Media Contact: Information Service
For Immediate Release: January 7, 1954

Appointment of Halter O. Olson as superintendent of the Mescalero Agency, Mescalero, N. Mex., was announced today by Secretary of the Interior Douglas McKay. Mr. Olson succeeds Lonnie Hardin who was transferred to Fort Apache Agency as reservation principal.

Mr. Olson joined the Bureau of Indian Affairs in June 1940, as a trainee in the Southwest field training program under a Rockefeller Foundation grant, National Institute of Public Affairs. In 1941, he was named assistant superintendent, United Pueblos Agency, Albuquerque , N. Mex. In 1946 he was named superintendent of the Zuni Agency in New Mexico and in 1948 became associate area director, Navajo-Hopi jurisdiction, Window Rock, Ariz. In 1952 he transferred to the Technical Cooperation Administration as deputy assistant administrator for Near East and Africa.

He was born in St. Anthony, Idaho in 1914 and attended the University of Idaho, and was graduated in 1940. He took leave of absence from the Bureau in 1947 to get a master’s degree at the University of Idaho.