Our National Parks — Ch 10, Part 2

The redwood is one of the few conifers that sprout from the stump and roots, and it declares itself willing to begin immediately to repair the damage of the lumberman and also that of the forest-burner.

As soon as a redwood is cut down or burned it sends up a crowd of eager, hopeful shoots, which, if allowed to grow, would in a few decades attain a height of a hundred feet, and the strongest of them would finally become giants as great as the original tree.

Gigantic second and third growth trees are found in the redwoods, forming magnificent temple-like circles around charred ruins more than a thousand years old.

But not one denuded acre in a hundred is allowed to raise a new forest growth.

On the contrary, all the brains, religion, and superstition of the neighborhood are brought into play to prevent a new growth.

The sprouts from the roots and stumps are cut off again and again, with zealous concern as to the best time and method of making death sure.

In the clearings of one of the largest mills on the coast we found thirty men at work, last summer, cutting off redwood shoots “in the dark of the moon,” claiming that all the stumps and roots cleared at this auspicious time would send up no more shoots.

Anyhow, these vigorous, almost immortal trees are killed at last, and black stumps are now their only monuments over most of the chopped and burned areas.

The redwood is the glory of the Coast Range.

It extends along the western slope, in a nearly continuous belt about ten miles wide, from beyond the Oregon boundary to the south of Santa Cruz, a distance of nearly four hundred miles, and in massive, sustained grandeur and closeness of growth surpasses all the other timber woods of the world.

Trees from ten to fifteen feet in diameter and three hundred feet high are not uncommon, and a few attain a height of three hundred and fifty feet or even four hundred, with a diameter at the base of fifteen to twenty feet or more, while the ground beneath them is a garden of fresh, exuberant ferns, lilies, gaultheria, and rhododendron.

This grand tree, Sequoia sempervirens, is surpassed in size only by its near relative, Sequoia gigantea, or Big Tree, of the Sierra Nevada, if, indeed, it is surpassed.

The sempervirens is certainly the taller of the two.

The gigantea attains a greater girth, and is heavier, more noble in port, and more sublimely beautiful.

These two Sequoia are all that are known to exist in the world, though in former geological times the genus was common and had many species.

The redwood is restricted to the Coast Range, and the Big Tree to the Sierra.

As timber the redwood is too good to live.

The largest sawmills ever built are busy along its seaward border, “with all the modern improvements,” but so immense is the yield per acre it will be long ere the supply is exhausted.

The Big Tree is also, to some extent, being made into lumber.

It is far less abundant than the redwood, and is, fortunately, less accessible, extending along the western flank of the Sierra in a partially interrupted belt, about two hundred and fifty miles long, at a height of from four to eight thousand feet above the sea.

The enormous logs, too heavy to handle, are blasted into manageable dimensions with gunpowder.

A large portion of the best timber is thus shattered and destroyed, and, with the huge, knotty tops, is left in ruins for tremendous fires that kill every tree within their range, great and small.

Still, the species is not in danger of extinction.

It has been planted and is flourishing over a great part of Europe, and magnificent sections of the aboriginal forests have been reserved as national and State parks,—the Mariposa Sequoia Grove, near Yosemite, managed by the State of California, and the General Grant and Sequoia national parks on the Kings, Kaweah, and Tule rivers, efficiently guarded by a small troop of United States cavalry under the direction of the Secretary of the interior.

But there is not a single specimen of the redwood in any national park.

Only by gift or purchase, so far as I know, can the government get back into its possession a single acre of this wonderful forest.

The legitimate demands on the forests that have passed into private ownership, as well as those in the hands of the government, are increasing every year with the rapid settlement and up-building of the country, but the methods of lumbering are as yet grossly wasteful.

In most mills only the best portions of the best trees are used, while the ruins are left on the ground to feed great fires, which kill much of what is left of the less desirable timber, together with the seedlings, on which the permanence of the forest depends.

Thus every mill is a centre of destruction far more severe from waste and fire than from use.

The same thing is true of the mines, which consume and destroy indirectly immense quantities of timber with their innumerable fires, accidental or set to make open ways, and often without regard to how far they run.

The prospector deliberately sets fires to clear off the woods just where they are densest, to lay the rocks bare and make the discovery of mines easier.

