Les Joslin

When a fire prevention guard spots or gets a report of a smoke, he’s temporarily out of the fire prevention business and in the fire suppression business. (Yep, I staged this photograph using smoke from a Forest Service dump!)

On July 22, 1963, with not a fire on the Bridgeport Ranger District yet that summer, my fire prevention job of the day was hazard reduction. Don, a new fire crewman, and I were clearing cheatgrass at strategic locations along the Buckeye Road to remove flash fuels that could carry fire into the canyons.

At about half past noon, and halfway through our lunch break, a carload of fishermen, speeding along the road toward the ranger station, honked to a stop  to report “a big fire running up the mountain near Eagle Creek!”

Don and I were in the fire rig and on the way in seconds. As I radioed the four-eleven—emergency fire call—to the ranger station, it occurred to me that this fire was man-caused. There hadn’t been a lightning storm in weeks.

We arrived at the fire about the same time the fishermen reached the ranger station with their exaggerated report. I sized up the small blaze burning in brush under a few Jeffrey pines near the old Buckeye Pack Station and cranked up the pumper.

Then, as Don attacked the flames with water, I hit the radio. Fire Control Officer Marion Hysell, on the strength of the fishermen’s report, had just ordered an air tanker. I advised my boss we would soon have the fire under control and to cancel the air show. The fire was knocked down in minutes. Marion drove out to check up on us, and helped us mop up.

We thought there was something fishy about the fishermen’s report of this “big fire near Eagle Creek” that wasn’t, but had nothing other than that mere hunch on which to go.

The flash fuels cured as expected, and the district’s fire danger remained high most of the rest of the season. But, even after many August lightning storms, that small man-caused fire somehow remained the only fire of my first fire prevention guard fire season.

The district wouldn’t always be so lucky.

Adapted from the 2018 third edition of Toiyabe Patrol, the writer’s memoir of five U.S. Forest Service summers on the Toiyabe National Forest in the 1960s.

I soon fancied myself “the fastest staple gun in the West” for the way I kept fresh Smokey Bear posters displayed all over the district.

 My greatest fire prevention ally as a Toiyabe National Forest fire prevention guard was Smokey Bear. That’s backward, of course. I was Smokey’s ally, and only one of many throughout the United States.

Smokey had been America’s “forest fire preventin’ bear” for nineteen years by the time I became the Bridgeport Ranger District fire prevention guard in 1963. With his famous “Only you can prevent forest fires!” tag line, Smokey had become the most recognized symbol in advertising history.

I was proud to be on Smokey’s team, and used the Cooperative Forest Fire Prevention Program materials I ordered each year to the fullest. I soon—albeit secretly—fancied myself “the fastest staple gun in the West” for the way I kept fresh Smokey Bear posters displayed on well-maintained peak-roofed signboards—all strategically located, by the way, in accordance with a fire prevention sign plan—all over the district.

In addition to stapling these colorful posters to these signboards, I installed and maintained the signboards—crafted in the ranger station’s shop by fire crew members on days they were not working in the field—all over the district. And so, in addition to its pumper unit and fire tools, my patrol rig was equipped with a post-hole digger, tamping bar, and other sign structure installation tools as well as a five-gallon bucket of brown stain and paint brushes to keep both newly installed as well as older signage looking sharp.

Smokey Bear posters were also displayed in Bridgeport’s public buildings, stores, restaurants, motels, and gas stations as well as at resorts and businesses throughout the district. A supply of Smokey Bear comic books for children met while on patrol was always in the patrol truck along with free national forest maps—yep, they were free in those days—and other information for public distribution. Every campfire permit issued on the district had a small Smokey Bear fire prevention reminder stapled to it.

All of these efforts were, of course, supplementary to the dozens of personal fire prevention contacts with forest visitors and users which I made every day while on patrol.

Although I could not back up my belief with statistics that all these fire prevention efforts actually prevented any wildfires, the district ranger and the fire control officer and I were convinced they did.

Adapted from the 2018 third edition of Toiyabe Patrol, the writer’s memoir of five U.S. Forest Service summers on the Toiyabe National Forest in the 1960s.

Sheep grazed on allotments on the Bridgeport Ranger District, Toiyabe National Forest. 

