Archives and Special Collections Mansfield Library, University of Montana Missoula MT 59812-9936 Email: [email protected] Telephone: (406) 243-2053

This transcript represents the nearly verbatim record of an unrehearsed interview. Please bear in mind that you are reading the spoken word rather than the written word.

Oral History Number: 297-026, 027, 028a Interviewee: Horace M. Albright Interviewers: Gyongyver "Kitty" Beuchert and Forrest Anderson Date of Interview: June 21,1979 Project: Boone and Crockett Club Oral History Project

Gyongyver "Kitty" Beuchert: The following is an oral history interview with Horace M. Albright on June 21 and 22, 1979, at his home at Sherman Apartments, 14144 Dickens Street, Sherman Oaks, California. The interviewers are Judge F. Anderson, one of the current first vice presidents of the Boone and Crockett Club, and Gyongyver Kitty Beuchert, office administrator of the Club.

[Break in audio]

Mr. Albright, could you give us your birthdate and your place of birth?

Horace Albright: I was born January 6, 1890, in a little mountain town of Bishop, which is about 280 miles north of here in the Orange Valley on the east side of the High Sierra and about 50 miles from the eastern boundary of Yosemite National Park.

GB: Your family went back to Candelaria for three years, didn't they, to live?

HA: Well my family were living in Candelaria at the time I was born. There was no doctor there, and the expectant mothers would go to Bishop where there was a doctor. They could get on the little railroad and come over, and after the baby was born, they'd come back from Bishop. That's what my mother did. She had two babies born in Bishop. One didn't live, and then I came second. Went back and lived in Candelaria for about four years. Then we moved, finally, to Bishop where we lived the rest of my boyhood.

GB: Would you give the names of your parents and tell us a little bit about your parents?

HA: Well, we'd better go back one other generation. My grandfather was born and reared in Maine. When he was 19 years old, he wanted to join the gold rush so he went down to New York and got on a boat there and went to Nicaragua and crossed the Isthmus of Nicaragua. He got on a boat on the other side of the Pacific and came up to San Francisco then headed for the mining camps. That was about 1851. In 1865, my grandmother came across in covered wagon from Arkansas. Her mother started out with three girls and a boy. The father was detained to settle up some business, and just before they started to cross the mountains, the mother died of a heart attack. She was only 39. So her children, the three girls and the boy, went on over to Stockton. That's where my grandfather met my grandmother shortly afterwards, and they were married. Lived on in the mining camps on what we call the mother lode here—the foot of the Sierra Nevada, the Sierra Nevada Mountains. It shouldn't be mountains. You should say Sierra Nevada, you shouldn't say Sierra Nevada Mountains.

1 Horace M. Albright Interview, OH 297-026, 027, 028a, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. Then when the silver developers started down the east side of the mountains, my grandfather moved over there, and my mother was actually reared in Aurora, Nevada.

My father was a Canadian. Came out in 1873 from a little town near Montreal and engaged in mining operations. He was millwright, a specialist in building tunnels or timbering tunnels and (unintelligible), then went on to installing machinery. That wasn't actually a miner. Then moved over to Aurora, near Virginia City, where he met my mother, and they were married and then moved to Candelaria. In 1893, when the Depression of that time came on, the mines closed down, why, they came down to Bishop, California. That's where we lived before I went away to college. I never went back after I went to college. That's about the size of it.

My one brother was a very brilliant student. After he graduated from college and he got his master's degree, he was assigned a fellowship to study in Spanish territory, Spanish colonies, and Spain. Died in Spain of typhoid within a year. The other brother remained up there, but he was accidentally killed in an automobile accident here three years ago, so I'm the last of the family.

GB: Could you describe the schools you attended, and I'm going to ask you specifically to go all the way back because I don't think too many people have attended a one-room school.

HA: My life's schooling began up here in Bishop in a three-room school. Each room had three classes. I went through to the seventh grade. They had no high school, and so they had really nine grades, but they called the last two the eighth grade. Called each of them eighth grades. After I'd gone through one, seven—through to seventh grade—my mother and father felt (unintelligible) go into two eighth grades (unintelligible) school where there's only one eighth grade. So that's why they sent me to a one-room schoolhouse. That's where I graduated from grammar school. I had to ride a horse five miles out to the school. That suited me fine because I loved horses and loved to ride.

The high school was started three years before, and so I entered high school in 1904 in the first class...I mean, in the fourth class. There were three classes already there. We had two teachers, each of them taught 16 classes a day because each class had four classes. It was one of those places where you didn't have any alternatives or any electives. You took four years of Latin, four years of English, three or four years of history, three years of mathematics, and a year of science. There were no changes.

Even then it was difficult to get accredited to a university because it was a small school with just two teachers. We were admitted on probation. If we passed the first semester examination satisfactorily, we were in. Otherwise, we had to go back and do all the examinations (unintelligible) at the university. There were only four in our class when we graduated, and only two of us went to the university and we both got by all right. We didn't have to take the examinations. We went in on probation and passed the examination at the end of the semester and were in.

2 Horace M. Albright Interview, OH 297-026, 027, 028a, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. I was an undergraduate for four years. Graduated in the class of 1912. I went on to study law, specializing in mining and water law. I was halfway through that graduate work. In those days, you could start your law as a senior. You didn't have to be a graduate student before you started law. The courses were three years as they are now, but you could start as a senior. So I had one graduate year. I had my senior year and graduate year. I had only one more year to go before I got a doctor of jurisprudence. I was in quite a famous class because it contained Earl Warren, who became Chief Justice of the United States and also Governor of California—three times governor of California. I had this opportunity to go to Washington, and I went and took office on June 2, 1913, that's when I started serving.

Well, I want to emphasize that the university I went to was the University of California, at Berkeley, which now has nine campuses with one right here in Los Angeles. But the one at Berkeley is the mother university and that's where I attended for five years.

GB: Before I allow you to go on to your Washington career, I'd like to ask you a little bit about the grandfather you mentioned earlier. I think this was the one. Your grandfather Marden (?) had a great influence on your life as a conservationist, didn't he?

HA: Yes he did, in this way. Of course, he was a miner. He had mined for years, and then when the mines shut down, he went into the logging business. He didn't own anything in the way of timber or mills or anything, but he contracted to take logs out and get them to the mills. He was a great lover of horses, and everything was on a horse-drawn basis in those days. But he talked about the waste of resources in logging, and of course, probably to some extent in mining. But in logging, where you cut the tree down and you left all the limbs and the tops and if the tree wasn't healthy you left the tree. You just went away leaving an enormous amount of rubbish. The next year fire started and burned over it. Burned up all the young trees and left more or less a desert situation. Sometimes lasted for years. Sometimes never reforested. That's the sort of thing he...He happened to be in that business when [Gifford] Pinchot came along and started forestry in this country, which was bitterly opposed by timber people, lumber people, and by everybody had anything to do with the forest. But he favored it. He liked the idea of selective cutting and hoped that the price of lumber could go up enough so that they could afford to clean up after logging.

I was with him for two summers. I was with him when I was 13 years old, and I was with him one year when I was a college boy. All I did when I was 13 years old, although I was a pretty well grown boy, was to help with the horses and clean out the stables—that type of work. Later on when I was 21 years old in the law school and worked for him one summer, I was a big wheel loader. I don't know if you know about how they log with big wheels, but that was an easier job. I saw almost all kinds of logging, and I saw the results of mining where big piles of debris were left and places that could never heal. All those influenced me.

3 Horace M. Albright Interview, OH 297-026, 027, 028a, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. My old grandfather was a thoughtful fellow, a very brilliant man. He served in the legislature of Nevada and so did my father. But he was also kind of a roughneck. He started telling me stories of the mining days. My mother, though, on the other hand, was unusually religious, and she used to brag that her son never swore, her children never said anything wrong. I was worked for my grandfather when I was 13, and they had me milking a cow. One night the cow...I'd climbed over the manger to get some hay to put in in the manger. I'd already fed her grain. She hooked me and tossed me over into the hay yard, which apparently angered me and I must have paid my respects to the cow because my grandfather's office was across the street. He said that he heard me paying my respects to the cow. He said that it was her son. He said, "Oh no, Mary's boy doesn't swear. Listen to him. Listen to that." (laughs) That seemed to please him that I had grown up enough to take care of myself in that respect.

He was an unusual fellow in so many respects. He used profanity but just in a casual way. Just seemed to be a part of him. I remember when I was grown up I asked him one day why he sandwiched in some profanities. "W ell," he said, "The English language is not expressive." He says, "That's the only reason I use these. I don't believe in profanity," he said, "You've got to pep up this language a little."

GB: One other point that I'd like to get out about your youth is that at one time you had a desire to enter West Point, and you just missed being appointed to West Point Can you tell a little about that, and did you ever have a military career?

HA: Well, yes, I did, but the attempt to go to West Point preceded my military career whatever it was. The first year I worked for my grandfather when I was 13, my mother hadn't been very well and had to go to San Francisco for treatment. She took me down there. I had always wanted to see a soldier or a sailor, and I clipped pictures of them out of the paper. I had stacks of pictures that I had made, and I used to make pasteboard bottoms for them so they'd stand up. But I wanted to see a soldier or a sailor, and we had been in San Francisco two days and I hadn't seen any. One day my mother said, "Well, they're going to Lolo’s Transport, transport Sherman to the Philippines." She said, "After we take a lunch and go down to the dock, we'll see them load the ship and then we'll see it go away and then we'll see the soldiers." They were sending over a regiment of infantry. Well, when we got down there we found the ship was being loaded but they were mostly by colored soldiers and they were in overalls, not in uniform. So I was pretty well disappointed. We ate our lunch, and they were going to sail at two o'clock, I think. Just before the time came to call "all aboard," two officers came by. They were dressed in blue uniforms with maroon shoulder straps and maroon stripes down the legs— handsome. I've never seen fellows look so perfect. They walked in perfect cadence across the dock and went up on the ship. Well, I was just thrilled to death. I'd never seen anything like that. The next morning in the paper, their pictures were there—U.S. Grant III and Douglas MacArthur. They'd just graduated from West Point, and they were on their first assignment, which was under General Arthur MacArthur, who was MacArthur's father. So this was 1903.

4 Horace M. Albright Interview, OH 297-026, 027, 028a, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. I'd heard the family talk about how impossible it would be to send me to college. We didn't have any money. I thought, well, here's where I get an education in just what I want. So I started bedeviling my congressman who lived over in Bakersfield for an appointment. This was when I was 13. Well, when I was 16,1 got a first-alternate appointment. I didn't get the main appointment. I got the first-alternate. You know they appoint a principal and two alternates so if the principal fails then the first alternate is the principal and if the first alternate fails then the second alternate. So along about May, April or May...No, earlier that, I guess. March 1907 I took the examination for West Point. It was just after the earthquake, and San Francisco was still in ruins.

I remember came down from Stockton. I got a job working that winter so I'd be close by, and I went down on the boat to San Francisco. I got in a little wooden hotel on Van Ness Avenue which had been put up after the fire. A big car strike occurred the day before I got down there, and I had to walk to the Presidio about four miles—eight miles each way for two days—while I was taking the examination. Well, the principal got in. I guess all of us passed the examination, but the principal got in and I didn't.

But an old friend of my family who had made a lot of money in the Tonopah gold field — Tonopah mine started up about 1900—he'd gone into banking in Berkeley. He took me over and showed me the university. That's where I ought to go. I got very much excited about it Well, in those days and up to just recently, the universities have had land grants. Had to drill all of their boys for two years. You had to drill for tw o years. Well, that suited me fine. But if you drill for four years, you could be an officer—your junior and senior year you could be officer. So I drilled all four years, and I graduated as a captain.

