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Transcriber's Note
The punctuation and spelling from the original text have been faithfully
preserved. Only obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
The photograph "The Rainbow Natural Bridge, Utah", facing page 8, is
missing from the source document even though presented in the List of
Illustrations.
[Illustration: Map]
[Illustration: Map]
THE BOOK OF
THE NATIONAL PARKS
[Illustration: _From the painting by Chris Jorgenson_
ZOROASTER FROM THE DEPTHS OF THE GRAND CANYON
Nature's greatest example of stream erosion]
THE BOOK OF
THE NATIONAL PARKS
BY
ROBERT STERLING YARD
CHIEF, EDUCATIONAL DIVISION, NATIONAL PARK SERVICE, DEPARTMENT
OF THE INTERIOR
AUTHOR OF "THE NATIONAL PARKS PORTFOLIO"
"THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT," ETC.
WITH MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1919
PREFACE
In offering the American public a carefully studied outline of its
national park system, I have two principal objects. The one is to
describe and differentiate the national parks in a manner which will
enable the reader to appreciate their importance, scope, meaning,
beauty, manifold uses and enormous value to individual and nation. The
other is to use these parks, in which Nature is writing in large plain
lines the story of America's making, as examples illustrating the
several kinds of scenery, and what each kind means in terms of world
building; in other words, to translate the practical findings of science
into unscientific phrase for the reader's increased profit and pleasure,
not only in his national parks but in all other scenic places great and
small.
At the outset I have been confronted with a difficulty because of this
double objective. The role of the interpreter is not always welcome. If
I write what is vaguely known as a "popular" book, wise men have warned
me that any scientific intrusion, however lightly and dramatically
rendered, will displease its natural audience. If I write the simplest
of scientific books, I am warned that a large body of warm-blooded,
wholesome, enthusiastic Americans, the very ones above all others whose
keen enjoyment I want to double by doubling their sources of pleasure,
will have none of it. The suggestion that I make my text "popular" and
carry my "science" in an appendix I promptly rejected, for if I cannot
give the scientific aspects of nature their readable values in the text,
I cannot make them worth an appendix.
Now I fail to share with my advisers their poor opinion of the taste,
enterprise, and intelligence of the wide-awake American, but, for the
sake of my message, I yield in some part to their warnings. Therefore I
have so presented my material that the miscalled, and, I verily believe,
badly slandered "average reader," may have his "popular" book by
omitting the note on the Appreciation of Scenery, and the several notes
explanatory of scenery which are interpolated between groups of
chapters. If it is true, as I have been told, that the "average reader"
would omit these anyway, because it is his habit to omit prefaces and
notes of every kind, then nothing has been lost.
The keen inquiring reader, however, the reader who wants to know values
and to get, in the eloquent phrase of the day, all that's coming to him,
will have the whole story by beginning the book with the note on the
Appreciation of Scenery, and reading it consecutively, interpolated
notes and all. As this will involve less than a score of additional
pages, I hope to get the message of the national parks in terms of their
fullest enjoyment before much the greater part of the book's readers.
The pleasure of writing this book has many times repaid its cost in
labor, and any helpfulness it may have in advancing the popularity of
our national parks, in building up the system's worth as a national
economic asset, and in increasing the people's pleasure in all scenery
by helping them to appreciate their greatest scenery, will come to me as
pure profit. It is my earnest hope that this profit may be large.
A similar spirit has actuated the very many who have helped me acquire
the knowledge and experience to produce it; the officials of the
National Park Service, the superintendents and several rangers in the
national parks, certain zoologists of the United States Biological
Survey, the Director and many geologists of the United States Geological
Survey, scientific experts of the Smithsonian Institution, and
professors in several distinguished universities. Many men have been
patient and untiring in assistance and helpful criticism, and to these I
render warm thanks for myself and for readers who may benefit by their
work.
CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE vii
THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS
ON THE APPRECIATION OF SCENERY 3
I. THE NATIONAL PARKS OF THE UNITED STATES 17
THE GRANITE NATIONAL PARKS
GRANITE'S PART IN SCENERY 33
II. YOSEMITE, THE INCOMPARABLE 36
III. THE PROPOSED ROOSEVELT NATIONAL PARK 69
IV. THE HEART OF THE ROCKIES 93
V. MCKINLEY, GIANT OF GIANTS 118
VI. LAFAYETTE AND THE EAST 132
THE VOLCANIC NATIONAL PARKS
ON THE VOLCANO IN SCENERY 145
VII. LASSEN PEAK AND MOUNT KATMAI 148
VIII. MOUNT RAINIER, ICY OCTOPUS 159
IX. CRATER LAKE'S BOWL OF INDIGO 184
X. YELLOWSTONE, A VOLCANIC INTERLUDE 202
XI. THREE MONSTERS OF HAWAII 229
THE SEDIMENTARY NATIONAL PARKS
XII. ON SEDIMENTARY ROCK IN SCENERY 247
XIII. GLACIERED PEAKS AND PAINTED SHALES 251
XIV. ROCK RECORDS OF A VANISHED RACE 284
XV. THE HEALING WATERS 305
THE GRAND CANYON AND OUR NATIONAL MONUMENTS
ON THE SCENERY OF THE SOUTHWEST 321
XVI. A PAGEANT OF CREATION 328
XVII. THE RAINBOW OF THE DESERT 352
XVIII. HISTORIC MONUMENTS OF THE SOUTHWEST 367
XIX. DESERT SPECTACLES 385
XX. THE MUIR WOODS AND OTHER NATIONAL MONUMENTS 404
ILLUSTRATIONS
Zoroaster from the depths of the Grand Canyon _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
The Rainbow Natural Bridge, Utah 8
Middle fork of the Belly River, Glacier National Park 12
General Grant Tree 18
The Giant Geyser--greatest in the world 22
The Yosemite Falls--highest in the world 26
El Capitan, survivor of the glaciers 44
Half Dome, Yosemite's hooded monk 46
The climax of Yosemite National Park 56
The greatest waterwheel of the Tuolumne 56
Tehipite Dome, guardian rock of the Tehipite Valley 82
East Vidette from a forest of foxtail pines 84
Bull Frog Lake, proposed Roosevelt National Park 90
Under a giant sequoia 90
Estes Park Plateau, looking east 96
Front range of the Rockies from Bierstadt Lake 96
Summit of Longs Peak, Rocky Mountain National Park 110
The Andrews Glacier hangs from the Continental Divide 114
A Rocky Mountain cirque carved from solid granite 114
Mount McKinley, looming above the great Alaskan Range 128
Archdeacon Stuck's party half-way up the mountain 128
The summit of Mount McKinley 128
In Lafayette National Park 134
Sea caves in the granite 134
Frenchman's Bay from the east cliff of Champlain Mountain 140
Lassen Peak seen from the southwest 152
Lassen Peak close up 152
Southeast slope of Mount Rainier 162
Mount St. Helens seen from Mount Rainier Park 166
Mount Adams seen from Mount Rainier Park 166
Sluiskin Ridge and Columbia Crest 172
Mount Rainier seen from Tacoma 172
Mount Rainier and Paradise Inn in summer 174
Winter pleasures at Paradise Inn, Mount Rainier 174
Dutton Cliff and the Phantom Ship, Crater Lake 190
Sunset from Garfield Peak, Crater Lake National Park 190
Applegate Cliff, Crater Lake 194
Phantom Ship from Garfield Peak 194
The Excelsior Geyser which blew out in 1888; Yellowstone 216
One of the terraces at Mammoth Hot Springs, Yellowstone 216
Yellowstone Valley from the upper fall to the lower fall 220
The lower fall and the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone 220
The Teton Mountain from Jackson Hole, south of Yellowstone 228
The lava landscape of the Yellowstone and Gibbon Falls 228
The Kilauea Pit of Fire, Hawaii National Park 238
Within the crater of Kilauea 238
The Great Gable of Gould Mountain 272
The Cirque at the head of Cut Bank Creek 272
Ptarmigan Lake and Mount Wilbur, Glacier National Park 276
Scooped both sides by giant glaciers 276
Showing the Agassiz Glacier 282
Beautiful Bowman Lake, Glacier National Park 282
Prehistoric pottery from Mesa Verde 298
Sun Temple, Mesa Verde National Park 302
Spruce Tree House from across the canyon 302
On Hot Springs Mountain, Hot Springs of Arkansas 308
Bath House Row, Hot Springs of Arkansas 308
Sunset from Grand View, Grand Canyon National Park 340
Camping party on the South Rim 344
Down Hermit Trail from rim to river 344
Through the Granite Gorge surges the muddy Colorado 346
When morning mists lift from the depths of the Grand Canyon 346
El Gobernador, Zion National Monument 362
Zion Canyon from the rim 364
The Three Patriarchs, Zion Canyon 364
Casa Grande National Monument 374
Prehistoric cave homes in the Bandelier National Monument 374
Tumacacori Mission 376
Montezuma Castle 376
Roosevelt party in Monument Valley 386
Rainbow Bridge in full perspective 386
The Petrified Forest of Arizona 396
Petrified trunk forming a bridge over a canyon 396
Cathedral Isle of the Muir Woods 406
Pinnacles National Monument 412
The Devil's Tower 412
MAPS AND DIAGRAMS
PAGE
Cross-section of Crater Lake showing probable outline of
Mount Mazama 189
Cross-section of Crater Lake 191
Map of Hawaii National Park 230
FACING PAGE
Outline of the Mesa Verde Formation 290
Outlines of the Western and Eastern Temples, Zion National
Monument 356
AT END OF VOLUME
Map of Yosemite National Park, California.
Proposed Roosevelt National Park and the Sequoia and General
Grant National Parks, California.
The Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado.
Mount Rainier National Park, Washington.
Crater Lake National Park, Oregon.
Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming.
Glacier National Park, Montana.
Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado.
Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona.
Zion National Monument, Utah.
THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS
The Book of the National Parks
ON THE APPRECIATION OF SCENERY
To the average educated American, scenery is a pleasing hodge-podge of
mountains, valleys, plains, lakes, and rivers. To him, the
glacier-hollowed valley of Yosemite, the stream-scooped abyss of the
Grand Canyon, the volcanic gulf of Crater Lake, the bristling granite
core of the Rockies, and the ancient ice-carved shales of Glacier
National Park all are one--just scenery, magnificent, incomparable,
meaningless. As a people we have been content to wonder, not to know;
yet with scenery, as with all else, to know is to begin fully to enjoy.
