Craters of the Moon Historic Context Statements

Recreation and Tourism in the Craters of the Moon Region, 1924-1942:
RECREATION AND TOURISM IN THE CRATERS OF THE MOON REGION, 1924-1942

Scenic tourism in the Craters of the Moon country was a twentieth-century phenomenon, for during most of the nineteenth century, the region seemed to epitomize the Snake River Plain at its worst. A foreign and forbidding landscape, the sagebrush and lava desert presented a harsh environment that fur traders and overland travelers avoided throughout 1800s. When they did come into contact with the region it was less by choice than by necessity. In the 1820s and 1830s, fur brigades traversed the desert between the Big Lost and Snake rivers, well to the east of Craters, only to make trade more efficient. Similarly, in the 1850s and 1860s, emigrants chose Goodale's Cutoff because it offered a shorter and safer route to their destinations. Even though the trail crossed through the Lost River country and the northern edge of the lava flows within today's monument, overlanders shared the opinion that the country was scenically worthless. And some, if not all, felt endangered by the perilous terrain and the arid climate. Here, then, was a visually monotonous and alien desert landscape better to cross and survive than to ponder its natural wonders. Few would have disagreed with Julius Caesar Merrill in 1864. Having passed through the volcanic desert, he was glad to put the "desolate, dismal scenery" behind him, to be rid of such a sterile, "unvarying mass of black rock," or in even more negative terms, "black vomit." [12]

The trend continued in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Miners, ranchers, and settlers routinely passed through the Craters region on their way to someplace else, and in the process, overlooked or ignored the lava landscape's aesthetic qualities. In general, travelers were not impressed with the scenery of the Craters country because it seemed to be such an uninviting place which caused great physical hardships. Speaking for many potential tourists in the early 1880s, Carrie Strahorn described the stage trip from Blackfoot to old Arco, or "Lost River Junction," as forty miles

through a sage-brush desert with not a drop of water the entire distance except what was hauled by teams from Snake River. The dust was insufferable enveloping the stage in such clouds of ashy earth that we could not see the wheels of the coach and it spread over us like waves of the sea.

To make matters worse the Lost River Junction provided only primitive accommodations for stage passengers, though conditions steadily improved, over the several years as she and her husband, Union Pacific promoter Robert Strahorn, traveled through southern Idaho. [13]

What seemed to remain a constant were the poor traveling conditions and their negative influence on aesthetic perceptions. Just as experienced by early emigrants, the rough desert road damaged stage coaches and slowed travel. One particular spring seemed more difficult than other times of the year to Carrie Strahorn. Passing west through the lava beds of the Craters country, she recalled that her party had to contend with the "expected rocky roads." She knew from experience that the lava region was "without parallel for roughness and ruts," and the day traversing this stretch of road stood out starkly in her mind. "I cannot begin to portray the trials of that day on the lava beds," she wrote. 'Thousands of acres of black rock, as hard as iron, rose in waves, jagged points, and minarets from a few inches to twenty-five feet." [14]

Strahorn's experience illustrates what shaped travelers' negative opinions of the volcanic territory of Craters of the Moon prior to the twentieth century. In the first place, physical discomforts--heat, dust, and rough roads--exerted considerable influence. Parched, worn, and tired, Strahorn was in no frame of mind to see this country as anything but a lava waste. In the second place, without familiar picturesque scenery, Strahorn overlooked this country's unique charm and instead emphasized its dreary monotony. This became apparent, for example, when she sought out one of the plain's more famous natural wonders, Shoshone Falls. As her stage approached the falls, Strahorn described how "the scenery was so wild and enchanting, with vast amphitheatres and curiously shaped lava rocks," so fascinating in fact "that the most critical people would forget the roughness and lose themselves in admiration of nature's freaks." [15]

Finally, as Strahorn's words reveal, nineteenth-century Americans considered awe-inspiring natural features, such as Shoshone Falls and its surrounding canyon, as "freaks" or "curiosities" worthy of seeing and preserving. As national park historian Alfred Runte argues, Americans derived a sense of cultural heritage from natural wonders that were monumental in scale--like California's ancient sequoias, the Southwest's time-worn canyons, and Yellowstone's geysers. Natural splendors of this caliber provided the young nation with a rich past. Moreover, these wonders rivaled and even eclipsed Europe's most renowned landscapes and cultural masterpieces. They not only drew scenic tourists to the West, they also encouraged the development of the national park idea and thus the creation of national parks, beginning with the Yellowstone country in 1872. [16]

However remote the Snake River's great cataracts were, sightseers willingly braved overland hardships to reach them in the 1880s and 1890s, but were not willing, it seems, to undertake the same trials to reach the Craters country. Despite this, the region was described, on occasion, in language similar to that used to extol the nation's wondrous works of nature. A few observations from this period suggest how views of the Craters landscape evolved from a repulsive region to a natural wonder of the world.

