To the reader:
My first contact with Owen Hoffman’s work came about 10 years ago, when I first ran across his master’s thesis in the park library. Little did I know that former Chief Park Naturalist Bruce Black, who I interviewed in 1988, would bring the two of us together by e-mail in November of last year? A number of messages followed and culminated in Dr. Hoffman arranging his schedule so that he could volunteer for a week during the latter part of August.
This interview took place in the park library near the end of that week, the day before Owen Hoffman because the catalyst for hike up Garfield Peak and across to Vidae Falls with five other past or present NPS employees. That trek highlighted an exuberant seven days at the park for virtually everyone he came in contact with during that time. His excitement about Crater Lake is also evident in the interview, as well as throughout the electronic correspondence lodged in the park’s history files.
Stephen R. Mark
(Crater Lake National Park Historian)
December 1998
