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Reviewing the Geologic History of Crater Lake
Crater Lake is a spectacular mountain lake in the Cascade Mountains of Oregon. Widely renowned for its great depth and beauty, it is also a sacred lake much revered by the Klamath Indians.
Crater Lake was formed around 4680 BC when the volcanic Mount Mazama blew its top in spectacular fashion. The eruption, estimated to have been 42 times more powerful than Mt. St. Helens’ 1980 blast, reduced Mazama’s approximate 11,000-foot height by around half a mile.
The mountain peak feel into the volcano’s partially emptied neck and magma chamber, and Crater Lake was formed in the new crater.
Crater Lake has long been revered as sacred by the Klamath tribe of Native Americans, whose myths embody the catastrophic event they witnessed thousands of years ago. The central legend tells of two Chiefs, Llao of the Underworld and Skell of the World Above, pitted in a battle, which ended in the destruction of Llao’s home, Mt. Mazama.
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An 1886 article in The Oregonian newspaper reported:
There is probably no point of interest in America that so completely overcomes the ordinary Indian with fear as Crater lake. From time immemorial no power has been strong enough to induce them to approach within sight of it. For a paltry sum they will engage to guide you thither, but before reaching the mountaintop will leave you to proceed alone. To the savage mind it is clothed with a deep veil of mystery and is the abode of all manner of demons and unshapely monsters.
This account, and others like it, is now regarded as factually inaccurate. Although the Klamath Indians regarded the lake with much respect, awe and fear, many did (and do) approach the lake. In fact, Crater Lake was a major site for vision quests.
The 1920s researcher Leslie Spier was told of a Klamath man who, “having lost a child, went swimming in Crater Lake; before evening he had become a shaman.” The quest for such spirits required courage and resolution:
He must not be frightened even if he sees something moving under the water. He prays before diving, ‘I want to be a shaman. Give me power. Catch me. I need the power.’
Another ritual at Crater Lake was to undertake strenuous and dangerous climbs along the caldera wall. Some would run, starting at the western rim and running down the wall of the crater to the lake. One who could reach the lake without falling was thought to have superior spirit powers. Sometimes such quests were undertaken by groups. Rocks were often piled as feats of endurance and evidence of spiritual effort. Such rock-pile sites are usually built on peaks or ridges with fine views of the lake.
On June 5, 1853, Crater Lake was seen by white men for the first time. Three gold prospectors came upon it and one remarked in his journal, “This is the bluest lake we’ve ever seen.” They named it Deep Blue Lake. Crater Lake has been impressing visitors ever since. In 1886, Captain Clarence Dutton, who made the first measurements of the depth of the lake, observed:
It was touching to see the worthy but untutored people, who had ridden a hundred miles in freight-wagons to behold it, vainly striving to keep back tears as they poured forth their exclamations of wonder and joy akin to pain.
Similarly, Mark Daniels, General Superintendent of the National Parks, remarked of Crater Lake:
The sight of it fills one with more conflicting emotions than any other scene with which I am familiar. It is at once weird, fascinating, enchanting, repellent, of exquisite beauty and at times terrifying in its austere-dignity and oppressing stillness.
In 1902, Congress decided that Crater Lake and its surrounding 180,000 acres were to be “dedicated and set apart forever as a public park or pleasure ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people of the United States.” The passing of this act was the culmination of a 17-year effort, championed by Crater Lake’s primary promoter, William G. Steel.
Today, Crater Lake remains a sacred site for power quests and other spiritual pursuits, both for members of the Klamath Tribe and those interested in Native American spirituality. And for just about everyone, the spectacular lake is a place of religious-like awe.
In 2005, Crater Lake appeared on the Oregon quarter.
With a depth of 1958 feet, Crater Lake is the deepest lake in the United States and the seventh deepest in the world. At an elevation of 7000 to 8000 feet at the caldera rim, it is the deepest lake in the world that is entirely above sea level.
The lake’s surface is six miles wide. There is no inlet or outlet to the lake: it is supplied with water from the great amounts of snow that fall every year. (Crater Lake
National Park is one of the snowiest areas in the Pacific Northwest.) The water of Crater Lake is some of the clearest fresh water found anywhere in the world.
Crater Lake contains a prominent island known as Wizard Island, which was formed during the eruption over 7,000 years ago. A smaller island is called the Phantom Ship.
Look also for the “Old Man of the Lake,” a hemlock log that has been floating upright in the lake for more than 100 years. Wind currents enable the Old Man to travel to different locations around the lake.