In the mid-1860s, for example, George Forman, a miner heading for the Boise Basin, passed through the lava landscape of the present monument. Surveying the formations, he expressed genuine interest in the fresh appearance of the rippled surface, the "large masses of Rock" and "honeycombed ore," which in places was hollow-sounding under foot and in others piled with cinders. Having seen other sections of the Snake River Plain as well, Forman ascribed an Old World quality to the region, noting that the three buttes rose on the horizon "like Pyramids," and suggested that the plain was unique, perhaps the "largest crater or Lava Bed in the world." [17] In the late 1870s, the noted Scottish geologist Sir Archibald Geikie, who briefly encountered the plain's eastern margin, suggested that the plain's "floods of basalt" were essential to understanding the origin of the basaltic plateaus of Ireland and Scotland. [18] In a similar sense, E.W. Jones wrote of the plain as one of the wonders of Idaho, if not the world, in the late 1880s. Jones emphasized the "varied character" of the lava landscape. The Snake River Plain, he noted, was a land of contrasts, unmatched throughout the world. The "second largest lava field," it spanned some 150,000 square miles, only exceeded by India's Deccan region. Nevertheless, he wrote that India's field could not equal in "interest our own, with its vast canyons of the Snake and Columbia Rivers, its intricate and impassable" sections, "its vast streams of basalt, black and frozen in the channels down which their floods advanced." Nor could India's lava plain compete with the Snake River Plain's magnificent surrounding mountains, the streams draining into it, the timber scattered across it, the wildlife populating it, and the wild grasses and sagebrush that clothed this "blackness and desolation...with verdure." [19] Jones presumably included the Craters country, a "line of extinct volcanoes," with his observations of the plain's exceptional character and international ranking. [20]

Despite their contributions to revising the negative image of the lava territory, Jones' and Geikie's writings seemed to have generated little interest in both the plain and the area of today's monument for sightseeing. In the late 1880s, tourist promoters may have included the "great lava bed of Idaho" in their guide books, but they did so only because tourists would have to cross the plain to reach the real western marvel, Shoshone Falls. [21]

More substantial evidence of the lava country as a natural curiosity came in 1901 when geologist Israel C. Russell studied the region. Russell's wide-ranging inventory covered the plain's geology, water, vegetation, and wildlife as well as its agricultural and settlement potential. Yet he also described the region as a natural and visual wonder. Downplaying the arid and wind-swept desert image, he emphasized instead the "healthfulness of the land" and its wilderness quality. Its wildness should be appreciated, not feared or loathed. 'To lovers of nature," he wrote, "and all who rejoice in scenes of natural wildness unmodified, or what is too frequently essentially the same thing, unmarred by the hand of man, the plains of southern Idaho present exceptional attractions." Russell's experience in the region taught him that cursory observations of the plain would not impress a traveler, especially one unaccustomed to desert environments. This was especially true when the mid-day sun or winter clouds rendered the country flat and featureless: The plain's true beauty only became known to someone who spent weeks or months riding across its "seemingly boundless surfaces," he noted. That is when he will find this landscape "to have charms unthought by the casual passerby." [22]

An important element in revealing the plain's beauty was light. As Russell pointed out, the time to view the plain was at dawn or dusk when the slanting sun beneath a clear sky cast all things in shadow, bringing out "details everywhere on its surface." Not only did light expose definition but color and shadow as well:

When the sun is high in the cloudless heavens the plains are gray, russet brown, and faded yellow, but with the rising of the sun and again near sunset they become not only brilliant and superb in color, but pass through innumerable variations in tone and tint.

