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This is Floyd Wynne with The View from Here.
It's a pleasure to be able to voice my view's from here. The long interim of about three months was filled with a month's hospital stay and continued recovery. My voice will take some recovery time also.
I was extremely pleased some months ago when the Crater Lake Parkway replaced the Alameda Bypass. In the first place, Crater Lake is completely within Klamath County. However as one travels the southern portion of Interstate 5, you find signs pointing to Crater Lake. The route from Klamath Lake is shorter to Crater Lake.
Over the years however, the community has not publicized this fact and much of the travel to Crater Lake comes from the I-5 corridor. I understand that at one time a billboard in Weed advertised that fact and brought the Crater Lake tourists our way.
This talk about Crater Lake brings up the fact that the lake got its official name some 138 years ago yesterday when John Wesley Hillman accompanied a group of visitors from Jacksonville to the lake and gave it its name. Hillman apparently was riding a mule up the slope one day when the mule stopped. Hillman looked over the beautiful blue lake.
At that time it had various names like Blue Lake, Lake Majesty, Lake Mystery and other titles. but it was Hillman who named it what it was....a lake in a crater.....Crater Lake.
A group called Mazamas of Portland also visited the lake in August of that year and felt it should become a national monument. However it was William Steele who made the successful move to a national park. He finally was able to visit the lake in 1885 and thus began a 17 year effort by Steele which was capped in May 22, 1902 when President Theodore Roosevelt signed a bill making it a national park.
Klamath County Historical Society's edition of 1984 gives great details on the size and beauty of the lake. The coming weekend will find the park very well visited as the Crater Lake Rim Runs take place. I you haven't been there you've not only missed an experience, but also have not seen the only national park that lies all within Klamath County.
This if Floyd Wynne and that's the View from Here.
 
 

Text Box: 8-5-08