2003 Revised Admin History – Chapter Nineteen Trails by Stephen R. Mark, Park Historian 2013

The trails inventory of 1955 varied somewhat from the one prepared six years earlier, especially with respect to what the NPS proposed to build with funding in the offing from an agency initiative that Director Conrad Wirth called “Mission 66.” Grading, all of it by hand from NPS crews as part of maintenance, was proposed for nine of the existing trails, beginning with work on six miles of the Oregon Skyline route through the park.141 Planners also proposed obliterating the Crater Wall Trail in favor of a new route to the lake, one linking the Pumice Point overlook on Rim Drive with a dock at Cleetwood Cove. The other prospective change involved removing a segment of the Watchman Trail that traversed the old Rim Road for 0.3 miles and shifting its trailhead away from the Watchman Overlook. A new trailhead would have been developed across from where a motorway led to Lightning Spring and the Skyline route, thus requiring hikers to ascend Watchman from the south. It could also create a trail junction near the motorway gate since an “alternate” to the Skyline route might then run along the rim from there toward Rim Village and then down Dutton Creek.142 Another trail reported as part of the inventory climbed Llao Rock from a yet to be constructed pullout on Rim Drive, but from the north, instead of going east from Merriam Point as had been proposed in 1935. None of the other potential projects matched those proposed a decade or so earlier; at this point agency planners added several short trails to their wish list. These included one of 0.7 miles to the top of Timber Crater from a motorway that looped around its northern base. Another started from a parking area on Rim Drive and went to the top of Palisade Point. The longest trail would have reached the top of Scoria Cone in 1.8 miles from a proposed parking area to be located north of Annie Falls on the South Entrance Road.143

The Mission 66 Years, 1956-1966

Annual visitation topped 370,000 in 1954 and with some variability over the next 12 years, finally reached the half million mark at Crater Lake in time for the NPS to celebrate its fiftieth anniversary. The agency undertook a new and large development program in response to increasing visitation and deferred maintenance throughout the entire national park system, while anticipating a sustained level of appropriated dollars over a ten year horizon. Unlike the 1930s, when appropriations paid for new facilities through work relief programs, Mission 66 projects were restricted to day labor and contracts. Most of the Mission 66 funding received for trails at Crater Lake centered on just one undertaking, one aimed at relocating pedestrian access to the lake from Rim Village with a new route leading from the northern part of Rim Drive to Cleetwood Cove.