A Life in the Woods: Joseph Killough

Our family moved here to the neighbourhood of Castlegar in April 1913.1 was just about seven at the time, and the area was just being logged around the house that was built for us. And we lived there for about seven years - and had to move out because we couldn't pay the mortgage on the property that we had bought. It was 800 acres, and we cleared a great deal of it for fruit farming, and that was what we came here for. But the mortgage came due before there was any money coming in from fruit, and my Dad pre-empted a piece of land right after the War, up about a mile back off the highway to Grand Forks - No. 3 - which runs through or just around the edge of it now. But at that time it was wilderness, more or less, and we started- in clearing land and stump farming - planting potatoes right in among the stumps. Well, I got quite a knowledge of woods in every aspect, from clearing land by burning and so on. I guess that's where I first learned the rudiments of fire. Whether you're burning to clear land or whether you're fighting a forest fire, fire is the same, it's the same element.

I can remember a fellow was here, he used to ride a horse and he was a Fire Warden. But Jack Price was the first Ranger that I knew. I used to walk up and down to school, that was in 1914, and see this tall man with his snowshoes over his back walking along the highway. And later on he drove a little Model- T Ford pick-up, you know, with his knees up above his head and sitting down on the canopy and this sort of thing.

So later on, I and my brothers were probably the first men that would be called if there was a fire because of our previous experience [with fire on the homestead]. But in 1925, a big fire struck by lightning came over the mountain from up above where Celgar is now. I worked on that fire. I was only nineteen, and I landed up being in charge because the man who was in charge had gone off to look for other strikes and not left anyone in charge, and I automatically took over. So anyway, to make a long story short, this fire burned right up through the valley back up over the head of Merry Creek, and the Forest Service impressed a construction gang of the West Kootenay Power and Light Company. They were busy building power lines through, and there were about thirty men came up from there, and I found myself in charge, just automatically in charge, of this crew of men. And the foreman said, "Who's in charge?" And one of the men says, "The kid here, I guess he's in charge." And he left them with me. Well, we got our work done, and two or three days later the crew was released and the foreman offered me a job.

So I went to work for the West Kootenay Power and Light Company. In the spring of 1927,1 started climbing for them as a lineman. And in the fall we closed down construction work, and in the spring, because of my experience in line work and so on, I was recruited by the Forest Service to build a telephone line up to the top of Old Glory Mountain to put a lookout there. There was a temporary tent lookout up there, and I was asked to build this permanent telephone line. Well, it wasn't until 1929, actually, that we got the material and built it. Then we started up the mountain through heavy timber and the last mile or so was through rocks. There we put in a telephone. We were tied right into the Rossland switchboard as "Rossland No. 2."

So then I still intended to go back to West Kootenay Power, but we got a bad fire season. I was finished by about the end of July with this work, we got a bad fire season but I was impressed, you see, and the foreman of the West Kootenay told me, "Your job's waiting for you."

Well I told him, I said, "Well I'm under pressure here to remain until things are over."

"Well," he said, "when you're free come back, your job will be waiting for you." Well, I was kept right on until October, and then I couldn't go then. I had work to do. So the next spring the Ranger prevailed on me to take the Assistant Ranger exams, which I did, and I started in in 1930 as Assistant Ranger in Rossland. Okay, I was Assistant Ranger off and on for about 15 years because with the Depression coming on - I had hoped to move up within a short time - but the Depression coming along, the number of Rangers were cut in half. We were even laid off. There was no protection, no forest protection at all in 1932, so I cashed in my life insurance and bought a truck and rebuilt a school bus and took a contract to haul school children. In 1933 I went back part-time to work. Anyway, from then on we had summer work here, winter work we'd go down to the Coast and be put in charge of forest- development projects, up to a hundred men in a camp. And we would whistle down there and get a camp - built up frames with canvas roofs and so on - and we had to build everything, build wash houses, do plumbing and have heating, hot water and showers, all this. Nineteen thirty eight, '39, with the war coming on, this was all wound up.

Anyway, it was quite an experience. But to make a long story short, I got appointed as Ranger in 1945 - that spring. And that was when I was put in charge of organizing and creating a Ranger District at Kettle Valley. You see, before that it had been an outpost of Grand Forks, and an Assistant Ranger from Grand Forks would go up there when he had time, and most of the inspections were done from the road. You couldn't blame them, they were short-handed. Anyway, there were an awful lot of things to be rectified, and some that you couldn't. You just started in and hoped that no one would know about them until they had fixed themselves up, and so on.

