72 
PARK AND CEMETERY. 
Casa Grande Ruin. Ari7.oiia: established in 1S92. 
Prehistoric Indian ruin. 
Mount Rainier. West central Washington; estab- 
lished 1S99. Area. 324 square miles. Largest ac- 
cessible single-peak glacier system; 14 glaciers, 
some of large size; 4S square miles of glacier, 50 
to 500 feet thick; wonderful sub-alpiiie wild-flower 
fields. 
Crater Lake. Southwestern Oi'egon; established 
1002. Area, 249 square miles. Lake of extraordi- 
nary blue in crater of extinct volcano, no inlet, 
no outlet; sides 1.000 feet high; interesting lava 
formations; fine trout fishing. 
Wind Cave, South Dakota; established 1903. 
Large natural cavern. 
Sully’s Hill. North Dakota; established 1904. 
Wooded hilly tract on Devil’s Lake. 
Mesa Verde. Southwestern Colorado; established 
190*3. Area. 77 square miles. Most notaljle and 
best preserved prehistoric cliff-dwellings in Ignited 
States, if not in the world. 
Platt. Southern Oklahoma; established 1900. 
Area, l^^ square miles. Many sulphur and other 
springs, possessing medicinal value. 
Glacier. Northwesteni Montana; established 1910. 
Area. 1,534 square miles. Rugged mountain region 
of unsurpassed Alpine character; 250 glacier-fed 
lakes of romantic beauty; 60 small glaciers: peaks 
of unusual shape; precipices thousands of . feet 
deep; almost sensational scenery of marked indi- 
viduality; fine trout fishing. 
Rocky Mountain. North middle Colorado; estab- 
lished 1915. Area, 358 square miles. Heart of 
the Rockies; snow range; peaks 11.000 to 14.250 
feet altitude; remarkable records of glacial period. 
These national parks are all upon lines 
of railways and are easily and comfortably 
reached from any part of the United States. 
Each of them is in charge of a resident 
supervisor who has under his charge 
enough park rangers to protect the forests 
from fire, the wild animals from hunters, 
and the visitors from harm. There are 
good roads in all of these parks, and ho- 
tels and public camps where visitors may 
stay as long as they like to enjoy the 
scenery and study nature. Trails are built 
to the waterfalls, up the highest mountains, 
and, in short, wherever especially fine 
views may be found. Over these trails 
visitors may walk or ride on horseback, as 
they prefer. 
Many of the hotels are fine ones where 
every luxury may be had by those who in- 
sist upon luxuries even in the wilderness. 
There are often cheaper hotels also, and in 
the great public camps visitors may live 
very comfortably indeed and quite econom- 
ically. One may go to these camps just 
as to a hotel, only he is assigned a com- 
fortable tent instead of a room, and eats 
his meals at a big table in a big dining tent. 
There is another big tent, usually, to serve 
as a general living room. At night a camp 
fire is built in the woods, and all gather 
around it to sing and tell stories. Many 
persons who can easily afford the luxurious 
hotels live in the camps because they prefer 
doing so. 
The Department of the Interior, which 
has all the national parks in its care, is 
trying to make them popular and com- 
fortable and available for people of all de- 
grees of income, and has issued an in- 
teresting bulletin, “Glimpses of Our Na- 
tional Parks,” telling all about them. 
Not only should these parks be the best 
and most fully patronized health and pleas- 
ure resorts in the United States, but they 
should also become great centers of nature 
study. In the national parks only is na- 
ture most carefully conserved exactly as 
designed. 
One must not confuse the national forests 
with the national parks. The national for- 
ests agregate many times the area of the 
national parks. They were created to ad- 
minister lumbering and grazing interests 
for the people; the lumbering, instead of 
being done by private interests for private 
profit, as in the past, is now done in the 
public interest. The trees are cut in ac- 
cordance with the principles of scientific 
forestry, which conserves the smaller trees 
until they grow to a certain size, thus per- 
petuating the forests. Sheep or cattle 
graze in all pastures under governmental 
regulations, and regulated hunting is per- 
mitted in season. The national parks, on 
the other hand, are not properties in even 
the least commercial sense, but natural pre- 
serves for the rest, recreation, and educa- 
tion of the people. They remain under 
nature’s own chosen conditions. They alone 
maintain “the forest primeval.” 
The Glacier National Park. 
The Glacier National Park is so named 
because in the hollow of its rugged moun- 
tain top lie more than sixty glaciers. It is 
in northwestern Montana, right up against 
the Canadian boundary line. It is a land of 
peaks and precipices, snow, ice, rushing 
rivers, waterfalls, and lakes of great love- 
liness. Experienced travelers tell us that 
nowhere in the world is alpine beauty 
found in such diversity and luxuriance. It 
contains 1,S3'4 square miles. 
But, with all its glaciers, the Glacier Na- 
tional Park is chiefly remarkable for its 
picturesquely modeled peaks, the unique 
quality of its rugged mountain masses, its 
gigantic precipices, and the romantic love- 
liness of its lakes. Though all the other 
national parks have these general features 
in addition to others which differentiate 
each from the other, the Glacier National 
Park possesses them in unusual abundance 
and especially happy combination. In fact, 
the almost sensational massing of these 
scenic features is what gives it marked in- 
dividuality. 
How Nature made this remarkable spot 
far back in the dim ages long before man 
is a stirring story. Once this whole region 
was covered with water. The bottom of 
this lake or sea, under the enormous pres- 
sure against its sides and from below, 
gradually rose and became dry land. 
Then the land at this point, probably be- 
cause it was pushed hard by the contract- 
ing land masses on both sides of it, rose in 
long, irregular wave-like masses, forming 
mountains. Then, when the rock could no 
longer stand the awful strain, it cracked 
and one edge was thrust upward and over 
the other edge and settled into its present 
position. The edge that was thrust over 
the other was thousands of feet thick. It 
crumbled into peaks, precipices and gorges. 
Upon these mountains and precipices the 
snows and the rains of uncounted' centuries 
have since fallen, and the ice and the wa- 
ters have worn and carved them into the 
area of distinguished beauty that is today 
the Glacier National Park. This range of 
the Rockies is called the Lewis Mountains. 
To picture to yourselves this region, 
imagine a chain of very lofty mountains 
twisting about like a worm, spotted every- 
where with snow fields and bearing glisten- 
ing glaciers in sixty or more huge hollows. 
Imagine these mountains crumbled and 
broken on their east sides into precipices 
sometimes three or four thousand feet deep 
CROSSING THE TRIPLE DIVIDE, GLACIER NATIONAL PARK. 