As the eastern Sierra summer of 1966 wore on, the Toiyabe National Forest dried out. By the middle of July the fire danger was extreme, and fire safety restrictions including prohibition of open campfires outside developed campgrounds were announced. These required special signage and increased the intensity of my patrols.

I was on patrol in the Twin Lakes area early one August afternoon. It had been a relatively slow morning and, just as I began to wish the pace would pick up, it did. But not in any way I expected.

“D-4-5, this is KMB-652.” It was Pam, the district clerk.

“KMB-652, this is D-4-5, over.”

“Les, we’ve had a couple reports of a dead sheep in the Honeymoon Flats Campground. Will you check it out, please?”

A dead sheep? I hadn’t seen sheep in the Twin Lakes basin for days. This one, I surmised, must be a stray from an allotment. Oh well, all in a day’s work. Hoping the poor critter wouldn’t be too ripe, I responded affirmatively.

A few minutes later, I approached Honeymoon Flat. The sheep wasn’t difficult to locate. Lying just off the highway, on the road into the campground, it appeared to have drawn more people than flies since its demise. The small crowd’s attention shifted to me as I pulled up alongside the wooly carcass of a fully-grown ewe.

Howdy,” I said to no-one in particular, closing the patrol truck door behind me. A cool afternoon breeze blew off the Sierra and stirred the aspen.

“It’s a dead sheep!” explained a helpful bystander. I nodded agreement and smiled thanks for his assessment. “Are you going to get rid of it?”

“Yes, sir.” Scratching my head briefly, I sized up the problem and then, in reluctant resignation, strode purposefully toward part of the solution. The crowd’s eyes followed me intently.

Fortunately, the campground garbage had been collected recently, and I found an almost empty can. Quickly transferring its content into another, I hauled the can back and pushed it under the ewe. Because dead animals don’t exactly leap into garbage cans, I had to pry this one into its casket with a shovel. Once the corpse was in the can, I set it upright and slapped on the lid. Then, dropping the tailgate to the horizontal position, I dragged the canned sheep to the rear of the patrol truck. There was just enough room for the can to ride behind the pumper unit and the fire tool box.

But one problem remained. That was one heavy garbage can! I doubt I could have lifted it, at least not gracefully. But an independent streak doesn’t allow me to ask for help—even in situations like that. With all eyes on me, I stooped to pick it up….

“Here, let me give you a hand,” volunteered a burly fellow. Saved!

“Thanks.”

We easily lifted the can onto the tailgate, where I lashed it securely in place. Having a dead sheep fall off one’s patrol truck onto the highway, it seemed to me, would be most embarrassing. With a ripple of applause and a few chuckles, the crowd dispersed. And the sheep was soon disposed of in the nearby Forest Service dump I would burn in a few days.

Adapted from the 2018 third edition of Toiyabe Patrol, the writer’s memoir of five U.S. Forest Service summers on the Toiyabe National Forest in the 1960s.

Part of the Toiyabe National Forest’s popular Honeymoon Flat Campground lies along Robinson Creek.

 It had been a snowy winter and a wet spring. In terms of fire danger, that was good and bad. Fuels were moist, but the wet spring of 1963 had produced a bumper crop of flash fuels—mostly that inadvertent Siberian import, cheatgrass—that would cure by midsummer. Bridgeport District Ranger Bob Hoag expected a busy fire season, and Fire Control Officer Marion Hysell’s small fire organization was as ready as it could be. It was my second summer on the district—my first as fire prevention guard, and I’d been lined out with a full bag of fire prevention duties.

When the telephone sounded the Bridgeport Ranger Station’s three rings about dinner time on July 11, the fire crew figured it was the first human-caused wildfire of my three-week-old fire prevention guard career. The three-man fire crew and I were dispatched not to a fire but to a flood…sort of…at the Honeymoon Flat Campground on Robinson Creek.

The crew and I arrived to find a large Jeffrey pine had fallen into the creek and was diverting water into lower-lying campsites. That tree had to go, and we soon figured the best way to make it go was to put a chain around its trunk and winch it out of the channel. Perhaps anticipating such a need, John had driven his own vehicle, an International Harvester Scout equipped with a winch, to the scene while the rest of us responded in a Forest Service rig.

