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1885

August 14             1885       William Gladstone Steel, and John Breck, a druggist from Portland, and two other friends, head for Crater Lake, via  Fort Klamath.  There they met Captain Clarence E. Dutton, also en-route to the Lake.  Steel spends the night at the Fort, collecting and writing down Indian legends as told by tribal story tellers and O.C. Applegate. “At Fort Klamath I met Allen David, chief of the Klamath Tribe of Indians, from whom I got the tradition of its discovery.  He informed me that, many years ago, the Klamaths came suddenly upon the lake and at once realized that the Great Spirit dwelt there…” Will Steel, from a speech given January 3, 1917 at the National Parks Conference in Washington, D.C.

August 15             1885       Steel and Breck, anxious to reach the lake, leave the main body of travelers as they leave Fort Klamath and hurry on ahead.  When the two men finally spot the Lake, the water is so blue they are startled.  Standing speechless for several minutes, the two men stare at the spectacle before them.  Finally Steel breaks the silence by saying, “Johnny, there isn’t a claim around or near the lake.  It all belongs to the government and it’s up to you and me to save the lake.”

Breck replies, “You are right, but how are we going to do it?”  After several moments of silence, Steel answers that the area should become a national park.  Steel becomes so agitated by the idea that he becomes distressed.  Thus begins Will Steel’s forty-nine year involvement with Crater Lake.

Captain Dutton soon arrives on the Rim, and the Steel and Dutton spend many hours discussing the national park idea as well as the Lake’s mystery and inspiring beauty.  The captain suggests that they circulate a petition asking President Cleveland to set aside ten townships as a public park.

“While standing on the rim of the lake with Prof. Joseph Le Conte, the thought occurred to me that at no point around this wonderful cauldron had the hand of man yet desecrated it with peanut stands or other marks of desolation and something should be done to forever save it for the people of this great country.  How to accomplish this was the question, so I turned to the professor for counsel.  We discussed it at length and finally decided the only way was to have a national park created.  Ways and means were discussed, and work of preparation commenced then and there.  A petition to the President was prepared…”  Will Steel, from a speech given January 3, 1917 at the National Parks Conference in Washington, D.C.

Steel names Llao Rock, elevation 8,046 feet and 1,869 feet above the lake, after the Indian deity, Llao, who was supposed to be the special guardian of the Lake.  Steel recognizes the “Fire Bird” form of Llao Rock based on the Indian legends that he had heard being told over a campfire at Ft. Klamath the night before.

August 17             1885       To learn more about the Lake, Captain Dutton launches a small, leaky, canvas boat and the men of the expedition explore the shoreline, and the island.  Steel names several of the Lake’s prominent features, including Wizard Island, “because of its weird appearance” and its resemblance to a wizard’s hat.  The crater at the top was named the Witch’s Cauldron.

Crater Lake:    The Campaign to Establish a National Park in Oregon      by Steve Mark

William Gladstone Steel: Crater Lake’s foremost advocate.

Courtesy Oregon Historical Society #23267.

The long campaign to establish Crater Lake National Park began at Fort Klamath in 1885. There two vacationers from Portland, William Gladstone Steel and J.M. Breck, met an army captain named Clarence E. Dutton who had been detailed to accompany University of California geologist Joseph LeConte on a summer trek to examine the volcanic phenomena in the region. The four men followed a wagon road leading from Fort Klamath to Jacksonville by way of Annie Spring. On the other side of the Cascade Divide they turned north along a blazed trail that ran along a creek later named for Dutton. After climbing and climbing, the men at last reached their goal, and stood upon the caldera rim enraptured by the beauty of Crater Lake.

Making Crater Lake a national park seems to have been first discussed at their campsite in what is now Rim Village, but the idea became Steel’s primary focus for the next seventeen years. He stopped in Roseburg on his way home to discuss the idea with Oregon Congressman Binger Hermann, and began organizing a petition drive. The public support Steel wanted came with no difficulty and by the beginning of 1886, the petition had arrived in Washington, D.C. The petitioners sought to have the president withdraw the lands surrounding Crater Lake from settlement and from land claims arising from mining or timber values while Congress considered the merits of establishing a national park. [1]

President Grover Cleveland ordered that ten townships of unsurveyed public domain adjacent to the lake be withdrawn from all forms of entry on February 1, 1886. This reservation was larger and slightly different from the actual park boundaries set in 1902. Only two townships wide, the withdrawal stretched from Union Peak in the south to well beyond Mount Thielsen. It simply represented a guess at what might be suitable for a national park, but the administration wanted to avoid infringing on the Fort Klamath Military Reservation to the south and the Klamath Indian Reservation to the east.

September 30      1885       The Crater Lake Park. Portland Telegram. Ashland Tidings. Referencs was made in these

columns yesterday to the fact that Mr. Wm. G. Steel had received a half dozen photographs of Crater Lake, and also that there is a petiion numerously signed asking the president or congress to set apart a section of Klamath County, including the lake, for a national park. This afternoon these photographic views were on exhibition in Ayer’s book store and attracted much public attention. Mr. Steel has just received a long letter from Congressman Binger Hermann in relation to this matter. Mr. Hermann promises to do all he can to secure the object of the petition. He will present the petition to the president and endeavor to secure an order from the chief executive to create a park in that locality, or if failing in this, to present a bill in congress for the same purpose. Congressman Hermann will go out to Crater Lake next week for the purpose of examining the country adjacent to the that singular body of water. This is for the purpose of being able to answer any questions the president migh ask him about his personal knowledge of the lake and the surrounding regions. The right of pre-emptious does not extend to any land which is reserved from sale by act of congress or by order of the president, or which may have been appropriated for any purpose whatever. If Crater Lake and the country surrounding it is set apart as a national park, it will preclude the settlement of the land by pre-emption.

August or Sept.    1885       “When returning to Portland, I stopped at Roseburg to confer with Hon. Binger Hermann, Congressman from Oregon, in reference to having the land surrounding the lake withdrawn from the market, with the intention of creating a national park.  A petition to President Cleveland was at once drawn up, and signed by Mr. Hermann.  It was circulated by a large number of prominent citizens, and forwarded to its destination. (Steel, 1891)

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