And State Papers 325 



themselves, but good things for the surrounding 

 community, can yet never be more than poor 

 substitutes, from the standpoint of the public, 

 for great national playgrounds such as this Yel 

 lowstone Park. This Park was created, and is 

 tTow administered, for the benefit and enjoyment of 

 the people. The government must continue to ap 

 propriate for it especially in the direction of com 

 pleting and perfecting an excellent system of drive 

 ways. But already its beauties can be seen with 

 great comfort in a short space of time and at an as- 

 toundingly small cost, and with the sense on the 

 part of every visitor that it is in part his property, 

 that it is the property of Uncle Sam and therefore 

 of all of us. The only way that the people as a whole 

 can secure to themselves and their children the en 

 joyment in perpetuity of what the Yellowstone Park 

 has to give is by assuming the ownership in the name 

 of the nation and by jealously safeguarding and pre 

 serving the scenery, the forests, and the wild crea 

 tures. When we have a good system of carriage 

 roads throughout the Park for of course it would 

 be very unwise to allow either steam or electric 

 roads in the Park we shall have a region as easy 

 and accessible to travel in as it is already every 

 whit as interesting as any similar territory of the 

 Alps or the Italian Riviera. The geysers, the ex 

 traordinary hot springs, the lakes, the mountains, 

 the canyons, and cataracts unite to make this region 

 something not wholly to be paralleled elsewhere on 

 the globe. It must be kept for the benefit and en- 