Cool blues covered distant peaks rimmed with the rising sun, and as the sun rose, the colors deepened to violet and purple "of a strength and purity never seen where rain is frequent." All shades of purple bathed the arid lands. At sunset, shadows deepened and color reclaimed the landscape creating "a sea of purple on which float the still shimmering mountains." The plain's clear air turned clouds molten and magnified stars in the night sky. Such visual wonders surpassed "the ability of even a poet to describe." [23]

Though he surveyed the entire plain, he concentrated his efforts in its eastern half, discovering in the process "a score or more of volcanic cones" he called "Cinder Buttes," today's Craters of the Moon National Monument. Russell, believing these remarkably fresh craters and lava flows held the key to the geological history of the plain, conducted an intensive reconnaissance of the area from Big Cinder Butte north. It is likely, too, that Russell's experience in what is now the monument, a veritable microcosm of the entire plain, shaped his opinions about the region's aesthetic values. For here the numerous textured craters, cones, and lava streams presented "many pleasing variations in color, ranging from deep red through brown and purple to lusterless black." Particularly impressive was what he called the Blue Dragon Flow. A sheen of "desert varnish" coated the lava flow with a film of cobalt blue; its flecks of light blue or gray, like scales of a reptile, shimmered in the sunlight, creating an indelible image in his mind. [24]

By the turn of the century, it seemed at least to some observers that the Craters country was not as visually repellent as was commonly believed, especially to those trained in geology. Even so the region remained isolated and difficult to reach in the early 1900s. But eventually it was "discovered" by local communities as a place for outdoor recreation and sightseeing. This discovery depended on changing attitudes of ordinary people toward the volcanic landscape, aided, for example, by experts like Russell whose work educated the general public about an obscure district in the West. In a sense, geologists, and other scientists, gave tourists and others ways to understand the unfamiliar landscape. They provided lay people a new vocabulary of geological terms and a sense of what natural forces produced the scene before them.

That discovery also depended on a growing population. Up until the turn of the century the Lost River area, as with much of the Snake River Plain, was lightly populated. But by the first decade of the twentieth century, the region's population swelled with the advent of irrigation projects in the Big Lost River Valley and along the Snake River. And these new residents, living in Idaho's isolated towns and villages like Arco, expressed a greater interest in the lava district's scenic qualities and tourist potential for their own enjoyment and economic returns.

Perhaps the most powerful influence in this changing perception was reclamation. Irrigation projects in the early twentieth century transformed "lava dust" into "gardens" and seemed to make the landscape less threatening. Once "smiling fields of grain, divided by rows of poplars" appeared, villages sprang up, and "white cabins" looked out "from laden orchards." In this way, the plain's "drear desolation" was modified, at least in the eyes of railroad publicists, irrigation promoters, and local boosters. In addition, irrigation "miracles" promised to make settlers rich, for example, who farmed the new tracts near Twin Falls, Blackfoot, Pocatello, and Idaho Falls. Farming and its potential wealth tended to create a sense of opportunity for settlers, and opportunity weakened critical thinking about the lava landscape. [25]

Moreover, as agricultural production reduced the amount of wild lands, it seemed to instill a sense of appreciation for what remained. As the historian Roderick Nash has pointed out, anxiety over the close of the frontier underlay the conservation movement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Similar forces were at work in southern Idaho and affected the Craters country as well. The legend of the "lost valley," for example, demonstrates how the lava territory took on a mysterious image, one more attractive than repulsive, as more lands were reclaimed on the Snake River Plain at the turn of the century. The volcanic landscape emerged as an island wilderness in a sea of settlement. The fable of the mythical valley, it would seem, helped foster a more enticing image of the region. [26]

The image of the Craters country evolved from a lava wasteland to a lava wonderland largely through the efforts of Arco residents and other settlers in the Big Lost River basin, who, after the promise of rapid agricultural growth ran aground, turned to tourism as a source of income. In the early 1900s, Arco was nothing more than a dusty village of about one hundred residents. That radically changed in 1909 when settlement was opened for the Big Lost River Project. Hundreds, possibly thousands, of people rushed to Arco to file on land being opened under the Carey Act. Incorporated that year, Arco boasted a population of more than three hundred in 1910, and six hundred including the surrounding communities. Unfortunately, the irrigation project failed to live up to its promotion. Mismanaged from the beginning, the project never delivered enough water for all of the lands opened to settlement. Those whose lands were eventually irrigated experienced some brief benefits from the World War I agricultural boom. In 1917, Arco became the county seat for the newly created Butte County and seemed to be on the verge of economic stability as the commercial and supply center for the surrounding Lost River country. [27]

