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DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR 
 
 FRANKLIN K. LANE. SECRETARY 
 
 NATIONAL PARK SERVICE 
 
 STEPHEN T. MATHER. DIRECTOR 
 
 THE NATIONAL PARKS FOR ALL 
 THE PEOPLE 
 
 AND 
 
 I 
 
 PERHAPS OUR GREATEST 
 NATIONAL PARK 
 
 ( The Greater Sequoia ) 
 
 TWO ADDRESSES : : By ENOS MILLS 
 
 DELIVERED AT THE NATIONAL PARKS CONFERENCE 
 
 AT WASHINGTON, D. C, DURING THE FIRST WEEK 
 
 OF JANUARY, 1917 
 
 WASHINGTON 
 
 GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFHCE 
 
 1917 
 
h- l(o<D 
 
 B. of J. 
 
 21 'iO..^ 
 
THE NATIONAL PARKS FOR ALL THE PEOPLE. 
 
 By Enos Mills. 
 
 Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, the Yellowstone was the 
 first national park in the world. There is an inspiring story in con- 
 nection with the making of this park. Possibly you have heard it. 
 At any rate, in September, 1870, a number of prominent citizens from 
 Helena, Mont., were camping in the Yellowstone wonderland. They 
 had just spent about two weeks in looking over the scenes within. 
 They had gone there for the purpose of doing so, simply because 
 they believed that such a region as they had heard the Yellowstone 
 to be did not exist. 
 
 As a matter of fact, it might be well to say right here that the 
 Yellowstone wonderland contained so many peculiar wonders that 
 it was actually discovered and forgotten five times. The original 
 discoverer of the Yellowstone, John Coulter, one of the greatest 
 names in the outdoor world, when he told of the story of the discovery 
 of Yellowstone Park, he was laughed at and ridiculed so much that 
 he vanished and died, as he felt, in disgrace. Yet the Yellowstone 
 wonderland existed. These prominent Montana men had gone, and 
 they had found the Yellowstone, had found it greater than the 
 wildest, strangest stories that had ever been told concerning it. But 
 they were just ready to le?-:'e this wonderland. They had seen the 
 marvelous canyon and the white waterfall that went plunging over 
 into it. They had seen the petrified forests, the greatest geological 
 wonder of the world. They had seen those strange, poetic geysers. 
 They had seen all of those things. But this night they were camp- 
 ing near the geysers, and a number of the men were discussing as to 
 how they might obtain control of the Yellowstone wonderland that 
 they might exploit it and make a fortune out of it — a perfectly 
 natural thing for the American business man to think of. But there 
 was one man. a statesman, who sat by the camp fire for a time and 
 said nothing. Finally — and I hope you will tell your children of 
 this man — ^Cornelius Hodges rose to his feet. 
 
 " Boys," he said, " you are on the wrong track. The Government 
 owns this wonderland, and it ought forever to own it. This region 
 ought to become a national park for the benefit and welfare of all 
 manlrind." 
 
 His idea prevailed. He was so enthusiastic that a number of men 
 in the party caught his enthusiasm. A campaign was waged, and as 
 
 22323—17 3 
 
4 NATIONAL PAKKS. 
 
 a result, on the 1st day of March, 1872, the first national park in 
 the world came into existence. Heretofore the beautiful places, the 
 scenic lands, had been set aside for the favored few, but this is one 
 of the great things concerning a national park or for any park, it 
 is made and it is developed for the general welfare. 
 
 In considering any welfare work, a park must ever be considered. 
 But a park, especially a national park, is something utterly separate 
 from welfare work, because the national park belongs to the people 
 themselves. In other words, it is a park of the people, for the people, 
 and by the people. It won't be the same as erecting great libraries 
 and that sort of thing for the benefit of the people. These parks are 
 something that people are caring for for themselves. Why do we 
 want them? I believe you will agree with me that it has become a 
 public function to look after the recreation facilities of the public. 
 There is no other way in which they are likely to be looked after in 
 a correct manner. 
 
