***previous*** — ***next***
1919
February 9 1919 From the MT: Alex Sparrow, supervisor of Crater Lake national park, departed this morning for Klamath Falls, from which city he will leave Monday for a trip to Crater Lake park headquarters. He will make the trip into the park on skis.
June 20 1919 The Crater Lake season will open July 1st. This news was brought to the city late Thursday afternoon by Alfred Parkhurst, manager of the Crater Lake company, who reports that the road is now open to beyond Anna Spring camp and that the camp there is open to receive visitors.
The road has been opened thru the snow to within one and one-half miles of the lodge at the lake rim, but between there and the lodge there is considerable snow, an average depth of two to three feet, and in places 10 feet. It will be a week yet before the road will be opened clear to the lodge. The lodge is now open and could take care of visitors could they find their way there thru the snow. But the lodge can comfortably be reached by July 1, and on that date Mr. Parkhurst will start the operation of the stages between Medford and the lake.
Alex Sparrow, Crater Park supervisor, who also arrived in the city from the lake yesterday reports that the road from the Klamath side is open to within a short distance of the lake and will be open all the way inside of a short time.
Mr. Parkhurst says people broke into the lodge again during the winter, and stole a lot of blankets and other things and left the window out where they entered thru which the snow filled the kitchen and did considerable damage. (MMT)
June 24 1919 CRATER LAKE TOURS ARE ANNOUNCED
Court Hall has accepted the local agency and management for leading booking firms in the east to handle their tourist trade to Crater Lake. Mr. Hall’s duties will consist of handling all telegrams and letters, meeting the tourists at trains and hotels, and arranging tours either by private autos or regular auto stage.
Mr. Hall has arranged six different sets of tours for the Crater Lake travel this season. These tours are from two to five days duration, each one different and attractive.
The road is now open up over the mountain, and autos can get within one mile of Crater Lake. By July 1st autos can get to Crater Lake hotel. Indications are that there will be a big travel to Crater Lake this season. (MMT)
June 30 1919 CRATER LAKE TO BE OPENED FOR TRAVEL TUESDAY from the Medford Mail Tribune
The Crater Lake season officially opens tomorrow and in the morning the Crater Lake stages will begin the regular schedule. The road has been opened to the rim of the lake and the hotel can easily be reached by tomorrow.
Mr. and Mrs. Alexander Parkhurst arrived by auto Sunday from Portland with a party of men and women who will reinforce the employees at the hotel and other concessions of the Crater Lake company, and the entire party departed for the lake this morning.
A new feature of this season will be musical entertainments for the hotel guests at the lodge which will be given by two Eugene young women. Returning visitors from the lake reported that Sunday there were ten guests at the Crater Lake lodge and more were coming every hour.
July 31 1919 From figures furnished by Will Steel, 1,914 autos have passed through the gates of Crater Lake carrying 6,932 visitors.
August 1919 “Petrified” mummy of an Indian woman “discovered” one fourth mile from Government Camp. “Mummy” claimed by persons to be older than the Egyptian mummies. Turns out to be the “Lady of the Woods.”
Aug. 4 1919 TRAVEL TO CRATER LAKE PROMISES TO BREAK THE RECORD
The Crater Lake tourist season continues to break all records and if the present ratio of gain over the attendance of other years keeps up it is estimated that the total attendance of visitors at the lake this season will number at least 20,000. Last month 6,923 persons visited the lake, which is 1,364 more than were attracted to this great nature wonder in July last year, which was the banner July record in attendance. (Mail Tibune)
August 8 1919 P.C. Bigham and Vaughn Zundell depart from Medford for Crater Lake. They have a contract to catch trout in sufficient number to provide an ample fish dinner for 300 Editorial Association visitors.
August 12 1919 Parties working at Crater Lake national park recently discovered in the woods onefourth mile from the road or trail a mysterious figure of a woman — an effigy or petrifaction which may date back of the mummies of Egypt or New Mexico, and will merit the investigation of scholars according to B. F. Platt of this city.
The figure is that of a woman in a crouching position with both forearms lifted in a defensive position before her face and is reclining against a large boulder. But few have seen the figure and all are impressed with the appearance of antiquity and mystery.
Was she a victim of the great cataclysm in which the masses of material from the exploding Mt. Mazuma were thrown over a wide area and were no doubt the cause of the immense quantities of petrified wood and encrusted plants, insects and wild life found in the preparation of agates and similar stones, in the far distant age before Crater lake was in existence.
This mysterious find is about 500 feet northerly from the road running westerly from the main Crater lake road about one-fourth of a mile this side of the government engineers camp, in or at the side of a canyon or creek, the second one from the main road and the second one having a bridge.
Among the parties who have seen this wonderful curiosity are B. F. Platt, John Barkdull, Sid Wheeler and W. J. Coggins. (Mail Tribune)
August 15 1919 Senator McNary introduces bill in Congress to add 94,880 acres to the Park. Passes the Senate but fails to pass the House. The addition would have included Diamond Lake and the 3/4 mile strip of Klamath County West of the Park, up to the edge of Jackson County.
August 18 1919 Stephen Mather spends the night in the new Lodge. Complains of horrible dusty roads and being forced to sleep four to a bed.
Aug. 18 1919 Wants to see a neat sign on the road to Crater Lake lettered thus: “Closed until more satisfactory facilities are provided for tourists?”
