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About Medford mail tribune. (Medford, Or.) 1909-1989 | View Entire Issue (June 27, 1950)
Medford Tribune Second Section MEDFORD, OREGON, TUESDAY JUNE 27, 1950 Pages 1-6 EiTOFTUCVirCODS By sT'n Zfeeens Tim and Trees We sat there on a log that had been a seedling over 1,200 years ago. Billy Entwistle, once a bull team logger, helped a 9-year-old Cub scout nail up a "Keep Green" sign on the dead forest giant, and I thought about the meaning of time. Around the log were firs and hemlocks about 20 years old. We were all out in the woods to help start the wheels rolling on a campaign to get people to thinking of the danger ahead in the holidays that will run from Friday, June 30, through to the last shot of fireworks on the night of the "Fourther July." Fire danger. We were in the midst of an area that contained 75,000 acres of second and third growth forest, practically all of it logged between 1910 and 1940. i Through it all fishing streams ran. There were hiking trails and oamplng sites. Roads webbed the area. Travelers through it would number thousands in the July 1-4 holidays. Billy Entwistle was telling the Cub scouts that they should live to see the greater part of the 75,000 acres logged all over again. 'Give the trees time." said Billy Entwistle. "Time and no fire.' No Sun "Once upon a time." said Bil ly Entwistle, "our summers here were all fires and no sun. In the summers of the 1870s and the 1880s, when I was a boy and then a young logger, the people of western Washington seldom saw the run on the Fourth of July or on any other summer day. All summer hundreds of forest fires were kept burning. In heaviest rain they would smolder and the smoke would die down. Rainy spell over, we'd have the twilight of smoke again." "Was it the Indians who burn ed the forests all the summers?" asked one of the Cubs. "I heard at school the Indians burned for ests to make better hunting grounds." "You heard something wrong, son," said Billy Entwistle. 'The Indians did not set the fires that hid the summer sun in those times and killed so many of the lowland forests, which had the . biggest and best trees of all. The ' Indians had been here for at least 10,000 years, the scientists declare, before the 1870s, when the great summer burnings be gan. Prospectors, ranchers, stockmen, homesteaders, hunt ers, all white, fired the forests to clear them out for their own purposes. "No one dreamed that timber could ever become scarce. Of all things trees were the cheapest. White men burned wonderful forests just to make trails for easier travel. Many traveled the waterways by boat and canoe, camping overnight on the beaches. If their beach fires started forest fires, no one was concerned. " 'Let 'em burn,' they said. Tires do no harm. Too many trees, anyway.' 'Is it any wonder that the sun did not shine in the summertime? But never blame the Indians, who loved their home country, for the fires of other days." First Warden It seemed a long while back, even to me, and to the Cubs a time much farther away the 1870s. Billy Entwistle is now 85. His father was a California '49er who found no gold and came to Fuget Sound as a sol dier under General George Brin ton McClellan in the Indian wars of the early 1850s. Billy was born in the region in 1864. By 1878 he was greasing skids for a bullteam logging show. In 1906 he was working for fest fire prevention, . posting trail signs that simply ordered "No Fire." In 1908 he became the first offi cial fire warden of the Pacific northwest. Retired from active fire-fighting, Billy Entwistle still likes to go to the woods with youngsters and tell them interesting .and useful facts of forest life. So 'there we sat and listened to history of the old days in the timber, and I thought how they were not old days, after all here was this log of a tree that was a windfall in the logging of 25 years ago. Twelve hundred years of age. Yet our native In dians could look 10,000 years back beyond the tree in their own history in this forest region. The poster put up by the Cub scout read, "Look to the Future. Keep the Forests Green." Time is how you see it. County Budget Hearing Set Wednesday, M a.m. Taxpayers will get a chance Wednesday to tell the county budget committee what they think of the proposed 1950-51 budget for Jackson county. The committee, composed of M. T. Wray, Roger F. Rath. Ar nold Bohnert, Judge J. B. Cole man, and Commissioners R. R. Lytle and L. G. "Shy" Morth land, has drawn up a budget calling for total expenditures during the next fiscal year of $1,595,358.55. The levy on prop erty owners will be $541,751.35, and the budget is within the six per cent limitation. The budget hearing will be held at 11 a.m. (DST) Wednesday in the county court chambers at the courthouse. Redmond, Ore., June 27 'U.R) Construction of a central Oregon district hospital was approved by a special bond election in Red mond Friday. The hospital was favored 478 to 169. . Goodbye Heartburn -Hello TUMS! Quick relief for mir ftomach. at, acid ifiaigcmoa. Mill onlv 1 (Aant Tdevhoto) BATTLE OF THE BULGES Anne Sterling (left), Hollywood actress, whose overflowing curves give television censors the heeble-Jeebles, has challenged New York Actress Paye Emerson (right) to a "Battle of Plunging Necklines." The green-eyed sweater girl said she's ready to confront Miss Emerson "any place she names" to settle the squabble over which bosomy beauty first Introduced the daring decolletage to television. Grand Junction, Colo. U.R) Purchasing and processing of uranium ores found in the Marysville area of Utah is being stepped up. The Atomic Energy Commission is planning expan sion of its facilities, Including construction of a new ore pur chasing station and a new pro cessing plant to handle the au tunite-torbernite ores found in the Marysville deposits. Man Injured in Jeep j Wreck, Hospitalized Guy Rawles, Humbug creek, received serious but undeter mined head Injuries this morn ing in a jeep accident in the Humbug area. Apparently alone, the victim walked to a nearby mill where he was further in jured by striking his head on a log when he fell into the mill pond during a lapse in con sciousness, reports said. Men working at the mill res cued Rawles from the pond and took him to the Mitchell sanitar ium in Jacksonville. Tentative ly identified as a veteran, au thorization was said to have been given to send Rawles to Portland for treatment there. The Mercy Flights ambulance plane was ready to fly him north when word came through that he was ineligible for veter an hospitalization in Portland. He was taken to Sacred Heart hospital by Conger-Morris am bulance early this afternoon. Patrol Blames 2 Fires On Firecracker Use State forest patrolmen said that firecrackers were the cause of a four-acre fire yesterday evening at Hillcrest and North Phoenix roads and a spot fire near the patrol headquarters on Table Rock road. A grass fire behind the Myron Root company box storage shed, 46 South Fir street, about 1 p. m. yesterday, resulted in no damage, city firemen said. Fire men were called to the Pear Bowl cafe, 213 West Main street, about 1:45 p. m. yesterday, when grease burned under a gas range. Portland, Or., Junt Vt (U.F9 Roy T. Bishop, 69, on of the leaders of Oregon's wool Indus try, died her Saturday. BAKER GETS CONVENTION Portland, Or., Jun 27 (U.R) Tha 1950 convention of the Ore gon young republicans will be held at Baker September 8-4 H was annaunced by Vera Me Callum, new Oregon chairman, today. 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