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1904
1904 Superintendent Arant asks the NPS for funds to build a visitor registration building near the future Kiser Studio but limited funds and road building activity dictated the building to be built at Annie Springs.
April 10 1904 The Oegon Journal reports: A few days ago a large audience gathered at the First Presbyterian Church to listen to a lecture and to revel in some photographic views of Oregon scenery. The views were taken by Kiser Bros., the well-known scenic photographers. A short general lecture was delivered by Fred H. Kiser, while Mr.Steel spoke about Crater Lake. Both gentlemen made the point that Oregon scenery, as superb as any that the wide world affords, is entirely too little known to the people of Oregon. The tendency is to rush year after year to the seacoast and to utterly neglect the mountains, which afford a variety and magnificency of scenery practically unparalleled, and in some respects unique. These mountains lie at our very doors and can be reached with little expenditure of time, labor or money. There is a relavely small percentage of our people who visit these scenes year after year, and always find in them something new to attract, to stimulate and to uplift. It is quite certain that much more attention will in the future be given to the mountains than there has been in the past, and as soon as their beauties are thoroughly realized by the people of Oregon they will begin to attract the attention they deserve from tourists who are contantly in search of fresh fields for exploritation.
August 1904 The Firestone Family, including six children from Talent, spend one month traveling to and from Crater Lake. They approached the Lake by the trail that came up behind the present Lodge. The trail was a one-way wagon trail. One of the older boys would ride up to the top or ride to the bottom and fire a shot signaling the trail was empty and open for travel. Wagons on the way down from the Rim would tie a log to the back to serve as a drag. The group had to be self-sufficient. The wagon was pulled by a team of horses and an extra one was brought along as a saddle horse and to be used to help the wagon up steep hills. Lots of food was included, but the family also hunted and fished along the way to supplement the supplies. While camping near the lake, Mr. Firestone was approached by a young doctor’s wife from San Francisco, who wanted to buy some local Indian artifacts. She had some beads and trinkets from San Francisco and her husband hired Mr. Firestone to take them to trade. They came to an Indian house, the older Indians lived in teepees in the back yards of government houses where the younger Indians lived, and the doctor’s wife got to dickering with a young squaw on the porch. The Indian girl had been away to school, so was rather knowledgeable and said, “ Don’t want any of your junk. I can go to San Francisco and get it as cheap as you do.”
After camping at Anna Springs, the Firestones went on to Whisky Creek below Huckleberry Mountain, to pick up a supply of huckleberries. Lots of Indians were picking berries and selling them for 50 cents a gallon. Often the Indians would approach tourists in the Rim area and offer to sell berries for money. (Story from Dr. Wayne Linn of SOSC of Ashland)
September 1904 “Crater Lake” by Joaquin Miller
This newest national park looks more like a park, to begin with, than any other that we have, even with all the cost and care bestowed on others. It is a constant marvel here to see the blue and white lupin, the crimson honeysuckle, and dazzling, bright yellow dandelion disputing with the tardy snow for a footing in mid-August. The air here, spiced with the odor of stately hemlocks under a glaring hot sun, is something astonishing in its vigor-giving qualities. Our young men, and pretty women as well, are up with the sun and out till twilight. I have yet to hear the word “weary” from any one, but the fine, vigorous air is on the lips of our observant and learned university men at every meal.
The lake? The Sea of Silence? Ah, yes, I had forgotten-so much else; besides, I should like to let it alone, say nothing. It took such hold of my heart, so unlike Yosemite, Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, when first seen, that I love it almost like one of my own family. But fancy a sea of sapphire set around by a compact circle of the great grizzly rock of Yosemite. It does not seem so sublime at first, but the mote is in your own eye. It is great, great, but it takes you days to see how great. It lies two thousand feet under your feet, and as it reflects its walls so perfectly that you cannot tell the wall from the reflection in the intensely blue water, you have a continuous and unbroken circular wall of twenty-four miles to contemplate at a glance, all of which lies two thousand feet, and seems to lie four thousand feet, below! Yet so bright, yet so intensely blue is the lake that it seems at times, from some points of view, to lift right in your face. In fact, the place has long been called by mountaineers, along with many other names, Spook Lake.
The one thing that first strikes you after the color, the blue, blue, even to blackness, with its belt of green clinging to the bastions of the wall, is the silence, the Sunday morning silence, that broods at all times over all things. The huge and towering hemlocks sing their low monotone away up against the sky, but that is all you hear, not a bird, not a beast, wild or tame. It is not an intense silence, as if you were lost, but a sweet, sympathetic silence that makes itself respected, and all the people are as if at church. The sea bank, the silent sea bank, is daily growing to be a city of tents. You discern tents for miles, but you do not hear a single sound. Men do not even chop wood here. They find broken boughs of fallen forests and keep their camp-fires going without the sound of axe or hammer, a sort of Solomon’s temple.
Sunset for September 1904 From: Steel Points, v. 1, n. 1 (October 1906), pp. 23-24.
Season 1904 Visitation: 1,500 est
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