Sheep-owners and their shepherds also set fires everywhere through the woods in the fall to facilitate the march of their countless flocks the next summer, and perhaps in some places to improve the pasturage.

The axe is not yet at the root of every tree, but the sheep is, or was before the national parks were established and guarded by the military, the only effective and reliable arm of the government free from the blight of politics.

Not only do the shepherds, at the driest time of the year, set fire to everything that will burn, but the sheep consume every green leaf, not sparing even the young conifers, where they are in a starving condition from crowding, and they rake and dibble the loose soil of the mountain sides for the spring floods to wash away, and thus at last leave the ground barren.

Of all the destroyers that infest the woods, the shake-maker seems the happiest.

Twenty or thirty years ago, shakes, a kind of long, board-like shingles split with a mallet and a frow, were in great demand for covering barns and sheds, and many are used still in preference to common shingles, especially those made from the sugar-pine, which do not warp or crack in the hottest sunshine.

Drifting adventurers in California, after harvest and threshing are over, oftentimes meet to discuss their plans for the winter, and their talk is interesting.

Once, in a company of this kind, I heard a man say, as he peacefully smoked his pipe: “Boys, as soon as this job’s done I’m goin’ into the duck business.

There’s big money in it, and your grub costs nothing.

Tule Joe made five hundred dollars last winter on mallard and teal.

Shot ’em on the Joaquin, tied ’em in dozens by the neck, and shipped ’em to San Francisco.

And when he was tired wading in the sloughs and touched with rheumatiz, he just knocked off on ducks, and went to the Contra Costa hills for dove and quail.

It’s a mighty good business, and you’re your own boss, and the whole thing’s fun.

” Another of the company, a bushy-bearded fellow, with a trace of brag in his voice, drawled out: “Bird business is well enough for some, but bear is my game, with a deer and a California lion thrown in now and then for change.

There’s always market for bear grease, and sometimes you can sell the hams.

They’re good as hog hams any day.

And you are your own boss in my business, too, if the bears ain’t too big and too many for you.

Old grizzlies I despise,—they want cannon to kill ’em;

but the blacks and browns are beauties for grease, and when once I get ’em just right, and draw a bead on ’em, I fetch ’em every time.

” Another said he was going to catch up a lot of mustangs as soon as the rains set in, hitch them to a gang-plough, and go to farming on the San Joaquin plains for wheat.

But most preferred the shake business, until something more profitable and as sure could be found, with equal comfort and independence.

With a cheap mustang or mule to carry a pair of blankets, a sack of flour, a few pounds of coffee, and an axe, a frow, and a cross-cut saw, the shake-maker ascends the mountains to the pine belt where it is most accessible, usually by some mine or mill road.

Then he strikes off into the virgin woods, where the sugar pine, king of all the hundred species of pines in the world in size and beauty, towers on the open sunny slopes of the Sierra in the fullness of its glory.

Selecting a favorable spot for a cabin near a meadow with a stream, he unpacks his animal and stakes it out on the meadow.

Then he chops into one after another of the pines, until he finds one that he feels sure will split freely, cuts this down, saws off a section four feet long, splits it, and from this first cut, perhaps seven feet in diameter, he gets shakes enough for a cabin and its furniture,—walls, roof, door, bedstead, table, and stool.

Besides his labor, only a few pounds of nails are required.

Sapling poles form the frame of the airy building, usually about six feet by eight in size, on which the shakes are nailed, with the edges overlapping.

A few bolts from the same section that the shakes were made from are split into square sticks and built up to form a chimney, the inside and interspaces being plastered and filled in with mud.

Thus, with abundance of fuel, shelter and comfort by his own fireside are secured.

Then he goes to work sawing and splitting for the market, tying the shakes in bundles of fifty or a hundred.

They are four feet long, four inches wide, and about one fourth of an inch thick.

The first few thousands he sells or trades at the nearest mill or store, getting provisions in exchange.

Then he advertises, in whatever way he can, that he has excellent sugar-pine shakes for sale, easy of access and cheap.

[Illustration: Sugar Pine.

