20) Crater Lake

[00:00:03] When you think of something being an oddity, you tend to imagine something quirky, maybe even whimsical. A roadside attraction off a forgotten highway or a strange landmark that makes you stop, tilt your head, and wonder how it even got there.

[00:00:32] Or maybe it's a curious little footnote in history, a kind of story that feels unusual but harmless. Something you can laugh about and explain. But the stories we're exploring this year aren't quirky, and they're certainly not whimsical. These are the kinds of stories that make you pause for a different reason. The kind that linger in the back of your mind long after you've heard them. Because they don't feel real, in the way history usually does.

[00:00:59] They feel constructed, like something written for a screenplay, carefully plotted. Something strange and unlikely. And yet, they happen. Not in some distant, unreachable place, but here along the Pacific coast. Which makes them oddly Pacific. Long before there was a national park here, there was a mountain.

[00:01:28] And according to the traditions of the Klamath people, that mountain was the site of a battle. Mount Mazuma rose thousands of feet above what is now southern Oregon. The Klamath knew this place as sacred, and stories passed down through generations told of powerful beings associated with the mountain and the surrounding landscape. There are several versions of these stories.

[00:01:56] And details vary depending on when and by whom they were recorded. But one of the best known involves two powerful spirits. Lao, associated with the below world, and Skel, associated with the above world. According to one version of the story, Lao lived beneath Mount Mazuma. From there, he could emerge from the world below and stand upon the mountain.

[00:02:22] One day, Lao saw the daughter of a Klamath chief and wanted her to join him in his world beneath the mountain. She refused, and Lao became enraged. The earth shook, and burning rocks fell from the sky. And then Skel came to the defense of the people. From Mount Shasta, more than a hundred miles away, Skel battled Lao on Mount Mazuma. The two hurled fire and stones at one another as the people below watched the mountain burn.

[00:02:51] In one telling, two Klamath holy men sacrificed themselves by climbing Mount Mazuma and throwing themselves into the fire. Their sacrifice strengthened Skel, who eventually defeated Lao and forced him back into the below world. And then the mountain collapsed on top of him. When morning came, Mount Mazuma was gone. Where the mountain had once stood, there was an enormous hole in the earth.

[00:03:19] Rain and snow eventually filled that hole with water. Today, we call it Crater Lake. But what's remarkable is that we know something catastrophic really did happen here. About 7,700 years ago, Mount Mazuma erupted with extraordinary violence. The eruption emptied so much material from beneath the volcano that the mountain could no longer support itself.

[00:03:47] Much of it collapsed inward, leaving behind a cauldra roughly 5 to 6 miles across. Before the eruption, Mount Mazuma may have stood around 12,000 feet high. Then, suddenly, much of it was gone. And we know that people were living in this region when it happened. Archaeologists have found evidence of human presence buried beneath ash from the eruption.

[00:04:14] The National Park Service says the connection between indigenous people and this landscape can be traced to before Mount Mazuma's collapse. That doesn't mean we can simply declare that every detail of the story is a literal eyewitness account preserved unchanged for 7,700 years. Oral traditions evolve, just as written stories do. And many of the versions available today were recorded much later by outsiders.

[00:04:41] But the Klamath connection to this place predates anything we're going to talk about in this episode by thousands of years. And the story they preserved described a mountain consumed by fire before collapsing into the earth. Today, the result of that collapse is one of the most extraordinary landscapes in North America. Crater Lake is the deepest lake in the United States. At its deepest, the bottom is nearly 2,000 feet beneath the surface.

[00:05:10] There are no rivers flowing into the lake, and no river carrying water away. Most of its water comes directly from rain and snow, while water leaves through evaporation and seepage. And because there is no river constantly carrying sediment into it, the water can be astonishingly clear. From above, the lake is almost unnaturally blue.

[00:05:37] Steep walls surround the water on every side, rising as much as 1,000 feet above its surface. Near the western side of the lake is Wizard Island, a volcanic cone that began forming after Mount Mazama collapsed. So even though the landscape looks peaceful today, almost everything you're looking at is evidence of violence. The cliffs are the remains of a mountain that destroyed itself, and the island is a volcano that grew inside the remains of another volcano.

[00:06:09] But somewhere in that water is an old man. Not an actual old man. It's a log. But we're going to talk about him anyway. The old man of the lake is a mountain hemlock approximately 30 feet long that has been floating vertically in Crater Lake for more than a century. Only about 3 or 4 feet of its sticks above the surface. The rest hangs beneath the water.

[00:06:36] The earliest documented observation came from geologist Joseph Diller in 1896. Nobody knows exactly when the tree entered the lake. The carbon dating indicates that the tree itself is more than 450 years old. And somehow it floats upright. And it moves. In 1938, naturalists John Doerr and Wayne Karchner decided to keep track of the old man's movements.

