Crater Lake sits in the caldera left when Mount Mazama's eruption about 7,700 years ago destroyed the mountain. In 1870 a Kansas schoolboy named William Gladstone Steel read about it in the newspaper wrapped around his lunch.

In 1886 he had three boats hauled in for Clarence Dutton's USGS survey. They took 168 soundings with a lead weight on piano wire, and the deepest came out at 1,996 ft, a number that stood until 1958. Theodore Roosevelt signed the park into law on 22 May 1902, 17 years after Steel first saw it.

The lidar shows the steep caldera wall down the left side and Wizard Island's cone and summit crater left of centre.

1. Crater Lake caldera wall and Wizard Island, Oregon
2. Air photo of the same area, September 2022

Numbered pins on picture 1:
Pin 1: The steep caldera wall
Pin 2: Wizard Island's summit crater
Pin 3: The flat lake surface

Lidar: USGS 3D Elevation Program (3DEP), public domain.
Imagery: USGS The National Map (NAIP Imagery service), 2022, Public domain.