The Rocky Mountain Wonderland

Once five callers came, each stringing in behind another. Just as the fifth came in the door, there was a dispute among the others and one started to retreat. Evidently he did not want to go, for he retreated away from the open door. As number two started in pursuit of him, number three gave chase to number two. After them started number four, and the fifth one after all the others. The first one, being closely pressed and not wanting to leave the room, ran round the centre table, and in an instant all five were racing single file round the table. After the first round they became excited and each one went his best. The circle they were following was not large, and the floor was smooth. Presently the rear legs of one skidded comically, then the fore feet of another; and now and then one lost his footing and rolled entirely over, then arose, looking surprised and foolish, but with a leap entered the circle and was again at full speed.

I enjoy having them about, and spend many a happy hour watching them or playing with them. They often make a picnic-ground of my porch, and now and then one lies down to rest upon one of the log seats, where, outstretched, with head up and one fore paw extended leisurely upon the log, he looks like a young lion.

Often they climb up and scamper over the roof of my cabin; but most of their time on the roof is spent in dressing their fur or enjoying long, warm sun baths. Frequently they mount the roof early in the morning, even before sunrise. I am sometimes awakened at early dawn by a chipmunk mob that is having a lively time upon the roof.

In many things they are persistent. Once I closed the hole that one had made in a place where I did not want it. I filled the hole full of earth. Inside of two hours it was reopened. Then I pounded it full of gravel, but this was dug out. I drove a stake into the hole. A new hole was promptly made alongside the stake. I poured this full of water. Presently out came a wet and angry chipmunk. This daily drowning out by water was continued for more than a week before the chipmunk gave it up and opened a hole about thirty feet distant.

For eight years I kept track of a chipmunk by my cabin. She lived in a long, crooked underground hole, or tunnel, which must have had a total length of nearly one hundred feet. It extended in a semicircle and could be entered at three or four places through holes that opened upon the surface. Each of these entrance holes was partly concealed in a clump of grass by a cluster of plants or a shrub.

I have many times examined the underground works of the chipmunk. Some of these examinations were made by digging, and others I traced as they were exposed in the making of large irrigation ditches. The earth which is dug from these tunnels is ejected from one or more holes, which are closed when the tunnel is completed. Around the entrance holes there is nothing to indicate or to publish their presence; and often they are well concealed.

These tunnels are from forty to one hundred feet long, run from two to four feet beneath the surface, and have two or more entrances. Here and there is a niche or pocket in the side of the tunnel. These niches are from a few inches to a foot in diameter and in height. In one or more of these the chipmunk sleeps, and in others is stored his winter food-supply. He uses one of these pockets for a time as a sleeping-place, then changes to another. This change may enable the chipmunk to hold parasites in check. The fact that he has a number of sleeping-places and also that in summer he frequently changes his bedding, indicates that these efforts in sanitation are essential for avoiding parasites and disease.

Commonly the bedding is grass, straw, and leaves; but in my yard the chipmunks eagerly seize upon a piece of paper or a handkerchief. I am compelled to keep my eyes open whenever they come into the cabin, for they do not hesitate to seize upon unanswered letters or incomplete manuscripts. In carrying off paper the chipmunk commonly tears off a huge piece, crumples it into a wad, and, with this sticking from his mouth, hurries away to his bedchamber. It is not uncommon to see half a dozen at once in the yard, each going his own way with his clean bed-linen.

Chipmunks take frequent dust and sun baths, but I have never seen one bathe in water. They appear, however, to drink water freely. One will sip water several times daily.

In the mountains near me the chipmunks spend from four to seven months of each year underground. I am at an altitude of nine thousand feet. Although during the winter they indulge in long periods of what may be called hibernating sleep, they are awake a part of the time and commonly lay in abundant stores for winter. In the underground granaries of one I once found about a peck and a half of weed seeds. Even during the summer the chipmunk occasionally does not come forth for a day or two. On some of these occasions I have found that they were in a heavy sleep in their beds.