We had the winch. We had the chain. All we needed was someone stupid enough to brave the swift, icy waters and hook the chain around the tree trunk. For some reason, the guy who a year earlier had told the district ranger he could type—and wound up filling in as district clerk—told the crew he was a pretty good swimmer. Some people never learn!

I took off my boots, wrapped a safety line around my waist, attached another line to the chain, waded in upstream of the target, and let the current sweep me about a dozen yards to the offending tree. Once there, I pulled the chain to me, secured it around the trunk, and signaled the crew to pull me back. That they did and, while I shivered in a blanket next to a blazing campfire demonstrating the difficulty of drinking generous campers’ hot coffee while my teeth chattered, John revved up his winch and, along with crew muscle, finished the job.

Those campers thought the Forest Service was okay!

Adapted from the 2018 third edition of Toiyabe Patrol, the writer’s memoir of five U.S. Forest Service summers on the Toiyabe National Forest in the 1960s.

The smoke chaser pack carried by Bridgeport Ranger District firefighters in the 1960s included a Pulaski, shovel, canteen, headlight for hardhat, rations, first-aid kit, snakebite kit, map, and other useful odds and ends.

One July 1962 evening a motorist southbound on U.S. Highway 395 drove into the Bridgeport Ranger Station to report a fire high in the crags above Devils Gate Summit. Second-year forestry aide Dick and rookie I were dispatched to the fire in a pickup into which we loaded two smoke chaser packs and two five-gallon water packs. We drove north, spotted the smoke, parked off the highway, put on our hardhats, strapped on our smoke chaser packs, and began the climb up steep rocky slopes toward the fire.

About forty minutes of climbing later we reached the fire. It wasn’t much as fires go—a large Jeffrey pine snag, a few smaller pines and junipers, and some mountain mahogany burning here, smoldering there, and smoking everywhere. But it had potential, and we attacked it with whatever vigor our steep climb had left us.

Once we had a line around the fire, Dick advised the ranger station by radio that we had it contained and controlled. As we began mopping it up, Dick commented on some real hot spots and allowed “We sure could use some water on this job before it gets dark.”

Knowing we meant me, I gazed at the pickup far below. There the two water packs waited.  “I’ll go get it.”

“Right,” Dick agreed, and added as I started down the mountain, “Bring both of ‘em.”

Both of them! Water weighs eight pounds a gallon. Ten gallons of water weight eighty pounds, twice as much as a smoke chaser pack. I knew I was in for a long crawl-and-a-half back up the mountain with those two water packs.

It was dark by the time this firefighter had scrambled back to the fire with that ten gallons of water. It was cold by the time the two firefighters had used that water to cool off the last of the hot spots inside their fire line. It was darn cold by the time the two firefighters, who knew better than to try to get off those crags at night, had kindled a small fire inside their fire line to heat their canned rations, boil water for coffee, and warm their hands. And it was colder still when, at first light, they declared the fire out, shouldered their gear, and made their way off the crags toward the pickup, Bridgeport, and a hot two-dollar breakfast on Uncle Sam at the Sportsman’s Inn as it opened for the day.

Les Joslin and Fire Patrol Rig

Burning off Forest Service dumps, to which campground and permittee refuse was hauled, was a hazard reduction part of my 1960s Toiyabe National Forest fire prevention guard job and just about the only part of the job I really didn’t enjoy.

Why not? Well, it started cold and dark, got dirty and smelly, and finished hot and dry. It involved getting up long before sunup, loading a couple five-gallon cans of diesel fuel onto the patrol truck, driving to the dump to be burned that morning, pushing garbage and trash piled up around the sides into the pit, anointing the whole mess with diesel fuel, touching it off with a fusee, watching the surrounding area for spot fires while the dump burned, and making sure the whole thing was dead out by about ten o’clock before the winds came up.

Oh, dump burning had its compensations, like communing with Mono Lake’s seagulls which winged north to forage for tidbit supplements to their brine shrimp diets. Once, at the Virginia Lakes dump, I saw a bear. And once, burning the Twin Lakes dump led to an amusing encounter with some fishermen.

