HISTORY 21 



ever, at the solicitation of the Secretary of the Interior, agreed 

 not to consider apphcations for Hcenses within the parks until 

 Congress had an opportixnity to enact the promised amen- 

 datory legislation. 



The successors of the late Secretary Lane have taken a like 

 stand with regard to park exploitation. One of the last ut- 

 terances of Judge John Barton Payne before relinquishing the 

 Secretaryship of the Interior was the following: 



In my view the greatest assets, stated with reasonable lim- 

 itations, of the country are such national monuments and parks 

 as the Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon and other national 

 parks which the Congress from time to time has set aside. If 

 those parks may be encroached upon for a commercial pur- 

 pose, sooner or later they will be destroyed, in my view. It 

 ought not to be a question of utility. Congress presumably 

 considered that when it set a park aside. No one feels more 

 keenly than I the wisdom of conserving water for reclamation 

 and power purposes, but that should not be done at the cost of 

 any of our national parks or monuments. And where the 

 question is one even for debate, every doubt should be resolved 

 in favor of the integrity of the national parks. 



The water never remains in the park, and in the final analy- 

 sis it is a question of expense, because without exception, so 

 far as I know, there is always opportunity of using the water 

 after it leaves the park. 



Now, on the Yellowstone project, I gave a hearing to gentle- 

 men when I was in the Yellowstone last July, and we had a 

 perfectly frank dicussion of the subject, and it finally came to 

 the proposition that the project could not afford the cost un- 

 less the free lands in the park could be used for that purpose; 

 that to buy the land for a storage reservoir, and pay the dam- 

 ages incident thereto, would make a burden on the reclamation 

 project which it could ill afford to bear. I said that that 

 should not be a question for debate. If the project cannot 

 afford to bear the expense of acquiring new lands and pay 

 the damages, then the project should be abandoned, if the con- 

 verse of the proposition was the possible injury and destruc- 

 tion of a national park. 



The Yellowstone is worth more to this country, it is worth 

 more to Montana and Idaho and Wyoming than any utilitar- 



