voir phase of extensive timber tracts, except to point out 

 that these well-known principles, applied in the headwaters 

 of the Wisconsin rivers, will mean an enormous development, 

 eventually, of the cities along these streams, for hundreds of 

 miles below the source of the waters. 



The forest reserve is at the headwaters of several river 

 systems, rivers flowing into the Mississippi river, Lake Mich- 

 igan and Lake Superior, from within a radius of half a dozen 

 ii'iles. Each of these rivers, in the 600-foot descent to the 

 irain bodies, provides a series of rapids, each capable of de- 

 veloping its own industrial center. On the Wisconsin river, 

 for instance, there are the cities of Merrill, Wausau, Stevens 

 Point, Grand Rapids, with an average population already of 

 over 10,000, and still in their industrial infancy. The use of 

 the natural forest reservoirs, retaining the water for the sum- 

 mer, instead of subjecting the river courses to disastrous 

 early spring floods, followed by comparative drouth, is pro- 

 posed to be supplemented by artificial reservoirs, the lakes 

 most tactically suitable for enlargement with storage reser- 

 voirs being secured under state supervision, by private cor- 

 Iporations, and the flowa^e being retained until most needed 

 for the industrial operations along the streams. 

 The financial value of this part of the state's conservation 

 problem is impossible to be figured in dollars and cents. 

 Summer Resort Area. 

 The third of the chief aims of the state forest service, the 

 development of a great playground, a summer resort area, 

 conserved in part for the fishermen and hunters, seems to 

 be the least of the three from an economic standpoint. But 

 in many ways it is the most important. While in the eventual 

 scheme of things it might become least of the three in finan- 

 cial value to the state, at present' it is the most immediately 

 productive, and even though apparently a devoting of stale 

 resources to the rich sportsmen, must be considered as a 

 revenue producer to the state. 



Wisconsin's receipts last year from summer resorters to- 

 taled nearly $700,000, and when the district is developed for 

 the West as the Adirondacks are for the East, Maine's figures 

 as $20,000,000, New York and New Hampshire with $10,000,000 



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