Photos from the WFIWC Archives:
Facilities

Blacks Mountain Experimental Forest, Lassen Co., Calif. These two adjoining wall tent platforms were constructed by Jack W. Bongberg and occupied by his family during summers prior to his service in the Navy during WW II. He was there obtaining data used to develop the California Ponderosa Pine Risk Classification by which pines were assigned four categories of risk to bark beetle attack. The tent on the left was for cooking and eating. The right tent was living and sleeping quarters. It had a lava rock fireplace with arrowheads embedded in the interior face. My family and I (M. Furniss) occupied the tents during 1951-1952 after Bongberg went to Albuquerque and I was assigned to annual plot measurements of mortality and training foresters in the application of the risk classification. The effluent from the kitchen sink went into a sump outside. The cover became rotted and my 4-year-old son fell in and was hauled-out and hosed down with no harm done. Once, lightning hit a pine, sending chunks of wood onto one of the headquarters buildings. Thereafter, afternoon lightning storms would send Irene and the kids well away from the large ponderosa pine standing next to the tents!

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