 Everyone needs to play, and to play out of doors. And outdoor 
 play never fails to help all that is good. If you want to further 
 people's health or their inefficiency, or expand their ideals, give them 
 a chance to meet their fellow people out under the open sky in some 
 magnificent scene. 
 
 If park life will promote health and prevent sickness, isn't it far 
 better to urge parks than it is to build so many hospitals? Isn't it 
 better to prevent disease than to cure it? 
 
 It is a known fact, as is shown by pioneer people and the children 
 of pioneers, that nature is a marvelous educational stimulus. If this 
 be true, and it certainly is emphatically true, why not give the chil- 
 dren of the country the opportunit}^ to enjoy park life, and especially 
 the national parks? In the national parks you will find some of 
 the greatest wonders of the world, wonders not elsewhere to be 
 found. Hence, these parks might be used educationally, and thus 
 we might cut down the list of those things that are hurtful to hu- 
 manity, and we might thereby reach the conclusion that after all one 
 of the greatest things which the public needs is outdoor recreation. 
 This being true, we certainly need parks, and then more parks. 
 
 As the Secretary of the Interior said to you this morning, " The 
 Nation is calling for volunteers to the Army and to the Navy and to 
 do other things." Yet he stated emphaticalh^ before you that vol- 
 unteers .to help further the work of creating and developing national 
 parks is one of the greatest needs of this Nation or any nation. It is 
 something, as I have just said, and I repeat, that reaches all people 
 and helps the interests. It is not a question of what they are going 
 to cost. We can not afford to do without parks. 
 
NATIONAL PARKS. 5 
 
 This afternoon is devoted, as I understand, chiefly to the idea of 
 developing parks. A number of Congressmen addressed the audience 
 here this morning, and a majority really appreciate the great possi- 
 bilities of parks. We ought not to think what they cost, but we 
 must think that we could not afford to do without them. It would 
 not do to try to make the public school pay; it would not do to try 
 to make the public playgrounds pay; well, now, neither would it do 
 to make the national parks or any other park pay. I think we 
 would blunder if we worked along that line. 
 
 I would like to sa}^ that civilization appears to have reached its 
 highest point at the present moment in the Interstate Park, near 
 New York City. There nearly $13,000,000 have been spent on parks, 
 and that park has been developed with the idea tliat people want 
 it and need it, and that it is theirs — and there, ladies and gentlemen, 
 there is not a single concession in the Palisades Interstate Park. No 
 individual or company can make a profit out of exploiting the neces- 
 sary pastimes of theij' fellowship in the Palisades Interstate Park. 
 
 And, Mr. Chairman, I believe you will realize that within a few 
 years the American people will insist that the people must not only 
 own their parks, but they must run them absolutely themselves. Just 
 at present that might be impossible, but we are moving undoubtedly 
 in the right direction. 
 
 Well now, I would like, and I believe everyone who is interested in 
 parks would like, to see them developed for all the people; that is 
 to say, the rich, the near rich, and the poor. In the Interstate Park 
 they make special efforts to find the way to have people transported 
 to the park who can not afford to go there themselves. Now, that is 
 doing real service. If you give people an opportunity to rest in a 
 park, they will save doctor's bills, and they will avoid, perhaps, 
 sickness and that sort of thing. Hence, this preventive measure 
 which you find, you might say, in all parks if they are used is one 
 of the best things that can happen to any people. Hence, let us 
 develop the i^arks. 
 
 Last winter in a brief address Mr. Robert B. Marshall, in speaking 
 of the development of parks, said he thought they should be devel- 
 oped for all the people; that is to say, a hotel in there where a 
 poor man could spend a day without paying any more than it actu- 
 ally costs — a low-priced and a popular-priced hotel; and if anyone 
 wanted to go to a national park to spend $100 a day, by all means 
 let us be ready for him. If we do not give him a chance to spend his 
 money in this country, he Avill spend it in another country; if we 
 do not give him a chance to spend his monej" in a park, he will 
 spend his money in the saloon. Let us remember that the park is 
 a competitor against all places of evil, and the majority of people 
 Vill go to good places if they are provided for them. 
 
