Mount Rainier Administrative History

PART THREE: YEARS OF PROMISE, 1915-1930

IX. THE RAINIER NATIONAL PARK COMPANY (continued)

GROWTH OF THE PARK CONCESSION

When Mather got together with Seattle and Tacoma businessmen in 1915 to form a partnership of public and private investment in the development of Mount Rainier National Park, neither party anticipated the pace at which visitor use would grow. Mount Rainier's total annual visitation shot from 34,814 visitors in 1915, to 123,708 visitors in 1923, on the way to 265,620 visitors in 1930. [71] For a brief period in 1924-25, Mount Rainier passed Yellowstone as the second-most visited national park in the United States (though well below the annual visitation of Rocky Mountain). At the end of this period it remained a close third. [72]

The driving force behind these numbers was, of course, the sensational spread of the automobile in American society. As early as 1923, it was claimed that one in two American families owned their own car. Mather reacted to the spread of the automobile with glee. He supported the automobile as the most democratic means of opening up the parks to the people, and of building up a strong constituency of national park users. His biographer, Robert Shankland, wryly commented that "Mather could recognize manna when he saw it." [73] Significantly, the businessmen who formed the RNPC were less than enthusiastic about the growing dominance of the automobile in the national park. As the company's officers consistently pointed out, the RNPC made its money from patrons who traveled by train. These were the people who boarded the company's auto stages in Tacoma and stayed at the Paradise Inn. Automobile travelers typically came and went without patronizing anything but the RNPC's restrooms. [74]

The RNPC liked to portray itself as the victim of its special position in the national park. Company officers insisted that the NPS required the RNPC to make sacrifices for the public interest again and again, either by providing services that did not make a profit or by foregoing promising developments that would make up the company's losses elsewhere. The company also tended to get the public's ire for things that were beyond its control, in spite of its best public relations efforts. "Don't forget that the Park Company is the 'goat' for much criticism based on National Park regulations and restrictions," the RNPC's general manager once told a local magazine reporter. [75] One of the difficulties of sorting out the RNPC's role in the development of Mount Rainier National Park is that the company's somewhat plaintive public relations stance contained a modicum of truth: the RNPC was in fact forced to make financial sacrifices in the public interest, and it was indeed maligned unfairly by local public opinion.

The RNPC was victimized most of all, however, by the spread of the automobile. While railroads brought tourists to national park hotels, automobiles brought tourists to national park campgrounds. Although Mount Rainier jockeyed for position with Yellowstone as the second-most heavily visited park in the United States, it was a distant fourth after Grand Canyon, Glacier, and Yellowstone in the number of train passengers received. This disparity was a source of constant frustration to the RNPC, which tried everything in its power to get more out-of-state train passengers to come to the park. The inundation of the park with automobilists actually worked to the RNPC's disadvantage, because it made the transcontinental railroads wary of all the RNPC's overtures.

The RNPC's impressive capital investment in Mount Rainier National Park during the 1920s is best understood as an effort to reconcile two objectives. The first objective was to cooperate with the NPS's plan for the development of the park--a development plan, nevertheless, which pandered more and more to the automobilist. The second objective was to interest one or more of the transcontinental railroads in exploiting Mount Rainier in the same way Yellowstone, Glacier, and Grand Canyon were exploited--with a branch line to the park and one or two well-financed grand hotels. With the advantage of hindsight, it would seem that the glory days of the big national park hotels were past in the 1920s. Yet surprisingly, RNPC officials did manage, with help from Mather and Albright, to interest the Northern Pacific, Great Northern, Union Pacific, and Milwaukee Road in a $2.5 million joint development proposal in 1928-29. The RNPC, as shall be seen, came within an ace of realizing its dream just prior to the Great Depression.

