The first year the CCC crews undertook landscaping, particular attention was paid to the area between the Kiser Studio and the lodge. The following year, 1934, the area on the north side of the lodge received attention as did the cafeteria building. The latter, with an exterior appearance that was “one of the most distracting sights that greeted the tourist as he arrived at the Rim area,” was naturalized, “improving the appearance of a poorly designed and unattractive building.”[50] Curbing stone was prepared and placed around the cafeteria and in front of the lodge in 1934. The beds created by the new curbing were planted with a variety of native plant materials.[51] By 1935, landscaping efforts were considered complete on the north side of Rim Village Road. Work was then directed to the south side of the road. In 1936, topsoil was brought in, and landscape architect Francis Lange focused on improving the landscape around the Community House. Eight hundred and fifty shrubs were transplanted in this area in 1936. Even though the planting program was considered to be approximately 75 percent complete, peat, topsoil, sod, trees, and shrubs continued to be hauled up to the village, with more than two thousand plants transplanted in 1938 alone.[52]
Roads, parking areas, walks, and curbing continued to be important areas of concern for landscape architects during the CCC era at Crater Lake. One new feature incorporated into the site was the construction of a triangular traffic island at the west end of the village. This was added in 1935 at the road junction where the main Rim Road and the road leading into the developed village converged. NPS landscape architects felt that this feature would not only help control traffic, it would also serve to break up a large expanse of pavement and permit planting within the bed of the triangle. Abandoned roads leading to Rim Village east of the lodge were obliterated by work crews beginning in 1937. Large rocks, logs, and plants were brought in and placed over the road remnants in attempts to hide the old routes.
The grounds around the lodge received renewed attention during this time. In 1933, CCC crews built a new parking area and entry platform on the south side of the hotel. The following year, a redesigned entrance route for cars driving to the hotel was constructed because the original design was not functioning as planned. The new design alleviated the congestion that was increasing in that vicinity. In 1938, walks and cut stone steps linking the tiers of parking together with the hotel entrance were incorporated into the design of the new lodge parking area. These features added a picturesque and “finished” quality to the landscape around the hotel. Additional paved walks and stone curbing were constructed in 1933 and 1934 at the village. Frustrated by the different workmen assigned to building the curbs, “each [one] trying to express his own ideas in masonry” thus making it hard to get a uniform type of stone curbing, the park landscape architects and inspectors from the Bureau of Public Roads agreed on a single style and credible work progressed.[53] Shortly after the stone curbing was installed, it became the target of criticism. Dr. Harold C. Bryant, Assistant Director of the NPS, visited Crater Lake during the summer of 1935 and prepared a field report for NPS Director Arno B. Cammerer. Bryant noted that while the most conspicuous improvement at the park continued to be the landscaping at the rim, he added:
A considerable change has been made in the parking area, the logs having been supplanted by rock curbing. The more I see of these parking spaces, the more they look like city parking spaces transplanted to a mountain setting. We are evidently getting away from simple rustic improvements.[54]
