Back in 1959-60 a national park photographer came to Crater Lake to take photos. They put out a folder the next year about working in the national parks. I was featured on the cover working with two stone masons rebuilding the rock wall at North Junction. Can you imagine, no shirt…no hardhat and I was featured…so unsafe. That is me on the left at age 19.
Very few people have witnessed this. When Larry [Smith] and I first started working at Crater Lake in 1959 the park dug garbage pits and dumped the park’s garbage into the pits and burned it each day. Sometimes our garbage people would wait until the end of the day to burn to be nice to the bears. The garbage from the lodge and cafeteria were rich in dumped food.
The bears turned into entitled pigs and would all descend into the pits near headquarters and rummage through the burning garbage.We used to go down after work and watch the bears and shoot photos. When friends visited we would take them to the pits. The first photo is of me trying to “feed” the bear. We were young and not afraid. The bears had a regular run; they would start in the Mazama Campground then stop by the burning garbage and then head up to the Rim and scavenger the food in the Rim Campground. At one time I counted 21 bears around the garbage pit and in the trees. The park knew they had a problem.
They put out bear warning pamphlets to put your food away in the campground. They made the bear-proof garbage cans. They closed the Rim Campground. Then they decided to close the pits and trucked the garbage out of the park.
Now you had druggie type/entitled bears used to free food…much better than leaves and berries. We had some people hurt. I have done first aid on bear injuries. One night a camper asked me if I could get a bear out his van that was going through his food boxes. I have been chased by a bear. Slowly the park trapped the bears and moved them outside the park. Some were tranquilized and moved. Some were shot…no other choice. The mothers had trained their kids to beg. We had them storming to the cabins looking for food.
Helen even chased one out of our cabin entrance with a broom. One day Helen was in our cabin and Kenneth was playing in the sandbox they had in the area for kids. Helen looked out and saw a bear walk between our cabin and Kenneth. Helen remained calm and the bear kept on walking. The bear was more interested in food rather than kids.
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1975 a Volkswagen bug is driven off the road and into the canyon one mile below Rim Village. The car rolled several times and the driver was thrown from the car. The driver, who had been drinking, is unhurt, but the car is a total loss.
A soldier, who was on leave, had just purchased the car and was not yet covered by insurance, Lloyd Smith, the investigating ranger wrote in 2017: “One thing about being a ranger with a camera you get to record some pretty interesting stuff. If I remember this story correctly the young man had just gotten out of the Army and he bought this Volkswagen for $900. He came to Crater Lake and spent the evening drinking on the Rim at the bar. He tried to drive down the curves below the Rim and drove off the road. It rolled several times and he was thrown out of the passenger’s window when it hit the trees. We found him below his vehicle. We hauled him up the slope and took him to the hospital . . . the verdict . . . all ok. . just drunk. We brought him back to HQ and put him to bed to sleep it off. He did not have insurance on the car. The next day my twin brother, Larry, and I went back to investigate it more and to clean up. We found some brick-like objects wrapped in aluminum foil. Our first thought was drugs. Oh, oh. But they turned out to be fruit cake.”
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August 29 1967 The Park’s old wooden Ranger boat is sunk near Wizard Island, after using a sledgehammer to knock holes into the boat’s sides and bottom.
October 2010 – Owen Hoffman writes: Larry, That was the old Naturalist’s research boat that was owned by the NPS. In the summer of 1967, it was deemed unusable and beyond repair.
It was sunk to make room for the OSU Boston Whaler, which had been recently lowered into the lake by sliding it down over banks in late Spring of 1967, to use the NPS boat house on Wizard Island for winter shelter and storage.
The old Naturalist’s research boat was featured in the 1966 edition of “America’s Wonderlands” by National Geographic. It was photographed in the vicinity of the Phantom Ship with Bruce Black’s wife and daughters on board.
In 1967, our professor of limnology at OSU, Dr. Jack Donaldson, used the OSU Boston Whaler to tow the Naturalist’s research boat from its boathouse out into deeper waters where it was sunk. The boat was sunk by Park Ranger Larry Hakel. He used a sledge hammer to punch holes through the weakened hull of the boat. Doug Larson and I went along to watch and help as needed. Doug took photos.
The boat was last observed peacefully at rest on the lake floor by Mark Buktenica, who was inside the submersible Deep Rover. This happened sometime in 1988 or 1989.