Stephen T. Mather, director of national parks admitted that he has such a sign in mind when he spoke on a rather personal basis to some 30 business, professional and railroad men of Portland at the Chamber of Commerce Friday evening.
“I’m not going to ask you to do anything more for Crater Lake,” he added. “I’ve done that until I’m sick of it. “Often I’ve sighed for some means of swinging Crater Lake to within 50 miles of Portland. Then the wonderful lake and the great playground around it might be made available to the tourist world with the spirit of cooperation from you men of Portland that is being manifested by the leaders of Tacoma and Seattle toward Mt. Rainier National park.”
With vigorous strokes, Mather flagellated Crater National park conditions. He complained of the road leading to the lake. “Everybody passing over it eats dust,” he averred. He criticized the inn. He said that Parkhurst, the innkeeper, has worked hard but without support and without sufficient knowledge of the tourist hotel game, either to please his patrons or to placate the national park administration. He had discovered that on the recent visit of the members of the National Editorial association to Crater Lake, some of them had slept four in a bed. He had also received, he said, a complaint from a wealthy woman, delicately nurtured, who had been denied a comfortable room with the statement that the better rooms had been reserved, only to find that the chauffeur of a subsequently arriving party had been allotted the room for which she asked.
September 10, 1919 The Mail Tribune reports: The bears in the vicinity of Crater lake are becoming quite tame, and one big black fellow has been coming to the kitchen door of the hotel every night for a week past for food. Monday night when the stage was returning from Klamath Falls to the hotel this bear walked leisurely across the road in front of it. It is hoped the bears at Crater lake will eventually become as tame as are their kind in several other national parks. Will G. Steel says the bears are harmless and that the only dangerous bears are in the story books.
October 1919 Plans laid for the erection of a small hotel at White Horse Creek.
October 15 1919 PARKHURST TO BUILD SECOND HOTEL AT LAKE
The annually increasing travel to Crater Lake and the exceptionally large travel of this year together with that in view for next season has led Alfred L. Parkhurst, president and general manager of the Crater Lake company which has all the Crater national park concessions from the government to decide to build a new hotel in the park at White Horse this side of the lake to be in readiness for the early travel of next season.
This hotel will be a small one and will be constructed primarily to care for the early tourist travel from California which starts in June, several weeks or a month before the regular opening of the season. The new hotel will be operated at such times the rest of the season as is necessary to take care of the overflow from the big hotel at the rim and the park headquarters hotel accommodations. (Medford Mail Tribune)
From Park Historian Steve Mark – October 21, 2019
There’s no record of such a structure at Whitehorse, but the building records have quite a gap between 1917 and 1945. The only other sources I can think of are the master plans, but I don’t think there are any site plans for Whitehorse in them. I went to my little trails book of 2013 to check what Thomson might have reported in 1924 when he and others “discovered” the Music Shell in Llaos Hallway (referred to as the “Giant Nutcracker”) and there’s no mention of a structure at Whitehorse. Not that the absence of evidence is evidence of absence (per Ron), but the only improvements I’ve ever at the site are a wooden privy (since tipped over) and a waterline to serve the campground abandoned in 1938.
My guess here is that Parkhurst was getting quite a lot of pressure from Mather and others to step things up by 1919, so he came up with another scheme, much like the “cottages” drawn in 1912 but never built. I have a copy of a letter from Alex Sparrow to Parkhurst dated 10/30/1919. The cottages were part of a development plan submitted to the NPS by Parkhurst, but Sparrow cautioned that AP needed to finish the lodge first. Sparrow commented in the following paragraph: “The Whitehorse Inn would be a convenience for about three weeks each season, but when the road was open to Anna Spring there would be no excuse for keeping Whitehorse open. I am satisfied that it would not be a success financially, but the convenience to the Company for the three weeks might pay them for the expense of the building. This is my private opinion, but if you feel sure of its success I will recommend approval by the Service, which, of course, might think very differently about all these projects.”
November 23 1919 “Crater lake will have a new hotel at White Horse next spring if the plans of Alfred L. Parkhurst, who has charge of the park hotels, carry,” says the Portland Journal.
“The new hotel would enable tourists to get into the park a month earlier than usual and would be built principally for the California tourists who wish to stop at the lake on their way north thru Oregon. At present accommodations are not available until the official opening of the park season July 1. Visitors at the Crater Lake hostelries showed an increase of 100 percent last summer over preceding seasons. Attendance at the park showed and approximate increase from 13,000 to 16,000, and the increase at the hotel was greater in proportion, says Parkhurst. (MMTribune)
1919 Cost of roads and trails set at $640,000. Cathedral Spire, named by John Maben because of its resemblance to a great cathedral. The Pacific Crest Trail (The Oregon Skyline Trail) is surveyed along the crest of the Cascades. Zane Grey and brother visit the Park for fishing purposes.
Suggestions by Superintendent Lewis of Yosemite and a government committee results in the adoption of the Park Service uniform which was to remain the same until 1946. Prior to 1935, all employees, including the Washington office, wore the National Park Service uniform.
Season 1919 By Anna Zander, 1977 – Around 1919, the Eagle Point Construction Company was formed by George Brown, William (Bill) Vonder Hellen and Chris Natwick. They contracted to build the road from Prospect to the boundary of Crater Lake. Once again Sam, his teams, wagons and drivers took over. They cleared all the timbers and cut the grade over the long stretch of more than 40 miles.
Season: 1919 16,645 visitors.
***previous*** — ***next***
***menu***