But I liked military so much that I joined the National Guard, coast artillery—First Company Coast Artillery—in San Francisco. Every week or two I had to go over there for drill, and we used to go out on weekends and man the big guns that protected the Golden Gate. What they called disappearing rifles. They're sunk in big holes, and when they were discharged, the rebound threw them back in there and they were cocked. They were there after the World War. So I have quite a little bit of military experience, but I didn't get in any war. I've never been in any war.

GB: I don't know if this is the place to mention it because it's skipping several years but since you mentioned that you'd never been in a war, you did sign up, though—you mentioned this to me one tim e—for Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders. I wanted you to mention that

HA: Pretty hard to explain why I did that. The Secretary had me deferred from the draft because I was organizing the National Park Service. The Park Service was authorized in August 25, 1916, but we get no money. No money was forthcoming until the next year. Meantime Mr. Mather, who was assistant to the Secretary, who had more to do with promoting the creation of the Service than anybody else, had a nervous smashup and I was left to look after it. We entered the war on the 6th of April, 1917, and on the 17th of April we got our first money. I was

5 Horace M. Albright Interview, OH 297-026, 027, 028a, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. in charge of the National Park (unintelligible), just told me to just go ahead and organize the new bureau and appointed me Assistant Director, which I immediately became Acting Director. Then he deferred me. It was a cinch for me to get a commission. No question about it. Everybody else was going. All my classmates and friends were all going in. I was pretty disappointed, but I had to stay there. As soon as Mr. Mather got well enough to come back, why, I could go.

Meantime, Theodore Roosevelt said he'd like to create a division—the Rough Riders. I suppose he thought here was going to be a horse war. Of course, it was a French war. On the other hand, nobody thought that W oodrow Wilson would let him do it. Because they said, well, taking it into consideration the kind of a fellow Theodore Roosevelt is, this whole war will be Theodore Roosevelt's war. It won't be Woodrow Wilson's war. If we let him in this thing, it will be Theodore Roosevelt's war. At any rate he went ahead and announced that he would take names and address of men who'd like to join his Rough Rider Division. He'd be Major General of course. Well an old guide that he had when he was young out in the Black Hills, Howard Eaton—taking parties through the national parks and also he was helping move elk when they were allotted to other states and so fo rth —he was close to the Park Service of the government but didn't belong to it. He was a dude rancher. He was the founder of dude ranching in this country. He was in Washington, and Roosevelt was taking names. Eaton said he wanted to go. Well, he was about 65 years old. So he and I went to New York, and we got an appointment with Theodore Roosevelt and went over there.

I felt fortunate to be going over with Howard Eaton because apparently they were devoted to each other. Roosevelt gave him a bear hug (unintelligible) for us to stay as long as we wanted. He was in his office. He was editor...What was that magazine he was editor for a while? (Unintelligible). So he took my name and took Howard's. He said, "Oh Howard, you can't be a soldier. You wouldn't look good in uniform." He said, "You're too old, and you wouldn't look good in a uniform." He said, "You'll be along. I'll take you along. You'll be with me. We'll find out what you'll do, but don't worry about it, you'll be with me." And he took my name.

I understand he had about 200,000 names on this roster. Nobody ever knows what became of the roster. It's never been...They never found it. I guess he just tossed it in the wastebasket when the president said he couldn't have his Rough Riders. So he just quit. Course all his own boys went in the service, and Clinton was killed. The other three were in. But that's about the extent of my military experience, which is not very much.

GB: Getting back to your college years for a little while. You didn't mention that you worked your way all the way through college.

HA: Well, of course, college was much cheaper to go to in those days. My father had a misfortune in his contracting work up in Yukon. They were building a tram over to (unintelligible) Valley where we used to get salt. The salt was gathered up just like hay, and then taken up to my father's mill and ground to size and sacked and shipped all up along the

6 Horace M. Albright Interview, OH 297-026, 027, 028a, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. east side of the Sierra. Well they got the idea that if they could get a lot more salt, they could probably ship down further to San Francisco and elsewhere. Could be a real business. But they apparently didn't know about the big salt operations elsewhere. My father undertook to install this tramway over the (unintelligible) Range to the (unintelligible) Valley so they could take salt out without having to haul it out with big mule teams. He was just contributing his time. He didn't put money into it. He didn't have any money to put into it. But he put so much time in building it that he practically didn't have anything. Anyway, he was able to provide me with board and room for my freshman year. Twenty-five dollars a month was all it was—board and room. I earned everything else. After that, I earned all my expenses. But they were relatively small compared to what they are now.

GB: Now, I have a question here. Please explain the beginning of your law career and your early years in Washington. It was your degree in law that took you to Washington in the beginning, was it not?

HA: No, no. It wasn't at all. In order to continue to earn my way when I finished my last two years in university, I was manager of my fraternity, which was a local fraternity. I got my board and room for managing it, and I'd learned stenography and typing in the meantime. I had a clerical job. I was doing all right in my last two years of college. But when it came to the graduate year, it took more money, and I had less time because I couldn't...I had to be right there at the university all the time to attend law classes. So I got a job as a reader, which now they call them teaching assistant. I was a reader for the head of the Department of Economics. The reader monitored the classes, he gave examinations, corrected papers, and sometimes even lectured to a section or something—not the main class. There were all kinds of things he had to do.

Well, in the spring after Woodrow Wilson was elected, Franklin K. Lane of San Francisco was made Secretary of the Interior. Lane and Miller had been great friends, in fact, they were in the university together. Miller was class of '87, Lane was class of '86. Lane called Miller to Washington. Miller was a wealthy man as well as a highly intelligent man. When he came back, he said the Secretary had offered him a job as Assistant to the Secretary. He said he asked the Secretary if he could bring a young man with him. He said yes. He [Miller] said, "I had you in mind and I want you to go with me."

"W ell," I said, "What am I supposed to do?"

He said, "We didn't work out a job. He just said I could bring you."

I said, "How much are you going to pay me?"

Well, he didn't know, but he said he'd guarantee me 100 dollars a month. Well, I didn't want to go. I wanted to finish my course and get by. In the meantime, I'd been appointed Assistant in Economics, going up from 50 dollars a month to 75 dollars a month. My next year, I would hit

7 Horace M. Albright Interview, OH 297-026, 027, 028a, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. 75 dollars. (Unintelligible). I didn't want to do it. I wanted to finish up. But some of my professors and my family and this professor, Professor Miller, talked me into it, so I finally said I would. So he loaned me to go, loaned me money enough for the tickets, and I went back ahead of him.

I got there on the morning of the 31st day of May, 1913. It was a Saturday. They worked all day Saturday in those days. Everybody worked Saturdays. I got a map right away, and I found out it was only a few blocks up to the Interior Department where I was supposed to report at nine o'clock. I'd gotten in about six. Well, I checked some baggage and got some breakfast and decided to hike up there—walk up there. I had this map. On the way up, I only had this one suit of clothes. It was a blue serge suit that was pretty badly rumpled from riding across the country—hot. So I passed a little shop—clothing shop—and I went in. The fellow said to take my clothes off. He threw a rug across my knees, and he pressed my clothes. So I arrived spick and span in the Secretary's office at nine o'clock. They took me down to the appointment office, and I supposed I was going to get 100 dollars a month. Well, when they swore me in...they were swearing me in, and the appointment said 1,600 [dollars]. Gee whiz, I was just as rich as J.P. Morgan right then—1,600. So then they took me to my desk, and they had some documents there that they wanted me to read and familiarize myself with the department. I said, "Well, I don't want to work today. I want to find a place..."

He said, "You find it...It isn't too hard." But at 1,600, I was feeling rich. I was feeling tough. I was getting confidence, and I just flatly refused to work. I wanted to find a place to live. They said —

[End of Tape 1, Side A]

8 Horace M. Albright Interview, OH 297-026, 027, 028a, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. [Tape 1, Side B]

HA: They said if you don't work today, you'll lose two days' pay—today's and tomorrow's. Your pay will begin Monday. Well, I was still feeling so rich I didn't care. I just threw two days away. Heaven knows nobody needed tw o days' pay more than I did. For several years, they used to point me out as the guy who threw two days' pay away.

GB: Then you ended up staying in Washington.

HA: Yes. I was still with Dr. Miller. He became Assistant to the Secretary, and his job was to create, to promote, a National Park Service. The parks, some of them were under the Army. Some didn't have any superintendence at all. The Forest Service were managing some. Generally, they all belonged to the Interior Department. They needed a Bureau to coordinate all the activities, and that was what Dr. M iller was called back there for. I was assigned to him, I suppose because I was a stenographer and typist and I was pretty well along in the law. I hadn't finished though. I still had one year more. So I decided to go to Georgetown at night. They had a good night school. All the professors were active lawyers or judges. They had a fine moot court.

Miller was a financial expert. He was professor of economics on the Flood Foundation...professor of finance on the Flood Foundation at the university. They right away took him to help develop the Federal Reserve law. He wasn't at the Interior Department much. He was out with Secretary McAdoo and at the White House and with other financial people working out this Federal Reserve law, which took most of the summer. They made a trip west too. They weren't there much of the summer. So it fell to me to handle what he was supposed to be doing and then anything else he gave me. I became a sort of jack of all trades. Anybody didn't want to do anything would give it to me. So that way I got well acquainted all through the department. I soon knew all the chiefs. I got acquainted with some congressmen and senators, and if I didn't have anything else to do, I'd go up and watch Congress that day. So then when the fall came, I went to law school and finished my law course and got my degree. Passed the bar examinations and passed the—on a little vacation trip out here to see if I could win this girl I was after—I passed the California examinations and won the girl.

Mr. Miller, to whom I was assigned, who had brought me to Washington, because of his work in developing the Federal Reserve legislation after the bill passed and was signed by the president, the president appointed him one of the governors of the Federal Reserve, so he resigned. This was in the summer of 1914. Now whether he resigned before I came out here or after, I don't remember, but at any rate I didn't have any boss when I went back. I was more or less a freelance that worked for different people, even including the Secretary. I was, even once in a while, acting as private secretary to Secretary Lane. I was in there one day acting with either the private secretary or assistant private secretary. See, he had two. I was in there one day in that capacity, the private secretary and I were waiting for somebody to come in, and along comes a dapper fellow dressed in brown clothes with a brown derby hat and swinging a cane.

9 Horace M. Albright Interview, OH 297-026, 027, 028a, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. Wanted an appointment with the Secretary. He was Franklin D. Roosevelt, Assistant Secretary of the Navy. He didn't have anything particular in mind, he said, but he did want to have a little visit with the Secretary. He said, "You know, we belong to the Franklin Club." He said, Franklin Houston, Secretary of Agriculture, and Franklin K. Lane, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He told me who the other Franklin was, but I don't remember. I don't suppose they played cards together. But he couldn't see him so he sat down there and gassed with us for an hour until he could get in. That was my first contact with Franklin Roosevelt. Incidentally, I've liked him ever since (unintelligible) although I didn't vote for him.

Well, I was doing everything they asked me to do. Much of my work was up in Congress, and I was getting acquainted with congressmen. Of course, this was a new Congress, don't you see, and (unintelligible) Democrats hadn't been in office for years, and this was a pretty new Congress. The congressmen didn't know the jobs themselves, and you could get acquainted very easily. In fact, one day I sat on the House of Representatives, in the House of Representatives, with a congressman who took me into a joint meeting. He says, "They won't know me at the door." He says, "They won't know you at the door," he says, "until you go by. (unintelligible) just tell them how they're doing, they'll think you're another congressman." I went in and sat on the (unintelligible) for just hour.

