It's Your Oregon: Larry Williams

excerpts from Memories of an Oregon Conservationist

My family, on both sides, came to Oregon in covered wagons in the 1848 and 1852. My great grandfather, James Shields, was a signer of the Oregon Constitution. Like many people, I had no idea what I was going to do when I grew up. Like a lot of things in life it all turned on happenstance. In 1955, during my last year in high school in Portland I got a job picking up and delivering film to a color-lab after school. I drove my 1939 Willys sedan to Portland’s photo stores every afternoon collecting film and delivering color prints. While working at the color lab I became acquainted with their lab technician, Bill Nordstrom. One day he asked if I would like to go on a hike with the Trails Club of Oregon. It turned out to be a wonderful trail on the flanks of Mt. St. Helens. I must admit that I did hesitate a bit when he told me it was a six mile trail.

It wasn’t that I had never experienced the out-of-doors, for my parents often took my brother and me camping. In the early 40’s I spent a lot of time in the woods above the Park Blocks in Portland’s West Hills. (We lived in a duplex on Montgomery St. where one of PSU’s buildings now sits.) After we moved to NE Portland my “woods” was Sullivan’s Gulch near the Lloyd Center. (Catching salamanders was its big attraction.) I soon joined the Trails Club. Shortly before the back-saving Kelty pack frame came out I got into weekend and weeklong hikes with the Trails Club along the Pacific Crest Trail. I also took up skiing on Mt. Hood and then added kayaking as a spring and fall activity to complete my outdoor activity schedule. My enthusiasm for hiking in the northwest led me to become president of the Trails Club and Oregon vice-president of the Federation of Western Outdoor Clubs.

In the late 1950’s the Forest Service began stepping up its timber sales in the old growth forests of the Cascades. As I returned to favorite trails I began to see new roads and clear-cuts in previously pristine forests. This increased logging was a special problem in Oregon where too little public land had been protected from logging and where the culture was very pro-logging.

Bagby Hot Springs: My first direct encounter with the U.S. Forest Service was over their road construction and logging sales in the upper Clackamas River drainage leading to Bagby Hot Springs. This was a favorite spot of mine. It had cedar log tubs to which hot water was channeled from the hot springs. Before my first visit it was an eight-mile hike through a magnificent river valley of old growth trees. My first hike to the hot springs was only four miles. In the spring of 1962 I discovered that the Forest Service was pushing a road up this magnificent valley. I, along with Bill Nordstrom and others, immediately paid a visit to the district ranger in Portland to protest this destruction. The district ranger assured us that the road would go no closer. Just to make sure we revisited Bagby the next weekend only to discover that the district ranger had lied to us. The road had already been pushed up the creek another half mile since our last visit. We made a return visit to the ranger’s office with photos in hand. He then reluctantly pulled back the cover of an easel revealing a map showing the road going right to the hot springs. Being still politically naive I was very surprised that an official of the U.S. government would lie. I immediately wrote a letter of protest to the Regional Forester and a letter-to-the-editor to The Oregonian.1 Soon after my letter was published I got a call from the district ranger saying “Okay, we have changed our plans and will relocate the road so it will go behind a hill and not into Bagby.” (The road now ends 1 ½ miles from the hot springs.) This victory was a defining moment for me. We had saved a recreational treasure for future generations. Indeed, Bagby Hot Springs has its own web site! It appears that volunteers are taking good care of Bagby despite the much increased visitor use. I have often said that making social change is like eating peanuts. Once you discover that you can make change there is no stopping. Bagby was my peanut!