But Arco's growth never seemed to realize its full potential, much of its fate resting with the troubled irrigation project. With unbridled optimism, Arco boosters had predicted another Twin Falls in the making and named Arco the "Coming City of the Big Lost River Valley." Yet between about 1910 and 1920, many settlers were forced to abandon the desert lands they had cleared of sage in anticipation of water that never arrived. Consequently, boosters looked around for other ways to promote faster growth and a stronger economic base for the burgeoning community. An important part of this public spirit was the formation of a commercial club and its promotion of the region's outdoor opportunities. [28]

Advertising the Lost River country's natural features began with the railroad. In the summer of 1910, the Oregon Short Line experimented with Sunday excursions from Blackfoot to Arco. Responding to the desire of urban residents who wanted a respite from city life, railway officials offered special trips to the Big Lost River Valley for fishing and sightseeing. The "reputation of Lost river is spreading," the Arco Advertiser reported, and "as a pleasure resort it is becoming famous." [29]

Although Union Pacific officials were most likely promoting settlement in the valley to support their line, Arco boosters had good reason to be positive about scenic tourism. The first lengthy debates to market American scenery emerged around this time. The "See America First" campaign spread across the nation in the years leading up to World War I as a way to convince scenic sightseers and patriotic Americans to spend their money in America rather than Europe. Switzerland's alpine scenery could not compare with America's western wonders, the argument went. Catching the fever, Idaho boosters added the state's name to the slogan, and Arco commercial leaders promoted the Lost River country as one of the West's scenic treasures. The scenery here "beats the best that famous land [Switzerland] can offer," the editor of the Arco Advertiser wrote in 1912. National parks were the nation's premier scenic wonderlands, the editor suggested, and nearby Yellowstone was so vast it could contain thousands of Europe's "little parks." Yellowstone, just like the Lost River country, was untainted by civilization, and "just as left by the forces of nature and nature's God." [30]

More than the railroad, the automobile was responsible for bringing sightseers to the Lost River country in these developing years of the tourist business. Almost at the same time community leaders realized scenic tourism could be profitable, they joined the Good Roads movement and campaigned to improve roads to Arco so the growing numbers of auto tourists, primarily from other states, could pass through the region. The automobile, though, was also important to the local scenery seeker. As more residents of Arco and outlying rural areas purchased new and more affordable cars, it was anticipated that "these machines will give a long needed impetus to sightseeing, a much neglected opportunity for great and interesting research among the scenic wonders of this region," the local press reported. [31]

Arco's civic leaders rallied for new highways to connect their town to interstate auto travel, and were particularly inspired by the thought of attracting motorists en route to the World's Fair in San Francisco in 1915. Meanwhile, a new highway was being proposed to link the Yellowstone Highway with Arco and continue west through the lava country to Hailey. Still more stimulus occurred that year when Yellowstone National Park opened its gates to cars. Arco boosters hoped to syphon some of the park's tourist traffic from the proposed highway as well as the Lincoln Highway, which led to the park. They also hoped to attract motorists heading for other scenic spots west of town such as the Sawtooth Mountains. Boosters soon were publishing information about the great camping and fishing opportunities for eastern tourists traveling through the Big Lost River Valley. The Big Lost River, they advertised, offered the "best fishing in this section of Idaho." The river was just a half mile from town, which itself "affords every convenience for the benefit of the tourist and fishing parties." [32]

It was in this climate of tourist promotion that the Craters country emerged as a central feature of the Lost River region's natural wonders. Shortly after settlement surged in the area, Arco residents expressed a curiosity for and a growing appreciation of the volcanic district's strange and fantastic formations. In some of the earliest reported outings, a group of adventuresome sightseers visited the "Devil's Playground" twice in June 1912. These adventurists, as had others before them, marveled at the weird phenomena--the numerous craters, serpentine lava flows, snow and ice-filled crags, among other sights. More importantly, they emphasized that the lava country's uniqueness gave it tourist potential. Echoing the patriotic tone of the "See America First" campaign and displaying an affinity for nature's oddities, they declared that "globe trotters have always been desirous to see places where, when nature was young, the earth's internal forces played havoc with her surface and left it in weird and fantastic shape." For centuries tourists have

gone to Europe, Asia, and the islands of the Pacific to see the results of volcanic activity. How many know that one of the greatest vents the world has ever known lies but a few miles away from here, that one may drive to the spot, make careful inspection for hours, and return before the day closes? [33]