At any rate, I wanted to get away, and I had an offer in San Francisco with William E. Colby. You've got his (unintelligible)? Good. He was the outstanding mining lawyer on the Pacific Coast. He had been my professor over at University. He also had greatly influenced my life, and I wanted to leave. So (unintelligible) in December, the Secretary called me in there and introduced me to Stephen T. Mather. I knew who Mather was because of University of California. He was prominent in alumni affairs in Chicago. He lived in Chicago. I never met him, but he'd been in the same class. He'd been in with M iller—class of 1887. He had met Lane. He didn't know him well. He had met him, but he hadn't seen him much. So that story is all in that magazine. From there on, my connection with Miller is all in that. That's what these girls got out of me, don't you know, (unintelligible) talking about all these 60 years, I haven't been talking about that at all. But they got it out of me. That's it. It's all there.

GB: Maybe I can get them to loan me the tapes so I that I could make copies for our tapes. (Unintelligible).

HA: They'd probably let you do that, yes. Then, of course, the main point that they were after was how did I get mixed up so deeply in National Park work, and that's because Mather came in and he really went after the National Park Service to get the bureau created. Right after that, I was appointed Assistant Attorney to work with him on it.

GB: On National Park affairs?

10 Horace M. Albright Interview, OH 297-026, 027, 028a, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. HA: National Park affairs in general, yes. But we traveled a lot. We traveled almost all of 1915 in order to familiarize ourselves with the problems. We traveled all over the country. We didn't get the bill through until August 1916, but we did get it through. That's how I got in.

The story there is I had to postpone the wedding, and I had to postpone practicing law. We were only going to do it for a year, you see. At the end of the year, we decided to be married and take another chance on another year. Never left.

GB: I've got two questions I'd like to ask you. First, when Mr. Mather first got involved with the National Park Service he called a conference in Berkeley, California, on March 15 in order to get to know all the present-day park superintendents. Present-day meaning at that time. He invited all the concessionaires and people from Washington who had a strong interest in parks. You had made these arrangements for him, I believe. But he made arrangements for a special Pullman car in Chicago and held conferences, in your words, "day and night" on a trip out West. I wonder if you would remark a little bit about this trip and the conference and the time that it took at that time to travel out West like that.

HA: Well, it took the same time as it always did. We had this Pullman car called Calzona —half Arizona and California. It was built a little differently. There were some berths there, upper and lower, and there were two or three bedrooms and then the drawing room that Mr. Mather had. Then there was a part in the middle that was kind of a conference room where we could sit and talk. But we first went to San Diego where there was an exposition, where Mather had a classmate. Right away, he started rounding up everybody he knew, don't you know. He wanted to take a look at this exposition and see this classmate of his and get things started down there. Went up to Berkeley and over to the San Francisco exposition [Panama-Pacific International Exposition]. At the San Francisco exposition, he had the superintendents on the way out...On the way out of San Diego, we only had the Washington group, and he had the Yellowstone group of Army officers, (unintelligible) Brett. I think he was the only officer, only park superintendent, on the train with us. But we had lawyers and others, who had been handling parks in the past. Do a couple of geological survey in them and helping on the service. We fell in with, very luckily, General Scott, who was Chief of Staff of the Army. He was one of the two people in the country here who knew thoroughly Indian sign language. The Utes in Colorado were making trouble, and the General had been asked to go out there to see what he could do with the Utes. He just happened to be on the train, and we took him into our party. It gave us an opportunity right there to talk about getting troops out of Yellowstone. They had just been taken out of Yosemite. So we got breaks along the line.

After the conference in Berkeley...All the sessions were in Berkeley except the last one, which was held over in the exposition. They treated like we were a foreign organization there. We had flags out and a band and everything when we went over there. We marched around. We had difficulty getting them all into lunch. They had bathing girls, had a bathing girls show. After girls would swim a while, they would come out in their swim suits and bask on a porch or (unintelligible), we called it. The Union Pacific had put in an imitation of Old Faithful Geyser and

11 Horace M. Albright Interview, OH 297-026, 027, 028a, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. Old Faithful Inn as their show at the fair. We were invited up there for lunch. Well, Mr. Mather left me to round up the superintendents and saw they got up there. I got most of them up there, but some of them didn't. They stopped to look at these bathing girls. Couldn't get them up to lunch. I remember going back and almost dragging a couple of them up there. They'd rather stay there than go to lunch.

After that, we went all over the country. We didn't get back for quite a while, and then we started out again. We (unintelligible). Then he put on his Mather mountain party. He took a party of people across the mountains with the biggest pack train. Had to go across the Sierras at that time. In there, he had such fellows as Frederick Gillett, who became chairman of the Appropriations Committee and Speaker of the House of Representatives and then United States senator from Massachusetts. Emerson Hough, who was the outdoor editorSaturday of Evening Post. We had Gilbert Grosvenor, editor ofNational Geographic, and other prominent officers.

GB: There's one other person he had there that is of interest to the Boone and Crockett Club. Henry Fairfield Osborn was there.

HA: Henry Fairfield Osborn, yes. He was then President of the American Museum of Natural History. But that's the father. Of course, Fairfield Osborn, his son, was afterwards a member. They're both of them in the list of Honorary Members. You see their names (unintelligible).

GB: I was wonder if, at this point, you can recall anything about him.

HA: Well, they're totally different fellows—the father and son. The father was a big husky fellow. I don't know what you'd say about him. He was just a good outdoorsman. He'd been out an awful lot. [doorbell rings]

[Break in audio]

GB: Did Henry Fairfield Osborn have anything to do with helping you influence—

HA: Well, he...great influence himself is the very fact that he was for creating a National Park Service helped, but he rounded up the trustees of the American Museum to help. All these men that were in that Mather mountain party all had friends, and they got in and got them to help right away. That was the main reason for bringing them along, of course. Henry Fairfield Osborn did his part. He was always a close friend of Mr. Mather's. Of course, his son Fairfield Osborn was concerned mainly with the Bronx New York Zoo. Did some writing. A very good member of the Club.

GB: On a personal note, somewhere about this time you finally did go back to California and marry your wife Grace Noble.

12 Horace M. Albright Interview, OH 297-026, 027, 028a, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. HA: At the end of the 1915 after we'd traveled all year going from one place to another, we'd been out in Berkeley at the conference in March, and we'd been out again after this Mather mountain party. So I'd seen her a couple of times, but we were trying to not postpone the marriage any longer than we could help. So we were married December 1915, that would be 64 years ago.

GB: I'd like to ask you what made you make the comment—and this is a quote from you—"It's a wonder that she stuck with me." Do you remember why you made that comment?

HA: Yes, well, on the way back on the train...We didn't have much of a honeymoon. We didn't have any time. We went up to the Grand Canyon for tw o or three days. I had a guide book that was gotten out by the exposition in 1915. The survey got out four or five of them for the railroads. They basically started from Chicago, and they told about every place all the way out on the railroad. On the Santa Fe Railroad, they had the nice one from Chicago to Los Angeles, but I never had a chance to use it. But I had it in my baggage. On the way back, I thought I'd like to read that book. So we did, but we had to read it backwards. We had to read it from Los Angeles backwards, you see. We sat out on the platform of the observation car in the cinders— in January—cinders and dirt and dust, sometimes snow. She sat out there and listened to me read that thing backwards. That's why I said, "It's a wonder she stuck with me." (laughs) It's a wonder she did too. Most of them wouldn't. They'd have said, put that book up and come inside. That's what they'd said, (unintelligible) do that.

GB: Could you just go briefly through to the point where you became Superintendent of Yellowstone Park and explain why you accepted that?

HA: When I agreed to stay with Mr. Mather for a year until we got the Park Service created, although by then Mr. Mather worked terribly hard for two years—1915 and '16. He was a high strung man anyway. He was close to 50 years old. He put on a big conference in Washington in January 1917 where he had people from all over the United States, and he also had a big art exhibit that he put on over at the Smithsonian. In the midst of this big conference, which was really very fine and very well done and very important, he had a collapse—a nervous collapse— and he had to go into a sanitarium. That was January of 1917. Now, as I told you, we got the Park Service created in August '16, but we didn't have any money. We didn't get that until April 17, 1917, about a week after the war started. So Mr. Mather appointed him Director of the Park Service, but he wasn't there—he couldn't be there—and appointed me Assistant Director so I immediately became Acting Director. It fell to me to organize the National Park Service, which I did. I was only 27 years old, but he had me deferred. I was a strong healthy fellow, eligible for service and had lots of military experience. Obviously, it looked to me as if I should've been in the war. But anyway, he gave me the job of organizing the National Park Service, which I did. I carried it through. Mr. Mather came back in 1918, and had another setback late in '18, so the war was over before I had a chance to get in.

13 Horace M. Albright Interview, OH 297-026, 027, 028a, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. After that, I decided it was time for me to get out. Well, by that time, I was approaching 29 years old. I asked Mr. Mather to release me in March 1919. Had just taken soldiers out of Yellowstone and also allowed automobiles in. So the whole thing was changing. They asked me to take over Yellowstone, which I did. I was appointed 60 years ago last week—9th of June. I was appointed (unintelligible) to Yellowstone. I was there 10 years.

But Yellowstone—this kind of a park—it was high, soon was snowed in, and in those days we kept it absolutely closed. From about better part of November, first of December, until May, it was closed up completely. We patrolled the boundary. No one was allowed in the park except up to headquarters which was just five miles inside. Then when I was appointed Field Assistant to the Director, then Assistant Director Field. I was the third-ranking man in the Service even out there. In that capacity, I travelled all winter among the parks and usually put in a month to six weeks in Washington. I appeared before committees, I helped with the budget, I made presentations on legislation. I lived at the Cosmos Club, (unintelligible) our little boy was born in January 1919. So Mrs. Albright stayed with her parents in Berkeley while I was travelling around until it was time to open up Yellowstone, then we'd go back.

I was there, and we did that for ten years. But I was constantly associating with Mr. Mather. He was there a great deal, and we made trips together. Called me to Washington once in a while. Then in 1926, '27, a very fine superintendent of Yellowstone, he had a heart attack, collapse. Mather didn't want to lose him, so he asked me to move my headquarters for the winter, '27- '28, to Yosemite. That's why I was in charge of Yosemite for all that winter. To see if (unintelligible) could come back. Well, he couldn't. Came back, but he couldn't stay and left. So the same thing happened in 1928-'29. In 1928, he asked me to go back again. So we made arrangements to go back for the winter of '28-'29.

The day before Hoover was elected in November, Mr. Mather was in Chicago and gone out there to vote and also, I guess, trying to promote Hoover's candidacy because they were very close friends. He was in his lawyer's office late in the day and went to light a cigar and went over with a stroke. He was a very, very, very ill man. Of course, he saw right away he had to leave, and so right away he said he wanted me to take his place. Well, I didn't want to leave. I'd been Director once, and that was enough for me. I was Director during the war. I didn't want to be Director. Why not take Mr. Cameron, who had taken my place in Washington? Why not somebody else? I wanted to stay Superintendent of Yellowstone. Finally, Secretary Worth (?)— he was there too, lots of people came in to see Mr. Mather—he took me to one side, and he said, 'You better take this directorship. If you don't, they'll put somebody in from outside the Service and the new director could move you to Platt National Park." That was the forest park we had. It's a city park. "You can't be sure you'll stay at Yellowstone." So very reluctantly, I took over the directorship on the 12th of January, 1929, and I was there until August the 10th, as she ways here, 1933. But I'd been Director in 1917, and then I was Director for nearly 5 years in my own right.

14 Horace M. Albright Interview, OH 297-026, 027, 028a, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. GB: Just skipping back for one moment. As Superintendent of Yellowstone, you undertook a 200-mile pack trip in order to acquaint yourself with all the problems and features of the park. Do you recall any of the details of that trip?