] Only the lower, perfectly clear, free-splitting portions of the giant pines are used,—perhaps ten to twenty feet from a tree two hundred and fifty in height; all the rest is left a mass of ruins, to rot or to feed the forest fires, while thousands are hacked deeply and rejected in proving the grain.

Over nearly all of the more accessible slopes of the Sierra and Cascade mountains in southern Oregon, at a height of from three to six thousand feet above the sea, and for a distance of about six hundred miles, this waste and confusion extends.

Happy robbers!

dwelling in the most beautiful woods, in the most salubrious climate, breathing delightful odors both day and night, drinking cool living water,—roses and lilies at their feet in the spring, shedding fragrance and ringing bells as if cheering them on in their desolating work.

There is none to say them nay.

They buy no land, pay no taxes, dwell in a paradise with no forbidding angel either from Washington or from heaven.

Every one of the frail shake shanties is a centre of destruction, and the extent of the ravages wrought in this quiet way is in the aggregate enormous.

It is not generally known that, notwithstanding the immense quantities of timber cut every year for foreign and home markets and mines, from five to ten times as much is destroyed as is used, chiefly by running forest fires that only the federal government can stop.

Travelers through the West in summer are not likely to forget the fire-work displayed along the various railway tracks.

Thoreau, when contemplating the destruction of the forests on the east side of the continent, said that soon the country would be so bald that every man would have to grow whiskers to hide its nakedness, but he thanked God that at least the sky was safe.

Had he gone West he would have found out that the sky was not safe; for all through the summer months, over most of the mountain regions, the smoke of mill and forest fires is so thick and black that no sunbeam can pierce it.

The whole sky, with clouds, sun, moon, and stars, is simply blotted out.

There is no real sky and no scenery.

Not a mountain is left in the landscape.

At least none is in sight from the lowlands, and they all might as well be on the moon, as far as scenery is concerned.

The half-dozen transcontinental railroad companies advertise the beauties of their lines in gorgeous many-colored folders, each claiming its as the “scenic route.

” “The route of superior desolation”—the smoke, dust, and ashes route—would be a more truthful description.

Every train rolls on through dismal smoke and barbarous, melancholy ruins; and the companies might well cry in their advertisements: “Come!

travel our way.

Ours is the blackest.

It is the only genuine Erebus route.

The sky is black and the ground is black, and on either side there is a continuous border of black stumps and logs and blasted trees appealing to heaven for help as if still half alive, and their mute eloquence is most interestingly touching.

The blackness is perfect.

On account of the superior skill of our workmen, advantages of climate, and the kind of trees, the charring is generally deeper along our line, and the ashes are deeper, and the confusion and desolation displayed can never be rivaled.

No other route on this continent so fully illustrates the abomination of desolation.

” Such a claim would be reasonable, as each seems the worst, whatever route you chance to take.

Of course a way had to be cleared through the woods.

But the felled timber is not worked up into firewood for the engines and into lumber for the company’s use; it is left lying in vulgar confusion, and is fired from time to time by sparks from locomotives or by the workmen camping along the line.

The fires, whether accidental or set, are allowed to run into the woods as far as they may, thus assuring comprehensive destruction.

The directors of a line that guarded against fires, and cleared a clean gap edged with living trees, and fringed and mantled with the grass and flowers and beautiful seedling that are ever ready and willing to spring up, might justly boast of the beauty of their road; for nature is always ready to heal every scar.

But there is no such road on the western side of the continent.

Last summer, in the Rocky Mountains, I saw six fires started by sparks from a locomotive within a distance of three miles, and nobody was in sight to prevent them from spreading.

They might run into the adjacent forests and burn the timber from hundreds of square miles; not a man in the State would care to spend an hour in fighting them, as long as his own fences and buildings were not threatened.

Notwithstanding all the waste and use which have been going on unchecked like a storm for more than two centuries, it is not yet too late—though it is high time—for the government to begin a rational administration of its forests.

About seventy million acres it still owns,—enough for all the country, if wisely used.

These residual forests are generally on mountain slopes, just where they are doing the most good, and where their removal would be followed by the greatest number of evils; the lands they cover are too rocky and high for agriculture, and can never be made as valuable for any other crop as for the present crop of trees.

