Craters of the Moon Administrative History

Chapter 8:
INTERPRETATION

THE PROGRAM: NONPERSONAL SERVICES

The self-guiding theme has directed the interpretive program at the monument in the form of nonpersonal services, and comprises a bulk of the program itself. A variety of factors influenced this development, namely the short-term visitor, the close proximity of the monument's volcanic features, and the fluctuations in the size of the seasonal staff and annual budget. Consequently, the combination of a self-guiding road and trail system, waysides, publications, and facilities enable the visitor to both understand and experience the monument with as much ease as possible.

Nonpersonal Services:
VISITOR CENTER

Finished in March 1958, the visitor center provided the monument with its first interpretive facility and the key component of the young program. Situated near the highway and high enough to overlook monument scenery, Craters of the Moon's visitor center advertised the presence of the National Park Service and attracted visitors to the building. There they could view the volcanic terrain and learn more about it before embarking on the self-guided loop drive.

The monument's 1956 museum prospectus called for the use of museum exhibits, panels, and audiovisual media in the new visitor center to introduce and explain the weird volcanic phenomena and life found within this landscape to the visitor. With Superintendent Floyd Henderson's administration, monument officials proceeded to set up the visitor center's museum. Display cases, panels, and a relief map visually related the complex story of basaltic volcanism and associated natural history contained in the monument. An important and popular device was the three-minute eruption film of Hawaiian volcanism which concluded the visual narrative. [76]

When installed in May 1959, the automatic projector (with film tree) soon proved to be the most "effective means of interpreting the area," [77] Henderson reported, but malfunctions plagued its operation, damaging films and often excluding this important audiovisual feature from visitor orientation--a situation which continued intermittently over subsequent decades. [78] The usefulness of the short film occupied the majority of the interpretation division's activities at the visitor center. In 1964, for instance, Chief Park Naturalist Edgar Menning advocated expanding the film's length to twenty minutes to convey a more comprehensive story, and proposed constructing an auditorium adjacent to the visitor center capable of seating 150 people. This type of building would solve an inherent design problem in the museum exhibit room, whereby sound from the film spilled out into the room disturbing concentration on other displays. Yet plans fell through and the Park Service dropped the project. Naturalist Dennis Carter had recommended against the longer film and auditorium because the visitation patterns had changed. Rather than the 90 percent estimated in the mid-1960s, only 50 percent of the monument's visitors stopped at the center, and a twenty-minute film, Carter believed, would waste too much of the average visitor's one-to-three-hour stay. [79]

The problem with sound spillage persisted. As detailed by Chief Interpreter David Clark in his 1979 interpretive prospectus, the monument decided to correct the issue by creating a soundproofed alcove for the audiovisual program, which has yet to be built. [80] In 1987 an exhibit development project funded the completion of a new monument video; it extended the play length to five minutes; the troublesome projector/film tree was replaced by a video cassette player/television, and in 1989 the interpretation division installed a laser disc player, thus completing the mission to find a relatively maintenance-free, if not quiet, audiovisual program. [81]

Another of the dominant issues relating to the visitor center has been the condition of museum exhibits. Completion of the displays was staggered through the late 1950s and early 1960s because of funding limitations. Because of the monument's interpretive design theme, the visitor center museum was dedicated to relating only the essentials to visitors, placing more emphasis on the "exhibits-in-place." Although various revisions and rehabilitations of the displays have occurred in both content and media throughout the last several decades (such as the addition of a topographic relief model, mounted animals for wildlife exhibits, and the incorporation of monument history), the exhibits are around thirty years old. While in good condition their effectiveness has dwindled. In response to this, Harpers Ferry Center undertook a new exhibit program in June 1987, although completion of the project awaits funding. [82]