HA: Well, you wouldn't get much in the way of detail. I had a ranger—good ranger—good cook and a good packer. We had all our stuff on one animal, and we just rode and rode and rode up one valley. We climbed the mountains as we came along until the snow stopped us. I was just out to observe everything—the animal life, the forest, streams, rivers—and familiarize myself. Of course, it's areas nobody everybody gets to. I suppose I was in places nobody had ever been before and haven't been since. But I don't know about that. But that's about all you can say.

I remember we were about halfway along on the trip. We stopped at the south boundary ranger station, and I heard my ranger, Douglas—the ranger that was with me—I heard him on the telephone, and he said "Kill him? God almighty no." He said, "He's damn near killed me." In other words, they thought was that it would kill the Superintendent on this kind of riding. I was much younger. I was only 29 years old. I remember a couple days after that we were over in the Heart Lake country. There's a mountain over there, Mount Sheridan, and there's already quite a bit of snow. We'd been camping in the snow. He was terribly tired. I could see he was tired. But on the other hand, I thought I'd have a little fun. I said "Doug, I've always wanted to climb that mountain." I said, "Now, let's do it today, we've got time enough." I said, "Let's ride the horses as far as we can and hike the rest of the way."

"Oh," he said, "I'm not begging you for (unintelligible). I think you can do it." But he said, "Gosh, I can't do it. I can't climb that mountain." I didn't have any intention to do it, you know.

But every year I took trips of that kind. I knew every...You can't...Yellowstone is bigger than Rhode Island plus Delaware. It's over nearly 4,000 square miles, and you can't know an area that big and still carry on an administrative job. It takes years to do it. It took me really ten years to know every nook and corner of that park. Some of it I covered quite a lot, many times. But the bulk of the people just circulated in that 150-mile loop, touching the geysers and the Mammoth Hot Springs and the Grand Canyon. They didn't get out in the wild section of the park at all. Of course, some danger in connection with it. It's a grizzly bear country. We fortunately never had any encounters with any of them, but we certainly knew the park when we were through.

GB: Now just in order to finish your biographical sketch before we go on into things about the Boone and Crockett Club, could you tell us a little bit about the career you selected after you retired from the National Park Service?

HA: I hadn't selected any career. I didn't know how long I would be there. I pretty well burned my bridges when I became Director. I was pretty old then to start a practice of law. I was past 30, nearly 40. I was 30 when I became Director, I was 39 on the 6th of January and I became Director on the 12th. So I was pretty far along. I was going to have to be a government man of

15 Horace M. Albright Interview, OH 297-026, 027, 028a, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. some kind or other or else I'd have to get out into some phase of conservation, like forestry. Like my grandfather did in lumbering or something. Then along came this opportunity to head the United States Potash Company. In fact, they called me first in 1930 when they first opened the field. This discovery was the first of its kind in the Western Hemisphere. Potash mine was the first feasible mine that had been discovered. It was found by an oil company. They didn't know how to mine and didn't have any experience in mining. They'd got in touch with all the great mining companies like Kennecott and Anaconda and others, and they didn't want to touch it because the Germans and the French had the monopoly of potash in the world. They mined it in Alsace and over in Germany, and our businessmen would be afraid that we couldn't compete. They could deliver potash to the—

[End of Tape 1, Side B]

16 Horace M. Albright Interview, OH 297-026, 027, 028a, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. [Tape 2, Side A]

HA: First of all because I wanted to accomplish something. I didn't want to just go in there to this area and not accomplish. I had some objectives that I wanted to accomplish. I wanted a chance to do it. Then the next year we found ourselves involved in the Sesquicentennial of the Battle of Yorktown. We'd gotten some legislation through to buy the battlefield of Yorktown. They were cooperating with Mr. Rockefeller. He was just starting with restoration. I undertook to acquire Jamestown and Yorktown. We got some legislation through, so we were pretty well tied up on that. We also took George Washington's birthplace. George Washington wasn't born in Mount Vernon. He was born at Lakefield, about 90 miles from Washington. So we were getting into the historical field, which interested me very much, [telephone rings]

[Break in audio]

I just turned them down in '31-'32. But after the election in '32 they made me another offer, which was the best of all. They thought probably Roosevelt would fire me. It was a new administration. All the other ones had been Republican, you see. I wasn't worried much about that because I knew him, and I didn't think he would. On the other hand, there was a remote possibility. By that time, I had two children to educate, and I didn't want to be thrown out naturally. So I said I'd consider it, but I wouldn't promise. They couldn't count on me until after the 4th of March because I didn't want the Park Service to get into politics. I wanted to know who they would put in my place. I wanted to have something to say about that. So when the time came for the change of administration, Ickes came in. He was an old friend of Mather's in Chicago. Nobody had ever heard of him before. A friend of ours called me up, the form er Assistant Attorney General. He said, "Horace," he said, "did you ever hear of a man named [Harold L. ] Ickes or something like that?"

I said, "How do you spell it?" He spelled it. I said, "No, I've never heard of him."

"Well," he says, "liable to be your Secretary of the Interior."

I said, "Where's he from?"

He said, "He's from Chicago." He said, "He might have known Mather."

"W ell," I said, "we can easily find out. Mather's files are still here. We can go check." So I did, and I found out. Several letters, "Dear Harold" and "Dear Stephen." I wrote back. I said, "Yes, Mather knew him all right. But," I said, "We'll have to find something out about him. Why do you think he's going to be?"

"Well," he said, 'that's the rumor around here." Sure enough, a couple of days later, I think, he was nominated. When he showed up, the first thing he did was send for me, much to my surprise. He'd been on one of Howard Eaton's parties in Yellowstone and heard me around the

17 Horace M. Albright Interview, OH 297-026, 027, 028a, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. campfire and had taken an interest in the way that Yellowstone was being run. He was only riding through on horseback. You know, he had plenty of time. This was several years before. He asked me right there if I'd be willing to stay before the administration came in. I was settled before the new administration was in.

That caused me to delay still further, don't you know. I wanted to see what was going to happen so I postponed it some more. Finally they gave me an ultimatum. If I couldn't come by the first of September, why, all the bets were off. But I had some awfully good breaks after that. I'll give you a little booklet on that that I wrote.

I started the CCC [Civilian Conservation Corps]. I was one of four men that started the CCC. I was over at the White House every day for several weeks to get that underway. I went down to Hoover's camp on the Rapidan with the President one day, and coming back I talked him into turning over all of the historical areas—all the battlefields, Statue of Liberty, everything else— more than doubled the activities of the Park Service. He issued that order. After I had gotten a lot of those things done, I thought, well, I can leave now. So I did and went with the United States Potash Company. Which was interesting for me from another standpoint. It was utilization of a resource and doing it the modern, proper way with all the attention to the environment and all of the rest of it, which we did. We were very successful. I was with them for 23 years before we merged with the Old Pacific Coast Borax Company—20 Mule Team Borax. We finally merged.

I was 66 years old by that time before we got ready to retire. I didn't even retire then. I acted as a consultant for five more years. Then I was a director too, and I didn't actually quit until I was 72.

GB: How did you become interested in and later a member of the Boone and Crockett Club?

HA: I was almost the only active man on wildlife conservation in the department. I remember that I just found some old clippings not long ago where I was the only representative of the Interior Department at a wildlife conference at the old Waldorf Astoria in 1916. Now that's where I began to get acquainted with these people, and I fell in with George Bird Grinnell. Naturally knew him quite well because of his varied experiences in Yellowstone.Forest and Stream was more responsible more than any other agency in getting the law through to protect the Yellowstone. Yellowstone was unprotected from 1872 to 1894. You could go in there and kill game and break up the formations and everything. There was no way of protecting it. They finally found some buffalo poachers and made a lot out of—Forest it and Stream. Grinnell owned theForest and Stream. And Karl Frederick and Senator Walcott. I got acquainted with those early...Of course, I had just touch and go with President Roosevelt. I don't know whether he even remembered me or not, but I first met him when I was a cadet and he was at the University lecturing. I met him at a couple of receptions, and I'd shaken hands with him. I'd been an adoring advocate of his. I didn't vote for him in 1912 because I didn't think he could possibly be elected, [clock chimes] I voted for Woodrow Wilson. I'd heard his lecture out there.

18 Horace M. Albright Interview, OH 297-026, 027, 028a, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. We needed friends, don't you know, for our creating the Park Service, and we rounded them up wherever we could get them. We knew about the Boone and Crockett Club, and we had them helping us on that.

But at the same time, we were trying to get the Park Service created. They were terribly interested in Mount McKinley [Denali]. Now Mr. Mather and Secretary Lane and I, we had no knowledge of Mount McKinley. We'd never been in Alaska, but we did here—Mr. Mather and I did—go to a church in Georgetown to hear Archdeacon [Hudson] Stuck tell about the first climbing of Mount McKinley in 1912. He climbed Mount McKinley first with a man named Harry Karstens. Then, of course, we began legislation to create the Mount McKinley Park [Denali National Park and Preserve], partly based on Archdeacon Stuck's climb, but more on Charlie Sheldon's book,The Wilderness o f Denali.

The Boone and Crockett Club was completely behind that, and Charlie Sheldon just moved down to Washington. He had a place out in the woods. Out toward Chevy Chase was all woods in those days. It was an old place that he had. He was a great book fan. He had a marvelous collection of books. He moved later on to Georgetown and finally then ended up in what was known as the Octagon House up near the Highlands, not very far from, well inside, Washington.

Charlie was helping us on the National Park Service Act—he and other members of the Boone and Crockett. But I don't remember that Theodore Roosevelt or that any of the Roosevelts were working on it at the time. They used to have some dinners. I don't know if the records show that or not, but they used to have dinners in Washington and New York too. I don't know how many years that they did, but they had two or three years I know, particularly around the war. I remember distinctly being at—and this was before I belonged to the club...In other words, I was going to Club dinners several years before I was a member of the Club. I had gone as a guest. I (unintelligible) remember a Washington dinner where Kermit Roosevelt was the hero. He was just about to go over and join the British in Palestine. They called it Palestine then. [Edmund] Allenby, I think, was general at the time (unintelligible). There was one dinner—I don't remember whether it was in Washington or New York—where Theodore Roosevelt was present. Of course, Archie and Kermit and Theodore, Jr. I got acquainted with all of them around there, at one time or another. Mostly after I left the Park Service.

Theodore, Jr. was with Doubleday, Page and Company. They had offices right near Rockefeller Center where I was. Kermit was president of the Audubon Society, and I was the trustee of that. Kermit was always doing something else. He was never anybody to have a good meeting with the Audubon Society. He didn't want to have it out at the Audubon Society. It was way out on Columbus Circle. But my office was right across the street from the Grand Central then. So he'd say, "Oh, let's have the next meeting at Albright's office." So most of our Audubon meetings, while Kermit was president, were in my office.

I felt like coming over to the Boone and Crockett Club. I knew it from their conservation activities, mainly helping us with the Park Service. They were just one of hundreds, of course, in

19 Horace M. Albright Interview, OH 297-026, 027, 028a, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. that respect, but the creation of Mount McKinley was almost completely Boone and Crockett because we didn't know anything about it. We had to depend on them. In the winter of 1916- 17, Charlie Sheldon was up at the Capitol with me very day, particularly on Mondays which you call the calendar—if nobody objects the bill is passed. I remember the day it didn't pass. It had already passed the Senate. I went up to see what it's doing. I was sitting up in the gallery and up comes the Mount McKinley bill and nobody objected to it so it passed. Of course, I had actually thought Charlie was someplace in the gallery. It never occurred to me to call him up. But the next morning he came into my room. It would be a Tuesday morning, and said he was just going to the Capitol. "W ell," I said, "You don't need to go Charlie. The bill's passed." Well, he was shocked. He hadn't heard it. He was so mad at himself that he wasn't there when it passed. Above everything he wanted to be there when that bill passed, but he wasn't. Oh, he had been in the Senate when the bill had passed the Senate.

