DEVELOPMENT OF THE NATIONAL PARKS. 25 



hotels will have been constructed, and that these will be adequate for 

 the anticipated heavy travel. This season s extraordinary increase 

 was not foreseen and could hardly have been anticipated. 



Beyond the work of maintaining the trail system and telephone 

 lines the department has been unable to undertake any improvement 

 of this park. A clause in the organic act establishing this park in 

 hibits the appropriation of more than $10,000 annually for its admin 

 istration, protection, and improvement. This sum is just sufficient 

 to administer and protect it. Before its improvement is undertaken, 

 therefore, this inhibition on the amount which may be appropriated 

 each year must be removed. Senate bill 6854, introduced by Senator 

 Shafroth, of Colorado, is designed to accomplish this end, but it has 

 not had the consideration of either House of Congress. The revenues 

 of the park are turned into the miscellaneous receipts of the Treasury. 



Some years ago, the State of Colorado undertook the construction 

 of a road across the Continental Divide from Estes Park to Grand 

 Lake by way of Fall River and Milner Pass, but the road has never 

 been completed. The State, however, is continuing to build a 

 few miles of the highway each year. Until this road is completed 

 by the State and other improvements are made by the Federal Gov 

 ernment visitors to this splendid scenic park will find it accessible 

 only to persons accustomed to foot or horseback travel on the trails. 



House bill 10124, now pending in the Senate, provides for the 

 addition to the Rocky Mountain National Park of a number of scenic 

 tracts, including Twin Sisters, Deer Mountain, Gem Lake, and The 

 Needles. Should this measure be enacted the east boundary of the 

 park will be brought very close to the city limits of Estes Park. 



THE HOT SPRINGS RESERVATION. 



The season of 1916 brought an increase in travel to Hot Springs 

 Reservation in the Ozarks of Arkansas, and, as might be expected, 

 an increase also in the indigent sick who became at once a charge 

 upon the community and upon charitable organizations of the city. 



Less than a year ago, I spent a week carefully studying condi 

 tions in Hot Springs. I found that the burden of caring for the 

 afflicted poor that annually came into the city to bathe at the Gov 

 ernment free bathhouse was very heavy, and I can not too highly 

 commend the efforts of the men and women who are constantly de 

 voting themselves to the alleviation of the suffering of these people 

 and to providing them with sufficient nourishment to enable them to 

 seek relief from their ills by bathing in these healing waters. 



In this connection I wish to call attention to the free clinics which 

 public-spirited physicians are now conducting at the Government 



