400 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



mining interests, 

 who were per- 

 suaded to believe 

 that the National 

 Forests would in 

 some way or other 

 act as a drawback 

 to the development 

 of this industry. 

 Since the location 

 and working of the 

 mines themselves 

 is unobstructed, 

 and has been per- 

 mitted within the 

 Forests since 1896, 

 the miners were 

 forced to concen- 

 trate their opposi- 

 tion on the timber 

 policy of the Na- 

 tional Forests. But 

 here again they 

 disagreed as to 

 what constituted 

 the real objections. 

 Under the existing 

 regulations, timber 

 could be purchased 

 from the Forests 

 for the develop- 

 ment of mines to 

 any required 

 amount. So one 

 group of objectors 

 claimed that tim- 

 ber lands included 

 within National 

 Forests were at 

 once opened to 

 wholesale and un- 

 restricted exploita- 

 tion by lumber- 

 men and pole 

 hunters, to the in- 

 jury- of mining and 

 other local indus- 

 tries; while a sec- 

 ond group still 

 blindly insisted that 

 the National For- 

 ests locked up all 

 resources, includ- 

 ing the timber, 

 from any kind of 

 development. 



Meanwhile, the 

 agricultural inter- 

 ests, dependent 

 upon watershed 



On 



CANYON OF BIG THOMPSON RIVER AND LOVELAND 

 the Estes Park auto road a midwinter scene showing the Canyon and bridge. 



GOOD UTILIZ.\TIU.\ OF NATIONAL FOREST RESOURCES 



These lambs from New Mexico, on the Henry Feit Ranch, are fattening on alfalfa raised locally by the 

 use of irrigation water from the Colorado National Forest, and corn from Nebraska. 



protection for the 

 maintenance of 

 irrigation on many 

 thousands of acres 

 of the richest lands 

 of Colorado, dis- 

 covered that the 

 ruthless denudation 

 of the foothills of 

 the Medicine Bow 

 range was dimin- 

 ishing the flow of 

 water and causing 

 great damage to 

 irrigation. These 

 foothills had not 

 been included in 

 the original with- 

 drawals for Na- 

 tional Forests be- 

 cause at the time 

 areas containing 15 

 per cent or more of 

 patented or pri- 

 vate land were not 

 considered suitable 

 for National For- 

 est use, and this 

 stretch of territory 

 was honeycombed 

 with mining and 

 timber locations. 

 In the very year 

 1907, in which the 

 opposition s u c - 

 ceeded in prohibit- 

 ing the creation of 

 any further Na- 

 tional Forests by 

 the President, pe- 

 titions went to 

 Congress from 

 this region asking 

 for this extension 

 of the Forest area. 

 During the last 

 decade this de- 

 mand has grown 

 constantly strong- 

 er and better or- 

 ganized, until it 

 embraced not only 

 the c o m m e rcial 

 bodies of the foot- 

 hills towns, the 

 local livestock as- 

 sociations, and the 

 representative agri- 

 cultural organiza- 

 tions, but included 