These in my yard are fed so freely upon peanuts that they have come to depend upon them for winter supplies. They prefer raw to roasted peanuts. The chipmunk near my cabin sometimes becomes a little particular and will occasionally reject peanuts that are handed to her with the shell on. Commonly, however, she grabs the nut with both fore paws, then, standing erect, rapidly bites away the shell until the nut is reached. This she usually forces into her cheek pocket with both hands. Her cheek pouches hold from twelve to twenty of these. As soon as these are filled she hurries away to deposit her stores in her underground granary. One day she managed to store twenty-two, and her cheek pouches stood out abnormally! With this "swelled" and uncouth head she hurried away to deposit the nuts in her storehouse, but when she reached the hole her cheeks were so distended that she was unable to enter. After trying again and again she began to enlarge the hole. This she presently gave up. Then she rejected about one third of the nuts, entered, and stored the remainder. In a few minutes she was back for more. One day she made eleven round trips in fifty-seven minutes. Early one autumn morning a coyote, in attempting to reach her, dug into her granary and scattered the nuts about. After sending him off I gathered up three quarts of shelled nuts and left about as many more scattered through the earth! Over these the jays and magpies squabbled all day.

One day a lady who was unsympathetic with chipmunks was startled by one of the youngsters, who scrambled up her clothes and perched upon her head. Greatly excited, she gave wild screams. The young chipmunk was in turn frightened, and fled in haste. He took consolation with his mother several yards away. She, standing erect, received him literally with open arms. He stood erect with one arm upon her shoulder, while she held one arm around him. They thus stood for some seconds, he screeching a frightened cry, while she, with a subdued muttering, endeavored to quiet him.

Once, my old chipmunk, seeing me across the yard, came bounding to me. Forgetting, in her haste, to be vigilant, she ran into a family of weasels, two old and five young ones, who were crossing the yard. Instantly, and with lion-like ferocity, the largest weasel leaped and seized the chipmunk by the throat. With a fiendish jerk of his head the weasel landed the chipmunk across his shoulders and, still holding it by the throat, he forced his way, half swimming, half floundering, through a swift brook which crossed the yard. His entire family followed him. Most savagely did he resent my interference when I compelled him to drop the dead chipmunk.

The wise coyote has a peculiar habit each autumn of feasting upon chipmunks. Commonly the chipmunks retire for the winter before the earth is frozen, or before it is frozen deeply. Apparently they at once sink into a hibernating sleep. Each autumn, shortly after the chipmunks retire, the coyotes raid all localities in my neighborhood in which digging is good. Scores of chipmunks are dug out and devoured. Within a quarter of a mile of my cabin one October night forty-two holes were dug. Another night fifty-four holes were dug near by. In a number of these a few scattered drops of blood showed that the coyote had made a capture. In one week within a few miles of my cabin I found several hundred freshly dug holes. Many holes were dug directly down to the granary where the stores were scattered about; and others descended upon the pocket in which the chipmunk was asleep. In a few places the digging followed along the tunnel for several yards, and in others the coyote dug down into the earth and then tunneled along the chipmunk's tunnel for several feet before reaching the little sleeper.

So far as I know, each old chipmunk lives by itself. It is, I think, rare for one to enter the underground works of another. Each appears to have a small local range upon the surface, but this range is occasionally invaded by a neighboring chipmunk. This invasion is always resented, and often the invader is angrily ejected by the local claimant of the territory.

In my locality the young are born during the first week in June. The five years that I kept track of the mother chipmunk near my cabin, she usually brought the youngsters out into the sunlight about the middle of June. Three of these years there were five youngsters. One year the number was four, and another year it was six. About the middle of July the young were left to fight the battle of life alone. They were left in possession of the underground house in which they were born, and the mother went to another part of the yard, renovated another underground home, and here laid up supplies for the winter.

A few days before the mother leaves the youngsters, they run about and find most of their food. One year, a day or two before the one by my cabin bade her children good-bye, she brought them—or, at any rate, the children came with her—to the place where we often distributed peanuts. The youngsters, much lighter in color, and less distinctly marked than the mother, as well as much smaller, were amusingly shy, and they made comic shows in trying to eat peanuts. They could not break through the shell. If offered a shelled nut, they were as likely to bite the end of your finger as the nut. They had not learned which was which. With their baby teeth they could eat but little of the nut, but they had the storing instinct and after a struggle managed to thrust one or two of the nuts into their cheek pockets.

The youngsters, on being left to shift for themselves, linger about their old home for a week or longer, then scatter, each apparently going off to make an underground home for himself. The house may be entirely new or it may be an old one renovated.

