1958

June 19                  1958      Ranger’s uniform torn by a bear while attempting to chase it way warm the Rim Parking lot.

July 6                     1958      Hans W. Thielsen, great grandson of Hans Thielsen for whom the mountain was named, visits the Park.

July 24                   1958      Oregon Congressman Charles Porter introduces a bill in Congress that will enlarge the Oregon Caves National Monument to 2,910 acres, up from the present size of 480 acres.  Opposition by the Forest Service and logging interests defeated the proposed addition.  The area in now a large clear-cut.

August                   1958      Richard M. Brown, John Wirty and Warren Fairbanks take core samples from the “Old Man of the Lake” and determine that the old floating log was 273 years old when it slid upright into the Lake.

August 6                1958      Rescue of a boy 350 feet above the Lake.

August 12              1958      Boletus frustosus is collected by Jim Trappe, research forester, on the summit of Union Peak.  This is the highest elevation that the plant has been reported for their range.

August 25              1958      New service station and employee dorm (located at the edge of Steel Circle) open for business.

August                   1958      The Old Standard Oil Log Service Station, across the road from Park Headquarters and across the road from the new the new station, is torn down.  The  “new” station is eventually torn down about 35 years later.

Summer                1958      Park visitor’s small trout is grabbed by a Bald Eagle as he fisherman tries to beach the fish.  The eagle swallows both the fish and the hook.  The Park Ranger on duty on the boats catches the eagle and removes the hook.

Construction begins on the new Cleetwood Lake Trail.  The new location was selected because of its lower elevation, and southern exposure allowing an earlier opening of the trail each year by several weeks.  The old Lake Trail had a northern exposure, was 50% longer and was subject to increased erosion and land slides

Summer                1958      Steel Circle housing area constructed.  Buildings #17 and #227 are built.  Contractor: Bob Deller of Eugene, Oregon. Harold Engebretsen is the lead carpenter. Deller also encases Annie Spring the year before.

Sweeny, an NPS architect, designed the buildings. Poorly designed for the heavy snows, the buildings nearly collapsed the first winter until they were strengthened when 21 feet of snow piled up.

Harold Engebretsen, now 80, tells of how he would lay out his sandwiches on the ground and lasso young bears and haul them up to the second story and turn them loose to find their way out. (Told to the author in 2009 in Weippe, Idaho.)

Harold also related the following story in 2009: He claims that a snow plow operator told him that several winters previously the operator had blown a young boy through his snow plow. Two boys had dug down through a snow bank and would wave at passing cars. Unseen by the plow operator, one of the boys was sucked into the blower. (Story told to the author, October 2009 in Weippe, Idaho. Harold is now 80.)  This story has not been confirmed from other sources.

September            1958      A new Annie Springs entrance station is built, including a separate office building and comfort station. Was eventually torn down with the realignment of Hwy 62 when it bypassed Mazama Campground.

October 4              1958      A new weighing type of recording rain gauge is installed at Park Headquarters.  The gauge had to be modified to meet the specific weather conditions existing at Crater Lake.

October 30            1958      Maximum Lake level reached at 6179.6 feet above sea level.  Second highest recorded level since records have been kept. Normally the Lake averages elevations of 10 feet lower, at 6170 feet.

October    A proposal that rock sheds be built on Dutton Cliff is presented.

November             1958      U.S. Representative from Oregon, Charles Porter of Eugene visits Crater Lake and proposes that the Government build a cable car from Rim Village to the boat landing.  When public out cry points out the visual damage that a tram tower would cause, Porter proposes an elevator.  Rep. Porter soon loses his seat and retires.

May 23, 2010 By BILL MILLER   for the Mail Tribune

When an Oregon politician visits Disneyland, strange things can happen.

Not long after being elected to the House of Representatives from Oregon’s 4th Congressional District in 1956, Congressman Charles Porter took a vacation to the enchanted world of Southern           California.

No one knows how many times Porter rode the Disney Skyway, but it was enough to spark an idea. Why not build a gondola line to Wizard Island from the rim of Crater Lake?

In November 1958, Porter unveiled his plan to install “some practical mechanical means for transporting people from the rim down to the lake so that more persons could enjoy boating, especially the many old people who visit the lake.”

The gondola line would run from the rim viewpoint on the west side of the lake, between The Watchman and Hillman peaks. From there, its cable would swing over the shallow waters of Fumarole Bay as it continued down to Wizard Island, where a restaurant and visitor center would be built.

Porter hired architects to come up with preliminary drawings for the project and mailed a questionnaire to 100,000 of his constituents. If no taxpayer money was used, and the project was hidden behind trees so as not to “disfigure the scenery,” would they support his idea?

About 2,500 people returned the questionnaire and 53 percent said yes.

Some newspaper editorials praised the idea as a way for the elderly, or those with physical ailments, to visit the water’s edge, but others agreed with the Mail Tribune.

“To slap a mechanical contrivance on the slopes of that unsurpassed caldera,” it said, “smacks of sacrilege in our book.”

Opposition also came from Thomas Williams, the park’s superintendent.

“A tramway, chairlift or other similar device would violate (our) mandate and irreparably mar the scene we are charged to protect,” he said.

Congressman Al Ullman, whose district included Crater Lake, said that just because Porter had been born in Klamath Falls didn’t mean he knew what was best for the lake.

“I wish he would stay on some of his other pet projects,” Ullman said. “We don’t want a Coney Island atmosphere in our national parks.”

Ullman served on the House Interior Committee, which handled legislation concerning national parks.

“I think in this instance, I hold the whip hand over Porter,” he said. “There’s not the slightest chance to get approval.”

Porter lost his congressional seat in the 1960 election, but not because of the “aerial gondola.”

He supported several ideas that were unpopular for the time, including decriminalization of marijuana, admitting Communist China to the United Nations and a ban on nuclear testing.

When he died at age 86 in 2006, a Eugene Register-Guard editorial remembered him as “persistent as a bulldog, optimistic as a bride, moral as a preacher, imaginative as a mad scientist and beneath it all, where it really counts, an authentic American hero.”

It seems you can’t judge a man on just one vacation.   Writer Bill Miller lives in Shady Cove. Reach him at newsmiller@yahoo.com

Season                  1958       Visitation: 333,853

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