What little planning and development of a trail route through the park by the NPS resulted from prodding by the Forest Service and conservation groups, but it remained a low priority in a park perceived as visited almost solely by motorists. Nevertheless, Chief Ranger Carlisle Crouch reported that the Skyline trail through the park had been maintained and signed by August 1940. In addition to shifting the trail route off the North Entrance Road (in favor of the abandoned roadway left by a portion of the Diamond Lake Auto Trail) until users reached the motorway near Red Cone, a camp on Dutton Creek was selected for trail parties who traveled presumably on horseback due to its proximity to Rim Village.127 It received little use, as did the trail, even in a year when Crater Lake finally drew a quarter million visitors. With a central feature so dominant and road access to lake viewpoints relatively easy with Rim Drive being virtually completed, the appeal of backcountry travel at Crater Lake remained limited. Elsewhere on the Skyline route, trails remained the only way of accessing the high country around the Three Sisters and Mount Jefferson, so a long distance route could attract a constituency especially if its wilderness character could be associated with ice-clad peaks, mountain lakes, or even big trees. At Crater Lake, however, the Skyline trail routing simply represented a void between the Sky Lakes area to the south and Mount Thielsen north of the park.128
Not that such perception worked to stop all new trails in the park. CCC enrollees did some regrading of the trail to Sentinel Point in 1940, given how contractors had completed a parking overlook with some log steps leading from a walkway along the parapet wall two years earlier. The CCC also extended the trail on Mount Scott another tenth of a mile to the lookout, but their largest undertaking to improve the experience of pedestrians that year involved building a half mile trail so that visitors to the Castle Crest Wildflower Garden had the option of hiking to an overlook and then into the wetland. Leavitt requested several additional trail projects for the following summer, these being new construction for a route to the lake, another accessing Llao Rock, and one along Sand Creek. CCC funding had by that time slowed to a trickle in comparison to the halcyon days of 1934 and 1935, when the program operated at its peak.129
