Wartime conditions, together with tire and gasoline rationing, resulted in drastic reductions to park visitation during the war years. Statistics indicate that park visitation for these years was 100,079 in 1942, 28,637 in 1943, 42,385 in 1944, and 77,864 in 1945. Beginning on November 23, 1942, the park was closed from mid-November to late June each year as a result of budget and personnel reductions and inability of the park staff to provide snow removal and visitor safety services. The concessioner closed the lodge and other visitor services in 1943 and did not resume such operations for the remainder of the war. Limited meal service was provided in the park headquarters dining room operated under contract by the aforementioned Robert P. Berry. [48]
During the war Crater Lake was visited by large numbers of military personnel from Navy and Marine facilities at Klamath Falls and Camp White, a U.S. Army base at Medford. The automobile permit fee of $1.00 per car charged to all visitors was suspended for automobiles carrying members of the armed forces, and campground and other special privileges were made available to them. Whenever a group arrived at the park a member of the staff was assigned to assist in its visit. Special literature was printed for distribution to military personnel. Park records indicate that 35,514 members of the armed forces visited the park during the war, not counting the families and friends that accompanied them. [49]
When Crater Lake was reopened on a year-round basis on July 1, 1946, visitation quickly returned to prewar levels. For the remainder of the 1940s visitation averaged approximately 250,000 annually. According to Superintendent Leavitt resumption of year-round operation and service to the traveling public by the Crater Lake National Park Company
was hailed with satisfaction throughout the State of Oregon for, Oregon being a recreational state, the year-around operation of Crater Lake National Park is of tremendous importance to it. Recreation is the third largest industry in the state. The counties surrounding Crater Lake, which depend largely on recreational income, use Crater Lake as the magnet to attract tourists, and around which they build their advertising program to other areas which are not as favorably known. This is also true of the advertising program of the State Highway Commission through its Travel Information Department.
The company opened for business on June 15 and offered a full range of summer services until September 19. The season provided the “finest business in the history of the company,” and the profits provided urgently needed funds with which to carry out many projects involving fire protection and safety in the lodge as well as replacement of cooking ranges and steam tables. [50] One of the innovations during the 1946 season was the subcontract entered into by the company with Scenery Unlimited of Berkeley, California, whereby the company brought a 35-passenger bus load of tourists to the park every two weeks as part of an excursion tour from San Francisco to Seattle up the coast and returning via the inland valley route. The experimental program was successful enough to have the subcontract renewed for 1947.
The company was requested by NPS Director Drury to provide winter services in the park during 1946-47. Accordingly, the company rented the park headquarters messhall and bunkhouse building and began furnishing meals and limited lodgings to park visitors and non-housekeeping employees of the Park Service on December 14. The company also entered into a subcontract with A.L. Vincze of Klamath Falls to provide a rope ski tow on the bowl below the lodge, limited ski equipment rental and ski lesson services, and transportation between park headquarters and the rim area. [51]
The return of large numbers of tourists to the park during the postwar years brought with it new problems for park management. The park was confronted with a new breed of park visitor as described by Superintendent Leavitt:
Although there was not very much vandalism of a kind that destroyed irreplaceable objects, there was the usual writing of names on signs, the carving of initials on signs, guard rails, benches, etc., worst of all was the almost total disregard of sanitation. Visitors threw bottles not only alongside the roads everywhere throughout the park but often in the road and scattered papers, filled cartons, and camp refuse throughout the park wherever they went, with a total disregard for sanitation, cleanliness and respect for the person who came after them.
In addition, it was found that we had an entirely different class of visitors to the park last year, people who had little or no appreciation of what the parks represented or what they stood for, so that there was a wanton disregard of the park rules and regulations and they did not take kindly to requests to obey these rules and regulations when they were called to their attention. . . . [52]
During the winters of 1947-48 and 1948-49 Crater Lake was operated on a day-use only basis. This experimental program meant that meals, lodging, and garage service had to be obtained outside the park with the exception of luncheon services provided at the Community House on Sundays and holidays. In commenting on the advantages and complaints generated by this experiment, Leavitt wrote on June 1, 1949:
