Rim Village: Cultural Landscape Inventory, Crater Lake National Park, National Park Service

Hankinson, Mike

Rim Village is located on the southwest portion of the Crater Lake caldera at an elevation of 7100 feet above sea level. Rim Village is primarily a linear historic district, closely following the caldera rim for one half‑mile, and extending southeasterly approximately one quarter‑mile. The landscape is a mixture of highly designed developed areas and natural areas, including large indigenous hemlock trees, and the fragile landform of the caldera. Rim Village covers approximately 32 acres of land. The period of significance is 1927 through 1941, encompassing the years when Rim Village was designed and constructed under the direction of Thomas C. Vint of the NPS San Francisco field office. Rim Village is significant on a national level for its association with the events of the American Park Movement and early NPS master planning. Rim Village retains a high degree of integrity as a planned, or "model", village and is in fair condition.Rim Village is significant for its association with the activity of National Park Service master planning, and for its distinctive method of construction, associated with the National Park Service Rustic and Naturalistic Landscape architectural theories of design. The period of significance is 1927‑1941, which reflects the years when Rim Village was planned, designed, and constructed under NPS direction and to which the remaining landscape characteristics and features date. Conceived as a model “village” development, Rim Village was designed to concentrate visitor services in one place. Early in design and development stages, a range of overnight accommodations and visitor amenities including lodging, camping, meals, supplies, and various general services were planned. Moreover, other landscape elements, meant to further enhance the visitor experience, were included and resulted in the development of the promenade, observation bays, and the Sinnott Memorial; these walkways and viewing platforms, in concert with visitor services, provided people with a convenient setting in which to appreciate the lake’s unique beauty and geology. Rim Village represents the complementary styles of Rustic Architecture and Naturalistic landscape architecture (distinctive methods of construction). These methods of design were implemented during the period of significance when many of Rim Village’s landscape features were designed and constructed. Rim Village’s buildings, vegetation, roads, trails, and small‑scale features incorporated 18th‑century picturesque and 19th‑century naturalistic theories of design, using the park’s indigenous stone, lumber, and native plants as basic materials. These theories and ideas were applied, refined, and advocated for by such NPS park planners as Thomas C. Vint and others on the NPS staff at the Western Field Office in San Francisco—where all planning and design work was conducted for Rim Village. Consequently, Rustic features at Rim Village represented the trend during the period of significance to blend built structures with their surrounding environment, appearing hand‑crafted or primitive, as if created without the use of technology available at the time—preserving the surrounding beauty of the landscape.

Rim Village: Cultural Landscape Inventory, Crater Lake National Park, National Park Service

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