out, coating everything in the
box with a sticky mess. Salvaging some dough and cleaning up the box kept
geologist and field assistant busy in camp while Fay turned the stock out to graze.
I think we had enough dough left for the night's biscuits, but there were fewer
than usual. The standard was nine or twelve—enough for dinner and the next
day's lunches. The small oven of the Kimmel stove would I hold no more.
By 1959 the cost of contract packing was so high that I began buying horses
for the Survey, hiring a temporary employee as packer, and filling out a short
string with Kissinger stock hired by the day. I bought the first horses from Verl
Potts, Mackay rancher, who had packed for my former boss, Clyde Ross. Verl
found me two saddle horses, all that I could afford. One was a stocky bay gelding,
promptly named Oswald. Oswald had been a sheepherder's horse, part Morgan,
15 years old and becoming a bit peggy (stiff in the forelegs). Oswald had a snappy
gait which, with his compact build, suited me fine. Still going strong, he was part
of the survey string til11965. the second Potts horse was Baldy, a big bald-faced
sorrel with a good disposition and easy gaits. He served us well till fall, when a leg
injury required that he be put out of the way. Some Yellow Piners said that a kid
had shot Baldy in the hock with a BB; others said that the horse broke his leg
when a stock truck jolted its load on a rough road.
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I went to Potts again for horses. One was a six-year-old sorrel mare, Lady,
gentle and well mannered though not much more than green-broke. The other
was Ned, a small black gelding that had belonged to a Mackay barber. Lady soon
become my all-time favorite. She had a running walk at four miles an hour when
on her own, but in a string she was willing to travel at the standard pace of three
miles an hour. On one trip when I was tail man in the string, I opened a tin of
kippered herring and ate the fish off my knife while riding. On another occasion,
the ticks were very bad in June. We had to pick them off the stock at night. Some
animals resented the well-intentioned intrusion. Lady did not. While we picked
ticks off her rump or crawled beneath her belly to get them, she was a model of
patience. Patience served her well on another occasion when Warrior (more
about him later) went down in a bog, jerked the whole pack string, and refused to
rise. The packer, Ted Payne, cut all the ropes to free the animals, then lifted
Warrior's tail and delivered a swift kick where it would do the most good.
Warrior went up like a rabbit, in spite of his 150-pound load, and paid Ted back by
splattering him with swamp muck. Meanwhile, Lady lay like one dead, legs in the
air, neck twisted, back bowed downward on hard g round, her spraddled load
weighting her down. I thought sure she was a goner soon to be shot. We
approached her cautiously, untied the packs, lifted them off, and stood clear.
Lady straightened her back, rolled over, got up without help and gave a mighty
shake. "All I a day's work," she seemed to say as we reloaded her. She had been
packing the alfojas that contained eggs, not one of which was broken. Small
wonder that Lady was the packer's favorite as well as mine, for a 10-day camp
without eggs makes for a sad crew.
But what of Lady's companion, Ned? I have said that he was small; I doubt
that he weighed 900 pounds when wet. He was nine years old, part American
Saddlebred but far more adept on the trail and less hi-strung than saddlebreds
raised for the show ring. In spite of his light build, he was a good climber on steep
ground where trails
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were lacking and lodgepole pines grew close together. Ned was especially
valuable as a night horse. The barber had trained him to stop when the horse
encountered a branch that would be clear of his head bur not the rider's. Most
horses are careful of their own heads, but what may happen to the rider is not
their concern. When released at dusk from his duties as a willing and cautious
worker, Ned delighted to roll in the dust. He could raise more of it than horses
twice his size. Ned and Lady were part of my string until it was disbanded some
years later.
Daisy I shall call an interim horse, one that I bought from Lafe Cox late in
my packing career and not with me long, but needed to fill out the Survey string
for a trip or two. One Sunday morning Lafe, his then-helper Harry McCullogh,
and I took a pleasure ride on trails near the Cox Ranch. Harry was riding a
compact little piebald mare whose excellent walk impressed me. Later I asked
Lafe if he would sell her. He agreed to do so, but in completing the deal he
cautioned me that Daisy always wanted to be at the head of the string. I was
mindful of this all but once, when we left camp at the head of Salt Creek. Out of
my own pocket I had hired extra stock so that my wife and two young children
could enjoy camp life, including elk thundering through camp, spooking the stock
in the middle of the night and getting Ted Payne out of the sack in long johns to
round up the bunch. Nevertheless my wife drew Daisy for the return trip. To
keep an eye on the children, my wife brought up the rear. I don't think Daisy
bucked on the way down hill, but she did her best fo give Vandy a rough ride. It
was some relief for Vandy to reach trail head, dismount, and find a pair of glasses
lost on the way to camp.
The Salt Creek area was one in which I had earlier done some mapping on
daytrips. Each day I trailered two of the Kissinger horses to the mouth of the
creek for the steep ascent of the canyon of the East Fork, named in full the East
Fork of the South Fork of the Salmon River. The horses were Blue and Cactus—
big geldings, good climbers, but often a nuisance on the way down. Blue was a
magnificent blue roan out of an Army remount. He was, as they say, proud cut,
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behaving much like a stallion. Why Fay let me use his prized saddle horse, I'm not
sure; I guess the horse needed exercise. Travelling downhill, Blue could spot
downed forest Service telephone wire half a mile away, make for it in spite of my
commands, jump in it, and get all tangled up. He never hurt himself or me, but I
soon tired of the late-afternoon dust-up: I bought a pair of wire cutters.
Thereafter Blue was not deprived of his pleasure; he continued to find wire and
jump in it. However he was quickly freed by a few snips with the cutters The
cutters are still in the nigh side pocket of my Mueller saddle.
As for Cactus, a buckskin, he was agreeable to going downhill—but very
slowly when carrying my field assistant. I didn't mind their arriving late at the
trailer; it gave me time to unsaddle Blue, clean him, and load him. One day I rode
Cactus. I kicked the lard our of him to keep him moving downhill. He resented it,
as he showed when we tied up to unsaddle at the trailer. I saw that he had
dropped a foot or two of his lead rope to the ground. Thinking that he might raise
his head if I stepped on the rope to remove his saddle, I stepped over the rope.
Cactus seized the opportunity. He jerked up his head, caught me where it hurt,
and sent the saddle flying over my head. On the way down, the saddle horn hit
me full face, splitting my lip. Forty years later he scar is still there, though a
moustache conceals it.
Double hauling—packer making two round trips with a short string of four
head—worked all right when trips were short and the going easy. I knew before
the start of the 1962 season that I would be mapping Oin rougher country, camps
far apart, 2 0-30 miles from Yellow Pine; I would need a string of at least eight
head. I began to approach the goal by acquiring two horses from another survey
field Party. Irving Witkind had finished using horses on a project in western
Montana. He transferred the horses to me. Some kind chap in the Forest Service
hauled two of them to Pocatello, where I picked them up. When I got to
Horseshoe Bend, I found that one of the horses was stringhalt, so I got rid of it.
He was suitable only for dog food. The other was serviceably sound, usable at
least for packing. I tried to load it in the trailer, but no go: It kept backing out.
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Cajolery, supplemented with a light whip, didn't work. Finally, rancher George
McDonough said "Mister, you're too damn gentle." He gook a long one-inch
rope, fastened it to the fork of the trailer, and laid it across the tailgate. He held
the free end of the rope, I urged the horse forward, and when it backed up,
George raised the rope enough to catch the horse above the heels. The horse
tripped itself and learned its lesson. On the second try, backing was not worth
while. The horse entered the trailer quickly and rode to Yellow Pine to join my
survey string.
The welcome addition of Wit's horse still left me short, therefore I asked
my 1959 -1960 packer , Claude Newell, to find two horses suitable for packing and
riding. Claude knew the market well. He found two horses in Boise. Their price,
$200.00 each, was higher than I had been paying, but it was the best he could do.
(Wow, in 1997, one can hardly get a serviceable nag for less than $1,000-$2,000.)
I wound up with two geldings, perhaps 8-10 years old, Warrior and Joe. Warrior
was a brown and white pinto, Joe was a dirty white. Both were good keepers and
useful on the trail. Warrior was the larger. He stood at least 16%4 hands high and
weighed 1200-1300 pounds. I preferred to pack him or palm him off on a the
field assistant. Often the lads liked the challenge of a horse that was hard to
settle down and much in need of a tie-down to keep his head out of the rider's
face. However, the horse was a willing traveler when left to pick his own pace.
Joe, though inclined to shy at imagined threats from innocent bushes, was a
comfortable horse to ride at any gait. He, too, was tall, but slighter in build
than Warrior, next to whom he looked almost skinny. Alert on the trail, Joe often
dozed when tied up in camp. In that way, he brought down many a lodgepole
sapling before we took care to tie him to a stouter tree. His proud carriage and
somewhat feisty nature endeared him to George McDonough, with whom we
wintered the stock in Horseshoe Bend. George especially liked to see Joe
silhouetted against the sky on a ridge covered with cheat grass blowing in the
wind. When I went to pick up the Survey horses in the spring, George would say
"Joe? You mean Geronimo?" George wished only that Geronimo was a stud. He
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bought the horse when the string was auctioned off as excess property in 1965.
Lady was sold as a kid's horse. She pleased many an Emmett youngster until she
was retired in her 20's. The other horses were dispersed to unknown buyers.
Helicoptering, report writing, and detailed mapping left me without need of
horses till 1970. That summer I needed two. I arranged to buy them from an ex-
Survey topographer who had a ranch at West Yellowstone, Montana. He hauled
them to Idaho Falls, where I looked them over, accepted them, and trailered them
to the Johnson Creek Guard Station near Yellow Pine. One horse, Lily, was a
registered Quarter Horse, a sorrel of medium size and thoroughbred
conformation, sold because she had been a brood mare but would no longer foal.
The other was Blackie, a large dark chestnut Cold Blood. I used them for some
weeks to get to and from a nearby tungsten mine whose road had been washed
out, then used them on a short pack trip to the Big Chief Creek area 20 miles into
the back country. When I no longer needed the horses at the end of the field
season, I petitioned the Survey's Property Review Board for permission to sell
them. Permission came about a year later, so I had to winter the horses with
George McDonough. He turned them out with his stock, which included a stallion
or two. Eleven Months later, the "mare that would not foal" promptly did so.
This was an embarrassment, because there is no way to account for government
property unless it has been bought or has been transferred through official
channels. Here, then, was property belonging to no one except the mare. My 16-
year-old daughter solved the problem by claiming the foal as her own. This
caused a further problem because the foal, trailed in he pack string with mother
on a long trip to Buck Lake, was still nursing at the end of the field season. But
deliverance was at hand: The property Review acting after the year's delay,
granted permission to dispose of two government horses by advertised sale. I
advertised promptly by notice at the Yellow Pine Post Office. Lafe Cox was the
only bidder. He wanted Blackie for hunting season; he did not want a mare with a
foal likely to be a nuisance in his pack string. Therefore, he sold the mare to me.
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She and the foal traveled to Denver in the horse trailer while Blackie, renamed
Jug, became a member of Lafe's string.
When I reached Denver, I pastured Lily and Loki at Wideacres, the old
Phillips Ranch that later became an office complex. Over two years, Loki grew to
be an attractive filly, ridden without much success by my daughter and clearly in
need of professional breaking. Therefore, I put Loki out with a trusted farrier and
horseman, who, after working with her for a season, said, "Mister, she's just plain
sullen. No trouble, but she won't learn nothin'." With my daughter's consent, I
gave Loki to the farrier. He found that she would pack, but she was no good as a
saddle horse.
Lily seemed indifferent to he loss of the filly. It is well that the separation
occurred during the summer, for the mare was about spend some months in a
gloomy box stall. During sub-zero weather in December, 1972, I went to the
Wideacres pasture to check on the mare and give her extra grain. I found her
standing still in a foot of snow. A wire cut had severed a tendon at the hock.
Blood was gushing from the wound which must have been made not more than
an hour or two earlier. The vet responded promptly to my call. He bandaged the
wound, put a long cast on the leg, and gave the mare a tetanus shot—all this
done in bitter cold late on a Saturday afternoon. We coaxed the mare to walk a
painful mile to the stable, where we persuaded the owner to evict a horse to
make a stall available for Lily. We left her there in the dark, hoping she would
still be on her feet next morning. She was, and she remained standing till the cast
was removed three months later. By then the wound had healed and the mare
could walk a little. It was some weeks before I dared to ride her. When I could do
that, I doubted that she would be a mountain horse again.
