Craters of the Moon Administrative History

Chapter 9:
DEVELOPMENTS

The Physical Plant:
ROADS: OVERVIEW

To an isolated area like Craters of the Moon National Monument, roads played a particularly important function in routing tourists to the area and circulating them through it. The highway traversing the monument's northern corner formed part of the historical travel route skirting the foothills of the Pioneer Mountains. During the early settlement period of the 1910s and 1920s, the citizens of Arco and Hailey developed the trail into a rough road to allow sightseers to reach the monument. In 1922 these same individuals created the double entrance system (see map), known as the Arco and Hailey entrances, enabling drivers to enter the monument from the east or west, respectively, along Highway 22. [11]

Concurrently, this group established the loop drive. Members from local communities--"Sunday Rock Pickers"--constructed a road beginning near Martin and extended it south into the monument hugging the cinder cone edges, through the old eastern entrance. From there it led south of the old headquarters site (near the campground), over the North Crater Flow to Registration Waterhole, and around Paisley Cone to Devil's Orchard. There it branched, one section heading toward the Caves Area and the other to the Big Craters. [12]

Inheriting this primitive road system in 1924, the Park Service has changed little in its design, for it successfully led visitors to the monument's most scenic sites. It was this guideline that governed road developments in subsequent decades along with programs for modernization and maintenance. Although the Park Service planned a five-year program for road improvements, among other things, budgeting some $50,000, the monument's first custodians were allotted only a few hundred dollars for road work. [13] Even with this "limited means," in 1926 Custodian Samuel Paisley reported that he improved the entrance into the monument and construct "fairly good roads...to the extinct craters." It also seems that Paisley might have finished the loop drive route, for he stated that he laid out a loop trip of five miles, apparently completing the route from the Big Craters around the southern side of Inferno Cone to the Devil's Orchard spur road. [14]

In the summer of 1927, Assistant Civil Engineer Bert Burrell's impression of the monument's road system was that the present conditions were adequate, provided that a long-range program was planned. He recommended, however, changing the circulation system in order to centralize the entrance to aid the one-man staff in visitor contacts and campground control, and at the same time aid the concessionaire's business located on the proposed entrance road. When the sudden water shortage occurred shortly after Burrell's inspection, tourists began congregating at Crater Inn for water. Complying with the engineer's suggestions, Custodian Robert Moore constructed the new entrance west of Sunset Ridge, abandoning the former double entrance, by the fall of that year. [15]

The general activity during the late 1920s and early 1930s was road maintenance, although a new administrative, two-track road was laid in the northern unit as part of the water system construction in 1931. In some cases, road improvements were necessary to protect monument resources. In 1932 Custodian Burton LaCombe lined the loop drive with rock barriers to keep motorists from driving onto the delicate cinders. [16]

LaCombe's work anticipated the New Deal work projects entered into over the next several years. The major road work, recommended by Custodian Albert Bicknell, was covered under a Public Works Administration project for widening and improving four sections of the monument's road system, beginning on May 8, 1934. The first road section worked on was the segment of Highway 22 crossing the monument. Originally built by volunteers, the road was nothing more than a trail. Widening the road and removing its blind curves, Custodian Bicknell noted, allowed two cars to safely pass, decreasing dangerous situations as travel increased. [17]

Next, the work crew eliminated the two entrance system. Although Moore had abandoned this entrance system in 1927, motorists still entered the monument from two different directions across the flat, sagebrush-covered terrain near the highway. Both east and west entrances were short roads leading into the monument from the highway, approximately a quarter of a mile apart. In the sagebrush the roads were nearly invisible from the highway, and visitors often passed the monument without seeing them. The roads were also narrow and dangerous. To correct these problems, workers closed the western, or Hailey Entrance, a third-of-a-mile road paralleling the highway, and constructed a "Y" at the eastern, or Arco Entrance, [18] since it was both a shorter and safer route from the highway--now visible with sagebrush cropped and a cinder surface applied. The final two narrow sections of the monument loop drive were likewise widened, straightened, graded and cinder-surfaced for better driving conditions. These included the two-mile stretch from the headquarters to Devil's Orchard junction, and the spur road leading from the loop drive to the Big Craters parking area. Additional road work entailed construction of embankments and rock barriers to keep cars on the road. [19]

Auto travel through the monument's rough lava flows underscored
the importance of a good road system, ca. 1920s.
(CRMO Museum Collection)