***previous*** — ***next***
1931
February 13 1931 From the Medford Mail Tribune: Al Solinsky, superintendent of Crater Lake National Park, who lost two rows of teeth by the dental route a week ago, skidded on the metal rim of one of the federal building entrance steps and landed on a part of his frame far lower down than the former teeth were located. “Wotta life,” he muttered disgustedly through the vacancy in the interior of his face.
February 23 1931 Emil Nordeen wins the Annual Crater Lake Ski Race to the cheering of 3,500 spectators and is now the permanent possession of the Ft. Klamath cup in the winning ski time of 5 hours and 35 minutes. The skiers followed unplowed roads from Ft. Klamath to Crater Lake Lodge and back again.
Spring 1931 Weed-Klamath Falls Highway construction begun. Promises to cut 50 miles from a trip to Crater Lake from Northern California.
Newspapers report that “Steven Mather, NPS Director, counts Crater Lake among his favorite playground.”
April 1 1931 Mr. and Mrs. Dale Franklin announce that they were the first persons to arrive at the Rim at 12:30 pm, having had to wait for the snowplow to finish the last mile and a half. The opening of the Park is 2 months earlier than Crater Lake has ever been accessible by car before. Light snowfall and more efficient snow removal equipment made the early opening possible.
April 10 1931 “Science” magazine reports that the Carnegie Corporation has donated $5,000 for the furnishing and installation of equipment for the Sinnott Memorial Overlook. Congress appropriated $10,000 toward the construction of the Memorial. The overlook will be developed with a twofold purpose: “To bring to the visitor to the Park an adequate idea of the beauty of the picture presented and to furnish interesting scientific data as to the formation of the crater in which the blue lake lies and its geologic history.”
May 1931 Superintendent Solinsky reports finding a serious infestation of bark beetles containing about 3,000 trees located in the S.W. corner of the Park. Staff feels the battle against the beetles is “not going well.” The superintendent feels that even if one bug tree is left in the Park it becomes a potential menace that will undo all of the accomplishments of the bug control work. Heavy infestations were found outside the Park. So, the entire beetle control question was much bigger than the Park, and people were beginning to question if complete control of the outbreak in the Park was feasible. (Boyd Wickman)
The year 1931 might best be described as the year the ax fell on F. B. Keen’s neck. Keen’s 1931 report of control activities is missing from the files, but according to Frank Solinsky, in charge of Park Service operations, work started on April 30. The Forest Service treated 1,020 trees east of the park. Snow and rain storms in the park lasted from June 13 to June 30, delaying the treatment by the solar-heat method considerably, but helping to ease the drought conditions of 1929 and early 1930. With bad weather and all, Solinsky reported 14,747 trees cut in the park that season. Solinsky continues, “In the last three years we have spent over $33,000 and cut 48,238 trees.” [24 <http://www.nps.gov/archive/crla/beetle/beetle7.htm#24> ] Solinsky was pessimistic about ever winning the battle unless a complete cleanup of the control units was done. Further, he recommended stopping the control efforts unless this approach was followed. Solinsky also mentions that W. Buckhorn of the Bureau of Entomology spent the whole season in the park helping on the control work.
Walter J. Buckhorn started working for the Division of Forest Insect Investigations, Bureau of Entomology, in 1925. His earliest assignment was assisting F.P. Keen in spotting and mapping beetle-killed pine on the southern Oregon-northern California project. In 1930, he was given the task of surveying the infested areas of the park under Keen.
There is some correspondence missing from my files, but the treating crews were obviously finding more infested trees than they had been told were there. Park Superintendent E.C. Solinsky, in a May 1931 preliminary report, said a very serious infestation containing about 3,000 trees had been found in the southwest corner of the park. [26 <http://www.nps.gov/archive/crla/beetle/beetle7.htm#26> ] In a June 8,1931, memo from Keen to Craighead, Keen tried to mollify Craighead’s apprehension, alluded to in a letter of June 2, that the battle of the beetles in Crater Lake National Park was not going well at all. Keen writes several pages of rationale for the poor outcome of control work to date, especially a flare-up of new infestation in an unsuspected area. Keen assumes the full share of blame for not having located these new areas and wonders how big an area should be surveyed to prevent future surprise outbreaks. He finally suggests that all the park and all the adjacent National Forest lands be type mapped and surveyed for new beetle outbreaks, which he said could be accomplished most economically by taking aerial photographs of the area. [27 <http://www.nps.gov/archive/crla/beetle/beetle7.htm#27> ] This aerial photography, if it had been approved, would have been a massive pioneering type project and was an indication of Keen’s innovative and technological bent.