These closing comments suggested the importance of automobiles and the volcanic country's proximity to Arco, some twenty miles away. Where nineteenth-century travelers bound to wagons saw this as a hazardous lava waste, twentieth-century travelers, in the comfort of their cars, saw this more as a visual wonderland than a wasteland-- mostly because they could come and go as they pleased. Thus promoters of the lava region considered the "queer shapes" and "roughness" of "these wonderful fields" to be "food for contemplation" rather than worthless desert. Only a truly thoughtless person would not be inspired by this landscape to meditate "upon the past, present, and possible future of this mundane sphere and its inhabitants." [34]

After these initial visits, boosters predicted that the Craters country could become one of the greatest tourist sites in the United States, and if properly exploited, "rank as one of the greatest regions on earth for sightseeing." Why, stated the Arco Advertiser, visit the "craters of Vesuvius and Mt. Etna and there see but a part of what could be seen, and seen easily southwest of Arco." [35] Soon the lava region was appearing as an important feature of the town's promotional stories. As part of Arco's campaign to lure motorists, particularly those heading for the 1915 World's Fair and Yellowstone, boosters advised tourists that taking the route through their town would bring them not only to a land of abundant fishing streams and big game, but also to the "craters, one of the most scenic spots in the west." Seeing these volcanic wonders alone was worth choosing the route. [36]

Despite these adulations, at first it seemed that the volcanic country only attracted a local audience. On one particular trip, a party of Arcoites picnicked at the "ancient craters" in the summer of 1913 for the sole purpose of "viewing the scenes where the Devil and Mother Earth cut up 'high jinks' when she was young and gay and giddy." Especially interesting were the "strange and freakish" shapes of lava bombs which party members collected for souvenirs. [37] But a short time later, the Arco Advertiser could report that "hundreds of people" from throughout the state were seeking out the Craters country. To boosters the reasons were obvious. "One look at these craters with their great mouths yawning" presented a picture unequaled in beauty no matter how many miles one traveled. More than unusual scenery, they proclaimed in the spirit of Progressivism, the lava landscape and the Lost River valleys offered an antidote to urban ills. Here the "tired city man" could "forget his labors and spend a few weeks" where "the exhilarating air and the beautiful scenery is second to none." [38] Over the next several years each new discovery in or exploration of the vast volcanic territory aroused Arco's booster spirit and encouraged pronouncements of the area as "one of the greatest drawing cards for tourists to this state." [39]

Even so scenic tourism seemed to lag behind predictions, judging from the continued calls for better advertisement of the lava wonders. An important step in increasing tourism came in 1919 with the location of the Idaho Central Highway through the Lost River country. For nearly a decade Arco residents had awaited this decision. The east-west highway would connect Dubois (and the Yellowstone Park or Lincoln Highway) with Arco, Carey, Hailey, and Mountain Home. It seemed certain now that Arco, known for its camping in nearby canyons, its "fine fishing and beautiful scenery," would "receive its share of tourists." More importantly, the highway would pass within "two miles of the extinct craters in the weird lava region near Martin." Publicizing "these wonderful craters and recent lava flows" and improving the road into them for easier auto access were vital tasks. The Arco Advertiser conveyed the significance of this when it stated that "Nature has placed there scenes no other part of the state can duplicate," and thus given Arco a calling card worth promoting. Already near the edge of the lava flows, the auto tourist could find shade, wood, and water for camping, and for just a few hundred dollars, the newspaper noted, the area could become "a favorite resort for the tourist as well as for our homefolks." [40]

By 1920, promotion of the Craters country was being propelled by the advent of better roads and auto tourism, and the desire by community leaders to reap the benefits of the growing popularity of outdoor recreation. In spite of this, Arco boosters could only point to limited results. Community leaders, however, became more committed to promoting the Craters region after a three-day, three-hundred mile driving tour of the Sawtooth Mountains in the fall of 1920. In a time when drives of more than fifty miles out of town made local papers, words failed to describe the region's natural beauties. Mile upon mile of lakes, forests, and mountains seen from the seat of a car not only inspired members of the group spiritually but also economically. Late in the season, tourists still crowded the hotel where the Arco party stayed. The adventurists concluded that central Idaho abounded in scenery and was a great playground, particularly since the Sawtooths were destined to become a national park. Such an abundance of magnificent natural resources could now be seen in a relatively short time and should not go wasted. [41]

