Playgrounds on National Forests 



A FEW years ago most of our citizens who pro- 

 fessed interest in the National Forests viewed the 

 subject from a purely utiHtarian standpoint. Men- 

 tion a National Forest and the discussion invariably 

 turned to questions of lumbering, grazing, and water- 

 power. In all such questions the public's attitude was 

 largely impersonal and usually academic. To-day the 

 National Forests of the West occupy an entirely different 

 position in the public mind. They have become the prop- 

 erty of the people in a 

 sense so genuinely per- 

 sonal that the Forest Ser- 

 vice, once the most bit- 

 terly assailed Bureau of 

 the Government, has be- 

 come one of the most 

 popular. 



What is the cause of 

 this reversal of sentiment ? 

 It is due to the fact that 

 the Forest Service has 

 been for years steadily 

 converting the local public 

 from hostility or indiffer- 

 ence to warm support be- 

 cause of the many benefits 

 realized by the public 

 from National Forest 

 administration. Not the 

 least of these is the use 

 of the National Forests 

 for recreational purposes. 

 A provision in the Con- 

 gressional enactments of 

 1915, extending the au- 

 thority of tiie Forest Ser- 

 vice to permit the leasing 

 of lands suitably located 

 within National Forests 

 in five-acre tracts for a 

 period of not exceeding 

 thirty years, to individuals 

 or associations for use as 



.\XD CA.MPERS ARE Wl-,1. 

 FORESTS 



Splendid roads are being constructed to link the woods with the cities. Camp sites 

 are located at advantageous points, with water piped from springs. The woodland 

 trails are blazed on trees, marked plainly on maps, and the officers of the Service 

 are constantly on the alert to render assistance to the visitor. Register and you 

 will be looked after. There is only one "Don't" in the woods, "Don't be careless 

 about fires.' 



summer homes, and for the erection of hotels, stores and 

 other structures needed for recreation or public con- 

 venience, helped the already well-developed recreational 

 use of the forests. This development had been under way 

 for some years, many people having built summer homes 

 on the year-to-year permit plans. Under the 1915 law 

 the Secretary of Agriculture has fixed a charge of from 

 $10 to $25 a year for summer homes and somewhat 

 higher rentals for hotels and other commercial projects. 



So long as the Forest Service dealt with matters con- 

 nected only with preservation and revenue, the average 

 citizen looked upon the Forest as a region apart from 

 712 



his daily affairs and gave the subject but little thought. 

 As soon, however, as the great West awakened to the 

 fact that our National Forests are in reality personal 

 assets, the most wonderful playgrounds in the world, open 

 to any citizen for his use and enjoyment, the Forest 

 Service began to grow in public esteem. The popular- 

 ity of this movement is now evidenced by a widespread 

 demand for home sites in several forests, and thousands 

 of people, cognizant that the neighboring forest is open 



for their use, are flocking 

 there for vacations. The 

 first comers are always 

 boosters, and as a result 

 an enthusiastic western 

 public is to-day encour- 

 aging and supporting the 

 Forest .Service in broad- 

 ening its activities in the 

 direction of recreational 

 use of our vast forest 

 areas. T he s u m m e r 

 campers and woodland 

 rovers have heralded far 

 and wide their delightful 

 experiences ; magazines 

 have published pages of 

 captivating stories about 

 the joys of a season in 

 the big woods, and this 

 year the National Forests 

 were visited by thousands 

 who came from distant 

 parts of the Union. It is 

 estimated that more than 

 1,500.000 people visited 

 the western National For- 

 ests this summer, or nearly 

 five times as many as en- 

 tered the National Parks. 

 Great as were their num- 

 bers, our National Forests, 

 with an area of 132,550,000 

 acres, were not crowded. 

 On a summer tour, the forest visitor met and con- 

 versed with hundreds of other summer campers and 

 tourists. In the log cabins, the rough lumber bungalows, 

 in the tent houses and brush leantos. in moving vans and 

 completely equipped camp autos, were to be found an 

 enthusiastic and healthv army of city and country folk 

 enjoying to the full the exuberant life of the clean out- 

 of-doors in the most wonderful playground in the 

 whole world. 



In remote and unexpected places, back in the fast- 

 nesses of mountains and primeval woods they were found, 

 whole families of them, having a wide fling with nature 



iMliD T(J THE NATIONAL 



