In response to the report NPS Director Arno B. Cammerer urged Superintendent Leavitt to initiate action toward the realization of Crouch’s recommendations. The five areas that he particularly supported were:
1 . Checking Stations at the park boundaries
2. Establishment of three ranger districts
3. Training school for rangers
4. Additional permanent ranger personnel
5. New engine for patrol boat [18]
During the summer of 1940 Superintendent Leavitt reported on the responsibilities and accomplishments of the ranger service. One permanent park ranger position was added to the staff in December 1939. Thirteen seasonal rangers augmented the permanent force during the summer. In addition two fire guards and two fire lookouts functioned under the supervision of the chief ranger during the summer. Leavitt noted that the ranger organization was functioning “smoothly and effectively” in spite of “very serious handicaps, due largely to an inadequate number of permanent positions.” Appreciation and use of the ranger organization thus justified “a continuation of the expanded service and program.”
Leavitt devoted considerable attention to the added responsibilities placed on the rangers by the winter use of the park. He noted:
The winter use of the park counts considerably more than mere wintertime travel, for this is a most concentrated and specialized use. The total travel to the park during the winter months might appear more or less immaterial as compared to the travel during the summer. The use of the park by visitors in the winter and the specialized service it requires by the park staff, however, goes a long way to counteract the greater numbers of travelers during the summer who are handled with less proportionate park force and greater ease. By way of example, the ranger s relation with a summer visitor might be confined to one contact at the entrance stations and possibly at the Rim; this is not the case with the same visitor in the winter. This visitor must receive close attention from the time he enters the park until he finally departs; his car will move over icy, snow-banked highways; it will probably be parked 10 times to the one time for the summer visitor.
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]
