Increasing numbers of visitors participated in the park educational programs during 1930. Some 107 evening lectures were presented to 10,310 people at the lodge and Community House. The lectures at the latter were illustrated with lantern slides and moving pictures. Some 2,330 persons participated in 112 field trips, two of which were taken to various sections of the park each day.
The building formerly occupied by Kiser’s Studio at the rim was converted for use as a visitor contact/information station in 1930. The structure, which became generally referred to as the Information Building, had been sold to the Crater Lake National Park Company, and the park concessioner agreed to permit government use of the structure without remuneration. It was estimated that about 90 percent of the park visitors came into contact with the park naturalist staff at this facility. Sales of government publications increased markedly during the year, the number of National Park Portfolios sold, for instance, rising from 54 to 1,000. Some 2,000 copies of the park “Nature Notes” were distributed. [11]
The Crater Lake National Park educational program was greatly expanded during the summer of 1931. Setting the philosophical basis for the program was a “Memorandum Regarding Relation of Aesthetic to Scientific Study in an Educational Program at Crater Lake,” prepared by John C. Merriam, president of the Carnegie Institution of Washington on June 14, 1931. In the memorandum Merriam discussed four features of nature appreciation which were incorporated in the park’s educational program. These aspects were:
1. Elements of special human appeal of the personal type. Included in this group are many features associated with joys or sorrows of previous life, also factors which have favorable influences on the individual through stimulation to activity or through influences bringing rest or relief.
2. That which has appeal to the sense of beauty or proportion as it is interpreted by the artist, and with the minimum of expression of purely individual personal appeal. The color sense, symmetry, balance, contrast, and unity in the pattern of nature sum up much of what would be included.
3. Features that force upon our attention recognition of magnitude, power, majesty, and law in nature. These aspects of nature produce a feeling of awe which may in one direction become fear or in another may be the basis of reverence.
4. Recognition of that which lies behind the superficial features, represented in the moving element through which the picture has been produced. These factors may be transmuted into what has been referred to as natural law. This type of appreciation means seeing nature as a living, moving, growing thing. . . . [12]
The growing educational program was centered around the projected Nicholas J. Sinnott Memorial Observation Station and Museum that was to be built with a $10,000 appropriation made by Congress on July 1, 1930. Sinnott, who had died in 1929, had been a member of the House of Representatives from Oregon during 1913-28 and as chairman of the Committee on Public Lands from 1919-29 had been a strong supporter of Crater Lake National Park. In providing for the memorial Congress acted upon the recommendation of Louis C. Cramton, chairman of the subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee handling Interior Department appropriations. The Sinnott Memorial is significant since it was the first museum building to be constructed in a national park with funds provided by a specific congressional appropriation.
Construction of the Sinnott Memorial, located on Victor Rock, was commenced during the fall of 1930. Plans for the structure were developed by Chief Landscape Architect Thomas C. Vint and Assistant Landscape Architect Merel S. Sager of the NPS Landscape Division and approved by the NPS Educational Division and John C. Merriam, who had become chairman of the Secretary of the Interior’s Advisory Committee. Through the cooperation of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, the sum of $5,000 was made available for placement of exhibits and telescopes in the memorial. The Carnegie funds were transmitted through the National Academy of Sciences, which appointed a committee headed by Merriam to cooperate with the Park Service in the installation of the equipment. [13]