The Craters country, of course, formed part of that abundant scenery, but despite promotional efforts, boosters still had to revise the region's desert image if they were to attract a wider audience. In 1920, Clarence A. Bottolfsen, editor of the Arco Advertiser and future two-time governor, made this clear in a speech before a statewide newspapermen's conference. While describing the Lost River region as a "scenic interest" to promote tourism, he implied the importance of overcoming the negative image of the desert. He downplayed, for example, the notion of the district as an awful waste, and instead emphasized it as a land of peculiar geological formations and phenomena found few if any other places. Where once seemingly endless space had made the desert intimidating and threatening, it was now, in Bottolfsen's words, a "land of magnificent distances." Buttes rose abruptly on the horizon and formed unique landmarks, and mountains, such as the Sawtooths, rimmed the plain and appeared sharply cut and distinct miles away. Nothing obstructed one's vision on the plain. The "spectacle of so much country spread before the eye," he said, was not intimidating but was an inspiring sight." Here one could experience "peculiar inspirations" as if on the ocean watching the sun rise or set with all its glowing colors. [42]

With this positive view of the desert, he identified the "crater region" as the main attraction of the Lost River country, for it was "one of the greatest wonderlands in Idaho," and one of the most geologically interesting in North America or even the world. At the Craters motorists could experience the sublimity of the volcanic landscape; its dormant and recently cooled appearance complemented Yellowstone's "eruptive" geysers, boiling mud, and hot springs. Moreover, one of Craters' "chief natural advantages" for sightseeing was that motorist could easily see it from the main highway, and view this volcanic wonderland whether visiting Yellowstone, the Sawtooths, or points elsewhere. [43]

Promotional efforts such as Bottolfsen's saw some returns in 1921. Rupert and Minidoka boosters threw their support behind road projects to connect their towns to Arco and the Craters country hoping to divert Yellowstone traffic. In addition, the Oregon Short Line agreed to advertise a trip to the "Valley of the Moon" as one of the many auto tours available to tourists who wanted to see Idaho's scenic wonderlands that lay beyond its rails. Perhaps most significant was the growing popularity of Craters for motorists. One report boasted that the drive to the lava country was only a "four-hour spin" from Hailey, especially once the Idaho Central had been finished. Decent roads and autos made it a simple task to "unlock the secrets" of the "forbidding craters." Already used by Arco picnickers, the volcanic wonderland was becoming an "easy and interesting little excursion" for those who lived farther away. All the "daring automobile tourist" needed to do was head for Martin, the Idaho Statesman reported, follow a sign posted there to the "Valley of the Moon," drive over a short entrance road, and join "numerous parties" of auto tourists already exploring the sites. [44]

What a few years earlier had been an isolated and shunned lava waste had become an attractive landscape for scenic tourism by the early 1920s, thanks largely to improved highways, automobiles, and changing values regarding the nation's wild lands. Influential as well was a growing awareness by Americans that the strange beauty and scenic wonders of places like the Craters country possessed both aesthetic and economic values. No one realized this more and was more responsible for promoting the Craters country as a tourist attraction than Robert W. Limbert. Naturalist and explorer, photographer and writer, artist and entertainer, as well as a taxidermist by trade, Limbert brought the lava wonderland to the attention of the nation, a campaign which culminated in the establishment of the region as Craters of the Moon National Monument in 1924. [45]

Robert Limbert devoted his life to promoting Idaho's wondrous landscapes. In an era when the population of the nation's cities was expanding, he envisioned Idaho, and places like the Craters country, as "a vacation refuge for America's urban masses." Similar to Charles F. Lummis, who romanticized and publicized the Southwest, Limbert portrayed Idaho's wild lands as the last frontier. He brought this romantic vision to his visual and literary publications on Idaho's outdoors--its wildlife, its mountains, its geology, and its Indian history--which appeared throughout the United States. Limbert also modeled his interest in geology and exploration after his hero, John Wesley Powell, the geologist who had explored much of the West in the mid-nineteenth century. Like Powell, Limbert looked for the undiscovered and unknown reaches of Idaho. He searched for places "where other fellows haven't been." Though he loved the outdoors, Limbert's primary motive was economic. While displaying his exhibits of Idaho at the 1915 World's Fair, for example, he realized the economic potential of tourism. He fielded questions from fairgoers about the state's opportunity for outdoor adventure, hunting, and fishing, and most likely it dawned on him that city dwellers hungered for the country life, for some relief from the complexity of their urban-industrial lives. And so acting as a self-appointed tourist bureau with his various depictions of Idaho's varied geography as an "ideal tourist attraction," Limbert in turn promoted his own business interests. He brought the full force of his skills to bear on promoting Craters of the Moon. [46]