[00:07:04] Over the course of several months, they recorded its position dozens of times. The old man traveled more than 60 miles. On one particularly ambitious day, it moved almost 4 miles. This is a 30-foot log wandering around a lake while standing on end. There are possible explanations for why it remains vertical. The submerged portion may have become saturated with cold water over time,

[00:07:31] making it dentier than the portion exposed to the air. Early observers also suggested that rocks may have once been trapped among its roots, weighing down the bottom. Whatever the explanation, the old man has been doing this since at least 1896. And because this is Crater Lake, even the log eventually acquired its own legend.

[00:07:53] In 1988, scientists were preparing to explore the lake using a small research submersible called Deep Rover. A 30-foot log wandering freely through the water presented something of a navigational problem, so researchers secured the old man near Wizard Island. And then the weather turned. Storms began, making the water dangerous. So the scientists released the old man. The weather improved.

[00:08:23] Obviously, that does not mean a log controls the weather. But I also wouldn't tie it up again, just in case. The old man remains in Crater Lake today, moving wherever the water takes it. Visitors sometimes try to spot it from the rim, although finding three feet of wood sticking out of 20 square miles of water is considerably more difficult than it sounds. By the time the old man was first documented, Crater Lake had already begun attracting outsiders.

[00:08:52] European-American knowledge of the lake dates to the 19th century. And over the following decade, people began pushing to protect the area and make it accessible to visitors. One of the most important people in that effort was William Gladstone Steele. Steele became obsessed with Crater Lake after learning about it as a child. He eventually visited the lake himself in 1885, and afterwards spent years campaigning for federal protection of the area.

[00:09:20] His efforts helped lead to the establishment of Crater Lake National Park in 1902. But protecting the lake is one thing. Convincing tourists to travel into the mountains of southern Oregon to see it was another. Tourists needed somewhere to stay. Which brings us to Crater Lake Lodge. Construction began in 1909, and almost immediately, there were problems. Building a large hotel on the rim of Crater Lake was not exactly easy.

[00:09:50] The site was isolated, the construction season was short, and winters here were brutal. Developer Alfred Parkhurst wanted to get the lodge open, and the building that emerged was considerably less impressive beneath the surface than it appeared from the outside. Construction dragged on for years. When Crater Lake Lodge finally opened in 1915, it wasn't really finished, but guests arrived anyway. The lodge eventually expanded,

[00:10:19] but problems followed it for decades. Parts of the building were poorly constructed. Floors and ceilings sagged. Walls bowed outward. Cracks appeared in the masonry. At one point, cables were stretched between walls to keep them from spreading apart, which is generally not something you want to hear about the hotel you're sleeping in. The National Park Service eventually acquired the lodge in 1967, but by then, decades of severe winters

[00:10:48] and inadequate maintenance had taken their toll. There was serious discussion about simply demolishing it. In 1989, engineers determined that part of the lodge had become so unstable that it might collapse under its own weight and potentially bring down the rest of the building with it, and the lodge closed. But Crater Lake Lodge had become part of the identity of the park, and preservationists fought to save it. Eventually they won.

[00:11:17] A massive rehabilitation began. Much of the building had deteriorated beyond saving. The Great Hall Wing was dismantled and reconstructed. Much of the rest of the lodge was gutted. A modern steel support structure was installed along with new utilities and safety systems, while the exterior and public spaces were restored to resemble the lodge as it appeared during the 1920s. On the 20th of May 1995,

[00:11:46] 80 years after Crater Lake Lodge first opened, it opened again. This time, according to the National Park Service historian who wrote about the project, it was finally finished. But not every strange story connected to Crater Lake is as easy to document. Some stories are told by people who work there, Ranger Jan Kerwin once described Crater Lake as a ghost and goblin park. She had her own reason for saying that.

[00:12:16] According to an account published by National Parks Traveler in 2009 and preserved by Crater Lake Institute, rangers had occasionally reported seeing what appeared to be campfires burning on Wizard Island. They would cross the lake to investigate and find nothing, not even scorch marks where the fire appeared to have been. But Kerwin's strangest experience happened away from the island. One evening, she was patrolling below the rim when she saw what appeared to be ten people

[00:12:45] standing around a large fire in the forest. There were nowhere near a designated campground. Kerwin stopped her vehicle and went into the woods to contact them. But when she reached the location, everyone and the fire was gone. Kerwin was disturbed enough by all of this that she took cover behind a tree and called for another ranger. The two searched the area and found nobody, not even evidence of the roaring fire

[00:13:14] Kerwin had seen only moments earlier. Later, Kerwin learned that the area had once been the site of an old campground known as Cold Spring. Maybe there was some combination of distance, darkness, and atmospheric conditions that created an illusion. Maybe there were people there who managed to leave before she reached them. Or maybe there was some detail missing from a story that had been repeated for years. But unlike a lot of ghost stories,

[00:13:43] this one at least gives us something unusually specific. A named ranger in a specific location. And then, in the summer of 1952, Crater Lake became the setting for something much more real. On July 19th, two businessmen entered the park. Their names were Albert Jones and Charles Colhane. Both worked for United Motors Service, a subsidiary of General Motors.

