Remembering Some of the Dead at Blackwater Creek

August is a bastard.  Hot.  Dry.  Blazing.  Deadly.  If you’re lucky, August will break your will, steal what little hope you have left and leave you dejected, hoping and praying for September or, better yet, October.  If you’re unlucky, perhaps a bit too slow, a bit too tired, a bit too inexperienced or careless, or wearing the wrong kind of boots, that bastard August will kill you.  If you’re really unlucky, August will wipe out any vestige that you even existed.

August 21, 2013 marks the 76^th anniversary of the blow up in Blackwater Creek, a fiery August conflagration that took the lives of 15 firefighters, most of them young Civilian Conservation Corps enrollees who battled wildfire on a rugged mountain slope hundreds of miles from their Texas homes.  I have posted more than one article related to the events that occurred in the Shoshone National Forest that blazing hot August afternoon and yet thoughts of that hot, smoky, fire-filled afternoon always come back to me when this bastard month rolls around and I begin to feel it’s too hot for my own good and then just as quickly, I remember that it isn’t likely ever going to be too hot where I am, compared to some panicky boys on a steep mountainside far from home in 1937.

Particularly heartbreaking is the fact that, while we know very little about the men who died fighting the Blackwater Fire, we know virtually nothing whatsoever of the CCC enrollees whose names filled the bulk of that tragic headcount in 1937.  Of the dead men who were variously in charge of the fire suppression work at Blackwater we know that one (Alfred G. Clayton) was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1892 and that he was considered to be a ranger of the “old school” and that he was an accomplished artist and writer.  We know that another (21-year-old Rex A. Hale) was originally from Afton, Wyoming, that he worked his way of from CCC enrollee to a full-time Forest Service position as Junior Assistant to Technician and that he left behind a wife and infant daughter.  We know that another of the leaders who perished on the Blackwater Fire (Paul E. Tyrrell) was a graduate of the University of California’s school of forestry, that he became a Junior Forester in February 1937 and that he died as a result of burns he suffered while trying to protect others during the fire.  Finally we know that one of those in charge of firefighting crews that day at Blackwater Creek (James T. Saban) had struggled with personal demons that had, in the past, forced him to leave work in forestry for a time and that he had only been back working in the woods professionally for about 3 weeks when the Blackwater blow up took his life.

Ranger Clayton and the men who were trapped in the gulch probably didn’t have a good deal of time in which to consider their impending fate.  A mortally injured enrollee, Roy Bevens, was found within 60 feet of Ranger Clayton, Foreman Saban, Junior Assistant to Technician Hale and enrollees Gerdes, Griffith, Mayabb and Rogers.  Bevens pointed out the location of the fatality site in the gulch and reportedly expressed his thanks to God for having survived, but he would later die from his burns.

As for the group of men with Ranger Post, the fire and the terrain provided time to weigh options, to take action, to pray and to panic, but there wasn’t evidently much time.  In the end, a rocky point was their last refuge as smoke enveloped them and flames surrounded them on all sides.  The group shifted from one side of the clearing to another to avoid the heat and flames.  Foremen and members of the technical services struggled to keep order in the chaos and in some cases, literally fought with the panicked men in order to keep them from bolting from the rocky clearing and its scant prospects for safety from the inferno all around.  Among the men trapped on the ridge with Ranger Post that blazing, smoking fearful August afternoon were CCC enrollees Earnest Seelke, Rubin Sherry, Clyde Allen and Herman Patzke.  Seelke, Sherry, Allen and Patzke made a break for it, along with Bureau of Public Roads employee Billy Lea.  Only one would survive the effort. 

The men were told to lie down, but according to Ranger Post’s account after the tragedy, many insisted on sitting up or even standing in order to say prayers.  Ranger Post noted later:

“Nearly all the boys grew panicky and instead of lying down as instructed, a good many of them stood up and ran to the edge of the park, turned and came back.  Some of the boys did not listen to any orders, instructions or cautioning and were insistent upon standing up and saying their prayers.”

Foreman Paul Tyrrell restrained panicked enrollees at the expense of his own safety; as he lay atop the panic stricken lads his body created a shield that protected the boys from the heat.  After the flames subsided, Foreman Paul Tyrrell would be helped from the burn area only to succumb to pneumonia a few days later.

