By an Act of Congress of July 19, 1919, the road engineering work in Crater Lake National Park was transferred from the Corps of Engineers to the National Park Service. All property and equipment of the corps that had been purchased with park funds were delivered to the Park Service, and anticipating the transfer the corps placed the direction of the improvement work under Superintendent Sparrow at the beginning of the 1919 summer season. [4] With the transfer of this engineering work the National Park Service, according to Mather “gained complete control of the last national park in which authority was divided between it and the War Department.”
With the completion of the Rim Road Mather focused his attention on two problems relating to roads both inside and outside the park. A permanent paving program was needed on park roads to prevent dust problems, insure more economical maintenance, and make them more durable. In this regard Mather observed:
Because of the nature of the soil in Crater Lake National Park, which in many places is either a volcanic ash or volcanic sand, in many stretches of the road natural surfaces are impossible to maintain. Where the road surface is a volcanic-ash soil it rapidly breaks up under automobile travel and becomes a finely pulverized and almost impalpable dust, which, when dry, flows much like Portland cement, filling the ruts and chuck holes so that to the eye they appear fairly smooth, yet offering no cushion to absorb the shock of the rut or chuck hole. Much of this dust is puffed into the air by the wheels of the automobile, where it remains in suspension for a long time, filling the eyes and nostrils of the occupants of automobiles, and often obscuring the view.
The sandy soil is of a very friable nature and impossible to pack or consolidate, and as a result many automobiles get stuck when these sandy stretches occur on hills, as is the usual case. That these conditions would exist was known in advance of the construction of the road system, for the roads at Crater Lake were built by the Engineer Corps in accordance with the scheme or project outlined in House Document No. 328, Sixty-second Congress, second session, in which provision was made for surfacing the entire system of roads with macadam, and the construction and maintenance of a sprinkling system to keep the macadam roads in repair and free from dust. During the first season of actual road construction short stretches of experimental road surfaces were laid, and it was developed that an oil-bound macadam, which was about as cheap as water-bound macadam, satisfactorily withstood travel demands, while the water-bound macadam did not.
Much of the 57 miles of road constructed is in material that with a reasonable fund for maintenance can be kept in a fair condition for travel, but perhaps half of this mileage is in need of permanent surfacing, which is the best and only economical method of maintaining it. Certain short sections of the road that are in most need of surfacing should be surfaced each season until all of the bad sections are thus improved, and in line with this idea I have included in the estimate for 1921 an item for surfacing 3 miles most in need of this treatment.
The other continuing concern of Mather was the deteriorating state of approach roads to the park. Now that World War I was over and federal and state funds were again available he wished to see the approach roads quickly rebuilt or repaired in order to develop Crater Lake “as a resort for motorists.” Particularly disturbing to Mather was the poor condition of the state road leading to the park from Medford. He observed:
. . . The section around Prospect was the worst part of the highway. The State is now working in this region on an entirely new road, but little was done to keep the present road in anything approaching proper usable condition. With the very heavy travel of this year it became deeply rutted and terribly dusty.
While road development was the principal concern of park management in 1919, other park development projects were also undertaken. One of the first to be completed was the installation of a water supply system for the convenience of campers at the rim. According to Superintendent Sparrow the new system “justified itself in the comfort provided for visitors and the growing popularity of the campground.” [5]
