Watchman Lookout Tower

High on Crater Lake's western rim, The Watchman lookout tower commands an eagle's-eye view across the amazingly blue lake to Wizard Island. The steep little climb up to The Watchman is one of the most popular paths in the national park.

The Watchman won its name in 1886, when national park promoter William Gladstone Steel brought a U. S. Geological Survey crew to Crater Lake to measure the lake's depth. Part of the team set up a survey point on The Watchman to track the precise location of the rest of the team, who were out on a boat sounding the lake with a reel of piano wire. Other names that stuck from that 1886 expedition are Cleetwood Cove (for the boat) and Dutton Cliff (for its captain). The surveyors in the boat ran out of wire after recording a depth of 1996 feet, althought sonar has since established a maximum lake depth of 1932 feet.

The Watchman Trail begins at a large, rail-fenced parking area on Crater Lake's Rim Drive. The wide path is actually a portion of the long-abndoned 1917 rim road. It traverses a rockslide of giant cream-colored boulders. These rocks are dacite, originally part of a 50,000-year-old lava on Mt. Mazama's shoulder. After Mazama's cataclysmic decapitation 7700 years ago, the old lava flow was left as The Watchman, a crest on the gaping caldera's rim.