Oral History Program Leo Young Interviewed by Carmen Anderson 22 July 1972 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Leo Young Interviewed by Carmen Anderson 22 July 1972 Copyright © 2012 by Weber State University, Stewart Library Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. 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These oral history assignments were created to help Weber State students learn the value and importance of recording public history and to benefit the expansion of the Weber State oral history collections. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. 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It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Leo Young, an oral history by Carmen Anderson, 22 July 2012, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Leo Young Abstract: This is an oral history interview with Leo Young, conducted by Carmen Anderson on July 22, 1972. Mr. Young began working with the Civilian Conservation Corp at the Bear River Bird Refuge in 1929. In this interview, Mr. Young discusses his work with the CCC as well as the plant and animal habitats at the Bear River Bird Refuge, the problem with botulism in duck species and water and hunting rights on and around the refuge. CA: Mr. Young, will you please tell us just a little bit about yourself? LY: I was born in Perry, Utah in 1907. I've lived in Box Elder County all my life. I started work at the bird refuge in 1929. On September 25, I started working for the contractors. The construction started at the refuge at that time. I retired in 1968. That would make about thirty-eight years, I think, that I worked at the refuge. I lived there part of the time and raised my family there. It was real fun to live there. CA: Could you tell us a little bit about how the Bear River Refuge was built? LY: The first job that I had was operating a barge on the Bear River from Corinne to the refuge headquarters site. All the materials and equipment were moved down the river on a sixty-by-twenty foot barge. It would haul as much as thirty-two yards of gravel and sand. It would also trail as much as sixty rafts of lumber. As much as a carload of lumber was put in rafts and moved down the river. There weren’t any roads to the refuge site at that time. The only road was west of Brigham City, over an old bridge owned by Dan Reeder. The bridge was kind of an oval shape. They would go over and then they just went down across the 1 flats. It was only usable in the summer when it was dry. The salt flats were dry at this time. CA: Was that the only means of transportation other than the road when it was dry? LY: There was another road that went down to the Bear River Club. They had a ferry at the Bear River Club which the contractor used to transport his men and equipment. From there, they used a thirty-foot boat with an old Model A engine in it. That's the way the dragline operators and the people that were working on the spillways went to and from the job. The spillways were first constructed of wood or lumber. Later, they were removed as the lumber became rotten, and then they were replaced with concrete. CA: Could you tell us anything about the road construction? LY: I don't remember the exact dates. When the water control structures were constructed along the various canals that came out of the Bear River, then the county constructed a dirt road and made use of these structures for bridges. That dirt road was the first road going to the refuge. There was no gravel on it at all, just dirt. You know what that amounts to in that alkali. CA: No, could you tell us? LY: You just get stuck when it rains. CA: Just sink? LY: That's right. Then it was graveled, but it wasn't until recent years that it was completely oiled. I think that the last oil that was put on was in the years since I retired. 2 CA: I understand that you worked as a pilot out there. Would you tell us just a little bit about your experiences in that? LY: I had a commercial pilot’s rating. I did the census and the patrol work and what not. We could use the aircraft quite a lot. We used it for the observation of "Duck Sickness" and areas that were hard to get to otherwise. I built several air thrust boats that were very handy and took the place of the old "Mud Queen.” Joe Cook had a shop in Corinne in the early days. He constructed what was known as the "Mud Queen." It had a long narrow boat with paddle wheels on the side. The operator would stand in the stern and man the rudder. This was what steered them as they went over the shallow water. They were replaced with the air thrust boats, which everybody uses now to hunt ducks. They are also used as work boats at the refuge. CA: Since you helped build the airboats, could you tell us a little bit about them? LY: They're made of aluminum and approximately fourteen feet long and five feet wide. They are a flat-bottomed boat that is propelled with an aircraft engine. They would reach an average speed of about thirty miles an hour in shallow water. They would go down maybe one-half of an inch in the alkali mud, which is real slick when they take off. They work real well. They use them all over now, in California and Canada. CA: Were they originally built in this area? LY: Yes, Emil Johnson in Salt Lake started to build them. The original air thrust boat was built with a concaved bottom at the front. The theory was that the shallow water would accumulate in this trough in the front on the bottom and then, as it 3 came to the back, the trough would disappear and the water would spread out under the back of