Another relief program of the New Deal, the Public Works Administration, was created in 1933 with the passage of the National Industrial Recovery Act. The PWA awarded grants to federal agencies for the construction of roads, buildings, and other physical improvements. Because the NPS had development plans in place for the national parks, much of this grant money was directed into NPS coffers.[41] With renewed funds for development, additional staff was needed. The magnitude of the change during these years is somewhat staggering, particularly when looking at NPS personnel figures for the Branch of Plans and Design. Thomas Vint had a staff consisting of sixteen individuals in 1933; two years later his staff had increased to include one hundred-and-twenty professionals, all hired to complete the tremendous amount of design work programmed for the parks.[42] Along with a park’s resident landscape architect, the Park Service hired a landscape architect for each CCC camp.[43] At Crater Lake, skilled supervisors were hired in great enough numbers to provide the oversight needed to complete construction projects according to the NPS’s high standards for design. What makes this period of development at Rim Village notable is that these work crews, particularly the CCC, were able to accomplish in one season work that would have taken regular park forces several years to complete. Without these “make work” programs, the implementation and completion of Crater Lake’s master plan would have been brought to an abrupt halt.[44] Furthermore, as landscape architect Francis Lange noted:
It would appear safe to say that the cost of this work would be less than that by the regular park method, and surely it would go without saying that the quality of work is better, as men trained in landscape work are in charge, resulting in carefully planned and executed work.[45]
The New Deal, then, totally changed the momentum of construction activity at Rim Village between the years 1933 and 1941. The work programs supplied the necessary manpower to complete much of Sager’s proposals and act on other tasks that required attention. Sager continued to work at Crater Lake in the early 1930s, but he was assisted by others. By 1934 Armin M. Doerner was the park’s Resident Landscape Architect and Emergency Conservation Work crews were supervised by NPS Landscape Architect Francis G. Lange. In Doerner’s absence, Lange watched over other work in the park and also assisted with the “architectural work on the buildings.”[46] In addition, from 1934 until 1939, Crater Lake had six landscape architects employed on various construction projects.[47]
At Crater Lake, CCC enrollees participated on a variety of projects, beginning with roads and trails work. During the course of a work season much of their time was spent firefighting, planting fish, and doing general clean-up tasks around the park. After NPS landscape architects became more confident that the CCC laborers could undertake more sophisticated projects, CCC projects were expanded to include small-scale construction projects. Storage and equipment sheds, ranger cabins, checking stations, comfort stations, warehouses and garages, and a messhall were just some of the facilities built by these crews at Crater Lake.[48]
The landscaping program at Rim Village remained a major activity for CCC crews. Enrollees hauled peat and topsoil up to the site for their revegetation effort. Additional plants from other areas in the park were established at the site to enhance the naturalization work that was already in place. In his report to the Chief Architect that year, Merel Sager wrote:
One of the most gratifying phases of this rim landscaping is the fact that we have accomplished the great objective aimed at three years ago, that is, of bringing back vegetation between the road and the rim all the way from the head of the trail to Crater Lake Lodge.[49]
