The Builders of the Timberline

[Archival footage] The President of the United States speaks to dedicate the WPA-built Timberline Lodge on the side of Oregon's Mt. Hood. The president has motored 78 curving miles from Bonneville Dam which he dedicated this morning. Above him tower frosty while glaciers, below him the evergreen forests march into the valleys. Before him Oregon's Cascade Mountains are spread out in an unbelievable 100 mile ocean of tumbling, tossing peaks. This is the picture as the governor of Oregon, the honorable Charles H. Martin, steps forward on the rough stone balcony to open the ceremonies. [20s jazz music plays] [Host] Oregon's greatest mountain peak has always attracted people who wanted to hike, climb, or ski. Ever since the automobile brought majestic Mt. Hood closer to the Portland area, there were

dreams and plans for buildings on the mountain. A cabin, a chalet, a lodge, a hotel. It was a long trip then from Portland, and when a person got here, they wanted to stay a while. As early as 1926, the U.S. Forest Service, which owned and managed the land on the mountain, had drawn plans for a lodge at the timberline level. And some businessmen were planning a hotel near Cloud Cap with a tramway to the top of the mountain. But the economy of the entire country was about to change everybody's plans. The Great Depression changed everything. [blues music plays] The stock market crashed. Banks closed. Oregonians by the

thousands lost their jobs, their businesses, their savings, their homes. [blues music plays] Under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, federal programs are created to put people back to work. And such agencies as the CCC, the Civilian Conservation Corps, building national parks, forest camps, trails. And the WPA, the Works Progress Administration, building bridges, highways, and large public works. And so it happened in 1935 that the man who was just starting up the WPA in Oregon, Emerson Jay Griffith, is convinced by a group of ardent skiers and developers that a ski lodge on Mt. Hood would be a good WPA project. It would provide jobs for hundreds of people,

ranging from carpenters to artists, and would produce something of value for the whole region. The Forest Service agrees with the idea and a project is born. It would be built on a site surveyed in part by young forest service engineer Ward Gaino. [Ward] One of my first assignments was to go up on the mountain and work with Scotty Williamson on a ground survey of the original site for the building. It was on the rim of the canyon that had a spectacular view of eastern Oregon, kind of the sweep of the Cascades from Jefferson around to Mt. Hood. [Host] There was a primitive road, more of a trail, that led into the site. But in order to make the road passable it would have to be totally rebuilt.

[Ward] It was a slow process. But it took from the early part of March, clear up until the early part of June before they finally arrived at the lodge site. Along the way the snow depths were anywhere from 12 feet, I guess, up to 18 feet. [Host] The workers are driven by truck seven miles to the launch site each day, from a camp at Summit Meadows. For weeks at a time they live away from their families. They were paid 90 cents an hour. [Ward] The rock came, for the most part, from picking up off the slopes adjacent to the lodge. Put on what they call a stone boat and dragged behind the tractor, then to the lodge site. Well a good many of them were masons that had worked on the rock work in connection with the Columbia River highway. So they were still active in the business. But of course during the depression there wasn't anything for them,

Until the Timberline project came along. The west wing was the first one built and that was followed up right almost concurrently with the east wing construction. So that left the two wings 120 degrees apart with a hole in the middle. And that was the head house, which came along last. The logs for those columns came from the Columbia National Forest in Washington, now the Gifford Pinchot national forest. And they were transported to the site and there were hewn into the final shape. The man that was hired particularly for that job, he did that job for $25 a column.

As I recall there were no incidents, no problems. Everything held together and went up smoothly. I think probably all the columns were up within less than a week. [Host] The head house is finished ahead of schedule. And thanks to a late winter, the building is enclosed before the heavy snows hit. Outside, men have to cope with blizzard conditions, sometimes using ropes to avoid getting lost between the trucks and the hotel. With the construction well underway, WPA director Griffith turns his attention to the interior of the lodge and it's furnishings. To head this massive job, he prevails upon Marjorie Hoffman Smith, an accomplished Portland interior decorator whose lasting influence is still

evident. [Marjorie] When I first was asked to join, it was because they felt they needed a woman's advice on certain interior details, which I think they did. At first we had no place in which to do our work. So we squeezed our ways into the basements of schools all over town. At one time I had as many as 200 people on my art project. We had a few very fine, fine artists, but there weren't many. But we had a great many willing craftsmen. For instance, Mr. Dawson, the head blacksmith was an artist, but he trained blacksmiths to do the ornamental iron work. [jazz music plays] One of our most skilled blacksmiths was in a wheelchair, he was a

cripple. But he had the strongest arms, and he did some of the most beautiful and difficult work. [jazz music plays] Our cabinetmakers worked under Ray Newfer, but they were carpenters.

They weren't cabinetmarkers. [Ray] When this Timberline project started they brought in some telephone poles and we cut them up to make the newel posts for the stairways at Timberline Lodge. [jazz music plays] There were some skilled carvers and there were some that learned rapidly. We had those models, and we duplicated, and that's the way they turned out. Then they said now we need some furniture. Well, what did we need? Well, seats and tables. And some chairs. We got started making the furniture. And I had a man there by the name of Keegan. I put him to work and he started on a big

piece of wood and I said what are you going to do here? Oh, he says, I don't know what it will be. But when he got through it was a ram's head. And that's how the idea for the various things would develop. [Marjorie] You see, everything we did was made for use. I'll tell you something very interesting about our furniture. We didn't blueprint it, we didn't have time to. We had, we had people on relief and we had to keep them busy. So we would build a piece of furniture, stand over, I would help stand over it with Newfer. And we would design it. It would be built. After it was built, we would blueprint it. And then make more like it. We tried to use, as you probably know, the pioneer techniques. We used strap iron, heavy oak, raw hide.

