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Crater Lake Photo Talk
Crater Lake Photographers
October 4, 2002
No source given, but may be from the Southern Oregon Historical Society
Words, spoken or written, can never fully describe Crater Lake’s unique beauty.
Even the most polished speakers and writers have struggled – and fallen short. That’s partly because of the Lake’s shifting moods, and partly because the individual impact of viewing the lake is something felt internally. The emotional responses the lake stimulates typically vary from person to person.
William Gladstone Steel recognized the shortcomings of words during the years he promoted Crater Lake’s designation as a national Park.
At a time when visiting the lake, located far away from traveled roads in Oregon’s high Cascades, required a major expedition. Steel used photographs to generate support for the creation of a park that few people had ever seen.
When that status was gained in 1902, Steel again enlisted photographers to produce images that encouraged people to want to visit the park.
As the curators from the Oregon Historical Society wrote in a 2001 exhibit of historic lake photographs, “The 19th century photographers who carried large format cameras, heavy glass plates, and portable darkrooms over rough trails set the standard for clarity and beauty in portraying “Deep Blue Lake”. They played an important role in establish Crater Lake National Park and bringing it to the public eye.”
Peter Britt and Fred Kiser were pioneer photographers who played key roles in creating images that rallied support for crating and developing the park.
Steel was a man of many agendas. After he learned about the early images taken by Britt in 1874, he used them in his park creating campaign.
In 1903, a year after the park was created by President Theodore Roosevelt; Steel devised a tour to Crater Lake that included prominent politicians and poet-writer Joaquin Miller. Fred and Oscar Kiser, then fledging scenic photographers, were enlisted to document the journey.
Among their memorable images is one of Miller sitting in front of his tent writing “Sea of Silence,” his love song to the lake that was later widely published. Miller wrote, in part, “The Lake took such a hold of my heart, unlike other parks…I love it almost like one of my family.”
Sharon Howe, a photographic cataloger for the Oregon Historical Museum, believes Steel clearly realized the value of lake photographs. Sharon M. Howe, “Photography and the Making of Crater Lake National Park,” Oregon Historical Quarterly 103:1 (Spring 2002), 76-97.
As Howe wrote, “What is very clear is that Will Steel used photography very heavily to promote what he was doing. From the very beginning he made the decision to hire photographers to document his ventures. Documents show that Steel used Peter Britt photographs in an effort to create the park.”
Britt’s famous first photograph taken in August 1874, when he and his 10-yearo-old son, Emil, joined Captain O.C. Applegate and Samuel Hall. Britt was ready to leave after several days of wet, overcast weather. Shortly before leaving on August 13, the clouds cleared enough to make his first, still famous lake image.
In his book “Photographer Of A Frontier: The Photographs of Peter Britt,” Arthur Clark Miller wrote, “Britt put Crater Lake on the map. Many people first saw that scenic landmark through the medium of Britt’s stereograph views, which became so popular that they were pirated by other photographers and sold without credit or payment to Britt. The Crater Lake pictures served as models for lithographs used in commercial advertising, and the Portland Immigration Board featured half-tone reproductions of them in promotional pamphlets soon after the invention of photo-engraving.”
According to Miller, Steel “armed himself with Britt’s pictures and journeyed to Washington. There he pitched himself into a long struggle that did not end until 1902. Britt’s photographs probably were as critical a factor in Steel’s efforts as were those taken by William Henry Jacksonville in the fight to preserve Yellowstone as America’s first national park.”
Britt’s photo was hard earned. In 1918, Britt’s son, Emil, wrote that he, his father and Samuel Hall left from Medford on August 7, 1874, in a “two horse wagon and about 200 lbs of photographic paraphernalia in addition to the regular camp outfit Consisting of cameras, baths solutions trays dark tent etc as required by the old wet process. It took us two long days to make Mill Creek falls.”
Other accounts detail the photographic items included a wet plate camera, stereo camera, darkroom tend, 20 8 by 10-inch glass plates, various chemicals and a large container of distilled water.
It took five days to travel from Medford to the park. Based on Britt’s diary, his party followed the Rogue River and camped about 2.5 miles from eh on August 12.
According to Emil Britt’s letter, his father’s diary entries show, “The pictures taken on this trip were all very good and were the first ones ever taken of the lake, We drove up to the rim with the wagon which was quite an undertaking as there was not road whatever up the mountain side, our only guide being blazed trees and some very dim tracks from a wagon that went up the season before, and it took us nearly all day to make the 2 1.2 miles. Nearly all visitors to the lake camped at the foot of the mountain, and either walked or rode up to the lake, but it was necessary for us to take the photographic outfit up in the wagon as it was too heavy to carry.
