Would it have had a water problem down there?
Uh, we didn’t think so at the time. But now here again, I don’t know, at the present time.
That may have been just one of the concerns raised by the reports that were done on that alternative versus this one.
I’m sure that could have been one of them. And I think we probably do have much better water sources up here. But I would think that there are adequate water sources down there. But I don’t know. That’s one of the things.
You mentioned, “Who lived at the various residencies?” I think we’ve pretty well covered these up above here and the maintenance people, the snow plow operators, and this sort of thing lived in the ones that had been taking out down at Sleepy Hollow. I know that’s where Koehlers lived down there and George Woodley lived down there and the equipment operators, Orville Castor and John Fulton. I think Dick Varnum lived down in Fort Klamath, I’m pretty sure. There was a man by the name of Heckman, I believe, was the maintenance foreman up here, but he was an alcoholic, and he got to drinking pretty heavy. I think he was given the choice of resigning or facing some sort of charges. And this was early on. This was before Gilbert becomes chief ranger so it was that period of time, after Carlisle left here and before Clyde became the real chief ranger, so it was in that period, probably about ’47 or something like that. There was a man by the name of Charlie True, and he was here; I think he was here when the park was founded, I’m not sure. Charlie had been around for a long time. More or less of a seasonal type, but he was also almost a permanent. But Charlie, it was getting so that he to couldn’t see too well. He ran into our house with a snow-plow at 4:00 am. That will wake you out of bed!
Now, you mentioned memory and details of major accidents or tragedies at Crater Lake from ’46-’50. I think there were only three fatalities while we were here. The first one was about 1:00 pm in the afternoon, or a little later. We got a call down here, and I was down here at headquarters. There was a seasonal up on the rim who said that someone had jumped over the rim. So of course, several of us got up there right away. And just as you hit the rim, where the walk is, as your road turns in there. At that time, of course, he was very elderly (now he’d be a young man) of about 60, 61 years old.