But Lily fooled us. When I was ready to leave for Idaho, she entered the
trailer with less than the usual sashaying around, endured the 950-mile haul
without complaint, and began to thrive in the pasture of the Johnson Creek
Guard Station. Six weeks later she was climbing the rocky 40-degree slopes of
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Little Pistol Creek canyon from our horse camp in the valley. As usual, she
climbed too fast; as usual she was reluctant to pause; as usual, she was
unmindful of the 20 pounds of rock crammed into my saddle pockets for the
downhill trip. Two years later she slipped as Mel Biggers and I were fording Mud
Creek on a side hill traverse in the Thunder Mountain district. She landed on her
belly on a large, water worn boulder, her legs spread out at 30 degrees. There
goes the horse, I thought, but I was wrong. She inched herself off the boulder,
got her footing, and completed the ford. Mel cheered for our success and paid
me a rare complement: "You were sittin' up straight as a picket pin through the
whole show."
For Lily, two years of easy living at Wideacres followed—not much to do
but eat, switch flies, trot the country roads on our Sunday morning outings, and
be led around with grandson Nathan as a passenger. She died peacefully at
Wideacres at age 24.
Other horses have worked for me in Idaho since then. They were good
horses, but unexceptional. They took me where I needed to go and brought me
safely back. That, after all, is the reason for a geologist to use horses in the
mountains of Idaho. As Clyde Ross said, if you're going to map that country, you'll
need a horse.
11
CHAPTERS FROM THE PAST
USGS FIELD WORK IN IDAHO
B. F. LEONARD
CAMPS
1953 Hand Creek
Rattlesnake Springs
Head of Porphery Creek
1954 Quartz Creek
Mosquito Springs
Round Meadow (and subsequent camp)
Head of Big Creek
South Fork Elk Creek
1956 Bear Lake
Hand Creek ?
Ponds near head of Tamarack Creek
(or was that anther year?)
1957 Missouri Ridge
Salt Creek
1958 Quartz Ridge
Estep Cabin
1959 Horse Heaven
East side Meadow Ridge
1960 Riordan Lake
Lower Trapper Flat
12
CHAPTERS FROM THE PAST
USGS FIELD WORK IN IDAHO
B. F. LEONARD
CAMPS, cont.
1962 Upper Trapper Flat
East side Meadow Ridge
Kiwah Creek
1963 Head of East Fork, without horses
Little Pistol Creek, with horses
1964 Head of East Fork, without horses
Buck Lake
1965 Salt Creek
Kiwah Creek
1966 Wolf Fang, without horses
Trailer camp, Government Creek,
Night at L.O. Mountain L.O.
1967 Trailer camp, Fern Creek (and subsequent trailer camps)
1974 Lookout Ridge
Others check green memo books
1975 Marble Creek
or 1976 Marble Creek ?
13
CHAPTERS FROM THE PAST
USGS FIELD WORK IN IDAHO
B. F. LEONARD
CAMPS, cont.
My introduction to horse camps in Idaho came in 1953. A substitute packer
moved my boss Clyde Ross, my field assistant Gordon Younce, me, and our outfit
from the lodge at Big Creek to a dusty campsite on Beaver Creek, at the mouth of
Hand Creek. My outfit was mostly castoffs; a tent that George Mansfield had
turned back to the Survey at the end of the Phosphosia (?) project about 1920,
warped aluminum pots and plates nested in a worn out water bucket, an ancient
dutch oven, an old National Guard duffle carrier, and a chicken feather sleeping
bag that was WWII surplus from an Army/Navy store. Clyde's gear was in better
shape; he always had the best he could get. Our only new stuff was a
sheepherder stove and some kitchen ware that I had bought in Boise on the way
to the field. The kitchen ware included a plastic bowl that the packer sneered at,
saying that he would soon bust it up. Except that Gordie melted the bowl's rim
on the first night at Hand camp, the bowl and the water bucket were still with me
40 years later.
The packer was a cut below what I was expecting. He let the stock run off
at night and was a total loss as a cook. I thought maybe that was par for the
course, but Clyde disagreed. After 30 years experience in Idaho, he expected
something better. A few days later we encountered our contract packer, Larry
Garner, on the Ramey Ridge trail. He asked how things were going, was
embarrassed but not surprised when we said not well, and told us that he had
expected to use his cousin Bud Cooper to pack for us. Bud, however, was still
shearing sheep in Nyssa; he would be our packer later in the season. Feeling that
anyone would be better than the chap we had, we resigned ourselves to putting
up with the incumbent while waiting for brighter days to come.
Gordie took all things in his stride, which as a Roman pace was more than
six feet. On this trip, he was determined to teach himself sourdough cookery. At
Big Creek he had got himself a jar of sourdough starter from Joy Koskella, the wife
of the district ranger. The night we made camp, he and Clyde were overcome by
a desire for sweets. To satisfy it, Gordie baked a chocolate sourdough cake. He
couldn't wait for the open wood fire to die down to coals, so he placed the dutch
14
CHAPTERS FROM THE PAST
USGS FIELD WORK IN IDAHO
B. F. LEONARD
CAMPS, cont.
oven in the flames. An hour later, out came the charred remains of the cake. He
broke the two inch crust with an axe and served us the interior, which for a
hungry crew was edible if not gourmet. Later in the season, he wisely left the
sourdough cookery to Bud.
Bud arrived in August. He was wearing new Levi denims—shirt , pants,
short stockman's jacket that would not bunch up in the saddle—and White
packers, a light-weight laced boot with a stockman's heel suitable not only for
riding but also skipping along slippery logs or walking on uneven ground. He
moved slowly and deliberately as he loaded our gear, testing each pair of packs
for balance and the gentle rocking motion that would be easy on the animal. As a
result of his care, he never had to pause on the trail to adjust a pack or, at the
day's end, to treat an animal for a sore back. Animal is the generic term for
horses and mules, of which we had five and three in our string. When we made
camp at Rattlesnake Springs that evening, the packs came off as deliberately as
they went on. The animals, scarcely sweaty after the 12–mile trip, were grained
and turned out to graze.
How Rattlesnake Springs became plural, I don't know. There was one
spring. It was about a hundred feet from camp, and a bucket full of water
seemed to weigh a lot more than 70 pounds by the time I lugged it back to the
patch of level ground that was barely large enough for kitchen and beds. We
spread our sleeping bags or bed rolls on the ground, one manty under us, another
pulled up to keep off the dew, and watched the perseids fall through the starry
sky.
I do know how the spring and the peak above it got Rattlesnake in to the
name. Halfway down the 4600-foot drop from the peak to the South Fork of the
Salmon River, I almost stepped in the middle of a coiled rattler. I was three feet in
the air before he could strike. When I came down, I landed well below him, out of
range and out of breath. At the map edge, I traversed across to an adjacent spur
15
.
CHAPTERS FROM THE PAST
USGS FIELD WORK IN IDAHO
B. F. LEONARD
CAMPS, cont.
to map it on the climb back to the peak. I saw no more snakes, but I did get out of
breath and out of water.
Our next camp was, by trail, four miles South of the first one, on a bench
near t he head of a cirque. From it we mapped the block of ground North and
Northeast of the Pilot Peak trail. (Years later the trail was made into a road to the
Forest Service lookout on Pilot Peak.) The camp was a comfortable one, with
wood, water and an abundance of beargrass near by. We stuffed beargrass into
sample sacks to make pillows. Bud shoved into the skirts of the Decker saddles
for extra padding, and we wrapped large rock samples in it for transport on the
way out. The camp also gave us a late evening view of the alpenglow, a delightful
sight, which I had never seen before.
A big fish fry on the last night in camp ended a long day. Bud, Gordie, and I
had ridden down a hunter's trail to the forks of Wolf Fang Creek, from which
Gordie and I took off to map the spurs along the Idaho County-Valley County line.
It was dusk when we returned to the horses, dark by the time we had saddled up.
We let the horses feel their way up the trail, protecting our own eyes against low-
hanging tree branches and fending off protruding stubs. It was a relief to reach
camp. Bud looked up from the dough crock and said "I figured you fellas'd show
up some time." He had fished his way up the creek and was almost ready to fry
his catch: 45 cutthroat trout. The legal limit was 15 but Bud reckoned that three
fishing licenses in the party obviously justified straight multiplication. He and I
ate five or six trout apiece, he set six aside for the next day's lunch, and Gordie
ate the rest. At 6-4 and 160 pounds he could afford to.
The trip was easier on us than on the pack string. Where ever the trail was on a
side hill, a little mule near the head of the string would hop up the bank and
traverse it for some distance. The stock behind her could do nothing but follow
her lead. The other mules, as agile as Molly, did not object. However, the pack
horses were not amused by the detour. I think I heard equine curses that day.
16
CHAPTERS FROM THE PAST
USGS FIELD WORK IN IDAHO
B. F. LEONARD
CAMPS, cont.
Bud packed for me again in 1954. I took Wilson Hinckley with me as a field
assistant. Gordie, out with me for a second season, was by then an accomplished
mapper, so I left him in Big Creek to map independently. Our first camp was at
Round Meadow, a well-drained grassy spot just off Elk Summit. After much
importuning of the Survey's administrative assistant in Denver, I had a new outfit:
new saddle, sheathes for saddle axes, three new sleeping bags and air
mattresses, an 8' x 12' Egyptian cotton tent with fly, a roll up table on folding legs
and a Kimmel stove. The stove, built for me from Forest Service specifications,
was a "baby Kimmel", right for a small party but not large enough for a fire crew.
For travelling, the oven, containing telescoped stove pipe, fit inside the firebox. In
use, the oven and stovepipe attached to the firebox; the oven rested one end on
the firebox, the other on a folding leg. Bud was happy to have something better
than a sheepherder stove, for the oven of the Kimmel would bake sourdough
biscuits to perfection if one didn't let it overheat. The space under the oven was
a great place to let the biscuit dough rise, and a dirt-banked, flattened log placed
next to the firebox made a warming oven for coffee pot, plates, and the main
course.
For the trip to camp, Bud saw that the oven had possibilities for more than
baking. He removed the stovepipe, shoved a stick of lodgepole pine into it to
keep it from being crushed, wrapped several boxes of eggs in a gunny sack and
stored the well cushioned eggs in the firebox. When Wilson hit camp he was
hungry. A speedy preparation of dinner was in order. After rolling a cigarette
from a pocket-size sack of Bull Durham, he set up the stove, built a fire, stood
back—and watched smoke pour from the oven as well as the stovepipe. Prompt
inspection of the oven revealed a thoroughly charred gunny sack, scorched egg
cartons, and—by a miracle—still useable eggs. Thereafter, we checked the oven
before firing up the stove.
Camping at Mosquito Springs was almost luxurious: water within reach of
the kitchen, good forage nearby, cleared trails, wild honey cached by hunters at
Granite Springs, and radio contact with the outside world. The Forest Service,
17
CHAPTERS FROM THE PAST
USGS FIELD WORK IN IDAHO
B. F. LEONARD
CAMPS, cont.
having gone to hand-held VHF radios, was willing to lend us an old battery
powered set. Weighing 75 pounds, it was half a load for a mule. A long copper
wire aerial tossed up into tree branches brought us sound—plenty loud, for I
could hear the din of the Spokane station playing "Out Behind the Barn" when I
was half a mile from camp. One night we got the news from Ontario. I thought it
strange that our radio was picking up a signal 2000 miles away. However, the
news was coming from Ontario, Oregon, just across the western border of Idaho.
But the chief purpose of the radio was not entertainment or enlightenment, it
was communication with the Big Creek Ranger station. The first grub order that
was radioed in included a dozen small cans of evaporated milk and two half-gallon
cans of Lumberjack syrup. The grub was already boxed and ready to cargo up
when Bud rode in to the station. When he unloaded at camp, he found among
other things two cans of milk and twelve of syrup. If communication was no more
successful than that, we decided, the mule might better carry 80 pounds of oats
than 75 pounds of radio. It was so done on the trip to the next camp.
One day Bud scouted the area on the prowl for things that might be useful.
When Wilson and I returned to camp that night, Bud was grinning over his find, an
empty 5-gallon kerosene can and a short length of Forest Service telephone wire.
I could imagine several uses for the wire, but not for a slightly rusty can. Bud
showed us otherwise. After dinner he got out his pocket knife, split the can down
the middle, and crimped the raw edges over telephone wire. Behold two
dishpans, one for hot water heated on the firebox, one for rinse water kept hot
on the oven top. In travelling, the pans neatly encased the sourdough crock and
were kept from rattling by a stuffing of dishcloths and towels. During the passage
of time, leaks developing at the rust spots were sealed with heat resistant liquid
metal to make the dishpans last me 20 years. Eventually I replaced them with
stainless steel pans that cost the Survey $40.00.
