The winter visitor uses the highway between Park Headquarters and the Rim to ride up to the Rim so that he might ski down; the summer visitor rides up the same hill to see Crater Lake and is away and out of the park in a comparatively short time. All protection work in the winter with respect to the use by visitors is comparable to that illustrated by the car parking example. Safety, sanitation, first aid, information, guidance, instruction, etc. are required to a marked degree for every winter visitor.
Superintendent Leavitt was particularly proud of the expanding program of the annual park ranger training school. Since the first ranger training school in 1938 had proven so valuable a second school was conducted for twenty students from July 3 to August 2, 1939. The expanded program of the school included training in such subjects as police protection, forest and building fire protection, forest insects and tree diseases, fish planting, wildlife, checking station operations, and first aid. Instructors, other than members of the regular park staff, included F.P. Keen, Bureau of Entomology; W.V. Benedict, Division of Plant Disease; W.I. Howland, Klamath Fish Hatchery; and M.C. Spear, E.E. Bundy, and Willis Wood, Special Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
One of the principal duties of the ranger force continued to be forest fire control. The ranger staff handled fifteen forest fires during the year, thirteen of which occurred within the park boundaries and two outside. Lightning started eleven of the fires in the park, one was caused by a careless smoker, and one was classified as miscellaneous. Total acreage consumed by the thirteen fires in the park was less than one acre. [19]
