r OA, Ranger!" 



time, looking over a report of a ranger's patrol, we noticed this item: 

 "Ate lunch on top of a telephone pole just east of Sylvan Pass." 



The snow must have been more than twenty feet deep up there and 

 the tip of the pole was probably the only 

 place he could sit down to lunch. There are 

 times when the snow is forty feet deep in 

 Sylvan Pass, and not even the telephone 

 poles nor the tree tops are visible in places. 

 It is hard for the summer-time visitor, who 

 sees Yellowstone or Glacier or the other 

 parks only in the height of the season when 1 

 the summer is balmy and the roads are good, 

 to picture the complete isolation of the 

 ranger stations in the dead of winter when 

 the snowdrifts hide even the two-storied 

 cabins. It takes genuine devotion to the 

 mountains to prompt men to make these 

 lonely cabins their homes during the long winter months. 



Ranger Joe Douglas was crossing Yellowstone Lake on skiis in the 

 dead of winter. He came to a place where the snow was blown off the 

 ice. Skiis are of no use on the ice, so Doug unstrapped them and carried 

 them over his shoulder while he walked across the ice. In an unwary 

 moment, he plunged through an air-hole into the icy water. The skiis 

 bridged the hole and undoubtedly saved his life. Clinging to them, 

 Doug cautiously pulled himself from the water and trudged on, his wet 

 clothes frozen stiff about his body. Reaching the shore, he dug through 

 four feet of snow, located some wood, built a fire, undressed, and stood 

 there naked while his clothes dried by the blaze. 



"It's a wonder you didn't freeze, Doug," someone said, when the 

 ranger told his story. 



"Naw, it wasn't cold," he retorted. "It was one of the warmest days 

 of the winter only 'bout seven below zero !" 



It takes a rawhide constitution to stand treatment like that. 



To the public, the ranger is one of the most romantic figures in life. 

 The term "ranger" probably originated on the southern border, in the 

 early days, when the roving mounted police officers, intrusted with 

 maintaining law and order along the frontier, came to be known as 

 rangers because they ranged over a wide territory. That was long be 

 fore either the national parks or the national forests were created. The 

 first national park ranger, so far as is known, was old Harry Yount, 

 government gamekeeper, who remained all winter long in Yellowstone 

 Park in 1880, to keep poachers from the territory. He was the first man 

 to weather a winter in Yellowstone. After that first winter alone, with 



