The first woman state park ranger
Born Harriett Weaver in 1908, they called her “P.D.Q.” for “Pretty Darned Quick.” But her high school baseball team shortened it to “P.D.,” which became “Petey.” The Weavers came to California in 1926 so Petey could go to UCLA. Her father told her about the tallest trees in the world up near Santa Cruz somewhere, so in June 1929 she decided to check them out, doubtful trees could compare to the splendor of the Colorado Rockies. Above Boulder Creek, she passed under a log gateway that read “California Redwood Park — To Be Preserved In A State Of Nature.”
From the meadow, she was amazed to see up to the tops of these giants, rising like the Pillars of Heaven. Petey hiked into their lush gardens of flowers, berries, and ferns, while sun beams slanting through the Cathedral Groves gave her a thrill of emotion. Then a man called through a megaphone “Hi Babe! Here Babe!
Hi Babe!” Uncertain to whom this was directed, Petey explored, and found ranger Charlie Lewis calling wild deer to a trough full of oats. When she told Lewis she was an animal lover, he also introduced her to tame raccoons, squirrels, and blue jays as part of this Peaceful Kingdom, where no lions or bears roamed. Big Basin was a community in nature, where log structures blended into the natural setting rather than contrasted with it. There was the log Redwood Inn, a cluster of cabins, log dining hall, log grocery store, and log post office/gift shop run by postmaster Peg Bishop. Billy Dool was Park Warden (head ranger) in his log home and office. The community was composed of day visitors, over-nighters, and months-long campers filling the 200 free campsites, where Petey pitched a tent.
Petey was looked after by a group of six elderly widows camping all summer, led by Jesse Johnson of Los Gatos, unofficial mayor of Big Basin.
Every evening campers gathered at the Redwood Bowl for a campfire circle, facing a stage built by the campers themselves, who passed the hat one day, then providing free labor. Lewis asked Petey if she would lead the singing, as he wasn’t much good at it. She did, followed by storytelling and a campers’ talent show, after which was dancing to a Victrola across Opal Creek, beside boaters floating in the light of paper lanterns.
Petey loved it all, and soon was assisting Lewis in the park’s maintenance, who taught her the story of each tree, plant, and animal. Petey became the Recreation Officer, wearing the ranger’s uniform of park staff. She also guided walks, and did nature talks, then registered visitors when a 50 cent camping charge was added.
Soon she was earning $30-a-month part-time pay. Back in 1918 during World War I manpower shortages, Clare Marie Hodges became the nation’s first woman ranger at Yosemite National Park. But Petey was the nation’s first female State Park ranger.
The following summer Petey was housed in the old Barber Shop building with nature guide Rodney Ellsworth, and two big rats. The Angels who ran the Inn, moved Petey into one of their ratless cottages. Soon the Inn included a small museum of nature exhibits and oil paintings. As an accomplished cartoonist, Petey illustrated the cover of the park guidebook in 1931.
Other posts
Her near-decade at Big Basin ended when she accepted a posting to Richardson Grove in 1938. Where Big Basin was a wilderness enclave, Richardson Grove straddled the busy Redwood Highway (US 101), with massive crowds of visitors.
In 1942 she was invited to Big Sur, a place she’d always wanted to see, but the timing was bad. World War II had started, and gas rationing made it difficult for vacationers to travel far from home. She kept being stopped by army road blocks on the way, dubious that a woman was a ranger until shown her uniform. Because a Japanese submarine had chased a ship into Santa Cruz harbor, the entire coast had become a restricted zone, on alert for invasion. Very few vacationers arrived, the majority being military men from Camp Roberts, in training or on leave. She ran the campfire circle entertainments, but with a bucket of water nearby, to quickly douse the fire in case of blackout. She spent three wartime summers at Big Sur.
As she’d given up teaching for the duration, Petey was asked to be a yearround relief ranger, and in September 1944, was stationed at Seacliff Beach, which featured the experimental “Cement Ship” from World War I. It was now little more than a fishing pier with few people, and when the fog rolled in, Petey went stir-crazy in the ghostly atmosphere. Then one day, out of a dense fog came the massive roar of machinery from the sea. It was the much-feared invasion, yet before alerting authorities, she recognized the Amphibious Duck landing craft, 100 in all. These were Fort Ord soldiers on maneuvers, practicing a beach landing, astonished to see a once-floating Cement Ship.
