CHIEF FIRE WARDEN, 33 



Last year congress created another national park to 

 include Mount Tacoma. In 1877 congress set apart 

 2/240 acres as a reserve or park at Hot Springs, Arkan- 

 sas, on which has been established a fine army and navy 

 hospital. It is practically a national park, and congress 

 has expended considerable money for its maintenance. 

 There has been good reason for all these as well as for 

 the national military parks like Chickamauga and Gettys- 

 burgh. We also know that Ontario has established a 

 national park of a million acres, and that the State of New 

 York has a great park in the Adirondacks. 



What good reason can we furnish congress for creating 

 the proposed national park in Minnesota to include the 

 Mississippi, Leech Lake, Lake Winnibigoshish and Cass 

 Lake Indian reservations, in all 611,592 acres of land and 

 218,476 acres of water surface? 



First — A strong reason for the park is, the good it will 

 do to the science of forestry. In its limits are some fine 

 bodies of primeval white as well as red pine, which have 

 been growing for centuries, bordering beautiful lakes and 

 easily accessible to the public by railroads. The white 

 pine> on account of its rapid growth on ordinary soil in 

 northern climes, and universal use, is the most valuable 

 tree in the world. It has been growing on this site for 

 successive centuries. Probably there is nothing in this 

 country to match the wonderful and beautifully wooded 

 island in Cass Lake, where, on the same area, dif- 

 ferent generations of pine are flourishing. Being on In- 

 dian reservations, these primeval forests have come down 

 substantially intact to the present time; and there is no 

 other so available opportunity in our country for obtain- 

 ing a considerable tract of original white pine forest for 

 scientific management as here. The forest would yield a 

 revenue, but remain unimpaired. It is the last chance 

 for so accessible a park. 



One can see what forestry science is, from the fact that 



