PARK AND CEMETER Y. 
13 
I believe that the mental horizon and the 
visual horizon hear very close relation to 
each other. The man who sees broadly, 
and conversely. I think it is as difficult to 
plant the seed of a broad intelligence in 
the mind of the child being reared in the 
streets of a great city as it is to grow a 
sunflower in a swamp. I know of nothing 
that has so potent an effect or is so effica- 
cious in the development of a broad mind 
and a dignity of character as the repeated 
contemplation of an inspiring view. If 
anyone doubts this, let him stand on the 
brink of the Grand Canyon at dawn and 
view the myriad tints and changing views 
and those mile-high walls as the rays of 
the rising sun creep down ; or let him stand 
on the Cloud's Rest and view 6,000 feet 
below him a peaceful village nestling at 
the foot of a half-mile cliff, over which 
pours a snow-white river ; or let him wan- 
der beneath the giant branches of the 
Sequoias, 8,000 years of age, the oldest and 
most tenacious of life of all living things, 
where at noontime you may look up and 
see the stars, and a serenity will creep 
over him that borders close onto that peace 
which passeth understanding. 
I once inquired of an old habitue of the 
Giant Forest what particular benefit he 
thought he derived from his repeated visits 
to the park, and he said : "Well, you see, 
it is like this. For quite a spell after 1 
came here to this park, somehow or other 
I felt kind of disinclined to cuss when I 
stubbed my toe." And, as a matter of fact, 
I have seen people who visited the giant 
forests enter them in a spirit of hilarity 
and boisterousness, and I have seen them 
leave speaking in whispers. 
While I have promised not to eulogize, I 
might give you a brief outline of what is 
composed within our twelve national parks. 
While they are twelve in number, there 
are applications for ten times that many to 
be admitted to that category. 
Arkansas Hot Springs and the Platte Na- 
tional Park are perhaps two of the great 
est health resorts in the world. Many phy- 
sicians have claimed that more legitimate 
and effective cures have been made at Ar- 
kansas Hot Springs than at any other 
springs on earth. At Mesa Verde National 
Park in Colorado we have the cliff dwell- 
ings. The park is replete with mystery and 
peaceful grandeur. If anyone wishes to 
experience the sensation which undoubtedly 
prompted Omar Khayyam to say that we 
know not whence we come nor how nor 
why we go or where, let him view those 
cliff dwellings. There remain the almost 
perfect structures of the cliff dwellers. 
They came to the country; they built their 
dwellings, and they passed away. Of rec 
ord they left nothing. Hgypt has her 
Sphinx, but I am not certain that I do not 
prefer the cliff dwellings. The next parks 
I speak of in the plural, and there are 
three in California, being the most western 
of our parks. They are the Sequoia Na- 
tional Park, the General Grant and the 
Yosemite. Sequoia and General Grant 
parks are considered and admitted as one 
park. The General Grant Park possesses 
already 2,500 acres, as originally created, 
for the purpose of preserving a very small 
grove of very great sequoia gigantei. Se- 
quoia. Park, however, is quite considerable 
in size. Within the park are one and one- 
quarter million sequoia gigantei. It has the 
largest trees in the world and the oldest 
living thing in the world, and the deepest 
canyon in the world, and on its border is 
the highest point in the United States. It 
is a park which has received little or no 
consideration. What few people eventually 
stray within its borders are chance visit- 
ors, and yet I believe that, properly devel- 
oped, it would be one of the most impor- 
tant paries in that system. The entire 
country is the most rugged I know of in 
the mountains of this continent, and 1 have 
walked over nearly every foot of the 
Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevadas. 
Yosemite, the incomparable, needs no de- 
scription from me. In fact, I think it de- 
fies description. However, I might correct 
a popular misapprehension. Nearly all of 
the tourists who visit that park go only to 
the valley. The Yosemite Valley comprises 
but a very, very small portion of the Yose- 
mite National Park. There are nearly 
1,000,000 acres in the park and the valley 
is only an area of one and one-half by six 
miles. It has in its northwestern portion 
two great canyons that are nearly as deep 
and as steep as the Yosemite. It has five 
enormous waterfalls, which, taken together, 
any one of them considered in its entirety 
— that is, from the top of the falls to the 
bottom, is at least 2.000 feet in height. It 
has also a grove of giant sequois, and I 
think it has more in variety and in diver- 
sity in mountainous scenery than any other 
area on the continent. 
North of the Yosemite is Crater Lake Na- 
tional Park, in Oregon, which was set aside 
for the preservation of the lake which now 
occupies the space once occupied by the 
crater. It is about six miles in diameter 
and the bluest water in the world. The 
blue water of Crater Lake pales the blue 
of the Bay of Naples to insignificance. 
This lake has been described by many tour- 
ists and writers as being the most exquisite 
bit of scenery to be found anywhere, 
North of that we have Mt. Rainier Na- 
tional Park. This park has been accused 
of being nothing but one mountain, but it 
is my opinion that that one mountain thor- 
oughly justifies any park equal in area to 
that park. As one stands in the valley 
looking up to this great mountain, it is 
quite easy to appreciate the religious rev- 
erence with which the Japanese hold Fu- 
jiyama. The mountain is covered with a 
system of glaciers, h'.ach year they add in 
number some two or three, so I cannot 
guarantee that there are ninety-two; how- 
ever, that is the latest report. The gla- 
ciers on the top of Mr. Ranier are con- 
siderably more impressive and more inter- 
esting than any of the glaciers I have seen 
outside of northern Alaska. 
Glacier National Park you have just 
taken a trip to. Yellowstone you have 
probably heard and read so much about 
that I need add nothing. I believe that its 
salient features are its natural phenomena. 
I do not, however, think that Yellowstone 
can compete with many of the other parks 
in landscape beauty. 
• 
There are two other small parks. Wind 
Cave and Sullys Hill. Wind Cave is an 
area set aside for the preservation of a 
cave several miles in extent, which is free 
and open to passage and in which there are 
many curiosities, such as stalactites and 
stalagmites. Sullys Hill is a small area in 
North Dakota which is only of interest for 
its charm of landscape. 
The problem which confronts us is a 
systematic and organized effort to admin- 
ister these national parks. Congress has 
exhibited a more than usual reluctance to 
appropriate any adequate sums of money 
with which to develop the parks. Con- 
gress, of course, has been subjected to a 
great deal of very severe criticism for that 
reason, and yet, after going carefully 
through all the records, I can find no rea- 
son why they should have appropriated 
money for organized effort, because I have 
been unable to find in the records any plan 
or any system which has ever been present- 
ed to Congress in a concrete form on which 
they could go to Congress and say: "We 
will build this link this year, and that next 
year; we will do this, and we will do that 
if you will give us so much money; and if 
you give us enough money to do this and 
to do that we will, in turn, be able to do 
this and that." There has been nothing- 
definite. There have been hoards of peo- 
ple who have gone up and said we should 
have a national park organization, with 
which everybody agrees, and have gone 
into generalizations as to its benefits. They 
have not as yet, to my knowledge, present- 
ed to Congress or to the committees any 
systematic plan in detail and worked out in 
such detail that they can see exactly where 
they are going to get off. 
I had just finished some similar work to 
this in the west when Secretary Lane 
asked me to draw some plans for the parks. 
In attempting to develop a plan for the 
physical development of the parks I ran up 
against the necessity for some concrete pol- 
icy, some concrete plan for its economic 
development, for any plan that is to be suc- 
cessful for any such area as our national 
parks must be functional. That plan must 
not only be a function of the topography 
of the country, but it must be a function 
of the economic needs of those parks. Re- 
fore I had gone far with my physical 
