A BRIEF HISTORY 69 



departments, the States have not been able to provide adequate facilities. 

 The influx of visitors into the State forests has taxed the ingenuity of State 

 forestry organizations, most of which are small. But most State foresters have 

 met the challenge to the limit of their resources, and plan a continued 

 expansion. 



Differences as to recreational equipment and methods in parks and on 

 forests, region by region, may be found on examination to arise in part from 

 varying circumstances — different kinds of country, cover, soil, weather; but 

 above all, from different degrees of demand or pressure exerted by the people 

 on available recreational areas, the per-acre recreational load. The national 

 forests are a vast stage on which escaping millions seek in their own way to 

 play their own parts. The national parks are natural galleries around natural 

 centers of attraction. They surround and preserve something definite for our 

 people to go to and see. The most gorgeous parts of the Grand Canyon and of 

 the Yosemite Valley are in national parks. So is the Mammoth Cave of 

 Kentucky; and in Kentucky, too, a national historical park enshrines a prim- 

 itive national memorial — the rude log cabin in which Abraham Lincoln was 

 born. 



The genesis of the national-park movement was nonutilitarian and patri- 

 otic in the highest sense. An exceptional streak of national idealism amid an 

 age of ruthless raiding led that group of Californians, viewing the Yosemite 

 and the Big Trees, to realize that the best use of such gems was nonpro- 

 ductive in the strictly practical sense. It was 26 years, however, before the 

 Yosemite State Park became a national park; so most writers on the subject say 

 that the movement began on March 1, 1872, with an act of Congress creating 

 a Yellowstone National Park. The pioneers here were the members of the 

 Webster-Doane expedition of 1870, a most unusual group. They saw in the 

 Yellowstone a supreme natural wonder which should be kept unimpaired 

 and unspoiled for public enjoyment — "a public park or pleasuring ground 

 for the benefit and enjoyment of the people" — and moved toward, "the 

 preservation from injury and spoliation of all timber, mineral deposits, 

 natural curiosities and wonders, and for their retention in their natural 

 condition." 