It has been shown over and over again that if these mountains were to be stripped of their trees and underbrush, and kept bare and sodless by hordes of sheep and the innumerable fires the shepherds set, besides those of the millmen, prospectors shake-makers, and all sorts of adventurers, both lowlands and mountains would speedily become little better than desert, compared with their present beneficent fertility.

During heavy rainfalls and while the winter accumulations of snow were melting, the large streams would swell into destructive torrents, cutting deep, rugged-edged gullies, carrying away the fertile humus and soil as well as sand and rocks, filling up and overflowing their lower channels, and covering the lowland fields with raw detritus.

Drought and barrenness would follow.

In their natural condition, or under wise management, keeping out destructive sheep, preventing fires, selecting the trees that should be cut for lumber, and preserving the young ones and the shrubs and sod of herbaceous vegetation, these forests would be a never failing fountain of wealth and beauty.

The cool shades of the forest give rise to moist beds and currents of air, and the sod of grasses and the various flowering plants and shrubs thus fostered, together with the network and sponge of tree roots, absorb and hold back the rain and the waters from melting snow, compelling them to ooze and percolate and flow gently through the soil in streams that never dry.

All the pine needles and rootlets and blades of grass, and the fallen, decaying trunks of trees, are dams, storing the bounty of the clouds and dispensing it in perennial life-giving streams, instead of allowing it to gather suddenly and rush headlong in short-lived devastating floods.

Everybody on the dry side of the continent is beginning to find this out, and, in view of the waste going on, is growing more and more anxious for government protection.

The outcries we hear against forest reservations come mostly from thieves who are wealthy and steal timber by wholesale.

They have so long been allowed to steal and destroy in peace that any impediment to forest robbery is denounced as a cruel and irreligious interference with “vested rights,” likely to endanger the repose of all ungodly welfare.

Gold, gold, gold!

How strong a voice that metal has!

“O wae for the siller, it is sae preva’lin’!

” Even in Congress a sizable chunk of gold, carefully concealed, will outtalk and outfight all the nation on a subject like forestry, well smothered in ignorance, and in which the money interests of only a few are conspicuously involved.

Under these circumstances, the bawling, blethering oratorical stuff drowns the voice of God himself.

Yet the dawn of a new day in forestry is breaking.

Honest citizens see that only the rights of the government are being trampled, not those of the settlers.

Only what belongs to all alike is reserved, and every acre that is left should be held together under the federal government as a basis for a general policy of administration for the public good.

The people will not always be deceived by selfish opposition, whether from lumber and mining corporations or from sheepmen and prospectors, however cunningly brought forward underneath fables and gold.

Emerson says that things refuse to be mismanaged long.

An exception would seem to be found in the case of our forests, which have been mismanaged rather long, and now come desperately near being like smashed eggs and spilt milk.

Still, in the long run the world does not move backward.

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; but straight right won its way, and now that park is appreciated.

So we confidently believe it will be with our great national parks and forest reservations.

There will be a period of indifference on the part of the rich, sleepy with wealth, and of the toiling millions, sleepy with poverty, most of whom never saw a forest; a period of screaming protest and objection from the plunderers, who are as unconscionable and enterprising as Satan.

But light is surely coming, and the friends of destruction will preach and bewail in vain.

The United States government has always been proud of the welcome it has extended to good men of every nation, seeking freedom and homes and bread.

Let them be welcomed still as nature welcomes them, to the woods as well as to the prairies and plains.

No place is too good for good men, and still there is room.

They are invited to heaven, and may well be allowed in America.

Every place is made better by them.

Let them be as free to pick gold and gems from the hills, to cut and hew, dig and plant, for homes and bread, as the birds are to pick berries from the wild bushes, and moss and leaves for nests.

The ground will be glad to feed them, and the pines will come down from the mountains for their homes as willingly as the cedars came from Lebanon for Solomon’s temple.

Nor will the woods be the worse for this use, or their benign influences be diminished any more than the sun is diminished by shining.

Mere destroyers, however, tree-killers, wool and mutton men, spreading death and confusion in the fairest groves and gardens ever planted,—let the government hasten to cast them out and make an end of them.

For it must be told again and again, and be burningly borne in mind, that just now, while protective measures are being deliberated languidly, destruction and use are speeding on faster and farther every day.

