Some years later, in 1872, William Gladstone Steel came to Oregon. The story is told that when Steel was a schoolboy in Kansas he had heard of the discovery of Crater Lake and had made a resolution that he would sometime see the western wonder. He spent 7 years in Oregon before he could find anyone who had heard of Crater Lake; two more passed before he found a person who had actually seen it. It was not until 1885 that he was able to visit the place which he found to be even more beautiful than he had anticipated. The result was that Judge Steel conceived the idea of setting aside the lake and the region thereabout as a national park. He began an immediate agitation for this. Though the task was not an easy one and there was much opposition from certain quarters, Steel was undaunted by the rebuffs and continued his efforts unselfishly and with personal sacrifice over a period of 17 years. Success crowned his work when the park was established by an act of Congress, approved May 22, 1902. Judge Steel thereafter devoted his life to the development of the park and became one of its first superintendents. Later he became park commissioner, holding this office until his death in 1934. Soon after Steel’s first visit, soundings were taken on the lake under the direction of Capt. C. E. Dutton of the United States Geological Survey. Over a month was spent in the work, with the deepest sounding recorded at 1,996 feet. The first survey for a road system within the park was made in 1910 and 1911; 2 years later the entrance roads from Medford and Klamath Falls were built. Though these roads were very primitive when compared with those now developed, they served the needs of that time when travel was yet dependent principally on horses and wagons. THE GEOLOGIC STORY OF CRATER LAKE _Origin of the Mountain._—Visitors to Crater Lake find they must ascend extensive slopes of volcanic ash or pumice to view the lake resting in a crater approximately 5 miles in diameter, with walls from 500 to 2,000 feet high. Geologists tell us this rim is the remnant of an ancient mountain which stood more than 14,000 feet high. In 1896 the Mazama Club, a mountain-climbing group of Portland, Oreg., visited the lake and with fitting ceremonies gave to the ancient mountain, never viewed by man, the name Mount Mazama. In comparatively recent geologic time enormous flows of molten rock poured out over an area of more than 100,000 square miles, extending into Oregon, Washington, Montana, Idaho, Nevada, and California. These masses of lava came to the surface largely through great cracks or fissures in the earth’s surface. A typical example of such extensive flows may be seen in the lava beds forming the Columbia River Gorge.