Appreciation measures enjoyment. And this brings me to my proposition,
namely, that we shall not really enjoy our possession of the grandest
scenery in the world until we realize that scenery is the written page
of the History of Creation, and until we learn to read that page.
The national parks of America include areas of the noblest and most
diversified scenic sublimity easily accessible in the world;
nevertheless it is their chiefest glory that they are among the
completest expressions of the earth's history. The American people is
waking rapidly to the magnitude of its scenic possession; it has yet to
learn to appreciate it.
Nevertheless we love scenery. We are a nation of sightseers. The year
before the world war stopped all things, we spent $286,000,000 in going
to Europe. That summer Switzerland's receipts from the sale of
transportation and board to persons coming from foreign lands to see her
scenery was $100,000,000, and more than half, it has been stated
apparently with authority, came from America. That same year tourist
travel became Canada's fourth largest source of income, exceeding in
gross receipts even her fisheries, and the greater part came from the
United States; it is a matter of record that seven-tenths of the hotel
registrations in the Canadian Rockies were from south of the border. Had
we then known, as a nation, that there was just as good scenery of its
kind in the United States, and many more kinds, we would have gone to
see that; it is a national trait to buy the best. Since then, we have
discovered this important fact and are crowding to our national parks.
"Is it true," a woman asked me at the foot of Yosemite Falls, "that this
is the highest unbroken waterfall in the world?"
She was the average tourist, met there by chance. I assured her that
such was the fact. I called attention to the apparent deliberation of
the water's fall, a trick of the senses resulting from failure to
realize height and distance.
"To think they are the highest in the world!" she mused.
I told her that the soft fingers of water had carved this valley three
thousand feet into the solid granite, and that ice had polished its
walls, and I estimated for her the ages since the Merced River flowed at
the level of the cataract's brink.
"I've seen the tallest building in the world," she replied dreamily,
"and the longest railroad, and the largest lake, and the highest
monument, and the biggest department store, and now I see the highest
waterfall. Just think of it!"
If one has illusions concerning the average tourist, let him compare the
hundreds who gape at the paint pots and geysers of Yellowstone with the
dozens who exult in the sublimated glory of the colorful canyon. Or let
him listen to the table-talk of a party returned from Crater Lake. Or
let him recall the statistical superlatives which made up his friend's
last letter from the Grand Canyon.
I am not condemning wonder, which, in its place, is a legitimate and
pleasurable emotion. As a condiment to sharpen and accent an abounding
sense of beauty it has real and abiding value.
Love of beauty is practically a universal passion. It is that which
lures millions into the fields, valleys, woods, and mountains on every
holiday, which crowds our ocean lanes and railroads. The fact that few
of these rejoicing millions are aware of their own motive, and that,
strangely enough, a few even would be ashamed to make the admission if
they became aware of it, has nothing to do with the fact. It's a wise
man that knows his own motives. The fact that still fewer, whether
aware or not of the reason of their happiness, are capable of making the
least expression of it, also has nothing to do with the fact. The
tourist woman whom I met at the foot of Yosemite Falls may have felt
secretly suffocated by the filmy grandeur of the incomparable spectacle,
notwithstanding that she was conscious of no higher emotion than the
cheap wonder of a superlative. The Grand Canyon's rim is the stillest
crowded place I know. I've stood among a hundred people on a precipice
and heard the whir of a bird's wings in the abyss. Probably the majority
of those silent gazers were suffering something akin to pain at their
inability to give vent to the emotions bursting within them.
I believe that the statement can not be successfully challenged that, as
a people, our enjoyment of scenery is almost wholly emotional. Love of
beauty spiced by wonder is the equipment for enjoyment of the average
intelligent traveller of to-day. Now add to this a more or less equal
part of the intellectual pleasure of comprehension and you have the
equipment of the average intelligent traveller of to-morrow. To hasten
this to-morrow is one of the several objects of this book.
To see in the carved and colorful depths of the Grand Canyon not only
the stupendous abyss whose terrible beauty grips the soul, but also
to-day's chapter in a thrilling story of creation whose beginning lay
untold centuries back in the ages, whose scene covers three hundred
thousand square miles of our wonderful southwest, whose actors include
the greatest forces of nature, whose tremendous episodes shame the
imagination of Dore, and whose logical end invites suggestions before
which finite minds shrink--this is to come into the presence of the
great spectacle properly equipped for its enjoyment. But how many who
see the Grand Canyon get more out of it than merely the beauty that
grips the soul?
So it is throughout the world of scenery. The geologic story written on
the cliffs of Crater Lake is more stupendous even than the glory of its
indigo bowl. The war of titanic forces described in simple language on
the rocks of Glacier National Park is unexcelled in sublimity in the
history of mankind. The story of Yellowstone's making multiplies many
times the thrill occasioned by its world-famed spectacle. Even the
simplest and smallest rock details often tell thrilling incidents of
prehistoric tunes out of which the enlightened imagination reconstructs
the romances and the tragedies of earth's earlier days.