the boat. It worked really well with the exception of deep water, and then you didn't have the buoyancy you should have. They were changed later to just a regular flat-bottomed boat. They used them for work boats, to gather sick ducks, to do observation, and so forth. CA: That's what the "Mud Queen" was? LY: The "Mud Queen" was much more awkward. It had a Model A engine in it. It used a boat for a frame and it used the rear axle to turn paddle wheels on the side. They would stick out approximately four inches below the bottom of the boat. In shallow water they would get ahold of the mud and propel the boat along. They were real awkward to use. CA: At the refuge I saw an old car-like thing with wide wooden tracks. Do you know anything about that? LY: It was one of the pieces of equipment that the engineers used to start with when they were surveying the area. It wasn't very successful, but they did get some good out of it. CA: Did it work in the water and mud or just on the dry area? LY: It worked in the muddy areas and that's where they had to get to. In the deep water they could get by pretty well with a boat. When it would get down to where you didn't have enough water to float the boat, you'd have to have it to get over the wet ground. They also used a caterpillar tractor with wooden staves that would stick out about two feet on each side of the track. The track was probably three and a half feet wide. Then they would use that and go off through the mud. 4 CA: Going back to the airplane and the census, did you take someone with you? LY: Usually I had an observer with me, but a good many times I had to do it myself. It worked well. You have to know your birds pretty well to identify them. It was never an accurate count. We never figured it was anywhere near an accurate count but if the same person did it continually, and then you'd get a trend. In other words, it would be more of a trend than an actual figure. The actual figures just give you a trend as to whether the number of birds was up this year or down. We like to feel that it was about eighty percent correct. We would spend a lot of time on the dike estimating the number of birds in a flock. You'd get so you could guess pretty close. CA: Did you notice an increase or decrease in birds over the years? How did it compare? LY: It was gradually decreasing all the time until I left. At one time, we estimated somewhere near thirteen hundred thousand birds on the area. It’s gone way down. I don't know what the figures are now—maybe around three or four hundred thousand. CA: What do you think would be the reason for this? LY: Draining of marsh areas, farming, people, and so on. CA: Has the water level gone down also? LY: No, I don't think so. The lake level comes up and down, of course. That doesn't have too much to do with it because it's salt water. They have to depend on the water in the river during the summertime, and if there isn't any water in the river, it 5 just goes dry, that's all. If they have a lot of water, they have a lot of feed and more ducks. CA: Do you think the hunting has affected it in any way? I know they used to have the market hunters. LY: Well, I think that's pretty well controlled. They have people in Canada taking a census and doing nesting surveys and the like. They know how many birds are going to come south each year. Of course, that’s just a trend, too. They take aerial census and they run the same transects at same time every year. This tells them how many birds we're going to have and the number of nesting pair. Then they take into consideration the water conditions in Canada and the area to the north. They know pretty well how many birds are going to come south each year. The big factor in this area, I think, is the botulism—avian botulin. In fact, that was one of the reasons for building the refuge in this area. They wanted to see if they could do something with the botulism. The first year that water was in the refuge, we picked up fifty thousand birds off the dike alone. We were continually picking them up and hauling them off. It's gradually gotten better, nobody knows the reason why, but they still have a large loss. Last year I went out and flew with John Weir to help them a little with their figures. As I remember, it was somewhere near twenty or thirty thousand birds that died in that area last year. They're all registered as the hunter brings them in. They called it "Western Duck Sickness" when it first started. They have it now on the Sacrament Refuge and up at Long Lake Montana and some of the other refuges. They have it down south, but mostly in the west. Since they found out that it was botulism, I don't think they’ve found out 6 too much more about it. They have been working with it all the time. It has something to do with water levels or what the birds eat, but they don't know how and where. They know how much it takes to kill a bird and they can produce it, but they don't know just what to do to stop it. CA: In the time you worked out there, did you notice any changes in the vegetation? LY: Yes, definitely. When the refuge and the dikes were constructed, that whole area around the outside was nothing but an alkali flat, with the exception of the mouth of the river and some of the other lower areas. There might have been a little string of vegetation extend beyond the dike. All the vegetation has come in. Of course, on the outside of the dike where the waters spilled and washed the alkali out, the vegetation came in. On the inside, where the water level was raised, the vegetation backed up. There is less vegetation on