Mosquito Springs had one drawback: the area had not yet been mapped
topographically. To map geology southwest of the
18
CHAPTERS FROM THE PAST
USGS FIELD WORK IN IDAHO
B. F. LEONARD
CAMPS, cont.
springs, on our Big Creek 15 minute quadrangle, we had to begin by using an old
planemetric map showing only drainage and trails, then guess our way to some
recognizable place on the headwaters of Porphyry Creek , on the Big Creek
quadrangle. Though Bud didn't know that country, he and the horses got us
down to the creek. On the way out, up 45 degree slopes, I learned a trick from
him: lean forward in the saddle, grab a handful of the horse's mane to keep the
rider's weight over the horse's shoulders, and let the nag do all the work. It
sounds unsporting, but it does the trick.
After a short stay at Round Meadows, we grubbed up at the Big Creek
store, and packed in to the abandoned Boyle cabin at the head of Big Creek
Stream. The cabin ruin, which afforded a good place to hang skillets and seek
shelter from storms, sat on a high bench overlooking lower benches covered with
lush grass. The stock loved it. Bud could always keep the animals in sight and
round them up with little effort; they were not about to leave, for there were no
greener pastures.
We were reluctant to move from the Boyle cabin. After mapping what we
could from that site, we moved on to craggy country at the head of the South
Fork of Elk Creek. Since the trail was an indifferent one, little more than a game
trail, Bud thought it best to blaze the route. In doing so, his axe struck a
horseshoe overgrown with bark, that some hunter, thinking the shoe would later
be useful , had hung on an a then-green sapling. The torrent of curses poured
forth upon horseshoe and hunter had theme, rhythm, da capo and coda.
learned no new words, only the need to let a cast shoe lie in the trail or be kicked
aside, never to be hung on a tree. Bud spent the evening with file and stone,
honing the nicked blade till it was as good as new. Yet the memory lingered on,
for this was his precious saddle axe, a Hudson's Bay model from L.L. Bean that I
had given him at the end of the 1953 season.
Bad weather plagued us for more than a week in the Elk Creek camp.
When it didn't rain it snowed. (Beware the third week of August!) We had no
19
CHAPTERS FROM THE PAST
USGS FIELD WORK IN IDAHO
B. F. LEONARD
CAMPS, cont.
shelter except mantles, the canvas sheets in which the loads were done up. Bud
had left our tent, its fly and the kitchen fly in Big Creek so that he could pack extra
grain for the stock. Fortunately there was also plenty of food for the crew. It
included a large sack of powdered eggs. Scrambled with kippered herring and
worcestershire sauce, the otherwise insipid eggs were downright good to eat, or
so my messmates told me.
Snow was falling again when we broke camp. Wet gear and numb hands
made the loading go so slowly that midday was approaching when we packed out.
As we climbed the divide of the head of the creek, little mounds of snow built up
on the toes of my boots. I wished I had taps like Bud's. (Taps—tapaderos—cover
a rider's feet in the stirrups.) Snow turned to rain as we descended to Logan
Creek. The Blazed trail back to the Boyle cabin lay somewhere ahead, but who
could see in torrents of rain? Still searching for the trail, we continued down
Logan Creek until we hit a hunter's trail that we thought might take us over a high
ridge and down onto Big Creek stream. We climbed the trail until it came to an
end in a cirque. There was no way out, so we back-tracked to Logan Creek. We
reached the creek as darkness fell and the rain slackened. Soon the stars came
out and freezing air came in. Frost coated the downed trees that the horses and
mules were obliged to hop. At least we knew where we were. We had only to
ride a fair trail nine or ten miles to the mouth of Logan Creek, then another mile
on the forest road to Big Creek Lodge.
We reached the lodge after midnight. No one answered our knocks and
yells; the temporary caretaker had locked up and taken off. I suppose we broke
in, though I don't remember how. The inside was still warm. Wilson and Bud,
desperately hungry, cooked themselves a big meal, while I, too tired to eat,
crawled into bed. When the caretakers returned next day, they found that
uninvited guests had left a neat lodge, money for food and beds, and a note of
apology for illegal entry.
2D
CHAPTERS FROM THE PAST
USGS FIELD WORK IN IDAHO
B. F. LEONARD
CAMPS: Camp Life
The foregoing incidents of camp life and packing are the exceptions that
lend a bit of interest to life in camp and on the trail. Much of that life is routine. It
makes field work possible in the back country. Lovers of the outdoors may think
of it as recreation, but it is hardly vacation for any member of the party.
Many camp chores are shared by the packer, the geologist, and his field
assistant, but because the first priority is the livestock, for whose management
the packer is responsible the packer is kingpin. He loads and leads the string,
finds them before daybreak lest they wander far from pasture, shoes them when
necessary, and keeps them fit for almost daily use. He clears unused trails, makes
and breaks camp, cuts and splits firewood, and does much of the cooking and
cleaning up, hauls in grub and mail, and sometimes provides the field party `s
only contact with the outside world.
Clearing trail to reach a campsite is seldom necessary if the site has been
chosen judiciously. Once the immediate area has been mapped, it becomes
necessary to commute to work by horse. Few trails except main ones will have
been cleared by the Forest Service or hunters, so the packer proceeds to clear a
way for the commuters, cutting out the worst deadfalls or by-passing them
through brush and thin timber. Progress of a mile or two a day means that the
going is easy: The packer gets back to camp in time to start dinner for the party.
The longer one can stay in at a campsite, the less the loss of time, for moving
camp to new site will take a long day. Commuting more than six mile from camp
is seldom feasible; good pasturage for stock seldom lasts more than a week.
A telescoping bucksaw is not the tool of choice for clearing trails and
cutting firewood, but it had to do for five seasons. Then I got a chain saw.
Advertised as light weight, it was light only in comparison to the saws used by
professional loggers. The saw, two 5-gallon jerry cans of gasoline, a half gallon
syrup can of oil, an axe, and a shovel made a load for a small mule.
Making camp can be a big job. The packer unloads, stacks saddles and
blankets or hangs them on a horizontal pole cut for the purpose, gives the animals
21
CHAPTERS FROM THE PAST
USGS FIELD WORK IN IDAHO
B. F. LEONARD
CAMPS: Camp Life, cont.
Seeing the fishing rods carried by packer George Cone, Vandy, and the children,
he asked to see our licenses. My field assistant and I had none. We had been
mapping, not fishing. The children needed no licenses. George and Vandy
showed theirs, which were valid. Nevertheless, George began to fidget. His horse
felt the unaccustomed movement of the rider and began to bob up and down.
The warden asked to see the catches. He inspected Vandy's and the children's
and found nothing over the legal limit. I think he was a good deal more
concerned about the dancing feet of George's horse than about checking
George's catch. Starting toward George, he drew back quickly, bade us a brief
farewell, and went on his way. George calmed his horse, and led us into camp.
There he opened his creel. On top of his fish was a plump grouse, taken some
weeks in advance of the shooting season. By the time George finished sweating
after his close encounter with the law, Vandy had the grouse skinned, cut up and
on the fire. One bird does not look like much, but the rich meat was enough for
five people. The trout were set aside for another night's dinner, an entire legal
one.
Many of our camps were in bear country, but a tidy camp and garbage
burned nightly in the pit kept them out. So also with cougars. We heard their
scream, like a banshee's, but neither the campers nor the livestock were bothered
by them.
In all the year in camp we had a few scrapes and cuts but no major injuries.
The only upset stomachs came from too much bourbon, which was not a staple in
my camps.
Giardia, a parasite that lodges in the intestines and causes much distress,
did not appear in central Idaho until the late 1970's. Thereafter, we thought
twice before drinking from springs or streams whose water had previously
supplemented the quart in our canteens.
24
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Mineralogist
MCMVA
Memorial of Benjamin F. Leonard III, 1921-2008
DANIEL E.KILE1,* AND KARL V.EVANS2"*
'U.S.Geological Survey,MS 413,Denver Federal Center,Denver,Colorado 80225,U.S.A.
2U.S.Geological Survey,MS 973,Denver Federal Center,Denver,Colorado 80225,U.S.A.
American Mineralogist, Volume 94,pages 859-861,2009
Memorial of Benjamin F. Leonard III, 1921-2008
DANIEL E.KILE1,* AND KARL V. EVANS2'*
'U.S.Geological Survey,MS 413,Denver Federal Center,Denver,Colorado 80225,U.S.A.
2U.S.Geological Survey,MS 973,Denver Federal Center,Denver,Colorado 80225,U.S.A.
Benjamin Franklin Leonard III,at age 87,passed away peace- g ! 4,e1
fully at his home in McCall,Idaho,on September 5,2008.Ben ;
had a long d distinguished career at the U.S.Geological Survey, "'" %4 ` W
g g $1 Y�
where he established himself as an accomplished field geologist
and an internationally recognized expert in ore microscopy.
Born in Dobbs Ferry,New York,on May 12,1921,Ben spent
much of his early life in the eastern United States,graduating
from Hamilton College in 1942(B.S.),a salutatorian and member
of Phi Beta Kappa,and then Princeton University in 1946(M.A.)
i 4
and 1951(Ph.D.),where he was a member of Sigma Xi.
Ben's geologic career began as a field assistant to Allen Heyl
in the summer of 1942 for the Geological Survey of Newfound- j, 4
land,mapping igneous and metamorphic rocks and magnetite `y
deposits. His U.S. Geological Survey career began as a field x '4
assistant in 1943 to A.F.Buddington,doing regional geologic ''
mapping and studying magnetite deposits in New York (for
which he mapped about 1000 square miles of the St.Lawrence
County magnetite district in the northwest Adirondacks) and
Pennsylvania,and copper deposits in New Jersey and Pennsyl- assistance of his wife.When hired horses became too expensive,
vania while still a graduate student at Princeton University.His he assembled his own pack string for the Survey,and he grew to
graduate studies on the ore deposits in the St.Lawrence County love the animals,not only riding them but also looking after them.
magnetite district culminated in his doctoral dissertation,later Ben approached horsemanship as he did everything else—with a
published by the U.S.Geological Survey as Professional Paper determination to excel.His lifelong interest in Idaho continued
377,considered to be the major treatise on the district. even after his formal retirement,giving his time to mapping and
His transition to the western U.S. started ca. 1951, when geologic work in the Snowdon Wildlife Sanctuary.
he and his wife Eleanor(Vandy)moved to Golden, Colorado, Beyond his skills as a field geologist, Ben was a master
and Ben became a member of the Minerals Branch at the U.S. petrographer an d aworld-recognized authority on the micro-
Geological Survey in Lakewood.With his Ph.D.fresh in hand scopic identification of ore minerals; despite his being nearly
he began full-time work on Survey projects including continued blind in one eye,his color perception and ability to distinguish
research in the St. Lawrence County magnetite district. Ben's faint anisotropism was exceptional.His expertise in the field of
field research soon expanded to mining districts in Colorado, ore microscopy.led to his tenure as Vice Chairman of the Inter-
where in the early 1950s he worked on uranium deposits in the national Commssion on Ore Microscopy from 1982-1986.He
Colorado Front Range.However,he soon turned his attention to was very discerning regarding new equipment(often preferring
his beloved central Idaho where decades of study followed.His the older,1950s vintage Leitz monocular ore microscopes),and
work on the Idaho batholith and metamorphic roof pendants of he methodically an d critically evaluated the optical performance
the Yellow Pine–Big Creek area resulted in several publications of each manufacturer's new wares.As technology changed,Ben
whose topics ranged from regional mapping,to neotectonics, teamed with colleagues to produce software that allowed the
and to ore microscopy. computerized matching of reflectance data to aid in the identi-
Readily recognizing when additional expertise was neces- fication of unknown ore minerals.
sary,he initiated joint cooperative studies,including some of the In 1962, he established the ore microscopy laboratory at
earliest U-Pb zircon isotopic work,with Tom Stern,in the Idaho the Denver Federal Center; this facility served the research
batholith region; similarly, with Jim Erdman he investigated and educational needs of the region for nearly four decades.
