National park

“ The pleasures, then, of the Lafayette National Park cover a wide range of human desire. Sea bathing, boating, yachting, salt-water and fresh-water fishing, tramping, exploring the wilderness, hunting the view spots—these are the summer occupations of many visitors, the diversions of many others. The more thoughtful will find its historical associations fascinating, its geological record one of the richest in the continent, its forests well equipped schools for tree study, their branches a museum of bird life. ”

“ But the weather is mostly sunshine, both winter and summer and the clear sunny brightness of the park is one of its most striking characteristics. Even the heaviest portions of the main forest belt, where the trees are tallest and stand closest, are not in the least gloomy. The sunshine falls in glory through the colossal spires and crowns, each a symbol of health and strength, the noble shafts faithfully upright like the pillars of temples, upholding a roof of infinite leafy interlacing arches and fretted skylights. ”

“ Not only do the Parks contain some of the world's sublimest and most beautiful scenes, but [xiii] each Park is a wild-life reservation, a place where guns are forbidden. Thus protected, these wildernesses will remain forever wild, forever mysterious and primeval, holding for the visitor the spell of the outdoors, exciting the spirit of exploration. Within them will survive that poetic million-year-old highway, the trail. Among their pathless scenes wild life will be perpetuated. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Nearly all the park is a profound solitude. Yet it is full of charming company, full of God’s thoughts, a place of peace and safety amid the most exalted grandeur and eager enthusiastic action, a new song, a place of beginnings abounding in first lessons on life, mountain-building, eternal, invincible, unbreakable order; with sermons in stones, storms, trees, flowers, and animals brimful of humanity. During the last glacial period, just past, the former features of the range were rubbed off as a chalk sketch from a blackboard, and a new beginning was made. ”

“ Even at its highest limit in the park, ten thousand five hundred feet above the sea on exposed ridgetops, where it crouches and huddles close together in low thickets like those of the dwarf pine, it still contrives to put forth its sprays and branches in forms of irrepressible beauty, while on moist well-drained moraines it displays a perfectly tropical luxuriance of foliage, flower, and fruit. ”

“ The wonderful advance made in the last few years, in creating four national parks in the West, and thirty forest reservations, embracing nearly forty million acres; and in the planting of the borders of streets and highways and spacious parks in all the great cities, to satisfy the natural taste and hunger for landscape beauty and righteousness that God has put, in some measure, into every human being and animal, shows the trend of awakening public opinion. The making of the far-famed New York Central Park was opposed by even good men, with misguided pluck, perseverance, and ingenuity ”

“ 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. A National Park service is greatly needed. ”

“ Beside the treasures common to most mountain regions that are wild and blessed with a kind climate, the park is full of exciting wonders. The wildest geysers in the world, in bright, triumphant bands, are dancing and singing in it amid thousands of boiling springs, beautiful and awful, their basins arrayed in gorgeous colors like gigantic flowers; and hot paint-pots, mud springs, mud volcanoes, mush and broth caldrons whose contents are of every color and consistency, plash and heave and roar in bewildering abundance. ”

“ At these and so many other historic places across our Nation, the National Park Service preserves and protects the American legacy, reminding us not only of who we are as a people, but also of how far we have traveled together on our great American journey. Our national parks are classrooms and laboratories, windows on our past and doorways to our future. ”

“ 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 [Pg 273] scenery, in "The Rocky Mountain Wonderland," I have said:—
We need the forest reserve, and we need the National Park. ”

“ America's National Parks are among our Nation's most precious treasures. During National Park Week, we celebrate these spaces and commit to protecting them for future generations of Americans. National Parks bring together Americans of all backgrounds and help us understand the story of America. From the Lincoln Memorial and Ellis Island to the Great Smoky Mountains and Yellowstone, National Parks attract visitors from across the country and from all walks of life. ”

“ 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 of a forest park, intact and inviolable, calls to mind our national parks of the West, which were actually established by Congress for that very purpose. Possessing, as they do, wonders of nature and exceptional scenery, these parks have been thought worthy of preservation solely for their own sakes. ”

“ Within each park lies a compelling story-a powerful reminder of our Nation's origins and destiny. Geology, political science, marine ecology, the Civil War, language, art, music, maritime history, geography, wildlife, the American Revolution, technology-all come to life in our National Park System. Today, the men and women of the National Park Service are reaching out to the next generation of caretakers, instilling in our children a respect for the land, an understanding of our common American heritage, and an appreciation of parks as places of inspiration. ”

