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Not only would a trail 12 miles in length (and intended for light horse-drawn vehicles) connect with the “old Indian trail to Diamond Lake, between Llao Rock and Red Cone,” but could also allow for branches to be run to Oasis Spring and Bald Crater.⁴³ Parts of the larger rationale behind this effort came from two sources: an expansion proposal launched by the NPS several years earlier for the park to include Diamond Lake, and a desire to eventually shorten the travel time needed to reach Crater Lake from points north.⁴⁴ Even if a state highway had yet to reach Diamond Lake or the park’s north boundary, by 1920 scenic promoters pitched the idea of a road (or “Skyline Route”) to run along the summit of the Cascade Range between Mount Hood and Crater Lake.⁴⁵ When the Mazamas, a Portland-based mountaineering group founded by W.G. Steel, reached the rim on foot from the north over this route in August 1921, Sparrow called it the “Oregon Skyline Trail.” Less than three weeks later, he and two others became the first to go between Diamond Lake and Crater Lake in a motor vehicle over the same route.⁴⁶ The route remained primitive enough to also be called the “Diamond Lake Auto Trail,” so that only the most confident motorist undertook a journey across it.

Maintenance and Construction, 1922-28

U.S. Forest Service map cover, 1931. Courtesy of Wendy Hull, Federal Highway Administration, Vancouver, Washington.

Whereas use of the words “road” and “trail” could be interchangeable at times, expenditures for maintenance tended to distinguish between them. Sparrow noted that the NPS built no new trails in 1922, but opening and maintaining the trail named for him continued to require considerable effort. While it received about 80 percent of trail use at the park, this trail to Crater Lake consumed two-thirds of the annual trail maintenance allocation. Under Sparrow’s successor, Charles Goff Thomson, the NPS needed to spend three-quarters of the park’s trail budget on this route in 1923 while building no new trails.⁴⁷With visitation growing and the annexes completed on an expanded Crater Lake Lodge the following year, Thomson began talking about the need for a new trail alignment. He wanted to eliminate having visitors pass behind the hotel as they entered the caldera, but also some heavy grades (the steepest was 28 percent) along it as well as some unspecified “dangers” associated with Sparrow’s alignment.⁴⁸