From a photograph by Fred H. Kiser
"While riding up a long sloping mountain," Hillman continued, "we suddenly came in sight of water and were very much surprised as we did not expect to see any lakes. We did not know but what we had come in sight and close to Klamath Lake, and not until my mule stopped within a few feet of the rim of Crater Lake did I look down, and if I had been riding a blind mule I firmly believe I would have ridden over the edge to death and destruction...."
"The finding of Crater Lake," he concludes, "was an accident, as we were not looking for lakes; but the fact of my being the first upon its banks was due to the fact that I was riding the best saddle mule in southern Oregon, the property of Jimmy Dobson, a miner and packer with headquarters at Jacksonville, who had furnished me the mule in consideration of a claim to be taken in his name should we be successful. Stranger to me than our discovery was the fact that after our return I could get no acknowledgment from any Indian, buck or squaw, old or young, that any such lake existed; each and every one denied any knowledge of it, or ignored the subject completely."
The next development in Crater's history introduces Will G. Steel, widely known as "the Father of Crater Lake National Park," a pioneer of the highest type, a gold-seeker in the coast ranges and the Klondike, a school-teacher for many years, and a public-spirited enthusiast. In 1869, a farmer's boy in Kansas, he read a newspaper account of an Oregon lake with precipice sides five thousand feet deep. Moving to Oregon in 1871, he kept making inquiries for seven years before he verified the fact of the lake's existence, and it was two years later before he found a man who had seen it. This man's description decided him to visit it, then an undertaking of some difficulty.
He got there in 1885. Standing on the rim he suggested to Professor Joseph Le Conte that an effort be made to induce the national government to save it from defacement and private exploitation. Returning home they prepared a petition to President Cleveland, who promptly withdrew ten townships from settlement pending a bill before Congress to create a national park. Congress refused to pass the bill on the ground that Oregon should protect her own lake. Then Steel began an effort, or rather an unbroken succession of efforts, to interest Congress. For seventeen years he agitated the project at home, where he made speeches winter and summer all over the State, and at Washington, which he deluged with letters and circulars. Finally the bill was passed. Crater Lake became a national park on May 22, 1902.
Mr. Steel's work was not finished. He now began just as vigorous a campaign to have the lake properly stocked with trout. It required years but succeeded. Then he began a campaign for funds to build a road to the lake. This was a stubborn struggle which carried him to Washington for a winter, but it finally succeeded.
During most of this time Mr. Steel was a country school-teacher without other personal income than his salary. He spent many of his summers talking Crater-Lake projects to audiences in every part of the State, depending upon his many friends for entertainment and for "lifts" from town to town. He was superintendent of the park from 1913 to the winter of 1920, when he became United States commissioner for the park.
The attitude of the Indians toward Crater Lake remains to be told. Steel is authority for the statement that previous to 1886 no modern Indian had looked upon its waters. Legends inherited from their ancestors made them greatly fear it. I quote O.C. Applegate's "Klamath Legend of La-o," from Steel Points for January, 1907:
"According to the mythology of the Klamath and Modoc Indians, the chief spirit who occupied the mystic land of Gaywas, or Crater Lake, was La-o. Under his control were many lesser spirits who appeared to be able to change their forms at will. Many of these were monsters of various kinds, among them the giant crawfish (or dragon) who could, if he chose, reach up his mighty arms even to the tops of the cliffs and drag down to the cold depths of Crater Lake any too venturesome tourist of the primal days.