4 OUR NATIONAL PARKS. 



Zealand. Again, it is conceded the world over that there is no valley in 

 existence so strikingly beautiful as our Yosemite Valley, and nowhere 

 else can be found a canyon of such size and exquisite coloring as our 

 Grand Canyon of the Colorado. In the Sequoia National Park grow 

 trees so huge and old that none quite compare with them. These are 

 well-known facts with which every American ought to be familiar. 



The eight national parks of the first order are the Mount Kainier 

 National Park in Washington, the Crater Lake National Park in 

 Oregon, the Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks in California, the 

 Glacier National Park hi Montana, the Yellowstone National Park, 

 principally in Wyoming, and the Rocky Mountain and Mesa Verde 

 National Parks in Colorado. With these must be classed the Grand 

 Canyon of the Colorado in Arizona, which, though still remaining a 

 national monument, is one of the great wonders of the world. 



The principal difference between a national monument and a 

 national park is that the former has merely been made safe from 

 encroachment by private interests and enterprise, while the latter 

 is also in process of development by roads and trails and hotels, so as 

 to become a convenient resort for the people to visit and enjoy. 



EACH A PERSONALITY OF ITS OWN 



One of the striking and interesting features of the eight greater 

 national parks of our country is that each one of them is quite dif- 

 ferent from all the others ; each has a marked personality of its own. 



Mount Rainier, for instance, is an extinct volcano down the sides 

 of which flow twenty-eight glaciers, or rivers of ice. 



Crater Lake fills with water of astonishhig blue the hole left when 

 the top of Mount Mazama, another volcano in the same chain as 

 Mount Rainier, was swallowed up in some far distant past. 



The Yosemite National Park, in addition to its celebrated Yo- 

 semite Valley and lofty waterfalls, has in the north a river called 

 the Tuolumne which spouts wheels of water fifty feet and more into 

 the air. It has great areas of snow-topped mountains. 



The Sequoia National Park contains more than a million sequoia 

 trees, of which 12,000 are more than ten feet in diameter, and some 

 twice that and several from twenty-five to thirty-six feet through from 

 side to side. Measure thirty-six feet on the sidewalk and see what 

 that means. Some of these trees are older than human history. 



The Glacier National Park was made by the earth cracking in 

 some far distant time and one side thrusting up and overlapping the 

 other. It has cliffs several thousand feet high and more than sixty 

 glaciers feed hundreds of lakes. One lake floats icebergs all summer. 

 This scenery is truly Alpine. 



The Yellowstone National Park, beside its geysers, has many hot 

 springs which build glistening plateaus of highly colored mineral 