Extending the Visitor Season

It was the RNPC's perennial desire that the NPS open the road to Paradise as early in the season as possible. Late-melting snowpacks usually precluded outdoor camping at Paradise until mid-July, but the inn would attract visitors as soon as the road was plowed. Indeed, so anxious was the RNPC to get the visitor season started in June that for several years it operated a saddle horse and baggage sled service from Longmire in order to get tourists up to Paradise Inn prior to the opening of the road. Unfortunately, the company received many complaints from visitors about the discomforts that this trip entailed. [76]

Opening the road to Paradise was a yearly race against time. NPS road crews used a tractor, a steam shovel, army-surplus TNT, and even hand shovels to get the job done. Floyd Schmoe, the RNPC's winter caretaker in 1919-20, gave a vivid picture of this work in his book, A Year in Paradise.

Day by day the sound of the shovel grew closer, and soon from the inn we could see the clanking, stuttering machine slowly creeping up the deep trough it was gnawing through the layers of snow....

The next day was Sunday, July 4; and we celebrated it by cheering the government road crew and the weary steam shovel around the last bend. They arrived in front of the inn about four in the afternoon--and directly behind the government trucks came the big red buses of the Park Company. The first ones were filled with college girl waitresses and maids, college boy guides, bellboys, busboys, tent boys, dishwashers, and sundry others. Then not a hundred yards behind this bus there were two busloads of tourists. [77]

The most dramatic race against time occurred the following year, in 1921. That April, RNPC President David Whitcomb boldly slated a convention of the National Association of Building Owners and Managers for June 26, then negotiated with Albright to share costs with the government for an all-out effort to open the road by that date. On May 10, Mather wired Superintendent Peters that he wanted the road opened in time for the convention, with photographs to document the whole process. On May 23, Mather reiterated this request, adding that the unusually heavy snowfall made the opening of the road "in the nature of an emergency." On June 14, word came from Superintendent Peters that the weight of the snow shovel was damaging the cribbing on the switchbacks above Narada Falls, but that they were pushing ahead with dynamite and hand labor. Finally, on July 9, two weeks after the convention, came the long-awaited telegram from Peters: "Automobile reached Paradise Inn." Then it was time to reckon the costs--$4,000 to $5,000 for the RNPC and approximately double that amount for the NPS. Albright and Cammerer consulted Mather and decided not to ask the company for a contribution to the $4,000 cost overrun. [78]

Similar excitement occurred earlier each season as the first tourist cars reached Longmire. Peters' monthly report for May 1921 described the scene:

To the Chevrolet Motor Company of Seattle goes the credit of being the first to reach Longmire Springs by auto. After two unsuccessful attempts, they drove one of their cars through to the Springs on Sunday, May 8, while there was still about two feet of snow on the ground. A rather ingenious device of extension wooden ladders, was used for getting over the deeper drifts, which proved very effective.

Later in the day The Blangy Motor Company, authorized by Ford dealer of Tacoma, brought a car to Longmire without the use of any mechanical device whatsoever; and to the Ford should go the credit of really breaking the road to Longmire Springs. [79]

It was not long before the Park Service and the RNPC began to discuss Mount Rainier's potential as a winter resort. Prior to 1923, some 1,200 to 1,400 Northwesterners snowshoed or skied into the park each winter, many on weekend outings with The Mountaineers. Beginning in that year, the Park Service kept the road open all year as far as Longmire. The RNPC rented out snowshoes, skis, and toboggans, and kept the National Park Inn open "informally." Ten thousand people took this opportunity to visit the park during the first winter season of 1923-24, most of them coming only for the day.

