CHIEF FIRE WARDEN. 39 



of 11.25 ^ni 3.cre, as originally agreed to, which would 

 amount to 1487, 237. It will be conceded that this is a 

 fair price when one remembers that there are millions of 

 acres of land in Northern Minnesota which have been 

 open to homestead settlers for thirty years and that are 

 still vacant. 



Under date of March 14th I submitted an estimate of 

 the value of the pine lands in the proposed Minnesota 

 national park based on official estimates of similar pine 

 lands on the Red Lake Indian reservation reported as 

 averaging 80,000 feet board measure to each forty-acre 

 tract. This average number of feet per forty acres on 

 the Red Lake reservation thus returned by the govern- 

 ment estimators seemed to me small, and I was aware 

 that their work had been criticised; yet inasmuch as a 

 previous estimate had been set aside for unreliability and 

 as this last one had been accepted, approved and pro- 

 mulgated — a portion by the Interior Department under 

 the administration of President Cleveland and a portion 

 by the Interior Department under the administration of 

 President McKinley — I felt that it was reliable. Accord- 

 ingly I used it as a basis for estimating the average num- 

 ber of feet of standing pine on the "pine lands" in the 

 proposed park. But from information which I have 

 since received and which I know to be absolutely reliable I 

 am satisfied that "pine lands" in Minnesota will average 

 250,000 feet per forty-acre tract, and that consequently 

 the estimates approved and promulgated by the Interior 

 Department April 24, 1896, June 14, 1898, and those 

 prepared for approval in 1899 (covering in all 291,348 

 acres, with 585,481,000 feet of standing pine of the value, 

 at 13 per i 000 feet, of #1,774,728), were in the aggregate 

 much below the true value of the pine. The Department 

 of the Interior was simply imposed upon by having thrust 

 upon it, I do not undertake to say dishonest estimators, 

 for there is sometimes a wide variance among honest 