GB: You mentioned Harry Karstens. I had a note here that Harry Karstens had made his home in Alaska, assisted Charles Sheldon in the exploration of the northern slopes in 1906. You had received a letter from him at one point that said that Charles Sheldon had remarked that McKinley would make a fine park and game preserve at that time.

HA: How far back was that?

GB: 1906. Then he must have—

HA: (unintelligible)

GB: No, but Harry Karstens must have wrote to him years later.

HA: Karstens lived in Fairbanks, you know, but Karstens never belonged to the Club.

GB: No, no, but you mentioned him and I thought—

HA: He was our first Superintendent.

GB: Of M ount McKinley Park?

HA: Of course, we couldn't get any money. The Congress, in those days, didn't want to create national parks, but the pressures were so great they had to. But [Irving] Lenroot of Wisconsin was the fellow that was watching the budget. He hung onto those parks that were created around that time. An amendment providing that not more than 5,000 or 10,000 dollars—some place it was 5,000, sometimes it was 10,000—could be appropriated without a special act of Congress. In other words, you couldn't put more than 10,000 dollars in your budget. That was the situation with Mount McKinley. Well, we couldn't even start Mount McKinley for 10,000 dollars. We had nothing to start with. We had no place to live, no facilities of any kind. Well, the way it got started was there was a man named Godshaw (?). Is he in here?

20 Horace M. Albright Interview, OH 297-026, 027, 028a, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. GB: John Gottschalk.

HA: Godshaw. Of course, he's been dead for years.

GB: Oh no, I'm sorry. That's the wrong man.

HA: He was a wealthy man. Been up in Alaska. He financed the beginning of the administration of the park. He did, and we hired Karstens. I think Karstens' salary for a couple of years was...No, he wasn't a member that I remember. I thought he was.

GB: Well, getting back to your history with the B and C. What year did you join?

HA: What?

GB: What year did you join?

HA: 1922.

GB: Archie Roosevelt joined the same year as you did, right?

HA: Well, you'll find that there's nobody behind us in this book. We're the last of the Mohicans.

GB: I think you've explained this a little bit, but maybe you'd like to go on and explain a little further. What prompted you to take such an active in the Boone and Crockett Club affairs? You were already so busy with a lot of other things.

HA: Somebody has to do those things, and I was always right there in Rockefeller Center. I wasn't in it very deep until I became Conservation Chairman. I think I was vice-president, but that was later. When I became Conservation Chairman, DeForest Grant was (unintelligible), but he was spending much of the year out at Tucson. So he turned his office over to me. He had a very elaborate office on 101 Park Avenue, and he had a good secretary too. I could go down there and dictate to her. Almost everything I did for the Conservation Commission, I did down there in his office.

GB: You know one of the things you've been doing is mentioning quite a few members of the Club and rather than my go through a list of the members and try and have you say something about each one, as you come along and think of people that fit into certain areas, would you say a few words about them because we can't interview them now and if you knew anything about them—

HA: You bet you can. (unintelligible). Well you take [Henry L.] Stimson, who was Secretary of the War in the Roosevelt cabinet. Before that, he'd been Secretary of State for Hoover. He was

21 Horace M. Albright Interview, OH 297-026, 027, 028a, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. a prominent member of the Club. He'd been in Glacier Park—used to hunt in Glacier Park. He was much interested in Glacier Park and in our affairs. We could always count on going to Henry Stimson for support. He was very practical.

I remember the last time I saw him. He was in the Century Club. I belonged to the Century Club too. They had an affair for him down there at the Century Club, and he was in a wheelchair by that time. Oh, a big crowd came out. After we have these Century dinners and then the talk afterwards (unintelligible), speeches of all kinds, whoever was with him went back up again to get a cup of beer or something I suppose. They always have some refreshments afterwards. Left Mr. Stimson down in the hall, all fixed up ready to go home. But he was just down there alone in his wheelchair. Well, I came along down there. I had to catch a train to New Rochelle so I came down and got my coat and hat. I noticed Secretary Stimson over there. So I went over and had a long visit with him because this fellow didn't come back. I suppose he looked down and saw somebody was with him and just stayed upstairs and drank beer.

One of the otherthings that Stimson said...We got talking about Glacier Park—his early days in Glacier Park. He was the first man to climb Chief Mountain. He said, "Albright, you haven't seen my book. I call it My Vacations."

I said, "No, I haven't seen that."

He said, "I'll send you one tomorrow, autographed." So I have Stimson's book. It's privately printed (unintelligible). It's not in libraries.

Well, to pick them out...friends. Karl Frederick was a marvelous fellow. He used to come out to Yellowstone every year. Several of the members used to come out there. Madison Grant did. If they came out late in the season, I would put on a buffalo show for them. We had the biggest buffalo herd in the United States, and we'd round them up. We had several old stagecoaches— two-horse and four-horse vehicles—and we'd invite other people. We'd invite the tourists out too. We didn't try to confine it to just our influential people. We'd round these buffalo up, and we had a place where we could bring in some Crow Indians, maybe, along with our rangers and keep the herd quiet in this meadow area. Then we'd all get settled in this place where they couldn't run over us, and then we'd let them go. They'd go back to the range, and they'd stampede. It was a tremendous, thrilling kind of a thing you used to see on the plains.

I can remember when we had George Bird Grinnell up there. We put on a special show for him. The tears streamed down his cheeks to see a buffalo herd on the run again. It didn't hurt the buffalo any, and he got a big kick out of it. I did that for quite a number of these old Boone and Crockett Club people. Karl Frederick (unintelligible).

Karl Frederick used to come out. In those days, we tried to select about a dozen of our biggest, finest animals, and we'd bring them in headquarters. We had a corral back at headquarters where some of our tourists could see buffalo if they wanted to. He used to come out and help

22 Horace M. Albright Interview, OH 297-026, 027, 028a, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. bring the buffalo in. He'd go out and help pick out...Karl Frederick, he was afterwards president of the Club. After he died, we had a mountain up there near the buffalo range named for him. Named for Karl Frederick.

Another man was Senator Walcott, Fred Walcott. He was United States Senator from Connecticut. He was also president of the Club. He helped us a lot with the Jackson Hole. Created the Grand Teton Park. He was chairman of a special wildlife committee in the Senate, and he would happened to come out there and look the place over, which was something we wanted done very badly. Have the committee come out. We could count on Fred to do a good job on that.

There was a man whose name has slipped me at this second I used to like to talk with. He (unintelligible) fortune. Last I heard was 150,000 dollars, but I think it's more than that. Studying the meteor crater in Arizona. (Unintelligible) forecasts to try to locate a meteor. If he could look at the meteor, why, he (unintelligible). His name, for the moment, slips me.

I could go through this list of members that have passed away, and find many of them that I had experiences with.

GB: Excuse me.

[Break in audio]

Forrest Anderson: Mr. Albright, you did form a very personal feeling of Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt, and had an occasion to meet him starting back on your days at the University of California at Berkeley. You might bring us forward from that point.

HA: Well he was out there to give a series of lectures, and he also gave the Charter Day address at the University. It was the 23rd of March each year that we called Charter Day, and that's the anniversary of the day the governor signed the charter back in 1868, I think it was. He gave the Charter Day address out there. I met him at a couple of receptions, and I went to all his lectures. He had a series of lectures. These were after he came back from Africa. I didn't know him before he came back. He reviewed the cadets. I was an officer in the cadets so he met with all the officers. We had a chance to shake hands with him. He was a military man all the way through. He loved it. I remember talking to his son-in-law, Doctor Derby, one time, who was married to Ethel Roosevelt, his younger daughter. They told about how T.R., as he called him, was always so interested in m ilitary and proud of his Rough Riders and so forth. He said, "Maybe we can never see any reason"—(unintelligible)—"for the San Juan Hill, Battle of San Juan Hill," (unintelligible) "Didn't you do a lot more in that war than was necessary?"

"Well," he [Roosevelt] said, "It's the only war we had. We had to make the most of it."

23 Horace M. Albright Interview, OH 297-026, 027, 028a, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. GB: You know, one thing I'd like to interject here. It's really quite odd because he really almost admired the art of war, but yet during his administration as president, there never was a war and he won the Nobel Peace Prize, didn't he?

HA: Yes, for settling the Russian-Japanese War. Yes, yes, he did. He had them up to Sagamore Hill. He did most of his negotiating with them at Sagamore Hill. I admired him as a Rough Rider. I admired him as president. I admired his interests as a conservationist; although, there's been question as to how much of a conservationist he was. Whether he was at heart at a conservationist or whether he was primarily a hunter who was a conservationist in order to protect game and want to keep game going. Wildlife was his principal feature. Of course, he was a naturalist too, but on the other hand, he did one thing that conservationists talk about with regret. That is, he failed to support John Muir on the Hetch Hetchy. He encourage it...His support or his failure to help to save Hetch Hetchy resulted in its loss. That's the most colossal loss that the parks have ever suffered, and they'll never suffer another equal to it.

FA: Well, was there ever any explanation on his failure to support?

HA: Well, Pinchot defected first. Now, Pinchot was an advisor. Pinchot was involved in forestry before he was, and Pinchot was over the Department of Agriculture. When they decided to go ahead and create a lot more forests, he acted on Pinchot's advice. When he had the Conservation Conference of 1908—the so called White House Conference—it was a conference of, really, of economists and businessmen. Very little attention was given to conservation as we know it today. Pinchot was there and had something to say, and they had J. Horace McFarland, but he was interested in saving Niagara Falls. About as much of it (unintelligible) been saved already as could be saved. Then there was George Frederick Cormens, President of the American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society. But otherwise, it was not a conservation organization. His failure to save Hetch Hetchy raised questions as to whether he was a capitalist more than a real conservationist

But I think that he did a lot of other things that entitled him to be called a real conservationist. For instance he signed the Lacey Act [Antiquities Act] of June 8, 1906, under which national monuments are created. Now that's the law that Carter just used to save the Alaska. Congress failed to act. Now, he just left them all to the national monuments, and there just the same as national parks as far as the administration's concerned. So he signed that. Crater Lake National Park came in under his administration. Mesa Verde. I think one or two others were created in his time.

[End of Tape 2, Side A]

24 Horace M. Albright Interview, OH 297-026, 027, 028a, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. [Tape 2, Side B]

HA: I have a fine collection of his books. His autobiography is very interesting. He's got a lot of conservation in it. He did one thing that I was never able to...Well, I understand, but I wish he hadn't done it. Carter is trying to undo it today. Every secretary is trying to undo it but hasn't been able to. He moved the Forest...the Department of the Interior under the Department of Agriculture, when he created the Forest Service in 1905. He moved the forests over to the Department of Agriculture. Taking them away from where all the rest of the land is—all the interior part. Well, of course, why he did it is because he could get more money that way. In those days the Appropriations Committee did not make appropriations for all the departments. Several of the departments, including the Department of Agriculture, made...the legislative committees made appropriations too, and so by creating the Forest Service in the Department of Agriculture, they get more money that way. Didn't have to go through the Appropriations Committee. That's one reason.

Then another reason been talked about a lot, but I don't have any idea whether it's right or not. I'm offering no opinion. That is, he was very fond of Pinchot. He followed Pinchot's advice. He had kept the forests in the Interior Department, but he would have had to move Pinchot over there. He probably would have had to make him Secretary of the Interior. For some reason or another didn't want Pinchot to be Secretary of the Interior. That's another one of the reasons, whether that's valid or not, I don't know.

He first created an enormous number of forests, but an enormous number created before him, started with Harrison's term. Harrison created a lot of national forests. Cleveland did. McKinley did. He just (unintelligible) everything. They passed a law—Congress passed a law—that he should not create no more national monument, nor national forest should be created, by proclamation. They already had (unintelligible). So before he signed the bill prohibiting making any more, he got Pinchot over there, they got out of the maps. They just threw everything in (unintelligible) and national. They couldn't put the maps on the table. They had it on the floor. They got down on the floor and figured out these forests. They got it up around 180 million acres. Then he signed the bill prohibiting (unintelligible) do it anymore.

