Was there a gas station there at Annie Springs?
I don’t believe so, unless there was in later years I think the first gas station was clear up there by Government Camp where it’s always been.(8) (OH)
I read something about a lunch counter and a gas station about 1922, but I wasn’t sure.
I don’t think so. It was all tents in there. There were no cabins or anything like that, just a place to pitch a tent, running water, and stuff like that for campers. (OH)
Here’s something I have wondered about. This sign called “Cascade Divide,” along the west road near Annie Springs. Do you remember that? I am still not sure when that was built and of course, when it was taken down.
You’re not sure when that was built? It would have been in ’24. Yeah, the second year I was there, when I was a teamster. They probably put that trimming there after we put up the big timbers. We probably just kind of roughed it out. They probably put it in later. We had to put the heavy timbers and stuff. We had a gin pull and stuff to place those timbers where they are. (OH)
I know in looking through your album we talked about a couple of things before, the charges that were set to open the roads. Was it both a combination of blasting and then there were a crew of men shoveling out? Did they do this for the entire rim road.
They opened the road from Annie Springs up to Government Camp first. Then we’d come down to the west entrance most generally. At the corkscrew this side of Annie Springs, that’s where they heavy drifts were. That’s where we had to open it up. Then they could get up from there. We got in there one time and stopped at Whiskey Creek. Whiskey Creek is down this side there (9). It’s quite a ways this side of the west entrance. That’s where we went with the trucks the first time we went up there, as I remember it. After they’d opened the road there, then they’d open the road from Government Camp to the lodge. There were some heavy drifts up in there. Then after that, of course, the South Entrance. I don’t know if they opened it all the time first or second. That’s the way it all went. Then the rim road, after they had these other roads opened up. But they’d have to shoot these drifts to crystallize that snow so that you could handle it with a shovel. It made them black after you worked in it. You’d swore you worked in a coal mine. It made all the crystal-chunked pieces of ice black. You’d look like you were all full of black tar and such. You’d think shoveling snow would be a clean job, but it wasn’t. It was kind of a nasty, messy, smeary job. Of course, they’d want to get it broke up like that and we’d get it moved.
