page_title: Mount Mazama
section_title: Human history
hierarchical_section_title: Mount Mazama / Human history
caption_attribution_description: English: William Gladstone Steel as an older man.
context_page_description: Mount Mazama is a complex volcano in the state of Oregon, United States, in a segment of the Cascade Volcanic Arc and Cascade Range. Most of the mountain collapsed following a major eruption approximately 7,700 years ago. The volcano is in Klamath County, in the southern Cascades, 60 miles north of the Oregon-California border. Its collapse formed a caldera that holds Crater Lake. The mountain is in Crater Lake National Park. Mount Mazama originally had an elevation of 12,000 feet, but following its climactic eruption this was reduced to 8,157 feet. Crater Lake is 1,943 feet deep, the deepest freshwater body in the US and the second deepest in North America after Great Slave Lake in Canada.
  Mount Mazama formed as a group of overlapping volcanic edifices such as shield volcanoes and small composite cones, becoming active intermittently until its climactic eruption 7,700 years ago. This eruption, the largest known within the Cascade Volcanic Arc in a million years, destroyed Mazama's summit, reducing its approximate 12,000-foot height by about 1 mile. Much of the edifice fell into the volcano's partially emptied neck and magma chamber, creating a caldera.
context_section_description: The Klamath Native Americans of the area believed that Mount Mazama was inhabited by Llao, their "Chief of the Below World." After the mountain destroyed itself the Klamaths recounted the events as a great battle between Llao and his rival Skell, their sky god, or "Chief of the Above World." Though the narrative has several slightly different iterations, commonly the legend goes that Llao saw a beautiful Klamath woman, the daughter of a chief, and became angry when she refused his offer of immortality if she would be his consort. Furious, Llao emerged from Mazama and threw fire upon the people beneath the mountain, and Skell stood on Mount Shasta, trying to defend the people against Llao's fury. As the earth shook and volcanic rock fell from the sky, two holy men sacrificed themselves to Mount Mazama's crater, and Skell was able to force Llao back into the volcano, which then collapsed on top of him; other accounts tell that Skell smashed the peak on top of Llao. Torrential rain followed, filling in the hole left by Mazama's collapse to form Crater Lake.
  Native American people have lived in the area near Mazama for at least 10,000 years. At least part of the surrounding vicinity was occupied by indigenous populations when Mazama resumed activity about 8,000 years ago, following about 20,000 years of dormancy. Most evidence suggests that Mazama served as a camp site, but not a permanent place of habitation. Sagebrush sandals have been discovered to the east of the mountain. These populations faced an increasingly dry climate and the hazards associated with volcanic activity. In civilizations south of Mazama, stories about the volcano's eruption have been transmitted for many generations. Native populations did not tell settlers about the area because it held sacred importance among tribes throughout Oregon and northern California. Shamans did not allow local Native Americans to look towards Crater Lake, and the Klamath people believed that just looking at Mazama would cause death. Though there are no tribal legends surrounding Crater Lake, some Native Americans still refuse to look at the water.
  During the 19th century, one Klamath leader named Lalek predicted scientific discoveries that described Mount Mazama's destruction, claiming that it had collapsed as a result of a particularly violent eruption. Geologists had not discovered this mechanism for caldera formation yet, but the hypothesis was recorded by the soldier William M. Colvig in 1865, and then reprinted in Ella Clark's Indian Legends of the Pacific Northwest.
  The last major volcanic landform in the Cascade Range identified by white settlers, Mazama was first visited by non-indigenous people in the spring of 1853. Eleven miners from Yreka, California, stopped at a mercantile store in Jacksonville, Oregon, owned by Isaac Skeeters, boasting that they knew where to find a gold mine called "Lost Cabin." Financed by a successful gold miner named John Wesley Hillman, Skeeters led a team with ten other Oregonians to find the mine. On June 12, they reached Crater Lake, which Skeeters noted had the bluest water he had ever seen, suggesting they name it "Deep Blue Lake." Though their trip failed to procure gold before running low on provisions, they returned with the discovery of the lake, though it was forgotten amidst the absence of gold in that region.
  By 1862, a separate group of Oregon prospectors led by Chauncey Nye reached the Crater Lake area. Nye authored an article for the Jacksonville Oregon Sentinel in which he wrote that he had named the depression Blue Lake for its color, the first published description of the lake. Fort Klamath was established in 1863, 7 miles (11 km) to the southeast of the current boundaries of the National Park area. A wagon road was built to the Fort from the Rogue River Valley as a result. On August 1, 1865, the lake was encountered by hunters on the road, and a party of soldiers and civilians went to see the lake after hearing of their observations. Sergeant Orsen Stearns climbed down into the caldera, followed shortly after by Captai
caption: The English name for the volcano, "Mount Mazama", came from William G. Steel, founder of The Mazamas climbing club
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