and magazine reports of the glories of the newer national parks, then
attracting some public attention. It helped discrimination in the
comparison of the minor parks created in 1903 and 1904 with the greater
ones which had preceded. The realization that the parks must be
developed at public expense sharpened Congressional judgment as to what
areas should and should not become national parks.
From that time on Congress has made no mistakes in selecting national
parks. Mesa Verde became a park in 1905, Glacier in 1910, Rocky Mountain
in 1915, Hawaii and Lassen Volcanic in 1916, Mount McKinley in 1917, and
Lafayette and the Grand Canyon in 1919. From that time on Congress, most
conservatively, it is true, has backed its judgment with increasing
appropriations. And in 1916 it created the National Park Service, a
bureau of the Department of the Interior, to administer them in
accordance with a definite policy.
V
The distinction between the national forests and the national parks is
essential to understanding. The national forests constitute an enormous
domain administered for the economic commercialization of the nation's
wealth of lumber. Its forests are handled scientifically with the object
of securing the largest annual lumber output consistent with the proper
conservation of the future. Its spirit is commercial. The spirit of
national park conservation is exactly opposite. It seeks no great
territory--only those few spots which are supreme. It aims to preserve
nature's handiwork exactly as nature made it. No tree is cut except to
make way for road, trail or hotel to enable the visitor to penetrate and
live among nature's secrets. Hunting is excellent in some of our
national forests, but there is no game in the national parks; in these,
wild animals are a part of nature's exhibits; they are protected as
friends.
It follows that forests and parks, so different in spirit and purpose,
must be handled wholly separately. Even the rangers and scientific
experts have objects so opposite and different that the same individual
cannot efficiently serve both purposes. High specialization in both
services is essential to success.
THE NATIONAL PARKS AT A GLANCE
[Number, 18; total area, 10,739 square miles]
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NATIONAL PARKS | | AREA IN|
IN ORDER | LOCATION | SQUARE | DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERISTICS
OF CREATION | | MILES |
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hot Springs, | Middle Arkansas | 1-1/2 | 46 hot springs possessing
1832 | | | curative properties--Many
| | | hotels and boarding houses--20
| | | bath-houses under public
| | | control.
| | |
Yellowstone, | Northwestern | 3,348 | More geysers than in all rest
1872 | Wyoming | | of world together--Boiling
| | | springs--Mud
| | | volcanoes--Petrified
| | | forests--Grand Canyon of the
| | | Yellowstone, remarkable for
| | | gorgeous coloring--Large
| | | lakes--Many large streams and
| | | waterfalls--Greatest wild bird
| | | and animal preserve in world.
| | |
Sequoia, 1890 | Middle eastern | 252 | The Big Tree National
| California | | Park--12,000 sequoia trees
| | | over 10 feet in diameter, some
| | | 25 to 36 feet in
| | | diameter--Towering mountain
| | | ranges--Startling
| | | precipices--Large limestone
| | | cave.
| | |
Yosemite, 1890 | Middle eastern | 1,125 | Valley of world-famed
| California | | beauty--Lofty cliffs--Romantic
| | | vistas--Many waterfalls of
| | | extraordinary height--3 groves
| | | of big trees--High
| | | Sierra--Waterwheel falls.
| | |
General Grant, | Middle eastern | 4 | Created to preserve the
1890 | California | | celebrated General Grant
| | | Tree, 35 feet in diameter--6
| | | miles from Sequoia National
| | | Park.
| | |
Mount Rainier, | West central | 324 | Largest accessible single peak
1899 | Washington | | glacier system--28 glaciers,
| | | some of large size--48 square
| | | miles of glacier, 50 to 500
| | | feet thick--Wonderful
| | | sub-alpine wild flower fields.
| | |
Crater Lake, | Southwestern | 249 | Lake of extraordinary blue in
1902 | Oregon | | crater of extinct
| | | volcano--Sides 1,000 feet
| | | high--Interesting lava
| | | formations.
| | |
Wind Cave, 1903| South Dakota | 17 | Cavern having many miles of
| | | galleries and numerous chambers
| | | containing peculiar formations.
