70 FOREST OUTINGS 



There are 27 national parks now. They cover some 9% million of our acres. 

 Beyond that on more than 125 other scattered sites, totalling 11% million 

 acres, the National Park Service guards and displays archaeological and 

 historic landmarks like the Aztec Indian ruins, pioneer forts, the Lewis and 

 Clark caverns in Montana, battlefields, military cemeteries and monu- 

 ments. It also cares for the beautifully designed and tended parks which 

 surround the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, the White 

 House, and Government buildings in Washington, D. C. 



In all, the National Park Service, with a permanent, seasonal, and tem- 

 porary personnel of 3,500, now administers for the public use and pleasure 

 something under 21 million acres. Public use is heavy; in the 1939 travel 

 year 15% million persons are reported to have visited all the various units 

 administered by the Park Service. This may not seem an especially heavy use 

 until you stop to consider that park crowds tend in the very nature of their 

 outings to cluster around the more accessible centers of attraction that the 

 park or the special site displays. 



Because no general charge of admission is made, national-forest visitors 

 are not accurately tallied. On most of the forests the recreational load 

 is widely dispersed. It is estimated that some 32 million persons visited 

 or passed through the 176 million acres of national forests in 1938. More 

 than half of them were simply people driving through on business or pleasure 

 bent. Nearly half of them were not to the same degree forest transients. 

 They stopped to picnic, camp, hunt, hike, or simply to rest. As is true in 

 the parks, these round-number tabulations are made in terms of "visits." 

 In these numbers the same person may be several times or many times 

 counted. "Repeaters," the foresters call them, these people who have found 

 something that they seek out in quiet places and who keep coming back. 



With a permanent and seasonal personnel of 5,000, more than 4,600 of 

 whom work afield, the Forest Service plays willing host to all these millions 

 the venturing newcomers young and old, the repeaters, the weather- 

 hardened veterans of the hunt and of woodlore dispersed over the greater 

 part of 176 million acres, from year to year. With the same force the Forest 

 Service also administers timber, forage, wildlife, and other resources of the 

 national forests. 



