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1865
July 19 1865 In a U.S. Army report dated July 21, 1865; Captain Franklin B. Sprague describes an exploratory trip that he and several others took out of Ft. Klamath looking for a newer and easier wagon supply route over the Cascade Divide to the Rogue River and connecting to Jacksonville.
The Captain feels the new route will be more conducive to moving heavy wagons to the Fort than over the Dead Indian route, which is much steeper. The downside is the new route will be 15 to 20 miles farther, but with a more level grade. “…it will require the labor of fifteen men thirty days to clean it out and put it in good order for teams.”
Setting out on his exploration trip, Capt. Sprague reports, “We traveled in a northwest direction, across the Prairie striking the timber at the foot of the mountain, near a branch of Wood River so which has no name here to fore been given. I gave the name of Anne Creek…”
The naming of Anne Creek by Capt. Sprague conflicts with Capt. O.C. Applegate’s story that the creek was named for Annie Gaines, the young sister-in-law of the Fort’s commander, Major Rinehart. This story from Capt. Sprague was uncovered by Park Historian Steven Mark while doing research at the National Archives. The new road report was written in Capt. Sprague’s own handwriting. (See the October 8, 1865 entry about Annie Gaines.) Steve feels that Capt. Sprauge named the creek after his wife, Joanne Leeds Sprague. (Steve Mark, 2012 Discovering Klamath – Shaw Historical Library)
“ANNIE GAINES SCHWATKA, FOR WHOM ANNIE CREEK CANYON, IN CRATER LAKE NATIONAL PARK, WAS NAMED. BORN 1846, DIED 1876.” CLI
July 1865 Captain Franklin Sprague and 20 men are assigned the task of clearing timber and the building of an army supply road from Ft. Klamath to Jacksonville, via Annie Creek Canyon and Union Creek.
August 23 1865 Two army hunters from Ft. Klamath, John Corbell and Francis Smith accidentally stumble up Crater Lake.
August 20 1865 Captain F. B. Sprague writes a letter to the Oregon Sentinel, in Jacksonville. FT. KLAMATH, Ogn.: It will probably be interesting to the traveling and freighting public to know that the new wagon road, connecting Ft. Klamath with the Rogue River and John Day wagon road, is nearly completed and will be by the 23rd, be ready for teams. Six miles further is White Horse Creek or Soldiers Camp–plenty of water, but no grass near the camp. Within two miles is Castle Camp, which is within half a mile of the summit. At this camp there is plenty of grass and water: the water is, however rather hard to obtain, being in a deep ravine. One mile from Castle Camp just at the foot of the mountain, on the Klamath side, and about one hundred yards to the left of the road, is a fine spring and an elegant camp in every respect. This we named, “Canyon Spring Camp.” Within four miles, Spring Creek is crossed on a bridge, and within half a mile of the bridge, close to the road on the left, is a good spring of water and plenty of grass. Leaving this camp, the road approaches and follows down the banks of Anne Creek, s tributary of Wood River, and along which the traveler will see some of Nature’s most beautiful works. The camp last mentioned is called Dead Wood. Within six miles from Dead Wood is Cold Run Camp, with water a few yards up the ravine, but not much grass.
The distance from Rogue River to the summit of mountain is estimated at sixteen miles, and from the summit to Ft. Klamath at twenty miles, making thirty-six miles. From Jacksonville to the intersection of the Klamath road, the distance measured is sixty-two miles, making the whole distance from Jacksonville to the Fort, ninety-eight miles, only six miles further than by Mt. McLaughlin. From Rogue River to within one hundred yards from the summit of the mountain, the road rises with a gradual elevation of probably ten inches to the rod, with but few rises. The summit is reached by a grade to greater than the hill back of Jacksonville on the Applegate road. The decline on the Klamath side is so gentle that in the dark a man could scarcely tell whether he was going up hill or down. The new road will be a “hard road to travel” for a while, as the ground is very soft, and much of the way the road is cut through dense thickets of small pines. And of course the stumps will be in the way for a some time. There are, however, but a few large stumps in the road and no rocks at all. The soil is pumice stone, and when beaten down will become hard, making a road equal to a macadamized one.
