48 Fun Facts About Crater Lake National Park

Crater Lake National Park is in which US state?

Oregon. Crater Lake is the state's only national park, and it exists because one man, William Steel, campaigned for 17 years to have the lake protected.

Crater Lake fills the caldera of which collapsed volcano?

Mount Mazama, a stratovolcano in the southern Cascades, grew over hundreds of thousands of years before its summit collapsed into the emptied magma chamber; the Klamath people witnessed the eruption and kept its memory in legend.

How deep is Crater Lake at its deepest point?

About 1,900 feet. The Park Service gives 1,943 feet and a 2000 sonar survey found 1,949, the deepest of any lake in the United States, because the collapsing volcano left a basin nearly 4,000 feet deep.

How is Crater Lake refilled, with no streams flowing into it?

Entirely by rain and snow falling on it, the lake is kept at a nearly constant level because evaporation and seepage balance the precipitation; with no streams carrying in sediment, it is among the clearest lakes on Earth.

Roughly how long ago did the eruption and collapse that created Crater Lake's caldera take place?

About 7,700 years ago (around 5700 BC) the volcano's climactic eruption emptied its magma chamber and the summit collapsed; ash from the blast forms a dated marker layer across the Pacific Northwest.

How does the US Geological Survey rate the threat posed by the volcano beneath Crater Lake?

Very high. The volcano is dormant rather than dead: warm fluids still seep from the lake floor, and geologists consider further, smaller eruptions likely.

After the collapse, about how long did Crater Lake take to fill to today's level?

About 500 years. A US Geological Survey model puts the filling at 420 to 740 years, the longer figure if the climate was drier, and the level has barely moved since, because seepage and evaporation carry off as much water as arrives.

The volcanoes of the Cascades are fed by the subduction of which piece of oceanic crust?

Juan de Fuca Plate. This small remnant of the once-vast Farallon Plate is still sliding under North America, and when the fault between them slipped in January 1700 the tsunami reached Japan.

What is Wizard Island?

A cinder cone that rose after the caldera formed, Wizard Island began erupting before the lake had filled, so the island visitors see is only the top of a far larger volcano.

What did William Gladstone Steel name the crater on top of Wizard Island in 1885?

The Witches Cauldron. Steel named both the island and its summit crater on his first visit to the lake, after paddling across in a canvas-bottomed canoe his party had brought from Portland.

Why can't visitors see Crater Lake's Merriam Cone?

Its summit is about 500 feet under water: Merriam Cone, a volcanic cone on the caldera floor, erupted while the lake was filling, and its smooth, craterless surface shows it was built under water rather than in air.

Phantom Ship, the small jagged island in Crater Lake, is made of rock roughly how old?

About 400,000 years old, Phantom Ship's andesite is the oldest exposed rock in the caldera, a remnant of an early cone; seen in fog or low light the jagged island looks like a ghostly sailing ship.

What is Crater Lake's 'Old Man of the Lake'?

An upright floating log. The 30-foot hemlock trunk has bobbed vertically around the lake since at least 1896, and it roams: tracked for three months in 1938, it covered more than 60 miles.

What did scientists use to explore the floor of Crater Lake in the late 1980s?

A one-person submarine. Deep Rover carried a single researcher to the bottom on each dive, where it found warm, mineral-rich fluids seeping up through the lake floor.

What name did the three gold prospectors who came upon Crater Lake in June 1853 give it?

Deep Blue Lake was their choice, but with gold on settlers' minds the find was soon forgotten, and the lake was renamed at least three times, the last as Crater Lake.

How did Kansas schoolboy William Steel first learn of Crater Lake?

From a newspaper article wrapped around his lunch, Steel read of the lake as a schoolboy in 1870; he did not reach it until 1885, and then spent 17 years lobbying to make it a national park.

How did the 1886 USGS expedition measure Crater Lake's depth?

A pipe on piano wire from a survey boat, a half-ton craft hauled up the mountain, gave 168 soundings, and the deepest came remarkably close to the figure sonar produced more than a century later.

Which president signed the act creating Crater Lake National Park?

Theodore Roosevelt signed the bill on 22 May 1902, making Crater Lake the first national park created during his presidency; Steel's lobbying and the 1886 survey data had made the case.

The climbing club that named Crater Lake's volcano took its own name from which animal?

Mountain goat. The club took an old word for the animal as its name when it was founded on the summit of Mount Hood in 1894, and it chose William Steel as its first president.

In Klamath legend, Llao of the Below World battled which chief of the Above World?

Skell. In the best-known telling his victory destroyed Llao's mountain home, a story that closely parallels what geologists later worked out; Llao Rock and Skell Head on the rim carry the rivals' names.

About how much snow falls on Crater Lake National Park in an average winter?

About 40 feet. Recent averages run from roughly 39 to 42 feet, down from about 51 feet in the 1930s, and the drifts that build up keep most of the park's roads closed through late spring.

Why does Crater Lake rarely freeze over?

Stored summer heat. So much water lies beneath so small a surface that only an exceptionally cold winter can ice it over, and the last complete freeze was in 1949.

Which fish thrive in Crater Lake, which is believed to have had no native fish at all?

Kokanee salmon and rainbow trout. Both are outsiders: the lake held no fish until William Steel began stocking it in 1888, and of the species tried over the next half-century only these two took hold.

What is the only legal way for visitors to reach Crater Lake's shore?

