Remember When?

50 YEARS AGO • FEBRUARY 27, 1969

TWO VETERAN PACKERS END CAREERS FRIDAY

Two of the real “old timers” among United States Forest Service personnel in western Montana – Earl Hendren of Thompson Falls and Dan Rasor of Trout Creek – will end their careers Friday with retirement.

Hendren’s career started 51 years ago in the spring of 1918 and according to Irv Puphal, Thompson Falls district ranger, he is the only person now working for the Forest Service who can claim service that far back.

Rasor began working for the Forest Service eight years after Hendren started in 1926, and his career spans 43 years.

Both are packers and long time friends.

Hendren went to work as a packer on the Bear Creek District of the Selway National Forest in the spring of 1918 when he was a boy only 14 years old. His first assignment was packing district supplies up the Selway River to the Bear Creek Station above the present Moose Creek Station from No. 1 on the Middle Fork just below Syringa, Idaho, where the road from Kooskia ended.

In the spring of 1920, Hendren left the Forest Service for a job packing for the Rutledge Timber Co. of Clarkia, Idaho After four years, he moved to Portland and took a job as a fireman on a steamboat working up to the position of assistant engineer on boats hauling paper from Oregon City on the Willamette River and from Camas, Washington on the Columbia into Portland. The boats were owned by the Western Transportation Co., a subsidiary of the Crown Paper Co., later to become the Crown Zellerbach Corp.

Earl missed the hills of western Montana and in 1930 returned to the Forest Service for a job on the Cabinet National Forest, an area later absorbed by the Lolo National Forest, at Thompson Falls. He has remained here since.

Dan began his work with the Forest Service in the spring of 1926 on the North Fork of the Coeur d’Alene Forest in Idaho. The following year he worked for the old Cabinet Forest at Plains as a guard-packer. In 1929, he transferred to Trout Creek and has worked as a laborer, truck driver, fire fighter, watchman, powderman in trails and brush. Primarily, however, his work has been as a packer, transporting supplies by mule to areas where roads did not exist.

After the Cabinet Forest was abolished in 1954, Dan became a full-time packer on the Kaniksu National Forest.

After retirement, Dan plans to catch up on his hobbies of fishing and hunting, which were neglected during long hours on the trails. He will continue to reside at his home at Trout Creek.

Earl plans to continue to make his home at Thompson Falls.

300 ATTEND GOLDEN WEDDING RECEPTION FOR NOBLE G. LaRUES AT HOT SPRINGS

Three hundred friends and relatives of Mr. and Mrs. Noble LaRue honored them Sunday on the occasion of their 50th wedding anniversary. The reception was held in the Florence Hotel.

Noble G. LaRue was married to Mary Lee Wilhite Feb. 12, 1919 in Centralia, Missouri. They lived on a farm near Columbia Missouri. Until March 1921 when they moved to Tuscor. There they operated the store and post office and LaRue was depot agent for the Northern Pacific Railway. June 1, 1930 the family moved to Hot Springs where they have operated the Hot Springs Mercantile since.

They have two children, Helen, who lives in Helena with her husband and three daughters and Harold and his wife, the former Betty Ratcliff, live in Hot Springs.