Two miles and a half, in a northeastern direction, from the summit of the mountain is Oregon’s famous lake, about which there is much difference of opinion as there is about “that darkey”. I have not visited the lake yet, but several of my men have, and they vary in their opinions of the distance to the water. One thinks it is not more than two or three hundred feet, while other say it must be six or seven hundred; one thinks the water easily accessible, and another that it cannot be reached. I shall visit it this week and blaze a trail to it from the summit, and give you my impressions of its depth, etc. I have heard of no name being given it except “Hole in the Ground.” It should have a name commensurate with its merits as a curiosity.
Respectfully yours, F.B. Sprague
Summer 1865 Members of Company 1, 1st Oregon Infantry, then engaged in the construction of a road connecting Jacksonville with Fort Klamath, named “Waupeg Camp”. A corruption of the word Wopp, invented by the cook. A member of the company found a large pumice stone of egg-shape, then trimmed it until it was a good representation. While the men were off during the day, the cook put a hole through it and lengwise, then climed to a tall lodge pole pine, cut off the slender top and inserted the remainer through the egg. He then trimmed off the limbs as he descended, leaving a tall pole with an egg on top. When the men returned to camp they were informed that an immense bird called the Wopp, had flown over and stopped long enough to desposit the egg. Located between the West Entrance of Crater Lake and Union Creek. (Oregon Place Names)
August 24 1865 Lt. O.A. Stern, Capt. Sprague and party “reached the bluff overlooking the lake on the west or southwest side, about 9:00 in the morning of a clear day, and for the first time feasted our eyes upon what we then pronounced the most beautiful and majestic body of water we had ever beheld.” Stearns and Peyton Ford become the first white men to reach the shores of the lake. A pistol shot by Stearns brings down Sprague and civilian Coats. Capt. Sprague suggests the name of “Lake Majesty.” Phantom Ship is discovered by Captain Sprague.
Sprague and twenty men from Company I were assigned to build a road linking the Rogue River with the existing John Day road. This connected Jacksonville and southwest Oregon with John Day’s mining country. After the construction work was completed, Sprague published a list of the best campsites along the road in the Jacksonville newspapers so that the wagon masters could find the best water and grass along the way.
On August 1, 1865, two hunters from Sprague’s road construction crew rediscovered Crater Lake, which had been first visited in 1853, but was never effectively recorded so that others could locate it. Based on directions from his hunters, Sprague and five other men visited the lake on August 12. They climbed down the 800-foot caldera cliff to become the first explorers to reach the lakeshore. Sprague’s account of the visit was reported to Jacksonville’s leading newspaper, the Oregon Sentinel on August 25.
…you sit down on the brink of the precipice, and feast your eyes on the awful grandeur, your thoughts wander back thousands of years to the time when, where now is a placid sheet of water, there was a lake of fire, throwing its cinders and ashes to vast distances in every direction. The whole surroundings prove this lake to be the crater of an extinct volcano. The appearance of the water in the basin, as seen from the top of the mountain, is that of a vast circular sheet of canvass, upon which some painter had been exercising his art. The color of the water is blue, but in very many different shades, and like the colors in variegated silk, continually changing. Now a spot will be dark blue, almost approaching black, the next moment it will change to a very pale blue; and it is thus continually changing from one shade to another…
Wizard Island and Crater Lake’s caldera
Blue waters continually change shades
Sprague’s report was published in the Oregon Sentinel on September 9, 1865. It included several significant observations. First, Sprague identified the volcanic origins of the lake. His report described Wizard Island, and observed it was a remnant of volcanic activity. Second, his description of the lake’s unique beauty was thoughtful and eloquent.