The axe and saw are insanely busy, chips are flying thick as snowflakes, and every summer thousands of acres of priceless forests, with their underbrush, soil, springs, climate, scenery, and religion, are vanishing away in clouds of smoke, while, except in the national parks, not one forest guard is employed.

All sorts of local laws and regulations have been tried and found wanting, and the costly lessons of our own experience, as well as that of every civilized nation, show conclusively that the fate of the remnant of our forests is in the hands of the federal government, and that if the remnant is to be saved at all, it must be saved quickly.

Any fool can destroy trees.

They cannot run away; and if they could, they would still be destroyed,—chased and hunted down as long as fun or a dollar could be got out of their bark hides, branching horns, or magnificent bole backbones.

Few that fell trees plant them; nor would planting avail much towards getting back anything like the noble primeval forests.

During a man’s life only saplings can be grown, in the place of the old trees—tens of centuries old—that have been destroyed.

It took more than three thousand years to make some of the trees in these Western woods,—trees that are still standing in perfect strength and beauty, waving and singing in the mighty forests of the Sierra.

Through all the wonderful, eventful centuries since Christ’s time—and long before that—God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand straining, leveling tempests and floods; but he cannot save them from fools,—only Uncle Sam can do that.

APPENDIX

I. NATIONAL PARKS

Map No. Name Location Established Characteristic Area: Acres Private Revenue Appropriation, Visitors Features Claims: 1908 1909 1908 Acres11 1 Yellowstone1 Wyoming March 1, 18723 Unique volcanic mountain scenery 22,142,720. 00 None ,125. 65 ,000. 0018 19,542 2 Hot Springs1 Arkansas June 16, 18803 Medicinal springs, wooded mountains 911. 63 None 28,090. 00 None 898,00422 14,418 3 Sequoia1 California Sept.

25, 18903 “Big Trees” 161,597. 00 3,716. 9612 59. 72 15,550. 00 1,251 4 Yosemite1 8 California Oct.

1, 18903 Unique glacial valleys and snow mountains 719,622. 00 19,827. 0013 18,260. 98 30,000. 00 8,850 5 Gen. Grant1 California Oct.

1, 18903 “Big Trees” 2,536. 00 160. 0012 None 2,000. 00 1,773 6 Casa Grande1 Arizona June 22, 18924 Prehistoric dwellings 480. 009 None None 900. 00 No count 7 Mt. Rainier2 Washington March 2, 18993 Snow peak and glaciers 207,360. 00 18. 2014 1,064. 84 28,000. 0019 2,826 8 Crater Lake1 Oregon May 22, 19023 Lake in extinct volcano 159,360. 0010 1,914. 22 15. 00 3,000. 00 5,27523 9 Platt6 Oklahoma July 1, 19023 Mineral springs 848. 22 None 72. 00 16,000. 0020 26,00024 10 Wind Cave1 So.

Dakota Jan.

9, 19033 Caverns 10,522. 00 719. 3915 400. 00 2,500. 00 3,17124 11 Sully’s Hill5 No. Dakota June 2, 19045 Wooded hills and lake 780. 00 None None None21 25023 12 Mesa Verde1 Colorado June 29, 19063 Prehistoric dwellings 42,376. 00 2,080. 0016 None 7,500. 00 8025 5-mile strip surrounding Mesa Verde1 Colorado June 29, 1906 Prehistoric dwellings 175,360. 00 50,346. 1417 TOTALS 3,624,9472.

85 78,781. 9111 ,088. 19 ,450. 00 13* Glacier Montana Pending 915,000. 00 6,000. 00 _Name, location, and establishment:_ 1 Constituted from unpatented lands of the public domain.

2 Constituted from unpatented lands of National Forests.

3 By direct Act of Congress.

4 By executive order authorized by Sundry Civil Act, March 2, 1889. 5 By executive order authorized by Act of April 27, 1904, amending agreement with Devil’s Lake Indians.

A cash purchase.

6 Cash purchase from Choctaw and Chickasaw Indians, acts of July 1, 1902, and April 21, 1904. Renamed in honor of late Senator Platt of Connecticut, long member of Indian Affairs Committee, by Act of June 29, 1906. 7 A small percentage of park laps over into Montana and Idaho.

