William Steel had campaigned for years to get Crater Lake designated a national park, succeeding in 1902, and he immediately turned to lobbying for a lodge that would let visitors stay near the rim overnight rather than pass through in a single day. Portland developer Alfred Parkhurst finally agreed to take on the project in 1909, hiring the firm R.N. Hockenberry & Co., though neither man had experience building for a site that saw fifteen feet of snow each winter and only a three-month construction season.
Costs spiraled, and when the lodge opened in the summer of 1915, the furnishings were spartan by design: tar-paper exterior walls, cardboard-like beaver board on the interior, no private bathrooms, and electricity from a small generator. Visitors came anyway, drawn by views of the lake 1,000 feet below. The National Park Service acquired the lodge in the late 1960s and completed a major restoration in 1995.