In the winter of 1924-25, the RNPC tried to attract more people to the park by bringing in a team of thirteen Alaskan sled dogs and an Eskimo driver. [80] Tourists paid a fare to ride through the Douglas fir and hemlock forest on the dog sled. This was continued for several years. No one questioned the fact that the dog sled was completely out of context at Mount Rainier; rather, it was considered another form of winter sport along with the popular toboggan run at Longmire and the ski and snowshoe trips up to Paradise. [81]

From the Park Service's standpoint, the use of the park for winter recreation was a great success. From the RNPC's standpoint, the winter operation was a disappointment because it did not pay for itself. The inn could only afford to open during the weekends, and the employees had to be run in and out of the park each Saturday and Sunday on a company bus. While the company lost money each winter season, it continued to operate through each winter in part as a public service, in part with the hope of building up a larger winter clientele over time. [82]

The First Aerial Tramway Proposal

Mount Rainier's real potential as a winter sports center lay in getting people to Paradise. Longmire experienced frequent rain and above-freezing temperatures during the winter, while Paradise's extra elevation assured it of much better snow conditions. With this in mind, the RNPC's T.H. Martin in 1924 proposed an aerial tramway from the Nisqually road bridge up the mountainside to Paradise. It would be purely functional, an alternative to the road during the three-quarters of the year when the road was closed. Superintendent Tomlinson forwarded this proposal to Mather with the comment that the tramway would make Paradise available for winter use and therefore deserved further study. [83]

The tramway proposal went no further for three and a half years, or until January 1928. Then Martin tried to link the tramway development to the construction of a second hotel, Paradise Lodge, at Paradise. "It is our definite plan to maintain the new hotel on an all year basis," Martin wrote, "and to do this it will, of course, be necessary to have some sort of comfortable and practicable method of transportation to Paradise Valley throughout the winter." [84] RNPC President H.A. Rhodes assured Mather that the tramway would not be promoted as a novelty or "Coney Island type of amusement." [85] The RN PC held that the only alternative to a tramway was for the NPS to keep the road open all winter--at an estimated cost of $100,000 per year. Of course, another alternative was to operate the new hotel on a seasonal basis just like the Paradise Inn, but NPS officials never broached this possibility with the RNPC out of concern that the hotel would not be built. NPS officials did not endorse the RNPC's premise that the expansion of Paradise facilities required that the area have a winter tourist season, but they did not take issue with it either.

The tramway proposal stirred opposition in the Park Service. Chief Landscape Engineer Thomas C. Vint observed that the tramway would mar one of the most spectacular roadside views in the park--the view of the Nisqually Glacier from the Glacier Bridge. Others worried that it would be precedent-setting, opening the door for tramways to be built to the tops of peaks in other national parks. The fact that many such tramways could be found in the Alps was no consolation to them; a review of these European engineering works indicated that they were built without much regard for scenic preservation. Still another concern was that local organizations including The Mountaineers and the Rainier National Park Advisory Board might oppose the project. [86]

Mather gave this issue his close attention, consulting not only his own landscape architects, but also the National Commission of Fine Arts in New York City. In August 1928, he gave the project his tentative approval, explaining his decision to Superintendent Tomlinson thus:

This is not a proposition having in view a spectacular trip, nor to make a scenic point in a park available at greater convenience to the traveling public, such as the proposed tramway to the top of Mount Hood contemplated or the existing cograil to the top of Pikes Peak presents, but an arrangement whereby the future hotel will be made accessible during the winter months for winter sports and travel from the most readily accessible point on the road. It therefore cannot be pointed to as a precedent by any other park operators, and any other such applications would have to be passed on their merits. [87]

The tramway proposal fizzled one year later, in the summer of 1929. The NPS remained tentatively supportive to the end, and the decision not to go forward appears to have rested with the RNPC rather than the NPS and to have been based on economics rather than aesthetics. After completing the new Paradise Lodge in 1928, the RNPC was in a weak financial condition. As discussed below, company officials were trying diligently to work out a plan with the major Pacific Northwest railroads to refinance the company. This circumstance seems to have been the crucial one in causing the tramway proposal to fizzle.

