Interview with Maurice E. Splane

Recently ( Nov. 3, 1977) Interviewed Maurice “Pappy” Splane;  812 Ferry St., Sedro Woolley, WA

Maurice was born near Lake Whatcom in 1895.  His father came to this area from the Great Lakes area and was in the business of constructing and setting up sawmills.

Maurice went into the service in 1917 and got out in 1919. After the service, he entered the Veteran’s Hospital because of trouble with his leg.  He had to re-enter the hospital in 1932, where he was advised that he needed to have more exercise to keep his leg loose.

Up until that time he had worked in a machine shop.  He decided to apply for a position that was open with the game department; after three interviews he finally got the job of game warden and was sworn in.  He started work from Sedro Woolley to the Okanogan, North to Canada.  Maurice said that he was used to hunting and trapping as a kid and that had helped him to cover the large territory he was assigned to.

One of the places where Maurice spent quite a bit of time was in the upper county in the vicinity of the City of Seattle Department of Lighting Camp at Newhalem. Seems the people up there caused trouble a lot.

Maurice had met Mr. Ross who was then in charge at Newhalem.  Mr. Ross had an aviary at Reflector Bar and even had a bunch of monkeys.  At that time, the National Forest in Whatcom County was a game reserve and Ross liked it that way—he didn’t like hunting or to see things disturbed.  

At that time, the CCC’s had just put a road up to Goodell Creek.  Maurice said that it did no good to ride the train up there because everyone would find out that he was coming and there would be no reason to go.  So instead he would always drive up as far as he could and sneak into town.  One day he recalled he was waiting in camp for Clarence McGuire, the fire control officer, when out of the woods came “Skagit Bill” Pressentin with a bunch of little (too little) trout from Goodell Creek, so he “picked him up”.

Splane recalled the day that he first met J.D. Ross, a “little weasely guy” who had come up to him and asked where he stayed in Newhalem.  Mr. Ross, after talking to Maurice, instructed the Superintendent of the camp to give him a free pass for lodging and meals.  Splane was a little suspicious of Ross (he thought he had something up his sleeve) and it didn’t take him long to find out what Ross was up to.  Mr. Courier, the Superintendent of the camp soon approached Maurice with a problem.  Turned out that they were having a lot of problems with bears in town.  The trouble was a garbage pit at the base of Ross mountain.  The bears really came into the pit because the whole area was a game preserve.  Splane had brought a shotgun with him and had a bunch of shells loaded with #7 ½  shot.  Everytime he saw a bear he would shoot it in the hind end – it was nothing to shoot 4 or 5 bears a night.  

One day somebody came out of the commissary, looked over and saw the rear end of a bear that was digging in a garbage can.  He ran at the bear, clapping his hands and soon everyone in the commissary was out running along behind the bear clapping their hands.  Soon they came near a power pole, and up went the bear.  The group looked on for a little but pretty soon someone hollered for the water hose and in no time they opened the valve, and up went the water.  Immediately the whole powerhouse shorted out and it was pitch dark.  After quite a while, they got the power house going and the lights came back on, but nobody would ever claim responsibility for hosing the bear.  Splane didn’t know what happened to the bear, just that when the lights came back on, it was gone.  Either that water or the electricity had knocked it out of the pole.

Art Neuby collected the garbage in camp and had charge of the garbage dump.  After looking at all the food he was dumping, he thought of raising pigs.  He got permission and soon built pens and was raising pigs.  He got the food to feed them from the garbage and when the pigs were grown, she sold them to the camp.

Neuby kept having trouble with bears getting in his pig pens so Splane suggested that he string an electric wire around the pen.  Nobody in town liked that too well because they thought their kids would get electrocuted.  Splane then had Neuby put a switch on the circuit and he turned in on when it got dark.  One night Art told Maurice to come over for some fun so he went over to the garbage pit and they sat down on some vine maples by the switch and waited.  Pretty soon down off Mt. Ross came a bear and it went right over to the pen, stood up and put both feet on the wire.  Art closed the switch and the old bear got knocked back 30 feet.  The bear sat up shook himself a little and came right back to the fence. Art threw the switch again and sent the bear flying again.  Finally the bear got back up, walked over to the pen stood up and hauled off and really smacked the fence with its paw.  Then it walked off and disappeared.

Maurice recalled the large number of cougar that were taken from the Ross Basin when the bounty on cougar was increased.  He said that Jay Marten and a Pressentin had got about 23 cougar that first year.  The next year a fellow named Lloyd Beebe from Sequim wanted to hunt cougar too, but Splane told him that Marten and Pressentin were already hunting in the area.  Splane told him though that there was a large area up in the Ruby and Granite Creek country where he could hunt for cougar.  Beebe had never seen Splane before, but he asked Splane to loan him $20.00 for food for the winter.  Maurice said he thought about it a bit but then decided to loan him the money since Beebe had to turn in the cougar skins to Splane to be paid.  Turned out that Beebe was a real animal hunter and got 21 or 22 cougar by himself.  The second year Marten and Pressentin got another 18 or 19 cougar.  They worked the Skagit Basin up to Boundary Camp.

