Army Corps of Engineers Road System (Crater Lake, Oregon)

Title: Army Corps of Engineers Road System (Crater Lake, Oregon)
LC Subject: Transportation Recreation
Alternative: Crater Lake Rim Road (Crater Lake, Oregon), Pinnacles Road (Crater Lake Oregon, Sentinel Rock Trail (Crater Lake Oregon)
Creator: United States. Army. Corps of Engineers
Photographer: Mark, Stephen R. Kritzer, Kelly N. (Kelly Norman)
Description: 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.
View: exterior: arm of Thew steam shovel next to abandoned Rim Road, looking north
Work Type: scenic byways access roads trails (recreation areas)
Date: 1910/1919
View Date: 2016-10-14
Identifier: OR_Klamath_ACERS_0009
Rights: In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted
Dc Rights Holder: Oregon. State Historic Preservation Office
Source: Oregon. State Historic Preservation Office
Type: Image
Format: image/tiff
Material: Packed earth, andesite
Set: Building Oregon
Primary Set: Building Oregon
Institution: University of Oregon
Citation: Oregon State Historic Preservation Office, Oregon State Historic Preservation Office, http://www.oregon.gov/OPRD/HCD/SHPO/