In October the ranger she’d replaced returned to Seacliff, so she went to Camp McQuade in Watsonville to teach illiterate troops to read. She began the first class by passing out copies of Readers Digest, and knew instantly from anyone laughing at the jokes, which were faking illiteracy to get out of work.
Victory in Europe was declared May 8, 1945, and while war in the Pacific was still raging, her return to Big Basin in June was a homecoming. The lunchroom had moved to the Redwood Inn, making room for a nature center. Yet just as things were returning to normal, a jeep full of Fort Ord personnel roared in, and began deploying around the park, not on maneuver, but for the real thing. Everyone began scanning the skies.
“There’s one!” a soldier shouted, pointing. It was a Japanese incendiary balloon carrying 30 pounds of explosives, the kind that had burning forests in the Pacific Northwest earlier in the war. Two landed in Big Basin, while several others landed outside the park. Each was found, and soldiers deactivated them before they could explode into flames.
On Aug. 6, and again on Aug. 9, atomic bombs were dropped on a Japan unwilling to admit defeat. A few days later, the Big Basin air raid siren started blaring, and some feared Japan was taking its revenge. But when people arrived at the ranger’s station, they found happy, dancing people. Petey had turned the siren on to announce Japan’s surrender, and the end of the war. Petey brought a Santa Cruz minister and his choir to the campfire circle that evening to celebrate. After a closing prayer, a soldier stood at the campfire and played “Taps,” while out in the mountain, a second bugler echoed his call. The stress of the war and reflecting on its cost brought many to tears, and the large crowd disbursed in silence.
As the summer of 1945 drew to a close, principal Don Main came to Petey after one of her talks, and asked her to teach at Fillmore High School over the hill. Petey said no, but he mailed her a contract anyway, and flattered, she signed it.
Postwar
With the war over in 1946, the park installed a large round swimming pool in the central meadow, which became quite popular. Petey found herself among several called to take a Ranger Civil Service examination. To her surprise, Petey finished No.1 on the ranger list, making her over-qualified to stay at Big Basin. Not interested in another park, Petey told them to ignore her ranking, and leave her at Big Basin, much to the relief of her superior.
With an end to travel restrictions and gas rationing, the postwar period was a time of massive crowds, keeping Petey busy every minute. Yet she loved it all, and regretted that time seemed to pass too quickly at Big Basin. Labor Day was Aug. 31, 1948, producing some of the largest crowds in a popular year, filling up every campsite, hotel room and cabin. That evening, chief Lloyd Lively told Petey that fire had broken out on Pine Mountain (south of Buzzards Roost), and asked her to empty the park as quickly as possible.
Petey dispatched people to wake-up every camper, and get them in motion. As bus-travelers gathered at the ranger station, Petey telephoned every possible fire unit, police, busline, and places to send refugees. Minimum security prisoners from Soledad joined fire-fighters, as flames swept through Little Basin and up to Empire Grade, threatening San Lorenzo Valley towns, while fearing gusts might blow it into central Big Basin. After her day on the phone, Petey was placed at the North Gate to deter the curious. Santa Cruz was under a pall of ashes, in a fire that wasn’t fully out until Nov. 30. It burned 20,000 acres of forest and chaparral, and Petey was heartbroken at the injured wildlife, and ancient trees crashing to the ground.
The swimming pool was dismantled in 1949, possibly because they needed the staging area.
In the summer of 1950, Petey went again to Big
Sur, which at last felt like a state park instead of a military base. But at summer’s end, she was informed jobs were now reserved for ex-servicemen, especially in the park service. While sad to go, Petey concentrated on teaching and writing. She wrote 10 books during her life, starting in 1939 with three on cartooning, then several on the redwoods for Sunset Publications, and biographies of a pet raccoon, and a steer. The state park service did not employ another woman until 1969 when a dozen seasonal female rangers served. Then in 1972, the first full-time woman ranger was Paula Peterson (now Jones). Petey died in 1993.