***previous*** — ***next***
1874
Spring 1874 Will Steel graduates from high school in Portland and apprentices to the Smith Brothers, iron manufactures, to learn the pattern making trade. He leaves this positron after three years to begin working on a newspaper.
August 9 1874 Members of the Peter Britt photographic party, (including O.C. Applegate, Samuel Hall and his twelve-year old son, Emil), reaches the Rogue River Falls (Mill Creek) and Britt photographs them.
August 11 1874 Britt arrives at Crater Lake. Apparently the wagon is left not far from the roadside while packing 200 pounds of photo equipment and camping supplies up to the Rim of the Lake. The sky is overcast and it begins to rain intermittently for the next several days. Snow patches still partially cover the ground. For two days the party shivers in the chilly weather, examining a Lake lacking its famous blue.
August 13 1874 The Britt party has been camping at the Rim for three days. Britt is ready to give up and leave without a photograph when suddenly the clouds part, the sun shines through and the first photograph ever of Crater Lake is taken. During the cold and windy stay on the Rim, Emil, Peter’s 10 year-old son comes down with a cough. The party stays on for two more days, takes more photos, and hikes and explores the area.
August 14 1874 Using some 200 pounds of photographic equipment, Peter Britt takes a total of 7 glass negative photos. The plates are made up in a black, darkroom tent, and exposed before they dry. Peter Britt is mainly a studio photographer, so natural photography was a challenge for him.
August 16 1874 The Britt party leaves Crater Lake and heads for Fort Klamath. A total of ten days were spent traveling from and to Jacksonville.
November 15 1918 A letter from Emil Britt, the son of Peter Britt and the boy who posed sitting on the rim in the first photo taken of Crater Lake. Emil is now 56 years old and translating his father’s diary that had been written in a very old style of Swiss German.
Mr. Wm G. Steel – Medford Or
Dear Sir
I am sending you some data of our trip to Crater lake taken from My Fathers Diary for 1874, which was his first trip to the lake, he did not go to the lake in 1868, however he furnished a camera and outfit to our James Sutton about that time, perhaps that is what you have in mind. Mr. Sutton did not bring any pictures back, I think he was with the party that took the first boat to the lake it was built here in Jacksonville.
My Father left here on Aug. 7th 1874 accompanied by Samuel Hall and myself, in a two horse wagon and about 200 lbs of photographic paraphernalia in addition to the regular camp outfit Consisting of cameras, baths solutions trays dark tent etc as required by the old wet process. It took us two long days to make Mill Creek falls. Below find notes from Diary.
Sunday Aug 9th 1874 Photographed Rogue River falls (Mill creek falls)
Aug 10 Camped at Silver Spring,
Aug 11 Camped at the foot of Crater Lake mountain about 2 ½ miles from rim of lake.
Aug 12 Camped on rim of lake. Melted Snow for horses and camp use
Aug 13 Took first view of lake, very cold and windy
Aug 14 Took more views, cold and windy returned to foot of mountain
Aug 15 returned to rim and descended to water, took 75 minutes from rim to water and return.
The pictures taken on this trip were all very good and were the first ones ever taken of the lake, We drove up to the rim with the wagon which was quite an undertaking as there was not road whatever up the mountain side, our only guide being blazed trees and some very dim tracks from a wagon that went up the season before, and it took us nearly all day to make the 2 1.2 miles. Nearly all visitors to the lake camped at the foot of the mountain, and either walked or rode up to the lake, but it was necessary for us to take the photographic outfit up in the wagon as it was too heavy to carry. The surroundings of the lake at that time were more beautiful, I think, than now, then were many picturesque and beautiful groups of trees on the rim and edges of the cliffs which have since been wantonly destroyed.
Hopefully that this matter will be of some use to you, I remain
Yours Truly Emil Britt
September 26 1874 After setting up camp two miles from Crater Lake either in late August or early September, probably near the present location of Park Headquarters or at Dutton Spring on the Old Dutton Wagon Road/PCT Trail, C.B. Watson writes the following: The trail to the lake is becoming plainer and more worn each year, from the great number of persons who visit it during the summer and fall months. It is yet very rough, crooked and difficult to drive a team over, yet teams are driven to the bank of the Lake. The trail is through a dense forest of timber peculiar to the altitude, only such as grows on high mountains. Small streams and bubbling brooks greet the eye and slake the thirst of the traveler at every turn until you get within about a mile and a half of the Lake. The ascent is not very steep nor difficult for horsemen or footmen, and good grass is plentiful this time of the year, as far as water is found up the mountain.
