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NR Nomination

LOCATION AND PROPERTY NAME
address: Crater Lake National Park historic name:Army Corps of Engineers Road System
Crater Lake vcty, Klamath County current/other names:Army Corps of Engineers Road System Historic District, Army Corps of Engineers Road System (Rim Road, Pinnacles Road, Sentinel Rock Trail), Crater Lake Rim Road, ACERS
assoc addresses:
block/lot/tax lot:
location descr:Crater Lake National Park, Rim Road, Pinnacles Road, Sentinel Rock Trail twnshp/rng/sect/qtr sect:
PROPERTY CHARACTERISTICS
resource type:district height (stories):0.0 total elig resources:24 total inelig resources:10
elig evaluation: eligible/significant NR Status: Individually Listed
prim constr date:c.1910 second date:1920 date indiv listed:08/12/2019
primary orig use: Road Related (vehicular) orig use comments:Recreation and Culture
second orig use: Pedestrian Related
primary style: Not Applicable prim style comments:
secondary style: sec style comments:
primary siding: Earth siding comments:
secondary siding:
plan type: architect:U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (George Goodwin, William G. Carroll, Alex Sparrow, William H. Peters)
builder:U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (George Goodwin, William G. Carroll, Alex Sparrow, William H. Peters)
comments/notes:
GROUPINGS / ASSOCIATIONS
Not associated with any surveys or groupings.
SHPO INFORMATION FOR THIS PROPERTY
NR date listed: 08/12/2019
ILS survey date:
RLS survey date: 03/01/2017
Gen file date: 03/01/2017
106 Project(s): None
Special Assess Project(s): None
Federal Tax Project(s): None
ARCHITECTURAL / PROPERTY DESCRIPTION
(Includes expanded description of the building/property, setting, significant landscape features, outbuildings and alterations)
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Road System (ACERS) includes Rim Road and three approach routes. ACERS is a linear property located entirely within Crater Lake National Park, in most cases within a mile of the previously listed Rim Drive Historic District (in 2008; NRIS 08000041). The National Park Service conducted an archaeological inventory project in 2015-16 so that features associated with the ACERS could be documented in the Oregon SHPO database, whether formally evaluated for listing on the National Register of Historic Places or as unevaluated, but documented, sites and isolates. This nomination focuses on the engineered qualities of the first road circuit around Crater Lake (Rim Road), a route currently used by park visitors and staff as an 11.8 mile trail, with the remaining 23.6 miles either overtopped by Rim Drive or obliterated in short sections via landscape treatments during the 1930s (9.3 miles), or abandoned altogether (14.3 miles). Crater Lake Rim Road is the most coherent part of the ACERS and lies between 6,000 and 7,850 feet in elevation in its original alignment, with a large number of the original overlooks to Crater Lake still evident. Elsewhere the 16 foot wide roadway winds through old growth forest of mountain hemlock, lodgepole pine, Shasta red fir, and whitebark pine. Abandoned portions of Rim Road contain these species in the roadbed, but vegetation has not erased its horizontal and vertical alignments or the associated engineered qualities over a total distance of 35.4 miles. Only one of the approach routes (the first Pinnacles Road) to the Rim Road circuit exhibits some integrity of location, design, setting, materials, workmanship, feeling and association where 1.1 miles of a possible 3.2 are contributing to the ACERS. The Medford and Fort Klamath approach roads are either fully overtopped by Oregon Highway 62 and the Munson Valley Road, or virtually indiscernible due to their proximity to the Fort Klamath-Rogue River Wagon Road (initially opened in 1865) and/or early wagon routes built by park employees in 1905. Realignments and other changes to approach roads by the Bureau of Public Roads began in 1924 and have resulted in widening routes pioneered by the Corps of Engineers, with almost none of the engineered qualities extant, apart from general alignments. The purpose of this nomination is to describe the design and construction of the ACERS where evidence of it still exists, and relate them to the historic contexts of park development and highway engineering. The historic district comprises eleven contributing archaeological sites associated with construction activities of U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, twelve contributing structures including eleven road segments and one trail, one contributing object (the remains of construction equipment used in the creation of the resource), and ten non-contributing structures, all of which are segments of the resource where subsequent road construction buried or destroyed the original structures.
