THE NATIONAL PARKS SYSTEM 249 



operating for far different purposes had also their 

 conservation committees. Among the thinkers and 

 workers for conservation, hundreds of thousands in 

 number, National Parks, because preserving majes- 

 tic wildernesses in original unmodified condition, 

 acquired great fame. They were recognized as the 

 outposts of the swelling conservation movement, 

 preserving in original record the plant and life forms 

 of this country as our forefathers had found it. 



This was the precious possession which the In- 

 terior Department was now to develop. Undertak- 

 ing to prepare the Californian National Parks for 

 the Pacific Exposition of 1915, Stephen T. Mather 

 brought with him from Chicago his dream of a sys- 

 tem so developed as to lead the world. There was 

 nothing to inform the little group he gathered round 

 him, of which I was one, that the automobile was 

 about to change the out-door conditions of all Amer- 

 ica. Studying the park creations of the past for the 

 plannings of the future, "these men had no hint that 

 a period had reached its fulness, that another, 

 charged with change and conflict, was at hand. 



National Parks had been created individually 

 without special reference to each other, and up to 

 that time had been administered in a group of unre- 

 lated entities including f reedmen's institutions and 

 other unclassified federal units. It was inevitable 

 that they should be correlated and handled as a sys- 

 tem. A separate bureau was created in 1916, and 

 became operative the year following, with Mr. Ma- 

 ther as Director. 