How eloquent, for example, was the small, water-worn fragment of dull
coal we found on the limestone slope of one of Glacier's mountains!
Impossible companionship! The one the product of forest, the other of
submerged depths. Instantly I glimpsed the distant age when thousands of
feet above the very spot upon which I stood, but then at sea level,
bloomed a Cretaceous forest, whose broken trunks and matted foliage
decayed in bogs where they slowly turned to coal; coal which, exposed
and disintegrated during intervening ages, has long since--all but a
few small fragments like this--washed into the headwaters of the
Saskatchewan to merge eventually in the muds of Hudson Bay. And then,
still dreaming, my mind leaped millions of years still further back to
lake bottoms where, ten thousand feet below the spot on which I stood,
gathered the pre-Cambrian ooze which later hardened to this very
limestone. From ooze a score of thousand feet, a hundred million years,
to coal! And both lie here together now in my palm! Filled thus with
visions of a perspective beyond human comprehension, with what
multiplied intensity of interest I now returned to the noble view from
Gable Mountain!
In pleading for a higher understanding of Nature's method and
accomplishment as a precedent to study and observation of our national
parks, I seek enormously to enrich the enjoyment not only of these
supreme examples but of all examples of world making. The same readings
which will prepare you to enjoy to the full the message of our national
parks will invest your neighborhood hills at home, your creek and river
and prairie, your vacation valleys, the landscape through your car
window, even your wayside ditch, with living interest. I invite you to a
new and fascinating earth, an earth interesting, vital, personal,
beloved, because at last known and understood!
It requires no great study to know and understand the earth well enough
for such purpose as this. One does not have to dim his eyes with acres
of maps, or become a plodding geologist, or learn to distinguish
schists from granites, or to classify plants by table, or to call wild
geese and marmots by their Latin names. It is true that geography,
geology, physiography, mineralogy, botany and zoology must each
contribute their share toward the condition of intelligence which will
enable you to realize appreciation of Nature's amazing earth, but the
share of each is so small that the problem will be solved, not by
exhaustive study, but by the selection of essential parts. Two or three
popular books which interpret natural science in perspective should
pleasurably accomplish your purpose. But once begun, I predict that few
will fail to carry certain subjects beyond the mere essentials, while
some will enter for life into a land of new delights.
Let us, for illustration, consider for a moment the making of America.
The earth, composed of countless aggregations of matter drawn together
from the skies, whirled into a globe, settled into a solid mass
surrounded by an atmosphere carrying water like a sponge, has reached
the stage of development when land and sea have divided the surface
between them, and successions of heat and frost, snow, ice, rain, and
flood, are busy with their ceaseless carving of the land. Already
mountains are wearing down and sea bottoms are building up with their
refuse. Sediments carried by the rivers are depositing in strata, which
some day will harden into rock.
We are looking now at the close of the era which geologists call
Archean, because it is ancient beyond knowledge. A few of its rocks are
known, but not well enough for many definite conclusions. All the
earth's vast mysterious past is lumped under this title.
The definite history of the earth begins with the close of the dim
Archean era. It is the lapse from then till now, a few hundred million
years at most out of all infinity, which ever can greatly concern man,
for during this time were laid the only rocks whose reading was assisted
by the presence of fossils. During this time the continents attained
their final shape, the mountains rose, and valleys, plains, and rivers
formed and re-formed many times before assuming the passing forms which
they now show. During this time also life evolved from its inferred
beginnings in the late Archean to the complicated, finely developed, and
in man's case highly mentalized and spiritualized organization of
To-day.
Surely the geologist's field of labor is replete with interest,
inspiration, even romance. But because it has become so saturated with
technicality as to become almost a popular bugaboo, let us attempt no
special study, but rather cull from its voluminous records those simple
facts and perspectives which will reveal to us this greatest of all
story books, our old earth, as the volume of enchantment that it really
is.
With the passing of the Archean, the earth had not yet settled into the
perfectly balanced sphere which Nature destined it to be. In some places
the rock was more compactly squeezed than in others, and these denser
masses eventually were forced violently into neighbor masses which were
not so tightly squeezed. These movements far below the surface shifted
the surface balance and became one of many complicated and little known
causes impelling the crust here to slowly rise and there to slowly fall.
Thus in places sea bottoms lifted above the surface and became land,
while lands elsewhere settled and became seas. There are areas which
have alternated many times between land and sea; this is why we find
limestones which were formed in the sea overlying shales which were
formed in fresh water, which in turn overlie sandstones which once were
beaches--all these now in plateaus thousands of feet above the ocean's
level.
Sometimes these mysterious internal forces lifted the surface in long
waves. Thus mountain chains and mountain systems were created. Often
their summits, worn down by frosts and rains, disclose the core of rock
which, ages before, then hot and fluid, had underlain the crust and bent
it upward into mountain form. Now, cold and hard, these masses are
disclosed as the granite of to-day's landscape, or as other igneous
rocks of earth's interior which now cover broad surface areas, mingled
with the stratified or water-made rocks which the surface only produces.