May 1 1931 In a letter to Superintendent E.C. Solinsky, Will Steel writes, “Theories (about Park preservation) should not be endured, when they interfere with the rights of visitors. Two courses are open. Either the road will be built over the hills through the forest, in an uninteresting region, or it will be built from near the hotel, inside the rim, to the base of Kerr Notch, four miles distant, on a four percent grade, then through a tunnel, on approximately a five per cent grade, making one of the most thrillingly beautiful roads on earth, exciting the admiration of all who see it.
“At present there are probably not to exceed one per cent of visitors who go to the water. With the road in question, 100% would certainly descend and enjoy fishing and boating. Have they not a right to do so? Whata (sic) tremendous increase in travel would result from such a road. A brilliant opportunity now confronts Crater Lake and a world wide reputation hangs in the balance, but it is threatened by a cheap theory, based on the hope of getting support from those in command. Shall we stand idly by and see such a disaster thrust upon the lake, then wait for posterity to condemn us? If we fail, the next generation will demand the road and wonder at our lack of vision.” Will Steel.
May 5 1931 New Chief Ranger Canfield on duty in park.
May 7 1931 Bids and plans begin for a new Rim Road. Bids called to grade the first six miles of a new West Rim Road. Estimated cost will be $60,000 per mile. 120 men are employed for the next five months.
Work on building Rim Drive began in June 1931. Up to 125 workers and four steam shovels were employed that first summer to remove more than 50,000 cubic yards of rock per mile, according to park records. An estimated 150,000 pounds of explosives were used to blast rock out of the way. (MT Jan. 2013)
In an October 12, 1958 Mail Tribune article, government employee manager Nelson Reed, talks about his experiences while supervising the construction crews building the new Rim Drive.
From the endless yacking you guess that last year’s migrants are telling this year’s children all about the country: “Sure, Crater Lake is beautiful for whom I had to get “special dispensation” to use “unnaturalized Swedes”, hard rock and jackhammer men, because no others understood or took kindly to that kind of work. I well remember the first time Bell came into my office and said, “I want to hire some Yail Men.” I was puzzled. “Oh, those square heads with the big feet that they put down hard, and the tough hands who have been out on the big drunk and who have been thrown in jail” “Soon as they are out I want them.”
I recall hauling several carloads of them up to the job. Barely able to stagger around, I watched them hang onto the handle of the thumping, jumping, banking jackhammer there first day on the job. I wondered how any human with a hangover headache could stand it.
Then there were those other Swedes who all daylong carried two five-gallon tin cans of water suspended from a yoke on their shoulders up the Wineglass Trail from the lake to the camp. They furnished all the drinking water before a pump and pipeline were installed. I have watched them as we plodded up the Wineglass Trail from fishing, and never once did they stop to rest. I saw them swing suspended from ropes from the sides of the rock cliffs while they drilled powder holes with those jumping jackhammers. Sometimes I think a plaque should be put up there to the square heads without whom the Rim Road could nave have been built.
Around the Rim near the Diamond Lake turnoff, my toughest contractor and biggest headache had a rock quarry and crushing job. He repeatedly refused to hire his help through the Klamath employment office, as he was bound by law, and tried to bring in whomever.
The trip around the Rim Road brings back many memories. As the first manager of the Reemployment office during the Depression in charge of the CWA programs, we furnished all the labor for the contractors who built most of the Rim Road. Dunn and Baker, who bid a fixed price for a tough looking stretch that appeared to be a solid lava rock flow, “struck it rich” when they dug into it with a steam shovel and it turned out to be a mountain of pumice overlaid with a light cover of drift lava.
