Vint had the following observations about the Anna Spring area:
The Anna Spring development is one of decreasing rather than increasing of facilities. The new road alignment provides the bridge across Anna Creek and a surfaced plaza area. The gasoline service station will be removed to Government Camp and the store abandoned at the end of this season. This will eliminate several structures, namely, the gasoline station and the cabins for Standard Oil employees, and the Anna Spring store buildings. The government development of that area is practically complete, includes the Superintendent’s residence and a small utility area, road crew quarters, warehouse, and barn, and a ranger station. The Superintendent’s residence and the utility group are as they will be for several years to come. The condemned white barn was razed this season and on the completion of the new ranger station the present obsolete type of building now in use can come down. [13]
In his annual report for 1926 Mather remarked upon the long-term development plan for the park. He noted that the “plan of development at Crater Lake is fortunately compact and simple and, as funds should become available soon, it is hoped that a five-year period will see development at this park completed except for camp ground developments, the limits of which can not be foreseen.” [14]
The comments by Mather concerning the need for appropriations to carry out the development program are interesting in light of a general statement on the poor condition of existing park facilities prepared by Superintendent Thomson in 1926. The statement was prepared to justify higher park appropriations requests from Congress. The statement contained the following observations:
There is a good hotel but approximately 90% of Park visitors fend for themselves, throwing very heavy loads upon our 10 camp grounds in the way of water supply, garbage disposal, sanitation, fuel, and policing. There is a stage concession, but 99% of our visitors arrive in their own automobiles.
The administrative problems involving future expenditures are, principally: housing of employees; storehouses; a slight increase in personnel; water supply and sanitation; and the continuing of road improvement. A construction program of $35,000 per annum for 5 years should adequately provide for all predictable requirements. . . .
Heretofore, Crater Lake National Park has been rigidly limited to 2 or 3 minor structural improvements annually; appropriations have lagged far behind proportionate increase of travel and functions; improvements have been few and on a scale to barely gather up the slack here and there. Structures are nearly all ramshackle, built years ago to meet the temporary needs of road gangs engaged in 1913 to 1917 in road construction; these buildings have long outlived their usefulness and must be replaced with modest structures in keeping with new requirements and harmonious design. Consequently, 1926 finds Park facilities, as a whole, materially behind demands in every department. [15]
The NPS Landscape Division developed further plans in 1926-27 to provide for “naturalization” of the rim area. Until that time parking along the rim was unrestricted, the common practice being for motorists to park their automobiles anywhere they desired. The result of indiscriminate parking and heavy pedestrian traffic, along with the poor, sandy condition of the soil, rendered the entire area between the road and the rim “an unattractive sand waste.” The soil was composed of a high percentage of volcanic pumice which was constantly shifted by the wind. Thus, it became the goal of the NPS Landscape Division to restore the rim area, especially between the foot of Garfield Peak and the cafeteria, so that it would resemble “much of its original beauty” and be in harmony with its natural surroundings. It was the goal of NPS landscape engineers that the area be planned “so that thousands of visitors” could use it “without further permanent damage” to its inspirational beauty. [16]