But this has not always been the fate of the under-surface molten rocks,
for sometimes they have burst by volcanic vents clear through the crust
of earth, where, turned instantly to pumice and lava by release from
pressure, they build great surface cones, cover broad plains and fill
basins and valleys.
Thus were created the three great divisions of the rocks which form the
three great divisions of scenery, the sediments, the granites, and the
lavas.
During these changes in the levels of enormous surface areas, the frosts
and water have been industriously working down the elevations of the
land. Nature forever seeks a level. The snows of winter, melting at
midday, sink into the rocks' minutest cracks. Expanded by the frosts,
the imprisoned water pries open and chips the surface. The rains of
spring and summer wash the chippings and other debris into rivulets,
which carry them into mountain torrents, which rush them into rivers,
which sweep them into oceans, which deposit them for the upbuilding of
the bottoms. Always the level! Thousands of square miles of California
were built up from ocean's bottom with sediments chiselled from the
mountains of Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah, and swept seaward through the
Grand Canyon.
These mills grind without rest or pause. The atmosphere gathers the
moisture from the sea, the winds roll it in clouds to the land, the
mountains catch and chill the clouds, and the resulting rains hurry back
to the sea in rivers bearing heavy freights of soil. Spring, summer,
autumn, winter, day and night, the mills of Nature labor unceasingly to
produce her level. If ever this earth is really finished to Nature's
liking, it will be as round and polished as a billiard ball.
[Illustration: _From a photograph by Bailey Willis_
MIDDLE FORK OF THE BELLY RIVER, GLACIER NATIONAL PARK
Very ancient shales and limestone fantastically carved by glaciers. The
illustration shows Glenns Lake, Pyramid Peak, Chaney Glacier, and Mount
Kipp]
Years mean nothing in the computation of the prehistoric past. Who can
conceive a thousand centuries, to say nothing of a million years? Yet
either is inconsiderable against the total lapse of time even from the
Archean's close till now.
And so geologists have devised an easier method of count, measured not
by units of time, but by what each phase of progress has accomplished.
This measure is set forth in the accompanying table, together with a
conjecture concerning the lapse of time in terms of years.
The most illuminating accomplishment of the table, however, is its
bird's-eye view of the procession of the evolution of life from the
first inference of its existence to its climax of to-day; and,
concurrent with this progress, its suggestion of the growth and
development of scenic America. It is, in effect, the table of contents
of a volume whose thrilling text and stupendous illustration are
engraved immortally in the rocks; a volume whose ultimate secrets the
scholarship of all time perhaps will never fully decipher, but whose
dramatic outlines and many of whose most thrilling incidents are open to
all at the expense of a little study at home and a little thoughtful
seeing in the places where the facts are pictured in lines so big and
graphic that none may miss their meanings.
Man's colossal egotism is rudely shaken before the Procession of the
Ages. Aghast, he discovers that the billions of years which have wrought
this earth from star dust were not merely God's laborious preparation
of a habitation fit for so admirable an occupant; that man, on the
contrary, is nothing more or less than the present master tenant of
earth, the highest type of hundreds of millions of years of succeeding
tenants only because he is the latest in evolution.
PROGRESS OF CREATION
Chart of the Divisions of Geologic Time, and an Estimate in Years
based on the assumption that a hundred million years have elapsed
since the close of the Archean Period, together with a condensed
table of the Evolution of Life from its Inferred Beginnings in the
Archean to the Present Time. Read from the bottom up. Read the
footnote upon the opposite page concerning the Estimate of Time.
---------+---------------+--------------+-----------------------+----------
ERA | PERIOD | EPOCH | LIFE DEVELOPMENT | ESTIMATED
| | | | TIME
---------+---------------+--------------+-----------------------+----------
| | Recent | THE AGE OF MAN |
CENOZOIC | _Quaternary_ | Pleistocene |Animals and plants of | 6
| | (Ice Age) |the modern type. First | millions
| | |record of man occurs in| of
| | |the early Pleistocene. | years.
Era of +---------------+--------------+-----------------------+
Recent | | Pliocene | THE AGE OF MAMMALS |
Life | _Tertiary_ | Miocene |Rise and development of|
| | Oligocene |the highest orders of |
| | Eocene |plants and animals. |
---------+---------------+--------------+-----------------------+----------
| _Cretaceous_ | | THE AGE OF REPTILES |
MESOZOIC | _Jurassic_ | |Shellfish with complex |
| _Triassic_ | |shells. Enormous land |
| | |reptiles. Flying | 16
| | |reptiles and the | millions
| | |evolution therefrom of | of
| | |birds. First palms. | years.
| | |First hardwood trees. |
| | | First mammals. |
Era of +---------------+--------------+-----------------------+
Intermediate | | THE AGE OF AMPHIBIANS.|
Life | | | THE COAL AGE |
|_Carboniferous_| Permian |Sharks and sea animals |
| | |with nautilus-like |
| |Pennsylvanian |shells. Evolution of |
| | |land plants in many |
| |Mississippian |complex forms. First |
| | |appearance of land |
| | |vertebrates. First |
| | |flowering plants. |
| | |First cone-bearing |
| | |trees. Club mosses and |
| | |ferns highly developed.|
---------+---------------+--------------+-----------------------+----------
| | | THE AGE OF FISHES |
| _Devonian_ | |Evolution of many |
| | |forms. Fish of great |
| | |size. First appearance | 45
| | |of amphibians and land | millions
| | |plants. | of
+---------------+--------------+-----------------------+ years.
