Like his predecessors, Thomson saw a safe and easy trail to the lake as critical to visitor enjoyment, so he thought spending an estimated $10,000 on building the Crater Wall Route perfectly justifiable. Annual visitation almost quadrupled over the six years he served as superintendent (1923-29), and Thomson devoted much of his time to planning for enhanced park infrastructure. He had the help of a slowly growing NPS staff of landscape architects and engineers who could handle many of the technical details of design and oversee construction projects once funding had been secured. During the first few years of Thomson’s tenure, construction funding of any kind could be characterized as meager, though by 1926 this had begun to change. Building new trails away from the lake did not rise to the top of NPS priorities for the park, though some small projects could still fit into Thomson’s larger objectives.
Increasing visitation brought more people who wanted to camp, so the number of designated areas began to grow in number beyond the two sites (Rim Village and Annie Spring) which already possessed some amenities such as tables and a water system. Four others were shown on the park map by 1924, but they were little more than small areas where motorists could stop next to an approach road. These had a few spots cleared for camping, possibly a pit toilet, and utilized surface water from an adjacent stream.53 Thomson located one of these peripheral camps on Whitehorse Creek on the Medford Road (later known as west Highway 62), and a small crew made a couple of modest improvements that summer.
A new trail from the road bridge on Whitehorse Creek to the “Giant Nutcracker,” a narrow gorge later known as Llaos Hallway, quickly became the most auspicious. The trail, as such, went for a distance of a quarter mile to where the creek met a seasonal tributary, and from there hikers had to traverse the gorge on their own.54 It came about when Thomson and Chief Ranger Pete Oard traversed Whitehorse Creek in order to access Castle Creek Canyon in September 1923. They so enthusiastically reported what they found that other NPS employees subsequently made the trip and fueled Thomson’s proposal to open a trail the following spring. The Washington office approved this comparatively small undertaking almost immediately due to its low cost and potential public relations value.55