8 Yosemite _Valley_ set aside June 30, 1864, as a _State_ park.

Receded to United Sates by California, March 3, 1905, and accepted by acts of Congress, March 3, 1905, June 11,1906. 9 Extension recommended to include neighboring ruins.

10 Extension recommended by Superintendent to include lower slopes of mountain to supply winter sanctuary for game.

_Private Lands:_ 11 Three areas are included in total areas of parks.

Total private claims amount to about 2. 8% of total park areas.

State school lands may be exchanged if same lie within any government reservation, under Section 2275 Revised Statutes as amended in 1891. 12 Secretary of Interior repeatedly recommended purchase of claims, but Congress has failed to act on his bills.

13 About 2% of park area is patented, including some of finest timber.

14 This is a placer mine patent.

There are also 178 unperfected claims.

15 Establishing act allows claimants to exchange for outside lands under forest lieu land laws.

No exchanges to date.

State school lands have been exchanged.

16 Of this 360 acres are patented.

Remainder in unperfected claims and school lands.

Workable coal underlies whole park.

17 Of this 31,535. 98 acres are patented.

Remainder as noted in Note 16. _Finances_ (revenues are from leases and concessions): 18 Of this ,000 is for “maintenance and repair of improvements,” to be expended by War Department.

19 Of this ,000 is for road building under War Department.

20 Of this ,000 is toward a sewer if city of Sulphur provides a like amount.

21 Park is supervised by an Indian school officer stationed in the neighborhood.

_Visitors:_ 22 First figure is number of baths, free and paid.

Second figure is number of persons visiting the mountain observation tower at 25 cents each.

23 Estimated.

24 Includes visitors from outside the immediate neighborhood.

Park also serves city of Sulphur.

25 No carriage road to this park.

Horse trail, steep and dangerous, 10 miles.

* Proposed park.

Bill to establish passed both branches in 60th Congress, but no in identical form.

The bills failed to each a conference vote.

Tract is now in a National Forest.

II. STATUTORY PROVISIONS RELATING TO NATIONAL PARKS

Name Departments Allied Penalties Protection of “Natural Special Privleges Allowed in Control1 for Misdemeanors10 Condition” specified19 Yellowstone War3 4 Yes11 Yes Hotels, etc. 23 Hot Springs2 None Yes12 No Numerous24 Sequoia War3 None13 Yes Hotels, etc. 25 Yosemite War3 None13 Yes Hotels, etc. 25 Gen. Grant War3 None13 Yes Hotels, etc. 25 Casa Grande2 Smithsonian5 None14 Yes20 None Mt. Rainier War4: Agriculture6 None13 Yes Hotels26: Mining27 Crater Lake None Yes15 No21 Hotels26: Mining28 Platt None7 Yes16 No22 Water29 Wind Cave Justice8 Yes17 No22 Hotels: Cavern30 Sully’s Hill None None14 No None Mesa Verde None9 Yes18 Yes Scientific Research31 _Nomenclature and Management:_ 1 Interior Department is in all cases the custodian.

2 All are specifically called “parks” in the establishing acts or their amendments except Hot Springs and Casa Grande Ruin.

These are termed “reservations.

” 3 Policed by troops on request of Interior Department (Sundry Civil Acts of March 3, 1883, and June 6, 1900).

Paid for from Army appropriation.

Same Superintendent and guard cares for both Sequoia and Gen. Grant Parks.

4 Road construction by Army Engineers (Act of June 6, 1900).

5 Scientific excavations and protective works placed under Smithsonian Institution by Sundry Civil Act of June 30, 1906. 6 At present the Supervisor of Rainier National Forest acts as superintendent of park.

Forest surrounds the park.

Forest rangers police park in part.

7 Superintendent of park recommends a military guard in summer.

8 The U. S.

Marshall for So.

Dakota acts voluntarily as advisory superintendent.

9 Scientific excavations and protective works undertaken voluntarily by Smithsonian Institution at request of Interior Department.

_Misdemeanor Penalties:_ 10 All National Forest and National Park employees given power of arrest for violation of laws and regulations by Act of Feb.

