Lodge · Crater Lake National Park, Oregon · Built 1911–1915; annex 1922–1924; rebuilt 1991–1994
Crater Lake Lodge
A shingled, stone-based lodge on the rim of Crater Lake, opened unfinished in 1915 by the park's private developer, enlarged in the 1920s, and taken apart and rebuilt inside its original walls in 1991–94.
History
William Gladstone Steel campaigned from 1885 for a national park at Crater Lake, and after Congress created one in 1902 he pressed for a lodge on the rim. He was the first president of the Crater Lake Company; when he became park superintendent in 1913, the Portland businessman Alfred L. Parkhurst took over and sank nearly everything he had into the building. Work began around 1911 to plans by the Portland firm of Hockenberry and Company. Remote, bad roads, a three-month building season and more than forty feet of snow a winter slowed it badly, and the lodge opened in 1915 with its frame walls covered only in tar paper, its rooms finished in thin wallboard, and no private baths. Stephen Mather of the new Park Service was dismayed by the rooms on a 1919 visit.
New management in 1921 shingled the exterior and in 1922–24 added two four-story annex wings, though money ran out before many rooms were finished; the last were completed in the 1930s, while the Civilian Conservation Corps landscaped the surrounding Rim Village. The park closed during the Second World War. Maintenance lagged, and cables had to be strung between the walls to keep them from bowing outward. The Park Service bought the lodge in 1967, and it was listed on the National Register in 1981, but demolition was proposed before public protest won a reprieve. In 1989 engineers found the Great Hall in danger of collapse and the lodge closed. From 1991 the hall was dismantled and the rest gutted and rebuilt around a steel frame; the lodge reopened on May 20, 1995.
“Through the use of rubble stone masonry, unpeeled logs, large stone fireplaces, and heavy timber framing in the public spaces, the lodge created an atmosphere similar to a European hunting lodge.”
Architecture
As built, the lodge ran along the rim as a line of public rooms, lobby, lounge and dining hall, with a kitchen wing behind. Their walls were rubble stone up to the second floor, and above rose steep 12/12 roofs with jerkinhead ends and two rows of shed dormers, shingled from 1921. Inside, the stone walls were left bare, with partitions and columns of unpeeled logs about twenty inches thick and exposed timber framing overhead, and big stone fireplaces in the lounge and dining hall. The nomination saw in this the atmosphere of a European hunting lodge. The 1990s reconstruction kept the exterior form and reinstalled the Great Hall's materials, while the guest floors are new construction.
What to look for
- Rubble stone lower walls under shingled upper stories
- Jerkinhead roof ends and rows of shed dormers
- Stone fireplace in the Great Hall
- Log columns in the public rooms
- The lake view from the rear terrace
Setting
The lodge stands at Rim Village on the southwest edge of the caldera, about a thousand feet above the deep blue water of Crater Lake. Wizard Island and the cliffs of the far rim fill the view from the back terrace. A low stone wall runs along the rim in front, and the CCC-era Sinnott Memorial overlook is a short walk east.
Timeline
- 1902Crater Lake National Park established
- 1911Lodge construction begins
- 1915Lodge opens, still unfinished
- 1922–1924Annex wings added
- 1967National Park Service acquires the lodge
- 1981Listed on the National Register
- 1995Reopens on May 20 after reconstruction
Where sources differ
- The architects appear as R. N. Hockenberry & Company in Wikipedia and E. L. Hockenberry and Co. in the nomination.
- Much of the building was replaced in 1991–94; the listing describes the earlier fabric, and how much original material survives beyond the Great Hall is not documented in these sources.