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On Tue, Oct 11, 2016 at 10:43 AM, Owen Hoffman ?<pkrnger@aol.com> wrote:
From 1967-1968, as part of my duties as a seasonal park ranger-naturalist at Crater Lake, I was given special project time to engage in limnological research. I used this research to support my MS thesis (obtained from Oregon State University in 1969).
As the recently posted article on the Old Man of the Lake reports, its origin is still a much of a mystery. The long-standing explanation is that the Old Man, a mountain hemlock, fell into the lake with a rock slide. Supposedly, it had rocks embedded in it’s roots to cause the Old Man to float vertically. When this actually occurred is unknown. But, from the earliest time of recorded observations, perhaps as early as 1902, there were no intact roots visible in the lower portion of the stump and no rocks embedded in those non-existent roots. Yet, the stump still floats vertically throughout the lake.
One idea several of us have batted around from time to time in our attempt to explain the origin of the Old Man of the Lake, which is not mentioned in the posted article, is whether or not it could be plausible that this mountain hemlock once grew on or near the shoreline of the lake during a time, much more than a century ago, when the lake’s surface was somewhat lower than at present (due to a prolonged period of lower than average annual precipitation). As the climate became more moist and annual precipitation increased, the lake’s surface rose and approached its current level.
The roots of the tree quickly drowned as the lower portions of the trunk became water-logged and the tree quickly died, shedding it’s upper branches and needles. Eventually, the roots of the stump decayed below the water and the submerged soil surface, and the partially water-logged stump eventually floated up vertically, with the upper portions of the stump being much less dense than the lower water logged portions. As reported, the Old Man continues floating around the lake to this very day.
The cold pelagic oligotrophic waters of the lake have prevented further decay of the stump, and I believe the stump is essentially in virtually the same condition as it was 50 years ago. However, standing or sitting on the top of the stump is no longer permitted by the NPS (which is a good thing). Owen
On Oct 18, 2016, at 5:16 AM, Buktenica, Mark <mark_buktenica@nps.gov> wrote:
HI Owen,
Thanks for the reply.
One thing that has “stumped” me: Where does the notion the the old man is a hemlock come from? I don’t see where that was determined by anyone.
Any ideas – did I read over that fact somewhere?
Mark
October 11, 2016 – Written by Dr. Owen Hoffman – I recall being told that it was a mountain hemlock by my mentors and supervisors, Richard McPike Brown and Glen Kaye in 1966. At that time, Dr. Marion Jackson and Adolf Faller were conducting the ecological survey of the flora of Wizard Island, documenting each species of plant form found within a few meters either side of several transects run from top of the island to shoreline. Dick Brown was also a trained botanist. Since then, I have always assumed that what I was told, was a fact.
But, given the size of the stump, and the abundance of mountain hemlocks growing on the highly unstable north-facing slopes of the south caldera wall, what else is it likely to be? Shasta red fir? Engleman spruce? Whitebark pine? Ponderosa pine? Lodgepole pine? Of course, many decades have passed since I recall being told that it was a mountain hemlock, and memory can be amazingly fickle, mine included.
I’d be very interested if there have been any more definitive determinations of the species of the Old Man.
It’s great to hear from you.
Owen
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Dr. F. Owen Hoffman spent the summers of 1966 through 1968 as a seasonal naturalist at Crater Lake. He volunteered at the park in 1998.
Among the named lakes of the world, Crater Lake is the 8th, not the 7th deepest. The reason is the recent discovery of subglacial Lake Vostok in Antartica. Lake Vostok has been found to have a maximum depth of as much as 1000 meters, much larger than Crater Lake’s maximum depth of 594 meters. Of course, if we declare that Lake Vostok is a “special case,” due to the fact that it resides under 13,000 feet of Antarctic ice, then indeed the citation of Crater Lake as the world’s 7th deepest lake is correct when compared with other lakes whose surface is free of ice at least for part of the year, and based on the comparison of officially reported maximum depths for the lakes of the world.
However, if the average depth of Crater Lake is compared with the average depth of other “deepest lakes”, which includes the average depth of subglacial Lake Vostok, Crater Lake becomes the third deepest in the world and the deepest in North America. Crater Lake is also by far the smallest of the world’s deepest lakes. It is the smallest among these lakes both in surface area and by volume, a testimony to the unique manner in which it was formed. In fact, Crater Lake is so small that it is the only one of the world’s deepest lakes whose opposite shores are visible to an observer, regardless of where one is located.
The officially documented maximum and average depths of Crater Lake can be obtained from the attached open literature publications, produced by USGS scientists (Bacon et al., 2002, and Nathenson et al., 2007
Note that the volume of water in Crater Lake is a simple product of it’s average depth (350 meters) and its surface area (53.4 sq. km). Thus, 0.35 km X 53.4 = 18.7 cubic km.
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