the use of metals in plants as an exploration tool near the Red Ben established in this laboratory a world-class collection of
Mountain gold deposit,Idaho.Much of the work in Idaho was ore minerals and their polished sections,many from mines no
done on horseback,utilizing 8-horse pack strings,often with the longer accessible.In the microscopy lab that he so fastidiously
maintained,these samples were the heart of the ore microscopy
*E-mails:dekile @usgs.gov;kvevans @usgs.gov classes. Detailed records of each ore mineral were carefully
0003-004X/09/0506-859$05.00/D01: 10.2138/am.2009.545 859
860 MEMORIAL OF BENJAMIN F.LEONARD III,1921-2008
maintained in his incredibly neat handwriting,as was every other Easter and Thanksgiving gatherings of U.S.Geological Survey
facet of operating the lab—going back to invoices for supplies and Mines personnel for dinner at their home.
ordered in the 1960s! Honors were numerous,well deserved,and varied.Aside from
Ben was not only a scholar but also a mentor to count- the aforementioned election to both Phi Beta Kappa and Sigma
less students, having taught ore microscopy to a generation Xi,in 1988 he received the Department of Interior's Meritorious
of Survey associates and outside students, and from 1992 to Service Award.He discovered and described the new minerals
2001,graduate students at the Colorado School of Mines as an paradocrasite and polhemusite,and co-authored papers on four
Adjunct Professor at the Department of Geology and Geological other new minerals.As was only fitting after having identified
Engineering.Earlier,in 1967,he was a Visiting Professor at the and named several new minerals,a new mineral(benleonardite,a
school,where he taught a graduate course in mineral deposits. Ag-Sb sulfotelluride)was named after him in 1985 by his British
In 2001,the students at the Colorado School of Mines presented colleagues(Stanley et al.1986);moreover,he has the distinction
him with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the annual faculty of having an Eocene larch,Larix leonardii,named after him by
appreciation dinner.Ben was generous with his time;aside from Daniel Axelrod,University of California,Davis.Over the years,
the many students fortunate enough to have benefited from his he published about 100 papers on regional geology,ore deposits,
encyclopedic knowledge of ore microscopy in formal classes, and mineralogy.
he freely volunteered his weekends to work with me(D.K.)on Ben was a Senior Fellow of the Geological Society of
the finer points of ore microscopy, and also took the time to America,and a long-standing member of the Society of Eco-
teach universal stage methods when so few were able to do so. nomic Geologists, the Mineralogical Society of America, the
Scientists are often remembered for their written contributions Mineralogical Society of Canada,and the Colorado Scientific
to the literature, but perhaps Ben's most lasting impact is on Society(where he served as president in 1956 and was elected
his innumerable students;as he himself wrote:"I believe that... an honorary member),as well as the Phi Beta Kappa Society of
my work with and for other people is more important than my Fellows.He was an associate editor of the Canadian Mineralo-
personal research on ore minerals." gist from 1976-1978.
When he retired from the U.S. Geological Survey in 1993 By his time of retirement to McCall,Idaho,Ben had returned
he assumed an emeritus status that continued until his death. to earlier interests of the study and identification of lichens and
Even after his"official"retirement,Ben maintained a full time fungi,having previously found a correlation of these organisms
schedule at the Survey,continued to oversee the ore microscopy to geological phenomena(e.g.,Erdman et al.1985;Leonard and
laboratory,and taught classes to U.S.Geological Survey person- Rosentreter 1994),and also on account,by his own description,
nel and Colorado School of Mines students at the Denver Federal of"having found rocks too heavy for his rucksack."
Center for another 8 years.In 2001 he and his wife Vandy moved He is survived by his wife of 58 years. Eleanor(Vandy),
permanently to their former summer home in McCall, Idaho, daughter Ruth (Kate) O'Neal, son and daughter-in-law, Bill
whereupon he continued to provide consultation and assistance and Tern Leonard, and three grandchildren. Those who were
to U.S.Geological Survey members and others.All told,his af- fortunate enough to have encountered Ben are privileged to have
filiation with the Survey spanned nearly 65 years—an impressive known him as a mentor,scholar,gentleman,and friend,and they
tenure that few in that organization have attained. will not soon forget him.
Fieldwork and geology were not Ben's only interests; his
activities were extraordinarily wide-ranging.Ben was,if noth- SELECTED REFERENCES
Buddington,A.F.and Leonard,B.F.(1953)Chemical petrology and mineralogy
ing else,a Renaissance man by any definition. Music and the of hornblendes in northwest Adirondack granitic rocks.American Mineralo-
arts—especially English literature—were among his"pastimes." gist,38,891-902.
Classical music was a large part of his life,with National Public Buddington,A.F.and Leonard,B.F.(1962)Regional geology of the St.Lawrence
County magnetite district,northwest Adirondacks,New York.U.S.Geological
Radio being the fare in both Golden and Idaho homes.He was Survey Professional Paper 376,145 p.
multilingual (French, German, Swedish, and Russian), and Czamanske,G.K.,Leonard,B.F.,and Clark,J.R.(1980)Erdite,a new hydrated
translated significant articles from German(including portions sodium iron sulfide mineral.American Mineralogist,65,509-515.
Czamanske,G.K.,Erd,R.C.,Leonard,B.F.,and Clark,J.R.(1981)Bartonite,a new
of Ramdohr's exhaustive treatise on The Ore Minerals and potassium iron sulfide mineral.American Mineralogist,66,369-375.
Their Intergrowths,Pergamon,New York, 1969) and Russian Desboronghh,G.A.,Finey,J.J.,and Leonard,B.F.(1973)Mertieite,anew palladium
mineral from Goodnews Bay,Alaska.American Mineralogist,58,1-10.
into English—sometimes for publication but often to assist Erdman,J.A.,Leonard,B.F.,and McKown,D.M.(1985)A case for plants in
monolingual colleagues. exploration—gold in Douglas fir at the Red Mountain stockwork,Yellow
Always the dapper gentleman,Ben was usually seen arrayed Pine district,Idaho.In McIntyre,D.H.,Ed.,Symposium on the geology and
mineral deposits of the Challis 1°x 2°quadrangle,Idaho.U.S.Geological
in a tie or bow tie,sport coat,hat,and an ever-present magnify- Survey Bulletin 1658 A-S,p.141-152.
ing loupe.Beyond being a consummate and meticulous profes- Gerlitz,C.N.,Leonard,B.F.,and Criddle,A.J.(1989)QDF database system,version
sional,he was substantive in his knowledge and unpretentious 1.0:Reflectance of ore minerals—a search-and-match identification system
for IBM and compatible microcomputers using the IMA/COM Quantitative
in his demeanor.Having described himself as a'`fair hand with Data File for Ore Minerals,second issue.U.S.Geological Survey Open-File
an...ore microscope",and"chief cook and bottle washer"for Report 89-0306 A-E.
rison
Har , and Leonard,B.F.t, minary ep the Jo ns
the ore microscopy lab in Denver(and to casually mention that area,Lawson-Dumont J.E. districear(1952)Cl Creek Preli Countyr,Colorado.orton U.S. Rey
Geological old
he"can ride some horses"in his curriculum vitae),Ben's self- Survey Circular 213,9 p.
deprecating demeanor(and mastery of understatement,given his King,R.U.,Leonard,B.F.,Moore,F.B.,and Pierson,C.T.(1953)Uranium in
the metal-mining districts of Colorado. U.S. Geological Survey Circular
well-recognized abilities) sets a positive example of humility. 215,10 p.
Ben was also congenial, often hosting, with his wife Vandy, Leonard,B.F.(1952)Magnetite deposits and magnetic anomalies of the Brandy
MEMORIAL OF BENJAMIN F.LEONARD III,1921-2008 861
Brook and Silver Pond belts,St.Lawrence County,NewYork.U.S.Geological Yellow Pine district,Valley County,Idaho.U.S.Geological Survey Open-File
Survey Minerals Investigations Field Studies Map 6(with text). Report 83-151,49 p.
Leonard,B.F.(1960)Reflectivity measurements with a Hallimond visual micro- Leonard,B.F.and Marvin,R.F.(1982)Temporal evolution of the Thunder Mountain
photometer.Economic Geology,55,1306-1312. caldera and related features,central Idaho.In Bonnichsen,B.,and Brecken-
Leonard,B.F.(1962)Old metavolcanic rocks of the Big Creek area,central Idaho. ridge,R.M.,Eds.,Cenozoic Geology of Idaho.Idaho Bureau of Mines and
U.S.Geological Survey Professional Paper 450-B,11-15. Geology Bulletin,26,23-41.
Leonard,B.F.(1963)Syenite complex older than the Idaho batholith,Big Creek Leonard,B.F.and Rosentreter,R.R.(1994)Dating a 20th-century fault,Elk Summit
quadrangle,central Idaho.U.S.Geological Survey Professional Paper 400-E, talus apron,Big Creek area,Valley County,Idaho.U.S.Geological Survey
93-97. Bulletin 2101,13 p.
Leonard,B.F.(1965)Mercury-bearing antimony deposit between Big Creek Leonard,B.F.and Vlisidis,A.C.(1960)Vonsenite from St.Lawrence County,
and Yellow Pine,central Idaho.U.S.Geological Survey Professional paper northwest Adirondacks,New York.American Mineralogist,45,439-442.
525-B,23-28. Leonard,B.F.and Vlisidis,A.C.(1961)Vonsenite at the Jayville magnetite deposit,
Leonard,B.F.(1969)Microindentation hardness of members of the ludwigite- St.Lawrence County,New York.American Mineralogist,46,786-811.
vonsenite series.U.S.Geological Survey Professional paper 650-B,47-52. Leonard,B.F.,Hildebrand,F.A.,and Vlisidis,A.C.(1962)Members of the
Leonard,B.F.(1971)[Review of]Ramdohr,Paul,1969,The Ore Minerals and ludwigite-vonsenite series and their distinction from ilvaite.Petrologic Studies
Their Intergrowths.American Mineralogist,56,1495-1496. (Buddington Volume),Geological Society of America,523-568.
Leonard,B.F.(1973)Gold anomaly in soil of the West End Creek area,Yellow Pine Leonard,B.F.,Mead,C.W.,and Conklin,N.(1968)Silver-rich disseminated sulfides
district,Valley County,Idaho.U.S.Geological Survey Circular 680,16 p. from a tungsten-bearing quartz lode,Big Creek district,central Idaho.U.S.
Leonard,B.F.(1979)Index to the reflectance and microindentation hardness of Geological Survey Professional paper 594-C,24 p.
ore minerals in the lMA/COM Quantitative Data File(First Issue,1977).U.S. Leonard,B.F.,Desborough,G.A., and Page,N.J. (1969)Ore microscopy
Geological Survey Open-File Report 79-658,52 p. and chemical composition of some laurites.American Mineralogist,54,
Leonard,B.F.(1982)[Review of]Craig,J.R.,and Vaughan,D.J.,1981,Ore Micros- 1330-1346.
copy and Ore Petrography.Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta,46,1473. Leonard,B.F.,Mead,C.W.,and Finney,J.J.(1971)Paradocrasite,Sb2(Sb,As)2,a
Leonard,B.F.(1982)[Review of]Ramdohr,Paul,1980,The Ore Minerals and new mineral.American Mineralogist,56,1127-1146.
Their Intergrowths,second edition,1980.Geology,10,168-169. Leonard,B.F.,Desborough,G.A.,and Mead,C.W.(1978)Polhemusite,a new
Leonard,B.F.(1986)Memorial of A.F.Buddington,November 29,1890-December Hg-Zn sulfide from Idaho.American Mineralogist,63,1153-1161.
25,1980.American Mineralogist,71,1268-1273. Okada,A,Keil,K.,Leonard,B.F.,and Hutcheon,I.D.(1985)Schollhornite,
Leonard,B.F.and Buddington,A.F.(1961)Iron ores of St.Lawrence County, Na03(H20),[CrS2],a new mineral in the Norton County enstatite achondrite.
northwest Adirondacks,New York.U.S.Geological Survey Professional American Mineralogist,70,638-643.
paper 424-B,76-80. Sclar,C.B.and Leonard,B.F.(1992)Quantitative chemical relationships in a
Leonard,B.F.and Buddington,A.F.(1964)Ore deposits of the St.Lawrence County franklinite-magnetite exsolution intergrowth from Franklin,Sussex County,
magnetite district,northwest Adirondacks,New York.U.S.Geological Survey New Jersey.Economic Geology,87,1180-1183.