PALEOZOIC| | |Shellfish develop |
Era of | _Silurian_ | |fully. Appearance and |
Old Life | | |culmination of crinoids|
| | |or sea-lilies, and |
| | |large scorpion-like |
| | |crustaceans. First |
| | |appearance of |
| | |reef-building corals. |
| | |Development of fishes. |
+---------------+--------------+-----------------------+
| | |Sea animals develop |
| _Ordovician_ | |shells, especially |
| | |cephalopods and |
| | |mollusk-like |
| | |brachiopods. Trilobites|
| | |at their height. First |
| | |appearance of insects. |
| | |First appearance of |
| | |fishes. |
+---------------+--------------+-----------------------+
| | |More highly developed |
| _Cambrian_ | |forms of water life. |
| | |Trilobites and |
| | |brachiopods most |
| | |abundant. Algae. |
---------+---------------+--------------+-----------------------+----------
| _Algonkian_ | |The first life which |
| | |left a distinct record.| 33
| | |Very primitive forms | millions
PROTEROZOIC | |of water life, | of
| | |crustaceans, | years.
| | |brachiopods and algae. |
---------+---------------+--------------+-----------------------+----------
| _Archean_ | |No fossils found, but |
| | |life inferred from the |
| | |existence of iron ores |
ARCHEOZOIC | |and limestones, which |
| | |are generally formed in|
| | |the presence of |
| | |organisms. |
---------+---------------+--------------+-----------------------+----------
Who can safely declare that the day will not come when a new
Yellowstone, hurled from reopened volcanoes, shall found itself upon the
buried ruin of the present Yellowstone; when the present Sierra shall
have disappeared into the Pacific and the deserts of the Great Basin
become the gardens of the hemisphere; when a new Rocky Mountain system
shall have grown upon the eroded and dissipated granites of the present;
when shallow seas shall join anew Hudson Bay with the Gulf of Mexico;
when a new and lofty Appalachian Range shall replace the rounded summits
of to-day; when a race of beings as superior to man, intellectually and
spiritually, as man is superior to the ape, shall endeavor to
reconstruct a picture of man from the occasional remnants which floods may
wash into view?
NOTE EXPLANATORY OF THE ESTIMATE OF GEOLOGIC TIME IN THE TABLE ON
THE OPPOSITE PAGE
The general assumption of modern geologists is that a hundred
million years have elapsed since the close of the Archean period;
at least this is a round number, convenient for thinking and
discussion. The recent tendency has been greatly to increase
conceptions of geologic time over the highly conservative estimates
of a few years ago, and a strong disposition is shown to regard the
Algonkian period as one of very great length, extremists even
suggesting that it may have equalled all time since. For the
purposes of this popular book, then, let us conceive that the earth
has existed for a hundred million years since Archean times, and
that one-third of this was Algonkian; and let us apportion the
two-thirds remaining among succeeding eras in the average of the
proportions adopted by Professor Joseph Barrell of Yale University,
whose recent speculations upon geologic time have attracted wide
attention.
Fantastic, you may say. It is fantastic. So far as I know there exists
not one fact upon which definite predictions such as these may be based.
But also there exists not one fact which warrants specific denial of
predictions such as these. And if any inference whatever may be made
from earth's history it is the inevitable inference that the period in
which man lives is merely one step in an evolution of matter, mind and
spirit which looks forward to changes as mighty or mightier than those I
have suggested.
With so inspiring an outline, the study to which I invite you can be
nothing but pleasurable. Space does not permit the development of the
theme in the pages which follow, but the book will have failed if it
does not, incidental to its main purposes, entangle the reader in the
charm of America's adventurous past.
I
THE NATIONAL PARKS OF THE UNITED STATES
The National Parks of the United States are areas of supreme scenic
splendor or other unique quality which Congress has set apart for the
pleasure and benefit of the people. At this writing they number
eighteen, sixteen of which lie within the boundaries of the United
States and are reached by rail and road. Those of greater importance
have excellent roads, good trails, and hotels or hotel camps, or both,
for the accommodation of visitors; also public camp grounds where
visitors may pitch their own tents. Outside the United States there are
two national parks, one enclosing three celebrated volcanic craters, the
other conserving the loftiest mountain on the continent.
I
The starting point for any consideration of our national parks
necessarily is the recently realized fact of their supremacy in world
scenery. It was the sensational force of this realization which
intensely attracted public attention at the outset of the new movement;
many thousands hastened to see these wonders, and their reports spread
the tidings throughout the land and gave the movement its increasing
impetus.
The simple facts are these:
The Swiss Alps, except for several unmatchable individual features, are
excelled in beauty, sublimity and variety by several of our own national
parks, and these same parks possess other distinguished individual
features unrepresented in kind or splendor in the Alps.
The Canadian Rockies are more than matched in rich coloring by our
Glacier National Park. Glacier is the Canadian Rockies done in Grand
Canyon colors. It has no peer.