For others trapped on what would later be named Post Point, death came a bit more quickly, but only just a bit and certainly in no less a traumatic fashion.  Sam Van Arsdale, a worker with the Bureau of Public Roads made a break for it at one point only to retreat back into the clearing but not before seeing others make a similar less successful break for safety.  Van Arsdale survived with burns but he recounted seeing other runners lie down in the flames, seemingly resigned to their fate.  Van Arsdale later recounted his ordeal:

“I tried to get away from that terrible heat…I remember there were other fellows running with me down the hill the first time.  But they didn’t turn around.  I guess they tried to run on through.  I saw some of them just lay down in there and let the fire burn over them.” (The Helena (Montana) Independent, August 24, 1937.)

In all likelihood, Sam Van Arsdale was witness to the death of some who chose to make a break for it:  Bureau of Public Roads employee Billy Lea or CCC enrollees Earnest Seelke, Rubin Sherry, Clyde Allen.  History records that only Herman Patzke survived his dash through the flames.

So here, for the first time that I am aware, are images of the four CCC enrollees who chose to make a run though the flames that blazing hot afternoon on a Wyoming mountainside 76 years ago.  History seems to have forgotten them, but not quite.



CCC enrollee Clyde Allen, killed at Blackwater Creek, Wyoming.

CCC enrollee Rubin Sherry, killed at Blackwater Creek, Wyoming







CCC enrollee Earnest Seelke, killed at Blackwater Creek, Wyoming.

CCC enrollee Patzke, Blackwater Creek Survivor.

A New Online Resource: Forest Outings, 1940

This post will be brief, but I felt it important to share an online resource that has some good references to the Civilian Conservation Corps.  Better still, this is a primary source document published before the abolishment of the CCC.  The publication is Forest Outings, edited by Russell Lord and published by the United States Department of Agriculture, Forest Service in 1940.  You can access the entire text of this book here.

Though it is a study of our forests and their uses, there are numerous references to the CCC and to CCC work in Forest Outings.  Perhaps more importantly, Forest Outings is a snapshot of forester’s attitudes about forestry and land management in the late 1930s.  I don’t recall ever seeing more than one copy of Forest Outings in my travels so I’m very excited to find that the book has been made available online so that anyone with an interest may access it and use it as a research or reference tool.  I hope that some of you will find it useful, too.

The C.C.C. State-By-State: Idaho

One need only glance at a CCC camp location map to realize Idaho had a lot of CCC camps and a lot of those CCC camps were Forest Service camps. The Annual Reports also bear this out. For example, Appendix C of The Annual Report of the Director of Emergency Conservation Work for fiscal year 1937 breaks down the average distribution of CCC camps by state and by technical service. Here’s the average for Idaho for FY1937:

National Forest camps: 33

State Forest camps: 5

Private Forest camps: 1

Soil Conservation camps: 5

State Park camps: 1

It should be noted that there is a discrepancy in this particular chart (Appendix C) in that the total number of camps listed for all services is 51 but the total number of camps in Idaho if you simply add up the totals for each service was 45. Likely this is due to the fact that the compiler or editor mistakenly listed the total number of Department of the Interior camps in Idaho as 7, when in fact the number should be just one (the sole State Park camp).

While we’re on the subject of camp types in Idaho, let’s look at the distribution of camps by service type for fiscal year 1939. Appendix H of The Annual Report of the Director of the Civilian Conservation Corps for fiscal year 1939 breaks down Idaho’s CCC camp distribution like this:

National Forest camps: 30

State Forest camps: 3

Private Forest camps: 1

Soil Conservation camps: 4

Bureau of Reclamation camps: 4

State Park camps: 1

Division of Grazing camps: 10

In this case, the Annual Report seems to be without error, as the total number of camps listed for all services is 53, which matches the total listed individually.

