Two years later Yard used even more glowing descriptive imagery to describe the beauty and serenity of Crater Lake. In his The Book of the National Parks published in 1919, he stated:
Lured by his eloquence the traveller goes to Crater Lake and finds it all as promised–in fact, far better than promised, for the best intended adjectives, even when winged by the energetic pen of the most talented ad writer, cannot begin to convey the glowing, changing, mysterious loveliness of this lake of unbelievable beauty. In fact, the tourist, with expectation at fever-heat by the time he steps from the auto-stage upon the crater rim, is silenced as much by astonishment as by admiration.
Before him lies a crater of pale pearly lava several miles in diameter. A thousand feet below its rim is a rake whose farthest blues vie in delicacy with the horizon lavas, and deepen as they approach till at his feet they turn to almost black. There is nothing with which to compare the near-by blue looked sharply down upon from Crater’s rim. The deepest indigo is nearest its intensity, but at certain angles falls far short.
Nor is it only the color which affects him so strongly; its kind is something new, startling, and altogether lovely. Its surface, so magically framed and tinted, is broken by fleeting silver wind-streaks here and there; otherwise, it has the vast stillness which we associate with the Grand Canyon and the sky at night. The lava walls are pearly, faintly blue afar off,
graying and daubed with many colors nearer by. Pinks, purples, brick-reds, sulphurs, orange-yellows and many intermediates streak and splash the foreground gray. And often pine-green forests fringe the rim, and funnel down sharply tilted canyons to the water’s edge; and sometimes shrubs of livelier green find foothold on the gentler slopes, and, spreading, paint bright patches. Over all, shutting down and around it like a giant bowl, is a sky of California blue overhead softening to the pearl of the horizon. A wonder spectacle indeed! [5]
Writing in a similar vein Henry O. Reik, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Medical Reserve Corps, described the beauty of Crater Lake in his A Tour of America’s National Parks (1920). Concluding his chapter on the park, he stated:
Remember that there is no lake its equal in depth; no other lake of such size occupying the crater of an extinct volcano; no other lake surrounded by such artistically colored, rugged mountain walls; and no other body of water of such a wonderful, indescribable blue. This coloring, varying from a faint turquoise to the deepest indigo blue, makes Crater Lake one of the most beautiful spots in America. [6]
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