The Changing Skyline: Photo Documentation of 100 Years of Landscape Change in the Central Oregon Cascade Range

Jim O'Connor

U.S. Geological Survey

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During the summer of 1920, Frederick William Cleator (1883–1957), a U.S. Forest Service recreational planner, surveyed and sign-posted the Oregon Skyline Trail. This trail, first laid out between Crater Lake and Mount Jefferson, was a predecessor of the Pacific Crest Trail, which decades later completed Cleator’s prediction of a recreational trail running from Mexico to Canada. During his survey, Cleator made several hundred photographs from peaks, forest glens, lake shorelines, and scenic vistas. These photographs show the landscape of the time. In the summer of 2020, with the help of many friends and colleagues, Jim O’Connor essentially retraced Cleator’s steps, re-photographing the landscape, many scenes 100 years to the hour from Cleator’s photos. These centennial matches show — in ways otherwise difficult to know or describe — the changing skyline, the changing forests, the changing glaciers, and the changing human uses of the central Oregon Cascade Range. 

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7:00 pm presentation

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