Poor weather was a problem because the wet-plat process required favorable weather. According to Clark, “On the third discouraging day they had just started to break camp in defeat when the fog and mist suddenly cleared. Britt quickly set up his black tend, coated several glass plates with liquid collodion and made two 20-second exposures from the campsite looking northwards toward Wizard Island. Half an hour later he emerged from the tent with two perfect negatives.”
Britt’s life story, which is excellently told in Miller’s book, is a fascinating tale that only partially involves Crater Lake. It is an intriguing story.
While Britt’s impact at Crater Lake largely stems from a single photograph, Fred Kiser became synonymous with the lake and pare because of his impressive collection of images, many taken from difficult-to-access locations, and beautifully hand-colored photographs and postcards that helped popularize the lake.
Kiser’s name remains current because the photo studio built for him in the park’s highly visited Rim Village has retained the name, the Kiser Studio, while serving unofficially as the Rim Visitor Center.
Unlike Britt, less complete information is available about Kiser. Files at Crater Lake National Park include generous heapings of letters written by and about Kiser, including his often-troubled business dealings. A tireless self-promoter, Kiser’s personal accounts seem a mixture of fact and fiction.
Dates and other information on Kiser’s birth and death are obscure. A possible clue to his age is found in a letter that Kiser sent in 1947 to Gordon Reckor, the Department of the Interior’s Board of Geographic Names. While petitioning that a glacier in Mount Baker be formally named the Kiser Glacier in recognition of his pioneering climb, Kiser wrote, “I am content with what I have had in the past, and the thoughts of living 70 years.” Based on that letter, he would have been born in 1877.
Even Kiser son, Laurene Kiser Tucker, was unaware of the details of his father’s life.
In 1991, after Park officials provided Tucker with documents containing snippets of Kiser’s history, the then 79-year-old Tucker wrote, “I am overwhelmed at the amount of information you and your staff assembled for me. I have only read the first few pages and already feel as though I have embarked on a journey backwards in time. My father and mother were divorced in 1926, (when Tucker was 14), and my father and I were never in contact after that. Bit and pieces of my memory may come together as I delve further into the facts. As I have no living relatives from whom to ask questions and no notes, dates, or other dates to rely on, my family’s history is very sketchy.”
Aclunts from the 1993 Oregon Historical Journal indicates Keiser and his younger brother, Oscar, lived at Warrendal, a community along the Columbia Gorge near Beacon Rock. In an early 1920s promotional brochure for Scenic America Company, a business Kiser started in the early 1800s and expanded to later include motion pictures. Kiser evades significant personal data. He does, however, reveal himself as a worthy hero.
“Into the Theatre of the Gods came, twenty-one years ago, one Fred H. Kiser,” tells the self-published brochure about Kiser. “The call of the out-of-doors lured him to Oregon in 1899. Since then he has trailed, camped, and photographed the length and breadth of the Scenic Northwest, recording with the camera his mountaineering exploits and the generally inaccessible wild sports. Six fee two, clear skinned, clear cut and bronzed, his upstanding 290 pounds of lithe brawn disguising the strength of two men, proclaim a Westerner of the West. “He climbs like a goat,” said a writer, after seeing Kiser in action. Easily accessible places do not appeal to him. Baffling crevasses, bottomless canyons and perilous heights are a recurring challenge to his daring and skill. A score of times Kiser has risked his life and equipment to record a pleasing composition of a rugged bit of wild sculpture.”
Modesty may not have been one of Kiser’s traits, but the truth of his adventuresome nature and photographic abilities cannot be challenged. The images he took of Crater Lake are not traditional rim panoramas, but instead were shot from vantages inside the caldera’s steep, crumbly walls. Many do not show the lake, but, instead, focus on geological features. An active member of the Mazamas climbing club, Kiser had the skills to venture where few others had, or have ever gone.
In “Oregon Photographers: The first Fifty Years,” Terry Todetemeirer writes, “Kiser made some of the earliest and clearly the finest, views atop the major peaks of the Cascade range.”
In pairing Kiser with Benjamin Giffor, another early 20th Century Oregon scenic photographer, Todetmeirer notes, “Fred Kiser and Benjamin Gifford left behind a wealth of high-quality standard for black-and-white work that was rarely matched in their time and would not be seriously challenged…Whether valued as factual documents or as works of art, Kiser’s and Gifford’s photographs reflect a transitional era of photography.”
