102 



TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY 



"As few new improvements were being 

 made, the position of landscape engineer was 

 not filled until we secured the services of Mr. 

 Punchard last summer. He devotes himself 

 exclusively to landscape planning and general 

 architectural work. He has no administrative 

 functions, nor does he have control of the gen- 

 eral engineering work, which is under the 

 supervision of our park superintendents and 

 our general engineer. His advice on landscape 

 matters, however, must be accepted by park 

 superintendents and the general engineer, and 

 in order that he may be able to give this ad- 

 vice on the ground we have him go from park 

 to park as occasion arises for his assistance." 



It is Stated that, while Charles was in 

 the Yosemite, the King and Queen of 

 Belgium in their tour over here visited 

 some of the National Parks, and he was 

 selected to be the personal escort of the 

 Queen, and also that at the end of the 

 trip the King decorated him with one of 

 the orders of the Belgium Court. 



On May 15, 1920, Charles, who had for 

 years been a member of the American 

 Society of Landscape Architects and 

 latterly a member of its Standing Com- 

 mittee on National Parks, said in the 

 course of a letter to the writer : 



"I am working on a letter to the Committee 

 on National Parks and hope to get it ofif this 

 next week if possible, although I am very 

 busy with other developments here. 



"The tourists and campers are coming in to 

 Yosemite in numbers 300 per cent, in excess 

 of the same dates last season, and it looks 

 like the biggest year we have ever experienced 

 and our appropriations no larger than last 

 year, which means that we are to be seriously 

 crippled for improvements. By another week 

 we will have to cut our labor force to not 

 more than ten men, in order to get through 

 till July 1. So you see there is very little 

 money for landscape work this summer." 



Mr. Horace M. Albright, then Super- 

 intendent of the Yellowstone National 

 Park, writes under date of November 30. 

 1920; 



"Of course you have heard of the death of 

 our Landscape Engineer, Mr. Punchard. This 

 was a very serious loss to our Bureau and per- 

 sonally we superintendents feel his death very 



keenly. He was making a wonderful success 

 in the National Park Service." 



The following letter from Mr. Arthur 

 Hawthorne Carhart, Recreation Engineer 

 of the United States Forest Service, is 

 particularly significant as indicating the 

 e.xtent to which Charles extended his in- 

 telligent and broad-sighted service be- 

 3'ond the confines of the areas immediate- 

 ly under his control and, by meeting in 

 a friendly cooperative spirit the one 

 Recreation Engineer in the Forest Ser- 

 \ice, vmdoubtedly did much toward 

 tempering the feeling of jealously which 

 has existed in some quarters between the 

 champions of these two Services, repre- 

 sented for our profession by Punchard 

 and Carhart: 



"Soon after I came to this work in the for- 

 ests I met Mr. Punchard in the Yellowstone 

 Park. After this meeting we corresponded 

 and whenever possible met and discussed our 

 problems. There is a belief existing in some 

 quarters that the Park and Forest Services do 

 not cooperate as much as they might, but 

 Punchard and I had no difficulty in getting 

 together on all subjects and discussing them 

 freely. We had planned some work along 

 cooperative lines which was to cover the ap- 

 proaches to all of the National Parks in the 

 District. The roads into the majority of the 

 parks pass through National Forests and con- 

 stitute some of the best scenic attractions 

 viewed by visitors. We had planned to cor- 

 relate our work along these traffic lines so 

 that there would be a unity impossible to se- 

 cure without close cooperation." 



The following extract from a letter 

 dated November 16 from Mr. Arno B. 

 Cammerer, then Acting Director of the 

 National Park Service, to Miss Theodora 

 Kimball. Librarian of the Harvard 

 School of Landscape Architecture, is the 

 best possible evidence of the way in 

 vvhich the officials of the National Park 

 Service regarded Charles — his work and 

 bis jiersonality : 



" 'Punch,' as his friends were wont to call 

 him, made friends wherever he hung his hat. 

 Faithful, loyal, hard-working, and energetic, 

 he was also endowed with a fund of good 

 common sense and rare judgment that secured 