[00:14:11] Colhane was a national sales manager from Detroit while Jones worked in the western region. They were traveling on business and had spent the previous day in Klamath Falls. With the weekend free before their next appointment in Medford, Colhane wanted to see Crater Lake. So the two drove into the park. They were expected to meet friends later near Union Creek, but they never arrived. At first, there wasn't necessarily reason to assume anything terrible had happened.

[00:14:40] They were tourists visiting one of the most spectacular places in Oregon. Maybe they'd stopped somewhere or gotten delayed, but the Pontiac was eventually found abandoned. And two days after, Jones and Colhane disappeared. Searchers found their bodies in the woods. Both had been shot in the head. Their mouths had been gagged with their own tie. Their watches, money, and shoes were missing. What followed was one of the largest investigations in Oregon history.

[00:15:09] The FBI became involved, along with Oregon State Police, the Klamath County Sheriff's Office, and the National Park Service. Investigators conducted interviews across the country, but there was very little physical evidence, and nobody was ever charged. There have been theories, though. One possibility was robbery. Their valuables were missing, after all. Another theory was that the killings were connected to Colhane's position with General Motors

[00:15:37] and labor disputes within the company. There have also been suggestions involving organized crime. Decades later, relatives of Albert Jones continued trying to solve the case themselves. His granddaughter, Alice Sims, began researching the murders in the 1990s. She obtained records, tracked down people connected to the investigation, and eventually said she believed she knew who had killed her grandfather. More recently, author Monty Oreck

[00:16:05] obtained more than 2,000 pages of FBI material through the Freedom of Information Act request and published a book arguing that the evidence points toward a particular solution. But officially, more than 70 years later, the murders of Albert Jones and Charles Colhane remain unsolved. Crater Lake has been the site as many other deaths and disappearances. This is where I want to be careful.

[00:16:33] It is tempting when talking about a place with a reputation like Crater Lake to make a list. This person disappeared. This person fell. This plane crashed. This person was never found. And eventually, you can create an impression that there is something uniquely sinister about the place simply by stacking tragedies on top of one another. But Crater Lake National Park is wilderness. The terrain can be difficult. People have died here because nature doesn't care

[00:17:03] that you're standing somewhere beautiful. So I'm not going to go through every disappearance or accident associated with Crater Lake. There is, however, one case that stands apart. In January of 1975, 19-year-old Charles McCuller traveled to Crater Lake. McCuller was from Virginia and had been traveling around the country. He was interested in photography and while visiting a friend in Eugene, Oregon,

[00:17:31] he decided he wanted to photograph Crater Lake in winter. This was not the Crater Lake most tourists see and photographs. Winter here could bury the landscape beneath enormous amounts of snow. The north entrance road and Rim Drive are now remotely closed to automobiles during winter. And even modern visitors are warned that backcountry routes can be deep, difficult, and hard to follow. McCuller apparently intended to spend only a short time at the park.

[00:18:02] Then he disappeared. In October of 1976, close to two years later, two hikers entered a remote area near Bayouby Creek. There they found a backpack. Further searching uncovered human remains. They belonged to Charles McCuller. And instead of ending the mystery, the discovery created another one. The location was miles from where McCuller was believed to have begun his trip. His father did not believe

[00:18:31] his son could have reached the area where the remains were found under the conditions that existed when he disappeared. The snow was deep and the terrain was difficult. McCuller was not properly equipped for a long winter expedition through the backcountry. His family became convinced that something else had happened. McCuller's remains had also been scattered and damaged, making it difficult to reconstruct exactly how he died. Some of that could be explained by exposure and animal activity

[00:19:00] after his death. But his father believed Charles had been murdered and that his body had somehow been taken to the remote location where it was eventually found. Others have argued that there is a much simpler explanation. McCuller underestimated Crater Lake in winter and became lost. He kept moving and eventually exposure killed him. Once the snow melted and animals reached his body, his remains were scattered. That explanation

[00:19:29] doesn't require a killer. But it still leaves a difficult question. How did Charles McCuller get there? His family never accepted that he simply walked into that remote part of the park through the winter conditions that existed at the time. And without knowing exactly what route McCuller took after he was last seen, we may never know. Maybe his death was exactly what authorities believed it was. A young traveler entering an unforgiving wilderness without understanding

[00:19:59] what he was getting into. Maybe his father was right. Whatever happened, Charles McCuller entered Crater Lake National Park in the winter of 1975 and more than a year later, his remains appeared in a place his family believed he could never have reached on his own. Crater Lake never gave them an answer. Maybe that's part of what makes this place so easy to surround with stories. Crater Lake is beautiful in a way that almost doesn't look real.