FA: While he was president, Pinchot was quite influential in shaping Roosevelt's opinions—

HA: Yes, I think he was. I think he probably was the one who influenced him on Hetch Hetchy. Because in 1903, Roosevelt came out to Yellowstone with John Burroughs, and they had a fine experience out there. They were out there at a time when they could watch the migration of the animals from the winter range to the summer range. The birth of the calves and the cubs of the bears and so forth. A great sight to be out there in the spring in Yellowstone. He was out there with John Burroughs. He then went over California and went out on camping trips with John Muir. Why he defected in San Francisco and let Hetch Hetchy go down the drain must, I think, be attributed to Pinchot.

25 Horace M. Albright Interview, OH 297-026, 027, 028a, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. Pinchot was an industrial conservationist. He wasn't the kind of a conservationist that I am. I don't want anything used in there. He...the forests were created to be handled economically. They were to be cut. Forests were to be cut. Mines were to be used and dug carefully. Resources were to be utilized.

GB: At this point, I'd like to throw a question in here. Could you explain the difference—and these terms are used a lot in those days, not so much so anymore—can you explain the difference between a utilitarian and an aesthetic conservationist and give some examples as far as people?

HA: I think those are the two examples...Between Pinchot and Mather. Pinchot expected the forests to be selectively cut. They were to be cleared of all the brush and so forth to be cleared up . They were to fight forest fires and protect them. Pinchot would open mines. You could even homestead back to June 11,1970—authorized homesteads in the forests. That was repealed afterwards, but you could do lots of things in forests. On the other hand, he didn't allow billboards. They had reserved for research, reserved areas for recreation. They called it multiple use. That's what he was.

Now, Mather, on the other hand, when he was representing the department then, they don't any use except for people to come in and see things and enjoy them. Interpret them. Park rangers interpret features to the people. Also allow recreation, but only for a limited time. Don't kill anything. You can still hunt in forests. That's all right. No need to make the parks as the forests, (unintelligible) 180 million acres. But that's the difference, and I think it's a very distinct difference. That (unintelligible) very much so if you read his 1908 conference, White House Conference.

GB: Just one more follow-up question on that. In the material that I've read in your biography and several other biographies from that time, there are many very forceful leaders in those days, and they had vastly differing opinions sometimes and vastly different methods. Could you explain, since you knew them intimately, what their philosophies and goals were and how they kind of eventually got together on various things? How they learned to work together, I guess, is what I'm asking, (laughs)

HS: I don't know just how to answer that question. I would say that the conservationists who were...There's industry and development, that sort of thing, where we want to make a profit. Wanted to make resources yield a profit whereas the archetypal of conservationist didn't (unintelligible) that. They just want to preserve them, keep them for future generations. Opening them up just enough so people can get a look. For instance, Yellowstone National Park was about, possibly, not over three or five percent of the (unintelligible). But almost exactly the same as it was in 1872. But there used to be national forests around Yellowstone, all of them which were developed in one way or another. There were ranches in there, raising cattle and sheep. Mining going on. At the same time, the forests were trying best to preserve the basic resource. They weren't allowing them to be destroyed. Still haven't. Of course, if you take the

26 Horace M. Albright Interview, OH 297-026, 027, 028a, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. minerals out, you can't get them back, but what you're grazing, you can keep on that year after year if it's well handled, (unintelligible) Park Service (unintelligible).

FA: Any further thoughts on Roosevelt's two trips, the one out there to Yellowstone with Burroughs or on to Yosemite with Muir? Did they further shape some of those (unintelligible).

HA: He undoubtedly made trips in other areas. There was one famous one to the Grand Canyon. It's written up in Outdoors with a (unintelligible)...What's the name of that book of his?

GB: Outdoor Pastimes of the President [Outdoor Pastimes of an American], or Hunter something like that. Outdoor Pastimes of the President had —

HA: No, this was a book...Well, what happened was that he went over to (unintelligible) on the north rim of the Grand Canyon. He had to come to the south rim first. He had a contract with a Mormon outfitter to meet him down at the river at a certain hour on a certain day. He had two boys with him, Nicholas Roosevelt, who was the son of his cousin—now lives up in Big Sur—and Archie. They went out there and went down to the river. No outfit. Waited and waited and waited and waited and nothing happened. It was 24 miles up the north rim they still had to go that day. There was a wire rope across the canyon where they could...with a box on it—box (unintelligible). Where you could get in the box and pull yourself across. That's before we had a bridge. Bridge was built by the Park Service. Finally, a lone cattle man came down and got off his horse and got in the box and came across. Astonished to find himself meeting the form er President of the United States, who was stuck on this south rim. So he generously said, "Well, you can have my horse and ride up (unintelligible) south rim, and I'll get back some way. They pulled themselves—Roosevelt and the two boys—pulled themselves across the river. He got in the box, and the boys had to walk. He got on the horse and went up to the rim. There was his outfit already, but they were using last year's calendar. That's why they weren't down. Made him so mad that he dismissed them. He went over and camped with Uncle Jimmy Owen [James T. Owen, "Cougar Killer of the Kaibab"], who was the famous cougar killer.

Well, there's where he, again you could say that he wasn't a conservationist, because he killed cougars right and left. That's what he went out there for. Plus, last thing in the world you should have done is...If you know the Kaibab problem there. What happened, deer increased to the point that they (unintelligible) starving to death. Hundred thousand of them. As a matter of fact, I counted 1,850 deer on afternoon before they started hunting. There was a big fight as to whether you should start hunting. Finally, various committees went out and (unintelligible) opened it up to hunting. It had been closed for years, but in wiping out the predators, was what created that situation with the—

That's one other trip...connected to a national park. It's offhand, but I don't think of another one. (unintelligible). Roosevelt was in Yellowstone once before, before the 1923...when he was a Civil Service Commissioner on a hunting trip. He came out to Cody [Wyoming], and went up across the thoroughfare, I think it was, and he got caught in a big storm. The only way he could

27 Horace M. Albright Interview, OH 297-026, 027, 028a, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. get out of there was take the (unintelligible) through Yellowstone and get a train. Catch, I think it was, a freight train (unintelligible). But that must have been about ten years before he was back there as president.

FA: You say there's a lot of about opening the Kaibab, north rim, because of...it had been closed for many years. When you got into the hunting area, where this all a controversial area with the Park Service?

HA: Everybody, even the Park Service, knew we should have been hunting. Of course, there's not much in the north rim of the park.

FA: No, just that little front edge.

HA: Just that little strip there. But there were too many deer. When they finally opened it up, cut it down to proportion and keep it that way.

FA: I was wondering, the Park Service, of course, (unintelligible) parks, there's no hunting. Generally, there has been in the present era hunting in national forests. Did the Park Service people or did you yourself have any particular views one way or the other on hunting? You didn't permit it in the parks property so, but beyond all that—

HA: No, but I don't think that any of us...I don't think we were ever opposed to hunting in the sense that you have to keep these animals in good health—herds in good health and so forth. You know how it was years ago when they had, opened up Pennsylvania and New York had to kill female deer. Got too many deer and they finally opened up for females. Somebody suggested if we can't get this population control in the world, we're going to have to start killing women.

FA: Going back to Teddy Roosevelt for a moment, did you ever happened to discuss with him or hear talked, in or out of his presence, his views of the founding of the Club or what his views were on the direction the Club should take?

HA: No, I heard the family talk about it. (unintelligible). It wasn't his alone. A group of young hunters who could afford to make long trips, and it was limited to 100. He didn't come...The associates weren't admitted until he was president, I think. I think that came along with his interest in conservation. That's another thing you've got to say about him, as a conservationist, he was in favor of having a group in the Club who did that, or were strictly conservationists. But there were quite a number of (unintelligible). I don't know just when that started, but I think it was along about when he was president about 1904. The main club was (unintelligible) a hunting club at the beginning of 1887.

GB: That's interesting. I'll look it up when the associate members started —

28 Horace M. Albright Interview, OH 297-026, 027, 028a, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. HA: (unintelligible).

FA: Well, that was certainly a definite direction in conservation orientation for the Club then, wasn't it?

HA: Yes, oh yes. I was surprised that there were small numbers in the Club now. Down considerably, isn't it?

FA: Yes, there've been some new members proposed here over the past year or so.

HA: I noticed that three were elected to (unintelligible). But I should think that...This you said about all organizations doesn't apply to the Boone and Crockett Club, it applies to a bunch of others. We had very few organizations in Roosevelt's time, almost none. There was an organization in New York called, I think, the Hunters Fraternity, which preceded all these organizations. There's the old Campfire Club of America. That's (unintelligible) hunting club; although, they've got a conservation committee. I was invited to always be there, and I'm an honorary member of the Club. But I used to attend the conservation meetings. Used to meet the (unintelligible) once in a while. I still get the minutes. They send them out.

Then they started these organizations financed mainly by the gun people, American...Was it the American Wildlife Society? (unintelligible) was head of it. Then it went into this management institute—Wildlife Management Institute [WMI]. Poole is the head of it now.

FA: Yes, Dan Poole.

HA: That's still there. That's still a hunter's organization. On the other hand, the Wildlife Federation, which is much bigger and gets out two magazines, is just 100 percent against hunting.

Six of us were appointed to a conservation committee (unintelligible). We used to meet over here, and the head of the Wildlife Federation and Gabrielson, when he was head of the Wildlife Institute (unintelligible) and members. I wasn't a member (unintelligible) going into the Park Service and a former president of the Sierra Club (unintelligible). They showed us a new picture one day that hadn't been release yet. It was a wonderful picture, wonderful scene of ducks and geese. One place they shot a lot of them. They shot into a (unintelligible) of geese. Right there there was a ruckus between Gabrielson and (unintelligible). The geese (unintelligible). But Kimball of the Wildlife Federation was against it. He said, "It spoils the picture for (unintelligible)." I was a kind of (unintelligible). It didn't spoil it for me because all these years we'd been saying Yellowstone was a great reservoir for wildlife. The elk would go out, moose would go out, even bears. I remember we had one old grizzly—Scarface, we called him — (unintelligible). Everybody loved old Scarface, you know, (unintelligible) we thought he'd always go live in the same park. One year he went down south and got shot. (Unintelligible). Of course, they're very careful not to let buffalo go out because they're supposed to have brucellosis.

29 Horace M. Albright Interview, OH 297-026, 027, 028a, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. FA: Yes, carry into the cattle country.

HA: Unwritten agreement with all the cattlemen around the country not allow buffalo to get out.

GB: How do they keep them in?

HA: What's that?

GB: How do they keep them in?

HA: They've got them in the middle of the park. Too big for them to move very far.

FA: In the early days of the Club, your membership in it, was there a lot of awareness of conservation then through your influence and that of others that came in as associate members?

HA: Oh, I think that was pretty well developed before we came in. I think I was just in there as Superintendent of Yellowstone. I was supposed to be able to get up and report on what's the status of Yellowstone and all its wildlife. I wasn't active in the Club until I was out of the Park Service and in New York. Then I was six or eight years head of the Conservation Committee. The biggest thing we did when I was head of the Conservation Committee was to participate in getting that Alaska wildlife preserve created that (unintelligible) corner of Alaska. A very big one. That's where the (unintelligible) place for caribou. It's now under the controversy because they want to drill it for oil. (unintelligible) right next to the (unintelligible) fields. Also, they talked about putting in a pipeline across there.

FA: Canadian pipeline.

HA: Never been able to get Canada to agree to create a similar preserve on its side. It was understood the reason they worked out—

FA: That they would have a matching reserve?

