Your National Parks Part 16

XV

PARK-DEVELOPMENT AND NEW PARKS

A platform for park-promoters:--

1. Immediate appropriations for every National Park.

2. Early enlargement of a few of the Parks.

3. Prompt creation of a number of new Parks.

4. The National Park Service needs the help of your eternal vigilance and sympathy. Keep the National Park Service absolutely separate from the Forest Service or any other organization.

5. Concessions are a bad feature in any Park. The Palisades Inter-State Park is run without concessions. Why should private concerns reap profits by exploiting the visitors to National Parks?

6. A Board of National Park Commissioners is needed. These commissioners should act as a Board of Directors, as do the Inter-State Park Commissioners, and have absolute control over the National Parks.

No nation has ever fallen through having too many parks. We may have too many soldiers, too many indoor functions, too many exclusive social sets, but the United States Government, or any other, will never fall for having too many national parks.

Nearly all the large nations of the earth now have national parks or are planning to create them. Canada, Australia, and New Zealand are especially thoughtful in park matters. Switzerland has a number, and is planning new ones. A number of South American countries are making investigations with the view of establis.h.i.+ng national parks.

National parks are an inst.i.tution intimately allied with the general welfare. You need this inst.i.tution, and it needs your help. Every one ought to be glad to help better and beautify our land. Whittier was once asked by a young man for advice as to how best to succeed. The poet told him to attach himself to a n.o.ble and neglected cause and to stay with it till he won. The Park field greatly needs the help of young men and young women who are willing to serve a n.o.ble cause. In connection with National Parks you can be exceedingly helpful in furthering the following work:--

A number of new Parks should be at once created. A number of the old Parks need to be enlarged. Appropriations are greatly needed for the development of all. You can help the National Park Service. It is in danger of being crippled by the lack of appropriations. A number of the National Monuments should at once be made National Parks. Among these are the Grand Canon, the Olympic, the Mukuntuweap Canon, and others. The Sequoia and other National Parks need enlargement; and the Mount St. Elias and other scenic regions, especially the Mount McKinley region, are most worthy of early consideration for park purposes.

The Yellowstone Park needs to have the Grand Teton region added; Rainier, about twenty square miles at the southwest corner; Crater Lake, a few square miles on the west and north; Yosemite, mountainous country on the east and southeast; Rocky Mountain, small areas--east, west, north, and south; and the Sequoia, Mount Whitney and the King's-Kern region.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TETON MOUNTAIN REGION, PROPOSED ADDITION TO YELLOWSTONE PARK]

One of the most deserving of National Park projects, as well as one of the most unique, is that which centers about the Jamez Plateau, in New Mexico. Upon this plateau in prehistoric times stood a metropolis of Indian civilization, and the magnificent ruins which remain make this place priceless, and throw over it one of the most fascinating mysteries in the realm of archaeology. A number of the buildings were stone structures of excellent and artistic architecture, and contained hundreds of rooms. The pottery and other records left by this vanished people indicate that they were a people of culture and refinement.

While the opposition is delaying the making of this Park, the despoilment of the region goes on. In this connection Dr. Jesse W.

Fewkes makes this significant statement:--

Too strong language cannot be used in deprecation of the butchering of the architectural features of our Southwestern ruins by pot-hunters, either private individuals for gain or representatives of inst.i.tutions under the name of scientific research.

The Cook Forest in western Pennsylvania, the greatest existing primeval growth of white pine; a splendid redwood forest near Eureka, California; the Dunes on the sh.o.r.e of Lake Michigan in northern Indiana; the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky; the Luray Caverns in Virginia; and a stretch of the seash.o.r.e in eastern North Carolina,--all ought to be public property, though now privately owned. These places might be saved for the people for all time in State Parks, but their unique and splendid characteristics justify their becoming National Parks.

Nearly all proposed National Park areas are of territory in the public domain--still owned by the Government. The privately owned areas that are proposed for National Parks are places admirably fitted for park purposes, and are located close to millions of people.

It is important that the remaining scenic areas in the country be at once made into State or National Parks. Fortunately there still are a number of these wild places, but it will require effort to save them.

Each Park proposed will have powerful and insidious opposition. The insidious opposition to National Parks will say, "There is a feeling in Congress that we should not have any more National Parks at this time"; or, "We should wait until present ones are improved."

Scenery is perishable--is easily ruined. The better parts of scenery are birds, flowers, and trees. These are easily despoiled. No work, no public service, is more n.o.ble than that of the Park extension and improvement which now presses us. Every National Park needs appropriations. It is the duty of every one to ask and urge Congress at once to make adequate appropriations.

Much is to be gained and nothing to be lost in acting promptly. It is important that new Parks be created now, a working plan made for all, and the development pushed. When all our National Parks are ready for travelers, we shall not need to shout, "See America First."

The phrase "See America First" may have done a little good, but it is now obsolete. A plain condition now confronts us. Scenic America is to be made ready to be seen. Only a small percentage of the area of our National Parks is really ready for the traveler.

Congress should not be blamed for this condition; neither should we severely blame ourselves. But we ought promptly to see that these Parks receive adequate appropriations. If we do this, in a short time the National Park Service, through its Director, will say, "Your National Parks--our matchless wonderlands--are now entirely ready for millions of travelers."

[Ill.u.s.tration: MOUNT BAKER FROM THE WEST Mount Baker is likely to be a National Park

_Copyright, 1900, by W. H. Wilc.o.x, Port Townsend, Wash._]

The plan for the development of National Parks includes three types of hotels, the luxurious, the popular-priced, and inns or shelter cabins that are clean and comfortable, and that give simple entertainment at the lowest possible cost. And all buildings should be of an architecture that harmonizes with the landscape.