| | |
Platt, 1904 | S. Oklahoma | 1-1/3 | Many sulphur and other springs
| | | possessing medicinal value.
| | |
Sullys Hill, | North Dakota | 1-1/5 | Small park with woods, streams,
1904 | | | and a lake--Is an important
| | | wild animal preserve.
| | |
Mesa Verde, | S.W. Colorado | 77 | Most notable and best preserved
1906 | | | prehistoric cliff dwellings in
| | | United States, if not in the
| | | world.
| | |
Glacier, 1910 | Northwestern | 1,534 | Rugged mountain region of
| Montana | | unsurpassed Alpine
| | | character--250 glacier-fed
| | | lakes of romantic beauty--60
| | | small glaciers--Sensational
| | | scenery of marked
| | | individuality.
| | |
Rocky Mountain,| North middle | 398 | Heart of the Rockies--Snowy
1915 | Colorado | | range, peaks 11,000 to 14,250
| | | feet altitude--Remarkable
| | | records of glacial period.
| | |
Hawaii, 1916 | Hawaiian Islands| 118 | Three separate volcanic
| | | areas--Kilauea and Mauna Loa on
| | | Hawaii; Haleakala on Maui.
| | |
Lassen Volcanic| Northern | 124 | Only active volcano in United
1916 | California | | States proper--Lassen Peak
| | | 10,465 feet--Cinder Cone 6,879
| | | feet--Hot springs--Mud geysers.
| | |
Mount McKinley,| South central | 2,200 | Highest mountain in North
1917 | Alaska | | America--Rises higher above
| | | surrounding country than any
| | | other mountain in world.
| | |
Grand Canyon, | North central | 958 | The greatest example of erosion
1919 | Arizona | | and the most sublime spectacle
| | | in the world--One mile deep and
| | | eight to twelve miles
| | | wide--Brilliantly colored.
| | |
Lafayette, 1919| Maine Coast | 8 | The group of granite mountains
| | | on Mount Desert Island.
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Another distinction which should be made is the difference between a
national park and a national monument. The one is an area of size
created by Congress upon the assumption that it is a supreme example of
its kind and with the purpose of developing it for public occupancy and
enjoyment. The other is made by presidential proclamation to conserve an
area or object which is historically, ethnologically, or scientifically
important. Size is not considered, and development is not contemplated.
The distinction is often lost in practice. Casa Grande is essentially a
national monument, but had the status of a national park until 1918. The
Grand Canyon, from every point of view a national park, was created a
national monument and remained such until 1919.
THE GRANITE NATIONAL PARKS
GRANITE'S PART IN SCENERY
The granite national parks are Yosemite, Sequoia, including the proposed
Roosevelt Park, General Grant, Rocky Mountain, and Mount McKinley.
Granite, as its name denotes, is granular in texture and appearance. It
is crystalline, which means that it is imperfectly crystallized. It is
composed of quartz, feldspar, and mica in varying proportions, and
includes several common varieties which mineralogists distinguish
scientifically by separate names.
Because of its great range and abundance, its presence at the core of
mountain ranges where it is uncovered by erosion, its attractive
coloring, its massiveness and its vigorous personality, it figures
importantly in scenery of magnificence the world over. In color granite
varies from light gray, when it shines like silver upon the high
summits, to warm rose or dark gray, the reds depending upon the
proportion of feldspar in its composition.
It produces scenic effects very different indeed from those resulting
from volcanic and sedimentary rocks. While it bulks hugely in the higher
mountains, running to enormous rounded masses below the level of the
glaciers, and to jagged spires and pinnacled walls upon the loftiest
peaks, it is found also in many regions of hill and plain. It is one of
our commonest American rocks.
Much of the loftiest and noblest scenery of the world is wrought in
granite. The Alps, the Andes, and the Himalayas, all of which are
world-celebrated for their lofty grandeur, are prevailingly granite.
They abound in towering peaks, bristling ridges, and terrifying
precipices. Their glacial cirques are girt with fantastically toothed
and pinnacled walls.