Bill von der Hellen’s outfit pleased from all over the country. Three times I went up there and checked his payroll and warned him to obey the rules or else. Then I had the Bureau of Public Roads Authorities shut his job down and fine him $100 a day.
He came roaring into my office the fourth day and offered to lick me. I laughed at him and told him he wasn’t big enough. After I got him calmed down a bit he tried to hire me for twice what I was getting. I told him to go jump. Then he gave up and agreed to obey the rules.
Next thing I knew the bureau engineer discovered that he was docking everybody 10 minutes every time they blasted in the quarry, which was a dozen or so times a day. Even truck drivers several miles away got docked. Then they found he was keeping three sets of books, one for the men, one for Uncle, and one for himself. It took all kinds to build the Rim Road.
Stone Walls
Ever notice the beautiful stonewalls at all the viewpoints? Examine them carefully the next time you are up there. “Old Shakespeare,” as we called him because of his goatee, can take credit for them.
He was the bureau’s inspector in charge of the stonework. Nothing bet the finest was good enough for Shakespeare. We combed the country for fine Italian and Austrian stonemasons who could satisfy him.
When they showed up on the job he never questioned them. He just looked over their stone cutting tools. Only real workers in stone ever went to work.
One day Harold Ickes, the eternally unhappy secretary of the interior, showed up and was taken for a drive over the almost completed Rim Road.
“It’s too narrow,” he bellowed. “Make it 20 feet wider!” So the contractors who had all the fancy sloping completed, cursed and the engineers had fits, and it cost Uncle Sam a lot more money. They went back and made it 20 feet wider.
Ickes was right
Today, of course, it is easy to see that Ickes was right, but why wasn’t it planned that way originally? Only a government bureaucrat could tell you, but he won’t.
So the next time, while you drive around the Rim Road and enjoy the magnificent scenery, pause and give some thought to the men who built it, who sweated and cursed and risked their necks everyday while they got it done come hell or high water.
May 21 1931 New boat launched on Crater Lake.
May 21 1932 the Medford Mail Tribune reports: Big Power Boat to be Lunched at Crater Lake A large new, power boat for Crater National park will be launched some time between now and Sunday, probably this afternoon. Although the engine of the boat is not entirely completed, the snow is melting so fast that the park officials deem it wise to launch the heavy craft as soon as possible so that the hazardous descent from the rim to the water’s edge may be made with snow covering the jagged rocks over which the boat must pass.
The launching will be made from the rim about 300 feet west of the Cafeteria, where the distance is only about 1000 feet down to the water. After it is launched, the work of completing the engine and other finishing details will be done there.
Two years ago a new large boat the property of the Crater National Park company, while being lowered from the rim at another location got away from the men in charge and plunged to destruction on the rocks.
It has been planned to launch the new boat next Sunday afternoon with a big formal program, including a beautiful girl to break a bottle of something, but for fear the melting snow would not last until this then this was given up.
The new powerboat is the property of the National Parks service and if successful launched will take the place of the sea-sled formerly used for official purposes but now considered ready for the discard. The new boat was built last winter and this spring by Ike Davidson, superintendent of construction at the park, with the help of several others of the park winter staff.
It is a 6-foot vessel with an 8-cylinder 80 horse power Cadillac engine, weights approximately 1.25 tons, will have a speed of from 25 to 35 miles per hour and will comfortably seat eight persons besides the navigator.
June 1931 Twenty new tourist cabins built behind cafeteria. “Will continue to build until need is satisfied.”
Post Office is located in the Lodge. Hot water, showers, and plenty of wood available in the upper (Rim) Campground. Campground located at White Horse Creek, because of the early snow melt at that elevation and the availability of water.
June 15 1931 Medical services are inaugurated in the Park. A seasonal nurse and doctor are available to the employees and visitors.
June 22 1931 New docks are built at the base of the new Crater Wall Lake Trail.
June 22 1931 A new water system is being constructed that will replace wood pipe with steel pipe. Munson Spring water has been pumped into five wooden tanks located on a hill in the campground area, but the new Garfield reservoir will eliminate two of these tanks.
July 1931 Carbonized logs found in a road cut, 23 miles west of the Lake Rim. The ancient burned tree had been covered over by pumice flows from Mt. Mazama.
