Randy Burke has ‘seen it all’ in his career at Linn County Conservation.
Randy Burke held in his hand a decades-old photo of his younger self pounding a stake at Pinicon Ridge Park, setting the rods to verify the width of a road and make some adjustments for a Linn County Conservation project.
“That’s a long time ago,” Burke, the county’s outdoor recreation planner and licensed landscape architect, said as he looked at the picture while he was at the Wickiup Hill Learning Center.
When Burke started working with Linn County Conservation 45 years ago on July 24, 1979, he started as a temporary planning aide before being permanently hired. The county was looking for somebody to put utility maps together. At that time, staff drew with pencils on paper instead of using the technology they rely on today.