Nevertheless, the Park Service's evolving position in the first half of 1929 is instructive. The two major points of concern--that the tramway would mar the scenery, and that it would set a bad precedent--continued to cause a great deal of ambivalence. Tomlinson worked closely with the RNPC's hired engineer, Richard Ernst from the German firm of Blechiert & Company, to ensure that the visual intrusiveness of the tramway would be minimized. He was disappointed to learn, for example, that the loading station would have to be placed below instead of above the road, so that it would now be in plain view to anyone approaching the Glacier Bridge from Ricksecker Point. [88] As for the claim that it would not be precedent-setting, this did not deter Assistant Director Albright from holding a conference with Ernst and various other tramway experts on both it and the Yosemite Valley-Glacier Point tramway proposal. [89] When the Secretary of Agriculture spoke out against the proposed aerial tramway to the summit of Mount Hood, NPS officials felt compelled to urge the officers of the RNPC to "keep the soft pedal on their project as far as publicity is concerned." [90] It was clear to NPS officials that they could not treat the RNPC proposal as an isolated case.

The other interesting point that the tramway proposal brought to light was the attitude of The Mountaineers. The Tacoma Mountaineers came out squarely in support of the proposal in March 1929. [91] The Seattle Mountaineers waited for a copy of Ernst's report in April before passing judgment; then it too expressed support. On May 9, The Mountaineers's Board of Trustees gave unanimous approval to the project. Superintendent Tomlinson was somewhat taken aback by this. [92] Earlier, the NPS had not wanted to approve the project without The Mountaineers's support; now it sought some indication that The Mountaineers would stand behind it should the NPS decide to oppose the installation.

It is impossible to know, of course, what Mather's ultimate decision would have been had the RNPC continued to press for this development. He was always careful to leave himself an out. In his annual report for 1929, he reported, "No actual opposition to the proposed aerial tramway has developed, but all National Park Service officials and all those not connected with the company have expressed themselves as opposed to the location of the cableway in any manner that will interfere with the view of the Nisqually Canyon as one approaches the Glacier Bridge from either direction." [93] When Mather wrote this, he knew that Ernst's plan involved just such a visual intrusion, even though it was the most discreet of four routes considered. Thus, a year and a half after his discussions with the RNPC on this issue began, he had not committed himself definitely to anything.

A Search for Capital

The RNPC's partnership with the NPS culminated during this era in the preparation of an ambitious "park development plan." The plan was produced in cooperation with Superintendent Tomlinson, Mather, and NPS landscape architects, who were themselves designing the park's road development plan. A major problem with the plan was that the RNPC did not have sufficient capital to carry out its part. The NPS tried to help the RNPC to enlist the financial backing of one or more railroad companies, but the railroads finally offered only token assistance.

The main stimulus for this planning effort was Congress's five-year, multi-million dollar, national park road construction program. With this infusion of federal funds, Park Service officials now had the opportunity and responsibility to determine which sections of the park would be opened up by roads and which sections ultimately would be left in a primitive condition. As park planners contemplated how the park's network of roads would eventually shape up, the question arose whether the RNPC would provide the requisite hotel accommodations at the ends of these new roads. Neither the RNPC nor the NPS wanted to see competition develop from rival concessions in other sections of the park. On the other hand, it was evident that the RNPC's financial resources would be stretched thin enough just to carry out the necessary expansion of facilities at Paradise. Faced with this choice, NPS officials preferred to stick with the single concession and assist the RNPC in growing into a larger operation.

The first way in which the NPS was able to help the RNPC to improve its financial standing was to strengthen its concession contract with the government. The RNPC's original contract in 1916 was to run for twenty years, but in 1926 company officials applied for a new, stronger franchise. The Park Service prepared a new contract for the RNPC which added stronger protections against competition, changed the government's fee from a profit-sharing plan to a percentage of gross receipts, and included sundry other modifications. Albright called it "the best franchise that has ever been prepared for the National Park Service." [94] Most importantly, the new contract allowed the RNPC to increase its capital stock by mortgaging its properties. This much desired feature was included in the contract by authority of an act of Congress passed on March 7, 1928. The new contract, which ran for another twenty years, was signed on April 2, 1928. [95]