July 6 1931 Park staff estimates that there are 47 bear living in the park.
Summer 1931 Crew of 40 men are employed to fight the pine beetle in the Park. Construction of the Watchman Fire Lookout is begun. Large concentration of California Tortoise Shell Butterflies, mostly on the East side.
Electric light facilities are installed in the Rim Campground.
A 2 story, six-room seasonal employee’s quarters is constructed of heavy stone on the Rim just above the present North Junction-known as the “North House”. Demolished in 1959.
Naturalist-conducted boat trips around the Lake and auto caravans around the Rim Drive become a summer favorite.
Summer 1931 (or 1932) Oral tradition persists among the old timers that an amphibian airplane landed on the Lake and was unable to fly out. It was supposedly packed out in pieces up the Lake Trail.
Summer 1931 Boy Scout, Drew Chick, conducts the first narrated auto caravan around Crater Lake. Chick filled in at the last moment because the regular scheduled ranger had taken ill. The auto caravan proved to be very popular.
July 11 1931 “Pop” Warner, famous football coach, visits the Park.
July 16 1931 To him, Oregon was dear – Crater Lake’s Sinnott Memorial was dedicated July 16, 1931, in memory of a proud Oregonian, Nicholas Sinnott.
August 05, 2012 By Bill Miller for the Mail Tribune
Nick Sinnott is long gone, but his memory lives strong.
Perched on Victor Rock, a cliff some 50 feet below the rim of Crater Lake, sits Sinnott Memorial, dedicated to a man who loved Oregon and was proud to say it as often as he could.
The stone steps down to Sinnott Memorial are across from the Rim Village on the edge of Crater Lake. The memorial offers an observation deck for a unique view of the lake, and a museum room, carved into the cliff, displaying the lake’s history.
Be sure to see the dedication plaque and the portrait of Nicholas Sinnott that was added to the memorial in 1932.
During his 14 years in Congress, no one’s words were more elegant than those coming from the mouth of this “large, slow-moving thinker.”
“I wish that I could take you out into my country,” he said in a speech to the House of Rep-resentatives.
“Southward, Crater Lake, cauldron-like and circular,” he said. “To the scientist, a mighty volcano collapsed upon itself. To the poet, the sea of silence, a lake of mystery.”
Nicholas John Sinnott was an Oregon native, born in December of 1870 along the Columbia River in The Dalles. He knew Indians because his father was an Indian agent, and he met real pioneers and the stockmen who frequented the Umatilla House, his father’s famous hotel.
After graduating from the local schools he was off to Indiana and the Golden Dome of Notre Dame. He was an all-around athlete and football star and came home with a bunch of gold medals to prove it.
But it was his interest in theatrics that eventually led him to his oratorical renown.
When the university presented Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Nick insisted on taking the part of Cassius.
“The way in which he rendered one of the most difficult parts,” wrote a reviewer, “showed that he is possessed of considerable histrionic power as a delineator of Shakespearean characters.”
After graduation in 1892, Sinnott returned home to study law and was admitted to the Oregon Bar in 1895.
He was elected to the State Senate in 1908 and served in that body until elected U.S. representative from Oregon’s 2nd Congressional District. He rose to chairman of the House Committee on Public Lands, giving him authority over the 11 Western states — the states where most of the country’s public lands lie.
Sinnott had a strong hand in the original bill requiring the federal government to return 50 percent of timber-sale receipts to Western counties.
In 1928, after serving through seven consecutive congressional terms, President Coolidge appointed Sinnott judge of the United States Court of Claims, in Washington, D.C. Less than a year later, July 20, 1929, he died after suffering his second heart attack in two weeks. In May of 1930, Crater Lake Superintendent Elbert Solinsky announced that Congress had authorized $10,000 to build a memorial to “Nick Sinnott, ardent friend of Crater Lake.”
Constructed of native stone, 1,000 feet above the azure water, the observation lookout and museum was dedicated July 16, 1931. The large delegation of national, state and local officials included Will Steel, known as the “Father of Crater Lake” for his early efforts to have the lake designated a national park.