This is true of all granite ranges which are lofty enough to maintain
glaciers. These are, in fact, the very characteristics of Alpine,
Andean, Himalayan, Sierran, Alaskan, and Rocky Mountain summit
landscape. It is why granite mountains are the favorites of those daring
climbers whose ambition is to equal established records and make new
ones; and this in turn is why some mountain neighborhoods become so much
more celebrated than others which are quite as fine, or finer--because,
I mean, of the publicity given to this kind of mountain climbing, and of
the unwarranted assumption that the mountains associated with these
exploits necessarily excel others in sublimity. As a matter of fact, the
accident of fashion has even more to do with the fame of mountains than
of men.
But by no means all granite mountains are lofty. The White Mountains,
for example, which parallel our northeastern coast, and are far older
than the Rockies and the Sierra, are a low granite range, with few of
the characteristics of those mountains which lift their heads among the
perpetual snows. On the contrary, they tend to rounded forested summits
and knobby peaks. This results in part from a longer subjection of the
rock surface to the eroding influence of successive frosts and rains
than is the case with high ranges which are perpetually locked in frost.
Besides, the ice sheets which planed off the northern part of the United
States lopped away their highest parts.
There are also millions of square miles of eroded granite which are not
mountains at all. These tend to rolling surfaces.
The scenic forms assumed by granite will be better appreciated when one
understands how it enters landscape. The principal one of many igneous
rocks, it is liquefied under intense heat and afterward cooled under
pressure. Much of the earth's crust was once underlaid by granites in a
more or less fluid state. When terrific internal pressures caused the
earth's crust to fold and make mountains, this liquefied granite invaded
the folds and pushed close up under the highest elevations. There it
cooled. Thousands of centuries later, when erosion had worn away these
mountain crests, there lay revealed the solid granite core which frost
and glacier have since transformed into the bristling ramparts of
to-day's landscape.
II
YOSEMITE, THE INCOMPARABLE
YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, MIDDLE EASTERN CALIFORNIA. AREA, 1,125 SQUARE
MILES
The first emotion inspired by the sight of Yosemite is surprise. No
previous preparation makes the mind ready for the actual revelation. The
hardest preliminary reading and the closest study of photographs, even
familiarity with other mountains as lofty, or loftier, fail to dull
one's first astonishment.
Hard on the heels of astonishment comes realization of the park's
supreme beauty. It is of its own kind, without comparison, as individual
as that of the Grand Canyon or the Glacier National Park. No single
visit will begin to reveal its sublimity; one must go away and return to
look again with rested eyes. Its devotees grow in appreciative enjoyment
with repeated summerings. Even John Muir, life student, interpreter, and
apostle of the Sierra, confessed toward the close of his many years that
the Valley's quality of loveliness continued to surprise him at each
renewal.
And lastly comes the higher emotion which is born of knowledge. It is
only when one reads in these inspired rocks the stirring story of their
making that pleasure reaches its fulness. The added joy of the
collector upon finding that the unsigned canvas, which he bought only
for its beauty, is the lost work of a great master, and was associated
with the romance of a famous past is here duplicated. Written history
never was more romantic nor more graphically told than that which Nature
has inscribed upon the walls of these vast canyons, domes and monoliths
in a language which man has learned to read.
I
The Yosemite National Park lies on the western slope of the Sierra
Nevada Mountains in California, nearly east of San Francisco. The snowy
crest of the Sierra, bellying irregularly eastward to a climax among the
jagged granites and gale-swept glaciers of Mount Lyell, forms its
eastern boundary. From this the park slopes rapidly thirty miles or more
westward to the heart of the warm luxuriant zone of the giant sequoias.
This slope includes in its eleven hundred and twenty-five square miles
some of the highest scenic examples in the wide gamut of Sierra
grandeur. It is impossible to enter it without exaltation of spirit, or
describe it without superlative.
A very large proportion of Yosemite's visitors see nothing more than the
Valley, yet no consideration is tenable which conceives the Valley as
other than a small part of the national park. The two are inseparable.
One does not speak of knowing the Louvre who has seen only the Venus de
Milo, or St. Mark's who has looked only upon its horses.