Peter Chapman: Trespassing on cutting permits?

Joseph Killough: Yes. Many of them, you see, didn't even ... Well, there were no lines run and they would figure they had the timber as far as the draw or creek would go. I know certain ones and they always ... that was their policy to go right to the top and starting working and log down. Probably they didn't get on to the area they were supposed to until maybe the second or third year or so, you see. And then one of the big things I ran into over there was I had never been in a cattle area before, and there everyone had cattle. A lot of the logging to begin with was done on private lots. People had been there since the turn of the century raising cattle, and you'd find good timber right along the road, on each side of the road and that was pretty nice to start in on.

But anyway, the great problem with the stock was that the range was overrun with wild horses. There had been no control on them for years, and one person or a family went in for rodeo stock - that's the type of horses they had - and they just ran winter and summer on the range. They bred any horses they liked, whether it was his or they belonged to someone else. Anyway that little war was building up, building up, and they kept saying, "Oh, by the spring of '45, we'll have a man in here and he'll clear up all your troubles." This is what they'd been told for a long time. So anyway, for the first time, they had a professional agrologist who had come from Victoria, and was stationed in Nelson, and we had somebody to consult with. Before, nobody knew anything. So we were able to start and we did a range closure that fall. From November to May, let us say, it was illegal for any stock to be on the range, on the open range. And after, say, the fifteenth of November, our round-up man was authorized to round up any stock that was on the range. They could be redeemed by paying the round- up man five bucks a horse, and if they weren't redeemed or if he wanted to take them, then it was up to the Ranger, me, to list all the horses - if they were branded, their brands, if they weren't, you might have to give a description of them by weight and colour and marks, etc. And give the round-up man a clearance on them, and then these were shipped out for fox meat or pet meat or whatever. But I saw some of the wildest meetings.

So, that was my first experience over there, other than having the first summer that was the worst fire summer that there had been for years. But there was one other thing that started, and one reason that they opened the Kettle Valley Ranger District when they did, too. Right after the War there was a great demand for pit props in England and the Canadian stock had never been tapped, and we had every farmer, every land holder after me to get small-timber sales for pit props. They would be cut eight feet long - we measured them by the cord, actually - and certain diameter. It was lodgepole pine, you see, and there was lots of it over there. And this stuff was shipped out at so much a cord to Britain, for the mines, because they were trying to rebuild, and it was quite an industry, aside from the thirty-odd sawmills that I had in the district as well.

That was a start over there. I enjoyed working over there very, very much. In 1949, because my children were getting ready for high school, I was offered a transfer to Rossland in the fall. I took over Rossland as well as the Kettle in the fall of '49, but officially it would be April 1950 that I was made Ranger m Rossland. Well, I could see immediately as soon as we got there that Rossland was not suitable. It was close to the border. Everything, all our district and most of the timber, was to the north, and you are right up on the hill. You had to use chains all the time up there. Take them off when you got down below. But anyway, I knew of some property out here, and I took it up with the authorities, and in 1951 we bought that property and built the first Ranger Station here [Castlegar].

My first or almost my first act of fire fighting was before I was Assistant Ranger,and I was sent out on lightning patrol in charge of a crew of four others a little younger than I was and we used a lightning patrol kit. There was, on a packboard, with a single blanket, a light ground sheet and a little one- man kit and three-day's dry-hard rations - "iron rations" we used to call them. There was also mounted a single-bit axe with an eye on the butt side of the axe that a shovel could be inserted in, and a little mattock.

Peter Chapman: Like a Pulaski?

Joseph Killough: It was like a Pulaski, but the blades were removable. And those first ones that we had, anyway, were manufactured at the old Nelson Iron Works, in Nelson. You'd be given those [kits], and go out and get that fire. Well, I went out from Rossland on this fire, I took these men from Rossland. There was no road in those days. We came a little past Nancy Greene Lake. As you're going west, then there is a what they call Mud Lake. It's a small lake beyond Nancy Greene, you see. We camped there that first night, and then in the morning we went up onto the mountain and we located the fire. It was about an acre, I guess. We put a guard around it, and then I said, "Two of us have got to stay here to finish this, see that it's dead out." So the other three, I sent them back pretty hungry, [laughter] They had to go back to Rossland, and we stayed there another three days. We stayed six or seven days, all told. We had three day's rations, but I did find some flour in a cabin and we made mush out of that, and I was pretty good with a stone. We got a few grouse. Anyway, we got that fire out and we got back. When I went out to do something like that, I was not going to leave it until it was dead out.

