104 



FOREST OUTINGS 



Developments . . . The origin of the national-forest movement in this 

 country goes back to the third quarter of the nineteenth century. Concern 

 over destruction of watershed and commercial forest values by uncontrolled, 

 ruthless private exploitation, and the recognized evils of wholesale, deliber- 

 ate, and easy passing of the public domain to private ownership, led finally 

 to passage of the act of March 3, 1891, authorizing that the "President of 

 the United States may, from time to time, set apart and reserve, ... in 

 any part of the public lands wholly or in part covered with timber or under- 

 growth, whether of commercial value or not, as public reservations. ..." 

 This act was clarified and amended by the act of June 4, 1897, which gave 

 a very broad grant of power to the Secretary "to make such rules and regu- 

 lations and establish such services as will insure the objects of such reserva- 

 tions, namely to regulate their occupancy and use, and to preserve the 

 forests thereon from destruction." 



Early national-forest objectives and management were necessarily utili- 

 tarian, attuned to the needs of the time. No one could have foreseen then the 

 place which recreation was later to take. The western national forests were 

 established in regions yet in the pioneer state of development. For a good 

 many years the pressure of work, coupled with slowness of travel and lack 

 of accessibility, resulted in but a small volume of recreational use, and that 

 for the most part local. 



Some idea of how fast the thing grew may be gained from notes lately 

 gathered on the Apache National Forest — some 1,700,000 acres of moun- 

 tains above desert, of which about a million acres are in New Mexico, and 

 the remainder in Arizona. It is thought that the Coronado Expedition 

 crossed this forest. Mexican settlement of the country did not begin until 

 about 1872, and after that there came Mormon pioneering, but hardly 

 anyone went there for pleasure prior to 1900. 



As a national forest, the Apache is 41 years old. There are 350 miles 

 of trout streams on it, and a considerable abundance of deer, elk, antelopes, 

 bears, mountain lions, wildcats, squirrels, and turkeys. 



Hunters sometimes entered the Apache, but the first recorded tourist 

 dates from May 1, 1912. Down the road from New Mexico that morning 

 came a Mr. Baker driving the first automobile ever seen in Springerville. 



