Appointment of Ralph M. Shane as superintendent of Fort Berthold Indian Agency, New Town, N. Dak., was announced today by Secretary of the Interior Douglas McKay.
Mr. Shane has been supervising highway engineer at Fort Berthold for three years. He joined the Bureau of Indian Affairs in November 1936, as an engineering draftsman at the same agency and a year later was promoted to junior road engineer. In January 1939, he transferred to the Sacramento, California agency as chief of road survey party.
Two years later he became road engineer at the Fort Belknap Agency, Harlem, Mont. He was given a military furlough in 1943, and after serving four months as an ensign in the Navy, returned to duty with the Bureau as road engineer at the Standing Rock Agency, Fort Yates, N. Dak.
Until his appointment as supervising highway engineer at Fort Berthold, Mr. Shane served as road engineer successively at the Consolidated Chippewa Agency, Cass Lake, Minn.; Uintah and Ouray Agency at Ft. Duschesne, Utah, and at Warm Springs Agency, Warm Springs, Oregon.
A graduate civil engineer, Mr. Shane was born at Edelstein, Illinois in 1910, and received his early training in the Pipestone, Minn., public schools* He attended the University of Colorado and received his B. S. from the South Dakota School of Mines in 1935. Following graduation he worked for the South Dakota State Highway Commission drafting right-of-way and strip maps.
Mr. Shane succeeds Benjamin Reifel who was transferred to the superintendency at the Pine Ridge Agency, Pine Ridge, South Dakota, last January.
