In 1912 two other concession contracts were negotiated by the department for visitor services at Crater Lake. Concerned about charges that it had given the Crater Lake Company a monopoly over concessions in the park, the department contracted with the Klamath Development Company to provide additional transportation services. Using six automobiles (2 Buick Models 17, 40-horsepower, 5-passenger; Buick Model 16, 40-horsepower, 4-passenger; Buick Model 19, 24-horsepower, 5-passenger; Great Smith, 36-horsepower, 5-passenger; E.M. F., 36-horsepower, 5-passenger) the company carried 88 persons that year. That same year J.W. Stephenson, a photographer for the Oregon Art Company in Lakeview, was granted a permit to “carry on the business of photography, including the selling of views and postal cards” in the park. The permit included the right to “occupy such quantity of land” in the park “not to exceed one-half acre, at such point as may be designated by the Superintendent of the Reservation.”
Park visitation remained at relatively high levels during 1910-12. The number of registered visitors was 3,746 in 1910 and 3,946 in 1911, although Arant estimated that the totals for those years were 5,000 and 4,500 respectively. Perhaps the most distinguished visitor to the park during this period was the writer Jack London in August 1911. The number of registered visitors increased to 5,235 in 1912–June, 27; July, 904; August, 2,504; September, 1,475; and October, 325.
By the early 1910s the driving of livestock through the park was becoming a thing of the past. In 1910 and 1911 one herd of cattle was driven through the park each year by permit. The first of these was driven from western Oregon to the summer range east of the Cascades over the Rogue River and Fort Klamath wagon road, while the second was driven by J.E. Pelton & Co. to the Wood River Valley some ten miles south of the park.
The condition of the park roads and trails continued to be an issue of concern to Arant during the early 1910s. There were three wagon roads in the park: one ran from the south boundary of the park to the superintendent’s headquarters at Anna Spring, 8 miles; one connected the superintendent’s headquarters to the crater rim just west of Garfield Peak, 5 miles; and one stretched from the headquarters to the western boundary of the park, 7 miles. The first two named roads, which had been built by the military troops at Fort Klamath in the 1860s, were, according to Arant, “simply tracks little wider than a wagon, cut through the trees and bushes.” Use of the narrow roads had made them “become veritable gutters the width of a wagon and 1 or 2 feet deep,” making it ”very difficult for teams to pass.” While the roads were widened in places, the trees, logs, and bushes were “too close to the road to permit a team to turn out of the narrow track.” The road to the rim, especially the mile nearest the lake, was, according to other observers, “exceedingly torturous and steep, some of the grades being nearly 30 per cent.”
While the roads needed widening and straightening, according to Arant, a more immediate problem was the dusty conditions resulting from their use. The soil which formed “the surface of these roads” was composed “of lava or volcanic formation,” and vehicles quickly “cut the surface,” converting “it into a very fine and deep dust.” The most disagreeable feature of park travel was, according to the superintendent, the “very dusty condition of the roads.” To solve this problem Arant continued to recommend that three road sprinklers be purchased and that tanks be erected at suitable places to supply water for them. The sprinkler system would not only keep the dust down but also eliminate continuous maintenance as ”they would incline to fill up and become more level instead of being cut deeper and deeper by the wheels of vehicles passed over them.”
The four trails in the park, except for the one that ran some 3,580 feet from the rim of the crater to the edge of the lake, were, according to Arant, “little more than mere horse tracks.” The trails had been developed primarily for the use of rangers in fighting forest fires. One trail extended from the wagon road three miles south of the lake to Garfield Peak, Applegate Peak, Sun Creek, Sand Creek, the Pinnacles, and Mount Scott, in the eastern portion of the park, a distance of ten miles. Another trail ran from the superintendent’s headquarters to Union Peak in the western portion of the park, a distance of five miles. A third trail passed from the superintendent’s headquarters to Bybee Creek and Bybee Prairie in the northwest portion of the park. The trail to the water’s edge was relocated in 1910 and 1911 to provide a broad and smooth trail having “easy and safe” grades that would be less liable to washouts and damage as a result of rain and melting snow.
