Welcome
The superintendent and the staff of Crater Lake National Park welcome you to this area of the National Park System. We hope that your stay here will be pleasant and inspiring.
Here in this park you encounter beauty—beauty in a wonderful combination of form and substance and sparking color—great curving walls of rock and sand, green spires of fir and hemlock, and the brilliant reflections of Crater Lake. All this is a part of a remarkable volcanic story.
On this spot, a few thousand years ago, stood the mighty 12,000-foot volcano, Mount Mazama. This great mountain discharged a tremendous quantity of ash and lava, causing the mountaintop to collapse, and creating a caldera, which now contains the unbelievably blue Crater Lake. It is the central feature of this 250-square-mile National Park on the crest of the Cascade Range in southern Oregon.
A major charm of Crater Lake is that the whole lake and its setting can be taken in by the eye at one time. Yet its size is impressive. The lake is about 20 square miles in area, 6 miles wide, and has 20 miles of shoreline. The surrounding cliffs rise as much as 2,000 feet to the uneven crater rim which averages about 7,000 feet in elevation.
WILD ANIMALS
It is dangerous for you to get near wild animals though they may appear tame. Some have become accustomed to humans, but they still are wild and may seriously injure you if you approach them. Regulations prohibiting feeding, teasing, touching, or molesting wild animals are enforced for your safety.
Discovery and History
The Klamath Indians knew of, but seldom visited Crater Lake. They regarded the lake and the mountain as the battleground of the gods. The lake was discovered on June 12, 1853, by John Wesley Hillman, a young prospector leading a party in search of a rumored “Lost Cabin Mine.” Having failed in their efforts, Hillman and his party returned to Jacksonville, a mining camp in the Rogue River Valley, and reported their discovery which they had named Deep Blue Lake.
On October 21, 1862, Chauncey Nye, leading a party of prospectors from eastern Oregon to Jacksonville, happened upon the lake. Thinking that they had made a discovery, they named it Blue Lake. A third “discovery” was made on August 1, 1865, by two soldiers stationed at Fort Klamath, who called it Lake Majesty. In 1869 this name was changed to Crater Lake by visitors from Jacksonville.