We made our curtains by appliqué, which is an old patchwork technique. We tried to make the furniture as--extremely simple, to go with the gargantuan scale of the lodge. Now to tell you about the weavers. There were no weavers. And of course I had persuaded Mr. Griffith that we were going to use Oregon wool and Oregon yarn, or Oregon flax. So, Ms. Gladdis Everett and I went to one of the sewing rooms where the machines were busy humming, making clothes for the very poor. And we asked for volunteers to weave. And we only got two. We wove over 700 yards of hand-woven fabric for the lodge.

The rug-hooking project was, to me, one of the most exciting, because the workers got so excited about it. Remember, we were dealing with people who were destitute and desperate. The average age of our project worker was 56. First place, we made balls of yarn from blankets that we cut into strips and notched together from the CCC camps. Then we took the colored corduroys from the sewing rooms, where they were making clothes for destitute families. Putting the two together we were able to get delightful rugs. And what was interesting was that these women got so excited about the designs. Our aim was to make the lodge very congenial

to its surroundings. I think that's why the head house is so highly successful, because it's like a mountain. Well, any visitor to Timberline has seen the watercolor studies of the wildflowers, the flora of the region. In order to get the flowers we would go out and pick them in the environment of the lodge, no farther than a mile away. We took these paintings for the color schemes of our rooms. They were done by a charming old German who had spent his life, his early life in Europe, copying masterpieces in museums for sale commercially. We found him in a most dilapidated situation. He was living in a piano box, and eating beans

soaked in cold water. He was so grateful to be on a project that he could not work hard enough or do enough for us. We had as many as 200 people, some of the time, on the art project. We had very few fine artists, but I must mention them to you. Our greatest artist was C.S. Price, who did two beautiful panels for the the dining room. [Host] In addition to C.S. Price, who would become an artist of national repute, several other of the fine artists who prepared works for Timberline also went on to become well-known. Oils, water colors, mosaics, carvings, marquetry, all are carefully selected to reinforce the pioneer and Cascade Mountain themes. [classical music plays] The Blue Ox Bar was really an afterthought.

It had been planned as a wood storage area. But Mrs. Smith noticed there was no bar in the entire structure, and she decided that just wouldn't do. With young Portland artist Virginia Darcy, she designed the stained glass murals that told the tall timber folk tale of Paul Bunyan and Babe the blue ox. As the lodge was being rushed to completion, the Indian head carving was installed on the lower level entry door. As sort of a signature, the carving included a string of beads, that is really a string of initials, of some of the people who worked on the project. At about the same time, Marjorie

Hofmann Smith, one day, came rushing into Ray Newfer's carpentry shop. [Ray] We had the furniture all finished and delivered and she came in with a message. This was about Friday, and she said the president's going to be there to dedicate the place and he has to have an arm chair because of his problems, you see? And we didn't have a chair with arms. So by the time, I think it was about a Tuesday, that he was there we had worked up an idea, and developed the chair, and made it, and had got it delivered and used it. [applause] [President Roosevelt] Governor Martin, ladies and gentlemen, here I am on the slopes of Mt. Hood, where I've always wanted to come. [applause]

I am here to dedicate Timberline Lodge. And I do so in the words of the bronze tablet which is directly in front of me. Timberline Lodge, Mt. Hood National Forest. Dedicated September 28, 1937, by the President of the United States, as a monument to the skill and faithful performance of workers on the rolls of the Works Progress Administration. [applause] Here to Mt. Hood will come thousands and thousands of visitors in the coming years. Those who follow us to Timberline Lodge on their holidays and vacations will represent the enjoyment of new opportunities

for play in every season of the year. [applause] So I take very great pleasure in dedicating this new adjunct, not only of national prosperity, but also as a place for generations of Americans to come in the days to come. [applause] [Reporter] From high up on Mt. Hood, the president of the United States has dedicated Timberline Lodge, a million dollar recreation spot in the Mt. Hood National Forest. The United States forest service and the Works Progress Administration have combined their most sincere efforts and ingenuity, the result being a super structure as modern as a clipper ship, and and yet one that belongs to the age of our pioneer fathers. This concludes the broadcast from Timberline Lodge, Oregon. This is the Columbia Broadcasting System... [music plays] [Marjorie] When we first opened Timberline Lodge it really was was a thing of beauty, we

were very proud of it. [music plays] [Ray] It was just almost impossible to realize, because I had been in the building business, and I had an idea of how long it took to put up a building. And when I saw the size of this, and when it was 18 months, I couldn't believe it. But I had a feeling that the furniture fit. And that was my reaction to that, it was just unbelievable. [Marjorie] Was probably very hard for you today to realize what the depression meant. Because people were so desperate. As

you know, they jumped out of windows and they sold apples on streets. So in these projects of ours, we were giving people a living wage, and a sense of security. [Host] Though it was a great hit when it first opened, Timberline Lodge was closed during World War two, and through mismanagement, stood in near ruin in 1954. It was then that Richard L. Constam took over management, and made restoration of the lodge his personal crusade. The Forest Service constructed a new wing in 1975, and the Wye East day lodge was aded in 1982 to reduce wear and tear on the original structure. Through the efforts of the citizens' organization, Friends of Timberline, artwork and furnishings have been restored. Now more than a

million people a year appreciate the work of the builders of Timberline, who have captured the mystic spirit and strength of the mountain. [music plays] [Marjorie] The night of the opening, some of those great big husky men that had been working for us, literally cried, because they didn't want to leave the project. It's very interesting that you can develop a creative spirit and Most.