Your National Parks Part 13

A number of the hot springs are agitated almost enough to be called geysers. Cold and mineral springs abound. There are a number of lively streams and plunging waterfalls.

The lake-area is twenty-three hundred acres. The largest of the lakes is Lake Bidwell. Cinder Cone stands between two lakes which appear to have been formerly one. The eruption of this cone probably extended a lava-flow across the lake, dividing it into two parts. An outpouring of volcanic material apparently made a dam, which formed a reservoir, now occupied by Stump Lake. This filled with water and drowned a forest growth. Through the surface of this lake still thrust numerous tree-trunks of the drowned forest. The outburst of Cinder Cone that formed this lake and overwhelmed the forest probably took place nearly two hundred years ago. Other lakes are Juniper, Tilman, and Manzanita Lakes.

The greater portion of the Park is forested. Among the more common species of trees are Jeffrey pine, red fir, mountain hemlock, lodge-pole pine, white fir, and incense cedar. In places among the forests are beautiful mountain meadows.

There are scores of varieties of wild flowers. Most of these grow under favorable conditions; have warmth, moisture, and rich soil; and they show bright, clean blossoms. The district has its full share of bird and animal life. In a number of streams fish are plentiful.

The La.s.sen Volcanic National Park was created chiefly through the efforts of Congressmen John E. Raker and William Kent.

The varied objects of interest in this Park, especially those a.s.sociated with topography and geology, make it not only a place with curious features, but a region affording unusual opportunities for the gathering of fundamental facts concerning our resources. Here also are scenes to inspire the souls of such as can be moved by the beauty and grandeur of Nature and by the awful manifestations of her power.

Says J. S. Diller, of the United States Geological Survey, "With its comfortably active volcano, inviting cinder cones and lava fields, vigorously boiling hot springs, mud lakes and 'mush pots' for the vulcanologist to study, and the glaciated divides and canons for the physiographer, in a setting of lovely scenery and attractive camps, for the tourists all easily accessible, the La.s.sen Peak region affords one of the most alluring and instructive spots for a National Park."

XI

HAWAII NATIONAL PARK

A volcanic exhibit unrivaled in the world is embraced in the Hawaii National Park, which was created in 1916. This Park consists of two volcanic sections in the Hawaiian Islands, with a total area of one hundred and seventeen square miles. Within this territory are two active volcanoes, Kilauea and Mauna Loa on the island of Hawaii; and one sleeping volcano, Haleakala on the island of Maui.

The celebrated and unequaled Hawaiian volcanoes are a national scenic a.s.set, unique of their kind and famous in the world of science.

Apparently, the ocean has been filled in and the entire group of Hawaiian Islands built by the lava-outpourings of volcanoes. In this National Park we may see volcanic topography in the course of construction; some landscapes just cast in the process of cooling; others that are beginning to show the erosion of the elements; also those which vegetation is just possessing.

The Hawaii National Park has about the same lat.i.tude as the City of Mexico. There are about a dozen islands in the group, with a total area of seventy-five hundred square miles. Honolulu, the capital city, is on the island of Oahu, near the middle of the island chain, which extends from northwest to southeast. From San Francisco it is about twenty-one hundred miles to Honolulu.

Kilauea is more than two hundred miles southeast of Honolulu, and thirty miles inland from the port of Hilo. Twenty miles to the west from Kilauea is Mauna Loa. The crater of Haleakala is on a different island from Kilauea and Mauna Loa, about midway between these and Honolulu.

The active rim of Kilauea is four thousand feet above the sea. The slopes of this volcano have an exceedingly flat grade. It is the most continuously active of the three volcanoes in this Park. It has a pit in which the molten lava rises and falls and is boiling all the time.

For a century Kilauea has been almost continuously active with a lake or lakes of molten lava. The crater of Kilauea is not a steep mountain-top, but a broad, forested plateau, beneath which is a lava sink three miles in diameter, surrounded by cliffs three hundred feet high. Several times during the last century the active crater was upheaved into a hill. In a little while it collapsed into a deep pit with marvelously spectacular avalanches, fiery grottos, and clouds of steam and brown dust. Through many years the crater was overflowing.

Frequently large pieces of the sh.o.r.e fall into the molten lake, forming islands.

The magnificent spectacle of the lake of lava at Kilauea is indescribable. Charles W. Eliot, President Emeritus of Harvard University, visited the crater and p.r.o.nounced it the most wonderful scene he had ever watched. It is a lake of liquid fire one thousand feet across, splas.h.i.+ng on its banks with a noise like the waves of the sea. Great high fountains boil up through it, sending quant.i.ties of glowing spray over the sh.o.r.e. There are fiery, molten cascades, whirlpools, and rapids, with hissing of gases, rumbling, and blue flames playing through the crevices. It is ever changing, and the record of these changes is being kept from day to day, photographically and otherwise, by the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory.