I do not know just when the mother returns to her old home. Possibly the new home is closely connected with the one she has temporarily left, and it may be that during the autumn or the early spring she digs a short tunnel which unites them. The manner of this aside, I can say that each summer the mother that I watched, on retiring from the youngsters, carried supplies into a hole which she had not used before, and the following spring the youngsters came forth from the same hole, and presumably from the same quarters, that the children of preceding years had used.

Chipmunks feed upon a variety of plants. The leaves, seeds, and roots are eaten. During bloom time they feast upon wild flowers. Often they make a dainty meal off the blossoms of the fringed blue gentian, the mariposa lily, and the harebell. Commonly, in gathering flowers, the chipmunk stands erect on hind feet, reaches up with one or both hands, bends down the stalk, leisurely eats the blossoms, and then pulls down another. The big chipmunk, however, has some gross food habits. I have seen him eating mice, and he often catches grasshoppers and flies. It is possible that he may rob birds' nests, but this is not common and I have never seen him do so. However, the bluebirds, robins, and red-winged blackbirds near me resent his close approach. A chipmunk which has unwittingly climbed into a tree or traveled into a territory close to the nest of one of these birds receives a beating from the wings of the birds and many stabs from their bills before he can retreat to a peaceful zone. Many times I have seen birds battering him, sometimes repeatedly knocking him heels over head, while he, frightened and chattering, was doing his best to escape.

There are five species of chipmunks in Colorado. Two of these are near me,—the big chipmunk and the busy chipmunk. The latter is much smaller, shyer, and more lively than the former and spends a part of its time in the treetops; while the big, although it sometimes climbs, commonly keeps close to the earth.

Among their numerous enemies are coyotes, wild-cats, mountain lions, bears, hawks, and owls. They appear to live from six to twelve years. The one near my place I watched for eight years. She probably was one or more years of age when I first saw her.

Almost every day in summer a number of children come, some of them for miles, to watch and to feed my chipmunks. The children enjoy this as keenly as I have ever seen them enjoy anything. Surely the kindly sympathies which are thus aroused in the children, and the delightful lesson in natural history which they get, will give a helpful educational stimulus, and may be the beginning of a sympathetic interest in every living thing.

A Peak by the Plains

A Peak by the Plains

Pike's Peak rises boldly from the plains, going steeply up into the sky a vertical mile and a half. There is no middle distance or foreground; no terraced or inclined approach. A spectator may thus stand close to its foot, at an altitude of six thousand feet, and have a commanding view of the eight thousand feet of slopes and terraces which culminate in the summit, 14,110 feet above the sea. Its steep, abrupt ascent makes it imposing and impressive. It fronts the wide plains a vast broken tower. The typical high peak stands with other high peaks in the summit of a mountain-range. Miles of lesser mountains lie between its summit and the lowlands. Foothills rise from the edge of the lowland; above these, broken benches, terrace beyond terrace, each rising higher until the summit rises supreme. With Pike's Peak this typical arrangement is reversed.

Pike's Peak probably is the most intimately known high mountain. It has given mountain-top pleasure to more people than any other fourteen thousand foot summit of the earth. One million persons have walked upon its summit, and probably two million others have climbed well up its slopes. Only a few thousand climbers have reached the top of Mont Blanc. Pike's is a peak for the multitude.

Climbing it is comparatively easy. It stands in a mild, arid climate, and has scanty snowfall; there are but few precipitous walls, no dangerous ice-fields; and up most of its slopes any one may ramble. One may go up on foot, on horseback, in a carriage, or by railroad, or even by automobile. It is not only easy of ascent, but also easy of access. It is on the edge of the plains, and a number of railroads cross its very foot.

This peak affords a unique view,—wide plains to the east, high peaks to the west. Sixty thousand or more square miles are visible from the summit. It towers far above the plains, whose streams, hills, and level spaces stretch away a vast flat picture. To the west it commands a wondrous array of mountain topography,—a two-hundred-mile front of shattered, snow-drifted peaks.

The peak is an enormous broken pyramid, dotted with high-perched lakes, cut with plunging streams, broken by cañons, skirted with torn forests, old and young, and in addition is beautiful with bushes, meadows, and wild flowers. The major part of the peak's primeval forest robe was destroyed by fire a half-century ago. Many ragged, crag-torn areas of the old forest, of a square mile or less, are connected with young growths from thirty to sixty years old. Much of this new growth is aspen. From the tree-studies which I have made, I learn that two forest fires caused most of the destruction. The annual rings in the young growth, together with the rings in the fire-scarred trees which did not perish, indicate that the older and more extensive of these fires wrapped most of the peak in flames and all of it in smoke during the autumn of 1850. The other fire was in 1880.