Professional Paper 377,259 p. Sims,P.K.and Leonard,B.F.(1952)Geology of the Andover mining district,Sus-
Leonard,B.F.and Christian,R.P.(1987)Residence of silver in mineral deposits sex County,New Jersey.New Jersey Department of Conservation,Geological
of the Thunder Mountain caldera complex,central Idaho,U.S.A.Mineralogy Survey Bulletin,62,46 p.
and Petrology,36,151-168. Stanley,C.J.,Criddle,A.J.,and Chisholm,J.E.(1986)Benleonardite,a new min-
Leonard,B.F.and Erdman,J.A.(1983)Preliminary report on geology,geochemical eral from the Bambolla mine,Moctezuma,Sonora,Mexico.Mineralogical
exploration,and biogeochemical exploration of the Red Mountain stockwork, Magazine,50,681-686.
� JARLt
BENJAMIN F.
LEONARD III The ore mineral
Benjamin F. Leonard III benleonardite, a silver-anti-
died peacefully at home Sept. mony-tellurium sulfide, was
5, 2008. His wife of 58 years named for him by colleagues
Mu-
was present. Much of the mapping in at the Natural History Mu-
A funeral service followed the Big Creek and Yellow seum in London. An Eocene
by a reception will followed
held Pine quadrangles was done larch, Larix leonardii, was
bt Saint Andrew's Episcopal from horse camps,for which name for him by Daniel Axel-
at Saint
at Andrew's
a.m.'s pisco al Leonard assembled an eight- rod,University of California,
Sept.13,2008. . horse pack string. He may Davis.
Crema
2008. j r have been the last geologist to On March 18, 1950, he
tion is under -� buypack stockfor the Geology- married Eleanor Vandewa-
the direc- ;, cal Survey. ter of Princeton, N.J. Their
tion of the �' From 1979 to 1983 he and children, Ruth O'Neal and
tion of his wife mapped the Red Bill Leonard,recently helped
Z '„ Mountain stockwork north towed
Funeral Chax a of Yellow Pine and, with
pel,McCall. YF them celebrate their 58
Ben was James A.Erdman,made a geo ding anniversary in McCall,
chemical and biogeochemical to which they had moved in
the son of survey of the stockwork. 2001 after 50 years in Golden,
Benjamin E Leonard,Jr.,and Though he thought of Colo.
Florence J. Smith Leonard, himself primarily as field ge Ben-never doctor or pro-
born in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y. on ologist,he established an ore fessor-was an ordained elder
May 12,1921. microscopy laboratory at the in the Presbyterian Church,
In 1923,his parents moved Denver Federal Center in 1962 and since 2002 amember of St.
up the Hudson River to their and was its chief cook and Andrew's Episcopal Church,
home town of Tarrytown, bottle washer until 2001. McCall.
then in 1929 to Katonah,where During most of that time Professional life left him
BFL Jr., had opened a civil he taught ore microscopy to little time for recreation,
engineering and surveying a thou hforsomeyearsherode
practice. generation of his Survey g played the recorder,
associates,to a few outsiders, horses,
BFLK III was graduated
and from 1992 to 2001 to gradu- and learned about wild flow-
from Katonah High School in ate students of the Colorado ers from his wife. When he
1938,from Hamilton College in
School of Mines,serving them foresaw retirement approach-
1942(B.S.),and from Princeton at the Federal Center as an ing,he found rocks to heavy
University in 1946(M.A.)and Adjunct Professor of the for his rucksack,so he turned
in 1951(PhD.) School. Earlier, in 1967, he to lichens and fungi.
At Hamilton he majored in was a Visiting Professor in Ben is survived by his
geology,mathematics,chem- its Department of Geology wife, Eleanor ( '); his
istry, German, and English and Geological Engineering, daughter Ruth(Kateate))O'Neal;
literature. At Princeton he where he taught a graduate his sons and daughter-in-law,
majored in petrology,miner- course in mineral deposits. Bill and Terri Leonard; and
alogy and mineral deposits. Over the years, he pub- three grandchildren, Na-
He was a member of Phi Beta lished about 100 papers on than O'Neil, and Robert and
Kappa from Hamilton and regional geology,ore deposits, Thomas Leonard.
Sigma Xi from Princeton. and mineralogy. He discov- Donations in Ben's name
He was a geologic field ered and described the new made me made to any of
aide of the Newfoundland ore minerals paradocrasite the following charities: St.
Geological Survey in 1942 and polhemusite and co-au- Andrew's Episcopal Church,
and a geologist of the U.S. thoredpapersonseveralother P.O. Box 1045, McCall, ID
Geological Survey from 1943 new minerals.His excursions 83638; McCall Music Society,
to 1993,serving afterwards as into mineralogy led him to P.O.Box 558,McCall,ID 83638;
a geologist emeritus and wear- become Vice Chairman of the Snowdon Wildlife Sanctuary,
ing the Meritorious Service International Commission P.O. Box 2004, McCall, ID
Award of the Department of on Ore Microscopy(now Ore 83638.
the Interior. Mineralogy) and an associ-
With A.E Buddington, he ate editor of the Canadian
mapped about 1,000 square Mineralogist.
miles of the St. Lawrence At the time of his retire-
County magnetite district, ment he was a Senior Fellow
northwest Adirondacks, and of the Geological Society of
studied the ore deposits of America, the Mineralogi-
that district,using his report cal Society of America, and
on the deposits as a doctoral the Society of Economic
dissertation later published Geologists, a member of the
by the Geological Survey. Phi Beta Kappa Society of
In 1951 and 1952 he worked Fellows, and an honorary
on uranium deposits of the member of the Colorado Sci-
Colorado Front Range before entific Society,who president
mapping the geology and min- he was in 1956.
eral deposits of the Big Creek
and Yellow Pine 10-minute
quadrangles, central Idaho,
and studying the gold depos-
its of the Thunder Mountain
district.
I
ELEANOR(VANDY) VANDEWATER LEONARD
This is an Oral History recording of Eleanor Vandewater Leonard recorded at her home
in McCall on October 25, 2012 by Marlene Bailey.
MARLENE: Vandy, I remember that you were born and grew up in Princeton,New
Jersey, can you tell me about your family and how they came to Princeton?
VANDY: My father was born in Princeton, and was a lawyer. When he married my
mother,they mover together to Princeton,rented a house for a year, and then built a
house on Springdale Road when my sister was due. And put an addition on when I and
then my younger sister came along. We needed more room.
MARLENE: What was your neighborhood like, and what were your schools like?
VANDY: My neighborhood was a suburban one in the township of Princeton across the
street from a golf course. My school was a small private school, Miss Fine's School,
with boys through 4th grade and after that just girls. I went two years of kindergarten
through my junior year of high school, at which point I had fifteen credits. I got one
more credit in English and went to college the next year.
MARLENE: And what was your college?
VANDY: Vassar College, Class of 1946.
MARLENE: Did you enjoy being at Vassar, and what was your major?
VANDY: I guess I enjoyed myself, and my major was mathematics. I feel that I grew up
at Vassar,but learned most of what I know at Miss Fine's School. It was during the war
and I didn't do much social life or go out much. If I did come back to Princeton, on off
weekends, Princeton men were happy to date a Vassar girl. So they'd have a Vassar girl
for a date, but for their big weekends they didn't invite me...they would invite someone
bigger and better.
MARLENE: What were your family's activities and vacations during the summer?
VANDY: In the summer we went to a seashore house we had at Point 0' Woods,New
York, on the south shore of Long Island, and swam...it was organized to make it nice for
the parents. We had on some days we had sports for the kids and on other days we had
sailing lessons. And then everyone went to the beach around noon and went swimming.
And,that was about life.
MARLENE: And you had the two sisters, so did the three of you hike and swim and do
sports together?
VANDY: My older sister had me as a crew on sailboat races, when we were older.
When we were younger, I don't think we did a great deal together. And as far as hiking,
We had hikes up the beach and overnights,things like that,but not a lot together, except
that I did crew for Phyllis.
MARLENE: I know that you traveled in Europe,was that after college,or later?
VANDY: Yes, in 1949,two friends I was working with and a friend of hers and I went
to Europe together and got bicycles and rode somewhat through the Cotswolds in
England. And then took our bikes over to France and rode through Normandy, stayed
with a friend...someone, one of my friend's aunts had gotten to know during the war ...a
woman in Normandy,who with her son had helped American soldiers get out of the
country, driven them in an ambulance and gotten them out that way. Then we went down
to Paris and on down south to Nice and up into northern Italy where I saw"The Last
Supper". And then I guess we went back to England where they decided to fly home, and
I rode my bicycle out to Cornwall,hitched a ride part of the way, and visited a friend I
had known in school who lived in Cornwall. And then I came back to South Hampton,
spent my last two days in South Hampton going to American movies because it was
pouring rain,and then took the boat back again. It was a troop ship that had not yet been
refitted, so I was down in the hold in bunks.
MARLENE: This was so soon after World War II's end,wasn't it? Did you still see a
lot of damage and were American's especially welcome at that time?
VANDY: Americans were very welcome;they all loved us. And I didn't see any
damage at all, except South Hampton had been bombed and was sort of messy. But that
was about all I saw of that. In France at one point we couldn't find any place to stay, and
some boys, who wanted to practice English and we wanted to practice French, so we
talked with them and they sent us to a campground. And this,mind you, is '49, and all
the French had pop tents and all the fancy things we got later. We made ourselves a tent
out of a tarp and a piece of metal and our bicycles and stayed in it. And another day we
stopped in a motel,not a motel, a pension, and they only sent out the kids to bring in all
the people from camp to see the three American girls. That was about it.
MARLENE: When you got back to Princeton,you had finished school so did you work
or what did you do next?
VANDY: O.K. I worked, actually I was already working for the university in the Office
of Population Research, which was a bunch of Sociologists. We were doing the research
for whatever they were writing. And I did that until I got married.
MARLENE: Well,where did you meet Ben? How did you meet Ben?
VANDY: I was dating his roommate. We were going to go to a concert and he couldn't
get tickets. So anyway,he had a little party in his rooms and Ben was there with another
girl. And I sort of wrote him off since he had another girl. Then I got a letter from him
in the summer from the field asking me to go out with him when he came back. And I
wrote, and said the right thing actually, because I had meant to say, "Do you work for an
oil company or do you do something else interesting?"But I left out the"else"and he
thought that was pretty good because he was a hard rock man.
MARLENE: Was there a rivalry among those geologists?
VANDY: Hard rock looked down on soft rock. Just as easily that could have been the
other way around.
MARLENE: Where was his family from? He had gone to Princeton, is that right?And
where was his family from?
VANDY: His family was from Katonah,New York. And he did his undergraduate work
at Hamilton College. He then went to Princeton for graduate work. He was still, for a
year after we were married,was working on his PhD. We lived in an apartment in
Princeton. And then in 1951,when he had gotten his PhD, we had a choice of either
Washington,D. C. or Denver, Colorado. We picked Denver.
MARLENE: Were those both with the Survey?
VANDY: Yes. Both were with the Survey. Ben had already been working with A. F.
Buddington in the Survey while working on his PhD. Buddington was his thesis advisor
and head of the department and was working in the Adirondacks' iron ores. So that is
what Ben did.
MARLENE: Was something published from that work in that area?
VANDY: Yes, Ben's thesis was published as a book with Dr. Buddington. That was his
first book, although he may have had some other publications earlier, I'm not sure. But,
that was a big one.
MARLENE: Why did you choose to go out to Colorado?
VANDY: Of course neither of us had been there and we didn't think much of cities.
MARLENE: The move to Golden was sort of a major move. What were his
responsibilities there initially?
VANDY: He worked at the Denver Federal Central,which was between Golden and
Denver actually. And he was just a geologist and at first he did field work in Empire,
Colorado.
MARLENE: What kind of ore was there?
VANDY: It was the National Office and there were Menlo Park,Denver, and
Washington,D.C. (it was in Virginia, actually). There was the big survey headquarters,
and everyone worked out of one of those.
MARLENE: Did they rotate through these?
VANDY: They did sometimes, but not necessarily. Ben just worked out of the Denver
Federal Center. It was the USGS but also all of the other government offices
headquarters. It was the old Remmington Rand arms factory,which was taken over as a
Federal Center after that. It was in Lakewood, Colorado, actually between Denver and
Golden.
MARLENE: And that is still active?
VANDY: Oh,that is still going strong, yes.
MARLENE: So he was able to stay in the west? Did he go back to consult or anything?
VANDY: He sometimes went back to meetings or something, but he was...all his work
was based out of the Federal Center. We had to be back by October 1 because of the
fiscal year.
MARLENE: And snow in the mountains, sometimes.
VANDY: We had that in July, sometimes!
MARLENE: When you came back from the field,what all did he do then in the
wintertime?
