I know there’s that old story about how Superintendent Solinsky had a design for a Snow Cat that he felt that Tucker had stolen from him.
I haven’t heard that one. Tucker had an inventive type of mind, but he was partially deaf. He started using Model-T’s and started constructing snow machines from them. He started putting skis on them and big chains in the back and skis in the front to steer. Then he moved to California and continued working on designs there. Right after the war, he moved back up here and went into production, I think right about 1947 or 1948. His grandson, who’s president of the company, comes to our church here, Jim Tucker. So we’re still connected with the Tuckers. For the next several years, my contact was mostly during the wintertime, because Mr. Tucker would bring his cats to Crater Lake for testing. He’d try them out in the deep snow up there. I remember the motto was painted on the outside of the building “No road too steep, no snow too deep.”
So they weren’t used by the park?
They [the NPS] used to have a Snow Cat. They bought a small one. You’ll see pictures of it in the files. I don’t know why they never really did much with the Snow Cat. I remember when I started working there in the office in about ’65, I remember when you opened up the key cabinets and there was a label there that said key for Snow Cat. It was still hanging there, I mean the key wasn’t there but the label was. They probably had about a ’50 or ’52 model because it was the old ski front and the pontoons in the back.
We had some pictures donated by Wayne Howe who was there from ’46-’50. Some of his photos are of Snow Cats.
As far as I know, the park only had one. But Tucker was always taking one up there. He was welcome. It’s kind of interesting to see the changes occur because he was always welcome to come anytime he wanted to. He would put on big snow blasts for the public. I remember one year, it was on Mother’s Day of about ’53 or ’54. At the rim there was the big iceberg right out there by the visitor center where they blew it up from the parking lot. It was 35-feet high, I remember. They had steps in there and we’d climbed up and my aunt took a picture of us at the 35-foot level. They had a rope ladder going up with footmarks on it. Every five feet they had numbers. So my brother and I are standing on 35-feet of snow. That “snowberg” wouldn’t melt all summer. It was right there by where the tunnel is now, the winter viewing point.