the inside than there was when the refuge was constructed, but more on the outside. CA: I understand that you worked as a dragline operator for a while. Could you tell us about your work along this line? LY: It was mostly repair work. I did work with the contractors from the first stages as an oiler on their dragline. My first dragline job was on the county road right out here on the other side of Burt's. Most of the work I did was repair work on the dike, cleaning channels, building nesting islands, and the like. CA: They used the dragline to build nesting islands? LY: We did at the time, and I think they do yet just a little bit. They would build up the river bank so the water wouldn't flood the nests. The birds would take to them real good in the higher areas. They built some out in the water in the units but they 7 didn't turn out well. They turned out to be more for seagull nesting, which they didn't like too well. California Gulls nested on them, then Caspian Terns and a few ducks, also. There's no vegetation on them at all. The cormorants nested there. They put some piles of rock on the ends of them and thought maybe this would help the pelicans to nest. They don’t nest except on one of the islands in the Salt Lake. The cormorants took over the rock piles. It made a good nesting area for them. CA: Is it difficult to keep the dikes up? LY: Since I've been out there, almost every day we've hauled a couple of loads of rock. They've rocked the beaches. All salt grass and tules can be planted in the shallow areas, and protect them that way. The biggest part of them has to be ripped with rock because of the waves and the ice in the winter. CA: No one has talked much about the winter conditions out there. Could you tell me a little bit about what it's like in the winter? LY: Well, in an average winter, everything freezes over and the units are drained. If the water is left in the unit, the ice expands and gouges the dike and causes a lot of repair work. CA: Is it a difficult job to drain the ponds? LY: No, they have flash boards in the spillways on the outside and they just remove those and let the water go. CA: What's a flash board? 8 LY: In this case, it's a board three inches thick, eight inches wide and about six feet long with two lag screws, one in each end. You have a hook to hook over these lag screws to lift them. CA: What were the C.C.C. boys and what did they do out there? LY: They’ve done a lot of good on the refuge. They hauled rock and the initial graveling of the dikes was done by the C.C.C. boys. They hauled gravel on the dikes and smoothed the beaches. They also helped in gathering sick ducks, fencing, nesting surveys, and projects like that. They really did do a lot of good out there. CA: About how long were they out there? LY: They were there from about 1936 until the war started in ‘41. They abandoned the camps and all of them went to the army—including me. CA: You spent some time in the service. Have you noticed any changes in management or any problems over the years? LY: Well, there have been several changes in personnel. The first manager— Mushback was his name—he came from the bison range in Montana. Mr. Vanez Wilson was his assistant. Mr. Wilson was a hydraulic engineer. He was overseeing the project when it was being constructed. He was assistant manager for a while, then he took over the manager job. When he left, Mr. Gunther took his place. There haven’t been too many different managers there, about three. Mr. Wilson started in 1927 sometime with the survey crew. CA: Could you tell me anything about the surveying and how it was planned? LY: I can't tell you too much other than the top of the dikes, all those dikes out there, there's about thirty miles of them. They are laid out so the top of the dike is at the 9 elevation 4,208.The ground out there slopes toward the Great Salt Lake about one foot to the mile. These dikes start just a few miles from Promontory Mountain and they took a circle over here to Perry. I don't think the height of the dike varied more than a couple of feet in all that distance. That was necessary in the old lake bed and river bed where the channels went through the area. CA: Do you know anything about the boat that they had that went from Corinne to Salt Lake? LY: No, that was before my time. I think there is an old boiler out at Corinne that they used to use as a fish cannery. I think the boat had something to do with that. They would haul the canned fish down to Salt Lake and down the Jordon River someplace. CA: Where did they obtain the materials to build the refuge? LY: The gravel and sand and cement were obtained in Brigham City and hauled to Corinne. They were dumped on the barge there and taken down the river. All the materials were shipped into Corinne. They had a crew there making up the rafts. They would make the rafts for individual spillways. In other words, so they could take the raft down to headquarters and then from there float it on around to the spot where they wanted this particular raft. They were made up, too, after they got down there so they could just send certain rafts out to each spillway and they would build the spillway. All cut-up work was mostly done. All they had to do was put them together out there. They had to drive a lot of pilings. It was a dirty job. CA: Was there more water in the river at that time in order to float the raft? 10 LY: I don't think so. I think it is about the same. In the summertime, they'd have trouble at times getting the barge down the river on account of sand bars and the like. I don't think there was more