Alex Salmon

In John Mazey's words:

Sixty-four years after Tongariro National Park was established the park board, in 1951, appointed the first salaried ranger. The man was Alex Salmon, whose involvement with the park started during the 1920s. 

Alex Salmon was a carpenter by trade who, during the 1920s was employed as a guide based at Whakapapa Village. In 1929 when the Fletcher Construction Company started the construction of the Chateau Tongariro, Alex joined the company as a carpenter. When the building was completed, he stayed in the village in charge of guiding and skiing. During the 1920s and 1930s few people were competent skiers so even though Alex would have been the first to admit he was no expert, he and fellow guide, Alf Cowling, could help visitors who had never been on skis. It was after the war that Alex returned to the park to work at the Chateau Tongariro. As a bachelor with his main interest being the mountains with their tussock and bush lowlands and snowy heights, he devoted his own unpaid time to making the park a safer place for visitors. For years all his spare time was spent cutting tracks, poling safety routes around the mountains, building bridges and even a hut. The hut arose from his concern that there was no shelter in the Whakapapaiti Valley. In this valley he built the hut which became known as Alex Bivvy, a small but very welcome and well-used shelter for trampers and hunters. He obtained the material, then either on his own back or with the help of a pack horse, everything was slowly and laboriously transported to the site. It was well known by the locals that because of his concern for the welfare of his animals - a faithful dog called Star and a pack horse - the distribution of loads of building material and track poles usually meant that Alex carried more than the pack horse. When the board decided to appoint its first ranger in 1951 the choice of Alex Salmon was logical and popular.

For the next six years with only the assistance of volunteers (in the later stage of his career from Ralph Harris - the first ranger's assistant) he continued the work he had already started.

His bachelor home was a Ministry of Works designed and built rather basic, three-bedroom cottage. Without insulation and with an open fireplace in the small lounge and a coal stove in the kitchen it was by current standards a very basic unit. By the standards of some other rangers at that time it was palatial. Everything in life is relative.