Craters of the Moon Administrative History

Chapter 6:
RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

Resource Management At Craters Of The Moon:
NATURAL RESOURCE MANAGEMENT: GEOLOGIC RESOURCES - TAKING ACTION

Taking Action: Overview

Protective measures at this early stage were employed out of necessity and were mostly informal. Impacts like collection do not appear as issues in early Park Service reports. With low-level tourist use, custodians were better able to monitor visitor activity, or at least contact visitors as they entered the area. Moreover, Custodian Paisley's creation of an outdoor display of lava samples in 1926 may have alleviated some rock removal, allowing visitors to touch but not take volcanic specimens. [15] Even so, impacts to geologic resources present at the monument's inception evolved into an ongoing issue that area managers eventually needed to address.

Taking Action: The Posse Dash

A variety of visitor activities jeopardized volcanic features. During the monument's formative years, for instance, damage to geologic formations occurred through a seemingly innocent activity--the annual Opening Day celebration conducted at the monument every spring since the area's creation. The fanfare included picnics, speeches, music, and the famed Sheriff's Posse Dash, all of which was sponsored by the Butte County Chamber of Commerce. The event attracted several thousand spectators. Overflow parking covered both sides of the entrance road and filled the campground. Over all, the festivities formed an important public relations activity and constituted considerable work for the small monument staff preparing for and controlling the crowds.

As a public relations activity the event was a success, but in terms of resource management, the celebration proved destructive. Beginning in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Superintendent Aubrey Houston reported that Opening Day vandalism and collection were on the increase. Houston's experience in May 1952 is as amusing as it is enlightening:

Sometime during the late evening rush of visitors leaving the monument on Opening Day, the 25th, one of our less law-abiding [sic] citizens made off with our prize specimen of breadcrust bomb, which makes me [sic] very unhappy and jars my faith in human nature to its very foundation. I even dreamed that I awoke one morning and found that the whole collection had been carted away. [16]

By 1963 change was in order, and Superintendent Daniel Davis toned down the celebration. It was not only labor intensive for his staff but also damaging to monument's resources. The Sheriff's Posse Dash, an opening ceremony where flag-bearing riders raced horses through the monument's sensitive cinders, "tore the place up," Davis recalled. Vegetation as well as cinders and hardened lava suffered. For these reasons, he eliminated the posse dash altogether. Davis realized that this was a delicate issue. The local groups used the area as a personal playground (as they had for years), and he was an outsider expounding new ecological perspectives on resource management. His decision did not win him new friends within the Arco community and alienated him from some of its members. Given the decades of serious impacts to the geologic resource, Davis felt justified in his decision. Even though he formally eliminated the Posse Dash, Arco community members have broached the subject with more recent superintendents. Robert Hentges, approached regarding the horseback event in the mid-1970s, decided against reinstating the festivity, for the same reasons as Davis. At present, the Sheriff's Posse Dash remains a part of the monument's colorful past. [17]

Lining up for the Posse Dash, a popular yet destructive event at Opening Day, 1961.
(CRMO Museum Collection)

Taking Action: Buried Treasure

Another colorful element stems from a rather humorous anecdote with potentially serious consequences. Local legend, as recorded in the 1937 Idaho: A Guide in Word and Picture, has it that outlaws headquartered in the cinder and spatter cones of Craters of the Moon, and there hid their gold. [18] It was only a matter of time before a request came in to excavate the monument's "hidden treasure."

In November 1949, several individuals from Boise, Idaho, aware of the legend, asked permission to dig for the secret cache supposedly in or near the formation known as the "Old Man of the Craters" on the southern slope of Paisley Cone. Believing they had located the site through suspect means, Superintendent Aubrey Houston denied their request until he gained confirmation from his superiors. For the Park Service, the situation caused a policy dilemma. At first, the Service "reluctantly recommended" that an excavation permit might granted, because this was consistent with agency policy and there appeared to be no valid reasons to deny the request. However, the proposed excavation was to occur in an area of monument's highest "value and use" and would leave an irreparable landscape scar. Stating that the excavation was inconsistent with the monument's purpose and the Park Service's mission, Western Region Director Lawrence C. Merriam denied the treasure hunting permit in April 1951. Nevertheless, the story resurfaces periodically, exciting more interest and eliciting more agency denials. [19]

Taking Action: "Hot Rods" and Cinder Cones: Off-Road Driving

A more destructive form of human erosion originated in the monument's early years as well. Driving across the cinders and fragile geologic features at the monument occurred prior to and after the monument's establishment. Both explorers and sightseers left the primitive road system and ventured unrestrained (as did pedestrians) across the delicate cinders creating troughs and tracking footprints in the process. Compaction of the sand-like cinders left an indelible image for years, altering the color of the surface in places and leading to the growth of vegetation in the depressions. In addition to these "cosmetic" scars, early auto travelers frequently sunk into the cinders, spinning deep ruts and breaking limbs off of limber pines for traction. [20] Brittle, hard-surfaced lava formations also suffered permanent damage. This situation was perhaps inherent to Craters of the Moon because of its enticing rolling terrain and informal road system. At first developments played an important role in mitigating this destructive activity. Custodian Albert T. Bicknell--with the help of the emergency conservation work programs in the early 1930s--tried to resolve the issue through the erection of rock barriers along the monument roads and the establishment of more formal trails to prevent cars and their drivers from wandering off onto cinder slopes.

