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1953
1953 Harry and “Pop” Smith purchase the Crater Lake Lodge Company. The Haner Report recommends that the Lodge should be rehabilitated rather than being replaced. With proper care and the spending of $72,000, the Haner Report estimated the useful life of the Lodge could be extended another 20 years.
The Smiths would buy stressed resort property, improve the bottom line and then resell, which they did when Ralph Peyton and Jim Griffin purchase the Crater Lake Lodge Company, 1959.
May 24 1953 The 100th anniversary of the discovery of Crater Lake will be observed this year, it has been announced by John R. Wosky, park superintendent. No separate event is planned though a special exhibit wil be placed in the park Information Building for the information of visitors. Independent-PressTelegram Long Beach, California?May 24, 1953
June 17 1953 Roger Tory Peterson, famed bird author, visits the Park.
June 12 1953 Edmond Clark of Cave Junction, Oregon, falls to his death in Castle Creek Canyon while trying to take a photograph.
July 4 1953 Bill Caldwell, of Eagle Point, age 16, while returning to camp from a horse-fishing trip, along with a friend, tries to cross the Rogue River at Flat Creek (above Natural Bridge). Bill’s horse stumbles, throwing the boy into the raging river. Bill, being 6’5” and “hay field hardened”, is able to grab for an overhanging rock and pull himself from the clutches of the river. His horse and gear are swept through the Natural Bridge lave tube. The horse carcass is found foundering on rocks just below the tube’s exit. Bill and his father, along with two Forest Service rangers, return two weeks later and, using dynamite, blow the horse into manageable pieces for burial in a “big hole”. Bill’s fishing gear, guns, and large western saddle are never located. (Story from school bus driver Bill Caldwell, July 12, 2007 who died in 2015. Related to the author while on a school fieldtrip to the Natural Bridge. As told to the author.)
August 6 1953 The Mather Memorial Plaque is permanently installed, on the Rim Wall, between Sinnott and the Lodge. The NPS apologizes for its oversight in not installing the plaque 30 years earlier as promised.
October 3 1953 Roof of Rim Community Building catches fire – $100 worth of damage.
September 6 1953 Rescue of injured person below Rim Village.
November 1 1953 New superintendent, Fred Johnson, transfers in from Lassen. Former Superintendent Wosky transfers out to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.
Season 1953 Forty-one bears counted in the Park, 22 adults and 19 cubs.
Summer 1953 – 1988 Lake Moss Studies over the years. Dr. Harry K. Phinney, professor in the Department of Botany and Plant Physiology at Oregon State University reports the following: In 1953, C.W. Fairbanks, Assistant Park Naturalist, and John Rowley, Ranger Naturalist, collected moss from several locations on the lake from depths extending to 129 meters. This work was reported in a Crater Lake Nature Note, Vol.20, 1954. Samples were sent to Dr. Henry S. Conard of Grinnell College, who identified the sample as Scleropodium obtusifolium (Mitt.) Kindb. A sample was also sent to Dr. Francis Drouet, Curator of Crytogramic Plants at the Chicago Museum of Natural History. He identified the moss as Drepanocladus fluitans (Hedw.) Warnst.
Fairbanks, Rowley, Rowley’s wife Joanne and Richard Brown continued to survey mosses during the early 1950s. They collected over 100 bottom samples from depths ranging between “10 feet to over 1900 feet.” They found moss “in all quadrants of the lake, indicating that the occurrence of the moss in Crater Lake is non-random.”
In November 1965, Richard Brown sent two moss samples to Dr. Elva Lawton of the University of Washington. She identified the moss as Drepanocladus aduncus (Hedw.) Warnst. Brown also sent samples to Herman Persson of the Riksmuseet Paleobotaniska in Stockholm, Sweden. He also identified the moss as Drepanocladus aduncus (Hedw.) Warnst.
In 1988, Dr. Gary Larson sent a moss sample collected from 221 meters (by Dr. Sylvia Earle while piloting the submersible “Deep Rover”) to Dr. W.B. Schofield at the University of British Columbia. He identified the moss as Drepanocladus uncinatus (Hedw.) Warnst.
The article in yesterday’s Oregonian referred to the moss as Drepanocladus aduncus Warnst.
In his article, Phinney provided a detailed description of the epiphytic flora attached to the moss, including diatoms and green filamentous algae. Phinney also observed a diverse, but sparse fauna associated with the moss, including one tardigrade (waterbear), two unidentified nematodes (roundworms), two rotifer species, and several unidentified mobile ciliates.
Season 1953 Visitation: 332,835
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