Fishing prospects in the lake continued to be enhanced by planting both by the Crater Lake Company and park management. In 1914, for instance, the company placed 2,000 rainbow fry in the lake and Steel planted 20,000 steelheads. The following year Steel planted 15,000 black spotted fry in the lake. Steel recommended that no further planting be done until the matter of fish food had been settled. As there were “no enemies to fish already in the lake,” their numbers had grown enormously to the point that the lake was “fairly teeming with them.” However, nothing had ever been done to increase the food supply for the fish.
One of the first wildlife management issues that Steel confronted was that of deer being chased by loose dogs in the park. While there were many deer in the park they were rarely seen along park roads because, according to Steel, “dogs have been permitted to run at large and probably chase them, causing them to become shy.” Thus, on September 13, 1913, the Department of the Interior, at the recommendation of Steel, issued the following instructions:
Visitors to the Crater Lake National Park are hereby notified that when dogs are taken through the park they must be prevented from chasing the animals and birds or annoying passers-by. To this end they must be carried in the wagons or led behind them while traveling and kept within the limits of the camp when halted. Any dog found at large in disregard of these instructions will be killed.
Game protection continued to be a problem for Steel as it had been for Arant. In 1913 Steel described the problems he was facing in protection of park wildlife:
But two temporary rangers are allowed during the season, one of whom is constantly employed in issuing licenses and registering visitors, so that one man must patrol the entire park. Then is it strange that there is always a report current that deer are slaughtered by poachers, who only need keep track of the ranger to carry on their nefarious practices with perfect impunity? However, hunting in the park is not general by any means, and is only carried on by an irresponsible class of semicriminals. Because of the protection afforded, deer in the park become very tame during the summer and when driven to the lower levels by the first heavy snow fall an easy prey to the despised deer skinners.
Accordingly, he, like Arant, proposed the creation of
game preserve, to embrace not only the park but all that portion of the forest reserve on the north to township 26 and on the west to range 1, Willamette meridian, then giving to it just such protection as is now afforded to other game preserves of a similar character.
In 1914 Steel proposed a second solution to the problem of game protection and overall law enforcement in the park. He observed:
If the department will allow five additional rangers, three of them will be needed for issuing automobile licenses and registering visitors at park entrances, one will be detailed for clerical work at headquarters, and three will be used to patrol the park. Of the latter one should be stationed at the Medford entrance to patrol north of the Medford Road and west of the lake, one at the Pinnacles entrance to patrol the eastern side of the park, and one at headquarters to patrol the southern portion, together with that portion of the rim in the vicinity of Crater Lake Lodge. By this arrangement fairly good patrol of the park can be maintained and deer hunters held in check. Besides this the danger of forest fires would be materially reduced and the work of park administration greatly improved.
Forest fires continued to be a critical problem for Superintendent Steel. In 1913 several small fires were started by careless campers. In one case in which live trees were destroyed, the offenders were apprehended and ejected from the park. The summers of 1914 and 1915 were unusually dry, thus leading to extraordinary precautions against forest fires. More than twenty fires broke out in the park in 1914, although all were extinguished before significant damage resulted. Thunderstorms and lightning ignited many of the fires in the park, the most significant occurring in 1916 when one storm resulted in four fires in the park and ten in the surrounding forests.
Road repair work during the spring continued to be a major component of Steel’s duties as he prepared the park for the summer tourists. To repair the washed out roads he began a new practice of cutting out the road sides and dragging them rather than “cutting out the middle.”