Guides in Parks should be of the highest type of culture and refinement, naturalists who can impart information. Of course they must be masters of woodcraft. The wilderness is destined to have a large and helpful place in the lives of the people. This is to be partly brought about by guides and Park rangers. There should be guides of both s.e.xes.

The ultimate development should embrace a scenic road-system, roads built so as to command scenery and to be for the most part on mountain-sides and summits. They should touch the greatest and most beautiful spots, and should follow, not the lines of least resistance, but those of greatest attraction. In places along the forested roads, openings might be cleared so as to expose near scenes and to enable travelers to see the game which may come to these openings.

Many roads should be paralleled by trails for people afoot or on horseback. Of course trails should be made to numerous high or wild places not reached by roads.

Many persons do not realize the difference between a forest reserve and a National Park. A forest reserve is primarily used for cattle-grazing and saw-mills, while a National Park is a region wholly educational and recreational for your children and yourselves. A forest reserve is a commercial proposition, while a National Park must be estimated by higher values. In a paper on the conservation of scenery, in "The Rocky Mountain Wonderland," I have said:--

We need the forest reserve, and we need the National Park. Each of these serves in a distinct way, and it is of utmost importance that each be in charge of its specialist. The forester is always the lumberman, the park man is a practical poet.... The forester must cut trees before they are over-ripe or his crop will waste, while the park man wants the groves to become aged and picturesque. The forester pastures cattle in his meadows, while the park man has only people and romping children among his wild flowers. The park needs the charm of primeval nature, and should be free from ugliness, artificiality, and commercialism. For the perpetuation of scenery, a landscape artist is absolutely necessary. It would be folly to put a park man in charge of a forest reserve, a lumbering proposition. On the other hand, what a blunder to put a tree-cutting forester in charge of a park! We need both these men; each is important in his place; but it would be a double misfortune to put one in charge of the work of the other.

In this connection Stewart Edward White recently wrote:--

If the public in general understood the difference between a National Park and a National Forest, there could be no doubt as to the opinion of any intelligent citizen. The distinction is so simple that it seems that it should be easy to get it within the comprehension of anybody. A National Park is an open-air museum set apart by Congress either to preserve from commercial development beautiful scenery, trees, natural monuments, or some of the forests that are being cut commercially both in private and national forests. The idea is not commercial development along even conservative and constructive lines, but absolute preservation in a state of nature. Once this distinction is grasped, no one can doubt that these two inst.i.tutions demand entirely different management. It would be as sensible to put men with the same training in charge of both National Park and National Forest, as it would be to place the same men with the same training in charge of a busy shoe factory and a museum of archaeology.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MOUNT ST. ELIAS FROM EAST SIDE OF AGa.s.sIZ GLACIER, ALASKA]

Says Frederick Law Olmsted:--

Why should there be a distinction between National Forests and National Parks? If the public is at liberty to use both as recreation grounds, why should they not all be under one management, in the interest of a more economical administration?

The National _Forests_ are set apart for economic ends, and their use for recreation is a by-product properly to be secured only in so far as it does not interfere with the economic efficiency of the forest management. The National _Parks_ are set apart primarily in order to preserve to the people for all time the opportunity of a peculiar kind of enjoyment and recreation, not measurable in economic terms and to be obtained only from the remarkable scenery which they contain--scenery of these primeval types which are in most parts of the world rapidly vanis.h.i.+ng for all eternity before the increased thoroughness of the economic use of land. In the National Parks direct economic returns, if any, are properly the by-products; and even rapidity and efficiency in making them accessible to the people, although of great importance, are wholly secondary to the one dominant purpose of preserving essential esthetic qualities of their scenery unimpaired as a heritage to the infinite numbers of the generations to come.

Because of the very fact that in the Parks, as well as in the Forest, considerations of economics and of direct human enjoyment must both be carefully weighed in reaching decisions, and because the physical problems are much the same in both, the fundamental difference in the points of view which should control the management of the National Parks and that of the National Forests can be safely maintained only by keeping them under separate administration.

John Nolen says:--

The minor purposes of forests may correspond somewhat with the major purposes of parks, and _vice versa_; but the main and essential purposes of each are altogether different from the main and essential purposes of the other and any confusion of them is sure to lead to waste and disappointment.

Scenery is our most valuable and our n.o.blest resource.

It is of utmost importance that each of these reservations be managed separately. Those who have distinguished themselves by appreciating the importance of National Parks and by helping them in every way, have been clear and emphatic in urging that National Park management be utterly separate from the management of National Forests. Among those who have taken this stand are John Muir, J. Horace McFarland, John Nolen, Mrs. John D. Sherman, and in fact every one that I know of who is an authority on parks. The National Academy of Science also made a similar recommendation in 1897.

A Park should stand alone, and stand high. If we think of the Parks separately, keep them free from the dominion of commercialism, of interests, and of organizations, we may hope in a short time to receive the best use of them.

The courts have recently made a number of excellent decisions concerning the conservation of scenery, and have gone definitely on record recognizing its higher values. In a decision concerning a waterfall, Judge Robert E. Lewis said in part:--

It is a beneficial use to the weary that they, ailing and feeble, can have the wild beauties of Nature placed at their convenient disposal. Is a piece of canvas valuable only for a tent-fly, but worthless as a painting? Is a block of stone beneficially used when put into the walls of a dam, and not beneficially used when carved into a piece of statuary? Is the test dollars, or has beauty of scenery, rest, recreation, health and enjoyment something to do with it? Is there no beneficial use except that which is purely commercial?

This decision is epoch-marking. It emphasizes the importance to the Parks of having a management that is in no way tied up with any other work.