Peter Chapman: I'm interested in the Rangers and how their work developed. There was a commission, the first Sloan Commission--

Joseph Killough: Well, 1946 was the Sloan Commission. And it was the first time that the public, the government, everybody got a little bit of an idea that the timber was something to be more than just a drug on the market, get rid of it, cut it as fast as you could and so on, and a great deal more money was made. As you probably know, up until 1914, the only way timber was disposed of was through the old timber licenses or sale of land and this sort of thing, and there were royalties. And it was 1912 they held the first commission, forestry commission, and out of that commission the Forest Branch of the Department of Lands was created, in 1914 [correction: 1913]. Up until then they had some "fire wardens." Then, later they started having Assistant Rangers but they were just hired on ... they were what they called "permanent temporary" or "temporary permanent" - which ever you like - staff. And then gradually lookouts and patrolmen.

But always there was this layoff in the winter, except I used to get quite a little bit of work as acting-Ranger - because of a Ranger taking holidays. Perhaps there was money for cruising, and this sort of thing. I suppose I was hired as a "compass man" or "cruiser," but if I were relieving the Ranger during his holidays, then I was acting Ranger and I used to work up the Lake and so on.

But with the Sloan Commission in 1946, that brought in the era of the change-over to full-time Assistant Rangers and the era of the first Tree Farm Licenses and so on. I think the idea was good. I didn't agree with all of it. You couldn't get a Tree Farm License unless you had a sizable piece of private property to start with, like Waldie's here, you see. They had a lot of old timber licenses way up the Lake. I think it had to be up to 10% of the [allowable annual] cut; and it would be subject to all the regulations of the Crown part, except that it would be scaled separately and you would pay only the royalties on that.

They felt that to deal with a small operator, you had nothing to ... he didn't have much of an investment, you couldn't hold him responsible, it was a case of "cut out and get out" and not completing his contract. Well, I never agreed with that. I felt that we had just as good a hold on them, and very often we were able to make them complete the contracts, carry out their obligations better than we could the big companies. Big companies could usually do what they wanted, anyway. But anyway, that was when the Tree Farm Licenses started.

A lot of Rangers wouldn't agree, but I felt that... for instance, you've got a mill that's got a quota, and they have equipment that can handle that quota. Well, the next thing they were promised, 'if you start using that small timber - tops, smaller tops and small residual timber, clearing that out - we will add that to your quota, but you've got to put in the manufacturing equipment to deal with it'. They do that; okay, they've got new equipment and so on, and much of it was very good equipment and probably the capacity was much more, but now they've got to have this additional quota. Instead of it being given to them first as sort of a bonus, now it's got to be a regular thing. And their quota and their production ability: they were always getting bigger and bigger. And when these Tree Farm Licenses were first established, it was for perpetual cutting - but it wasn't long before they had to go and shorten the growing time and everything else in order to keep up with cut, which of course is impossible. But anyway, my belief there is that harvesting has far outstripped what it's possible to reproduce [as forest].

Peter Chapman: Is the reason that the Celgar mill, that bought out Waldie's, was to get these timber licenses?

Joseph Killough: Well, actually, Waldie got the license more or less, or applied for it. He made the application and went through the business of turning their licenses to be included in the whole [Waldie] license. They were able to make a much better deal with Celgar than they would have made if Celgar had just bought an old sawmill and their existing licenses. So they used brains there. But anyway, this was fine, and a good percentage of the cut had to be the timber that was decadent and had a limited life and so on. And I had to go down to the mill when they first started, and I took a lot of pictures, they've got them at Victoria, pictures of the decadent and small logs, just to show what they were handling, so they could use that at other mills.

Peter Chapman: When you were a Ranger, how much did you get together with the other Rangers?

Joseph Killough: Once a year in the spring we had a Ranger meeting, usually, and during the Depression there for a little while, well, there was one or two years where they didn't have them.

Peter Chapman: What was the purpose of the Ranger meetings?