After moving to Boise in 1911, Limbert began hearing fantastic stories about the mysterious lava country in central Idaho. Drawn to the Craters country by tales of the mythical "lost valley," strange lava beds, and especially grizzly bears, he decided to explore this unsurveyed lava territory. A blank space on the map, labeled as "rolling lava terrain," the "Valley of the Moon" whetted Limbert's interest, for here was an exotic place likely to lure tourists to Idaho. He undertook his first two trips into the lava country about 1918 and covered the area originally explored by Israel Russell nearly a decade earlier. Following these initial forays, Limbert set out on a longer exploration that covered the length of the Great Rift, an eighty-mile trek which lasted seventeen days. He launched his odyssey through the lava wilds in May 1920. He traveled north from Minidoka, accompanied by Walter L. Cole of Boise and an Airedale terrier, and for more than two weeks crossed the hot, arid, and treacherous volcanic terrain. Limbert believed that he and Cole were the first white men to undertake such an expedition, although others had penetrated parts of the lava country prior to his adventure. [47]

Limbert excelled perhaps less as an explorer than as a publicist. He produced no exact maps of the lava country, though he gave colorful names to prominent features. But, more important for tourism, he photographed the landscape. These remarkable photographs accompanied vivid descriptions of the lava district and accounts of this as well as subsequent expeditions in the area. Like others from the Lost River country, Limbert's experience traversing the contorted landscape helped him to "appreciate its scenic value." His expectations of an unattractive, barren, and lifeless region were proven wrong by his exposure to a land of solace and beauty, a land where there were, he said, "more odd and fantastic shapes and formations than one would believe existed in the whole world." [48]

Describing the region's unique beauty to an audience in search of inspirational scenery and restorative encounters with nature, Limbert wrote of the lava territory as "a place of color and silence." Some of the "grandest sights imaginable" were the "immense rolls and folds of fantastically formed lava...colored blue, black, and brown," and the myriad craters that "start at your very feet and dot the landscape to the horizon line," he noted. Descending into a huge crater dwarfed the human figure and enveloped one in a red walled funnel." The remarkable Blue Dragon Flow, above all, seemed to contain the very essence of this country. As the light of sun and moon danced across the cobalt blue lava, the flow changed from a "twisted, wavy sea" to a "glazed surface" with a "silvery sheen." Here, he decided, was a place that was, with few exceptions, unequaled in "variety of formation, color, and scenic effects" in the world. [49]

Limbert shared with local boosters their appreciation of the Craters country, but he surpassed their ability to broadcast news of these wonders to a wide audience, emphasize the district's tourist appeal, and draw national attention to it. He did this not only by writing of the landscape in glowing terms and producing impressive photos but also by proposing that this region be preserved as a national park. Writing of his third exploration in the April 10, 1921, edition of the Idaho Sunday Statesman, Limbert stated that "no more fitting tribute to the volcanic forces which built the great Snake River Valley could be paid than to make this region into a national park." True to the promoter that he was, he asserted that the area would attract thousands of visitors, provided that adequate highways were built to persuade Yellowstone tourists to visit the lava country. [50]

The park proposal echoed earlier descriptions of the volcanic region as a nationally significant resource. "Idaho should and will awake to the possibilities of this region as a scenic attraction," Limbert wrote, "for nothing of a like nature of its size exists in America." For this reason he spearheaded a campaign to convert the lava district into a national park by conducting free lectures and meeting with civic groups around southern Idaho. He also attracted national attention by guiding several more explorations of the region with scientists and reporters. In June 1921 the explorer-promoter conducted what would be his most important exploration. His party consisted of ten scientists and civic leaders who were "equipped to make an exhaustive study of the lava formations, bird and animal life, and explore the many craters." The trip lasted two weeks, during which Limbert snapped more than 270 photos, recorded an estimated 1,400 feet of motion-picture film, produced sketch maps of the lava country's features, and discovered previously unknown ice caves, what he thought were bottomless pits, and craters. [51]