Nestucca Spit: In 1965 the Oregon Department of Transportation Commission proposed to relocate Highway 101 on the Oregon Coast over a sand spit at the mouth of the Nestucca River near Pacific City. I joined the protests by those who feared the road would destroy the natural environment along the spit and limit public access to the beach. It was during this time I met Oregon Treasurer Robert W. Straub, who was leading the opposition, and Janet McLennan, a experienced public interest campaigner in Portland. We believed that if the State Highway Commission approved this road along the spit, it could well begin building roads over other sand spits down the entire Oregon coast. We held a picnic on the beach and got public hearings in Tillamook and Portland. We also collected 50,000 signatures on an advisory petition presented to Glenn Jackson, Chairman the Department of Transportation Commission. But the real clincher to killing the project recalls Janet McLennan, “was the discovery of a reversionary clause in the deed by the BLM granting a portion of the spit to Oregon on condition that it be perpetually available for recreational use. Then in 1971 or 1972 Governor Tom McCall and Glenn Jackson finally gave up.”

Saving the Oregon Beaches: Shortly after the Nestucca road fight came yet another and even bigger threat to Oregon’s beaches. In 1968 a developer on the northern Oregon coast fenced off beach access for his hotel guests. He claimed that Oregon’s open beach law only extended below the high-tide zone. This it turned out to be true but nobody had ever challenged this law before. It had been generally accepted that the public had ownership west of the dunes. Limiting open access to the beaches could well have turned Oregon’s magnificent coastline into a string of fences where the public was not allowed. Again, Bob Straub rose to the challenge by launching the “Beaches are for Kids” campaign. He proposed a petition drive to get a one-cent per gallon gas tax on the Oregon ballot to buy the land from the top of the dunes to the high-tide mark. I again joined Janet McLennan and many others in spending many weekends on the streets of Portland seeking signers to our ballot initiative. We succeeded in our petition drive and were assigned the unfortunate ballot number 6.

The oil companies soon had billboards all over the state warning people to “Beware of Tricks in 6” – with a rabbit coming out of a hat no less! They out spent us 100 to one. The measure went down to a resounding defeat. We thought that all our work had gone for naught. But that proved not to be true. The Oregon Supreme Court saved the Oregon coast from this blight. “It recognized a public right to use based on the English Common Law doctrine of Custom,” recalled Janet McLennan. “The decision was appealed on constitutional grounds to the U.S. Federal Court of Appeals. That appeal was heard by a three-judge panel, and finally sustained in a decision in either 1972 or 1973.” I like to believe that if it had not been for our campaign the court would not have ruled as it did.

The Oregon Environmental Council: Having successfully launched the Washington Environmental Council in late 1967, Brock Evans began contacting veteran conservationists based in Eugene, Bend, Salem and Portland in June 1968. He was seeking advice and support for creating an Oregon Environmental Council. Many of us realized that we needed a home-grown conservation voice. The problem was time. We were up to our necks in campaigns (i.e.: Hells Canyon, French Pete, Oregon Cascades Study, Oregon Dunes, the Minam, etc.). We felt that we had little time or energy to build a new organization. It was also clear that there were just too few of us to effectively confront all these challenges. In calling around that state to build support for an OEC Brock got help from Cornelius Lofgren of Salem, a member of the Chemeketans. Cornelius assisted in organizing a meeting of the conservation leaders in Salem. In late September and early October 1968 I contacted key campaigners in Portland and Eugene to ask them to come to Salem to discuss the feasibility of creating an environmental council. We held our first meeting in the Chemeketans clubhouse on November 9,1968.

The meeting went smoothly. Brock made an impassioned presentation on how much we needed an Oregon grown organization. He told of the success of the Washington Environmental Council and how it was bringing new warriors to the conservation battle. With the leadership of Maradel Gale of Eugene and Bill Ellis of Bend, it was agreed that we needed a home-grown lobbying organization that could represent our interests before the Oregon legislators and the U.S. Congress. An organizing meeting soon followed on December 7th in Salem to draft the by-laws. Following the example set by the recently created Friends of the Earth we decided not to make the OEC a tax exempt organization. The IRS rules restricting the use of tax exempt funds for lobbying purposes were very strict at that time. We used the Washington Environmental Council model in designing the OEC. It was to be a coalition of Oregon non-profit organizations.

