\The Boone and Crockett Club 



were familiar with the Park one of them had 

 been there as early as 1875 an d had seen the 

 changes which had taken place and the progressive 

 destruction which followed the growing number of 

 visitors. All knew how the timber had been cut 

 off and the game killed by the so-called syndicate, 

 which in 1882 attempted to secure a monopoly of 

 the Park and all the concessions connected with it. 



They had seen fires, started by careless campers, 

 sweep over mountainside and valley, and had 

 passed through mile after mile of burned forest, 

 where charred tree trunks blackened the packs 

 which brushed against them, and pine logs glowed 

 and crumbled to ashes along the trail, and the 

 forest floor on either side sent up clouds of acrid 

 smoke from subterranean fires that ate their way 

 among the dead and decayed vegetatation. Thus 

 they all knew what forest fires sweeping over the 

 Rocky Mountains might mean for the region 

 devastated. To protect the Park, its forests and 

 its game, seemed to them a vital matter. This was 

 what they had set out to do>; but as they saw more 

 and more the dangers to which these forests were ex- 

 posed, so the forests and the game of other regions 

 became, in their view, more and more important. 



The most pressing dangers to the Park passed; 

 the Senate, with George Graham Vest as a watch- 



454 