6 NATIONAL PARKS. 
 
 And Mr. Marshall also said that the buildings should be attrac- 
 tive, and fit harmoniously into the surroundings; or, as he ex- 
 pressed it, they should not scare the scenery ! 
 
 Before going further I would like briefly to name some of the 
 parks that I find in wandering over the country. Not one indi- 
 vidual in a thousand can name more than four national parks. At 
 present there are really at least 16. I wish there were 16 more. At 
 the head of this list I would like to see the Grand Canyon. 
 
 But before naming these parks, just a little outdoor experience 
 which I once had: Once in my rambles in the mountains oA a rainy 
 day, I took a refuge in a prospector's tent. The storm was breaking, 
 and the prospector and I stood outside of the tent looking down 
 into the canyon, watching the clouds separate and drift away. 
 Lightning had occasionally struck around us. It was a day of thun- 
 der showers. And as we ^tood there, lightning struck a fir tree close 
 to our tent, and with a terrific report smashed the tree to pieces. 
 I was frightened, but to let my companion think that I was not 
 alarmed, I said to him, " Jerry, why doesn't lightning ever strike 
 twice in the same place? " And Jerry replied, ^' Gosh, it don't need 
 to ! " 
 
 Ladies and gentlemen, many nations have fallen, but never for 
 having too many parks or too much scenery — not a single one. So 
 let us have at least ample park room, so if nations must pass away, 
 it will not be because they have failed to have outdoor life. 
 
 A well-known author, some years ago, wrote a story about an 
 experience in London. He said he was the twenty-second one that 
 had bathed in the same water in the family trough of a poor rural 
 family, but that was not half as bad as breathing the same air every 
 day. Therefore, we need outdoor breathing places. These parks 
 afford outdoor breathing places. 
 
 As to parks, I briefly touched on the Yellowstone. Then there is 
 the Glacier National Park, one of the largest ones. Perhaps, the 
 greatest area of mountain lakes in the country, about 250 of them, 
 are in this park, and above them rise precipitous high mountains. I 
 will not dwell on its wonders. 
 
 Out near Seattle is Mount Eainier National Park, often called the 
 noblest mountain in the West, should be mentioned in this connec- 
 tion. Mount Eainier is a sleeping volcano. It has a heart of fire, 
 but on the outside of it 50 square miles of glacial ice on the top, 
 and on the lower slope a splendid forest, and between these what 
 happens? The most luxurious and grandest wild flower garden in 
 the world. 
 
 In Oregon they have the Crater Lake National Park, the crater 
 of an old volcano, about 6 miles in diameter, partly filled with water, 
 which, when seen from the top, appears marvelously strangely blue. 
 
NATIONAL PAKKS. 7 
 
 California leads in the number of national parks and it ought to 
 have others. Surely the greater Sequoia National Park ought to be 
 created. In California you have the Lassen Volcanic National Park, 
 the Gen. Grant, the Yoseniite, and the Sequoia. And the Sequoia 
 has the grandest and greatest forest in the world. In that forest are 
 trees that are 2,000 years old, many of them more than 20 feet in 
 diameter, trees old in story, many times the age of the oldest nation 
 on earth. The smaller parks I shall not trouble to name. In Colo- 
 rado there are a couple of parks well worth seeing. In the south- 
 western part of the State on Avhicli rises about 2,000 feet above the 
 surrounding country are the ruins of a prehistoric Indian civiliza- 
 tion. There were houses and temples upon the mesa and there were 
 wonderful cliff houses of more than 200 rooms, built of polished 
 stone. No one knows where those people came from, why they lived 
 there, or what had become of them. But there they evidently lived 
 through many centuries and surely they must have been civilized 
 people. The ruins they left behind, at any rate, are suggestive and 
 interesting and even inspiring. And in the Rocky Mountain Na- 
 tional Park, in Colorado, you will find the rocks at their best, dotted 
 here and there with lakes and draped with verdant forests. 
 