[00:20:27] The water is too blue. The cliffs too steep. An island rises from the remains of a volcano inside the remains of another volcano. A centuries-old tree stands upright in the water and wanders around the lake. A historic lodge sits on the rim after nearly collapsing under its own weight. A ranger walks towards ten people gathered around a fire and finds an empty forest. Two businessmen are murdered and their killer

[00:20:56] is never officially identified. A 19-year-old photographer disappears into the winter landscape and is found more than a year later in a place his family and disting could not have reached. And behind all of these stories is one much older than the rest. The story of a mountain destroyed in a battle so violent that fire filled the sky and the earth collapsed beneath it. 7,700 years ago Mount Mazuma really did collapse.

[00:21:25] People really were here to witness that happen. The Klamath understood long before tourists arrived that this was not an ordinary place. I don't mean that as evidence that Crater Lake is haunted, cursed, or supernatural and I especially don't want to take a sacred Klamath tradition and turn it into evidence for someone else's ghost story. I mean something much simpler. People have been standing at this place for thousands of years looking at it

[00:21:55] and trying to understand what happened here. The explanations have changed, the stories have changed, the people telling them have changed, but the lake hasn't. It sits inside the remains of Mount Mazuma almost 2,000 feet deep reflecting the sky from a hole left behind by one of the most violent events this landscape has ever experienced. And scattered around it are thousands of years of human stories. Some are sacred, some historical, some are mysteries

[00:22:24] while others are probably folklore. And some involve a log that apparently gets angry if you tie it to an island. But together, they make Crater Lake something more than a beautiful lake inside a volcano. They make it exactly the kind of place we've been looking for all season. There are places where you can still see the shape of what happened. Sometimes it's obvious, like when a lake fills the hollow where a mountain once stood.

[00:22:54] An old city survives beneath the streets of the new one, or a stadium rises where a neighborhood used to be. The landscape changes, something else takes its place, and eventually it becomes difficult to imagine that it was ever any different. But it was. That's the strange thing about history. It happens in the present tense. The people standing on the Tacoma Narrows Bridge didn't know they were standing inside a story that would be shown

[00:23:23] to engineering students generations later. The sailors working at Port Chicago didn't know that an ordinary summer night was about to become a dividing line between everything that came before and everything that came after. The people at Chavez Ravine weren't living in history. They were just living at home. Colleen Stan didn't know how many years would pass before she was free. The children climbing aboard a school bus in Chowchilla didn't know

[00:23:53] where that bus was going to take them. Nobody hears the narrator while it's happening. There's no music underneath it. No one knows which details will matter later. They are simply living their lives and then something happens. Sometimes it lasts a few seconds or lasts years. When it's over, it leaves a sheet behind. Sometimes that shape is physical. Concrete buried beneath a pavement. An empty space

[00:24:22] where a building once stood. A scar in the earth. Sometimes this shape exists only in memory. A place people refuse to forget. A story a family continues telling. Or a question that survives everyone who might have known the answer. And sometimes this shape changes as we tell the story again and again. facts become legends. Legends become facts. Details disappear as new ones appear.

[00:24:52] A city builds another city on top of itself. And eventually even its history develops another layer. Maybe that's why I've spent this season looking at places as much as events. Because places remember differently than people do. They don't remember names or dates. They don't care which version of a story we prefer. They simply remain. The Golden Gate still disappears into the fog. The Narrows still moves beneath the wind.

[00:25:22] People still walk through Seattle without thinking about the streets beneath their feet. Baseball fans still fill Dodger Stadium. Children still ride school buses through California. Movies are still made beneath the Hollywood sign. And here at Crater Lake rain and snow continue falling into a hole left by a mountain that disappeared nearly 8,000 years ago. The event ended. The world kept moving. And eventually grass grew over the ground. Buildings are repaired.

[00:25:53] Roads reopen. New people arrived who weren't there and can't remember what happened. But that doesn't mean it's gone. Because absence has its shape too. You can see it in the things we rebuild. Hear it in the stories we keep telling. Feel it in the places where something happened long before we arrived. Maybe that's what an oddity really is. It's not simply something strange like a ghost story a mystery or a crime. Maybe

[00:26:22] an oddity is something that interrupts the shape the world was supposed to have. For a moment something bends breaks or disappears and afterward everything settles into a new shape and the space left behind becomes part of the landscape. Eventually if enough time passes we stop seeing the scar we just see a lake but the shape of what happened is still there and sometimes all you have to do is look. This has been

[00:26:51] Oddly Pacific.

[00:27:22] The Rambler Network. Work.