Sprague also predicted that the lake would “be visited by thousands hereafter.” Finally, he recommended that the lake not be named after its discoverer, saying: “I do not know who first saw this lake, nor do I think it should be named after the discoverer.” Sprague suggested it be called “Lake Majestic.” Today, it is known as Crater Lake. Since he was the first to identify the lake’s volcanic origin, Sprague deserves some credit for the name. Wpedia
August 1865 The Oregon Sentinel of Jacksonville reports the visit a week or so earlier of a party of citizens to the “Great Sunken Lake” in the Cascade Mountains. It was reported that “no living man ever has, and probably never will be able to reach the water’s edge.” These visitors fired a rifle several times into the water in an attempt to ascertain the distance from the rim to the water, but evidently did little other exploring. Their group was probably composed of some of the visiting citizens from Jacksonville who had gone out to inspect the progress of the new Forth Klamath-Jacksonville wagon road and to view the lake.
September 3 1865 A party of eleven men from Jacksonville, guided by James D. Fay arrived on the west side of the Lake during a hunting trip to Diamond Peak. Here Fay, Herman Helms and Sgt. Orson Stearn find a gentler slope enabling their decent to the water, where they inscribe their names and the date on a nearby rock. Intrigued by the topography of Wizard Island, they resolve to return and bring a boat with which they could reach the island and explore its slopes.
1865 – published 1882 Lake Majesty.
To the Editor of the Union County Journal. Ohio
There is an article partially descriptive of a great natural curiosity going the rounds of the papers again, and as a soldier in my company was the discoverer of this curiosity, I have been asked to give a description of it.
In the fall of 1865, I was stationed with my company at Fort Klamath, on the eastern slope of the Cascade Mountains, in Southern Oregon. The nearest settlements and post offices were about one hundred miles away, and nothing but a pack trail leading over the mountains, over which all provisions for the post had to be transported. I determined to cut a wagon road over the mountains to facilitate the transportation of our supplies. The pack trail crossed the mountains at the base of Mt. McLoughlin, or Snowy Butte, as it is called in that neighborhood, and was a “hard road to travel.” I determined to build my road on another route. Fort Klamath is situated in an almost level plain, between two spurs of the mountain, and this plain is one vast bed of lava, or pumice stone, sloping to the south and ending in Klamath Lake. I selected a route over the mountain at the northern end of this plain, so as to strike Rogue River, which runs through the settlements on the west of the Cascade Mountains, and down the banks of which river I was to build the wagon road. There is a sharp divide between the waters of Rogue River and the Fort Klamath plain, and I had considerable difficulty in engineering a road over this divide, or summit of the mountain.
Our rations furnished by the government were not sufficient for men employed in unusual hard manual labor, and as deer and bear were plenty, I kept one or two employed in hunting, that what they killed might help out our regular rations. The Cascade Mountains are a continuation of the Sierra Nevadas, and this range under different names extends from the Arctic Ocean to Patagonia, South America. The Cascades and Sierras will average one and a quarter miles in height above the ocean, and throughout Oregon, Washington Territory and the British and Russian (now American) possessions are numerous peaks whose altitude reaches from two to three miles. Sometime in past ages (the Supreme Being only knows how long since), a volcano has existed in the Cascade Mountains, and it happened, unknown to us at the time, that we were building our road on its base. One evening after work was done for the day, one of the hunters came in with a deer he had killed, and reported that he had seen a curious lake up in the mountain to the north of us. He did not seem excited at all about the matter, nor seem to think it was anything very unusual, but said that he came near falling into it before he saw it. I asked him some questions about it and he said that it was a long way down to the water, as much as three hundred feet, and he did not think anybody could get down to the water. After awhile the other hunter came in, and he too had discovered the lake, but from a different quarter. His account tallied with the first man, except that he thought it must be as much as a thousand feet down to the water, and that he thought it was the grandest thing he had seen. They agreed that the lake was as much as a mile and a half, or two miles in diameter and that it was impossible to reach the water, as the walls were perpendicular.
