Crouch strongly recommended that a permanent ranger station be built at Rim Village (a temporary station had been in use at the rim) since it was “the destination of the majority of visitors to the park and the tremendous concentration of visitors in this relatively limited area calls for definite regulatory and protection activities.” The recommended permanent central ranger station would “serve as a clearing house for the multiplicity of protection work required”–parking, traffic control and regulation, information and campground services, police protection, and emergency first aid.
Competent ranger personnel were necessary, according to Crouch, for exclusive service on the lake and around its shores. The majority of fatal or serious accidents in the park occurred on the lake or in the crater, including drowning, recovery of bodies of individuals who fell into the crater, rescues of marooned persons, and search for lost persons. Protection of the forest cover in the crater and on Wizard Island from fire and other destructive elements should be provided as well as enforcement of fishing and marine regulations. Thus, a patrol boat was needed to provide park rangers with the necessary means to carry out their duties on the lake.
Crouch urged that three ranger districts be established in the park as a means of making the ranger organization more effective. The three districts would include the northern and southern sections of the park and the middle portion consisting of the park headquarters, rim, and lake areas. He observed:
Operating from the central office at Park Headquarters offers certain and obvious disadvantages. Unnecessarily long trips, lost time and expenses result in the centralized operation. To send rangers from headquarters to outlying sections of the park to handle any work is obviously not as quick and therefore not as efficient as having men stationed in these sections where they would be closer to the work and equally as familiar with it or perhaps more so than the ones from headquarters. The establishment and operation of districts would lessen the present need for so much direct supervision from headquarters and would allow more time for planning and general supervision . . . .
