Hannan Ranger station in 1907. (U.S. Forest Service)
At Hannan, I found Assistant Ranger Henry Waldref in charge. He was an old-timer who had been appointed to patrol the forests and watch for forest fires for 6 months each year. He had a mining claim near Lincoln, and his 6 months’ wages from the Forest Service were his winter’s grubstake. Henry was camped in a tent along the creek, and I joined him there. To him the job was just a summer’s outing. He had been in the hills for years; and I sure picked up a lot of handy ideas from him about life in the mountains and living off the back of a packhorse that have been useful to me all my life. At that time, the Sun River Ranger District, with headquarters at the Hannan Gulch Ranger Station, included all of what is now called the Sun River drainage, (then called the North Fork), the Deep Creek drainage to the north and the Willow and Ford Creek drainages to the south. At that time, the stream running through the town of Augusta was known as the South Fork of the Sun River. What is now known as the South Fork of the Sun River was then known as the South Fork of the North Fork, and we also had the West Fork of the South Fork of the North Fork of the Sun River. The Sun River country comprises some very interesting, not to say spectacular, to-
Spring 2009
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