 There are other parks which I have already suggested which I 
 shall not even name to-day; but one of the newer ones, off in the 
 Hawaiian Islands, is another wonderland. So in our national parks 
 we have a great variety of wonderland. In some of them there are 
 scenes of the highest type which you can not find elsewhere in the 
 world. 
 
 I believe that the development of national parks is about the only 
 advertising that they need. So I think the keynote of the present 
 time should be to get our national parks ready to be seen. People 
 are going to them just as rapidly as people find that they can get 
 accommodations. At the Interstate Park in New York, in speaking 
 of the machiner}^ for handling the crowds, the gentleman who has 
 charge of it the other day said : " The people are coming to that park 
 more rapidly than we can get ready for them." So back of and 
 accompanying all national-park legislation we should bear in mind 
 that people will go to these places if we get them ready for the 
 travelers. 
 
 Mr. Charles Sheldon, who has had years of experience in the out- 
 doors, is urging forward the malring of a national park in Alaska of 
 Mount McKinley and part of the surrounding region. This is a 
 most worthy project, for the simple reason that one of the great 
 things that it will now accomplish will be the protection of the 
 game. Alaska is being settled ; a railroad is close to this park ; and 
 in two or three short years the greatest mountain sheep range in the 
 
8 NATIONAL PARKS. 
 
 world is likely to be depleted of its sheep unless this is made a park. 
 So I would like to commit that proposition. 
 
 The Secretary this morning; referred to the fact that volunteers 
 are needed in the ntjtional park work. T am not i^oing to commend 
 the work of anyone who has labored in the last few years, but I do 
 want to refer to the work of three men who have rendered national 
 parks splendid service. Mr. Will G. Steel, who now has the digni- 
 fied title of judge, spent seventeen years, ladies and gentlemen, in 
 working to procure for you and me and future generations the Crater 
 Lake National Park. Seventeen years; think of the man so devoted 
 to a cause that he will give the best' years of his life and all the 
 money that he could earn and borrow to create a national park. 
 But he did. And then there still lives in southern California Mr. 
 Stuart, and it was chiefly through the efforts of this one man that 
 we have to-day the Sequoia National Park. But in thinking over the 
 names of those who have been helpful to national parks, and honor- 
 ing as I do Mr. Cornelius Hedges, who really proposed the first 
 national park, a greater work than that done by all was done by 
 that magnificent man, John Muir. 
 
 I really feel that John Muir did more for the human race during 
 the century that just passed in good that will be reaped in the cen- 
 tury in which we are now living than any other individual. He 
 wrote the poem of the outdoors ; he pointed out its beauties ; and the 
 name of John Muir will be forever associated with our national 
 parks, with the great glaciers, with the big trees, with sunlight and 
 shadow, with the canyons, with the wildflower gardens, and with 
 every song that nature sings in the wild gardens of the world. To- 
 day I am most thankful, among all the heroes in American history, 
 or of the world, to John Muir. I hope and believe that after the 
 names of all the other heroes of nature are forgotten that John 
 Muir's name will live. He was a man who did not use or carry a 
 cane. 
 
 But now, ladies and gentlemen, there are still other places which 
 I feel should be parks, and for fear some people misunderstood me, 
 let me say right here that I am not a Government official, I am not 
 speaking for Government officials, I am not speaking for any organi- 
 zation. I simply represent my o^vn ideas, and in saying what is 
 about to follow, let me say that I simply believe that they represent 
 the general ideas of the people of the United States who have 
 thought concerning national parks, and are — yes, as one of the Con- 
 gressmen stated this morning, I believe it would be a wise thing for 
 the people of the United States at once to make all of the national 
 parks — to have scenery fit to go into a national park. All this would 
 include places that have already passed into private hands. These 
 
NATIONAL PARKS. 9 
 
 scenic places will never get any cheaper or more beautiful than they 
 are to-day. Hence, if they are to be parks, let us urge their creation 
 now. That would be a noble kind of preparedness. 
 