“It is good to consider that the Nick Sinnott we knew so well,” wrote a reporter, “is not forgotten of his generation, and that others who come after will know that here, too, was one to whom Oregon was dear.”
Writer Bill Miller lives in Shady Cove. Reach him at newsmiller@live.com.
July 18 1931 Boy Scout, Drew Chick, and Chief Ranger Ansel Hall spend the day laying out a new trail to the top of Wizard Island. While exploring the island on the return to the boat dock, Hall discovers the transom of the Cleetwood. Chick recovers the remains of the old boat from a small lake inlet while Hall takes photos of the historic recovery. The letters, “U.S.G.S.” were still visible. Will Steel confirmed the discovery as being authentic. Pieces of the pioneer craft are soon displayed at the Park’s information Bureau and Community House.
July 25 1931 Mr. Davidson, construction engineer for the Park during the years, 1927 to 1934, finds the Cleetwood sounding apparatus on Wizard Island, having been discarded 45 years earlier. Judge Steel verifies the find and demonstrates how the Cleetwood Party was able to sound the Lake with such a crude device. Several photographs are taken with Judge Steel and his old sounding device.
August 3 1931 J.C. Penney visits the Park.
August 8 1931 One-fourth acre fire on Wizard Island, caused by a careless smoker. Many thought the Island was erupting.
Season 1931 New 200,000 water tank completed on Garfield, replacing 5 wooden tanks on the hill behind the Rim Campground. Power lines are extended to the Rim.
Lights are planned to illuminate the Rim area over a mile north of the Lodge.
A 35-inch trout reported to have been caught in the Lake.
The new Rim Drive is completed to the North Junction. One hundred laborers are working two 8-hour shifts.
During the past four years, 33,000 acres of trees are killed by insects.
North Entrance Road is paved from Diamond Lake to the Park.
September 5 1931 One of the largest Western White Pines in the World is found in Annie Creek Canyon. Circumference of 23 feet and is estimated to be 1,000 years old.
September 22 1931 Power is delivered to a transformer substation at the Lodge, making the first time that generators do not have to be used. An 11,000-volt transmission line is constructed.
October 8 1931 Braving the dangers of the high altitude and precipitous cliffs, the first airplane in history lands on the windblown waters of Crater Lake. The ship, a yellow winged amphibian with crimson fuselage, was piloted by Clayton Scott of Seattle, and mechanic George Dahlberg. The plan approached from over the Annie Spring Checking Station, circled gracefully around Wizard Island, and landed easily near the shore of the Island, being tossed about by strong winds and waves. Soon after it landed, the ship taxied toward the East shore and slowly raised from the water. The plane circled low over the Information Building (Kiser Studio) while Pilot Scott tossed out pictures of the plane and of the passengers. The plane barely missed the treetops.
November 15, 2004 – an update on Clayton Scott by Bill Jepson: “Clayton lives on Mercer Island, Washington and continues to drive himself to work at this office at Renton Airfield every weekday. He has been active in the aviation industry since 1927 when he got his pilot’s license at Vancouver, Washington. He started with the Pacific Air Transport mail service up and down the coast in 1926. Clayton has been a good friend to me for the past several years and it has been the greatest plesures of mine to collaborate with him on his memoirs. He is 99 now.”
October 1931 Judge Steel continues to push for his idea of a road down to the Lake, connecting the Lodge with Kerr Notch below Garfield and Applegate Peak. Will Steel expressed a low opinion of those who opposed his plan on a theory that the road would mar the beauty of the natural landscape. “Crater Lake belongs to the people. If they want to deface the wall, they can do. What good is scenery if you can’t enjoy it? Every person who visits Crater Lake wants to go to the Lake shore and out on the beautiful Lake in a boat. With the road, I propose every person, be he aged, crippled, or otherwise unable to make the present long trip down to the water and back, can drive down in comfort.” “This newspaper (Portland Oregonian) is entirely behind Judge Steel in his visionary project.”
1931 One hundred laborers at work on two eight-hour shifts of road building, trying to beat the upcoming winter snows.
Season 1931 Visitation: 170,284
***previous*** — ***next***
***menu***