Comparing the two years, we see that while the U.S. Forest Service and the state forest each lost camps, Idaho gained a total of 8 camps altogether, in large part due to the establishment of Bureau of Reclamation and Division of Grazing camps. And just what did Idaho gain from the CCC? Thankfully we’ve got Perry Merrill’s book Roosevelt’s Forest Army to turn to for some details, and the camp total seems to compare favorably with the available Annual Reports. Merrill notes that an average of 51 CCC camps operated in Idaho. The aggregate number of Idaho men who gained work as a result of the CCC was 28,074, which included 20,292 junior and veteran enrollees, 1,038 Indian and 6,744 non-enrolled personnel. Merrill also points out that 86,775 individuals from all states worked in Idaho between 1933 and 1942. This means of course that many of the CCC enrollees who worked in Idaho were brought in from other states.

Merrill’s list of work accomplishments indicates the CCC built 236 lookout houses and towers, 91 impounding and large diversion dams and that they strung just over 3,000 miles of telephone lines.

Let’s take a closer look at individual work accomplishments listed in the 1939 Annual Report. The list shows that, among other things, the CCC was responsible for the following improvements in Idaho during fiscal year 1939:

Vehicle bridges: 31

Garages: 10

Latrines and Toilets: 47

Lookout houses and towers: 18

Camp stoves and fireplaces: 68

Cattle guards: 202

And the report shows that from mid 1938 to mid 1939, the CCC spent an astonishing 20,286 man-days fighting forest fires in Idaho!

Comparing just one improvement type – construction of cattle guards – between 1937 and 1939, we might get a snapshot of what it meant to have an increase in the number of Division of Grazing camps between these two reporting periods. In fiscal year 1937 when there were no Division of Grazing camps operating in Idaho, the Annual Report shows that 30 cattle guards were constructed in the state. Two years later, with 10 Division of Grazing camps now operational, the number jumps to 202. (There was also an increase in the number of corrals constructed, with 7 corrals built by the CCC in 1937 compared to 11 corrals built in 1939.) Admittedly, these figures represent a tiny fraction of the statewide work done but comparing them from year to year helps us understand what it meant to have particular technical services working in a state. Fewer Division of Grazing camps in Idaho meant fewer cattle guards and corrals built in Idaho.

Comparisons like this are less useful in sizing up the number of man-days spent fighting forest fires. Recall that in the 1938-1939 reporting period, the CCC spent 20,286 man-days fighting forest fires in Idaho. Two years earlier, during the period 1936-1937, the CCC spent more time (26,020 man-days) fighting fires. This might be due to the fact that there were more forestry-related CCC camps in the state during the 1936-37 time frame (five more forestry camps operated in Idaho in FY1937 than in FY1939) but it might also be due to the fact that there were fewer fires to fight one year versus the other, or that crews were better trained two years later and thus fires were brought under control more quickly. What seems clear now is that over the lifetime of the CCC, the United States saw a steady decline in the numbers of acres lost to wildland fire, but that is a topic for another time.

The Federal Security Agency Annual Report of the Director of the Civilian Conservation Corps for Fiscal Year 1942 includes some interesting and detailed summaries of CCC work projects that are often overlooked by current historians. The report includes a section entitled “CCC Camps and the Bureau of Animal Industry.” Turns out there were six Bureau of Animal Industry CCC camps scattered across the United States and one of them was located in Dubois, Idaho. The report explains that the Animal Industry stations were research facilities established for the purpose of finding better breeding, feeding and management practices for domestic farm animals and poultry. Referring specifically to the station at Dubois, Idaho, the report goes on to state:

"The CCC camps happened to come when the unusual assistance which they could give was sorely needed at several stations. For example, at Dubois, Idaho, a Bankhead-Jones Special Research project had just been added to this Bureau’s regular appropriation for sheep research. This made necessary a two to three-fold expansion in the research facilities at that station. This meant the opening up of additional land, construction of roads and trails, major extensions of the water and sewerage systems, and extensive landscaping around new laboratory buildings and dwellings. Not without such a unit as a CCC camp, bringing its special equipment and its own housing could it have been possible to equip this plant for the enlarged program so quickly with such small cost to the Government, or so smoothly and well."

You can access an online listing of Idaho’s CCC camps here. (The list is taken from the camp list at the CCC Legacy website.) You’ll note that the Bureau of Animal Industry camps were designated by the letter “A.”

The 1942 Annual Report also includes mention of Idaho CCC enrollees hired by lumber producers: “Sixty-eight CCC boys were hired from one camp in Idaho by a Boise company in four months and this company had over 500 former CCC’s on their payrolls at Pacific Island bases where the Japanese started hostilities in December 1941.”