Joseph Killough: Well, a lot of people asked that question, really, and there was a mixed feeling. Some felt that it had benefit. I think that it had benefit. Aside from ... well, the Rangers, Assistant Rangers, anybody was supposed to give their thoughts, bring up matters, very often there were resolutions passed on the strength of recommendations or statements made at those meetings. And we used to have some of the forest-protection personnel from across the line [the U.S.], they used to come in and sit in. We had just got some new pumps, English pumps, Coventry pumps, they were a centrifugal pump. But I thought they were too heavy. I preferred the Evinrude and Johnson. Anyway, we had the Americans looking on, and I was asked to get this pump going and produce water and the supervisor, he said to me, "Well, you better make it good!" [laughter] Fortunately, I had tried one out. It started. But anyway, we did that sort of thing.

Peter Chapman: What were the kinds of issues that mattered to the Forest Rangers, that were discussed at the meetings?

Joseph Killough: Well, there were many things, of course. One of the things of course was involving more help, more Assistants, and giving an Assistant Ranger full-time work, so that the Ranger had a known and dependable helper instead of having to hire somebody for special jobs during the winter, and this sort of thing. Oh, and then there were methods and policies that were felt to be out of date, or could be improved, and if anyone had a new method of doing something, well he was asked to demonstrate it. And often something would come out of it, or maybe a new system established. It gave everybody a chance to know the other ones from the other Districts and what their problems were, and as a rule they went back feeling that it was worthwhile.

Peter Chapman: How long did you stay at Castlegar?

Joseph Killough: Five years. And then I answered the letter that was sent out calling for applications for Inspector of Sealers. Well, you see, I had got my license back in about 1930 or thereabouts, and I had quite a bit of practical experience, too. And I'd also had it reclassified down at the Coast with Coast scaling, and so on. And I had applied for a supervisor's job when it came up, which I did not want particularly, but I felt that in order not to get passed over I should apply for it, and I got the drop-dead letter. You know, not that you weren't qualified, but someone else seemed to be more suited, etc., etc. So when I applied for the Inspector's, which was the same classification as the supervisor, TF05, and the same rate of pay, the only thing was that I worked alone, and in all the districts there were three supervisors, and each supervisor had six to eight Ranger Districts that he supervised over, whereas I was responsible for all scaling matters: the bookkeeping, the proper returns, and all this sort of thing - and holding examinations, classes. In fact, I started the first classes because we got such poor results from just holding exams and hope somebody would pass. So the first year - or second, maybe - that I was Inspector of Sealers, I made up an examination paper. And when I was out in the district I held practical and theoretical classes in the schoolhouses and so on, on my own time, all over: here, Nakusp, Revelstoke, Golden, Fernie. The next year, the head of the Green Timbers School came and said he wanted to see my papers, what we were doing. And he seemed kind of impressed, and from there on they took them back with them, and at that time the paper that they made up used a great deal of that material that we were using here, and it was made part of our regular curriculum. We didn't have to go out at night and work on our own time.

So I felt quite good about that, and one of the more interesting phases of my whole period with the Forest Service was working out the developing the weight-scale-ratio scaling. And we were about six years or so I guess getting that perfected, and it was still going when I left. Anyway having been a Ranger, I knew all the Ranger's problems - the Lake district as well as in the cattle district.

Peter Chapman: When you were Inspector of Scaling, that was for the Nelson District?

Joseph Killough: Yes, the entire area. From the Alberta border to ... well you could say almost into the Okanagan, because from the Kettle a great deal of our timber when down into Kelowna, to Penticton, to Oliver and Osoyoos. So I had to follow all that timber, and go down to see that we were getting proper returns. And if they had somebody scaling down in Penticton that was not under permit, well then I had the right to close that down if they didn't, or make them get a licensed sealer. You might say the divide between the Kettle and the Okanagan was my western boundary officially, but I used to follow up in order to control the work down in the Valley there.

I was alone when I started. And then Frank Hill came on, but he was put out at Cranbrook, but all of the records, all of the correspondence, except between us, was handled from the Nelson office, so I had the lion's share, lets say, and also I had the proximity to the senior staff. But I'll say that for the most part, I got very good support from them. Only once that I didn't, and then I was just about ready to throw it in, because we were working on this bringing everyone into this same status of weight scaling. But a big company objected, and when we tried to bring them in line, we were not backed up by the brass.

Peter Chapman: What was at issue? This was going to weigh scales?

Joseph Killough: And "watering" before scaling. You see, I know they do that at the Coast, but here we absolutely forbade that.

Peter Chapman: What do you mean by watering, when you say they were "watered"?

