When Crater Lake National Park entered the National Park System it was considered to be one of the Service’s “crown jewels.” At the inception of the system numerous publications described the superlative scenery and beauty of the park. In an article published in American Forests in October 1916, Mark Daniels, former General Superintendent and Landscape Engineer of National Parks, described the scenic grandeur of the lake in glowing superlatives:
Many people whose repugnance for platitudes is not sufficiently strong to prevail against their indifference to the value of an extensive vocabulary will describe Crater Lake as the eighth wonder of the world and let it go at that. To many others, myself included, it is the whole eight, and then some, if one may be permitted to resort to the more expressive vernacular. The sight of it fills one with more conflicting emotions than any other scene with which I am familiar. It is at once weird, fascinating, enchanting, repellent, of exquisite beauty and at times terrifying in its austere-dignity and oppressing stillness. In the sparkling sunlight, its iridescent hues are dazzling and bewildering. When a storm is on, it throws terror into the heart of the observer and carries the mind back through the eons when it was born in Titan throes of nature. There are a few other crater lakes in the world. In India, Hawaii and Italy there are some; perhaps there are others in other lands, but there is none known to man that can remotely approximate the transcendant beauty of Crater Lake in Crater Lake National Park. [2]
Writing in the April 1917 issue of Sunset, Aubrey Drury continued with the same superlative vocabulary:
. . . In many ways this is the most remarkable body of water in the world. There is no lake its equal in depth, no lake so blue, none surrounded by such precipitous walls. Its whole setting is strange and unusual: it is a lake in a mountain-top, occupying the crater of a burnt-out volcano. . . .
This whole region is one to delight the heart of the mountain-lover. Many trail trips may be taken from the Lodge, and the Rim Road, which eventually will encircle the lake, affords magnificent automobile drives. Southward by automobile road are Anna Spring Camp, Dewie Canyon, and the remarkable Pinnacles in Sand Creek Canyon. All the scenic beauties of the vast Cascade Range await the visitor to this famous summer pleasure-ground of Oregon; and most splendid of them all, a wonder among wonders, is that magical mirror held up to catch and intensify the blue of the sky–Crater Lake. [3]
Robert Sterling Yard expanded upon this theme in his The National Parks Portfoliopublished in 1917. Describing the “Lake of Mystery,” he noted:
Crater Lake is the deepest and the bluest fresh-water lake in the world. It measures two thousand feet of solid water, and the intensity of its color is unbelievable even while you look at it. Its cliffs from sky line to surface average over a thousand feet high. It has no visible inlet or outlet, for it occupies the hole left when, in the dim ages before man, a volcano collapsed and disappeared within itself.
It is a gem of wonderful color in a setting of pearly lavas relieved by patches of pine green and snow white–a gem which changes hue with every atmospheric change and every shift of light.
There are crater lakes in other lands; in Italy, for instance, in Germany, India, and Hawaii. The one lake of its kind in the United States is by far the finest of its kind in the world. It is one of the most distinguished spots in a land notable for the nobility and distinction of its scenery. [4]