However promising these developments appeared, they were not enough of a deterrent some thirty years later. Even after Mission 66 modernized the monument's loop drive and adjacent roads, rising visitation increased number of incidents, suggesting that the problem was here to stay. Confronted with a rash of off road-driving by local youths from Arco in March 1961, Superintendent Henderson increased protection by initiating night patrols. He exhorted that such actions were contemptible, should be actively opposed, and viewed as "an act of vandalism." [21]

Two years later, Superintendent Daniel Davis acted on this directive and recorded what is probably the first enforcement against off-road driving at the monument, writing that the Butte County Sheriff returned four California youths to Craters of the Moon for driving across cinder cone slopes with their "hot rods." Davis punished the youths by making them rake out their tracks, a policy incorporated into the first resource management plan. [22] Active enforcement and public contact, as practiced by Davis, helped to alleviate but not cure the problem. In a small measure, the problem persists; the wide trail up Inferno Cone, for instance, occasionally attracts four wheel drive vehicles. [23]

Taking Action: Cinder Hauling and Vandalism

Off-road driving was indicative of rising damage overall to geologic features in the 1950s with expanded protection forming the management response. For example, in October of 1952, Superintendent Houston discovered that cinder hauling was taking place since the cinders were attractive for landscaping, an occurrence likely attributable to the region's construction boom. After discovering the activity, Houston increased patrols, two to three times a day, and resolved the problem. [24]

Outright vandalism during this period, however, underscored the obstacles a small staff encountered protecting the resources. In August 1953, Ranger Robert Zink discovered that some hikers had ventured four miles south of the Tree Molds parking area to Trench Mortar Flat where they "attempted to dig up one of the lava trees," vertical tree molds believed to be the only type in existence. Zink lamented that a lack of personnel to patrol the closed area (now wilderness) or funds for protective fencing found the administration unable "to control the activities of such visitors." [25]

Reflecting the expanded administrative capacity set in motion by Mission 66, Superintendent Henderson took steps to offset vandalism in other areas of the monument, initiating the construction and installation of the gate at Arco Tunnel in May 1961. The gate also provided for visitor safety. And in August, the superintendent increased ranger patrols "in an effort to discourage the removal of rock samples and vandalism to some of the more heavily visited features." [26] As part of this protection and public information program, two months later Henderson erected five signs warning "visitors that specimen collection is prohibited." [27]

Taking Action: Devil's Sewer: The Lost Feature

Increased patrols, warnings, and signs, however, failed to completely prevent the destruction of volcanic features. The impacts represented a process that transpired over a long period of time, and by 1962 their effects appeared in the Devil's Sewer formation situated in the North Crater Flow. [28] The lava section contained a variety of interesting features including aa and pahoehoe lava flows, a pressure ridge, squeeze-outs, monoliths, common plant life of the pahoehoe habitat, and the famous 1,350-year-old Triple Twist Tree. The central element of the area was a long lava tube known commonly as the "Lava Snake." Accessible from the first turnout along the loop drive and by a 300-yard trail, the site received a great deal of use. In the late 1940s and early 1950s Superintendent Aubrey Houston called attention to its impairment intensified by the Opening Day celebration, whereby "Vandalism is a constant threat to some of the most interesting features. As an example, the Lava Snake has been so badly damaged by souvenir hunters or destructive vandals as to be unrecognizable." [29]

Almost forty years of this activity and off-trail hiking across the brittle rock eroded the feature until it had virtually disappeared. In September 1962, Superintendent Merle Stitt pronounced its destruction: "once a 35-foot squeezed-out tube of geological importance, [it] has been completely destroyed by thoughtless visitors. Approximately 2-1/2 feet of this formation remained at the beginning of the 1962 travel season." [30] Afterwards the area was still interpreted but the feature's diminishment redirected interpretive efforts to other features within the North Crater Lava Flow. [31]

The photo at right reveals an intact portion of the "lava snake", ca. 1940s or 1950s;
the photo at left feature's destruction, ca. 1962. Note the proximity of the trail to the feature.
(Left photo, CRMO Museum Collection; right photo, courtesy Glenn Hinsdale)