Mauna Loa is an active crater, 13,675 feet above sea-level. It is an enormous mountain ma.s.s, covering a wide area with its very gentle slopes. This volcano erupts about once every decade. Of the three volcanoes in the Park, Mauna Loa is the most productive of new rock, which it pours out on the surface of the land. Its activities start with outbursts on the summit and culminate after a number of years in a flow which floods the whole country for many months.

Perpetual snow crowns Mauna Loa, and ice may be found in cracks even in summer. In the winter-time there is a variety of climate from sea-level to the summit--from the warmth of the tropics to arctic blizzards on the mountain-top.

An interesting and somewhat amusing story is told in regard to an eruption of Mauna Loa in 1881. The flow of lava at that time was so heavy that it seriously threatened to wipe out the town of Hilo. When the lava ran down to within a mile of the place, the natives urged their Princess Ruth to go and conjure the G.o.ddess of the volcano, Pele, to stop the flow. She went--so the tales goes--with all her retinue, and threw into the crater some berries, a black hen, a white pig, and a bottle of gin, as sacrifices. The lava-flow stopped, and the natives believed their escape due to the odd offering, although some people have expressed the opinion that such a collection of stuff thrown into an active volcano's crater would make the eruption more violent, if it had any effect at all.

Mauna Loa forces columns of liquid lava hundreds of feet into the air, and every few years pours forth billions of tons of lava in a few days. There is a wonderful rift-line, from which eight or ten flows poured forth during the last century. These burst out on the slopes of the mountain, not from the summit crater. After the first explosion at the summit, a period of quiet intervenes, and then the rifts open and lava flows down.

The lava cools quickly and changes through colors of red, purple, brown, and gray as it cools. Areas of each of these are seen at one time, with red-hot liquids showing in the cracks of the lava. Trees of lava are formed at one place by the flow of lava rus.h.i.+ng through a forest and congealing around the trunks. Fields of "Pele's hair"--lava--are blown out by the wind, like spun gla.s.s, as the fiery spray is dashed into the air on the surface of the molten lake. In the large craters are numerous smaller ones with endless lava forms, colors, and volcanic structures.

The crater of Haleakala, ten thousand feet high, is near the middle of the island of Maui. It is eight miles in diameter and three thousand feet deep. While Haleakala has not erupted for two hundred years, the entire crater is sometimes full of active fire fountains, and the fiery glow mounts to the clouds like an immense conflagration.

Professor Thomas A. Jaggar says, "The crater of Haleakala at sunrise is the grandest volcanic spectacle on earth."

No photograph can give any adequate idea of the view from its summit, often above the clouds. It is a good place from which to see the sun come up through the clouds in the crater. This event has been described as being like the birth of a new world. From here one can look down on the island and on the sea, and see the neighboring island of Oahu.

Sidney Ballou says: "A number of people who have been to the top of Haleakala p.r.o.nounce the sensation there, although somewhat indefinable and indescribable, as the chief scenic attraction of the world. Men like John Muir, who have been all over the world, go up there and say that it is the greatest spectacle in the world."

In addition to the variety of volcanic displays and lava landscapes, the Hawaiian Park contains splendid tropical groves and forests of sandalwood and magnificent Hawaiian mahogany trees with trunks over twenty feet in circ.u.mference. There are forests of tree ferns up to forty feet in height, with single leaves twenty feet long; tropical jungles with scores of varieties of the most exquisite and delicate ferns and mosses, many of them found nowhere else in the world. There are numerous song-birds of brilliant hues, many of them found nowhere but in Hawaii, and nearly extinct except in this Park. There are rolling gra.s.sy meadows, dotted with tropical trees, shrubs, and ferns, giving a parklike effect. Many of the trees are botanical treasures, known only in this Park region, and of great rarity.

The views from the slopes and summits of the volcanic peaks are a mingling of wild magnificence and tropical splendor. The craters themselves are weird spectacles that awe visitors into silence as they watch the wonderful action of the liquid fire fountains, boiling lakes, flaming lava, and other demonstrations of the Fire King.

L. A. Thurston, of Honolulu, appears to have first proposed this Park, and he did much toward its acquisition.

XII

THREE NATIONAL MONUMENTS

1. THE OLYMPIC NATIONAL MONUMENT

The territory embraced in the Olympic National Monument is now proposed for use as a National Park. It occupies the extreme northwest corner of the United States, a peninsula between the Pacific Ocean and Puget Sound. It is dominated by the precipitous and heavily snow-capped Olympic Mountains. These snowy summits attracted the attention of the explorer Vancouver, who named the mountains the Olympics. Their lower slopes are heavily forested with gigantic trees, and beneath these there is an undergrowth of almost bewildering luxuriance. This undergrowth is a jungle in itself. Many of the trees are heavily and picturesquely roped and bearded with moss. The openness which characterizes the Sierra or Rocky Mountain forests is absent. Gigantic tree-trunks lie scattered over the forest floor. Many of these fell centuries ago and are water-soaked, half-rotten, and covered with moss a foot thick. Here and there a living tree, a century or more of age, is standing upon a fallen one. Others are lost in the tangle of vines, huge ferns, and vigorous wild flowers that crowd the floor of the woods. Even at midday the forest reposes in twilight.

