238 



Sierra Club Bulletin. 



Indeed, we are not ready for visitors in our national parks. 

 We have, as yet, no national park system. The parks have 

 just happened; they are not the result of such an overlooking 

 of the national domain as would, and ought to, result in a 

 co-ordinated system. There is no adequately organized control 

 of the national parks. With forty-one national parks and monu- 

 ments, aggregating an area larger than two sovereign states, 

 and containing priceless glories of scenery and wonders of 

 nature, we do not have as efficient a provision for administra- 

 tion as is possessed by many a city of but fifty thousand in- 

 habitants for its hundred or so acres ! In a lamentable number of 

 cases, the administration consists solely in the posting of a few 

 muslin warning notices ! 



Nowhere in official Washington can an inquirer find an office 

 of the national parks, or a desk devoted solely to their manage- 

 ment. By passing around through three departments, and con- 

 sulting clerks who have taken on the extra work of doing what 

 they can for the nation's playgrounds, it is possible to come 

 at a little information. 



This is no one's fault. Uncle Sam has simply not waked up 

 about his precious parks. He has not thrown over them the 

 mantle of any complete legal protection — only the Yellowstone 

 has any adequate legal status, and the Yosemite is technically 

 a forest reserve. Selfish and greedy assaults have been made 

 upon the parks, and it is under a legal "joker" that San Fran- 

 cisco is now seeking to take to herself without having in ten 

 years shown any adequate engineering reason for the assault, 

 nearly half of the Yosemite, Three years ago several of us 

 combined to scotch and kill four vicious legislative snakes under 

 which any one might have condemned at $2.50 per acre the 

 Great Falls of the Yellowstone, or even entered upon a national 

 cemetery for the production of electric power at the same price 

 for the land! 



Now there is light, and a determination to do as well for the 

 nation as any little city does for itself. The Great Father of 

 the nation, who honors us tonight by his presence, has been 

 the unswerving friend of the nation's scenic possessions. He 

 has consistently stood for the people's interest in Niagara; he 

 now stands for their interest in the nation's parks. 



His Secretary of the Interior, the presiding officer of the 

 evening, has applied his great constructive ability to the national 

 park problem. It was at his invitation that the first national 

 park conference was held in September last. He has visited 

 most of the parks, and, coming from a city where intensive 

 park development has proceeded to a greater beneficence than 



