in accessible places
ready for immediate use. When a Forest officer is notified of the
approximate location of a fire he goes immediately with what help
he thinks he needs. If he finds that the fire is larger than he
can handle with the available force at his command, he notifies
the Supervisor, who secures men from the most practical point and
dispatches them to the fire as soon as possible, by automobile or
train.

To give further fire protection a gasoline launch--the
_Ranger_--twenty-six feet long and with a carrying capacity of
fifteen men, and a speed of about nine miles an hour, was placed on
Lake Tahoe in 1910, at the Kent Ranger Station, located a mile below
the Tavern. The guard who is in charge of this boat is on the Lake
about eight hours each day, going up the Lake in the morning towards
Tallac and taking the northern end of the Lake in the afternoon. The
launch is put in service each year about the 15th of June and kept
there until the fire-danger is over in the fall. Normal years this is
about the 15th of September, but in 1913 the launch remained and the
patrolman was on duty much later.

If the guard sights a fire anywhere within the watershed of Lake
Tahoe, he immediately obtains men at the nearest point and proceeds
to the fire. Since the launch has been on the Lake there have been no
serious fires. Every fire has been caught in its infancy and put out
before any damage has been done. There has been only one fire of any
size on the Lake since the launch was installed. This burned about 20
acres just east of Brockway. Numerous small fires of an acre or less
have been put out each year.

The Forest Guard in charge of the launch for the years 1912-13 was
Mark W. Edmonds. Mr. Edmonds is the son of Dr. H.W. Edmonds, who is
now in the Arctic doing scientific work for the Carnegie Institute.

The force of men at work on the Reserve varies in number according to
the season of the year. When the fire-season is on many more men are
on duty than in the winter-season. The year-long force consists of the
Supervisor, Deputy Supervisor, Forest Clerk, Stenographer, thirteen
Rangers and two Forest Examiners who are Forest School men engaged
chiefly on timber sale and investigative work. The force in 1913
during the season of greatest danger was fifty-six. Some of the
temporary employees are engaged for six months, some for three months
and others for shorter periods. The longer termed men are generally
Assistant