VANDY: Wrote up reports,mainly. He didn't do teaching until quite a bit later. One
year, and, I don't know which year, probably in that thing I gave you, one of the
professors at the Colorado School of Mines who had been on sabbatical, didn't come
back. And they asked Ben to take his course, which he did. So for that year Ben worked
for the School of Mines, although he didn't get paid...he got his regular salary and the
Survey was paid. It worked pretty well, I guess all around.
MARLENE: Did he enjoy teaching?
VANDY: He loved teaching! Later,he had...the last ten years that he was with the
Survey, he had an ore microscopy lab that he had developed for the Survey. Ore
Microscopy(he taught)to Survey people and also the School of Mines students. He did
that after he retired. After he retired, he went on working at the Survey.
MARLENE: What a contribution!
VANDY: They all do that. Until they got thrown out.
MARLENE: Keep their labs at all cost!
VANDY: Labs, yes! But he was also a Professor Emeritus at the School of Mines,
teaching the Mines' students as well as the Survey guys...because he was the only person
at that point who was doing ore microscopy. They were all going to computers and doing
things other ways. This was the old fashioned way, but it was still a good way. So he did
that until we decided to move up here, which was in 2001.
MARLENE: On those research summers,you had mentioned that you didn't go the first
years when the children were small.
VANDY: We couldn't afford the rent or to have money for two places where you had a
house; couldn't afford rent up here too. When I was pregnant with Bill,that was 1956
and Ruth was two, I came up for the first time and stayed for maybe a month. And then
went back down and had Bill. Then I'd come up for part of the summer about every
other year. The other years I'd drive back east with the children to visit grandparents.
One year after visiting grandparents, we drove the whole way down to Key West.
MARLENE: A long trip for children!
VANDY: Then ran out of money, and the children by then I suppose were six and eight,
and we swam out way down. The warmer the water got,the better they liked it.
MARLENE: And the shells changed!
VANDY: They didn't care so much about that. One year we drove down to California,
and visited a friend there. And went down to Disneyland; Bill was three that year. And
did pick up a dog at a friend's house, and drove home with a dog...a puppy getting sick
regularly. You did that sort of thing when you weren't in the field.
MARLENE: Did you go out to Fire Island?
VANDY: By then, no, we....actually by then the house had washed away, anyway. But
we no longer had it; I think I was fifteen when my father died, and then mother sold the
house.
MARLENE: But did you take the children in later years into Yellow Pine?
VANDY: Oh,yes, we were in Big Creek when they were ten and twelve. Well,we were
in Yellow Pine when they were little that first year. And then,when Bill was a year old
we were in Yellow Pine. I have a funny story about that,but it doesn't have anything to
do with mining.
MARLENE: Well,tell me.
•
VANDY: The year before, when we were down in McCall just before I left,people
called to Ben. It was Ernie Overbillig and his wife. They had the Big Creek lodge when
Ben was up there one year. So Ernie was really taken with this two year old I had, and
got into his red jeep with his wife and Ruth in his lap and drove to every bar in town to
show her off. We followed him. The next year I was sitting on the porch of the Yellow
Pine Store with Sally Walker and her two kids,who were the same age as mine,and the
Overbilligs drove up. I introduced myself to Ernie,who said, "I have met you?" I said,
"Yes." He went into the store and came back with a ripe banana,peeled it completely
and handed it to the one year old in the stroller. Oh,yes! These are the two times I
remember Ernie Overbillig. Although, I don't mean Overbillig, I mean Horace Faraday.
Ernie Overbillig owned the property where we later had our trailer parked for several
years. It was halfway up Monumental Summit from Stibnite that great big meadow.
You know it. It was a wonderful place. We went by there part of the last year that Ben
was alive;he and I drove up there and went down into the meadow. The fire had gone
through by then, but it was still lovely. I have it on my computer.
MARLENE: So wildflowers were coming up...
• lovely.
VANDY: Yes,and there was bright green. The trees were burned,but it was y
MARLENE: That is such a pretty area. So,who were some of the people you remember
beside those two in Yellow Pine? Was Sally Walker, Jack Walker's wife?
VANDY: Yes,Jack Walker,who had a mine up in Big Creek. And Sally was his wife;
she died of cancer. And their two children were exactly the age of my two...a girl and a
boy. They played together some, yes. And then up in Big Creek,the Gillihans,he was a
packer also. And,of course Earl Dodds was Ranger part of the time up there.
MARLENE: Did you get to know him?
VANDY: Oh, yes, I knew him. He was talking with Don(Bailey) at that thing and never
even saw me. I couldn't catch his attention.
MARLENE: Don's father(Harold Bailey)had gone by the time you came up there,
hadn't he?
VANDY: Yes. The first year I was in Yellow Pine,they were moving the houses out.
So it was well over by then. The first time I went up there (Stibnite)the Walkers were in
one of the three houses that were left as caretakers. The Adkins I knew fairly well.
MARLENE: You didn't know the Beanes did you? They may have been there earlier.
VANDY: By name only. Joe Powell was there. He was an old railroad man and people
like that were hippies of an earlier generation...the drop outs. Ray Thrall was there. And
up in Big Creek,the Cougar guy.
MARLENE: Wilbur.
VANDY: Wilbur Wiles,yes.
MARLENE: Yes, and he is still there, but now just in the summers.
VANDY: And his,he married his second wife, who is Ray's mother. And I knew her
somewhat. I saw her to visit with her from time to time.
MARLENE: Now,was Wilbur working on the opal mine when you were there?
VANDY: No,he did have that,but it was way out so he went off. He was still doing it;
he was upset because somebody had come through and taken some of the opals that he
had mined and collected. And he was working on a mine up the road that goes to Elk
Summit from Big Creek. He had a mine up there. I met him one time on the road up
there. He told me to go look...I'm not about to go to it. But he said I could if I wanted
to.
MARLENE: And,has Yellow Pine changed very much in your opinion since those
years?
VANDY: A lot of people have come in, yes. I love the fact that there was no electricity,
no phone, and all that. The newer people wanted a phone, wanted electricity. They could
have gotten electricity there back when Stibnite was running. The power company said
they would run a line down there if they could agree on the cost. The twenty or so people
in town couldn't ever agree on it. So they didn't get it until well after I stopped going
there. Everyone had Coleman generators. But then after Henry Abstein died, Faye
Kissinger bought up the Abstein property and was selling off lots. And that brought an
entirely different type of person in. They wanted more of the conveniences. Another one
I knew, of course,was Deputy Dave,Dave McClintoch,the deputy sheriff up there and
his wife, Paula. I'll keep coming up with names.
MARLENE: It is interesting to hear them. And in Big Creek, did you know the McRaes,
when they were in and out of the Dewey and Surmyside mines?
VANDY: No, that was before my time. I knew Marj (Collord) obviously, because the
Collords were up there the whole time. She was the only one I knew.
MARLENE: When did you begin staying in with the children? And making the field
camps? And staying out with the trailer? What years were those? How old were the
children?
VANDY: That is probably the best way;probably Bill was about six when we were in
camp up off the Meadow Creek Road..just down below the Meadow Creek Lookout for
maybe a week or so at that point. He might have only been four. He could ride a horse.
He could sit on a saddle anyway. He hiked a little up there. And then, as I said, every
other year we'd go up to Big Creek when they were ten and twelve. I know that. Ruth
had a good friend,whose father ran the lodge. I can't think of her name. Then once we
got the trailer,we went up pretty regularly then. Children and field assistants stayed in
tents, and Ben and I stayed in the trailer and cooked for everybody. That worked very
nicely. Part of that time, a helicopter would come in and pick up Ben, which he didn't
like. It would land on the road up above the meadow,headed in toward the hillside on
the other side. Ben would hop in and take off, startling a couple of people driving down
the road.
MARLENE: Did this take him up to high ridges?
VANDY: To the tops of the peaks. That is what he disliked. Because then he would
have to hike down to wherever he wanted to do his field work, and then hike up again at
the end of the day. He had some good pilots. Some would go into sort of clearings and,
strictly illegal,put one of the runners balanced on a tree trunk while they jumped out.
But most of them just took him up to the top of the mountain and let him out.
MARLENE: He didn't have to rappel down or anything?
VANDY: No,he didn't have to do that.
MARLENE: Now, were those provided by the USGS?
VANDY: Yes. They were hired by USGS, contract work. Some of the pilots were
really good, ones who had been in Viet Nam,mostly. And others were, well you chewed
your nails the entire time. It just depended on who you got.
MARLENE: Now were there ever fires while you were back in there?
VANDY: There weren't. Well for one thing, you could count on its...yes, I remember
one time,you could count on its raining until the middle of June, and you could count on
a week of hard thunder storms in the third week of August. Regularly. And the fire that I
remember was one that had burned early in the spring and was just sort of simmering.
They were waiting for the August storms to put it out. That was the first year we didn't
have August storms. And we haven't since. And that was probably, I don't know,kids
might have been twelve or fourteen or somewhere around there. The Gillihans were the
people who had the lodge.
MARLENE: Oh,yes! That lodge, I was thinking of the Big Creek Lodge.
VANDY: Oh, yes, I knew them,too, although I don't know their names. We stayed at
Gillihans, anyway. They had their stock out. I remember they raced out ahead of the
fire: whoever had the stock was racing out. We heard it on the radio.
MARLENE: I don't think Bob packs anymore, sometimes he doesn't even come in
anymore.
VANDY: No, I don't think so, and Cathy was taking care of her mother for awhile.
They stopped by,they came in here for a Forest Service talk about maybe the mining
plans...not sure. They came in for that and stopped by to see me. That's the last visit
I've had with them.
MARLENE: And I think she is still gathering history information to write another book.
VANDY: Oh,well good.
MARLENE: She is in touch with Kay, who is Marj Collord's daughter.
VANDY: Kay came by the Historical Museum with Grace's wedding gown.
MARLENE: Oh,yes,that's right. That's nice. I think the children all feel very involved
with the back country and McCall. That's a very nice thing for them to give.
VANDY: Yes,that was very nice. There was a picture in the paper, I think it was of
Sandy and Kay and me. Kay is so tall, even Sandy was dwarfed a little,but I was like an
infant...so little.
MARLENE: I'm glad they got it into the paper(Star News). Did you have any
relationship with the Forest Service besides knowing Earl?
VANDY: Very little. I would deal with them if I wanted to. We had our trailer on
government land,and they sort of kept tabs on us....to be sure we were behaving
ourselves. That was really all.
MARLENE: And you didn't need anything from them in terms of information or radio
or anything like that?
VANDY: Early, when Ben was first up there,he had to carry a Forest Service radio,
which he used to order stuff,but that didn't work very well. We took half their mules,
and they didn't like that. That stopped pretty soon. One time a Forest Service guy came
by when we were parked down at Park Street in Yellow Pine,to check up on us. Earl had
said we could park there, but it was out of the Krassel District so Earl shouldn't have had
any say in the matter. It turned out to be a cousin of my daughter-in-law. We found that
out later. He told Carrie later that Ben was referred to as"Old man Leonard".
MARLENE: I think that's an endearing thing. When did you begin making the field
camps,where you used your field boxes?
VANDY: Ben had been using those for years. I started going out...we went up on Salt
Creek when Ruth was...when do kids play with Barbie dolls? We were allowed to each
take our stuff in one sample sack, anything we could carry in a sample sack.
MARLENE: That's not very big.
VANDY: No. Ruth filled hers with Barbie dolls. She claimed that she had lost her
comb the first day, and I never knew the difference. We were up at a camp on Salt Creek
at that point. We were there for a couple of weeks. So that was probably the first time,
although the earlier one on Meadow Creek was not nearly so long. And then I started
going out more with Ben as pretty soon the children got to be independent. I left them at
home when they were sixteen and eighteen,maybe, and told my neighbors that I didn't
want to hear a thing about what went on.
MARLENE: They must have survived just fine. So then you would go out with him,
and his field assistant?
VANDY: Yes, and the packer if we had the horses. And then the packer would go with
Ben, and take a horse to wherever Ben wanted to start his traverse. And then take both
horses around to where Ben planned to end up. And tie up one horse, and then the packer
would spend the rest of the time clearing trail or doing whatever needed doing. I would
be down in camp or off hiking somewhere, or doing laundry.
MARLENE: Did you have favorite hikes? And places you went fishing?
VANDY: I fished the East Fork, from its headwaters pretty well down to Park's Creek
down below Stibnite...or below Yellow Pine, excuse me. At different times Johnson
Creek, of course. I hiked Monumental and fished up Monumental to Roosevelt Lake.
