126 * * * * * "Oh, Ranger!" 



measure up to the standard of the other parks. Likewise, the service 

 hopes to see certain areas added to some of the parks, notably a section 

 of the Kings country bordering on Sequoia National Park, Mount 

 Banner and Mount Ritter, The Devil Postpile, and Thousand Island 

 Lake southeast of Yosemite Park, the Never Summer Range and the 

 glaciers and peaks south of Rocky Mountain Park, and possibly a section 

 of fine California coast redwoods to preserve the primeval splendor of 

 these great trees. Since most of these areas are now federal lands, their 

 addition to the parks involves merely transfer from one government 

 department to another. 



The National Park Service since its establishment has never had 

 any political standing. Appointments are made on a merit basis, in 

 accordance with civil service rules and regulations. Even the director 

 is a civil service employe. Secretaries of the Interior, since the crea 

 tion of the park service, have taken so great an interest in its develop 

 ment and welfare that they have resisted efforts to inject politics into 

 the handling of the parks or the appointment of park officials. 



It is the policy of the National Park Service to keep its organization 

 small. It has no ambition to be the biggest bureau in the government 

 service. It does not seek to build up a corps of experts in every activity 

 which touches national park operations. It has a small engineering or 

 ganization for planning purposes and to execute certain lines of con 

 struction. It has a landscape engineering department which supervises 

 all building plans, approves plans and layouts for hotel and other conces 

 sioner developments, and has charge of all planting work, modification 

 of scenic areas through installation of roads, trails, and telephone lines. 

 It has an educational division which supervises the work of interpreting 

 the parks to their visitors, has general oversight of museums, natural 

 history activities, research, and so on. For all specialized scientific serv 

 ice, the National Park Service calls on other bureaus. For insect control 

 work in the forests, the Bureau of Entomology is our adviser. Road 

 construction is under the Bureau of Public Roads. The United States 

 Public Health Service designs all water and sewer systems and over 

 sees their construction. It also keeps a sharp oversight of conditions of 

 health in the parks, but at our request. The parks are exceptionally 

 healthy places and epidemics are almost unknown. Streams and lakes 

 are stocked with fish through co-operation with the Bureau of Fisheries. 

 The Biological Survey, the Geological Survey, the Forest Service, are 

 other bureaus that co-operate closely with us. 



The administration of some of the parks is complicated by the fact 

 that before they were established as parks, private and state holdings 

 existed in them. For example, in Yosemite National Park there are 

 large timber and land holdings. Many of these grants have been bought 