Kiser’s connections with Crater Lake began in 1903, when Steel put together a celebrity party of 27 people, with Fred and Oscar as the trip’s photographers. The Kisers and Steel were mountain climbers and Mazama members. At the time, the Kisers were operating photo studios in both Warrendale and Portland. The most complete record of their work appeared in “Pacific Coast Pictures.” Oscar died in a 1905 boating accident, so Fred took over the business.
The Mazamas connections, and their expanding reputation as scenic photographers, resulted in being asked to join Steel’s Crater Lake Tour. Steel and the Kisers lowered the “Start”, a 16-foot boat, from the Rim to the Lake. The boat was used to ferry group members to Wizard Island and Cloud Cap. The Kisers paddled across the lake to the Pumice Caste area, where they climbed the East Rim and Mount Scott. From atop Mount Scott, the Kisers took the first photographs that showed the entire lake.
A Web site for the Oregon Historical Society notes, “Fred and Oscar Kiser documented the adventures of the visitors, capturing the beauties of the lake in the process. These images were fixed on glass plate negatives from which Fred made what are believed to be the first hand-colored photographic images of Crater Lake.”
Sharon Howe believes the Kisers participation was part of Steel’s well-orchestrated plan. “This was a priority for him, to see there was photographic documentation of things he was involved in,” said Howe. “Clearly he carefully calculated who should be on this trip to help promote the park. He was a bright, savvy person.”
Steel said Kiser was the nation’s first person to make “hand-colored-in-oil photographs for quantity production,” and wrote, “When they were exhibited in Portland, they were the subject of hilarious ridicule, for no water could be so blue.”
Kiser’s abilities and panache gained him attention. “One of the men who has done much to make Oregon known to tourists is Fred Kiser,” wrote Fred Lockley in his 1917 newspaper column, “Travel Stories of the Northwest.” When you look at a picture of Phantom Ship or of the glaciers on the slopes of the Three Sisters and see the signature of Kiser at the bottom, do you realize the hard work that has been done to secure the unusual and striking view? No matter how remote or inaccessible the place, if it is unusual or strikingly beautiful you are pretty apt to find a Kiser picture of it.”
The Kiser Studio was built in the summer of 1921, over the objections of Park Superintendent Alex Sparrow and other Park Service officials. Steel laid the cornerstone on July 12 while, according to newspaper accounts, “Fred H. Kiser himself took a motion picture of the ceremony.”
Kiser’s name was not remembered fondly by park officials.
As Kiser wrote, “I had a friend of mine write to a certain Park official asking about Fred Kiser and if Crater Lake was still using the Kiser Trail on the inside of the Rim. In due time a lengthy letter was received which stated that it was generally believed that Fred Kiser had passed onto the ‘Great Beyond and that ‘there never was a Kiser Trail, nor would there EVER, and if he had in mind suggesting the trail be named after Kiser the thought should be dismissed once and for all, or words to the effect. ‘In fact,” the letter went on to say, ‘rather than call the trail now in use Kiser Trail, we would wreck it and build a new one.’”
Kiser’s relations the park officials soured, but his hand colored photos remain a legacy and important part of the park’s development. Kiser’s colored photographs of the lake and park were featured in exhibitions that toured the nation, including the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco.
Kiser’s Crater Lake photos helped stimulate the then emerging postcard market. In the early 1900s many professional photographers produced hand-tinted and black and white postcards that were eagerly bought by tourists.
“Kiser above all, first and foremost,” believes Howe of Kiser role as Crater Lake’s most influential photographer. “Britt was important because he was the first. Not great technically speaking,” she believes of Britt’s historic 1974 lake image, “but the first.”
Howe believes the importance of Britt and Kiser cannot be understated. “I would say it was a major impact because Crater Lake wasn’t a place people could go in any numbers. The only way they could gain a major understanding was through photographs. Steel used them in his contacts with Washington, that’s documented. Once the park was created he used photographs extensively.”
The Oregon Historical Society’s Web site for the 2001 “Deep Blue” exhibit also fasters the importance of photography at Crater Lake, no only it creation as a National Park and its development as a tourist location, but in shaping the park’s future.
“Beyond the controversies of commercialism, land-use, and native people’s rights lies Deep Blue’s indescribable beauty. Which lead to a final question: If words fail to capture the essence of Crater Lake, how can we ever hope to preserve it culturally? Answer: perhaps with the photography.”
Words can tell the story of Crater Lake, but it’s impossible to picture Crater Lake without photography.
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