Considered as a whole, the park is a sagging plain of solid granite,
hung from Sierra's saw-toothed crest, broken into divides and transverse
mountain ranges, punctured by volcanic summits, gashed and bitten by
prehistoric glaciers, dotted near its summits with glacial lakes,
furrowed by innumerable cascading streams which combine in singing
rivers, which, in turn, furrow greater canyons, some of majestic depth
and grandeur. It is a land of towering spires and ambitious summits,
serrated cirques, enormous isolated rock masses, rounded granite domes,
polished granite pavements, lofty precipices, and long, shimmering
waterfalls.
Bare and gale-ridden near its crest, the park descends in thirty miles
through all the zones and gradations of animal and vegetable life
through which one would pass in travelling from the ice-bound shores of
the Arctic Ocean the continent's length to Mariposa Grove. Its tree
sequence tells the story. Above timber-line there are none but inch-high
willows and flat, piney growths, mingled with tiny arctic flowers, which
shrink in size with elevation; even the sheltered spots on Lyell's lofty
summit have their colored lichens, and their almost microscopic bloom.
At timber-line, low, wiry shrubs interweave their branches to defy the
gales, merging lower down into a tangle of many stunted growths, from
which spring twisted pines and contorted spruces, which the winds curve
to leeward or bend at sharp angles, or spread in full development as
prostrate upon the ground as the mountain lion's skin upon the home
floor of his slayer.
Descending into the great area of the Canadian zone, with its thousand
wild valleys, its shining lakes, its roaring creeks and plunging rivers,
the zone of the angler, the hiker, and the camper-out, we enter forests
of various pines, of silver fir, hemlock, aged hump-backed juniper, and
the species of white pine which Californians wrongly call tamarack.
This is the paradise of outdoor living; it almost never rains between
June and October. The forests fill the valley floors, thinning rapidly
as they climb the mountain slopes; they spot with pine green the broad,
shining plateaus, rooting where they find the soil, leaving unclothed
innumerable glistening areas of polished uncracked granite; a striking
characteristic of Yosemite uplands. From an altitude of seven or eight
thousand feet, the Canadian zone forests begin gradually to merge into
the richer forests of the Transition zone below. The towering sugar
pine, the giant yellow pine, the Douglas fir, and a score of deciduous
growths--live oaks, bays, poplars, dogwoods, maples--begin to appear and
become more frequent with descent, until, two thousand feet or more
below, they combine into the bright stupendous forests where, in
specially favored groves, King Sequoia holds his royal court.
Wild flowers, birds, and animals also run the gamut of the zones. Among
the snows and alpine flowerets of the summits are found the ptarmigan
and rosy finch of the Arctic circle, and in the summit cirques and on
the shores of the glacial lakes whistles the mountain marmot.
The richness and variety of wild flower life in all zones, each of its
characteristic kind, astonishes the visitor new to the American
wilderness. Every meadow is ablaze with gorgeous coloring, every copse
and sunny hollow, river bank and rocky bottom, becomes painted in turn
the hue appropriate to the changing seasons. Now blues prevail in the
kaleidoscopic display, now pinks, now reds, now yellows. Experience of
other national parks will show that the Yosemite is no exception; all
are gardens of wild flowers.
The Yosemite and the Sequoia are, however, the exclusive possessors
among the parks of a remarkably showy flowering plant, the brilliant,
rare, snow-plant. So luring is the red pillar which the snow-plant lifts
a foot or more above the shady mould, and so easily is it destroyed,
that, to keep it from extinction, the government fines covetous visitors
for every flower picked.
The birds are those of California--many, prolific, and songful. Ducks
raise their summer broods fearlessly on the lakes. Geese visit from
their distant homes. Cranes and herons fish the streams. Every tree has
its soloist, every forest its grand chorus. The glades resound with the
tapping of woodpeckers. The whirr of startled wings accompanies passage
through every wood. To one who has lingered in the forests to watch and
to listen, it is hard to account for the wide-spread fable that the
Yosemite is birdless. No doubt, happy talkative tourists, in companies
and regiments, afoot and mounted, drive bird and beast alike to silent
cover--and comment on the lifeless forests. "The whole range, from
foothill to summit, is shaken into song every summer," wrote John Muir,
to whom birds were the loved companions of a lifetime of Sierra summers,
"and, though low and thin in winter, the music never ceases."
