VIII. Roads of Crater Lake
National Park
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B. Entrance Road and Bridges
4. Accounts by Early Visitors
Throughout the early 1900s the hardships
in traveling the Crater Lake road were recounted. Heavy wagons usually
took four or five days one way to reach the lake. Because the wagons
were full of provisions, members of these expeditions usually had either
to ride horses or to walk most of the way. A Medford woman, in recalling
a 1909 excursion, noted that only the base of the rim could be reached
by wagon. From there people proceeded by horse or on foot to the rim
edge. Although the fording of Union Creek was a fairly easy matter for
wagons, a couple of logs with flattened tops had been placed over the
creek to facilitate auto traffic.
[15] A wagon driver a year later
warned:
One particularly bad spot on the road to
Crater Lake was found at Pumice Hill, near the end of the journey. This
hill is of pumice stone, and the dust on it is nearly a foot and a half
deep. The grade is also very steep. On account of the dust the clearance
of the car would touch both coming up the hill and going down. The
Inter-State car climbed the hill four times, three of the trips being to
take the loads of other cars, stuck on the hill, to the summit.
[16]
Illustration 16. Annie Creek bridge, Fort Klamath
road. Built by the Dept. of the Interior, 1903. Courtesy Klamath County
Museum, Klamath Falls, Oregon.
