Director Conrad Wirth’s order to take design and construction functions out of the regions in 1953 changed the way that park planning had been done previously. Two offices, one in Philadelphia and the other in San Francisco, were organized prior to the inception of the ten year development program called Mission
66. This was done to centralize design and construction so that the NPS could justify hiring enough staff to meet the demands of park projects brought on by aging facilities and increased visitation.
Near the end of 1954, the new Western Office of Design and Construction (WODC) drew a museum building that was to be located downslope from the site of the Community House. The proposed building was to be connected to the Sinnott Memorial by an underground walkway. The walkway’s purpose was to allow visitor access to a glassed-in Sinnott Memorial for all-year use. [54]
A winterized Sinnott Memorial had been part of NPS planning for Rim Village since 1947, but Congress provided barely enough money for operations at Crater Lake despite Drury’s best efforts. [55] To Wirth, the only way to meet park needs for new facilities was to launch a coordinated program whose time horizon could coincide with the publicity generated by the National Park Service’s 50th anniversary. With the initiation of Mission 66, park officials fully expected that construction of a visitor center and winterized Sinnott Memorial would begin in 1957. [56]
E. The Mission 66 Era: 1957-1967
After an enthusiastic beginning under the Eisenhower Administration, the energy behind Mission 66 began to dissipate by the fall of 1960. In an attempt to keep the construction funds flowing and encourage concession development at Rim Village, the NPS instituted package master plans. Formulated in 1961, 1964, 1965, and 1967, these plans took slightly different approaches to relieving congestion at the site. The need for a visitor center was soon intertwined with concession development and a complicated attempt to move NPS headquarters out of the park.
The questionable feasibility of building an underground walkway to a winterized Sinnott Memorial prompted Merel Sager (who was now the NPS’s Chief Landscape Architect in the Washington office) to design a winter viewing platform in early 1957. He envisioned a platform on the edge of the rim, built so that it could sit on the berm. The device would utilize posts so that it would be raised and lowered depending on the snow depth. [57] At roughly the same time Sager proposed a platform for lake viewing, Cecil Doty designed a visitor center for the site of the Kiser Studio which included a winter viewing tower at its north end. [58]
Although construction of a visitor center proved elusive, some changes took place at Rim Village during the Mission 66 program. The roadway between the plaza and lodge was widened to provide more parking for day use, which had been accounting for over 80 percent of visitation since before 1950. [59] Newly designed cement picnic tables accompanied by metal fire grates were put into the realigned Rim Campground in 1958. By 1960, the new Cleetwood Cove Trail on the north side of the caldera was providing access to the lakeshore, replacing the steeper and increasingly hazardous Crater Wall Trail.
The Smiths sold their interest in the concession company to Ralph O. Peyton and James M. Griffin in 1959. Negotiations began with the new concessioners about the disposition of the lodge because their contract was due to expire at the end of 1960. The NPS wanted to buy the lodge and convert it into a visitor center and museum, and programmed $285,000 for its purchase. The new concessioners could take the proceeds from the sale and construct a motel accommodating 250 people in the new “concession area” adjacent to the cafeteria. [60 ] Contract negotiations stalled over the issue of the new motel’s proximity to the lake, so Peyton and Griffin were granted a five year extension under the terms of the old agreement. [61] The large number of contracted construction projects of the Mission 66 program (some of which had to be coordinated with concession development) necessitated flexibility in NPS master plans. When the agency found itself increasingly concerned about the Kennedy Administration’s willingness to back Mission 66 projects, it tried a new approach to updating and presenting park plans called package master plans. Narrative material prepared by park and regional staffs could be presented on the same size sheets as the WODC drawings for areas in a park that were considered to have common problems. A general package that encompassed the entire park was prepared in addition to however many packages that a large or small park required. Package master plans were also to be accompanied by development schedules that listed priorities and estimated costs of the proposed changes. [62]
