Crater Lake

In 1938, park naturalist John Doerr spent three months following a log. The Old Man of the Lake is a 30-foot hemlock trunk carbon-dated at more than 450 years old, and it has been bobbing perfectly vertical in Crater Lake since at least 1896, when USGS geologist J.S. Diller first recorded it. Doerr’s tracking found that between July 1 and September 30 it traveled more than 62 miles, including 3.8 miles on one windy day, respectable mileage for a dead tree. Its territory is the deepest lake in the United States, 1,943 feet of water filling the caldera left when Mount Mazama collapsed about 7,700 years ago.

The depth contours show a lake unlike any other. Tight rings plunge from the caldera rim straight toward the deep central basin, with almost no shallow water anywhere along the shore. Wizard Island stands out as a bullseye of concentric lines, the summit of a volcano growing inside a volcano. The map makes plain what the blue surface only hints at: a nearly 2,000 foot pit rimmed by cliffs on every side.