Littell's Living Age/Volume 173/Issue 2235/Afloat in a Crater

Afloat in a Crater — Captain C. E. Dutton, of the United States Geological Survey, has been recently engaged in making a study of Crater Lake, in Oregon, and the latest advices received from him show that he has discovered, probably, the deepest body of fresh water in the country. Leaving Ashland, Oregon, on July 7, his party, escorted by ten soldiers, provided through the courtesy of the general commanding the military department of the Columbia, reached the brink of the wall of the lake on the thirteenth, having brought with them boats so mounted on the running gear of wagons as to bear transportation over a hundred miles of mountain road without injury. The boats bore the transportation without strain or damage, and preparations were at once begun for lowering them nine hundred feet to the water. The steepness of the wall was very great, being at the place selected about forty-one or forty-two degrees, and the descent partly over talus covered above with snow, and rocky, broken ledges lower down. The boats entered the water quite unharmed. The process of sheathing them, rigging the tackle, and lowering them occupied four days. A couple of days were occupied in making journeys around the walls of the lake by boat — the only possible way — and in examining the rocks and structures of the wall in its various parts. Next followed a series of soundings. The depth of the lake considerably exceeded the captain’s anticipations, though the absence of anything like a talus near the water line already indicated deep water around the entire shore. The depths range from eight hundred and fifty-three feet to nineteen hundred and ninety-six feet, so far as the soundings show, and it is quite possible and probable that depths both greater and shallower may be found. The average depth is about nineteen hundred and forty feet. The descent from the water’s edge is precipitous; at four or five hundred yards from shore depths of fifteen to eighteen hundred feet are found all around the margin. The greatest depths will probably exceed two thousand feet, for it is not probable that the lowest point has been touched. The soundings already made indicate it as being the deepest body of fresh water in the country.