Interesting Crater Lake Letter
High School Chronicle
El Dorado County High School
September 1, 1923
By RUTH STIVERS
Dear May:
I received your most welcome letter a few days ago. You are my best correspondent and I enjoy hearing from you.
A couple of weeks ago we went to Crater Lake and had a wonderful trip. The scenery up there is the most beautiful I’v ever seen. On the way up we saw “Garden of the Gods” a sort of a canyon which has for its wall on one side peculiar shaped jutting rocks. Some of them resemble pinnacles with sharp points. At the bottom, hundreds of feet below, is a little valley covered with green grass and a stream of water running through. I took some pictures of it and will have some more taken off and send them to you.
After pressing “Garden of the Gods” we went on through the National Forest of large pines and other evergreen trees.
Crater Lake is so beautiful it almost takes your breath away. From the rim to the shore of the lake is about 1000 feet and the depth in over 2000 feet. There is a foot trail which leads down to the lake. We went down that the took a few pictures from the shore. The hike up was not quite so easy as going down but it wasn’t at all bad. There is dandy rainbow trout fishing in the lake but the limit is five. They’re large enough to make up for it, some of them being two feet long.
In the lake are “Wizard Island” and the “Phantom Ship,” an island in the shape of a ship. Trips by launch can be made to Wizard Island and back for one dollar each. The fishing is very good from the island. A trip around the lake is four dollars for each person. A row boat can be taken out for seventy-five cents an hour.
Each automobile entering the park pays a registration fee of $2.50. The fee for motorcycles is a dollar. This is for the entire season which covers a period from the first of July until the last of September, and sometimes later, depending upon when the snow begins.
The lake resembles Lake Tahoe a great deal, being a deep blue in color and changing at times to almost every color of the rainbow. On the lake are a large number of sea gulls, but of a different variety than are seen on San Francisco bay.
On the way back we stopped at the government camping ground and at our lunch. There we saw the “Lady of the Woods,” a figure of a woman carved in a rock. Her head is bent on her arms, looking as if she were weeping or else in deep meditation. This is meant to represent the solitude of the woods. At this camping ground we also saw some large black bears. There are ten or twelve of them. Very tame since they live right in the camping grounds and are fed at the cook house. Then being in the national park they are safe from hunters. I neglected to mention before that a doctor from New York spending his vacation in the national park carved the Lady of the Woods with only a chisel and hammer for tools. The snow came before he had completely finished it but is almost perfect. The drive to and from Crater Lake is along the shore of the upper Klamath Lake most all the way so you see there’s not a scarcity of water in this country.
(The above is an extract from a letter written by Ruth Stivers, a member of last year’s freshman class in the El Dorado County high school, now a resident of Klamath Falls.)