Joseph Killough: Well, the dumping or consigning of logs to pondage for storage or transportation. It is a term we always have used, you see, when they were put in the water. The main reason for scaling before watering, except where they are bundled and accounted for, is the possibility - not only the possibility but the quite a high risk - of loss [and thus waste].

Well we did a little study over in Kaslo Bay while I was still there. There had been a mill there, oh back in the 'teens, I guess, and some scuba divers went down and they found that there was a tremendous amount of timber down on the bottom in that bay and they appeared to be quite sound. They'd sunk, you see, dumped in there. Now you can bet in those old days, those logs were never scaled, because they scaled when they pulled the logs up the jack ladder into the mill, you see. They did bring some of those up and saw them [without having paid stumpage on them]. This was our prime reason for requiring scaling before watering, or in the case of Celgar where we were weight-scaling, recording all the bundles and securely bundling, so there could be no wastage.

What we did with Celgar - they weighed them themselves before they were put into the water - but every bundle was numbered and we cooperated with them in some respects there. They used to do all their towing you see in flat-bag booms and, particularly with hemlock and stuff like that, you had a great loss.

So together we worked this out. They agreed to bundle everything, and with usually mixed species so that you had one supporting the other. Oh, I spent a lot of time up the Lake, you now, in things like that. Our men did the official weighing. The loads were weighed, numbered and towed down and by a system of random samples. We already knew what the sampling numbers would be, but we had two sealers at the mill here at Celgar, and they had the sample list, you see, and when 'sample number so and so' arrived, okay that sample has to be brought over to the flat, and it had to be completely spread so that every log could be accurately measured. You can get on every side of it. Every log could be measured, and [the scaled sample bundle] could not be removed until the next sample load was scaled and marked in the book and so on. We could go in then and identify every log against the scale in the book and check that. So that was the way we worked it. So this gave us 100% check-ability, and we controlled the whole thing and they could see what we were doing, and this was more or less the same as we did with all the mills, you see.

Peter Chapman: When you took the exam for Ranger that was before the Ranger School was established?

Joseph Killough: Oh, yes. Oh, yes. 1941. It was 1941 that I took my Ranger exams, but it was the spring of 1945 when I was appointed to Kettle Valley. But I didn't go to the Ranger School in the first, I went in the second class. I had one Assistant Ranger, my senior Assistant Ranger went down in the first class. The idea was to get him through as soon as possible, and my other two Assistant Rangers were not deemed Ranger material and they did not go down, you see.

Peter Chapman: What was "Ranger material"? What were the qualities that one sought in a Ranger?

Joseph Killough: That's rather hard to say. Now, these men are put through the college, Selkirk and others, given about the same training that we got down there. But the way it was put to us, the Assistant Rangers were sent down primarily to make Ranger material out of them. After the Assistant Rangers were sent down, it was only fair that the Rangers be sent down so they would at least have had the same training that the Assistant Rangers had had, so the Assistant Rangers couldn't crow over them. There were some of the Rangers that had had some university training, and I didn't, but I had had a lot of practical, and in the practical I could show the instructors quit a little bit. Pumps and cars and building telephone lines, trails - all the practical work and so on.

Now, the Ranger ... particularly in areas like Kettle Valley, you were far from Headquarters, and you soon learned that if you had a problem you fixed it on the site. Old Bob Alien told me when I started, he says, "One Ranger, he said he had been to Moscow, Idaho and taken forestry, and he was the only one of the bunch that has been through university, but," he said, "I have more trouble with him over certain things than any of the others. He won't take any responsibility." And he said, "I told him 'Damn it all George, if you're not man enough to work out your own problems on the job, why don't come in here to me with them.'" So I said [to myself], I guess that's the way he wants it. And you didn't see supervisors very often and so on. Therefore, I made that decision pretty early: if there is something that has to be fixed up [on the site], what they don't know won't hurt them, as long as it is fixed up. When you get in close to headquarters, you can't always do that.

Peter Chapman: Where were the first weigh scales used?


Joseph Killough: Well, to go back, 1960 Celgar had started bringing out small timber - much of it was very defective timber and very small. Tops and all this. And they just couldn't begin to legally scale that material without an army of men because it would be so slow. A load of maybe 150 pieces of small stuff on it, if it was scaled according to the Act, it would be every piece scaled separately.

Measured both ends and length. And we got a request from Victoria to see if we could do something about setting up a bulk-scaling system.