6, 1905, reënacted by Agriculture Appropriation Act of March 3, 1905. Act of March 3, 1875, provides a fine up to or imprisonment up to one year for cutting or injuring trees or fences, or for unauthorized pasturing on any reserved public lands.

Act of June 3, 1878, as amended August 4, 1892, forbids unlawful timber cutting on public lands, the fine being to . Section 5391 Revised Statues and Act of July 7, 1898, makes offences on U. S.

property punishable under the law of the State where committed, if such law exists, in cases where there is no U. S.

law to cover same.

See 11, 12, 13. 11 Special Act of May 7, 1894, “to protect birds and animals in Yellowstone National Park, and to punish crimes in said park.

” Fine up to or imprisonment up to 2 years, or both, with costs.

Wyoming State laws apply where U. S.

laws are deficient.

12 Fine up to and costs in certain cases on a portion of the reservation (Act of April 20, 1904, amended March 2, 1907).

City ordinances and State laws apply in some cases.

13 Violators of rules governing park may only be ejected.

State laws do not cover sufficiently.

In the case of the Yosemite there is no U. S.

Commissioner within 100 miles.

14 Rules and regulations for government are required by law in connection with all National Parks except Casa Grande and Sully’s Hill.

15 Fine up to or imprisonment up to 1 year and liability for all damages.

16 Fine of to or imprisonment up to 6 months.

17 Fine up to , or imprisonment up to 1 year, or both.

18 Fine up to , or imprisonment up to 1 year, and obligation to restore removed property.

_Preservation Terms:_ 19 The preservation of the park in its _natural condition_ is required by law on 7 of the 12 parks.

20 Establishing act specifies “protection of said ruin and of the ancient city of which it is a part.

” Custodian provided annually by Sundry Civil Act.

21 Custodian required by establishing act to “cause adequate measures to be taken for the preservation of the natural objects” and of timer, game, and fish.

22 Requirement might be implied, however, from general terms of establishing act.

_Privileges:_ 23 Act of August 3, 1894, amended March 2, 1907, redefined leasing terms, limiting area to 10 acres, or where more than one location was granted one person or concern, not over 20 acres all told.

It forbade leasing any natural wonders, or any land within a fixed distance of chief objects.

24 Railway locations, revocable by Congress, granted by acts of March 3, 1877, and Oct.

19, 1888. Another railway right of Dec.

21, 1893, was defaulted.

City reservoir site granted by Act of August 7, 1894. An observation tower with elevator, admission 25 cents, leased a site on the mountain under Act of March 19, 1898. Hotel, bath-house, and sanatorium locations allotted, and hot water from springs sold pursuant to sundry acts of Congress.

25 Revocable locations to power-plants, water-supply works, pole lines, conduits, etc. authorized by Act of Feb.

15, 1901, when not deemed “incompatible with the public interest.

” Hetch-Hetchy storage basin grant to San Francisco made hereunto, May, 1908. 26 Hotel leases unlimited as to area or time.

Railways may be built _into_, not through, park.

27 Mining claims proved in good faith prior to Act of May 27, 1908, may be worked under regulation of department.

178 such claims in park.

28 Mining claims may be located and worked under regulation of department.

Such claims do not carry a fee title to land here.

29 Village of Sulphur supplied from creek under department regulation.

30 Establishing act permits renting cavern, the chief natural feature of the park.

Mining claims antedating park would be protected.

31 A bill introduced in 60th Congress by Secretary of Interior to allow hotel and similar leases failed to become law.

(Bill now pending to create Glacier National Park, Montana, allows 20-year leases for private cottages, and also allows removal of mature timber “for the protection and improvement of the park.

” No penalties for misdemeanor are provided.

) III. NATIONAL MONUMENTS1

Map Name Location Established Characteristic Features Area: Acres2 No. 14 Devil’s Tower Wyoming Sept.

24, 1906 Example of erosion 1,152. 91 15 Petrified Forest Arizona Dec.

8, 1906 Silicified mesozoic forest remains 60,776. 02 16 Montezuma Castle Arizona Dec.

8, 1906 Cliff-dwellings, prehistoric 160. 02 17 El Moro New Mexico Dec.

8, 1906 Inscribed rocks 160. 00 18 Chaco Canyon New Mexico Mch.