The second way in which the NPS was able to help the RNPC was to involve the company as a full partner in its master planning effort. As a first step, NPS Chief Landscape Architect Thomas C. Vint attended the meeting of the RNPC board of directors in Seattle on April 9, 1928, one week after the new contract had been completed. President H.A. Rhodes called for an estimated $960,000 investment over the next five years--considerably more than the company's existing capital stock of $500,000 would allow. Listening to the board discuss the company's new five-year plan for upgrading and expanding its facilities, Vint proposed that the NPS and the RNPC work "hand-in-hand" in fashioning a comprehensive park development plan. Such a plan, though even more ambitious than Rhodes's five-year plan, would actually make it easier for the RNPC to interest large investors, namely the railroads, in its long-range scheme. According to Vint, "the board of directors considered this scheme very favorable and saw its advantage in planning their financial program as well as their construction program." [96] Mather responded even more favorably. The idea of involving the company in a general plan for the entire park, Mather wrote, was "excellent and should be followed out." [97]

Vint returned to the Park Service's new field office in San Francisco and produced a package of drawings and overlays called the "Master Plan for Mount Rainier." The master plan involved the RNPC in three areas: 1) an expansion of the development at Paradise, 2) a new hotel and cabin complex to be built at Yakima Park within the next couple of years, after the NPS completed a road up to the site, and 3) another and final development, probably located at Spray Park, to be undertaken a few years after that. Although quite sketchy by later standards, it was the first master plan of its kind in the national park system. [98] Later, a $2.5 million price tag would be attached to these developments--a near tripling of the investment Rhodes had proposed only a few months earlier. The main outlines of the plan were ready in time for Mather's trip west that July.

At Mount Rainier, Mather rode horseback up to Yakima Park with Tomlinson, Vint, Rhodes, and Asahel Curtis, chairman of the Rainier National Park Advisory Board, to inspect the proposed development site. Curtis took their photograph: the men seated on an outcropping of rock, Vint's maps and drawings spread out across their knees, and in the background, the enormous east face of Mount Rainier rising beyond the bare meadow where the new hotel would be built. It was a perfect image of the partnership between the NPS and the RNPC, symbolizing perhaps the headiest and most promising moment in the partnership's fifty-year history.

Twelve days after leaving Mount Rainier, Mather and Rhodes had another meeting, this time in company with the Northern Pacific's president, Charles Donnelly, at Mammoth Hot Springs in Yellowstone National Park. It appears that this was the first time the RNPC approached the Northern Pacific as a potential investor, and Mather was there to give the railroad executive his most effective sales pitch. According to a memorandum prepared by a Northern Pacific official after this meeting, Mather felt so positive about the Yakima Park site that he thought it would surpass even Paradise in fame and popularity. [99]

In January 1929, Rhodes gave a more complete presentation of the RNPC's proposal to Northern Pacific officials. This was followed by a conference one month later in Portland involving Donnelly and six other Northern Pacific officials on the one side and Rhodes and Martin on the other. Rhodes proposed a $2.5 million investment over five years. Rhodes explained that the RNPC could not obtain that kind of capital from its present stockholders and that it seemed to him after "'very careful consideration" that the railroads would be "logically interested" not only because of the traffic revenues that would result, but from an investment standpoint, too. [100]

Two months later, Assistant Director Albright wrote to Donnelly in support of the RNPC proposal. Albright described the master plan for Mount Rainier and reviewed the list of other national parks in which railroads had given financial assistance to the park concession. "'The time has now arrived," Albright wrote, "when.. .a very large development must go forward in Mount Rainier and it should be undertaken in the same broad gauge way in which such developments had been made in the other parks with financial assistance from the railroads interested in the growth of the tourist business." Albright gave the RNPC's financial plan his "personal endorsement," and hoped the Northern Pacific would consider it favorably. [101]