HISTORY
(Chronological, descriptive history of the property from its construction through at least the historic period - preferably to the present)
The Army Corps of Engineers Road System (ACERS) in Crater Lake National Park is significant statewide under National Register Criterion A for its association with transportation and outdoor recreation in Oregon’s only national park. Crater Lake Rim Road and the ACERS is also significant under National Register Criterion C for its association with the earliest period of highway engineering in Oregon, as a pivotal example of a road that adhered to contemporary standards (albeit rapidly evolving ones) for grade, curvature, drainage, and slope treatments. As the first federal highway project in Oregon, the ACERS at Crater Lake was completed through the grading phase of construction and constitutes a linear cultural landscape. The period of significance includes the first location surveys for the road system in 1910-11, which formed the basis for estimates and annual appropriations for the project, which continued through 1919. It is also the only extant road project attributed to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Oregon and a starting point for subsequent vehicular circulation systems designed and built by the Bureau of Public Roads and the National Park Service in Crater Lake National Park.
RESEARCH INFORMATION
Title Records Census Records Property Tax Records Local Histories
Sanborn Maps Biographical Sources SHPO Files Interviews
Obituaries Newspapers State Archives Historic Photographs
City Directories Building Permits State Library
Local Library: University Library:University of Oregon
Historical Society:Southern Oregon Historical Society Other Respository:Library of Congress
Bibliography:
Harmon, Rick. Crater Lake National Park: A History. Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 2002, 89-102. Kiser, Fred. Rim Road: A Wonder Drive. Portland: Scenic America Company, 1926. Government Documents Baldwin, Kenneth C. Enchanted Enclosure: The Army Engineers and Yellowstone National Park—A Documentary History. Washington, DC: Office of the Chief of Engineers, U.S. Army Historical Division, 1976, 85-93. Greene, Linda W. Historic Resource Study, Crater Lake National Park, Oregon. Denver: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1984, 132-140. Mark, Stephen R. and Jerry Watson. Rim Drive Cultural Landscape Report. Seattle: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2009, 11-19. United States Geological Survey (USGS) 1999 Crater Lake East, OR. 7.5 minute topographic quadrangle. 1997 Crater Lake West, OR. 7.5 minute topographic quadrangle. 1998 Maklaks Crater, OR. 7.5 minute topographic quadrangle. Willingham, William F. Army Engineers and the Development of Oregon: A History of the Portland District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Portland: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1983. Articles Davis, Timothy. “’Everyone Has Carriage Road on the Brain’: Designing for Vehicles in Pre-automobile Parks,” in Ethan Carr et al. (eds.), Public Nature: Scenery, History, and Park Design. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2013, 39-54. Lipin, Lawrence L. “Cast Aside the Automobile Enthusiast: Class Conflict, Tax Policy, and the Preservation of Nature in Progressive-Era Oregon,” Oregon Historical Quarterly 107:2 (Spring 2006), 166-195. Mark, Stephen R. “At the Forefront: Three Contributions to Transportation Infrastructure in the Land of the Lakes,” Journal of the Shaw Historical Library 28 (2016), 59-77. Other Sources Crater Lake National Park Museum and Archives Collections, William G. Steel Scrapbooks, vols. 36-39, Accession 969,Catalog 8556, containing news articles from the Medford Mail Tribune, Portland Oregonian, and the Portland Oregon Journal. Hoyt, Hugh Myron (Jr.), The Good Roads Movement in Oregon, 1900-1920, Ph.D. dissertation at the University of Oregon, Eugene, June 1966, 207-241. Mark, Stephen R. Historic American Engineering Record, Addendum to Crater Lake National Park Roads (HAER No. OR-107). Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 2003, 10-14. Quin, Richard. Historic American Engineering Record, Mount Rainier National Park Roads and Bridges (HAER No. WA-35). Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1992, 70-73, 79-82. National Archives and Records Administration: 1. Record Group 77 (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers), Entry 36, Boxes 27-31, Pacific Northwest Region, Seattle; 2. Record Group 79 (U.S. National Park Service), Entry P9, Boxes 005-013, NARA II, College Park, Maryland. Southern Oregon Historical Society, Alex Sparrow Collection, containing photographs, maps, and drawings of Rim Road, including: U.S. House of Representatives, Executive Document No. 328 (Washington DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1911), 1-16.