HA: That they would have a matching reserve, and they never (unintelligible). They never done it.

FA: That's strange because at one tim e they did put aside a lot of land, didn't they, in Canada?

HA: Yes. Well, Canada's been a good wildlife preserve. They've (unintelligible) worked for we were. They've got some awfully big areas (unintelligible) buffalo—17, 500 square miles or something like that. Big area.

30 Horace M. Albright Interview, OH 297-026, 027, 028a, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. GB: I'd like to ask you about something a little change of topic, but I'm getting into questions about things that the Club was involved in that you may have also known about. In 1918, the Boone and Crockett joined a lot of other national organizations in forming what was called a Joint Committee for the Protection of Wildlife in Wartime. You were involved in this. Could you explain what the purpose of the committee was?

HA: Of course, there were all kinds of, all sorts of things came up during wartime. For instance, there was a very strong movement to kill the elk in Yellowstone Park because we needed the food for soldiers. There were efforts at every turn to put the cattle and sheep in the parks. Finally, we had to go to Hoover, (unintelligible) administrator, to get him to issue a statement that the time had not come that we were so short of food that we would touch any of our wildlife. He issued that kind of a statement.

I think that organization was put together temporarily and informally and very loosely to watch (unintelligible). I don't think it actually did anything.

GB: Some of the people that were involved in this organization with you were George Bird Grinnell and William Hornaday and T. Gilbert Pearson. Now, I'm going to run these names off. The only reason why I want to do that is I thought maybe you could say a few things about some of them like you did earlier. You've already mentioned things about Frederic Walcott and Charles Sheldon. There was George Shiras III. These were some of the people that...yes.

HA: Sure, well, he was a form er congressman.

GB: Yes, I was just wondering if you could say a few things about these—

HA: He was the fellow that did the research on moose—the moose of the Wyoming- Yellowstone country. It was called the Shiras moose. He was a member of Congress, very, very active in wildlife. One of the very first congressman to get into a (unintelligible).

Now, George Bird Grinnell, of course, you know all about him. He was a reporter in the early days. As a matter of fact, he was a reporter with Custer [George Armstrong Custer]. He didn't go on in with Custer, he went back to send some messages. That's why he wasn't riding with Custer that fatal day. Then he got Forest and Stream, and he promoted conservation for years. The biggest thing was promoting the law, legislation that gave Yellowstone protection completely. It's still law that (unintelligible). Of course, he was president of the Campfire Club of America (unintelligible). He also wrote many books. He always used to come out and stay with me (unintelligible) in Stanford, Connecticut. I used to go up and stay with him (unintelligible). He (unintelligible) with the man who built the zoo.

T. Gilbert Pearson, he was a member of the Club. He was the real Audubon man. (unintelligible) was the man who gets more credit for establishing it, and I think he did (unintelligible) charter

31 Horace M. Albright Interview, OH 297-026, 027, 028a, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. or something. But Gilbert Pearson (unintelligible). Wonderful personality, big storyteller, very active. He was on the Conservation Committee of the Campfire Club. I remember he was very active in this. He was an advisor on the Boundary Commission for Yellowstone in 1899. Some other place I was with him. He was a marvelous storyteller, (laughs) He had headquarters in North Carolina before he came to New York. He worked out of there. He had more to do with influencing the states, in particular the southern states, with starting saving birds. He was mixed up in this plumage stuff, (unintelligible) plumage. He was very deep in that. He was a wonderful storyteller.

He told me one night he got finished at his work at the Capitol in Raleigh, and he had to hurry to the station. It was the horse and buggy days, and he hired a man out there with wagon or cart or buckboard or something, buggy, to drive him to the station. He got in and told the fellow to go to the station. Yes, yes, yes. (unintelligible) the horse up. Went down a little ways then all of a sudden Pearson stopped him and said, "I forgot to tell you, I want to stop at the haberdashery on your way down to the station."

"Yes, yes boss." Got the horse going, then all of a sudden he stopped. He said, "Boss, where did you say we need to stop."

He says, "Stop at the haberdasher."

"Oh yes, I knew...Yes, yes." Then, get up, get up [to the horse]. W ent a little further down then he stopped again. Pearson was getting worried about if he was going to catch the train. He said, "What are you stopping now for?"

He said, "Boss, where did you tell me to stop on the way down to the station?"

"I told you to stop at the haberdashery!"

"Get up, get up." (unintelligible) the horses harder than ever. Then he stopped again quick. He said, "Boss, what is it you want? What is it you want? Women or food," he says, "or something like that?"

That's the kind of a story he told. He was a great fellow to repeat these...Who was that poet out there (unintelligible) Indiana? Who was the man who used to tell those stories? He could mimic. He was a tremendous fellow. He built up the Audubon Society, and he built up the foundation. I was the trustee of it back then until I left the Park Service. One day a man named Baker decided that he wanted to be head of the Audubon, and he nudged Pearson out. At least, he nudged him to one side and he got him kicked clear out. I forget what job he got. Well, we protested about that, and then Baker began using endowment funds—

[End of Tape 2, Side B]

32 Horace M. Albright Interview, OH 297-026, 027, 028a, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. [Tape 3, Side A]

HA: I meant to say using money from the endowment was like getting in the habit of creating deficits like they were doing in Washington at the time. We protested that—two or three of us did—and we got thrown off the board, (laughs) At least when it came up for reelection, we were not reelected. That was the end of my trusteeship of the Audubon Society. Well, that's all there was on that subject

I just think Gilbert Pearson is one of these fellows that needs more attention than he gets. Another one that is in here—he's a great fellow—you know him as Dick Poe. He's a member. He is, in some respects, the greatest conservationist that there is when it comes to raising money. He's been very successful and a very fine man. But like the rest of us, he's getting old now too, but he's still active. He was in the Audubon Society and had a great deal to do with raising money to buy sanctuaries. He went over to the American Museum of Natural History, and it was claimed that because he supported the fight against dams in Echo Park, Dinosaur [National Monument, that they put him out over there. But he never lost his interest and still works for the Audubon Society; although, he's not connected with it.

Well, you go ahead with whatever—

[Break in audio]

GB: Can you relate the story of how you campaigned to save the elk herd in Yellowstone Park around 1919 while you were Superintendent there, and do you remember any of the Boone and Crockett Club members that helped? You had made the remark—

HA: We had a very dry summer with many forest fires. The forage for elk was pretty badly burned up. So when they came down, started down in the fall, for the winter range we started a heavy snow. That was about the heaviest winters they ever had. Of course, the elk ran out of the park and were killed by the hunters. We were afraid we wouldn't even have a nucleus of a herd so we put in an appeal to Congress and to the societies, and there were several Boone and Crockett people came forward. Madison Grant was one, and Gilbert Pearson and Fred Walcott, who afterward became a United States Senator from Connecticut.

GB: Was this to raise money?

HA: I don't recall...There were several of them did. Then Mr. Greg (?), who built cars for orchards and that sort of thing—small cars, mine cars and so fo rth —he lived over in Englewood, New Jersey. He came forward with about 10,000 dollars, which was enough for us to get by with what Congress gave us. So we didn't carry the solicitation too far with individuals. But we did have some help from Boone and Crockett people.

33 Horace M. Albright Interview, OH 297-026, 027, 028a, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. GB: Could you tell about the crisis which took place also in 1919 which almost allowed irrigation works to be built in Yellowstone and how a valuable precedent was established for preventing the parks from encroachment in this way in the future? I've also researched that the Boone and Crockett Club supported you very heavily in this.

HA: That was a matter of legislation. Irrigation interests in Idaho wanted to build a dam in the southwestern corner of Yellowstone Park. It was a sort of Hetch Hetchy all over again, wanting to get permanent rights in a national park for a reservoir so to capture and use the water. Of course, we protested that very vigorously, but the pressures were great and so we had to appeal to our friends. So we appealed to Boone and Crockett members, as we did many others. I can't remember just who took part in it. Did we have a resolution of the Club? Did the Club itself come out—

GB: I don't know.

HA: I think we tried for a resolution of the Club. We tried to get every organization we could find to support us in it. We had a lot of trouble because the Secretary of the Interior at the time seemed to be favorable to it so we were in rather a difficult situation. He resigned just at the tim e when it looked as though Mr. Mather and I would have to resign because we couldn't go ahead with it. We couldn't allow this to happen. We were going to get out and campaign ourselves against it outside the government. We couldn't campaign inside with our Secretary leaning the way he did. So when he resigned the new Secretary, John Barton Payne, was all on our side so he went up to the Capitol and with his aid we stopped it. We had these associations working for us, but I can't tell you any of the individuals. Undoubtedly, Charlie Sheldon was right there on the job because he never left Washington. You don't have to have a lot of correspondence when you're dealing with a man like Charlie Sheldon. All you have to do is call him on the telephone or he drops in every few days, don't you see, and leave it up to him. I think whatever pressure we brought on the Boone and Crockett Club we did through Charlie Sheldon. We didn't go up to New York and solicit people individually. We just left it to Charlie to do it.

GB: Do you remember how the Boone and Crockett Club helped with the proposed extension of Yellowstone to include the Tetons and the headwaters of the Yellowstone?

HA: Well, that's another case where...I don't remember whether they passed a resolution or not, but individuals wrote about it. Of course, Laurance Rockefeller's father spent nearly a million and a half dollars buying land for the park, and naturally he was active in it. But Harold Anthony was from the American Museum of Natural History. He probably represented both of them, probably both the Boone and Crockett Club and the American Museum. Mr. Carpenter—I don't know just what part he took, whether he wrote or whether he went down there. He might have. Some of them went down to Washington. The things moving so fast that under those circumstances you can't keep track of them.

34 Horace M. Albright Interview, OH 297-026, 027, 028a, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. GB: Around 1919 again, Madison Grant took Stephen Mather on a tour of the surviving groves of sequoias. Out of this tour came the formation of the Save the Redwoods League, and it was founded by Madison Grant, Stephen Mather, Henry Fairfield Osborn, William Kent, and John [Campbell] Merriam, and tw o Californians—Judge P.A. Cutler (?) and A.E. Koenig (?).

HA: Yes, that was in 1918.

GB: Yes. Can you explain how the Boone and Crockett Club was associated and also tell us a little bit about some of the people that were involved in the Redwoods League?

HA: The movement to save the Coast redwoods, and these are the Coast redwoods, not the sequoias, not the big trees. In 1917, three men organized a group to go up there. That was Henry Fairfield Osborn, Madison Grant, and John C. Merriam. Now, I happened to be there at the time. That group got together, and they met at the Bohemian Grove. Must have been July 1917.

I couldn't go because I had an appointment over in southern Utah that I had to keep. So they went up, and they came back with the first report on the need for doing something about the redwoods in the north there—the northwest part of the state. Madison Grant was, I think, was the most active of the three, but Mr. Mather soon got into it. Mr. Kent, who was a former Congressmen, he's the one who gave Muir Woods to the government, and Cutler and others. They formed the association in 1918, and shortly after that they employed Mr. Drury [Newton B. Drury] to be the secretary. We celebrated the 50th anniversary of that event in 1968. I was at that celebration up in the redwood country. So you could say, certainly, that the Boone and Crockett Club had a hand in forming the Save the Redwoods League. It certainly did.

Of course, Madison Grant was a very vigorous fellow. He had wealth, and he worked at any project that he had. He had the time to do it. But unfortunately he developed quite the arthritis. In fact, by the time I got up to New York early 1930s, it was practically impossible for him to do anything. He practically like a dead man. Almost had to carry him in and out of the house almost like he was on a slab. I used to go up and take rides with him so I could talk with him. Slip him in the back of the automobile, and I'd get up with the driver and I could turn around and talk to him. It was a terrible, pitiful case. I think he was an anthropologist. I'm sure he wrote a book or two on anthropology.