water—some years there's more, some years less. Last year they had a lot of water. I noticed this year that it's dry. When I say dry, it isn't dry, but there isn't any water flowing down it. In later years, there have been a lot of farmers along the lower areas on the river and they use that water. They pump it on the farms since the farms have started using the sprinkler system. They use a lot of it on the river bottoms between the refuge and the dam in the canyon. The refuge suffers in that way, too. CA: Who owns the water right? LY: I don't know. When the government built the refuge, they filed rights on a thousand feet of water. Anytime there was any more water in the river than that, anyone could utilize it. It was twenty-five or thirty years after they filed that the agriculture along the river started and they were reluctant, I think, to have a court case. Each time they found somebody illegally pumping, it was going for agriculture. Usually a court would decide in favor of the farmer, rather than the birds, so they never did attempt to stop it. It has been hard. They tried to get some water out of Willard Bay and they could have got some down there because a lot of that water isn't filed on. They are going to take it from the spillway on the north and take it across to Unit 5. Like I was saying, the top of that dike is 4,208 all the way around, so the water put in Unit 5 could be forced over to Unit 1 if they wanted. But they never did and I don't know if they're still working on it or not. It never did materialize while I was there. 11 CA: How many units are out there and what is a unit? LY: A unit is an area separated by dikes. They average about 5,000 acres in each unit. There are five of them. There are 64,000 acres in the whole project, which is a hundred square miles. The state has an enormous area below that, too. CA: What is their area for? LY: It's for the birds. It's state land and the water spill from the refuge has raised a lot of tulles and made a good marshland out that way and it didn't cost too much. The only sad part about it is when the refuge doesn’t have water because they don't spill water out there and so they all suffer. CA: Have you been hunting out there? LY: Yes. CA: Could you tell me what a blind is and how it it’s made? LY: All they are is something to hide you from the birds. You throw your decoys in the water and build a blind on a point or in the tulles nearby. Some people will just sit down in the tall tulles and don't use a blind other than just the natural habitat or vegetation. Others will go to the trouble of weaving the tulles in wire mesh, then they attach stakes to this wire mesh and put this around the blind. Some of them have a palate in the bottom to hold them out of the mud and water so they have a dry area to sit on. Usually, these people have a guide and the guide chases the ducks and they don't have to go out. CA: How do you feel about them opening the bird refuge to hunters? LY: I think everybody liked it. I think it was the going thing at that time. There aren’t too many people that object to it now. I think they can see that that sort of thing has to 12 be. There were some mixed emotions when it was opened to shooting, but that was done before the refuge was even built. A lot of that area was state lands and they had to agree to leave a certain amount of the refuge open to hunting before the state would agree to turn these lands over to them. I think forty percent of the area was supposed to be left open to shooting. Of course, that leaves a lot of it closed. Actually, forty percent of the whole area is left open. Forty percent of the best hunting areas were left open to shooting. The actual area was available so that hunters could get to do their hunting. It might amount to a little less than forty percent. However, a lot of the people go out on the main dike and then south to a designated area in the state land below. They hunt down there, which gives them a lot more ground. CA: Is there any closed areas in that state land down below the refuge? LY: No, not that I know of. It's all open to shooting. There's as large an area down there as the refuge itself. The refuge has been a good producer of sago pond weed seed. It's been gathered at the refuge over the years. Some years several tons have been gathered and distributed throughout the area and other refuges in the United States to get them started. It is one of the better recognized duck foods. After it's been planted in an area for a while, then they can gather their own seed. CA: How is it collected? LY: Well, they have various methods. To get it out of the moss and debris that would wash up on the dike, they would just throw the moss and trash into the shaker that we built and it would shake the seed out. The shaker would be in the pickup truck and the seed would fall in the truck and the weeds would go on out the back. What 13 was left on the dike we would gather up with a vacuum cleaner or a broom or whatever method we could find. We never did gather it all up. Some years several tons of it was picked up and sacked. CA: What birds like that particular item? LY: Most all of them, but ducks mostly. There are nine different species that nest at the refuge and most of them utilize it. If they don't eat the seeds, the diving ducks would eat the tubers and vegetation part of the plant. The swan would dig up the tubers, too. In doing so, they would create a lot of loose vegetation and whatnot around them. The birds would stay around the swan and they would pretty well finish the whole plant. It's a good plant. 14