So the DF [District Forester] asked me to get together with Celgar and see if we could come up with an acceptable alternative where we would not be dropping our standards or anything, but we might be able to help them out. So I left, I went from here, and Rod Picard, the Celgar man, left Nakusp and we met up at Galena Bay, and we spent the whole afternoon by the side of the road in the shade of some trees there, and we worked out the first sample-scale plan to be used in the province.

It was a very simple, very basic plan that all loads would be numbered, kept track of, bundled and they would all be counted. If they were mixed species, they would be counted and recorded as mixed species. Our sealers, the sample sealers, that is, they would scale every piece in the sample and we would work out a ratio, a piece ratio, a piece-volume ratio for every species, and the frequency of that species would control the accuracy of scale estimates by weight. So in giving them permission, we stated that that was an interim method only, pending further investigation and coming up with something better.

So then Victoria got into it. Carl Heistad had been put in charge of scaling at Victoria, and he came over here and was very interested in it, and we continued on and developed the weight-scale ratio system where all loads were numbered, and through a random sampling system, certain numbers would become samples according to the frequency as established by the mathematical process.

We had a little more problem with Celgar than we had with others. Dry land, it was just a case of each load being bundled and numbered. The way Celgar did it, up in the bush the load was put on the truck. Now of course before this was done, there had to be an analysis [of timber from the site], and through this analysis we worked out the required frequency of the sample and all this sort of thing, and it was all done, you know: the law of probabilities.

First of all, the company would have to agree to go to weight-scaling. And we put a lot of pressure on them, and most of them did. And according to our specifications, they had to put the scale in and then we would have usually a minimum - oh, on a small operation it would be one man, but mostly two and sometimes three or four - when the load came in, it would pull up on the scale, and our sealer would go out and number that load and check it for marks and all this, you see. Weigh it. And then it would be dumped and the empty truck come back and be weighed; that gave us our net weight. Then when a sample bundle came up, after numbering it, he would put a sample tag on it. That load had to be completely spread so that every end and each log could be examined independently, and our men were instructed to make as intensive and accurate a scale as possible.

We required in piece scaling [the earlier method, described previously] that the last load scaled had to be left until the next load was scaled and then it could go. Therefore, we could always come in and do a check scale on that last load and the figures would be identifiable in the book. Well this way, if you took a 125 loads and spread those the way we required them to be spread - the area necessary was a big factor, and the speed - it would have taken them about ten sealers working steady and hard.

Peter Chapman: So with the weight-scale method you'd weigh every load?

Joseph Killough: Weigh every load. Peter Chapman: Scale one in 40, or ...? Joseph Killough: Whatever the ratio was that we worked out in the process. And it was worked out to an accuracy: the usual system, you know, to an accuracy of x% , 19 times out of 20.

To get the correct weight-scale ratio, we could only do that if it was done fully statistically! Again, even though it was our men, that load would have to stay there until another load was spread and scaled. Then that one could be removed [to be stockpiled for cutting]. But we wouldn't allow them to pick that load up as soon as it was scaled unless another one was scaled and recorded, so there was always one that, if I or someone else went in there, I could make a "check-scale" unannounced, and I've got the figures in the book. And if there was some log I didn't agree with, I could discuss it with him and this sort of thing, but we had absolutely full check-ability this way. So we were very proud of our scale.

"Weight/cubic-foot ratio scaling" was based first on a reconnaissance done by special crews, mainly, because it was too much for the normal Rangers or others to take on; so there were many cruising crews, a lot of the young people were hired at that time to go out on these cruising crews, and the timber was all typed. Then the types would be classified and grouped together. You could use the same classification for the same types you see, regardless of what the ownership was.

Peter Chapman: Was a "type" the same as a species?

Joseph Killough: "Type": for instance, if you have a stand of cedar that was good for cedar poles you couldn't have that in the same type that you had [cedar] wood that was rotten, big and rotten and all; this had to be taken into consideration. Before the operator could log it, we would give him the type, the classification. Of course, they knew nothing about what loads were going to be sampled.

Peter Chapman: But earlier, you would have cruised this with a board-foot scale?

Joseph Killough: Oh, no, we were into cubic. Had been in cubic for quite a while.

Anyway, the whole of the Interior gradually accepted, and by the time that I retired [1971] I had felt that the last five, six years that I had put in on the developing, you know, and improving of the weight-scale system was the most interesting part.