There are two birds which the unhurried traveller will soon know well.
One is the big, noisy, gaudy Clark crow, whose swift flight and
companionable squawk are familiar to all who tour the higher levels. The
other is the friendly camp robber, who, with encouragement, not only
will share your camp luncheon, but will gobble the lion's share.
Of the many wild animals, ranging in size from the great, powerful,
timid grizzly bear, now almost extinct here, whose Indian name, by the
way, is Yosemite, to the tiny shrew of the lowlands, the most frequently
seen are the black or brown bear, and the deer, both of which, as
compared with their kind in neighborhoods where hunting is permitted,
are unterrified if not friendly. Notwithstanding its able protection,
the Yosemite will need generations to recover from the hideous slaughter
which, in a score or two of years, denuded America of her splendid
heritage of wild animal life.
Of the several carnivora, the coyote alone is occasionally seen by
visitors. Wolves and mountain lions, prime enemies of the deer and
mountain sheep, are hard to find, even when officially hunted in the
winter with dogs trained for the purpose.
II
The Yosemite Valley is the heart of the national park. Not only is it
the natural entrance and abiding place, the living-room, so to speak,
the central point from which all parts of the park are most comfortably
accessible; it is also typical in some sense of the Sierra as a whole,
and is easily the most beautiful valley in the world.
It is difficult to analyze the quality of the Valley's beauty. There
are, as Muir says, "many Yosemites" in the Sierra. The Hetch Hetchy
Valley, in the northern part of the park, which bears the same relation
to the Tuolumne River that the Yosemite Valley bears to the Merced, is
scarcely less in size, richness, and the height and magnificence of its
carved walls. Scores of other valleys, similar except for size, abound
north and south, which are, scientifically and in Muir's meaning,
Yosemites; that is, they are pauses in their rivers' headlong rush, once
lakes, dug by rushing waters, squared and polished by succeeding
glaciers, chiselled and ornamented by the frosts and rains which
preceded and followed the glaciers. Muir is right, for all these are
Yosemites; but he is wrong, for there is only one Yosemite.
It is not the giant monoliths that establish the incomparable Valley's
world supremacy; Hetch Hetchy, Tehipite, Kings, and others have their
giants, too. It is not its towering, perpendicular, serrated walls; the
Sierra has elsewhere, too, an overwhelming exhibit of titanic granite
carvings. It is not its waterfalls, though these are the highest, by
far, in the world, nor its broad, peaceful bottoms, nor its dramatic
vistas, nor the cavernous depths of its tortuous tributary canyons. Its
secret is selection and combination. Like all supremacy, Yosemite's lies
in the inspired proportioning of carefully chosen elements. Herein is
its real wonder, for the more carefully one analyzes the beauty of the
Yosemite Valley, the more difficult it is to conceive its ensemble the
chance of Nature's functioning rather than the master product of supreme
artistry.
Entrance to the Yosemite by train is from the west, by automobile from
east and west both. From whatever direction, the Valley is the first
objective, for the hotels are there. It is the Valley, then, which we
must see first. Nature's artistic contrivance is apparent even in the
entrance. The train-ride from the main line at Merced is a constant
up-valley progress, from a hot, treeless plain to the heart of the
great, cool forest. Expectation keeps pace. Changing to automobile at El
Portal, one quickly enters the park. A few miles of forest and
behold--the Gates of the Valley. El Capitan, huge, glistening, rises
upon the left, 3,000 feet above the valley floor. At first sight its
bulk almost appalls. Opposite upon the right Cathedral Rocks support the
Bridal Veil Fall, shimmering, filmy, a fairy thing. Between them, in the
distance, lies the unknown.
Progress up the valley makes constantly for climax. Seen presently
broadside on, El Capitan bulks double, at least. Opposite, the valley
bellies. Cathedral Rocks and the mediaeval towers known as Cathedral
Spires, are enclosed in a bay, which culminates in the impressive needle
known as Sentinel Rock--all richly Gothic. Meantime the broadened
valley, another strong contrast in perfect key, delightfully alternates
with forest and meadow, and through it the quiet Merced twists and
doubles like a glistening snake. And then we come to the Three Brothers.