Mr. Standish and I made our first trip of 2023 to Lassen Volcanic National Park Wednesday. I had seen my pal Debbie Stearns’ photos of her trip there with her hubby Woody a few weeks ago and have been itching to see the snow before it melts.
Out the window of the visitor center – bug wings no extra charge
I needn’t have worried. There is still plenty of snow, more than we’ve ever seen this late in the year. The road has been cleared from the Kohm Yah-mah-nee Visitor Center at the South Entrance to Sulphur Works, about a mile. You can walk or cycle it. The sidewalk collapsed at Sulphur Works over the winter and the road appears compromised. They are just starting repairs, as the snow all around it is still very deep. Nothing past the thermal area has been touched by a plow, except from the North Entrance at Manzanita Lake. The road there is open to cars ten miles in to the Devastated Area. You can keep up with the road clearing status here.
Leaving the southern parking lot, the road is walled by 10-15 foot snowbanks, which eventually get shorter on the downhill side, opening to a blazing white vista with millions of black toothpick trees – somber reminders of the Dixie Fire. The temperature was in the mid 60s, and it’s weird but very comfortable to be in shorts and a t-shirt in that much snow.
That’s a lot of snow!
Sweeping vistas – toothpick trees in the distance
There were a variety of nature-made sculptures where the plow deposited tons of snow which is now in varying stages of melting. Pure white on the outside, but wherever there was a hole into the deeper recesses of the mounds there was a gorgeous translucent sky blue. If you Googled the color for COLD, that would be it. Magical.
Snow sculptures – see the blue?
Bendy trees
Stellar’s Jay looking for a handout
When we got back to the parking lot, the car parked next to ours had New Jersey plates and the license frame announced the vehicle’s purchase had been made in Freehold, a mere 20 miles from my family’s home in Wall Twp. What are the chances? We listened for telltale Jersey accents in the visitor center, but no Soprano-esque dialogue was detected. Whaddayagonnadoyaknow? Fehgeddaboudit. I could almost smell the pork roll and cheese. Sigh.
The next day, a memory from a year ago popped up on my Facebook. We had walked from the visitor center all the way to Emerald Lake and Lake Helen. Twelve mile round trip on asphalt. Ours dogs were barking bigly. I collaged two photos from a year ago and this week.
What a difference a year makes!
Mr. Standish has been reading a book that he has dragged along on the entire 32 years of our marriage. It’s called Footprints in Time – A History of Lassen Volcanic National Park by Douglas H. Strong. It’s a great little read, explaining some of the geological history, but mostly the human-related stuff, which is super interesting.
The Park mostly owes its existence to three men – Congressman John E. Raker, Redding Record-Searchlight founder Michael E. Dittmar, and Red Bluff’s Arthur Conard, for whom Mount Conard, just south of Lassen Peak, is named.
Raker tried to get a bill through Congress in 1912 that would have created Peter Lassen National Park in the region where two National Monuments were already located – Lassen Peak and Cinder Cone just to the east. The National Park Service had not yet been created and there wasn’t a ton of interest. It never got out of committee.
He reintroduced the bill in 1913 to the 63rd Congress. The Secretary of the Interior approved of the proposal but the Secretary of Agriculture did not, citing the loss of grazing land in the summer for sheep and cattle. Raker did his research and found that only 2,200 sheep and around 1,000 cattle and horses used the area.
They went back and forth until the world’s largest plug dome volcano finally had enough and blew its top. Literally. The extremely well-timed eruptions of Lassen Peak gained national attention and drew local support, especially from Shasta and Tehama County folks. They wrote letters and the park was created in 1916. Yay! Grassroots efforts win!
Lassen Peak reacts to National Park designation delays – photo by BF Loomis – 1914
Not so fast. In 1919 the stockmen of Tehama started a movement to abolish Lassen as a National Park and revert it to National Forest status, which would allow grazing. Ol’ Artie Conard launched a counter-offensive, calling a special meeting of the Red Bluff Chamber of Commerce, of which he was president. But the stockmen hijacked the meeting and voted down Conard’s proposals.
Guess who else wanted to abolish the Park? The Tehama County Board of Supervisors, of course. Even 100 years ago they were stifling progress. (Not the current supes. They have already begun to prove themselves to be more forward thinking than recent versions.) Corning’s Warren Woodson blocked an anti-park action by that 1919 board, so thank him next time you drive across his bridge on South Ave.
It finally took a man named George E. Goodwin, Chief Engineer of the National Park Service, to talk everyone down off the ledge, noting that tourism would bring in much more money than the sale of the 1,400 head of cattle that were grazing inside the park boundaries. There were other perks he touted and people started to get jiggy with the idea.
By 1920, Congress began funding development in national parks, and that nailed the lid shut on the protests. Give the people flushing toilets and a concession stand and they will eat right out of your hand.