Letter to the authors from Dr. Doug Larson, October 18, 2010
Here are some photos that I took at Crater Lake in the summer of 1967. That summer, the Park Service decided to get rid of a boat that was stored on Wizard Island. Apparently the boat had been given to the Park Service years earlier to haul tourist around on Crater Lake. According to Dick Brown, Chief Park Naturalist, the boat had been used to smuggle alcoholic beverages from Cuba to Florida during the Prohibition Era. The boat was intercepted by the Coast Guard, confiscated, and later given to the Park Service.
Because of the unusually dry weather and high fire danger that summer, the Park Service ruled out burning the boat on Wizard Island. Instead, they decided to have it sunk in about 300 meters of water along a transect roughly halfway between Wizard Island and Crater Lake Lodge.
Photo 1 shows the boat parked on the shore of Wizard Island near the entrance of the shed where it had been stored, apparently for many years. Before the boat was towed out to the Lake, we filled the bottom with rocks.
When I (Lloyd Smith) worked on the trail crew at Crater Lake National Park we used the Ranger (Naturalist) Boat for some of our lake duties. From former ranger Owen Hoffman: In the summer of 1967, it was deemed unusable and beyond repair. It was sunk to make room for the OSU Boston Whaler, which had been recently lowered into the lake by sliding it down over snow banks in late Spring of 1967, to use the NPS boat house on Wizard Island for winter shelter and storage. The old Naturalist’s research boat was featured in the 1966 edition of “America’s Wonderlands” by National Geographic. It was photographed in the vicinity of the Phantom Ship with Bruce Black’s wife and daughters on board….cont…
Photos 2 shows us towing the boat toward its final resting place. The towboat is the OSU research vessel, a Boston Whaler powered by two 35 HP outboard motors. Owen Hoffman, grim-faced and wearing the red hardhat and orange sweatshirt, sits in the stern. Jack Donaldson, barely visible and wearing a plaid shirt, far left, operates the research Rod Cranson’s head, inside of the tan-colored hard had, appears in the lower right-hand corner of the photo.
Photo 3 shows the crew preparing the boat for sinking. Note that the engine, a 12 or 16-cylinder job, has been left in the boat to help keep it submerged on the Lake bottom. Four people are shown in this photo. The person nearest the camera and wearing a tan hardhat and olive-green shirt is Naturalist Ted Aurther. Next to him, with his back to the camera and wearing a red hard hat, is a Park Service employee, Larry Hakel. The third person, wearing a red hardhat and orange sweatshirt is Owen Hoffman. The fourth person, whose straw hat is the only thing showing, is Jack Donaldson. Both Hoffman and Donaldson are leaning well into the boat.
Photo 4 shows four or our crew making final preparations for sinking. The person wearing the tan-colored hardhat and blue sweatshirt is Rod Cranson. Own Hoffman, red hardhat and orange sweatshirt, holds the rope tethered to the tourist boat. Jack Donaldson, straw hat and plaid shirt, watches Larry, wearing no hat, preparing to perforate the tourist boat’s hull with a sledgehammer.
Photo 5; Holes appear in the tourist boat’s hull as Larry swings his hammer. Rod Cranson captures this destruction with his camera. Photos 6,7 and 8 show the boat steadily sinking. I show these last three photos when I give talks about our research at Crater Lake. I say that there are days for limnologists on the lake when everything seems to go wrong. —- Dr. Doug Larson
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Researched by Larry and Lloyd Smith
April 12 1934 The bodies of Doris Sparks, 27, and Audrea Mardelle, 33, Hollywood beauty demonstrators are found 150 below the East Entrance Road in Sand Creek Canyon.
The two women had driven around a road-closed sign and while turning their car around in the snow, the Chevrolet car plunged through a weakened guard rail. The two women had been the object of an intense search covering the Northwest for 6 months. Their bodies and the car were found by snow blower operators as the East Road was being opened. The broken guardrail led to a further investigation and the discovery of their wrecked car.
Fearing the two had driven into the Columbia River during a heavy fog, the local sheriff drug the river in several places searching for the car. An airplane search was also conducted.
Apparently the accident happened on November 12, based on their intended travel plans. They left Spokane on the 11th of November and drove all night, planning to meet friends in Klamath Falls the next day. The two beauty experts had asked a service station operator in Crescent, Oregon about road conditions to Crater Lake. He warned them to not attempt to enter the Park because of heavy snows. The Park Service, based on this information, searched Sand Creek Canyon in November, but no trace of the car was found at that time.
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