In 1934 the American Forestry Association published a small book entitled Youth Rebuilds: Stories from the C.C.C. The book is a collection of personal narratives written by CCC enrollees across the United States and it includes a story entitled “The Next Ridge to the West,” written by Henry F. Vicinus, an enrollee in Company 1276 at Camp F-48, Clarkia, Idaho. In his life before the CCC, Vicinus was a newspaper reporter and his narrative is especially well written. Here are some excerpts from Vicinus’s story.

Vicinus wrote of his struggles before enrolling:

"Winter came and was little better. The old tuxedo was the first thing to be sold; then the wardrobe trunk, then the camera, all at ten per cent of their value, and finally – my God, what a blow! – the old typewriter. I was no longer a reporter! When “Bel” Hildreth hunted me up to tell me the local CCC quota of men was leaving the next day, he found me on a farm, with my last ragged clothing on my back, and that back nearly broken."

Concerning his time in a conditioning camp, Vicinus recalled:

"Camp Dix was a grand scramble. There was kidding, there was bullying, and each man developed his own little defense to it – some by excelling in the art of kidding and bullying, some by evading it with snappy comebacks, some by going “over the hill.” Never will I forget my nervousness when I first walked up to the orderly tent and suggested myself as a clerk. Nor will I forget the home-coming feeling I had when I first sat down to that little three-bank Underwood and started making rosters. There was something to work at, to occupy my mind, and to do well, looking forward to advancement… Neither will I forget the tense expectancy at the prospect of leaving…once we got the orders to leave for Idaho."

Finally, of his enrollment period in the mountains of Idaho, Vicinus wrote:

"There is, too, something purgative and expansive about the West. One only need stand by a huge tamarack or white pine, look over the valley below him, and gaze miles and miles away where the hazy mountains rise and fall like the waves of a giant ocean….to feel it…And now…it is time to go back to the old surroundings. I shall return not exactly as I left. I have conquered one world. Why should I cower from another?"

To read a section of the online history The Forest Service and the Civilian Conservation Corps that deals with the 9th Corps area and work in Idaho, click here.

Larry Sypolt’s very useful book Civilian Conservation Corps: A Selectively Annotated Bibliography includes references to materials dealing specifically with the CCC in Idaho. In the section on the 9th Corps Area (Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Utah, Nevada, California and Yellowstone National Park) you’ll see the following source materials listed:

“The CCC in Idaho,” by Judith Austin, Idaho Yesterdays 27 (Fall 1983).

“I’d do it again in a minute!” The Civilian Conservation Corps on the Salmon National Forest, by Michael Crosby, Salmon Idaho, 1997.

Outdoor Idaho. CCC in Idaho. Documentary film by Pat Metzler and Bruce Reichert, 1999.

The work of the CCC in Idaho was not without tragedy. The ruggedness of the country, the frequency of forest fires and the impetuousness of youth thrown together far from home, conspired to take the lives of enrollees in a variety of ways. The April 7, 1935 Edition of the Spokesman-Review reported the death of 25-year old Fred Hunter, an enrollee from Company 245, Chatcolet, Idaho. Hunter died of injuries received “when his motorcycle collided with the concrete rail of the overhead bridge near Lapwai…He was badly crushed.”

The Spokesman-Review also reported on the death of Oscar Kee, an enrollee at the Avery, Idaho CCC camp. 31-year-old Kee was run over and killed by a tractor in March 1935.

There were also instances of boyish exuberance leading to injury, as was reported in a June 1935 issue of the Spokesman-Review. Under the headline, “Bruiser in CCC Tucked in Jail,” the article states:

"Six months is sentence given youth who broke boy’s rib in “initiation.” Cortland Rockwell, 19, was given six months in jail here today by Probate Judge M.G. Whitney, on a charge of battery that developed from an “initiation” at the Ludlow creek CCC camp yesterday. Frank Falk, a rookie being initiated, suffered a broken rib and landed in the Fort George Wright hospital at Spokane when the rough play of the enrollees turned into something more than “monkey business.” He resisted and was set upon by the ringleaders of the “degree team,” bossed by Rockwell, it was said. John Machan, 18, held in the Kootenai county jail here overnight, with Rockwell, as a witness, was released after the trial, but Cecil Sowards, 18, also jailed as a witness yesterday, was held for further investigation."

