Ross rejects Forest Service's definition of fair

If the early history of Seeley Lake is intertwined with the lumber industry, the rise of the United States Forest Service is incontrovertibly intertwined with Seeley Lake and in particular with the Big Blackfoot Timber Sale of 1907-1910. Historian and member of the Camp Paxson Preservation Board Gary Williams has been researching that sale. The Seeley Swan Pathfinder will be bringing some of the interesting bits of information he has discovered about logging in the Seeley Lake area and also about the fledgling U.S. Forest Service.

SEELEY LAKE – Missoula's Great Flood of 1908 temporarily interrupted the contract dispute between the Big Blackfoot Milling Company and the Forest Service regarding the Seeley Lake Timber Sale. In a letter dated June 1, Associate Forester Overton Price wrote to Big Blackfoot's General Manager Kenneth Ross detailing the ways in which the Forest Service's scalers adhered to the parameters of the contract and pointing out ways the company's scalers and loggers had transgressed.

Price's letter expressed confidence that having explained the contract and the points of transgression, Ross undoubtably would agree Big Blackfoot was being treated fairly.

As soon as the damage from the flood was somewhat under control, Ross sent Price an indignant reply, "...we are very much surprised indeed at the position you take in this matter and we certainly cannot agree with you in your assuming that we have been treated fairly...."

Ross insisted the company scalers were "as liberal in the scale as could be asked for by anyone." In his opinion, the main problem was that the Forest Service was forcing "absolutely worthless" logs on the company. He urged the Forest Service to send a representative to Bonner to see some of the offending logs in the millpond and observe the results of trying to mill them, adding, "...we certainly feel that we are entitled to this consideration."

Ross ended his letter, "...we must insist again that we certainly have not been fairly treated in this matter and it is not our purpose to drop the matter of these differences until we feel that the parties responsible for the Government end of this deal have a proper investigation made to get a fair adjustment of these differences."

Ross officially requested a check scale. This is the process where a qualified scaler not previously associated with the sale reassesses the exact same logs and the results are compared to those of the original scaler.

Forest Inspector Paul Reddington, who had initially handled the scaling complaint and whose report data and recommendations had formed the basis for Price's letter detailing Big Blackfoot's contract transgressions, advised his superiors against attempting a check scale. In the first place, Reddington said the hazardous trip the logs had undergone on their way to the mill had obliterated most of the numbers marked on them. In addition, government logs had inadvertently been mixed with logs belonging to Big Blackfoot.

In fact, in an action separate from the scaling issue, Big Blackfoot filed a trespass claim against the Forest Service, accusing them of cutting trees on property owned by the mill and scaling the logs as their own. Ironically, trespass is the same violation the Department of Interior had accused Big Blackfoot Milling's predecessor company the Montana Improvement Company of violating.

An investigation by Forest Supervisor David Kinney revealed the trespass claim was justified. The Big Blackfoot Milling Company property in question originally belonged to Jasper Seely, the founding father of the town of Seeley Lake.

Born in Michigan, Seely came to Montana in 1881 and worked as a timber cruiser for the Hammond Lumber Company, which later became the Montana Improvement Company which eventually morphed into the Big Blackfoot Milling Company. According to Mildred Chaffin writing in "Cabin Fever: A Centennial Collection of Stories About the Seeley Lake Area," Seely's brother Elmer moved to Montana to join him and the two lived in a cabin where Camp Paxson stands today.

In 1883, surveyors reached the area around the lake locally referred to as Clearwater Lake. They officially renamed it Seeley Lake, mistakenly adding an "e" to Jasper and Elmer's last name.

Seely married, added a few buildings and gradually developed his land holdings into a ranch. In 1887-88 he homesteaded 160 additional acres on the east side of the lake where he built a large log house for his growing family.

In 1897, the Lewis and Clark Forest Reserve was created. At that time, it included the area surrounding Seeley Lake. Jasper Seely decided to become a part of the U. S. forest organization regulated by the Department of Interior. His home became the ranger station. His assigned duties were to watch for poachers, prevent timber theft, evict squatters and put out fires.

In 1900 he was promoted to supervisor of the Lewis and Clark Forest Reserve. Promotions and transfers came steadily after that, requiring Seely to move his family to different parts of the state. In 1906, he sold his Seeley Lake holdings to the Big Blackfoot Milling Company.

According to the chronology which forms part of the introduction of "Cabin Fever," Seely's house/ranger station transformed into headquarters for the Anaconda Copper Mining Company, for all practical purposes the parent company of Big Blackfoot Milling Company. The logging camp for the 1907-10 sale was thought to be somewhere near the present-day Wapiti Lodge.

The Forest Service trespass occurred because Seely's property was encompassed within the Timber Sale boundaries.

The explanation sent to The Forester in Washington D.C. read, "The mistake happened when operations first opened in the early fall of 1907, a short time before the assignment of Lumberman Norton [site supervisor] to the sale."

Apparently, Norton assumed all logs cut in the area were part of the contract sale and scaled them as Forest Service logs. Once understood and acknowledged, the matter was easily settled and an equitable adjustment was made resulting in Big Blackfoot being awarded a refund equivalent to $442.53, though the amount was adjusted in terms of scale rather than dollar amount.

The on-going issue of "absolutely worthless" logs and improper scaling was not so easily settled. The controversy made its way to the Forest Service's Washington D. C. office where Acting Forester E.E. Carter sent a Sept. 14 telegraph to Ross acknowledging the company's concerns and assuring him Assistant Forester, William T. Cox, would be in Missoula "in the near future" and would investigate the situation.

Ross was growing impatient. On Sept. 16, he wrote to Cox, "We wish to advise that we have been sawing on last year's logs since the first of April and, of course, each month makes the quantity of logs in evidence at Bonner just that much less. At the present time there are quite a lot of these logs here and if you can conveniently arrange to do so it would be a whole lot better if you could come here at the earliest opportunity."

The next article in this series will discuss the – at least partial – conclusion of the controversy.