Hiking down the steep Cleetwood Cove Trail, a 1.1-mile path that drops about 700 feet, is the one safe and legal route to the water; it closed in 2026 for a rebuild due to last through the 2028 summer season.

How were the tour boats on Crater Lake delivered to the water?

By helicopter. No road reaches the shore, so the tour boats had to be flown in, as three new ones were in 2003.

What is the 33-mile scenic road that circles Crater Lake called?

Rim Drive. It follows the edge of the caldera all the way round, but the snow lies so deep that the full loop is usually open only from about July to October.

What is the highest point in Crater Lake National Park?

Mount Scott is a satellite cone that stood just outside the collapse, so it now rises higher than anything left on the rim, and on a clear day the view from its summit stretches more than 100 miles.

How do rangers lead winter visitors out across Crater Lake's deep snow to see the lake?

On snowshoes. The park lends them free for two-hour ranger-led walks that leave the trails behind and wander through the forest and meadows along the rim; no experience is needed.

What historic structure, built in 1932, stands at the top of the Watchman Peak trail?

A fire lookout tower. It was built to do two jobs at once, watching the forests for smoke and serving as a small trailside museum, on a peak William Steel named during the 1886 survey of the lake.

Which long-distance hiking route running from Mexico to Canada passes through Crater Lake National Park?

Pacific Crest Trail. Crater Lake is one of seven national parks along its 2,650 miles, on a route laid out to avoid towns and keep to high mountain country with few roads.

How did the Pinnacles, the needle-like spires near Crater Lake, form?

Rising gas cemented ash into columns. Hot gas escaping through the deep ash left by the eruption hardened the material around each vent, and erosion later stripped the loose ash away from them.

Why is the Pumice Desert north of Crater Lake almost bare of plants?

Its porous soil holds little water. Rain sinks straight through the deep pumice that buried an old glacial valley during the eruption, and the ash offers few nutrients, so hardly any trees have taken root since.

Why was Crater Lake Lodge, open since 1915, closed abruptly in 1989?

Engineers feared the Great Hall might collapse. The 1915 building had been patched for decades, and just before the 1989 season it was judged unsafe to open; a $15 million rebuild brought guests back in the mid-1990s.

The Sinnott Memorial Overlook, built in 1931 below Rim Village, honours what kind of person?

A US congressman. Nicholas Sinnott had championed the park as chairman of the House Public Lands Committee, and after his death in 1929 Congress paid for the cliffside viewpoint in his memory.

Since 2005, Crater Lake has appeared on the back of which US coin?

State quarter. An 18-member commission chose the view of the lake and Wizard Island over three rival designs to stand for the whole state on its coin.

About how tall did Crater Lake's volcano stand before it collapsed?

About 12,000 feet. The collapse beheaded the mountain: the highest point left on the rim today stands at only about 8,150 feet.

Which bird, famous for caching whitebark pine seeds, is a common sight on Crater Lake's rim?

Clark's nutcracker, a grey-and-black corvid, buries tens of thousands of whitebark pine seeds each autumn and recovers them by memory; the pines around the rim depend on the bird to spread their seeds.

Which of these mammals lives in Crater Lake National Park?

American pika. This small relative of rabbits lives among the rock piles along the rim, and it spends the summer gathering plants into 'haypiles' to live on through the long winter.

What did archaeologists famously find beneath the ash of Crater Lake's eruption?

Woven sandals. Made of sagebrush bark, they were dug from beneath the ash layer at Fort Rock Cave, proof that people lived in the region before the lake existed.

What hangs like icicles from the underwater walls of Crater Lake's caldera?

Moss. In the 1930s a biologist's dredge hauled it up from nearly 400 feet, a find he called his most startling at the lake, and later dives showed it draping the walls far below the surface.

Which animal, put into Crater Lake in 1915 as food for stocked fish, has since overrun much of its shoreline?

Crayfish. They now crowd long stretches of the shallows and are pushing out the lake's native newts, while the algae spreading in their wake threatens its famous clarity.

Which river rises at Boundary Springs in the north-west corner of Crater Lake National Park?

Rogue River. From springs at the park's edge it runs about 215 miles to the Pacific, and its whitewater and rugged scenery put it among the first eight rivers protected by the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act of 1968.

Which of these US national parks is older than Crater Lake?

Yosemite. Of today's national parks, only Yellowstone, Sequoia, Yosemite and Mount Rainier are older than Crater Lake, which won its turn only after William Steel had campaigned for 17 years.

What is unusual about the fishing rules at Crater Lake?

No licence is needed. Every fish in the lake descends from stock put there by people, so the park encourages anglers to catch as many as they like, provided they use only artificial bait.

Garfield Peak on Crater Lake's rim honours a president's son, James R. Garfield, who held which cabinet post?

Secretary of the Interior. His department ran the national parks, and in 1907 he came to see this one for himself, the first cabinet member to visit Crater Lake.

How can visitors tell Crater Lake's begging ground squirrels from the chipmunks they resemble?

No stripes on their faces. Both animals have striped backs, but only a chipmunk's stripes run on to its nose; however hard either begs, feeding them is illegal, because handouts harm their chances of survival.

Which Canadian lake is the only one in North America deeper than Crater Lake?

Great Slave Lake. It is one of the ten largest lakes in the world, yet its deepest point, in Canada's Northwest Territories, is only about 70 feet deeper than Crater Lake's.

Roughly how far across is Crater Lake?

About 6 miles. The lake measures roughly 5 by 6 miles, yet it holds nearly 5 trillion gallons of water, because the basin beneath that modest surface is so deep.