And hiked over into Cinnabar, from my camp it was up over the hill and down where we
had the trailer. That wasn't so bad. And then I'd go on down Sugar Creek and come out
at Stibnite, go across the glory hole and back up to the trailer.
MARLENE: Was much left in there when you were there? Was the Rec Hall still there?
VANDY: The Rec Hall was there when I was first there.
MARLENE: The Hospital was not?
VANDY: The first time I went up,the Hospital had just burned, but not burned to the
ground. The people who were,the Campbells,had the big house (Bailey's house) and
they went to Boise or something and left the children. The children set the schoolhouse
on fire and the hospital and their own house. (Warren Campbell moved the houses out of
Stibnite.)
MARLENE: That must have been the house Don had grown up in.
VANDY: Probably, yes. The Campbell's kids did that. That was around that time when
the Walkers were taking care of things. I remember going through the schoolhouse and
found a couple of books that weren't too damaged that I took down actually, and the
hospital. And when Ben was first there, he actually got kicked by a mule, and went up to
the hospital for treatment. And he used to go up to Stibnite from Yellow Pine,because I
was expecting Ruth and she was two weeks late. So he'd call down to Landmark, to
whoever was at Landmark,who I think was Juanita Shoemaker at that time, and she
would relay the message down to me. You couldn't talk directly. You had to do it that
way. But at least he could call.
MARLENE: Now, did you have supplies dropped to you?
VANDY: No,we brought everything we were going to need for the time we were there.
We were packing our horses in using our panniers. Ben called them al forcas because he
learned the name from Hoss Ross,who had lived in Mexico. That is why I call them al
forcas, while everyone else calls them panniers. We packed those full of whatever
groceries and all we needed.
MARLENE: Did those fit on those pyramid shaped....
VANDY: Crossbars, yes, sawhorse type. Yes,they would get tied to those. We also tied
Bill to those for one trip in. He was quite young. It was the year that the dam gave out on
the Meadow Creek Reservoir up above Stibnite. So we couldn't...the Monumental Road
was washed out...so we had to go in by Twin Bridges and that way,which was a twenty
mile ride. And a long pack string. Ben was in the front, and I was at the end. The two
children were somewhere in between, and the dog ran back and forth from one end to the
other. But Bill was basically tied on to a sawbuck. Not hanging over the edge.
MARLENE: As safe as could be,but bumpy, I'm sure! Did you know Lafe and Emma
Cox?
VANDY: Oh, yes! In fact we stayed at the Cox Ranch sometimes. One time,when we
were up camped on Fern Creek and got snowed out. Ben couldn't see the rocks so there
was no point in staying up there, and we went down to stayed at the Cox Ranch that time.
And,actually, when Ruth was married up in Yellow Pine,we got a couple of cabins at
the Cox Ranch before hand as a place to stay. Yes, I knew them.
MARLENE: And Lafe had been all over that country hadn't he?
VANDY: Oh, yes, and he packed for Ben some. One time a cousin of Lafe's, another
packer, decided they would all go and make a party of it. And that worked for awhile,
but Emma got teed off at me. That was at the time they were moving down to the other
ranch,and they wanted to go back so left early. At that point we were on Monumental
down at Mud Creek, I think,but they did come out with us that time. But he used to buy
stock for us. We went to Lafe's funeral; I didn't go to Emma's.
MARLENE: That would have helped her...although if she didn't...
VANDY: Oh, she wasn't going to talk to me but got over that soon enough. If you were
a lady, you couldn't be that way.
MARLENE: She was so hard working.
• VANDY: Yes, she did work hard.
MARLENE: Don has fond memories of that ranch. When you were doing the field
work,you mentioned holding the rod and looking at lichens,what other...you have
talked about hauling core samples or going through cores?
VANDY: At Thunder Mountain, all their cores were in a building, and I would carry the
big trays of cores out so Ben could look at them, make notes of what all was in them, and
then carry them back in again.
MARLENE: Was he measuring things?
VANDY: He might measure the length of a certain type of mineral, or look at it with his
hand lens to see to see what was in it. He would form a general idea of what was
underground, as well as what was on the surface.
MARLENE: Did you hike all over the Thunder Mountain and Dewey property?
VANDY: Yes,of course we could drive up to the top,and at one point we went up by
horses and down on Marble Creek on the other side. We camped there for awhile. I
hiked when we were staying up there. We camped, I can't remember where,but I hiked
down Mill Creek for instance...followed the slide down to Monumental and went down
to see where that was...covered a fair amount of it.
MARLENE: Did you collect fossils?
VANDY: No. I helped, although he really didn't want me to, Dan Axelrod, who was
collecting fossils from California. A colleague of Ben's,he later named a lichen after
Ben...not a lichen, a larch fossil. It's in the monograph you have. It's an Eocene larch,
named after Ben, but he was there and we stayed at the cabin at the Dewey. He thought I
was a little rough with his fossil pile;he preferred that I not go through it. But he was
collecting fossils there, and I helped him a little on that. We also panned some gold,just
for the fun of it.
MARLENE: Did you find some?
VANDY: Oh,you know,you always find some but not much...just color and Chats
about all.
MARLENE: You were both keeping the camp and helping with the geology? Did he
work in the evenings on the mapping?
VANDY: When we had the trailer and could have the lights,he'd write up his notes
before it got dark, so he'd know what he had. One geologist,wrote up his notes very
nicely all summer long, and then put the notebook on top of the jeep and drove off.
MARLENE: Were they found?
VANDY: I'm not sure I ever heard. It's just as well. Nobody really liked him anyway.
MARLENE: So when you made a field camp in various places, can you describe what it
looked like?
VANDY: Yes,usually we had a big wall tent, and then smaller tents for the packer, field
assistant,and children. There was the stove in camp,Kimmel stove,that had an oven on
top, and our kitchen boxes that opened out with shelves. And a roll up table fitted on a
cut down cot frame. That was our kitchen.
MARLENE: It had a smoke stack?
VANDY: We didn't have a stove in the tent. The stove was outside,but it did have a
stack that...a firebox and the oven sat on top of the firebox and the stack went out from
that.
MARLENE: You really baked with that?
VANDY: I baked bread. Ben made hot cakes and bisquits from sourdough. I baked
bread we used for sandwiches.
MARLENE: Was that using sourdough, as well?
VANDY: No, I just used yeast. I am a yeast person. And basically Ben got the
breakfast; I made the sandwiches and the field assistant and I made up the lunches. And
at night either the packer or I made dinner. The packers kind of felt that was their job.
And some of them resented the fact that I did it. We can all open cans.
MARLENE: Some of them have traditions.
VANDY: You have to watch that. In the morning,the packer was out getting the horses
and all, and Ben always had hot water for him with Scotch in it. The he got the horses
out and got them ready to go.
MARLENE: Were they hobbled?
VANDY: Usually not, we just let them loose with a bell mare. And once in a while they
went back to the Cox Ranch, not often, but it was known to happen.
MARLENE: Did you have good packers?
VANDY: Very good. Like everything, some were better than others. Particularly, Bud
Cooper,who lived down in Lucile, was I think Ben's favorite. Ben was a pall bearer at
his funeral. Adeline has just recently died; she was postmistress in Lucile for years. He
had some good ones.
MARLENE: Were you ever up on the Chamberlin Basin?
VANDY: No.Never was. I did one year,when Ben was off...I think in Europe for
meetings. I was up in Big Creek, and the children were out of my hair, I went with guys
who had the lodge that year to their hunting camp on up Beaver Creek. I remember we
went past Rock Rabbit Look Out, and on into the hunting camp. I did some hiking and
fishing while I was there.
MARLENE: You didn't do any hunting?
VANDY: No. They were setting up the camp early. They said they were going, and I
said, "Hey, can I go,too?", and they charged me a fee and ride of a horse and I went. My
dog did better than theirs did on the trip actually. Their dog got sore feet.
MARLENE: What kind of dog did you have?
VANDY: A mutt...a shepherd type, farm shepherd...don't know you call it,just black
and brown and white. Basic dog. That was our basic field dog for years; he went
everywhere.
MARLENE: Now were there wolves back in then?
VANDY: I never saw one. I don't know. I know there were some around Snowden long
before they were released. Linda would hear them from time to time. So they could have
been and probably were. None of the wildlife wanted to get close to us.
MARLENE: You didn't see cougars, either?
VANDY: I only saw one once. He was just crossing the road as we came up from
Monumental Creek. We were in a jeep so that was all right. Of course,that was during
the time that Wilbur was working with...doing the study on the cougars. Wilbur and his
dog were treeing them. The only time we had trouble with animals at all was up in Big
Creek and there were a whole lot of people camping up there. A big survey party was
there, and we and the head of the party had our trailers up on Government Creek...a little
bit away. And every night we burned our garbage, and every night the bear would come
in, and,we had it covered with a piece of metal of some sort,but the bear would mess up
the metal and get into it. One night I heard him around, and he was shaking, you know
leaning against the trailer at one point. And then I heard Roy Breckenridge,up in his
camp away up,yelling something like. "Get out of the way, you Son of a Bitch!" And
then we heard the children, saying, "Daddy can we come in the trailer;the bear's been
shaking our tent." We hadn't looked but then could see a big tall one. But then,
what really scared me,was the helicopter pilot who was in the other trailer came running
out with his gun. He was saying, "Where is he? I'll get him! I'll get him!" That really
scared me. I didn't want someone running around with a gun.
MARLENE: I hope that it scared the bear enough that it left.
VANDY: The bear by then had gone off somewhere. Roy wasn't very nice about them.
Another field assistant found out the next morning that the piece of steak he had been
saving for his lunch was gone. Just like bears here,they learn to see what they can find.
MARLENE: What were your favorite activities while you were in there?
VANDY: Hiking and fishing. I did a lot of that and just wandering by myself...doing
my own thing.
MARLENE: Did you photograph?
VANDY: Wildflowers. I took...I had a very small Canon camera with a Frenel lens that
fastened on it., so I could get right down on top of the flower. So I took a picture of each
flower, and then picked the flower and carried it in my pocket in one of those things they
give you for your fishing license...a little plastic case with some newsprint inside, and I
would put the flower into that. Then I would put that into my hip pocket,which started
the pressing right off the bat. And then I could put it into the press when I got back to
camp later.
MARLENE: Did you have one of those several layer presses?
VANDY: Yes, I have seven or eight albums out there with photographs and the pressed
flower together.
MARLENE: And all the identification?
VANDY: Well,more or less...the name anyway. They are looking a little sad now,but
they are still there. That was fun, because....
MARLENE: And the children learned their wildflowers!
VANDY: Well,they weren't around at that point. They were more or less out of my
hair. Yes, I used to think dog-toothed violets were wonderful until we were mapping
once and were ankle deep in dog-toothed violets. They didn't seem as special then.
MARLENE: Did you get up high to get the high Columbines?
VANDY: Yeah, I guess I did. I got up high and saw lots of Columbine. Yellow was
particularly around there. ... yellow and red.
MARLENE: That's right,that is the native one here...
VANDY: That's the native,yes, of course the blue is Colorado one.
MARLENE: And there was a white one way high in the Sierras that I always loved to
find.
VANDY: Here usually only the Yellow and Red. I once got up on the top of Rainbow
Peak. I had tried once doing it from Monumental, when you go up and down and up and
down, and I got near the peak. It was already 2:30, and I wasn't feeling that great, and I
thought of the length of time it would take me to get there and all the way back again. I
didn't have time. So I got Ben to drop me off down at the mouth of Rainbow Creek and I
followed it the whole way up to the top of the mountain. So I did get up there. The rocks
there are phonoliths; they sound like wind chimes. They clink as you go through them.
It's lovely.
MARLENE: Why do they sound like that?
VANDY: I don't know. They're sort of very thin pieces, slivers.
MARLENE: In layers?
VANDY: Yes,but all broken like a scree slope on top of the mountain. So you just sort
of kick through them. But it is a very nice sound. I brought some down and tried to
make a wind chime out of them,but it wasn't very successful.
MARLENE: Did you ever hear the thunder in Thunder Mountain? Sandy always says
there are strange sounds there.
VANDY: I've never heard the thunder,but I know we couldn't take horses up there.
They just didn't...
MARLENE: They were spooked?
VANDY: They were spooked. They wanted to leave. And one year, they had done
some exploratory work and run some roads off across the dump down near the Dewey,
and the next year there was about a foot scarp in the road in two or three places. So the
ground was still moving.
MARLENE: So there was a rumbling and shaking.
VANDY: Yes, something is still moving. I don't remember being conscious of the
sound. But I knew that it was meant to make noises.
