GRANTS PASS — When Medford resident Carroll Brown was born on Dec. 8, 1907, President Teddy Roosevelt had a gleam in his eye.

Working with newly minted Forest Service Chief Gifford Pinchot, the Rough Rider created on March 2, 1908, the Crater National Forest, which would become the Rogue River National Forest in 1932. In June 1957, Brown, now 99, was appointed the Rogue River forest supervisor, a post the career forester held for a decade.

"It was challenging," he said in an interview with the Mail Tribune. "The (Rogue River) forest was less than a million acres but we sold over 200 million board feet per year. It was a mixture of Douglas fir, pine and other associated species."

By comparison, the combined forest currently sells less than 50 million board feet annually. Brown was forest supervisor during a time when timber production was paramount in the national building boom after World War II.

Brown was honored Thursday at the Josephine County Fairgrounds during a celebration of the anniversary of the birth of what would become half of the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest. More than 200 people, mostly agency retirees, gathered for the event.

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The other half — the Siskiyou National Forest — was officially established on March 4, 1907. In 2004, the two forests were combined to become the Rogue River-Siskiyou forest, which covers nearly 2 million acres. The forest headquarters is in Medford.

Brown also helped establish the air tanker base at the Medford airport.

"It was hilarious as I look back on how we started out," he said. "The regional office sent down a 1,000-gallon canvas tank. We hooked that up right near the administrative building."

An old PBY military airplane was converted into an air tanker, he added. The tanker base was later moved to its present location at the west end of the airport.

The creation of the tanker base was prompted by a wildfire which had started in the Ashland Creek watershed shortly after his arrival, he recalled.

"It was outside the forest but it came within the forest," he said. "We had a major fire on our hands. That's how the tanker base was established."

Brown spent nearly 40 years working for the agency, starting out in 1928 on what would become the Gifford Pinchot National Forest in Washington state.

"My job? Building a trail to the top of Mount St. Helens," he said.

The top portion of that trail is no longer there, thanks to the volcano blowing its top in spring 1980.

Brown took time out from his career with the agency in 1929 to enter Oregon State University, where he earned a degree in forestry. His identical twin brother, Carlos, followed a similar career, graduating from OSU the same year and becoming supervisor of the Tongass National Forest in Alaska. Carlos died in 1995.

In spring 1933, after college, Carroll Brown became a fire guard at a ranger district that no longer exists on the Gifford Pinchot.

"I enjoyed it," he said. "But a lightning storm came up. I had to walk out 25 miles to the Spirit Lake ranger station. It was mostly during the night."

From there he went to the Chequamegon National Forest in Wisconsin, where he worked with Civilian Conservation Corps enlistees, serving as foreman and camp superintendent.

"Those boys were wonderful to work with," he said. "They got $30 a month — $25 of that went home to their parents. Five dollars they kept for spending money. We had a Chicago camp. They told us their folks back home in Chicago had never seen so much money."

Established as part of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal program to combat unemployment caused by the Great Depression, the CCC employed unmarried young men to work on such projects as soil conservation, flood control, tree planting, fighting forest fires, protecting wildlife and building structures from dams to buildings.

Before it was disbanded in 1942, more than 2 million men had joined what was known as Roosevelt's Tree Army.

In 1938, Brown returned to the Pacific Northwest to continue his work with CCC crews, then worked in half a dozen forests before arriving at the Rogue River forest.

Brown, who wrote a 500-page, two-volume history of the Rogue River forest following his retirement, was named recipient of the Port-Brown award by the current Rogue River-Siskiyou Forest Supervisor Scott Conroy during Thursday's event.

The award was created in the 1990s in honor of Brown and early-day Star Gulch Ranger District ranger Lee Port.

Reach reporter Paul Fattig at 776-4496 or e-mail him at pfattig@mailtribune.com.