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| Crater Lake National Park. Footbridge and Ranger Dormitory, 1936. NPS photo by Francis G. Lange, included in volume 1 of Park and Recreation Structures (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1938), 183. |
Apart from maintenance (which included snow removal, clearing, and oiling of the most heavily used pedestrian routes), trail improvements at Crater Lake were limited to the area around Park Headquarters in 1936. CCC enrollees built a footbridge over Munson Creek, one designed by resident landscape architect Francis G. Lange. It replaced a more modest structure behind the Ranger Dormitory on the Lady of the Woods Trail, a route they also surfaced that trail with gravel over its entire length. They maintained and improved the existing trail through the Castle Crest Wildflower Garden, as well as a trail that linked the popular wetland area with the newly completed Administration Building.112
By 1937, some components of the park’s “system” met with criticism from NPS staff. Lange’s report on grading a portion of Rim Drive contained an observation that the old “motor trail” to Sun Notch could be seen within a thousand feet of the new road. In keeping with the NPS practice of removing old roads visible from Rim Drive, he suggested obliterating the “trail” and noted that plans now called for its removal.113 Wildlife technician E. Lowell Sumner, meanwhile, protested the use of a small tractor for oiling the Garfield Peak Trail after his field visit in July 1937. He attributed the “surprising” width of this and several oilier trails to the machine used to oil them. At six feet wide, however, such a trail actually discouraged use by hikers who had since shortcut the “highway” by making a path of their own with a width of some 18 inches. Sumner noted that the wider trail had an “aggravated tendency” toward bank erosion and often led to situations where work crews more often undermined important trailside trees by chopping away lateral roots. In his view, trails of that width conveyed “no feeling of isolation, no feeling of primitive nature no matter how rugged the surroundings into which they are introduced.”114
Beyond opening the park’s most heavily used pedestrian routes, the CCC placed a total of 20 log benches along the Garfield Peak and Crater Wall trails that summer. These features utilized logs cut in half and further divided into sections of six feet, then placed into smaller supports on the ground that were notched to hold the seat.115 Enrollees then added two “rock seats” to this number, stone features that were presumably similar to the benches located along the Watchman Trail in 1932. The CCC also completed the final stage of building walks at Rim Village that summer, with some of the enrollees focusing their efforts on the parking area south of Crater Lake Lodge, in addition to linking a new comfort station near the plaza with visitor parking. They also added a walk at Park Headquarters, effectively connecting the Ranger Dormitory with the Messhall.116