By February 1970 thirty-one organizations had become members. (We grew to 80 organizational members and 3,000 individual members by 1974.) Our list of supporting organizations made a powerful political statement on our letterhead and in hearings. Maradel Gale, representing the Eugene Natural History Society, was elected President at the second meeting. The other founding board members were:

• Cornelius Lofgren (Chemeketans), Salem
• Bill Anderson (Oregon Wildlife Federation), Portland
• Chris Attneave (Planned Parenthood of Lane County), Eugene
• Maxine Banks (Salem Beautification Council), Salem
• Reese Bender (OSU. Fin and Antler Club), Corvallis
• Stanton Cook (Nature Conservancy), Eugene
• Bill Elllis, (Preserve our Urban and Rural Environment - PURE) Bend
• 27
• Charles Fischer (Citizens for Clean Environment), Corvallis
• Bruce Hall (Planned Parenthood Association of Oregon), Portland
• John Hammond (PSC Outdoor Club), Portland
• Holway Jones (Sierra Club), Eugene
• Frances McCarter (Chemeketans), Salem
• Richard Noyes (Sierra Club), Eugene
• Henry Rancourt (Oregon Wildlife Federation), Portland
• Michael Shannon (PURE), Bend
• Rodney Stubbs (Sierra Club) Salem
• Sandy Tepffer (Sierra Club), Eugene
• Herbert Titus (Upper Willamette Valley Anti-Pollution League), Eugene
• Larry Williams (Federation of Western Outdoor Clubs), Milwaukie

Five working committees were also established: Pollution Control, Recreation, Natural Resources, Environmental Planning and Environmental Education. Salem was chosen as the meeting place for the monthly board meetings due to its central location.

My first letter to The Oregonian as OEC’s executive director was published on January 25, 1970. It was in response to several letters published in The Oregonian calling French Pete Valley a “Fire Trap.” Our first “office” was my apartment in Milwaukie.

I had a small portable Royal typewriter, a card table and that was about all. Then a wonderful thing happened. People called me, seemingly out of the blue, to offer their help. To my joy and relief my old friend Janet McLennan called one day to say that the owner of the Oregon Transfer Company had offered to give us rent free a 12’ x 15’ office in his pesticide warehouse building at 1238 N.W. Glisan St.

The Bottle Bill: It was in the 1969 session of the Legislature that OEC members Rich Chambers and Don Waggoner got the now famous Oregon Bottle Bill first introduced. Gov. McCall responded by forming the Anti-Litter Committee, which later became Stop Oregon Litter and Vandalism, or SOLV. (Later, McCall would consider himself the father of the Bottle Bill. He became a key player in its eventual passage. After SOLV had lost in its effort to stop the Oregon Bottle Bill, McCall called me to his office to seek my support in having the OEC take over SOLV. I declined the offer.) The Committee launched an extensive advertising campaign opposing the bottle bill. Two years later we were much better organized. Maradel reported that the 1971 session saw the “heaviest amount of citizen participation of any session in recent history.”11 She later recalled that “a member of the Associated Oregon Industries publicly complained about the large numbers of citizens who were coming to Salem to present their views, and thereby threatening the very stability of the democratic process.

Most people do not know, or remember, that the Oregon Bottle Bill contained a provision outlawing detachable pull-tabs. One could not have dreamed at the time that this provision, drafted by two OEC activists, would circle the globe! I only encountered detachable pull-tabs in two countries. What a wonderful example it is of the impact of citizen activism. Today’s OEC members should be proud of their organization’s continuing contribution to protect the environment.

I retired from the Sierra Club 1998 but I am still active with the Club. I have been Chair of the International Committee and am now International Vice-President of the Sierra Club and Chair of the U.S. and Canada International Committee. In 2004 I spent four months in the Philippines as chair of an Asian Development Bank inspection panel examining a development project in Pakistan. So the beat goes on…