I determined to visit it, and next day taking First Sergeant Orson A. Stearns, the two hunters and another man or two, we “started out” up the mountain for the lake. The route was not a difficult one; most of the way a horse could be used. The distance from our camp, not more than three or four miles. On gaining the summit of the mountain and looking away to the north, mounts Three Sisters, Jefferson and Hood could be seen; to the east, Steens Mountain; to the south, McLoughlin, Shasta and Lassen’s Peak, and in every direction the world seemed to be at our feet. To these sights, however, we were used, and we thought nothing of it, but if a stranger to mountain scenery could be suddenly placed in a similar situation he would be lost in amazement. The summit of the mountain seemed to be nearly a level plain for a distance of twenty miles, with sharp, rugged peaks surrounding this plain on all sides, except the side from which we ascended. No appearance of a lake could be seen, and no one would have suspected such a thing.
A tramp of half a mile dispelled this thought as we came suddenly upon the threshold of this “Well of the Gods.” I had lived in the mountains for many years, and had seen many beautiful things, and had become so used to mountain scenery that it required something unusual to excite me, but when I stood on the threshold of this stupendous wonder, and got the first sight of it, the cold chills ran over me, and I drew back astonished. We were probably fifty feet from the walls, but it appeared to us that even another step would precipitate us headlong into its depths. When we had got through with our first expressions of astonishment, and our eyes had become somewhat used to looking down into its depths, we commenced a search for a place where we could approach safely and get a better view. Imagine yourself standing on the brink of an immense well, at least eight miles in diameter, and not less than three thousand feet deep, its jagged, irregular walls laid up by the hands of the Great Creator Himself, and you can have a very faint idea of this stupendous crater, for such it is, or has been. Viewed from the summit, the water is intensely blue, but is constantly changing, or appears to change, presenting all the appearances of variegated silk. Although it is not less than eight miles in diameter, it is so deep that storms passing over the mountain scarcely create a ripple on its bosom. Standing on the brink, I caused my men to fire their Springfield rifles into the lake, holding them as near as possible at an angle of forty-five degrees, and then counting in an ordinary manner from the report of the gun until the ball was seen to strike the water, and repeating this several times found I could count from fifteen to twenty during the interval. The balls would strike the water very much inside of the place aimed at, showing that the distance to the water was great. There are no streams of water emptying into the lake, and only a few springs that run into it, yet there is an immense amount of water running out of it underground and forming streams that run into Klamath Lake on the south, or Rogue River on the west and north.
The Klamath Indians have a tradition that a long time ago a monster inhabited this mountain, that he got angry and set it on fire and that it boiled over and ran all over the country and burned everything up, and destroyed a great many of their people, and they, notwithstanding they know where it is, never told us of it, nor talked about it until we made the discovery. They can’t be persuaded to go anywhere near it, as they think the monster still there ready to “gobble them up,” and were surprised when we questioned them about it, and told them we had been there and had got down to the water. They declared that the monster must be on good terms with the white people, and that it was only Indians that he wanted.
We made several trips to the lake and finally found one place where the water from a spring had cut a passage to the water down which by the aid of ropes we finally succeeded in reaching the water. From this point the scene is indescribable and I shall not attempt it. Orson A. Stearns was the first man, white or colored, who had ever reached the water of this lake, and we agreed that he should name it. He called it Majesty, but it is generally known as Sunken or Crater Lake. The water is purity itself, cold as ice. The lake is nearly circular, and near the western rim is a small island probably half a mile in diameter and more than a thousand feet high, shaped like the frustum of a cone, and on the peak a small crater.
The lava from this mountain extends south a distance of thirty miles to Klamath Lake, and has formed the plain on which the fort [Fort Klamath] is built. To the west, down Rogue River, lava has been found more than a hundred miles from the mountain.