MARLENE: Did Ben feel that was a strange area? Geologically?
VANDY: Not any different...
MARLENE: It such a large caldera.
VANDY: The whole thing is a caldera. In fact the contour map,the plastic contour map,
that you could buy,we used to have one...it was a map of Idaho, showing the
contours...the scale was off definitely...you could pick out the caldera from the higher
peaks. It definitely went around in a circle. But as far as the rocks, a rock is a rock, and
he knew what they all were. They weren't special.
MARLENE: And Sandy has said there were three or four volcanic points that he thought
were significant,where a lot of the mineralization had occurred.
VANDY: As I have said, one geologist in the family is enough...I took Geology 105 and
that was O.K.
MARLENE: So that you knew what was happening.
VANDY: He thought I knew more than I did,because I could talk a good talk.
MARLENE: Well, I think hearing geologists all the time,too, it keeps you refreshed.
VANDY: Yes, I know quite a bit...
MARLENE: I'm sure you do. Now, when did you come to McCall?
VANDY: Well, in 1956 was the first time I remember that we came through McCall to
get to Yellow Pine. And McCall was where we did our shopping. And we usually took
the car to Cascade to get it worked on. So, it was not home base but the big city all the
years we were up in the hills.
MARLENE: Did you usually go in Lick Creek Road?
VANDY: Usually. Sometimes we went in Johnson Creek, and the year that everything
washed out, we had to go in on the South Fork,because all the bridges for a while
there... Deputy Dave, who was supposed to put a hundred miles a day on his car, could
only go one mile out of town in any direction.
MARLENE: Do you remember what year that was? How much washed out?
VANDY: Yes, because it was the year Ruth was married. 1974. It had been a late
spring... heavy snow, late spring, and then a week of 90 degree temperature.
MARLENE: It washed out all the bridges with all the debris coming down?
VANDY: Yes,and all the high water; the Johnson Creek bridge,the one down on Parks
Creek was out, and the one up above that went over the East Fork was out. Everything
was washed out. Ruth was married in the daisy field across from the airport(in Yellow
Pine). Ben's field assistant went to the guys who, at that point,were rebuilding the
bridge, and took a six pack of beer and said, "Don't do any work while the wedding's
going on." The bridge across Johnson Creek to the airport was washed out. You could
go by sort of straddling a...I used to go over there and see Emma...beam,but that was
about it. It was not easy. That was quite a year.
MARLENE: Did they repair it all in one year?
VANDY: Yes,they got everything all replaced. Ray Thrall and Jim Adkins were on the
other side of the East Fork Bridge, and the road below the bridge...I guess the bridge
stayed, but the road below it washed out. They made the Forest Service very angry by
building another road up higher, which you weren't allowed to do. They got home that
way, and everyone used that road all summer. I think when the Forest Service rebuilt
they sort of compromised between that one and the old one. The bridge did stay,but the
road washed out. Just as bad. You couldn't do anything. Then there is another bridge on
Quartz Creek that was dedicated to Kissinger, Faye Kissinger, and I don't know where
they brought it from,but they put it across Quartz Creek. And after that some of the
property there sold, and some of the summer people were there. You could get across
before,but it wasn't as good a bridge. Faye had a mine up there, and then a couple of
brothers or father and son had a mine further up that we worked on up on Quartz Creek.
MARLENE: Did you know the Jenson brothers? Or were they a lot earlier?
VANDY: No, I didn't know them.
MARLENE: They had the Sunshine mine.
VANDY: I knew the name and that was all. I knew Henry Abstein slightly. He would
walk into town(Yellow Pine), and Edwards,Nape Edwards.
MARLENE: Was he still there?
VANDY: He was coming in for the mail the first year I was there. I thought he was very
strange,because he wore sneakers without socks and his pants were rolled up above his
knees,but most of the time I lived there I wore sneakers without socks and knee length
shorts. And I understood why: to get through the creeks. I remember being impressed.
MARLENE: Did you ever talk with him?
VANDY: Just to say, "Hello." I wasn't collecting information or anything. I was a
young mother sitting on the porch. He brought the mail down from Big Creek to Yellow
Pine.
•
MARLENE: Was his mother still the Postmistress (in Edwardsburg)? Or was he doing
that then?
VANDY: I don't know,because I hadn't been up to Big Creek at that point.
MARLENE: She was the Postmistress. There was a problem with that, when Helga
Cook was Postmistress here in McCall. She was asked by the Federal Government to
have a sting operation,because they suspected that Mrs. Edwards was pilfering the gold
dust that was being shipped out. And it turned out that she was. They were weighing it
at both ends, and it didn't all get there. Well that is interesting; I didn't know that you
had known him.
VANDY: He was a strange old back countryman, and I was just learning. As I say I got
to know Joe Powell quite well. He lived in Yellow Pine, and Henry Abstein lived in
Yellow Pine but way up on the hillside. I only saw him when he came into town. Those
were the old names. We stayed at...one year we had our trailer the year Ruth was
married...at the Hennessey property,which was near the airstrip. But Hennessey was
long gone.
MARLENE: You knew the Bryant family, then?
VANDY: I knew Emma. I used to go over to visit her, and get books from her in the
spring. Her family took over and wouldn't...I won't say wouldn't let me near her, but
were always having conferences or something when I would go over there. It was when
they were trying to move her out. She had nephews, and grandsons and all who came up
to take care of the airstrip and looked after her. I guess, when they ran out of grandsons
and nephews,they thought she ought to move. She had already given up her driver's
license at eighty,voluntarily. You won't catch me doing that. But she was a very nice
person, I liked her.
MARLENE: So,when you came into McCall to spend more time,when was that?
VANDY: When we bought the house in 1986. Then we would come down on
weekends...stay weekends, and then go back up. We had the trailer at that time around
Parks Creek. So we would go up to the trailer, and then go out and camp or whatever we
were doing. But we still had this as a base, and then about the time...let me see, Bobby's
twenty-four now...would have been about twenty years ago about 1994 or so.
MARLENE: Now, did you and Ben ski?
VANDY: I did. I skied every week in Colorado. That was just scheduled. And up here
I did. I would try to go once or twice a week in the three weeks we were up here...and
shoveled snow. And we both cross country skied and snow shoed. Sometimes we would
go in the Park but mostly right out here on the old Mill property before they put the
condos up. We would just go out the back and hike. And Ben had the old tennis racquet
snow shoes,and then we got him the kind with the grip on them because you had to go
down into the road and then up on the other side. It was easier to climb that way. So we
used to do a lot of that during the time we were here. And shovel a lot of snow.
MARLENE: And Brundage Mountain was here during those years?
VANDY: So I always tried to go to Brundage. In fact I...the reason I stopped skiing
was because I could see Brundage, and I could see there was a cloud on top and I knew
there was always a better day. And I just found I didn't ski as much. I knew, once I
moved here,that I could always go another day.
MARLENE: You swam in the lake for years,too, for years?
VANDY: Oh yes, Lotai and I used to go down every day and swim in the lake. I think
that what stopped me as much as anything, other than old age,was that I've got so much
metal in my body that I sank. If I didn't keep moving, if I just floated on my back, my
legs would actually go down and I would follow them. I had to keep moving. Then I
began to get a little nervous and wanted to be where I would touch bottom. We used to
swim from the old dock down to the fish weir and back again regularly. If I did the
crawl, I would always go crooked. But that was a good bit of swimming at that time.
But anyway I quit, but Lotai still goes. She is younger that I am.
MARLENE: But you hiked and walked? You did a lot of that for many years.
VANDY: Yes, I did that for many years until fairly recently. I'm just getting gimpier
and gimpier. The last time I cross country skied was with you.
MARLENE: Yes, out at Ponderosa.
VANDY: I think I can ski better than I can walk but I would never get up again.
MARLENE: Is I remember, it was a little bit icy in the shade that day.
VANDY: Yes, and the one time I fell, I got up but it took some doing. That's why I
don't even try now. That would be the hard part. Same thing with the bicycle, I could
ride alright but the getting on and off was scary. I hope you are still using the bike!
MARLENE: I am! Thank you very much! Now,did you travel with your children...I
know you have a sister...
VANDY: We traveled back east and the trip to California. One summer when we were
going back from here,Ruth said, "Let's go home by way of Oregon." She thought that
was the way you did things. So I did things like that, more going east than west.
MARLENE: And when your daughter was in the Virgin Islands, you went down.
VANDY: I went down to visit her there. Yes, every year,usually.
MARLENE: And now to Florida?
VANDY: Now to Florida, I'll go there at Christmas.
MARLENE: And you have a sister in California?
VANDY: Yes, I've driven down there. She has a place on Clear Lake, and she lives in
Sebastapol. If I driven down in the summer, I've gone right to Clear Lake and met her
there.Now I can,unless they have changed the planes again, fly to Seattle or Portland
and than fly to Santa Rosa,which is right near Sebastapol...and go see her that way. I do
that occasionally.
MARLENE: And then to Bill in Colorado?
VANDY: And then to Bill in Colorado,yes. I do all that. I get around. Actually, I had
two other trips with my mother. One to Europe and one to...a cruise studying pre-
Columbian things...I was the youngest one on that cruise, so I climbed all the parapets.
MARLENE: Was that in the Caribbean and on the east side of Mexico?
VANDY: Yes, Honduras, Guatemala...a little bit of snorkeling... things you do on a
cruise, but basically to see the pre-Columbian area. And then the other trip was to
Europe, and we went to France and to Greece...took a cruise in the Mediterranean.
MARLENE: Now, you said Ben went to Europe for meetings sometimes?
VANDY: Yes, he went to International Congress meetings. He was a very well known
mineralogist. And was on the International...was vice whatever in the International
Mineralogical Society for awhile, so he went to all of those meetings. He'd been to
Russia and Scandinavia, well actually went to Scandinavia for our 50th Wedding
Anniversary. Well, not on our anniversary which is in March,Norway is rather dark in
March,but later in the summer. We flew from Boise to Seattle and from Seattle across to
Copenhagen...that's a long trip. And then a bus tour through a little bit of Denmark and
a little bit of Sweden and then Finland up to the Arctic Circle, which was the hottest day
we had in the whole trip, and then went across northern Norway and then took the
Norwegian mail boat through the fjords and down the coast of Norway to Oslo...from the
Arctic Circle to Oslo. That was the most fun of the whole trip. Ben got off at every
place; I didn't always. Then in Oslo we saw the Kon Tiki Raft...found out about that,
and then very soon we came on home.
MARLENE: When you were coming down the fiord, did you have time to explore any
when the boat stopped to pick up and leave mail at the little towns?
VANDY: Yes,we stopped at every town that we came to so they could deliver mail. I
got off at some, Ben got off at every one and some people didn't get off at all.
r.
MARLENE: What other trips did you have after that time?
VANDY: We didn't take any more trips together. I made a trip after that hiking in the
Grand Canyon and one raft trip in the Grand Canyon. The hiking one I did was a fun one
with three men and three boys, and I wasn't responsible for anyone, we went down to
Phantom Ranch. Then we hiked back up again to the Tonto Trail, sleeping out at night, a
couple of places the trails took us back down to the river and up again. We came back
out more or less at the other end of the Tonto. I guess somebody had gotten a car down
there for us; I know we didn't walk back on the road.
MARLENE: That must have been a beautiful trip;what time of year was that?
VANDY: It was in June, I think. It might have been earlier that that. There was snow
on the rim when we came. Of course it wasn't snowing as we went down and there
wasn't any when we came back up. And then three years later, I took the raft trip, which
was in the Grand Canyon Dories. Those are very nice boats to ride in. Sometimes a
wave washes over you and you are suddenly sitting waist deep in water but you bail.
MARLENE: Where did you start for that one?
VANDY: In Glen Canyon right below the dam. We started there for a two week trip. I
don't remember where we came out. We didn't go all the way down to the next big lake.
But, again, I love it because it is camping at night with someone else doing all the work.
The boatmen are running it. One of the boatmen was Steve Jones,who lives here in
McCall.
MARLENE: And when Ben traveled, was he studying geology all the time?
VANDY: Yes,and talking to Geologists.
MARLENE: And looking at whatever rocks there were...
VANDY: There were always field trips, and Ruth called them hammer
pictures...pictures with a rock hammer for scale. There would be field trips to see rocks
in the area, and the rest of the time he would be talking geology to geologists. I went to
one in Albuquerque, and, you know they have things planned for wives but, it mostly is
shopping.
MARLENE: Oh, yes! Well, I've appreciated your taking the time to talk with me.
Thank you so much!