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Sierra Club Bulletin 



so firmly and clearly enunciated the principle of complete national-park con- 

 servation. 



EDUCATIONAL ADVANTAGES IN THE PARKS 



Each season the advantages which the parks offer in an educational way be- 

 come increasingly apparent. Probably no other areas offer such fertile fields 

 for natural history exploration. Here the results of nature's activities remain 

 undisturbed. One interested in zoology can select no better spot to study wild 

 life in its native setting. The animals are almost fearless, for hunting in no 

 form is permitted. To the ornithologist the parks offer full opportunity to ob- 

 serve the habits of our feathered friends. The student is free to roam at will 

 with the camera. Nearly all the parks are wild-flower gardens. 



YOSEMITE 



Yosemite's normal travel curve shows a gradual rise which reaches its peak on 

 or about July 4th. Previous to this year the peak has never shown more than 

 six thousand people in the valley. During the season just passed, however, on 

 June 2 1st, nearly two weeks before the normal peak, there were nearly if not 

 quite nine thousand visitors in Yosemite Valley, of which approximately five 

 thousand were in the free public camping-grounds. Just what the peak would 

 have been had it been possible to allow the flow to continue it is impossible to 

 estimate, but remedial measures had to be taken by warning broadcast of the 

 shortage of accommodations, which almost immediately brought relief. Similar, 

 but less intense, measures have had to be taken in previous years to hold down 

 the peak to the capacity of the park accommodations, and similar unsatisfac- 

 tory results have followed, namely, the idea prevails long after the situation 

 has been relieved that accommodations are lacking, with the result that late 

 season travel is seriously affected. Also, due to a confusion of park names in 

 newspapers, such warnings have a detrimental effect on travel to the Yellow- 

 stone. 



This situation is one to which I have given a great deal of thought, as it 

 has been the cause of no little annoyance to visitors to the park who have gone 

 there with the belief that they would secure first-class accommodations and 

 have had to be content with anything in the way of a bed that could be se- 

 cured. It can only partly be met by the installation of additional equipment, 

 as I do not feel we would be justified in demanding that the park operators 

 invest in sufficient equipment to meet the entire demands of this short-peak 

 season. Rather the solution seems to be in a reasonable equipment increase 

 from year to year and the carrying on of the campaign for extending the travel 

 season over a longer period. April and May and September and October are 

 quite as beautiful in Yosemite as are June, July, and August, and no one need 

 miss its wonders through inability to come in these months of extremely heavy 

 travel and congestion. 



During the past season the trails from Harden Lake on the Tioga Road to 

 Pate Valley in the bottom of the Grand Cafion of the Tuolumne River and 

 down the same canon from Glen Aulin to the lower of the Waterwheel Falls 

 have been properly completed. There still remain to be built, in order to prop- 

 erly balance out the Yosemite trail system, and also to make more readily ac- 

 cessible the magnificent scenic area of the north half of the park, a trail from 



