Access, discourse, and cultural landscape change: The case of national park communities along the Crater Lake Highway in Jackson County, Oregon

Abstract

Scope and Method of Study: This dissertation examines changes in the cultural landscape along the Crater Lake Highway in southern Oregon and relates those changes to local discourse of four principal development themes. The purpose is to establish a link between increased access at national park sites and landscape evolution in surrounding regions. Field and archival research was performed in the communities surrounding Crater Lake National Park, with a particular focus on areas in Jackson County, Oregon. Primary and secondary material provided the context for development along the route during the first 75 years of the 20th Century. Over 900 newspaper articles from local, state, and national sources were analyzed to determine contemporary attitudes towards automobiles and road building, boosterism, outdoor recreation, and federal land management.

Findings and Conclusions: The study found significant changes in the amount of automobile access along the route during the study period. These changes in access mirrored many changes that occurred near park sites throughout the nation over the course of the Twentieth Century. For the communities along the route, realignments and the corresponding increased speeds of traffic transformed their role for passing motorists. Businesses which catered to tourists destined for the park modified their services to suit the changing expectations of modern American travelers. In the evaluation of local discourse themes, automobile and road building was the most dominant overall. However the representative coverage of that theme in local media declined in the post-World War II period. Outdoor recreation and federal land management themes saw a steady increase over the study period as the economy of the Crater Lake Region became more focused on the tourism draw of the park and the surrounding Cascade Mountains. With the changes in access and the shifting focus of local attention came some substantial modifications of the cultural landscape along the route.