Splane remembers going up to the Lightning Creek shelter one winter – the shelter was about 10 X 20 feet with bunks in it.  He said that he could see 37 bucks at one time working around on bluffs above the cabin.  The deer were pawing at licorice root ferns and eating in about 2 feet of snow.  There was lots of food for them – mountain mahogany and kinnikinnick.  Maurice said that lots of time does would get right inside the shelter and he would have to chase them out.

Maurice also recalled how good the fishing was for rainbows about 16 – 18 and 20 inches long in the Skagit River.  He said that he had a couple of spots where he could really catch them.  Often he would hook a fish and play it for a while, then give it slack to release it, but another would bite immediately.

Splane said that Lloyd Beebe was no relation to Frank Beebe, after whom Beebe Mountain is named.  Frank Beebe was a marten trapper.  Maurice said that Frank Beebe always trapped 25 marten a year, then he would stop.  He always released the females.  He mentioned that Stan Aldo also trapped on Granite creek – he now lives in Sedro Woolley.

I asked Maurice if he knew how fish got way up into Fisher Creek, Maurice laughed and said that he and Roger McRae packed them up there on horses in 1945 or ’46.  Splane called Roger McRae, “Rod”.  He was the forest guard at Reflector Bar.  Maurice said the fish were Montana Black Spots from Yellowstone Lake that were raised at the USBF hatchery at Birdsview. 

Later Maurice and Hank Moore had packed in beavers that Splane caught elsewhere.  They released them in Fisher Creek and it wasn’t any time at all before the beavers dammed up the creek and flooded the trail.  So Splane had to go right back and clean up the dams.

Splane also planted Montana Black Spots in Thunder Lake.  They really got big feeding on red water mites that were so thick that they made the water look red at times.

Splane said that the Montana Black Spot he planted came from the USBF at Birdsview.  They raised mostly salmon, but also MBS which they got from Yellowstone Lake.  Joe Kemrick ran the Birdsview Hatchery.  He came there from the Baker Hatchery.  A fellow named Dunn stayed at Baker in 1934 at least.  They took some fish from the lake hatchery and put them in lakes and streams.

In the 50’s the Game Department started getting fish from somewhere else, maybe Colorado or Montana, that they called Blue Lake cutthroat.  Splane didn’t like the new fish which they had at the Whatcom Hatchery.

Maurice recalled many lakes that were planted.  He remembered when Guy Powell, a USFS employee packed fish in on horses to Blue Lake and Tuckway Lake.  Those lakes were sterile then.

A fellow named Frank Springsteen had a timber claim up at Springsteen Lake and he lived there.  In 1912 or ’13, Springsteen had packed in steelhead eggs via the trail up Grandy Creek.  A few years later some local fishermen came back and told of big fish in Springsteen Lake.

Later in the ‘40’s, about 1942, Laurence Seabury and Splane got football players from Mt. Vernon to pack fish into Springsteen Lake.  Splane wanted to go in by way of Grandy creek trail but Walter Thornton wanted to go in by way of Blue Lake and Dock Butte.   The USFS won out, so they went in via Dock Butte. Splane took the boys into Blue Lake during the day (Saturday) and later that night, 8:30 pm or 9:00 pm, Hugh Ritter was there too. The next day they loaded the fish up in 5 gallon cans with 4 ½ gallons of water and took off.  They had to go way out of their way to get around mountains and didn’t get to Springsteen Lake until 4:00 pm.  It was midnight before they got back to Dock Butte and there was no water along the way.  There were patches of snow on Dock Butte and Splane warned the kids not to drink it but pretty soon a couple of the kids got sick from drinking it, finally there were three sick boys.  They decided to head down off the mountain and a couple of the strongest ones took flashlights and headed down the trail.  Maurce told them that if they got sick they should lie down in the trail.  Maurice and rest of the bunch got going slower but finally headed down the trail.  Wasn’t long before they heard something and bumped into the second as well.  They finally got down to Sedro Woolley at 5:00 Monday morning.  After a while, they heard from the coach (named witness) who complained about how rough they were on the kids – seems they missed a couple of days of school.  Splane grumbled back a little and said he thought the coach had said that the football players were tough.

Splane also recalled planting Clear Lake in the early 40’s.  Seabury, Burt Hasselburg, Vic Galbraith, and George Pressentin were also along.