25 8 OUR FEDERAL LANDS 



Great Smoky National Park, ten million dollars are 

 now provided, made up of local private subscriptions, 

 plus legislative appropriations by the states of North 

 Carolina and Tennessee, balanced by a Rockefeller 

 gift of equal size. Saving for posterity so large an 

 area untouched of the finest original forest of the 

 East is one of the greatest achievements of the Na- 

 tional Park System or of the age we live in. 



Whether one or both of two other areas author- 

 ized by Congress at the same time, the Shenandoah 

 region of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia 

 and the Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, shall also be 

 acquired by purchase depends on the next several 

 years. Both would make excellent State Parks, and 

 Mammoth Cave would probably also make a good 

 National Monument. 



THE EDUCATIONAL PERIOD 



The National Park educational movement of to- 

 day may be said to have begun when effort was ex- 

 erted consciously toward systematic development, 

 but in reality National Parks have been very prac- 

 tically educational and inspirational from their start. 

 Early in the seventies, discussions in the daily, 

 weekly and monthly press of the causes and mecha- 

 nism of Yellowstone's geysers, hot springs and mud 

 volcanoes attracted wide public attention to natural 

 phenomena. Later, the Hay den survey by the United 