No language can describe this immense vortex; it can only be comprehended by being seen. It is one of the great curiosities of the world, and when the route to it has been made easier it will be visited by thousands. We read of other living volcanoes whose craters are from a half to three-quarters of a mile in diameter, but imagine what this must have been in eruption, with a crater not less than eight miles in diameter. The immense masses of matter thrown out could not be represented by figures, and the peak must have been one of the highest on this continent..
- B. Sprague.
Union County Journal, Marysville, Ohio, December 14, 1882, page 2
1865 Pole Bridge Creek named when it was hastily bridged by soldiers using Lodge Pole Pine.
Previous to 1865, supplies for Fort Klamath were carried by pack train from Jacksonville, down into Northern California, then north to the fort. Capt. Sprague was responsible for cutting a road through from Ft. Klamath to Jacksonville, but his crew did no grading. He simply cut the way for wagons, leaving stumps and stones that would pass under the axles. Not one cent was spent on it in the meantime, and in 1886, 21 years later, the Cleetwood party went over it with an expedition bound for Crater Lake and carrying among other things, the Cleetwood, for sounding, on a wagon. (Steel)
September 2, 2012 By Paul Fattig Mail Tribune
Although eroded by the winds of time and encroached upon by dog-hair thickets, remnants of a wagon road that paved the way for pioneers from Jacksonville to Fort Klamath nearly 150 years ago still can be seen in Crater Lake National Park.
Opening at the end of August in 1865, the rustic road was an important route back when Oregon was young, observed park historian Steve Mark. It was used for about half a century.
“They were filling an oat contract,” he added. “In those early days, agricultural commodities for the soldiers at the fort were brought over from the Rogue Valley. That was a valuable source of income for the residents around Jacksonville and Ashland.””At one point, there were 90 wagons from the Rogue Valley heading over this wagon road,” Mark said of a late 1860s wagon train.
For 4 cents a pound, farmers could have agriculture products shipped by Teamsters from regional hub Jacksonville to the fort, he noted.
“That wasn’t so bad when considering every other route where the freight cost was 5 cents or more,” Mark said.
In a Sept. 2, 1865, article in the Oregon Sentinel in Jacksonville, Franklin B. Sprague reported the new wagon road would be completed late in August, creating a roughly 32-mile vital link in the nearly 100-mile trek from Jacksonville to the fort.
“The summit is reached by a grade not greater than the hill back of Jacksonville, on the Applegate road,” Sprague wrote, referring to the divide between the Rogue and Klamath watersheds.
“The decline on the Klamath side is so gentle that in the dark a man could scarcely tell whether he was going up or down,” he added.
To help wagon masters, he included a list of the camps where water and grass could be found en route.
Capt. Sprague knew of what he wrote, having commanded I Company, a unit of the 1st Oregon Volunteer Infantry Regiment that blazed the new wagon road over the Cascades in summer 1865.
Sprague, for whom the Sprague River in Klamath County was named, was instrumental during pioneer days in initiating scenic tourism of the lake he had dubbed “Lake Majesty,” Mark said.
Moreover, a spur wagon road he and his men built from the main road provided access to the lake for some 40 years, he added.
He and 20 men from I Company, the lion’s share from the Rogue Valley, were ordered to blaze the road over the Cascades that summer. Before being deployed to Fort Klamath, the company was based at Camp Baker, a military encampment about one mile southwest of Phoenix.
Fort Klamath on the Wood River was established in summer 1863 under the command of Maj. C.S. Drew to provide a connecting point for supplies from the Rogue Valley. It was also near an anticipated Indian reservation and would serve as a base for military operations against the Paiutes in southeastern Oregon, Mark explained.
Sprague was directed to find an improved wagon road over the Cascades so the fort could be supplied.
“When Sprague and his Oregon Volunteers came over the mountains, they did part of their trek cross-country over what is now Dead Indian Memorial Road,” Mark said. “After they reached the fort, they almost immediately started looking for a new route over the mountains.”