Upon his return Limbert announced that the scenery and natural wonders of the "Moon Valley" were "unexcelled by either Yellowstone National Park or the Garden of the Gods." [52] To ensure this message reached as many sympathetic people as possible, he published a series of exceptional photo essays in a variety of newspapers and journals throughout the state and the nation. His most influential piece, "Among the 'Craters of the Moon,"' appeared in the March 1924 National Geographic. The essay was illustrated with twenty-three photos and a map detailing the route of his 1921 expedition, but the article actually represented a composite of his many trips. Limbert had submitted the article in the fall of 1921, but the National Geographic Society delayed its publication in order to confirm his observations--as if to suggest that such a remarkable place could not exist. Sunset Magazine, Outdoor Life, and Literary Digest also carried his stories of the Craters country. [53]

Limbert's publicity galvanized the existing appreciation that Arco residents had for the lava country and won new supporters at the same time. In the spring of 1921, for example, the Idaho Sunday Statesman reported that eastern scientists, Idaho commercial clubs, and women's organizations had expressed interest in the region's establishment as a national park. With the creation of a park and improved access into its interior, the paper noted, "this spot in Idaho may become as great a mecca for tourists as Yellowstone Park." In the wake of Limbert's 1921 expedition some 150 lodges and commercial clubs around the state were backing the park movement, some of whom petitioned Congress to create the "Valley of the Moon National Monument." Park advocates expressed concern for the area's protection and worried that without federal preservation the lava country would be despoiled by private and commercial interests. Nevertheless, preservation seemed more important for boosting the tourist economy of tributary towns near the proposed park. [54]

Arco was especially motivated by Limbert's promotion. In the summer of 1921, for example, more than two hundred people from the Arco vicinity turned out to celebrate Limbert's most recent exploration; they picnicked, gave speeches, and listened to music played by the Arco high school band. They also explored the wonderland, some for the first time, and it was such a "huge success" that the participants planned others. [55] By 1922, local promoters had built a rough road into the lava country's interior, marked waterholes, and distributed to visitors free maps drawn by Limbert. By this time as well the Arco Chamber of Commerce recognized the opportunity at hand. Clarence Bottolfsen, who used the Arco Advertiser to drum up local and regional interest in protecting the volcanic district, publicized the chamber's plans to join with other communities to attract tourists to the Craters country. The chamber vowed to "do everything in its power to bring the attraction to the attention of those who would enjoy a trip to the 'Craters of the Moon in Idaho."' The plan included a promotional blitz-- distributing circulars, maps, and films to towns and communities along the Idaho Central Highway--and a scheme to improve highways to the lava wonderland and the primitive road within it. Finally, a mother-daughter team announced plans to build a hotel and run a campground within today's monument. Ultimately Arco's leaders believed that their town--as the "gateway" to the proposed park--would benefit from a tourist season, if only people would "wake up and do something before...the season arrives and finds us all 'asleep at the switch.'" [56]

Promoters could boast that more than a thousand visitors had passed through the lava country and signed a petition for its protection as a park by 1923. Attesting to the region's growing appeal, many of those who visited were tourists from across the country. Likewise, a coalition of Idaho's civic leaders backed the park proposal that year by forming the Craters of the Moon National Park Association. With the assistance of Representative Addison T. Smith, the National Park Service, and the United States Geological Survey, who verified the scientific importance of the lava region, Craters of the Moon National Monument was established on May 2, 1924. [57]

Although all of these people and agencies played an important role in the monument's creation, it was particularly significant that the monument was established two months after Robert Limbert's article on Craters of the Moon appeared in National Geographic. Limbert had exposed a historically and geographically isolated region to the public at large as an unknown scenic wonder. Through Limbert's work, Craters of the Moon not only appeared on the coffee tables of ordinary Americans, it also appeared before congressmen, agency officials, and a president who set it aside as a monument. (Limbert sent President Coolidge a photo scrapbook of the proposed area.) In addition to its scientific and educational importance, Craters of the Moon was now "officially" recognized as a lava wonderland, a label which forecast a lucrative tourist business for this remote area of Idaho, "one of the scenic districts in the west." [58]