Despite the growing number of tourists who were utilizing its concession facilities the Crater Lake Company was facing financial and contractual problems by September 1911. At the National Park Conference held in Yellowstone that month Steel revealed his dreams for the development of Crater Lake and the difficulties encountered by the Crater Lake Company in achieving those aims. Among his comments were:
I will tell you, as briefly as I can, the experience of our company in Crater Lake Park. I have been trying to develop this proposition for 27 years. . . . I was so green, so simple-minded, that I thought the United States Government would go ahead and develop the proposition. In this I found I was mistaken, so had to go to work again.
All the money I have is in this park, and if I had more it would go there, too. This is my life’s work, and I propose to see it through. I want a hotel as magnificent as this one; I want a road entirely around the lake that will cost $500,000, and I want other roads and trails that will cost as much more. We are now building a cut-stone hotel on the rim of the lake from the veranda of which you will be able to look down upon the waters 1,000 feet below. We have a 5-year lease and have come to the end of our string for money, if developments are to be made commensurate with the necessities of the proposition. We can not float bonds or otherwise borrow sufficient funds on a lease of that character. We want to do our part, and we want the Government to help us. All we ask is a 20-year lease. Give us that, and we can secure funds to carry on the work as it should be. Limit us on the lease and you limit the development. We must have a 20-year lease or we will not be ready to receive and properly care for the great number of tourists that will come to us in two or three or four years, with transcontinental railroads operating within 15 miles. If necessary for the good of the cause, I will come to Washington and stay there through the winter to aid in getting money from Congress to build our roads. We want to build another hotel on the easterly side of the lake to care for visitors who will come to us on the completion of the Southern Pacific and Oregon Trunk in two years, to say nothing of the San Francisco Fair in 1915, when we will simply be swamped with tourists.
We can do all these things better as a single corporation than they can be done by a lot of little ones. We want to provide every facility for the accommodation of the poor man and his family as well as the rich, and if you will give us an opportunity we will do it. We have made good in the past, and we will make good in the future. However, we must have a monopoly for the protection of the men who supply the money and for the protection of the public as well. We will meet the department more than halfway in providing rates, rules, and regulations acceptable to the public and will accept the slightest suggestion from it as an order and always hasten to obey it. If you are going to divide the concessions, that practically means that we must retire, for it will lead to unnecessary jealousies and jangling among concessioners that must of necessity interfere with perfect service. In these matters I believe I express the sentiments of every concessioner in every park in the United States. [14]
The complaints by Steel concerning the plight of park concessions led to changes in the contractual arrangements between the Crater Lake Company and the Department of the Interior in 1912. The department granted a twenty-year lease of two parcels of park property to the company. The lease, which took effect on June 1 but was not formally approved until August 6, granted the two tracts of land to the company along with the rights of operating park concessions and visitor services and facilities. The lease authorized
the construction, maintenance, and operation of hotels, inns, lunch stations, and buildings, for use as barns, etc. , general stores for handling tourists’ supplies, hire of rowboats on Crater Lake, and operation of power boats and gasoline launches thereon, for accommodation of tourists, with use of land embraced in the following sites:
Acres. Crater Lake Lodge Tract 43.26 Wineglass Tract 11.83
55.09 at an annual charge of $2 per acre $110.18
Plans were to be drawn up to build a second lodge on the Wineglass tract. By terms of the lease the company was permitted to lay water and sewer pipes to and from its buildings and use water for generating electricity for its facilities in the park. All construction was to be carried out under plans approved by the Secretary of the Interior, and in consideration of such privileges the company agreed to pay, in addition to the $2 per acre per year rental, a sum per annum considered just and reasonable by the Secretary of the Interior. [15]