 The Government among its 700,000,000 acres of land has a number 
 of scenic areas that might well be made national parks. You know, 
 as well as I do, that much of the attractive quality of national parks 
 or of any scenery is perishable — birds, flowers, etc. Hence, such 
 regions should be at once created, not to-morrow, not next year, but 
 why not do it now ? The Government has to maintain its own scenic 
 areas whether they are parks or not; so why not make the subject 
 larger so it will appeal to all the people of the country? Show 
 them what an unrivaled inheritance they have by at once designating 
 the territory that is to become national parks. 
 
 There is an interesting Indian legend which substantially is this, 
 that in the closing acts of creation the woman was called into exist- 
 ence and told to do her part. She at once covered the earth with the 
 beautiful, with the flowers, the birds, and the trees. Now, that's 
 the kind of a woman to have at the creation of a world, and that's 
 the kind of women and men we need to-day, who will perpetuate 
 some of its primal beauty. It is being done in national parks ; and 
 so the Indians, in their realistic poetic way, saw years ago what 
 Victor Hugo so well stated; that is, that the beautiful is as useful 
 as the useful. If you will stop for a moment and recall this fact that 
 sometime ago the Declaration of Independence was written — now, 
 did you ever stop to think it was written by people who were inti- 
 mately in contact with nature ; that the Declaration of Independence, 
 after all, was but the spell of the wilderness ; and that hundreds upon 
 hundreds of years ago we met on the mountains of Switzerland at 
 the founding of Switzerland, and said amid magnificent scenes : " We 
 will stand each for all and all for each," and then still further 
 some time ago Australia was colonized by convicts who were rele- 
 gated there by people who were worse than convicts. But Mother 
 Nature took charge of them all; they were among primal scenes, 
 and in a short time those people have become real human beings, 
 and to-day the Australian men and women are second to none in 
 the world. Nature did her part there. 
 
 South America is still mostly a primeval wilderness. I look at 
 the great women she is beginning to produce, and she is only just 
 beginning. It all but emphasizes what I said in the beginning of 
 the address that we need parks for their mental stimulus, for their 
 inspiration. We need them for education ; we need them that we 
 may have greater men and women. 
 
 Scenery is the most profitable resource that we have. Switzer- 
 land has grown rich by exploiting its scenery. The year before the 
 
10 NATIONAL PARKS. 
 
 breaking out of the war in Europe 500.000 Americans were abroad. 
 They spent on an average of $1,000 a piece, which means they 
 took out of the country $50,000,000. They spent most of this for 
 scenery, and they spent it chiefly because the American scenery was 
 not ready for the traveler. So, if we want Americans to see America, 
 we simply have to think of the development of our parks and gQt 
 ready for the travelers. 
 
 So, for practical business reasons, we may say develop the parks 
 because the}' will pa}', and we can not get along without them. 
 Parks pay dividends in humanity. Within the magic scenes of 
 national and other parks lies the hope of the world. 
 
PERHAPS OUR GREATEST NATIONAL PARK. 
 
 By Enos Mills. 
 
 Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, it is a profound pleasure 
 to say a few words, and I shajl speak but briefly concerning the 
 Greater Sequoia Park, perhaps our greatest national park. The 
 speakers who have preceded me have given you some idea of it. 
 Those who follow me will give you still other ideas of it. So I 
 shall try to be brief. When it comes to a variety of scenes in one 
 locality, scenes which embrace, you might say, almost every class of 
 outdoor beauty, you will find them in the region proposed for the 
 Greater Sequoia National Park. 
 
