November 20, 2019 10:10 a.m. 
The Army Corps of Engineers Road System at Crater Lake National Park in Klamath County is among Oregon’s latest entries in the National Register of Historic Places.
A release from Park Historian Stephen Mark said the National Park Service staff at the park prepared and nominated the property to the National Register. Mark said the Oregon State Historic Preservation Office supported the listing of the nomination. That nomination was accepted in August.
Mark took the lead in writing the nomination, which centers on a previously little-known effort by the Corp in highway engineering and construction that occurred in the park between 1910 and 1919. Park Archaeologist Kelly Kritzer, with the help of Jessica Gabriel from Oregon Parks and Recreation, inventoried the ACERS as an initial step for the nomination, between 2015 and 2017.
The Army Corps of Engineers Road System, was a precursor to the historic Rim Drive and is significant for its association with the earliest period of highway engineering in Oregon as a pivotal example of a road that that used the latest standards in road design, according to the release. As the first federally funded and supervised highway project in Oregon, ACERS is the only road project in Oregon attributed to the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers.
The construction of the ACERS and of the Columbia River Highway were the immediate forerunners to the creation of the Oregon State Highway Department in 1917. That department began building a highway system in the state with funding from bonds, federal aid and other sources by 1919.
Visitation at Crater Lake National Park in 1913, when the work started on ACERS, was 13,000 for the year. That figure grew to 170,000 in 1931 at which point contractors began to build what is now known as Rim Drive.
The ACERS is the fourth historic district listed at Crater Lake National Park. Others are at Rim Village, Park Headquarters and along Rim Drive.