The Yellowstone outranks by far any similar volcanic area in the world.
It contains more and greater geysers than all the rest of the world
together; the next in rank are divided between Iceland and New Zealand.
Its famous canyon is alone of its quality of beauty. Except for portions
of the African jungle, the Yellowstone is probably the most populated
wild animal area in the world, and its wild animals are comparatively
fearless, even sometimes friendly.
Mount Rainier has a single-peak glacier system whose equal has not yet
been discovered. Twenty-eight living glaciers, some of them very large,
spread, octopus-like, from its centre. It is four hours by rail or motor
from Tacoma.
Crater Lake is the deepest and bluest accessible lake in the world,
occupying the hole left after one of our largest volcanoes had slipped
back into earth's interior through its own rim.
[Illustration: GENERAL GRANT TREE
It has a National Park all to itself]
Yosemite possesses a valley whose compelling beauty the world
acknowledges as supreme. The valley is the centre of eleven hundred
square miles of high altitude wilderness.
The Sequoia contains more than a million sequoia trees, twelve thousand
of which are more than ten feet in diameter, and some of which are the
largest and oldest living things in the wide world.
The Grand Canyon of Arizona is by far the hugest and noblest example of
erosion in the world. It is gorgeously carved and colored. In sheer
sublimity it offers an unequalled spectacle.
Mount McKinley stands more than 20,000 feet above sea level, and 17,000
feet above the surrounding valleys. Scenically, it is the world's
loftiest mountain, for the monsters of the Andes and the Himalayas which
surpass it in altitude can be viewed closely only from valleys from five
to ten thousand feet higher than McKinley's northern valleys.
The Hawaii National Park contains the fourth greatest dead crater in the
world, the hugest living volcano, and the Kilauea Lake of Fire, which is
unique and draws visitors from the world's four quarters.
These are the principal features of America's world supremacy. They are
incidental to a system of scenic wildernesses which in combined area as
well as variety exceed the combined scenic wilderness playgrounds of
similar class comfortably accessible elsewhere. No wonder, then, that
the American public is overjoyed with its recently realized treasure,
and that the Government looks confidently to the rapid development of
its new-found economic asset. The American public has discovered
America, and no one who knows the American public doubts for a moment
what it will do with it.
II
The idea still widely obtains that our national parks are principally
playgrounds. A distinguished member of Congress recently asked: "Why
make these appropriations? More people visited Rock Creek Park here in
the city of Washington last Sunday afternoon than went to the Yosemite
all last summer. The country has endless woods and mountains which cost
the Treasury nothing."
This view entirely misses the point. The national parks are
recreational, of course. So are state, county and city parks. So are
resorts of every kind. So are the fields, the woods, the seashore, the
open country everywhere. We are living in an open-air age. The nation of
outdoor livers is a nation of power, initiative, and sanity. I hope to
see the time when available State lands everywhere, when every square
mile from our national forest reserve, when even many private holdings
are made accessible and comfortable, and become habited with summer
trampers and campers. It is the way to individual power and national
efficiency.
But the national parks are far more than recreational areas. They are
the supreme examples. They are the gallery of masterpieces. Here the
visitor enters in a holier spirit. Here is inspiration. They are also
the museums of the ages. Here nature is still creating the earth upon a
scale so vast and so plain that even the dull and the frivolous cannot
fail to see and comprehend.
This is no distinction without a difference. The difference is so marked
that few indeed even of those who visit our national parks in a
frivolous or merely recreational mood remain in that mood. The spirit of
the great places brooks nothing short of silent reverence. I have seen
men unconsciously lift their hats. The mind strips itself of affairs as
one sheds a coat. It is the hour of the spirit. One returns to daily
living with a springier step, a keener vision, and a broader horizon for
having worshipped at the shrine of the Infinite.
III
The Pacific Coast Expositions of 1915 marked the beginning of the
nation's acquaintance with its national parks. In fact, they were the
occasion, if not the cause, of the movement for national parks
development which found so quickly a country-wide response, and which is
destined to results of large importance to individual and nation alike.
Because thousands of those whom the expositions were expected to draw
westward would avail of the opportunity to visit national parks,
Secretary Lane, to whom the national parks suggested neglected
opportunity requiring business experience to develop, induced Stephen T.
Mather, a Chicago business man with mountain-top enthusiasms, to
undertake their preparation for the unaccustomed throngs. Mr. Mather's
vision embraced a correlated system of superlative scenic areas which
should become the familiar playgrounds of the whole American people, a
system which, if organized and administered with the efficiency of a
great business, should even become, in time, the rendezvous of the
sightseers of the world. He foresaw in the national parks a new and
great national economic asset.
The educational and other propaganda by which this movement was
presented to the people, which the writer had the honor to plan and
execute, won rapidly the wide support of the public. To me the national
parks appealed powerfully as the potential museums and classrooms for
the popular study of the natural forces which made, and still are
making, America, and of American fauna and flora. Here were set forth,
in fascinating picture and lines so plain that none could fail to read
and understand, the essentials of sciences whose real charm our rapid
educational methods impart to few. This book is the logical outgrowth of
a close study of the national parks, beginning with the inception of the
new movement, from this point of view.
