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As It Was: Historian Frances Fuller Victor Leaves Name at Crater Lake

Nationally known historian and photographer Frances Fuller Victor first visited Crater Lake in 1873. She was accompanied by Oliver Cromwell Applegate, a member of the well-known pioneer family.  Victor perched on a large rock 900 feet above the water to admire the lake’s beauty, inspiring Applegate later to name the overlook Victor Rock.
Victor wrote books about the Pacific Northwest, originally for the H.H. Bancroft History Co. in California.  After 11 years, she resigned her position and wrote under her own name in Oregon.  Her book “Atlantis Arisen” helped promote Crater Lake as a popular tourist attraction.

Originally, maps of Crater Lake identified Victor Rock, but the Sinnott Memorial was built on top of it in 1930, supplanting the original name.  As compensation to Victor, the park superintendent named a spot on the East Rim near Sentinel Rock “Victor View.”

Victor once said, “I should like to be buried with a rock for my monument, beside the lovely and awe-inspiring Crater Lake.”  Although that never happened, Victor View remains.  She died in 1902, the same year that Crater Lake became a national park.
 

Source: Mark, Stephen R. "Frances Fuller Victor." Southern Oregon Heritage Today, vol. 4, no. 5, May 2002, p. 13.    

Sharon Bywater of Ashland, Oregon grew up in Southern California. She taught English literature and writing at Syracuse University in New York, where she also wrote and edited adult literacy books and published freelance articles in local media. Later, she lived in Washington, D.C., where she worked as an international telecommunications policy advisor at the U.S. Department of Commerce. She has Master’s degrees in English and Communications Management.