DEVELOPMENT OF THE NATIONAL PARKS. 5 



and uses of their national parks in the manner for which they them- 

 selves express so plain a preference. 



INCEEASED TKAVEL AGAINST ADVERSE CONDITIONS. 



Under the stimulus of this public interest it was expected, in the 

 early days of the season just closed, that travel to the parks would be 

 heavy, but it was not expected to equal that of the year before, which, 

 with the lure of the western expositions, had been phenomenal. Re- 

 ports from the parks, however, clearly indicate that the 1916 travel 

 not only did not fall below that of last year, but actually exceeded it. 

 Of course, the travel did not increase in every park, but in several 

 parks. In Rocky Mountain National Park, for example, the increases 

 were so large that they more than offset the decreases in other reser- 

 vations. 



However, travel to all of the parks was far above the normal of the 

 years before their development was undertaken. And we can not 

 refrain from conjecturing how much heavier it would have been had 

 not unforeseen conditions intervened to discourage and retard travel 

 in all sections of the country. These conditions were the very late 

 spring and the threatened railroad strike. There is no doubt that 

 they adversely influenced railroad travel to the parks. 



ASTONISHING INCREASE IN MOTOR TRAVEL. 



The travel that was less seriously affected by these unfavorable 

 weather and industrial conditions was the motor travel. It deserves 

 special mention here. Last season 12,563 cars registered at the por- 

 tals of the various parks, and this year's reports show that 19,848 

 cars, carrying 78,916 tourists, passed through them and made tours 

 of the parks. The number of tourists entering the parks in private 

 cars is astonishing when one takes into consideration the fact that 

 they have been opened to motor traffic only a very few years and 

 that one of the larger parks has only been open a season and a half. 



This tremendous increase in automobile travel leads to one con- 

 clusion only, and that is that in the early future travel in private 

 machines will overtake the increasing railroad travel and constitute 

 the greater portion of all park travel. This makes it incumbent upon 

 the Federal Government to prepare for the great influx of auto- 

 mobiles by constructing new roads and improving existing highways 

 wherever improvement is necessary. 



At the present time there are only two parks, Yosemite and Yellow- 

 stone, which have more than a very few miles of highway con- 

 structed, and they have naturally enjoyed the largest patronage by 

 motorists. Much remains to be done, however, in these reservations, 



