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1954
1954 Medford lawyer, Frank J. Van Dyke, appointed as Park Commissioner, a position that he holds for nearly 30 years.
Teen-age girl falls to her death while hiking along the Rim between the Sinnott Overlook and the Lodge. Her sister works at McLoughlin Junior High School in Medford.
July 19 1954 Fatal heart attack.
August 7 1954 Dr. Earl Bush, Carver of the “Lady of the Woods”, visits the Park for the first time since 1917. Dr. Bush is surprised at how the “lady” had deteriorated and eroded so much in 37 years.
Mid 1950’s A woman is killed when the car her husband is driving strikes a tree on the West Road. She was declared dead by her doctor husband. (Story related to the author by Ranger Herb Stein in 1964 while working at the Annie Spring Entrance Station.)
From: deb <debsinmt@gmail.com>
Subject: Crater Lake accident 1950s
To: m13cli@yahoo.com Date: Friday, April 22, 2011
Mr Mastrogiuseppe:
I am doing some research on crimes in the 1950s, and came across a brief description of an accident which resulted in the death of a woman. The description was vague as to exact date, but said that the woman who died was pronounced dead by her doctor husband.
I was hoping you might have more information regarding this incident; specifically the name of the man and woman, and the year in which the accident took place.
Any help you can give me would be greatly appreciated!
Thank you, deb laveson
On Fri, Apr 22, 2011, Larry Smith <twinhiker@gmail.com > wrote:
Mid 1950’s A woman is killed when the car her husband is driving strikes a tree on the West Road. She was declared dead by her doctor husband.
That came from the Smith Bros CL History.
I got the story from Ranger Herb Stein, a long-time seasonal ranger. I started working at Crater Lake in 1961. The story was told to me by Ranger Stein in 1964. It was an oral story of an event that he had personally investigated. I wrote it down about 1968. There was no other detail. Unfortunately at the time I was not very attentive to detail. Perhaps park historian Steve Mark can locate additional detail.
Larry Smith
On 4/23/11, “deb” <debsinmt@gmail.com> wrote:
Mr Smith,
Thank you. That small paragraph is what started my search for more information. I was hoping to get a name of the Dr and his wife. Would this accident have made any local papers, whose archives I could search through?
My research has taken me a lot of different places in the virtual online world, but I have never been able to find out this last little detail. Does anyone know what might have happened to the doctor after the accident, and where his wife might have been buried? Was he associated with the lodge at the time of the accident, or were they just on a day drive and the accident occurred?
I don’t have Mr Mark’s email address, so cannot ask him those questions directly. But if I’m right, every one of you fine gentlemen will have assisted in solving a very very very old mystery!
My research began in searching for victims of a serial killer, who wrote a book of his life. I know this guy killed at Crater Lake; I just have to find the right victim, and I believe it was this accident, which in fact was no accident. The killer had posed as a doctor more than once, and had actually described a horrible accident where the woman was ‘injured’ (he never describes killing people; but he puts enough clues in that if you’re willing to dig, will unfold the whole thing) and he says they both walked away. I know through the rest of what he described, that the car went off the road and into a ravine. He says her injuries were to her upper body, along with a dislocated arm. He apparently was unscathed enough to escape the vehicle.
I am sure that what he describes in his book is a murder and not an accident, but I have yet to find the accident. I know he was in Oregon around the same time, and that’s how I discovered the 1950s Crater Lake accident. But I really need a more complete date and the names of the Dr and his wife. Their approximate ages would be great, too. But if I’m right, then the approximate age for the doctor will be 30. He’ll have been about 5’8″, not bad looking, a congenial man whose wife would have been plainer and constantly wearing a worried look. I will speculate she was also pregnant. And I’ll further bet that they were never legally married, though to check that fact is impossible. He would have also talked about a military career, or that he’d been in ROTC through college, though never served active duty.
He would have been one of those guys who blends into the crowd but upon close contact with him, something will have struck people as odd about him. That he tried too hard to fit in, that he was always TOO available to hang out and have fun, with a job as a doctor and a wife at home no one ever saw him with until this accident. If I’m right, he would have been coming on to one of the young women who vacationed at the Lake, which would have been a scandal if she’d have found out about this wife of his.
I know that this man I’m looking for did all of this; this accident is the only one that I’ve found that could fit all these pieces together.
If Mr Mark is who I should talk to, I would be more than happy to contact him directly, but until then, is it possible for you to pass this information on and give him my email so he can respond?
Thank you for your help, Mr Smith!
deb
August 29 1954 Thomas J. Williams enters on duty as Park Superintendent.
Williams served as superintendent of Crater Lake National Park from 1954 to 1959. He has been in Santa Fe since 1959.
“Crater Lake must be seen to be appreciated properly,” Williams explains. “Photographs simply cannot depict the majesty of the lake in its setting, the depth of the blue. The lake was formed in a caldera, the collapsed summit of a volcano, by rain and snowmelt, mostly snowmelt. The unusual deep blue color is caused by the scattering of sunlight in water of exceptional depth and clarity; the blue rays of the sunlight spectrum are reflected upward, and other rays are absorbed by the water.
“An average of 52 feet of snow a year falls at Crater Lake. Moisture-laden winds off the Pacific move upward along the west face of the mountain range, and when they reach the elevation above Crater Lake they are primed for the temperature that creates snow. Until my last year there, we maintained offices in Medford during the winter. Then, my 2 1/2-story residence at the lake was a mere hump in the ski run. When we began major developments, we stayed there the year around.
“Living in the deep snow was a strange and pleasant experience. Snow plows kept the west and south entrance roads open, we could get to and from town and visitors could come to the park.
Mr. and Mrs. Williams plan to continue to make their home in Santa Fe. Their oldest son, Jeff, is a foreign correspondent, now stationed in Jakarta, Indonesia. Their daughter, Lynn (Mrs. James Jordan), is living in Las Cruces, N.M.; her husband is a student at New Mexico State University. Their youngest son, Robert Lee (Skip), is a sophomore at New Mexico State. (Neither source nor date available.
Summer 1954 Two-acre forest fire suppressed in the northeast corner of the Park.
Fall 1954 The NPS designs a new museum building to be located down slope from the Community House. The new building is to be connected to the Sinnott Memorial by an underground walkway. The new walkway would allow a glassed-in Sinnott for all-year use. Construction planned for 1957, but the money was never appropriated. A new visitor center is designed with a two-story winter viewing tower on the north end to replace the Kiser Studio. Never built.
Season 1954 Visitation: 370,554 – A new record.
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