Luther Cressman at Paisley Caves archaeological site, Oregon (USA), 1966

This is Paisley Cave Number 3 (also known as 4). Thanks to Dennis Jenkins for the correct identification of this site. For more information on Paisley Caves, see:

pages.uoregon.edu/ftrock/paisley_caves_description.php

For an excellent documentary about Luther Cressman, including much on Paisley Caves, see:

video.pbs.org/video/2365243932/

On our days off from the 1966 excavations at Fort Rock Cave, Cressman would take us to sites around the area that he had excavated in the 1930s. I took this photo (which is a high-resolution scan of a previous post) on one of those trips.

This was certainly the most "luxurious" archaeological project I had ever worked on. Instead of tents and dehydrated food in a remote archaeological site in Alaska during the summers of 1964 and 1965 and tents at Wildcat Canyon on the Columbia river earlier in 1966, we stayed in a nice motel in La Pine and drove back and forth to the site each day. Steve Bedwell and I shared a room and Gerry and Carol Clark shared one. The project director, Luther Cressman, had his own room. We had breakfast together each morning at the restaurant adjoining the motel and had boxed lunches of our choice prepared by the restaurant to take with us to the site. In the evening, we had dinner at the restaurant, sometimes together and sometimes separately. The work at the site itself was often hot and dirty and we all looked forward to showers at the motel at the end of the day. Although we tried to get rid of most of the ash from a recent fire in the cave, we still breathed in way too much. Today, I would imagine that masks of some sort would be required wear. We had lots of visitors including local residents, reporters from near and far, and a long visit from the author of the "Perry Mason" mysteries,
Erle Stanley Gardner. Cressman usually dealt with the visitors, but otherwise worked just as hard as the rest of us.

SOME MISCELLANEOUS RECOLLECTIONS:

After the project was over, Cressman sent me out a couple of times to look for stone quarries (the topic of my then recently completed master's thesis) in the area. I used Reub Long's ranch as a base and he helped a lot in finding sites of possible interest. He also introduced me to others who knew the area, either when we were riding around or when we were having lunch together at a restaurant in Silver Lake. Later, Cressman had Steve Bedwell and me go out to do some more work on other projects (I think it was November by then). We stayed at the Christmas Lake lodge and apparently we were almost the only ones staying there then. One day we went out to do a surface survey on a ridge and it started snowing. It took us a few minutes to realize that we couldn't do a surface survey or anything else on our list with several inches of snow on the ground.

We were invited out to dinner a couple of times during the time we were working at Fort Rock Cave. One was at Mrs. Long's ranch house which had a large dining room, probably from the days from when there were lots of ranch hands. Reub was not there and I never saw the two of them together. He lived in a small mobile home on his compound near Fort Rock Cave. Near the end of the project, Phil Brogan treated us all to dinner at the best restaurant in Bend. I remember Cressman in a quiet voice reminding us not to order anything really expensive, but Phil overheard him and said we could have whatever we wanted. (We of course followed Cressman's advice.)

The 1966 excavations at the cave lasted only about three weeks at the end of August and the beginning of September. They were scheduled that late in the summer because three of us were working on another project until then (Wildcat Canyon). Cressman at first planned to set up tents at Reub Long's ranch, but since it was for such a short time, it turned out to be cheaper and easier to stay in La Pine. The motel was the West View Motel and the room rates then were $6 for a single, $7 for a double, and $9 for a double with two double beds.

Cressman had the only alarm clock and was the one who woke us early each morning by rapping on our doors. We usually wanted to sleep longer, of course, and one morning, Steve, who had the bed nearest the door, let out a disappointed groan which Cressman heard and replied, "You should be honored to be awakened by a full professor emeritus!"

Photos of the Wildcat Canyon excavations, where three of us were working earlier in the summer of 1966 can be found here:

www.flickr.com/photos/gbaku/sets/72157600017253977/

Two of us (Steve Bedwell and I) worked on an archaeological project in a remote area of Alaska in 1964. Photos of that project including a couple of Luther Cressman when he visited are here:

www.flickr.com/photos/gbaku/sets/72157600005121699/

Photos of the 1965 Alaska project are here:

www.flickr.com/photos/gbaku/albums/72157600005098536

More pictures from the 1966 Fort Rock Cave excavations are here:

www.flickr.com/photos/gbaku/albums/72157600017125594

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Taken on: January 1, 1966

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