Hacker News · Feb 16, 2026 · Collected from RSS
My great-grandfather Reuben P. Box was a US Forest Ranger in Northern California, and I've got his daily work diary from 1927-1945, through the depression, WWII, Conservation Corps, and lots of forest fires. I've scanned the entire thing, had Claude help with transcription, indexing, and web site building, and put the whole thing here: https://forestrydiary.com/ This is one of those projects I've sat on for years, but with Claude and Mistral helping with the handwriting recognition, and even helping me write a custom scanning app that would auto scan each page and put it into a database as I assembled everything. As far as I know, this is the only US Forestry Diary that has been fully scanned in and published. I understand that there are other diaries in some collections, but none have been scanned in. I hope this helps somebody. Please let me know if it does. This is the sort of project Claude and AI can help with - A personal project that sits on the shelf forever, but now a reasonable project that can be published in my spare time. I'm not trying to earn money on this, but just improving our knowledge and history just a little bit. Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47041836 Points: 6 # Comments: 0
US Forest Service Diaries Daily work diaries of Reuben P. Box, US Forest Service Ranger for the North Butte Protection Unit of the Lassen National Forest, stationed at Stirling City, California. These diaries document forest management, fire suppression, law enforcement, road construction, and daily life in the northern California mountains from 1927 to 1945. These family records were scanned and digitized by Lance Orner. Handwriting transcription by Mistral OCR. Text summaries and indexes built by Anthropic Claude. Hosting by DreamHost. In partnership with Working Toast, LLC and Stirling City Historical Society. For more information, contact Lance at lance@orner.net. Highlights: March 1927 — Diaries begin at Stirling City; transferred to Klamath National Forest February 1928 — Returned to Stirling City, North Butte Protection Unit April 20, 1931 — Stirling City town fire July 22, 1931 — Mud Creek Fire, largest fire of 1931, 10-day operation October 1932 — Federal arson arrests and Grand Jury testimony in Sacramento January 1938 — Transferred to Hat Creek District December 7, 1941 — Pearl Harbor attack, forest watches set up March 31, 1945 — Retired from the Forest Service 1927 1928 1929 1930 1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945