Archie Murchie was the epitome of an Old School Forest Ranger. His 400+ page memoir covers the 36-years of his life working for the Forest Service back when it was more of a "Good Ol' Boy" outfit.
Archie lived for awhile in Mackay and managed the Wildhorse District in Copper Basin in the 1940's. He took a real practical approach to working with the ranchers:
"Helping with the roundup was interesting and enjoyable, and the permittees appreciated that you could take off your ranger hat and go out and work and sweat and eat dust right along with the rest of them. The fall roundup was something I wanted to be involved in very much, but it also was really, I guess, part of my job, because I could work with those ranchers then; I could talk to them. When the day was done, and we were sitting around having a shot of whiskey after we got through eating, if they had problems, they’d come out with them. And if I had problems, I could come out with them. We could sit there and talk things over, and there was no bitterness. It worked."
Archie's book was published in 1991 and will remain an enduring classic of the genre. Used copies of the book are available online in the $15-$20 price range. However, the entire book is actually available from the University of Nevada Reno archives. You can go right to the chapter about Archie's time in Mackay and Wildhorse via a link in the right margin.
"One advantage of being a ranger at Mackay was that it was a small community, and you got to know the people well, and you could work with the people. I had actually become part of the community, more than in a lot of other places I’ve been. I worked with the Boy Scouts and Lions Club and was a member of the Masonic Lodge there. Women’s clubs and different groups, if they wanted somebody to give a talk, they would call on me. Also, the community was a very nice community to live in. Our children were all in school then, except our youngest boy, John. They had good schools, and the classes weren’t so big that they didn’t get a good education."
Archie's kids bicycles sealed the deal and four out of five of The Pence Boys actually became Forest Rangers and the fifth went to work for a USDA sister agency, the Soil Conservation Service. Here's a quote from an LA Times article about Guy Pence, easily the most famous of The Pence Boys:
"There never was much question that Pence would become a forest ranger. For that matter, there never was much question about any of the five Pence boys. Growing up in Mackay, Ida., next to the Challis National Forest, four of them ended up as forest rangers, the fifth with the Soil Conservation Service.
"Our father," Pence explains, "always had us in the woods."
Every Saturday, the five brothers would gather the camping gear. Remember this, remember that, their father would urge, calling from the grocery store he and his wife ran for 50 years, six days a week. Soon as he closed up, they were gone, the boys all piled in the back of their dad's 1949 Ford pickup, slingshots aimed at roadside tin cans. All Sunday, they hiked, caught grasshoppers for bait, fished for brook trout, sometimes hunted deer. The Pence boys learned how to survive in the woods, how to appreciate where they were."
Guy Pence was the Forest Ranger who was bombed twice during his days as a Forest Ranger. Luckily, he and his Family survived. You can read all about it here:
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