Extinguishing the dump fire had drained the patrol truck’s pumper tank, so I drove to the nearby Timber Harvest Road bridge over Robinson Creek for a refill. Crossing the bridge, I pulled off the road and backed down to the creek. Not long after I had dropped the drafting hose into the stream and reversed the pump, two vehicles halted on the bridge. One was a flashy convertible and the other a battered Jeep. The occupants gestured in my direction, pulled off the road, and parked next to the patrol truck.

At first I thought something might be up. Perhaps they were going to report a fire! But the rapid unloading of fishing gear soon betrayed their misguided urgency. This had happened before.

“Hey! Are they biggies?” a couple blurted in unison as they scrambled past me to peer into the stream where my drafting hose lay. The rest of the pack followed, clutching fishing rods and carrying tackle boxes.

Feigning ignorance, I responded to their question with another. “Big whats?”

“Rainbows! Man, you know! Trout! Fish! You are the fish man, aren’t you?”

“No, I’m sorry. I’m not the fish man,” I answered almost apologetically. “Fish are planted by the California Department of Fish and Game. I work for the U.S. Forest Service.” Then, after a pause, I added with a smile and only slightly exaggerated pride, “This is a fire truck.”

“A fire truck?” They looked unimpressed, to say the least. More like disdainful. But the awful truth was beginning to sink in. “You mean…you’re not the fish man?”

“Sorry,” I shrugged. They probably had been looking for a “fish man” with a “fish truck” all morning. “I’m just filling the tank on this fire truck.” I slapped the hose reel affectionately. Then I informed them of the days on which the Department of Fish and Game usually planted fish in Robinson Creek. Needless to say, those fishermen—a dismayed “that’s a fire truck” look on their faces—didn’t hang around very long.

Adapted from the 2018 third edition of Toiyabe Patrol, the writer’s memoir of five U.S. Forest Service summers on the Toiyabe National Forest in the 1960s.

Cattle graze on Buckeye Meadow allotment.

Among the many challenges of my 1960s seasonal Toiyabe National Forest fire prevention guard job was explaining multiple use management practices to citizen-owners of the National Forest System.

One afternoon in Buckeye Canyon, for example, I met a family of four backpackers returning from a several-day trek into the Hoover Wilderness high country. They’d had a great time, the prosperous-looking head of the family told me, but he wanted to talk about cattle. The round tin cup hanging from each family member’s belt gave me more than a hint of his opinion on the subject.

“Why are all these cattle here?” the man demanded to know, waving his arm toward Big Meadows, well outside the wilderness boundary.

“This is a national forest grazing allotment,” I answered. “The rancher who owns those cattle holds a grazing permit and pays a fee to graze them here.”

“They’re ruining the country,” he countered. “They shouldn’t be here. Why are they allowed to be here?”

I didn’t get far with my explanation of the multiple-use concept under which our district range conservationist labored to manage cattle and sheep grazing allotments in a way that would maintain the quality of the forage resource as well as the integrity of the watershed, wildlife, and recreation resources. He didn’t care that some ranchers depended on national forest range to stay in business. He just wanted those cattle out of there, pronto! And, although there were no active timber sales on the district, he wanted national forest timber cutting stopped, too. Basically, he wanted national forests to be national parks.

So I took a different tack. After assuring him I shared his concerns for proper public land management, I used the next few minutes of our conversation to find out more about him. I soon knew this gent was a corporate executive who lived the good life in Palo Alto. He and his family resided in a rambling redwood house and dined on steaks at fashionable restaurants college students such as I certainly couldn’t afford.

“You know,” I suggested, “the resources that make the way you and millions of other Americans live possible have to some from somewhere.”

“Look, I see what you’re driving at,” he responded. “But they don’t have to come from places that should be wilderness areas.”

“Places like California’s redwood coast? Places like public rangelands?”

“Exactly….” Just for an instant, his eyes showed he had made the connection, he had recognized the conflict between his affluent lifestyle and his environmental convictions. But only for an instant. He wasn’t ready to accept—or concede to me—the fact that he couldn’t have it both ways forever.

“The Forest Service should get those cows out of here!” were his last words to me. But he sounded more thoughtful, less arrogant, less certain.

Adapted from the 2018 third edition of Toiyabe Patrol, the writer’s memoir of five U.S. Forest Service summers on the Toiyabe National Forest in the 1960s.