There is nothing beyond, however, to indicate a body of water ahead, and the adventurer is impressed with the idea, or rather the feeling, that he is above all traces of water–in fact beyond the power– of vegetation to grow. There is no change in the scenery to notify one that he is nearing one of the grandest scenes in the world, but knowing that it was ahead of us, patiently we toiled onward and upward, pausing now and again to get breath to enable us to pursue our journey. One has no notice of the nearness of the Lake until the whole scene, in one grand view, breaks upon the astonished gaze of the traveler. Here we stand, upon the brink of a mighty basin hollowed out by the hand of nature in some of her terrible upheavals. Standing upon the brink, the placid bosom of the Lake is spread out two thousand feet below.
There are but two places discovered where it is possible for man to reach the water, and even here the utmost caution is required. The Lake is said to be about ten by fifteen miles in extent, yet so pure is the atmosphere and so transparent the water that the distance across does not seem one third of what it really is. An island stands about two miles from the shore, and is estimated at 1,500 feet in height, composed of lava and cinders. An excavation is left in the top about one hundred feet deep. This island is supposed to have been the last chimney or crater to the mighty volcano that was in active operation here, and was the instrument in the hands of nature in changing and transforming a vast extent of country.
For many miles around, the country is covered to a considerable depth with pumice stone and other rocks of volcanic origin. Just imagine this immense cauldron, containing between 100 and 150 square miles, and mayhap thousands of feet deeper than is indicated by the surface of the water, filled with molten lava and threatening every moment to inundate the country with liquid fire–its fiery tongues of flame shooting upward as if defying the gods themselves, for its perpendicular rock-bound sides bear evidence of having struggled with the flames in their mad attempts to escape from this rocky prison–and you have a faint idea of what I conceive this lake once to have been.
There are points about this mystic spot that are probably 3,000 feet above the water. One point is known as “Sore Thumb,” from its peculiar shape, resembling, as it does, the hand of a man doubled with the thumb projecting above the fist, with a portion torn off. It is one of the highest points in the vicinity, and from its summit an extensive view can be had. The Lake, it is said, has been sounded to a depth of 600 feet, and in places no bottom has been found. There is no visible inlet or outlet, and the water is as transparent as crystal.
Huge banks of snow repose on the inner rim of this basin the year round. From the south bank we turned southward and were surprised with the splendid view spread out before us. There, twenty-five miles away, slumbered Big Klamath Lake, mountain barriers encompassing it, and its many tributaries wending their way to add their mite to swell its burden of waters. The whole Lake and Basin was spread out in one extended view and gave such a view as many would travel hundreds of miles to see.
But we were destined to see what no other party has seen– LAKE MAJESTY IN A SNOW STORM.
About noon the sky became darkened with clouds, the wind arose and the blinding snow limited our vision to a few hundred yards. I descended to the water’s edge, entered the boat and pushed out into the Lake, whose placid bosom but so short [a] time ago had seemed incapable of motion, but now the agitated waves began to roll, and whitecaps to break on the shore. The majestic cliffs, now that I had got to the bottom and was looking up, seemed terrific [i.e., terrifying]. I was getting uncomfortably cold, my boat was leaking and I floating upon the surface of the waters which had smothered out the fires of this once lake of fire, and a storm was upon the deep. The sensation was not a pleasant one. I succeeded in reaching shore, moored my boat, and after the hardest task for the same length of time in my experience reached the top, met my wife, who was almost ready to start in search of–a husband–thanked my fortune she was not a widow, took a last farewell look at Lake Majesty, and returned to camp, tired and hungry, while the ground was rapidly being covered with snow.
Oregon Sentinel, Jacksonville, September 26, 1874, page 2
***previous*** — ***next***
***menu***