 Three years ago, in addressing an audience concerning national 
 parks, I had been describing all the places that are national parks, 
 and some that I thought should be, some one in the audience asked me 
 this unusual question : " Mr. Mills,»if you were sentenced to serve the 
 rest of your life in one of the national parks, which one would you 
 select?" "Without the slightest hesitation I said, "The Sequoia 
 National Park." Of course, the supreme attractions in that park 
 are the big trees. Let us notice this park region at the present time. 
 The Sequoia National Park embraces about 265 square miles. The 
 proposed park would include an area of 1,600 square miles; the 
 region included would be one which you would classify as a scenic 
 one. You have been hearing a great deal about land classification. 
 Land has been classified as agricultural, forest, mineral, or high land, 
 and all that sort of thing; but from now on, ladies and gentlemen, it 
 is time to make a higher classification — that is, a scenic classification 
 of land — because from scenery we get the greatest benefits to man- 
 kind; and, after all. scenic land has higher value if used for the 
 benefit of men, women, and children than any other land known. 
 
 This region of 1,600 square miles lies at the southern end of the 
 Sierras, approximately 100 miles north of Los Angeles. All of you 
 have heard of the Death Valley. Ip a straight line about TO miles 
 from the Death Valley is Mount Whitney. It is an interesting fact 
 that the lowest point in the United States should be within 70 miles 
 of the highest point ; that the lowest point, the Death Valley, which 
 is not a very poetical looking place, did not look to me, when I was 
 there as a young man, as though it was a good place in which to grow 
 up with the country. At any rate, move just a short distance west- 
 ward from Death Valley and you get a very radical change, not so 
 
 11 
 
12 NATIONAL PARKS. 
 
 much of latitude as differences. It seemed to when I first visited 
 the Sequoia Park region that all of the great wonders of the world 
 had been piled in that locality. Incidentally, I may say that as a 
 boy, wandering in the wilds because I enjoyed it, one September 
 evening, I found myself in the Giant Forest in the Sequoia National 
 Park, This Avas just about at the time it was made a national park. 
 in 1890, and although I have stood in many w^onderful places, 
 although I have looked upon the l»igh central peaks in Alaska as 
 they rise above the white clouds, although I have stood by that bril- 
 liantly colored canyon in the Yellowstone and looked upon the 
 wonderful scenes in Mount Rainier, yet never, any place, have I stood 
 where I felt so a part of the Infinite as I felt when I stood in the 
 Giant Forest in the Sequoia National Park. 
 
 In this park, as I have already said, was a great range of attrac- 
 tions. First of all there is the high peak, Mount Whitney, 14,501 feet 
 high. Now there are in the United States more than 100 peaks that 
 are above 14,000 feet, but only one that rises above 14,500. There 
 you have a high peak. Then in this same region you haA e the Kings 
 and Kern Canyons, unrivaled in the world as canyons of their kind. 
 And then, best of all, are these big trees. 
 
 A tree is the best friend that a man has. The human race, all the 
 way from cave to college, has been benefited by the trees in the 
 United States, but in this park the trees attain their highest de- 
 velopments. A tree lives longer and grows larger than any other 
 living thing. In this park as it now stands, there are about 1,000,000 
 big trees. Some of them are of simply stupendous size. This park, 
 if extended, will of course include the General Grant National Park, 
 in which stands the largest tree in the world, the General Sherman, 
 a tree old certainly, known in story, probably 6,000 years of age. 
 I wonder if the boys and girls in the room at the present time have 
 ever stopped to think that the tree has to stand in one place all of 
 its life, although it may live hundreds and thousands of years. 
 A little tree may start to grow ; it grows a few inches, then it grows 
 9 few inches more ; then a few feet more. But in the spring and 
 summer and winter there it stands in one place. In its top the birds 
 nest and sing; around it animals live and play. As a matter of 
 fact a forest springs up around the tree. The tree watches the ever- 
 changing struggle for existence. Our animals fight and frolic, li^-e 
 and love. It is one of the strangest places in all the world. For 
 what a long, long time this splendid big tree, the General Sherman, 
 has witnessed through the centuries, and let us hope it will still 
 witness there for centuries yet to come. 
 