The region is extremely difficult to penetrate and explore. The streams, even during the period of low water, are almost too swift for boats, and the tangled jungle-growth, produced by abundant moisture and a mild climate, compels the explorer to chop every foot of the way he advances. Until recent years trappers, who were supposed to go everywhere, were content to work around its outskirts. Even the adventurous prospector pa.s.sed it by, and searched the earth over for gold before seeking in the heart of the Olympics. Through the combined efforts of government agents, individuals, and organizations, the region has at last been pretty well explored. Both in exploring this Olympic region and in endeavoring to have a part of its primeval scenes saved in a park, the Mountaineers Club of Seattle has taken an aggressive part.

Up to the alt.i.tude of about four thousand feet the mountains are wrapped in dense green and heavy forest gloom. Then come the scattered gra.s.sy, flowery, snowy openings. Timber-line, kept low by the excessive snowfall, is at about fifty-five hundred feet alt.i.tude, one thousand feet lower than in the Alps, and six thousand feet below the forest frontier on the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. The summit slopes are a broken array of snow-fields, ice-piles, and glaciers. Above the timber-line, vast, deep snow-fields cover much of the area. These white summits show from far out at sea.

Mount Olympus, with an alt.i.tude of 8250 feet, is the highest peak.

Among the other commanding peaks are Meany, Cougar, and Seattle.

The climate, tempered by the warm sea, is mild. Probably no other region in the United States has a heavier rainfall and snowfall. From sixty to one hundred feet of snow is deposited over it each winter.

The only comparatively rainless months are July and August. The rain, and the water from the ice- and snow-fields, supply numerous steeply inclined streams, which descend in roaring waterfalls and in long, leaping wild cascades.

This region excels in the number and crowded conditions of large tree growth, and the impenetrable luxuriance of undergrowth. Hemlock, cedar, spruce, and fir predominate. While the hemlock is the most common tree here, the cedar is the most striking. The latter is a strangely stiff and mysterious tree of rather stocky growth. In this moist, mild clime it finds conditions for development almost ideal.

The two kinds of cedar are the Alaska and the red. Thousands of acres here may be seen crowded with tall trees that will average five feet or more in diameter and one hundred and fifty feet in height. Trees twelve feet in diameter are not uncommon, and the United States Geological Survey reports one with a diameter of twenty-eight feet!

Thousands of acres of red fir trees may also be found in which the average height of the trees is two hundred and forty feet!

Wild flowers are everywhere. They edge the snow-fields, cover the breaks in the cliffs, line the streams, and bank with bloom the fallen forest patriarchs. Among the common blossoms are the lovely ca.s.siope,--white heather,--mountain anemone, phlox, and "Indian basket gra.s.s."

[Ill.u.s.tration: MOUNT ST. HELENS From the Timber-Line Trail on Mount Rainier]

This is the home of the gigantic Olympic Roosevelt elk, and among the other common animals are the bear, deer, wolf, fox, lynx, otter, and beaver. The streams are simply crowded with trout. Bald eagles are found, and there is an array of flickers, woodp.e.c.k.e.rs, warblers, jays, sparrows, and hummingbirds. The solitudes of this sylvan park are cheered with the melody of the water-ouzel, the Alaska hermit thrush, and the winter wren.

But the mountain summits are significant as view-points. From them one commands the sea, islands, and the broken sh.o.r.e of the Pacific. Bright Puget Sound, with a scattering of dark islands and ragged edges, fills the foreground. Looking toward the southeast across the darkly forested mountains through which rolls the Columbia, one enjoys a view vast and imposing. The dark forest cover is pierced by three snow-laden and steaming sleeping volcanoes. The most impressive one of these is Mount Rainier, with a score of enormous glaciers covering head and shoulders. Another one is Mount Adams. But the most exquisitely beautiful of all the peaks which the summits of the Olympics command is Mount St. Helens. The head and shoulders of this mountain rise a perfect snowy cone above the purple forest robe and stand as perfectly poised as a Greek statue of marble.

The Olympic National Park should include about three hundred square miles. What a splendid attraction if this area of primeval scenes and forests were kept in a state of nature!

2. THE NATURAL BRIDGES AND RAINBOW BRIDGE NATIONAL MONUMENTS