Donnelly proposed to his counterparts of the Great Northern, Union Pacific, and Milwaukee Road that the four transcontinental railroads serving Washington state should make this a joint venture, each contributing a half million dollars; the RNPC's Seattle and Tacoma stockholders would put up the remaining half million. The Union Pacific's president, C.R. Gray, found this proposal ""staggering," but like Donnelly, did not want to reject it out of hand. Together with H.A. Scandrett, president of the Milwaukee Road, he suggested that the companies send a representative to the park to look it over. The Great Northern's president, Ralph Budd, agreed but insisted on sending his own representative. [102]

After investigating the park concession and the proposed development sites in July 1929, both railroad representatives filed favorable reports. The Northern Pacific's man thought the proposed Spray Park development would exceed visitor demand, but considered the prospects for new hotels at Paradise and Yakima Park to be excellent. The Great Northern's investigator was even more positive, suggesting that the expanded development of the park could make it the central tourist attraction of the Pacific Northwest. [103]

Why the four railroad presidents did not accept the advice of their own investigators is not entirely clear. The decisive meeting of the four executives occurred in Chicago on January 6, 1930, where they reached unanimous agreement to decline the RNPC's offer. In reply to Albright's further entreaties that March, the railroad executives insisted that they did not want to make the investment because it would be precedent-setting. The analogy between Mount Rainier and other national parks in which the railroads were involved was not fair, they said, because Mount Rainier was not accessed directly by rail and unlike Yellowstone, Glacier, Grand Canyon, Zion, and Bryce Canyon, it had alternative sources of capital in the two nearby cities of Seattle and Tacoma. No mention was made of the crisis in the economy following the stock market crash of October 1929, but it seems that this may have weighed in their decision as well. When Albright tried once more to enlist their help in 1931, asking the railroads for $200,000 to assist with the Yakima Park development only, Donnelly replied that the present economic conditions made it impossible. [104] In February 1932, in the very depths of the Depression, the RNPC finally got the four railroads to buy a piddling $2,000 of company stock each. [105] After entertaining such high hopes in 1928-29, this turned out to be as much investment by the railroads in Mount Rainier National Park as the RNPC and the NPS would ever see.

Developments at Paradise

In its five-year plan of 1928, the RNPC proposed to make qualitative improvements at Paradise as well as merely expand its facilities. For that reason, RNPC officials thought in terms of a whole new structure some distance apart from the Paradise Inn. It would offer deluxe accommodations, and it would be more fire-proof than the old building. [106] Preliminary plans called for 118 rooms to start and a total of 200 rooms after completion. [107] Meanwhile, the Paradise Inn would be scaled back to a lodge-type of service, the full-service dining room converted into a cafeteria, and the bungalow tents replaced by cabins.

This plan met with NPS approval. It addressed the general upscaling of visitor preferences that had taken place over the past decade. As Albright and Vint both saw it, the national park should eventually provide five types of accommodations on a scale from rustic to sophisticated, beginning with free public campgrounds and ending with deluxe hotel service. In between these two extremes would be what were called "housekeeping cabins," and two types of indoor lodging known as the "European plan" and the "American plan," the chief distinction being whether or not the rooms had private baths. [108] The RNPC's improvements were thus tied into an effort to create uniform standards among all national park concessioners. [109]

Owing to a lack of capital, however, this plan had to be revised in 1930. The original Paradise Inn was refurbished, repainted and retained as the most luxurious hotel in the park. The tents which had surrounded it on three sides were removed. Plans for a deluxe hotel were abandoned; instead, the RNPC built 275 housekeeping cabins and a central service building with cafeteria, camp store, and 40 guest rooms. This building was called the Paradise Lodge. The housekeeping cabins and lodge were located away from the Paradise Inn. Built during the fall of 1930, the cabins and lodge were opened to the public on June 20, 1931. [110]

There was one other noteworthy development at Paradise in 1930-31. The NPS approved a request by the RNPC to put in a nine-hole golf course. This short-lived "experiment," completed in 1931, was justified by Park Service officials on the grounds that golfing was a form of outdoor recreation and would not detract from the mountain setting. [111] It appears to have been one more attempt by the RNPC to attract a sojourning type of clientele to the Paradise Inn.