“ From these lovely dens you may make excursions whenever you like into the middle of the park, where the geysers and hot springs are reeking and spouting in their beautiful basins, displaying an exuberance of color and strange motion and energy admirably calculated to surprise and frighten, charm and shake up the least sensitive out of apathy into newness of life. ”

“ 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 establishing national parks.
National parks are an institution intimately allied with the general welfare. You need this institution, and it needs your help. Every one ought to be glad to help better and beautify our land. ”

“ Today, the National Park System has grown to 378 sites visited by more than 285 million people each year. Each of these sites is interwoven with America's richly diverse natural and cultural heritage to make up the pattern of our past, the fabric of our present, and the promise of our future. ”

“ Today, visitors from around the world travel to our Nation's 59 national parks to climb snow-capped peaks, splash under majestic falls, rappel into the deepest canyons, and find peace in shaded forests. ”

“ Area, 10,000 Acres
It has been the policy of Congress to create national parks only from public lands, the title to which costs nothing to acquire. It may be many years before the nation awakes to the fact that areas distinguished for supreme scenery, historical association, or extraordinary scientific significance are worth conserving even if conservation involves their purchase. The answer to the oft-asked question why the national parks are all in the west is that the east passed into private possession before the national park idea assumed importance in the national consciousness. ”

“ I earnestly recommend the establishment of a bureau of national parks. Such legislation is essential to the proper management of those wondrous manifestations of nature, so startling and so beautiful that every one recognizes the obligations of the government to preserve them for the edification and recreation of the people. The Yellowstone Park, the Yosemite, the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, the Glacier National Park and the Mount Rainier National Park and others furnish appropriate instances. ”

“ In the Rocky Mountain National Park there is an accessible empire in the mountainous sky, up more than two miles above the wide plains of the sea. Mountain-climbers pass through these scenes on their way up peaks into the sky without stopping to see the wonders. They have at best only an introduction, or a hurried traveler's impression, of a strange and varied exhibit. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the Yellowstone National Park—the first national park in the world—are so many natural wonders, of such unusual character, that not until the tract was discovered the sixth time were the American people convinced of its existence. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Now you look abroad over the vast round landscape bounded by the down-curving sky, nearly all the Park in it displayed like a map,—forests, meadows, lakes, rock waves, and snowy mountains. Northward lies the basin of Yosemite Creek, paved with bright domes and lakes like larger crystals; eastward, the meadowy, billowy Tuolumne region and the Summit peaks in glorious array; southward, Yosemite; and westward, the boundless forests. On no other mountain that I know of are you more likely to linger. It is a magnificent camp ground. ”

“ So now, after all the years and all the tumult, the cattlemen have their grazing rights on the national forest lands and the right to drift their cattle across national park lands to reach those permits: people still have their homes, dudes still come to the dude ranches. No one, Oldtimer or Newcomer, would now deny that the national park has vitalized the economy of the valley a thousandfold. ”

“ Each Park is thus a wild-life paradise where the animals are safe, free from the fear of being killed by man. These Parks are ideal places in which to enjoy the animals and to study their character; and they are a happy hunting-ground for the hunter who carries the camera. Recreation in these wonderlands is thus absolutely separated from the butchering business. ”

“ As we observe National Park Week, I encourage all citizens to explore our national parks and to commit to the conservation and stewardship of these timeless treasures. By working together, we can ensure that these special places thrive for generations to come. ”

“ The National Park Service has made a major effort to improve maintenance at the parks that so many Americans love and love to visit. And today, they provide a wider, more beautiful variety of outdoor splendor than you can find anywhere else in the world. ”

“ Beyond it the road follows the Nisqually and Paradise valleys, under glorious groves of pine, cedar, and hemlock, along ravines of striking beauty, past waterfalls and the snout of the Nisqually Glacier, finally to inimitable Paradise Park, its inn, its hotel camp, and its public camping-grounds. Other centres of wilderness life have been since established, and the marvellous north side of the park will be opened by the construction of a northwesterly highway up the valley of the Carbon River; already a fine trail entirely around the mountain connects these various points of development. ”