Honor Discoverer of Noted Oregon Lake
The Helena Daily Independent
Helena, Montana
September 22, 1925
Klamath Falls, Ore., Sept. 20. (AP) - Citizens of Oregon today honored the memory of a man who sought gold and
found, instead, one of nature's most precious jewels - Crater lake.
With pine knots blazing in the spacious lobby of Crater Lake lodge and with a
friendly sun beating down upon a foot thick carpet of freshly fallen snow, a
bronze plate was dedicated today to the memory of John Wesley Hillman, who first
discovered Crater lake, on June 12, 1853.
A heavy snowstorm, which last night swept over the pine-turreted peaks of the
Cascades, made it impossible to place the Hillman memorial on the massive stone,
two miles west of Crater Lake lodge, where the discoverer first looked upon the
lake of blue. Stephen A. Mather, superintendent of national parks, was at Crater
lake and spoke in glowing terms of the Argonauts who first blazed trails through
primeval forests.
