14 OUB NATIONAL PARKS. 



Two herdsmen, Richard and Alfred Wetherill, while hunting lost 

 cattle one December day in 1888, discovered these ruins. Coming 

 to the edge of a small canyon, they saw under the overreaching cliffs 

 of the opposite side, apparently hanging above a great precipice, 

 what they thought was a city with towers and walls. They were 

 astonished beyond measure — and indeed even the expectant visitor 

 of to-day involuntarily exclaims over the surprise and beauty of the 

 spectacle. 



EXPLORATION OF THE MESA VERDE 



Later they explored it and called it Cliff Palace — an unfortunate 

 name, for it was not a palace at all, but a village with two hundred 

 rooms for family living and with twenty-two kivas, or sacred rooms, 

 for worship. Later on they found another similar community 

 dwelling which once sheltered 350 inhabitants. This they called 

 Spruce Tree House because a large spruce tree grew near it. These 

 names have remained. 



Other explorers followed and many other ruins were found. This 

 is not the place to name or describe them, but it may be said that here 

 may be seen the oldest and most fully realized civic-center scheme in 

 America. City planning of which we hear so much now, as if it were 

 a new idea, began in America five or six centuries ago under the cliffs 

 of the Mesa Verde. 



Antiquities are not the only attractions in the Mesa Verde National 

 Park. Its natural beauties should not be overlooked. In winter it 

 is wholly inaccessible on account of the deep snows; in some months 

 it is dry and parched, but in June and July when rains come vegeta- 

 tion is in full bloom, the plants flower and the grass grows high in 

 the glades; the trees put forth their new green leaves. The Mesa 

 Verde is attractive in all seasons of the year and full of interest for 

 those who love the unusual and picturesque of mountain scenery. 



IV. 



THE YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK 



Special Characteristics : Glaciers and Hot Springs ; Wonderfully Colored 

 Canyon; Largest Wild Bird and Animal Refuge 



THE Yellowstone National Park, which lies principally in Wyoming, 

 is the most widely celebrated of all our national parks because 

 it contains more and greater geysers than all the rest of the world 

 together. The geyser fields next in size are in Iceland and New 

 Zealand. The rest are inconspicuous. 



Geysers are, roughly speaking, water volcanoes. They occur only 

 at places where the internal heat of the earth approaches close to 

 the surface. Then action, for so many years unexplained, and even 