How free from the partisan considerations common in governmental
organization was the birth of the movement is shown by an incident of
Mr. Mather's inauguration into his assistant secretaryship. Secretary
Lane had seen him at his desk and had started back to his own room. But
he returned, looked in at the door, and asked:
[Illustration: _Copyright by Haynes, St. Paul_
THE GIANT GEYSER--GREATEST IN THE WORLD
Yellowstone National Park]
"Oh, by the way, Steve, what are your politics?"
This book considers our national parks as they line up four years after
the beginning of this movement. It shows them well started upon the long
road to realization, with Congress, Government, and the people united
toward a common end, with the schools and the universities interested,
and, for the first time, with the railroads, the concessioners, the
motoring interests, and many of the public-spirited educational and
outdoor associations all pulling together under the inspiration of a
recognized common motive.
Of course this triumph of organization, for it is no less, could not
have been accomplished nearly so quickly without the assistance of the
closing of Europe by the great war. Previous to 1915, Americans had been
spending $300,000,000 a year in European travel. Nor could it have been
accomplished at all if investigation and comparison had not shown that
our national parks excel in supreme scenic quality and variety the
combined scenery which is comfortably accessible in all the rest of the
world together.
To get the situation at the beginning of our book into full perspective,
it must be recognized that, previous to the beginning of our propaganda
in 1915, the national parks, as such, scarcely existed in the public
consciousness. Few Americans could name more than two or three of the
fourteen existing parks. The Yosemite Valley and the Yellowstone alone
were generally known, but scarcely as national parks; most of the
school geographies which mentioned them at all ignored their national
character. The advertising folders of competing railroads were the
principal sources of public knowledge, for few indeed asked for the
compilation of rates and charges which the Government then sent in
response to inquiries for information. The parks had practically no
administration. The business necessarily connected with their upkeep and
development was done by clerks as minor and troublesome details which
distracted attention from more important duties; there was no one clerk
whose entire concern was with the national parks. The American public
still looked confidently upon the Alps as the supreme scenic area in the
world, and hoped some day to see the Canadian Rockies.
IV
Originally the motive in park-making had been unalloyed conservation. It
is as if Congress had said: "Let us lock this up where no one can run
away with it; we don't need it now, but some day it may be valuable."
That was the instinct that led to the reservation of the Hot Springs of
Arkansas in 1832, the first national park. Forty years later, when
official investigation proved the truth of the amazing tales of
Yellowstone's natural wonders, it was the instinct which led to the
reservation of that largely unexplored area as the second national park.
Seventeen years after Yellowstone, when newspapers and scientific
magazines recounted the ethnological importance of the Casa Grande Ruin
in Arizona, it resulted in the creation of the third national park,
notwithstanding that the area so conserved enclosed less than a square
mile, which contained nothing of the kind and quality which to-day we
recognize as essential to parkhood. This closed what may be regarded as
the initial period of national parks conservation. It was wholly
instinctive; distinctions, objectives, and policies were undreamed of.
Less than two years after Casa Grande, which, by the way, has recently
been re-classed a national monument, what may be called the middle
period began brilliantly with the creation, in 1890, of the Yosemite,
the Sequoia, and the General Grant National Parks, all parks in the true
sense of the word, and all of the first order of scenic magnificence.
Nine years later Mount Rainier was added, and two years after that
wonderful Crater Lake, both meeting fully the new standard.
What followed was human and natural. The term national park had begun to
mean something in the neighborhoods of the parks. Yellowstone and
Yosemite had long been household words, and the introduction of other
areas to their distinguished company fired local pride in neighboring
states. "Why should we not have national parks, too?" people asked.
Congress, always the reflection of the popular will, and therefore not
always abreast of the moment, was unprepared with reasons. Thus, during
1903 and 1904, there were added to the list areas in North Dakota,
South Dakota, and Oklahoma, which were better fitted for State parks
than for association with the distinguished company of the nation's
noblest.
A reaction followed and resulted in what we may call the modern period.
Far-sighted men in and out of Congress began to compare and look ahead.
No hint yet of the splendid destiny of our national parks, now so
clearly defined, entered the minds of these men at this time, but ideas
of selection, of development and utilization undoubtedly began to take
form. At least, conservation, as such, ceased to become a sole motive.
Insensibly Congress, or at least a few men of vision in Congress, began
to take account of stock and figure on realization.
This healthy growth was helped materially by the public demand for the
improvement of several of the national parks. No thought of
appropriating money to improve the bathing facilities of Hot Springs had
affected Congressional action for nearly half a century; it was enough
that the curative springs had been saved from private ownership.
Yellowstone was considered so altogether extraordinary, however, that
Congress began in 1879 to appropriate yearly for its approach by road,
and for the protection of its springs and geysers; but this was because
Yellowstone appealed to the public sense of wonder. It took twenty years
more for Congress to understand that the public sense of beauty was also
worth appropriations. Yosemite had been a national park for nine years
before it received a dollar, and then only when public demand for roads,
trails, and accommodations became insistent.
[Illustration: _From a photograph by Pillsbury_
THE YOSEMITE FALLS--HIGHEST IN THE WORLD
From the brink of the upper falls to the foot of the lower falls is
almost half a mile]