Developments at Sunrise

Just as the disappointing search for investors and the economic downturn in 1930 altered the new development at Paradise, so too did they affect the RNPC's development at Yakima Park, or "Sunrise." Here the scaling back of RNPC developments caused NPS officials more frustration, however, because it defeated the park administration's long-standing aim of taking pressure off the Paradise area by creating an equivalent development on the east side of the mountain. Indeed, some people suspected the RNPC of dragging its feet precisely in order to keep visitors concentrated at Paradise.

Sunrise was to be the first instance of master planning of a complete area by the NPS and the park concession. The NPS would build the access road and plaza, physical plant, campground, and administrative buildings; the RNPC would build the hotel and cabins and be ready to serve the public practically as soon as the road opened. The imperative for close cooperation was recognized as early as 1923, six years before the road work was actually begun. [112] In 1928-29, when NPS planners began drafting alternative plans, it was expected that the RNPC would build a full-service hotel and cabins at the site. When the RNPC's plans for refinancing collapsed in 1930 and it turned out the hotel was not to be, the NPS was left with an overdeveloped site in spite of its best efforts to plan carefully.

The lay of the land at Yakima Park did not make planning any easier. The road reached the top of the ridge at Sunrise Point and came westward toward the mountain view. The landscape engineers (Tom Vint and his assistant, Ernest A. Davidson, who was assigned to Mount Rainier in 1928) found that Yakima Park divided naturally into three segments proceeding from east to west: the relatively narrow approach, the park proper, and a lower area of benches around Shadow Lake. It was already agreed that the '"hotel" would stand in the park proper. The question was where to put the government buildings, the campground, the cabins, and the camp store and cafeteria building in relation to the '"hotel" and road. The desirability of keeping the park proper uncluttered had to be weighed against the limitations of space at either end of Yakima Park. Above all, the NPS wanted to keep the area between the road and the canyon rim in a natural state. [113]

Sunrise Lodge and cabins under construction in 1930 or 1931. The development was supposed to be the first instance of cooperative planning by the Park Service and a concessioner but the Great Depression forced the company to scale back its commitment. (J. W. Wheeler photo courtesy of University of Washington, Negative No. UW15697)

To Davidson, the RNPC proved a most exasperating partner. The company's responses to his many alternative plans (eventually eight in all) were vague, inconsistent, and uncooperative. Even when Albright and Tomlinson visited the area with the RNPC's director and general manager in July 1929, the two parties failed to reach final agreement on where the developments would go. Company officials did state, however, that they wanted sufficient area to put in no less than 600 cabins. After many more delays, RNPC officials finally approved a development plan on February 4, 1930--one month after their two million dollar proposal had been turned down by the railroads. [114]

The RNPC's development plan was considerably scaled back. In July 1929, RNPC officials had described their plans for the Yakima Park area to the Great Northern's investigator as follows: Construction of a 300 room hotel, most rooms with bath, electric lighted and heated; a central lodge building and cabins nearby to accommodate 300 guests; 80 to 100 housekeeping cabins for auto tourists; and a hydro-electric plant, garage, and service buildings. [115] But when the Sunrise development opened for tourists two years later, accommodations consisted of 215 housekeeping cabins and a central service building containing cafeteria, camp store, post office, storage, and employee dormitories. Moreover, in the interests of economy, the RNPC eliminated many of the adornments on the main building that the architectural drawings called for and laid out the cabins in straight rather than curving rows. [116]

In summary, the effort to incorporate the RNPC's general development plan into Mount Rainier National Park's master plan went awry in 1930-31. Park planners had every reason to feel keen disappointment over the company's flagging contribution to the park's development. But it would be too simple to attribute this failure to caprice or greed on the part of the RNPC. Rather, it reflected underlying weaknesses in the partnership of public and private investment in Mount Rainier National Park. This soon became obvious as the Great Depression knocked the stuffing out of the national park concession.