1. Elements of special human appeal of the personal type. Included in this group are many features associated with joys or sorrows of previous life, also factors which have favorable influences on the individual through stimulation to activity or through influences bringing rest or relief.
2. That which has appeal to the sense of beauty or proportion as it is interpreted by the artist, and with the minimum of expression of purely individual personal appeal. The color sense, symmetry, balance, contrast, and unity in the pattern of nature sum up much of what would be included.
3. Features that force upon our attention recognition of magnitude, power, majesty, and law in nature. These aspects of nature produce a feeling of awe which may in one direction become fear or in another may be the basis of reverence.
4. Recognition of that which lies behind the superficial features, represented in the moving element through which the picture has been produced. These factors may be transmuted into what has been referred to as natural law. This type of appreciation means seeing nature as a living, moving, growing thing. . . . [12]
The growing educational program was centered around the projected Nicholas J. Sinnott Memorial Observation Station and Museum that was to be built with a $10,000 appropriation made by Congress on July 1, 1930. Sinnott, who had died in 1929, had been a member of the House of Representatives from Oregon during 1913-28 and as chairman of the Committee on Public Lands from 1919-29 had been a strong supporter of Crater Lake National Park. In providing for the memorial Congress acted upon the recommendation of Louis C. Cramton, chairman of the subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee handling Interior Department appropriations. The Sinnott Memorial is significant since it was the first museum building to be constructed in a national park with funds provided by a specific congressional appropriation.
Construction of the Sinnott Memorial, located on Victor Rock, was commenced during the fall of 1930. Plans for the structure were developed by Chief Landscape Architect Thomas C. Vint and Assistant Landscape Architect Merel S. Sager of the NPS Landscape Division and approved by the NPS Educational Division and John C. Merriam, who had become chairman of the Secretary of the Interior’s Advisory Committee. Through the cooperation of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, the sum of $5,000 was made available for placement of exhibits and telescopes in the memorial. The Carnegie funds were transmitted through the National Academy of Sciences, which appointed a committee headed by Merriam to cooperate with the Park Service in the installation of the equipment. [13]
The Sinnott Memorial was dedicated with special ceremonies on July 16, 1931. Donald B. Colton, a representative from Utah and chairman of the House Committee on Public Lands, gave the dedicatory speech. Colton had succeeded Sinnott as the chairman of the committee. Colton stressed the untiring efforts of Sinnott in interesting the national authorities in Crater Lake and obtaining for Oregon’s national park funds with which improvements had been made. Among those attending the ceremonies were NPS Director Horace M. Albright, William G. Steel, and nine members of the Committee on Public Lands. [14]
During the summer of 1931 exhibits, emphasizing the beauty and scientific aspects of the Crater Lake story, were placed in the Sinnott Memorial. Nine exhibit boxes were sunk in the masonry of the parapet to interpret the park’s principal themes:
1. Volcanoes of the Northwest
2. Why We Believe a Great Volcano Existed Here
3. Building Up of the Mountain
4. Glaciation
5. Destruction of the Mountain
6. Latest Volcanic Activity
7. Crater Lake
8. Beauty of Color
9. Beauty of Form
Between and outside of these boxes ten pairs of field glasses and two binocular telescopes (battery commander) were mounted in fixed position in order to tell the story of Crater Lake in a consecutive manner. Other installations placed in the memorial included a cast relief model of Crater Lake and vicinity which had been presented to the park earlier by the Crater Lake Company, exhibits related to experiments to determine the color of the lake’s water and the color of light transmitted through the water, a small stand to be used by visitors to identify color, color harmony, and landscape composition, and a charred cross-section of a three-foot log of Western yellow pine which had been found buried beneath some 60 feet of ash at a road excavation some ten miles southwest of the rim.
