370 CRATER LAKE, OREGON. 



Victor saw the lake in 1873, and briefly describes it in "Atlantis 

 Arisen." ' The same year Mr. S. A. Clarke gave an interesting 

 account of the lake in the December number of the Overland Monthly. 



The iirst Geological Survery party visited the lake in 1883, when 

 Everett Hayden and the writer, after spending several days in examin- 

 ing the rim, tumbled logs over the clift's to the water's edge, lashed 

 them together with ropes to make a raft, and paddled over to the 

 island. In 1886, under the direction of Capt. (now Maj.) C. E. Button, 

 many soundings of the lake were made by W. G. Steel, and a topo- 

 graphic map of the vicinity was prepared by Mark B. Kerr and Eugene 

 Eicksecker. Button was the first to discover the more novel and 

 salient features in the geological history of the lake, of which he has 

 given, for his entertaining pen, an all too brief account.^ 



Under the inspiration of the " Mazamas," a society of mountain 

 climbers at Portland, Oregon,^ a more extended study of the lake has 

 just been made by Government parties from the Bepartment of Agri- 

 culture, the Fish Commission, and the Geological Survey. 



Crater Lake is deeply set in the summit of the Cascade Range, about 

 65 miles north of the California line. As yet it may be reached only 

 by private conveyance over about 80 miles of mountain roads from 

 Ashland, Medford, or Gold Hill, on the Southern Pacific Eailroad, in 

 the Eogue Eiver Valley of southern Oregon (see fig. 1). This valley 

 marks the line between the Klamath Mountains of the Coast Eange on 

 the west and the Cascade Eange on the east. The journey from the 

 railroad to Crater Lake aflbrds a good opportunity to observe some of 

 the most important features of this great pile of lavas. The Cascade 

 Eange in southern Oregon is a broad irregular j)latform, terminating 

 rather abruptly in places upon its borders, especially to the westward, 

 where the underlying Cretaceous and Tertiary sediments come to the 

 surface. It is surmounted by volcanic cones and coulees, which are 

 generally smooth, but sometimes rough and rugged. The cones vary 

 greatly in size and are distributed without regularity. Each has been 

 an active volcano. The fragments blown out by violent eruption have 

 fallen about the volcanic orifice from which they issued and built up 

 cinder cones. From their bases have spread streams of lava (coulees), 

 raising the general level of the country between the cones. From some 

 vents by many eruptions, both explosive and effusive, large cones, like 

 Pitt, Shasta, and Hood have been built up. Were we to examine their 

 internal structure, exposed in the walls of the canyons carved in their 

 slopes, we should find them composed of overlapping layers of lava and 

 volcanic conglomerate, a structure which is well illustrated in the rim 

 of Crater Lake. 



' "Atlantis Arisen," by Mrs. Francis Fuller Victor, page 179. 



2 Science, Vol. VII, 1886, pages 179-182, and Eighth Annual Report of the United 

 States Geological Survey, pages 156-159. 



3 The National Geographic Magazine, Vol. VIII, 1897, page 58. 