His brother DeForest Grant continued in good health until the 1950s when he died. He was also active in the Club. I think he was an honorary member, but Madison Grant was President of the Club. Madison Grant had a Lincoln automobile specially equipped to keep wind off of him. He wanted this open car though, but he had windshield so it was movable so you could sit back and keep wind off him. But finally they told him he couldn't keep...he couldn't ride in an open car anymore. He'd have to be closed in so that cold air couldn't get at him. He sold the car to me for a very moderate sum because we liked to use open cars for showing people around

35 Horace M. Albright Interview, OH 297-026, 027, 028a, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. Yellowstone. Last I heard of Madison Grant's car was still in Yellowstone Park. But it's long since gone. I think it was a Lincoln. Very good car.

FA: Madison was active in a number of other Club activities prior to and subsequent to the Yellowstone and the redwood event too.

HA: Well, he stayed with the redwoods as long as he was able. These things that he had his hand in, he didn't let go of even though he was practically useless...well, his limbs worked. He couldn't do anything. He could talk, but that's about all. Terribly pitiful case. These Grants were vigorous fellows. They had opinions, and they weren't afraid to speak them. They spoke positively and took strong positions. They were a great loss when they passed off the scene.

GB: What happened to the proposal which was supported by the Boone and Crockett Club to enlarge the Sequoia Park and rename it Roosevelt National Park?

HA: That didn't go through. There was too much opposition from cattle and sheep men and sportsmen and so forth. That didn't go through. It did go through later on but not as the Roosevelt—

GB: I just thought maybe you'd know because it shows—in the Boone and Crockett Club minutes—it shows that this was proposed and then it disappeared. I thought maybe you might know whatever happened.

HA: Wee worked awful hard at it, but the opposition was too great. This was a very big project. It not only extended Sequoia Park to the summit of the Sierra and took in M ount W hitney and vast area of forest and mountain land but also took in the King's Canyon. In 1926, we got through with the Sequoia extension, but we didn't get the King's till 1940. In 1940, the final winning of that battle was done by Secretary Ickes [Harold L. Ickes]. The opposition continued, and he wasn't able to do anything about it anymore than the rest of us. But he was the Public Works Administrator. He had vast sums of money in his hands to develop public works so he went out and he took me with him, and he got all these people together down around Fresno that wanted the Pine Flat Dam but didn't want the park. So he told them, one thing or the other. If they'd agree on having a park and giving him the park, why, he would consider the Pine Flat Dam. It was just that simple. In other words, no park, no dam. So that's the way he got King's Canyon Park.

The efforts made in 1922...See, what happened was we were hard put to find a way to get that bill through, but there was great excitement when Theodore Roosevelt died January 6,1919, which was my birthday. The day I was 29 years old, he died. All kinds of proposals were put up, just like they were when Kennedy was shot. They just named everything. So Mr. Mather just got the idea camping in the sequoias, you make good statements about the big trees, about Muir, why not just add his name to it and we can get it. So all Roosevelt's friends supported us, but the cattle and sheep men, miners, sportsmen, all those didn't want a park in there defeated

36 Horace M. Albright Interview, OH 297-026, 027, 028a, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. forthwith. Just didn't last. Four years later, he did get the Sequoia part of it. Got another congressman and got a different group of people.

GB: Now on another topic, and this is jumping quite a few years, would you explain how you became involved in the Midcentury Conference on Resources for the Future that was held at the Shoreham Hotel, and what was its purpose and who was involved?

HA: I think I could find you a little book on that because it celebrated its 25th anniversary a couple of years ago. Well, the Ford Foundation was being reorganized, and the man that was handling it for Henry Ford II was a man by the name of Rowan Gaither—R-o-w-a-n G-a-i-t-h-e-r. Rowan Gaither. I don't think he belonged to the Club. All sorts of proposals were being put up to the Ford Foundation, most of them good but some of them not so good. Some of us conservationists there in New York thought, well why shouldn't we get some of this Ford money. Why shouldn't we get the Ford Foundation interested in conservation? So we had some meetings, and four of us were delegated to go out. The Ford Foundation was then stationed in Pasadena. I was selected as the leader. Ed Condon, who was Vice President of the Sears Roebuck and President of the Friends of the Land, which was an organization in the Midwest Another man was Mr. Davis—Rivers Davis [Waters Davis?]—who was President of the Soil Conservation Districts, and they were mostly in the South, and Fairfield Osborn from New York. We went out there to see if we interest...There were two members out of the five. There were five members on the board that was handling the reorganized Ford Foundation. Chester Davis had been president of the Federal Reserve Bank in St Louis. I had known him in Montana when I was at Yellowstone Park. He ran a little agricultural newspaper up there. So Rowan Gaither was from University of California, so two out of the five I knew. I suppose that's the reason why they selected me to lead this group.

We went out and made a presentation to them—the whole board. Paul Hocklin (?) was chairman at the time, and we didn't succeed at first. We were asked to present some more information, more data, which we did. Then later in the year, about six months later, I was out here, and I called up Chester Davis to see where we were. He says, "Well come on out here." He says...Bob Hutchins was another one. Robert Hutchins, who just recently died. He was a former president of the University of Chicago. He says, "He's here, and we might get him on our side. If we do, we've got three out of the five." So I went out to the Huntington Hotel, and we had lunch and Hutchins came over to our side. So then they said they would go on. Well Bill Pailey, head of Columbia Broadcasting Company [Columbia Broadcasting System], he was head of a commission that was known as the President's Materials Commission. After the war, they did a survey of all the materials we have: grain and coal and oil and everything else. Did a survey of the whole region, and he was very proud of that report to the President. It was a very good job done. But he was afraid that would be dropped. But an organization that was growing, continuing, might like to keep that going, so he joined us. (unintelligible) go on with this.

But in the meantime, we decided to have another conference like Roosevelt had in 1908. This was to be the Midcentury White House Conference, and I wrote to both candidates—both

37 Horace M. Albright Interview, OH 297-026, 027, 028a, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. President Eisenhower and Mr. Stevenson—and they applauded the idea. So the first thing they did was put up 150,000 dollars for us to carry on that conference. Then they did support us in a more permanent move. We met in the Ford Foundation offices—Mr. Pailey and his group and my group—and we were just up to the point where we'd organized. Mr. Pailey had incorporated Resources for the Future, but he hadn't done anything with it. Didn't have any officers, just had dummy directors. He had it there to use, and he offered it. He offered his corporation, which he had chartered. Well, I got called on the telephone. We were having some labor troubles down in New Mexico at our mines. I was on the phone about an hour. When I came back, I found I was elected president of this organization, which taught me a lesson. If you're organizing something, don't ever go away because you're liable to be elected president while you're gone.

Anyway, I undertook it; although, I had far more work than I should've done. As soon as we could get an able permanent president, we got him—Dr. Gustafson (?) from the University of Nebraska—and I became chairman. I was chairman about eight years. We're still going. That organization's still going. It's done a wonderful lot of work. But only because (unintelligible). I didn't have anything to do with the work that they did afterwards, or I wasn't competent to do then. We had a very capable staff, researchers, got a fine shelf of books.

On the other hand, lots of things happened to me out of it, because of the way it worked. For instance, the University of California alumni promptly elected me the Alumnus of the Year, which was quite a little tag to have. Around Washington, I got quite a lot of prestige out of it, which I didn't deserve because I wasn't that important.

Then we went ahead with the big meeting. Then the White House staff talked the President out of allowing the use of the word White House after we had gotten everything but the stationery printed. I had to go down there to the White House and see what we could do about it, but Adams (?), who afterwards got into trouble, he was the man who wouldn't allow it. So we called it the Midcentury Conference, and we had about 1,500 people contributing to it. It had a big book about four-inches thick that is still referred to a (unintelligible). President Eisenhower carried out his promise to open the conference, made a speech, before he actually took the presidency and after he was elected. We had to have a chairman for this conference so we elected Professor Hannah of Michigan State University. Mr. Hannah and I had to go see the President-elect to see how far we could go. He gave his fullest support. We had to be at the Commodore Hotel where his offices were. We had to be there at 7:30 in the morning. We had about an hour and a half-talk with President Eisenhower, (unintelligible) except when I was entertaining Presidents Coolidge and Harding out in Yellowstone. That was a good one. He stayed with us, except that he wouldn't go back to allowing us to use the White House name. We had to give that up. But it didn't hurt too much. We had the meting just the same.

Now, I think that answers you (unintelligible) about Resources for the Future. I have a little book for you on that.

38 Horace M. Albright Interview, OH 297-026, 027, 028a, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. GB: Yes. You alluded to two things that I would like to ask you a little further about. First of all, the conference that Roosevelt held in the White House in 1908 did you by any...You were very young and not in Washington at that time. Do you know anything about it?

HA: No, I was a freshman in college.

GB: Do you know anything about it, though?

HA: It's all in the book. There's a book on it, all the proceedings, everybody's talks. As I said this morning, that was not a conservation of resources in the sense that we talk about now. In fact, it was more an inventory, something more like Peeley (?) was doing. I think J. P. Morgan was there, Carnegie was there. He had the heads of all these big corporations, utilities, farm organizations. There was very little of the conservation as we understand it today. Dr. McFarland was there, preceding Niagara Falls, and Dr. Kunz was there, representing American Scenic and Historic Preservation, and Pinchot was there talking about his forests. That's about a ll there was to it. You can find it all in the book.

GB: Now the other thing that I'd like to ask you a little more about was you just happened to mention that you entertained Presidents Coolidge and Harding at Yellowstone. Could you tell a little bit about that?

HA: President Harding was on his way to Alaska. It was the last trip he ever made. He'd wanted to see...He'd seen Yellowstone when he was a boy, and he wanted to see it again. So the whole party...First they went to Utah and dedicated the Zion Park, and then they came up to Yellowstone and they spent two days there. So we took them around the park, and we had two very pleasant days because he was a very attractive fellow to be with. Put him on the train on the night of the first day of July, 1923, and he died on the night of August the 2nd in San Francisco, which was a blow to us because he had said that he'd go along with us on our Grand Teton Park. He wanted me to go to the White House and talk to him about it as soon as they got back and all that. We hadn't had any opportunities like that, and then they were all snapped right out.

Four years later, President and Mrs. Coolidge and their son and, of course, the newspaper people and all that go along with the President's party came. The exciting thing about that was that they insisted on coming on the day, at least the President insisted on coming on the day, they were going to kill Sacco and Vanzetti. The Secret Service didn't want the President out very far that day because they had been appealing to him to prevent the execution for two reasons. In the first place, he had been Governor of Massachusetts and this was a Massachusetts affair, but he had no authority...he had no authority to do it. Whether or he tried to talk to the Governor of Massachusetts, we don't know. I don't know that. At any rate, there were all sorts of threats being made about everybody that had anything to do with the Sacco and Vanzetti case. To have the President arrive on that day was a ticklish proposition, and we had to make very elaborate arrangements for his protection.

39 Horace M. Albright Interview, OH 297-026, 027, 028a, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. He had been in the Black Hills that summer (unintelligible). On the 2nd day of August, he announced he would not run for president. "I do not choose to run," he says, "in 1928." Well, of course, that word "choose" nobody understood what he meant by that. Lots of people thought you could draft him and there wasn't...he was having a little play with words and he really didn't mean it and all that. But he did mean it. I happened to be entertaining the Secretary of the Interior and the Governor of Pennsylvania the day that that word came out. It was telephoned to me, and I took the word into them while they were eating lunch and you should've seen two surprised people. The Secretary of the Interior and the Governor of Pennsylvania, they really were...they were flabbergasted to say the least.

[End of Interview]

40 Horace M. Albright Interview, OH 297-026, 027, 028a, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula.