Landscape History

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The Rustic Style at the Rim

Introduction

Because it was one of the early parks in the system, Crater Lake National Park was a laboratory for NPS planners and designers working in the Rustic style. It was also an older park, with many needs to address. With monies in place for park development, and a professional team in the Western Field Office transforming ideas and concepts into master plans for the parks, the time was right for design implementation. At Crater Lake, the period of intensive development was 1927 to 1941, and one area of focus was Rim Village.

The key players developing the design concepts for Rim Village were assembled in San Francisco, and led by Thomas Vint. Along with Vint, landscape architect Merel S. Sager had the greatest influence in the design program for Crater Lake's Rim Village. Crater Lake was one of several Pacific Coast parks that benefited from Sager's expertise. It was Vint, however, the "veteran," who was responsible for teaching Sager and the other young professionals about the principles of non-intrusive (Rustic) design.

Vint was charged with the job of implementing the NPS' Rustic architecture program in the parks. He did this through the use of general development plans and later, beginning in 1931, by instituting a Master Plan Program.[13] In this program, each park in the system would have a plan establishing design criteria to guide development. These plans would govern all construction and maintenance work in the parks and in Vint's eyes be "progressive" and revised regularly to reflect new issues, annual progress, or new information. The plans themselves were comprised of two components: written statements detailing policy and objective statements about the park's intended use; and a series of site plan drawings. The drawings served both as an inventory of existing conditions, and as design documents showing proposed facilities. In order to prepare these plans, Vint assigned each member of his team of professionals to specific parks. Summers were spent in those areas conducting topographic surveys, photography, and other field work critical for site design.

At Crater Lake, the construction season was extremely short, due to the area's harsh weather conditions. Substantial amounts of snow fell annually at the park, blanketing the place for almost nine months a year. These conditions made planning work schedules difficult, as the actual work season varied from one year to the next. In a typical year the workforces began their operations in June and were forced to stop in October. Occasionally, crews were able to begin as early as April. No matter when the work season started, the park's landscape architects were prepared to begin, working on unfinished projects from the previous year that required completion prior to undertaking new tasks. As the season drew to a close and over the course of the winter, the park's landscape architects assessed what was completed during the previous season, and what was needed next season, and designed their proposed work schedules accordingly.

Extensive and detailed monthly narrative reports were prepared by the assistant or resident landscape architects and forwarded to the chief and/or regional landscape architect through the park's superintendent. Returning to San Francisco in the fall, the architects and landscape architects would use the winter months to synthesize their field observations and notes, and draft the information into cohesive master plans for each park. The master plans were primarily conceptual: what was delineated on a master plan drawing during any given year was not necessarily found on the ground for the same year. Often, it took years before design ideas were actualized on the site. In addition, many design decisions were made "in the field." For example, if a good idea occurred to one of the designers or planners working at the site, that idea was often implemented immediately and the master plan drawings and narrative text later adjusted to reflect the new design element or feature.[14]

When Vint turned his attention to Crater Lake in 1927 to begin a fall-scale planning program for the park, the "village," espoused earlier by planners as a means of accommodating park visitors, was already in place on the south shore of Crater Lake.[15] At the east end of the site was the hotel, the Crater Lake Lodge, and a stone comfort station built in 1921 for park campers. To the west a short walk, was the rustic Kiser Studio (built in 1921) where visitors obtained their souvenir photographs of the park. Across the way, was the Community House, built in 1924 by the NPS. Such a building had been suggested in 1923, "to encourage visitors to mingle together after sundown."[16] The Community House provided space for visitors to dance, hear lectures, and participate in other forms of entertainment. A wooded area behind the Community House was formally designated as a campground by the NPS.

Despite this development, the overall appearance of Rim Village was bleak and had been for many years. Park visitors drove their cars in a random fashion all over the area and up to the edge of the steep caldera wall. People walked wherever they desired, including to a precipitous outcrop known as Victor Rock, where they could take in a breathtaking vista of the lake. Campers arbitrarily pitched their tents after driving around the campground looking for suitable sites. With all of the indiscriminate activity, the landscape of Rim Village suffered. Trees were used as bumpers for automobiles; vegetation was practically non-existent from trampling by visitors and/or their cars; and the nature of the site's soil combined with the prevailing winds, often created an unbearably dusty and dirty environment. NPS designers went so far as to describe the area as a "pumice desert" and "an unattractive sand waste."[17]

The intent of Vint's plan was to improve the appearance of the landscape, eliminate safety hazards with respect to cars, reduce dust, and simplify traffic and parking problems by spreading people out across the site. The plan focused on three components: buildings; landscape; and circulation. With regard to buildings, the park concessioner (who had built two of the three existing buildings) had plans for additional structures, including a cafeteria and store, and twenty-two rental cabins, at the far west end of Rim Village. The circulation component of the plan proposed a pedestrian trail to be laid along the edge of the rim for the full length of the village, and trails to be built leading down to the lakeshore and up to Garfield Peak from the Rim Village. Vint felt that this rim walk would be one of the most important units of the rim area development, and its center of attraction would be the lookout designed for Victor Rock, complete with a rustic stairway and ramps. The landscape component of the plan focused on reclaiming the "pumice desert" by restoring the area's natural grasses and wildflowers. It was hoped that this planting program would bring back the site's original beauty and once again be in harmony with its natural surroundings. Other structures and features, including paved parking areas north of the cafeteria, south of the lodge, and a road with parking revetments linking the two main lots, were also incorporated into the design proposal for Rim Village. In 1928 a new road to Rim Village was completed altering the visitor's entry sequence to the west end of the site. However, Vint saw this as an improvement, for it would help distribute traffic at the rim. Vint noted that this new road approach was "one of the most powerful factors, having an influence on the general layout" programmed for the village.[18]

In general, the design intent of the first general development plan was to create an aesthetic and functional environment for visitors through non-intrusive design. The overall development would appear natural, as though the vegetation added to enhance the site had always been there, and the buildings and curving walks belonged in the landscape. Orderliness would prevail. Of utmost importance was to refrain from overdevelopment, but develop all services intensively in one area so the rest of the park could remain intact and "virgin." Vint's long-term vision for the village included the development of the open desert area west of the Community House into a plaza where all services and facilities would be located. He wanted to relocate the Kiser Studio to this area, a site away from the rim and thus more visually appropriate. Vint also hoped that a new Community House could be erected in this plaza, designed in a more sensitive manner than the existing structure.[19]