 There are the higher mountains, and streams and canyons, and 
 then there are many beautiful lakes in this region. The ice king, 
 Avho chiseled California on such a magnificent scale, did some of his 
 
NATIONAL PARKS. 13 
 
 best and grandest work. He chiseled the canyon, the peaks, the 
 lakes, and gave to this park region many of its flowing lines and 
 beauty. Within this proposed park you will find as interesting a 
 glacier record as you will find any place on earth. As the great John 
 Muir has pointed out, the Sequoia forests are growing, in those 
 places which were first laid bare by the ice at the close of the great 
 ice period. Here in manj^ waj^s you will find an ever-interesting 
 story of nature in this Sequoia Park. 
 
 In the streams you will find fish. Let us remember that in this 
 region the golden trout originated. Within this park there are the 
 mountain sheep, there are bear and deer. There are many kinds 
 of birds, and then, too, there is an exceeding wealth and variety of 
 wild flowers, and then over all, and ever with it is a climate equal 
 to any in the world 
 
 This region, with its varied beauty and size, is, I believe, the 
 greatest in all the world. Why it would be a disgrace to civilization, 
 ladies and gentlemen, if we let it be destroyed. We ought to save 
 it for our better selves and our greater Nation, and we shall save it. 
 
 There used to be a race of people in Africa called the Hottentots. 
 They have been forgotten. The Hottentots had a strange idea. 
 They considered that a woman was not beautiful until she had 
 both cheeks scarred and her front teeth knocked out ! I sometimes 
 think that pioneer people— not all of them — are so forgetful of the 
 beauty of their country that they consider it is not beautiful until 
 it is all scarred and its front teeth knocked out. Many years ago 
 that genius. Horace Greeley, went West, and he almost typified the 
 tj^pical pioneer. When he arrived by one of those big trees it did 
 not seem to appeal to his imagination at all. As a matter of fact, 
 too often people do not have imagination. But at any rate Horace 
 Greeley, instead of thinking of the wonders it might look upon and 
 had looked upon, simply walked up to it. jDulled out a pencil and 
 paper and figured how much lumber could be obtained from it. 
 
 Ladies and gentlemen, we have passed too many milestones to 
 figure how many feet of lumber may be obtained from one of these 
 big trees. AVe had just as well think of how many paving stones 
 could be obtained by tearing down the Congressional Library. 
 
 So let us hope and believe from now on we will appreciate the 
 value of scenery and its benefit to mankind, and that appreciating it 
 we shall preserve it. 
 
 Now, briefly to restate the points that I have tried to make : The 
 region enlarged would include scenery land; that would be its best 
 classification. Used scenically, it will give it a v'ery high economig 
 value, and still higher values which you can not measure by gold. 
 Within this region are extensive areas of such lands. They will 
 be lost to the public, I fear, if the region is not made a national park, 
 
14 NATIONAL PARKS. 
 
 because California may sell or lease this land to private individuals 
 and thus cut the park all up, if the making of the national park is 
 delayed. 
 
 So this in turn urges us forward in making this region a park. 
 Is there any reasonable objection to making this a national park? 
 Absolutely none that I know of. So if you are in favor of it I hope 
 you will tell your children about the Sequoia National Park region. 
 I hope you will tell your neighbors; I hope you will tell everyone 
 that one of the great duties of everyone, and it ought to be a pleas- 
 ure, is to help bring about the creation of the greater Sequoia Na- 
 tional Park, or, to use the words of John Muir, "national parks 
 should give glory to the country, and our national parks should 
 make our country the glory of the w^orld." I thank you. 
 
 108 f 
 

 
 
 
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