My experiences with Mt. Shasta go back to when I was 2 months old. I can remember my experiences since I was 5 years old here

 I was born in 1948 so in the summer when I was about 2 months old my father and mother brought me to Mt. Shasta to be blessed by the head of their church who owned Shasta Springs then and now. Shasta Springs is in between Dunsmuir and Mt. Shasta City and was once visited by Train by President Teddy Roosevelt. It was then at the turn of the century a mountain resort that could be reached by train and then there was a tram built up the side of the mountain from the Sacramento River where the train line is to where Shasta Springs was then and now. 

My first memories of this place were when I was 5 and my father brought me with him to play and live for I think around 6 weeks one summer while he worked as an electrician volunteering his time building the Amphitheater for the presentation of the "Life of Christ".

Children were treated much differently then so I was allowed to basically run loose over 1800 acres of Shasta Springs starting this 6 weeks with a bunch of other boys ages 5 to 12 or 14 years old. We walked down the trail to the Sacramento River down the mountain to the railroad tracks. Some of the older boys would catch a ride on a freight train north to Mt. Shasta City and get a Soda or milkshake in Mt. Shasta and then hitch hike back to Shasta Springs then. I'm not sure the adults were told about this though.

I also was able to swim in Castle lake at age 5 at 6000 feet which is even  before they dammed up Lake Siskiyou which is part of the headwaters of the Sacramento River. But, then it was just the river heading south towards Sacramento which also went to Shasta Dam just above Redding then too.

However, I didn't learn to swim this early yet and mostly just played in the water while my father and his friends from church jumped off cliffs and did cliff diving into the lake. The back of the lake looks sort of like a Castle which is why it is called Castle Lake and people often jump off those Castle Rocks into the Lake below. However, you have to make sure it is deep enough where you are jumping to survive doing this.

When I was 5 years old in 1953 the man driving us up to Castle Lake  had a brand new 1953 Chevy and the road wasn't paved yet and the rocks pulled out his exhaust pipe and whole exhaust system driving up to Castle Lake. But, strange things like this people often took more in stride than today. It was more common to have events like this in 1953 than now. also, no one wore or had seat belts then either so things were much different than now in that way too.  IN fact, in 1953 passenger jets hadn't started because I think the first passenger jet in service wasn't until 1957. But, there were propeller driven passenger planes but I think traveling from New York to Los Angeles was somewhere between 12 to 16 hours of flying in a propeller driven passenger plane then. Also, they flew at much lower altitudes like about 10,000 to 12,000 feet because I'm not sure planes were pressurized like they are now too with oxygen cannisters like we have now in jets. So, planes were much more bumpy at these lower altitudes because air is thicker at lower altitudes so you bump around more because of this, especially still in smaller planes worldwide.