In dispatches to the Sentinel that summer, Sprague kept Rogue Valley residents apprised of his unit’s progress. When he mentioned that their grub was running low, Rogue Valley farmer William Bybee brought over a load of potatoes and other vegetables, Mark said.
About 14 of the original 22 miles of wagon road inside the park still exist, said Mark, who hopes to place the segment on the National Register of Historic Places.
“This wagon road connected you with the existing Rogue River wagon road, which was the link to John Day and the northern mines,” Mark said, adding the two roads hooked up near present-day Union Creek.
Of course, the road was only open three or four months a year, depending on how much snow piled up the previous winter and how early the snow flew in the fall, he said.
“Snow was always a concern,” he said.
In July 1865, Sprague found what he called the “summit” over the mountains. As the raven flies, the divide is about four miles southwest of Crater Lake.
A huge mountain hemlock towering over the old road just shy of the divide would have been there when the wagon road was built, Mark said during a recent hike to the site.
“I’m sure the big trees on both sides here were there at the time,” he said. “They would avoid those, cutting out the little ones with axes.
“You can often tell the wagon road today when you see stretches about eight feet wide — the width of a scraper back then,” he said.
He and volunteers have searched for artifacts along different segments of the road but have been stymied by the pumice ash in the soil created when Mount Mazama blew its top some 7,700 years ago, carving out the caldera that now holds Crater Lake.
“Artifacts can literally swim in this pumice soil,” he said. “You can look in year No. 1, year No. 2 and so on without finding anything. Then year seven, something pops up where you were looking.”
“Parts of the road, at least in what is now the park, were not changed significantly until about 1902,” the year the park was established, he said. “Other pieces of it were not changed or realigned until the teens.”
Drivers speeding along Highway 62 today follow tracks of short segments of the wagon road, he said.
A spur wagon road was blazed up to the south rim of the lake in 1869 where blazes on mountain hemlocks still mark the way. The spur road ended at a camp site that is now a picnic area for today’s tourists.
Jacksonville pioneer Peter Britt and his son, Emil, used the spur road to access the lake.
“The two Britts had problems following it because it had just been blazed,” Mark said. “But this would have been a preemo camp spot for them.”
It was not far from that campsite at the end of the spur wagon road that Peter Britt took the first-ever photograph of the lake on Aug. 12, 1874.
October 9 1865 Annie Gains, for whom Annie Spring and Annie Creek are named, climbs down to Crater Lake. Miss Gaines, sister-in-law to Major W. F. Rinehart, Fort Klamath commander, was the first white woman to reach the waters of the lake. Mrs. O.T. (Roxanna) Brown, who was greater in age, lost the race by a few feet to the 19 year-old girl. (Brown Springs?) (Please see August 21, 1916 entry.) Roxanna would have been 32 years of age. The name “Annie” was incorrectly changed to “Anna” soon after the Park was established, and was changed back to “Annie” during the 1930’s. Regardless of the weather or the season, Annie Springs’ flow remains constant, and the temperature of its water is always 35 degrees F. This is the coldest spring in the Park. The Indians called the spring “PALALX”.
From Steve Mark, Park Historican – July 2016 email to the author: As for “Annie” vs. “Anna,” I have a different view. The name “Annie” was applied by O.C. Applegate, who wasn’t present when the creek was originally named by Capt. Sprague. In his reconnaissance letter to Major Rinehart, Sprague used the name “Anne.” He did not explain why, but most married men would not name something after an unmarried woman, whether or not she happened to be Rinehart’s sister in law. Sprague’s wife was named Joanna, which could very well be the origin of “Anna.” In any event, “Anna Cr.” appeared on the first USGS contour map of 1887, its first special map of Crater Lake in 1896, and the first Ashland quadrangle map of 1893. The name “Annie” came later.
The Spring was a refreshing stop for dusty travelers traversing their way between Jacksonville and Fort Klamath. The soldiers had named it, “Kanyon Creek Camp” because of its abundance of grazing grass and water.
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