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the permanent staff after he graduated from Virginia Tech in 1953. In those early years, he manned the entrance stations, collected fees from visitors, worked on the survey teams during winter and watched from the lookout towers during fire season. Those five towers were abandoned in the late 1950s with the advent of four-wheel drive vehicles and improvements in radio communication.
“The towers just weren’t productive any more. Besides, we were looking right into the sun at the hottest part of the day, and we couldn’t see much with haze,” Mr. Johnson recalled.
There have been other changes. Ranger Johnson remembers the days when Commissioner Ferdinand Zerkel held court in park headquarters. Mr. Zerkel, who lived in Luray, had been an early enlistee in George Freeman Pollock’s battle to develop a national park in the Blue Ridge Mountains and later supervised the resettlement program.
“Any time you had a minor infraction, a misdemeanor, you’d call Mr. Zerkel in and when you got to park headquarters with your man, he’d be there," Mr. Johnson said.
Training for park rangers was as informal as the hearings ih the headuuarters courtroom.
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