Leslie Raymond Albee

Les Albee Named To State SCS Position

Appointment of Leslie R. Albee of Rapid City as assistant state conservationist for the U.S. Soil Conservation Service in South Dakota, was announced Friday by State Conservationist Ross R. Davies of Huron. Albee will be transferred from the Rapid City office to the state headquarters in Huron early in November.

The post which Albee will fill is a new one created in connection with the new Great Plains Conservation program which will involve 17 South Dakota counties.

Since 1944

The new assistant state conservationist has been a Rapid City resident since 1944. He was district conservationist for a 10-county West River area from 1944 to 1950, and has been state range conservationist headquartered here since July 1, 1950.

Albee has been with the SCS almost continuously since 1936. He spent about a year with the Forest Service in range research in central Utah after graduation from the University of Idaho in 1935 with a range management major. He started with the SCS in range survey work in Arizona and New Mexico in 1936-37.

Albee’s first work in South Dakota was in 1937 when he was assigned to a range survey for the SCS on the Pine Ridge and Rosebud Indian Reservations. He spent a year as the chief of an SCS range survey party in the Wind River Mountains of western Wyoming in 1938 and was at Sturgis in 1939 as range conservationist for the CCC Camp at Fort Meade.

Several Jobs

Before his assignment to the state range conservationist post, he held district conservation jobs in Faith, Philip and Rapid City.

In 1956 Albee was detailed to Iran as a leader of an international range management training course for the International Cooperation Administration. He is the author of many articles and pamphlets relating to range conservation in the northern Great Plains. Albee and his wife, Margaret, have three children. Beverly, 17, is a senior at Rapid City High School. Billy, 14, and Bobby, 13, are students at the West Junior High School, Albee said he expects to move his family to Huron by the first of the year.

In the new Great Plains program Albee will be the SCS liaison officer with the Agricultural Conservation and Stabilization Service which administers the older ACP conservation program,

The new Great Plains program applies only to counties designated by the Secretary of Agriculture in the 19 Great Plains states. It emphasizes land use changes and wind erosion control and moisture conservation and management practices, The new program is based on voluntary participation with a basic conservation plan for individual farm serving as a contract between the producers and the government.