All told the proposals provided for a total extension of the park boundaries of some 118 square miles and eliminations totaling 43 square miles for a net enlargement of 75 square miles. As a result of continuing opposition by the Forest Service, however, none of the proposed park extensions or eliminations were approved. On August 6 the committee met in Medford and voted unanimously to disapprove all of the Park Service proposals. Later in 1932 a portion of the proposed Klamath extension would be added to the park, thus providing for a more attractive southern entrance amid a stand of yellow pine. [76]
It is interesting to note that Commissioner Steel, who had begun the campaign to add the Diamond Lake region to the park in 1914, opposed the extension in August 1926. Writing to the President’s Coordinating Committee on August 3 Steel provided the rationale for his change of mind:
About ten or twelve years ago, while 1 was superintendent of the Crater Lake National Park, I started a movement to extend the boundaries of the park, so as to take in Diamond lake, but since then my mind has changed, for I have come to realize it is not for the best interests of the park.
Diamond lake is a beautiful sheet of water, similar to hundreds of others throughout the country, with no national features, but very dear to local residents, who love to camp there during the Summer, together with their families and enjoy a relief from business cares, in the mountain wilds. It is exclusively local in character and should be left free of such restraints as go with a great national attraction, which it is not. It has no interests in common with Crater Lake and the two should not be combined.
In a spirit of local pride certain citizens of Southern Oregon have invested money in its development in good faith, under a concession of the Agricultural Department, trusting in the honesty of that branch of the government, and suspicious of the Park Service, because of the fact that the only man on earth who was willing to invest his own money at Crater Lake, was dispossessed of his concession, which was given to others, no better able to make good than he.
The inclusion of Diamond Lake in the Crater Lake National Park, means an immense increase of fire hazard, because of the vast area of dead and down timber, to which there is no offset in benefits. . . .
If an addition is desired to the park of real benefit, the Western line should be extended, so as to protect deer that move down in that direction, just in time to be slaughtered by hunters in the Fall. [77]
Park boundary extensions again became a political issue in April 1932 when Superintendent Solinsky recommended that approximately 400 square miles of Forest Service lands be added to Crater Lake. This extension included not only the Diamond Lake-Mount Thielson-Mount Bailey region but also the Upper Rogue River Valley and Union Creek area west of the park. Prior to this time nothing as large as Solinsky’s recommendation for the Union Creek extension had ever been contemplated. The opposition of the Forest Service, which viewed the proposed westward extension as a “land grab,” and the combined opposition of that agency and various private and commercial interests in the Diamond Lake area doomed the proposal to defeat. [78]