Finally, the August 24, 1935 issue of the CCC newspaper Happy Days reported on the death of 19-year old Creath Cupp of Huntington, West Virginia, who was killed in a truck accident near Wallace, Idaho. Happy Days reported that Cupp was from Company 565. A photo of the accident site appeared in the Spokane-Review with the following caption: "One man was killed and more than a dozen were injured when the CCC truck shown here drove down a hillside on the Dobson Pass highway near Wallace early Sunday morning, while it was conveying a group of 24 CCC workers back to camp F-150 at Hawk Ranger station from their Sunday holiday in Wallace. The dead man was Creath Cupp, 19 of Huntington, W. Va. Excessive speed on the sharp turn is blamed for the tragedy."

The Colorado Whoopenhollars: Living a Good Life Despite the Great Depression

If we look deep enough and consider all that was happening during the 1930s, it becomes clear that one of the primary accomplishments – if not a goal stated outright - of the CCC was the preservation of families and family livelihoods.

Remember that enrollees were required to send all but a few dollars of their $30 monthly pay home to their needy family. FDR and his advisors realized that money accumulating in an enrollee’s footlocker, deep in some forest in Arkansas or Colorado, wouldn’t do the economy much good. For thousands of families, that additional $25 meant the difference between paying the rent and being tossed into the street. The allotment sent home by a son meant food on the table.

While we’ll never know every CCC enrollee story, we’ve got a good grasp of camp life and the work that went into insuring that the family received the monthly allotment. But what of those who remained at home while the young enrollee shipped out to work in a park or forest far from home? We have some of that story through the eyes of the enrollees themselves because they’ve often told of how important that monthly allotment was to their parents or loved ones. But what about the families of the men who ran the CCC camps? What about the foremen and supervisors from the National Park Service, the Bureau of Reclamation and the U.S. Forest Service? What did the creation of the CCC mean to their families?

The Colorado Whoopenhollars, a newly released book offers a glimpse of what it was like to be waiting at home while a father is far away working as a supervisor in the forestry camps of the CCC. The full title of the book is The Colorado Whoopenhollars: Living a Good Life Despite the Great Depression and in it the reader is transported back to a small Colorado town in the 1930s. Through personal recollections, letters and the shared memories and experiences of her four brothers Jean Rutherford Duaine provides a close look at small town life during the Great Depression and just as importantly, she offers an insight into how a father coped with the long months of forestry work that kept him from his wife and small children.

The first section of the book is literally a guided tour of Georgetown, Colorado as the author remembers it from the 1930s. We’re introduced to an extended but tight knit family struggling to look after each other in the midst of a national economic crisis. In addition to siblings, parents, grandparents and uncles, we meet friends and neighbors from town – many of whom are as close as family. Woven through this narrative is the continual longing of a youngster for her daddy, William Rutherford, who is miles and miles away working for the U.S. Forest Service.

The latter portion of the book contains the texts of the letters that Bill Rutherford wrote to his children during his long absences; but these aren’t really just letters, they’re the story of five youngsters – the Whoopenhollar kids (named Billy, Frank, John, Jean and Glenn after Rutherford’s own children) and their hair raising adventures in the wilds of the Rocky Mountains. A careful reader will come to realize that a longing for loved ones burned in the heart of both the family at home and the forest ranger working in the forest camp far from home.

Part family history, part historical record, part children’s story, The Colorado Whoopenhollars will appeal to readers of all ages. Moreover, despite the national desperation and hardship of those times, the story is upbeat and full of the author’s love of a special time and place.

While not directly related to the Civilian Conservation Corps, The Colorado Whoopenhollars offers a rare look at how the families of this era coped with the long absences of sons, brothers, husbands and fathers while they were away working in the CCC. More importantly perhaps, the book offers a glimpse at one father’s heart warming effort to remain connected to his kids back home.

For more information visit:

The Official Colorado Whoopenhollar website

Disclaimer:Jean Rutherford Duaine is my mom. I couldn’t be more proud of her for writing this book and my enthusiasm probably makes me a biased source but there you have it.