The district has 12 individual features that comprise a designed historic landscape in terms of form and function. In order to analyze these features in relation to each other and within the context of overall design intent, significant landscape characteristics were organized into four primary categories: circulation, vegetation, structures and small-scale features.
Circulation includes four individual features: roads, and parking areas (vehicular circulation), walkways and trails (pedestrian circulation). As the fundamental structuring elements for the landscape design at Rim Village, roads were the first features implemented from the general development plan formulated by the NPS in 1926. The present road from Park Headquarters in Munson Valley is particularly important to the overall design intent because it represents a fundamental shift in the approach to Rim Village from previous roads to reach the rim from Munson Valley.
In 1904-05, W.F. Arant, the park’s first superintendent, oversaw construction of a road which terminated at the rim just east of the future Crater Lake Lodge. This was eclipsed by another, less steep, road opened by U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in 1914. In approaching Crater Lake Lodge from the south and then proceeding west, it also formed the initial portion of a road around Crater Lake. By 1926, this highway’s relatively steep grades, narrow width, and tight curves had proven unsatisfactory in the face of steadily climbing visitation, so the NPS formulated a new route to Rim Village.
This one avoided Crater Lake Lodge in favor of “spectacular views” of the lake and caldera roughly half a mile west of the hotel in an open area suitable for developing additional visitor services. Such an approach also gave motorists the option of entering Rim Village or bypassing it entirely. The new route brought visitors into a plaza where they could park or continue east along a roadway which terminated at the lodge. This roadway approximated the 1914 alignment but was widened to 50 feet for two way traffic and parking in 1928. Related developments included a loop road in front of the hotel and a circulation system for what had formerly been an ill-defined campground between the lodge and plaza. The latter made use of a single entry and several loops which underwent realignment in 1961. Roads within the campground still reflect the historic pattern, however, because they are curvilinear and conform to the topography by providing a sequence of views framed by natural vegetation. By contrast, the access road to the concessioner’s dormitory does not contribute to the historic district because it is a one lane strip of asphalt built in 1972 along the edge of an open pumice field.
The district contains parking that the NPS developed in three places during the late 1920s: in the cafeteria plaza, along the Rim Village roadway, and adjacent to Crater Lake Lodge. These improvements commenced in 1927 with grading and surfacing of the plaza, so that motorists had an area measuring roughly 200 by 400 feet in which to park. This parking area remains open and has been striped for 150 vehicles since the mid 1 930s. East of the plaza, parking for 240 cars on both sides of the roadway has existed since 1928. Additional parking is available in front of the lodge, where NPS crews constructed a loop road in 1929 and then built a second loop two years later. This provided parking for 44 cars and is confined to the second (south) loop.
A promenade, built between 1929 and 1932, is the primary pedestrian circulation system for Rim Village. Stone masons built a low parapet wall of 3,450 feet in length as a way of separating visitors from the inner caldera. The promenade extends from a point 400 feet west of the cafeteria plaza to some 800 feet east of Crater Lake Lodge. It also forms a segment of a trail system which becomes the Pacific Crest Trail west of Rim Village and the Garfield Peak Trail to the east. In contrast to these longer trails, however, the eight foot wide promenade has a number of secondary paths or “crosswalks” between it and the Rim Village roadway. The crosswalks range in width between four and six feet, and are generally curvilinear to complement the promenade’s serpentine form. The Victor Rock Trail to the Sinnott Memorial is 200 feet in length and forms a branch of the promenade, as does a loop walk in an observation bay below the Crater Lake Lodge.