11, 1907 Pueblo ruin, prehistoric 20,629. 40 19 *Lassen Peak California May 6, 1907 Extinct volcano 1,280. 00 20 *Cinder Cone California May 6, 1907 Lava field 5,120. 00 21 *Gila Cliff-Dwellings New Mexico Nov.

16, 1907 Cliff-dwellings, prehistoric 160. 00 22 *Tonto Arizona Dec.

19, 1907 Cliff-dwellings, prehistoric 640. 00 23 Muir Woods3 California Jan.

9, 1908 Primeval redwood forest 295. 00 24 *Grand Canyon Arizona Jan.

11, 1908 “Titan of chasms” 806,400. 00 25 *Pinnacles California Jan.

16, 1908 Rock pinnacles and caves 2,080. 00 26 *Jewel Cave So.

Dakota Feb.

7, 1908 Large cavern 1280. 00 27 Natural Bridges Utah Apr.

16, 1908 Three natural bridges 4120. 00 28 Lewis and Clark Cavern Montana May 11, 1908 Limestone cavern 160,00 29 Tumacacori5 Arizona Sept.

5, 1908 Spanish mission ruin 10. 00 30 *Wheeler Colorado Dec.

7, 1908 Volcanic formations 300. 00 31 *Mt. Olympus Washington Mch.

2, 1909 Habitat of Olympic elk6 608,640. 00 32 Navajo Arizona Mch.

20, 1909 Cliff-dwellings and pueblos 600. 00 33 *Oregon Caves Oregon July 10, 1909 Limestone caverns 480. 00 1,510,443. 35 * Managed by U. S.

Forest Service, Department of Agriculture.

These areas lie within National Forests.

All others managed by Department of Interior.

These were created out of National Forest lands.

All others except Muir Woods and Tumacacori were created from unpatented public lands.

See notes 3 and 5. 1 Monuments created by Presidential proclamation under Act of June 8, 1906, “For the Preservation of American Antiquities.

” Act specifies “historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest” as reservable under this authority.

No power given to lease any part of such lands.

The Secretaries of the Interior, Agriculture, and War are directed to draw uniform rules for the control of these tracts.

They may permit “properly qualified institutions” to carry on scientific investigations, including excavations and collecting.

No appropriation ever made for maintenance of monuments.

No revenue derived therefrom.

A

fine up to or imprisonment up to 90 days, or both, is the penalty for unlicensed excavating or collecting, or for injuring the reserved properties.

2 Includes any possible private claims.

Extent of patented lands not known to Interior Department.

3 Gift of WIlliam and Elizabeth Thacher Kent of Chicago, Illinois.

4 Proposal to enlarge under consideration.

5 A perfected patent on this land was relinquished by the entryman.

6 The Olympic elk is a rare species and found only in this section of Cascade Mountains.

IV.

LOCATION AND AREA OF THE NATIONAL FORESTS IN THE UNITED STATES, ALASKA, AND PORTO RICO, AND DATES WHEN LATEST PROCLAMATIONS BECAME EFFECTIVE.

June 30, 1909. [_Official Table of the Forest Service, United States Department of Agriculture.

_] State or Territory Forest Headquarters of Proclamation Area: Acres Total Supervisor Effective Arizona Apache Springerville Mar.

2, 1909 1,785,711 Chiricahua1 Douglas July 2, 1908 287,520 Coconino Flagstaff July 2, 1908 3,689,982 Coronado Benson July 2, 1908 966,368 Crook Stafford July 1, 1908 788,624 Dixie2 St. George, Utah Feb.

10, 1909 626,800 Garces Nogales July 2, 1908 644,395 Kaibab Kanab, Utah July 2, 1908 1,080,000 Prescot Prescott Feb 1, 1908 1,541,762 Sitgreaves Snowflake Mar.

2, 1909 1,470,364 Tonto Roosevelt Feb.

10, 1909 2,110,354 Zuñi3 Mar.

2, 1909 266,981 15,258,861 Arkansas Arkansas Mena Feb.

27, 1909 1,663,300 Ozark Harrison Feb.

25, 1909 1,526,481 3,189,781 California Angeles Los Angeles July 1, 1908 1,350,900 California Willows Feb.