Pike's Peak exhibits a number of scenic attractions and is bordered by other excellent ones. Near are the Royal Gorge, Cripple Creek, and the fossil-beds at Florissant. The Garden of the Gods, Manitou Mineral Springs, Glen Eyrie, Crystal Park, the Cave of the Winds, and Williams, Ruxton, and South Cheyenne Cañons are some of its attractions.

The fossil-beds at Florissant are one of the most famous of fossil-deposits. Here was an old Tertiary lake-basin. In the deposit which filled it—a deposit of fine volcanic sand or ash, sediment, and other débris—is a wonderful array of fossilized plants and insects of a past age. All are strangely preserved for us in stone. A part of the lake appears to have been filled by a volcanic catastrophe which overwhelmed animals, plants, and insects. Whole and in fragments, they are lying where they fell. Here have been found upwards of one hundred recognizable plants, eleven vertebrate animals, and a few hundred insects. Among the fossil trees are the narrow-leaf cottonwood, the ginkgo, the magnolia, the incense cedar, and the giant redwood. Water erosion through the ages has cut deeply into these fossil-beds and worn and washed away their treasures. This deposit has been but little studied. But what it has yielded, together with the magnitude of the unexamined remainder, makes one eager concerning the extent and the nature of the treasures which still lie buried in it.

Helen Hunt, whose books helped awaken the American people to the injustice done the Indian and to an appreciation of the scenic grandeur of the West, lived for many years at the foot of this peak. Much of her writing was done from commanding points on the peak. She was temporarily buried on Cheyenne Mountain, and on her former grave has accumulated a large cairn of stones, contributed singly by appreciative pilgrims.

South Cheyenne Cañon, like Yosemite, gives a large, clear, and pleasing picture to the mind. This is due to the individuality and the artistic grouping of the beauty and grandeur of the cañon. The cañon is so narrow, and its high walls so precipitous, that it could justly be called an enormous cleft. At one point the walls are only forty feet apart; between these a road and a swift, clear stream are crowded. Inside the entrance stand the two "Pillars of Hercules." These magnificent rock domes rise nearly one thousand feet, and their steep, tree-dotted walls are peculiarly pleasing and impressive. Prospect Dome is another striking rock point in this cañon. The cañon ends in a colossal cirque, or amphitheatre, about two hundred and fifty feet deep. Down one side of this a stream makes its seven white zigzag jumps.

Pike's Peak wins impressiveness by standing by itself. Cheyenne Cañon is more imposing by being alone,—away from other cañons. This cañon opens upon the plains. It is a cañon that would win attention anywhere, but its situation is a most favorable one. Low altitude and a warm climate welcome trees, grass, bushes, and many kinds of plants and flowers. These cling to every break, spot, ledge, terrace, and niche, and thereby touch and decorate the cañon's grim and towering walls with lovely beauty. Walls, water, and verdure—water in pools and falls, rocks in cliffs, terraces, and domes, grass and flowers on slopes and terraces, trees and groves,—a magnificence of rocks, a richness of verdure, and the charm of running water—all unite in a picturesque association which makes a glorious and pleasing sunken garden.

It is probable that Pike's Peak was discovered by Spanish explorers either in 1598 or in 1601. These are the dates of separate exploring expeditions which entered Colorado from the south and marched up the plains in near view of this peak. The discovery is usually accredited, however, to Lieutenant Pike, who caught sight of it on the 15th day of November, 1806. Pike's journal of this date says: "At two o'clock in the afternoon I thought I could distinguish a mountain to our right which appeared like a small blue cloud; viewed it with a spyglass and was still more confirmed in my conjecture.... In half an hour it appeared in full view before us. When our small party arrived on a hill, they with one accord gave three cheers to the Mexican Mountains." It appears not to have been called Pike's Peak until about twenty-five years after Pike first saw it. He spoke of it as the Mexican Mountains and as Great Peak. The first ascent by white men was made July 14, 1819, by members of Lieutenant Long's exploring expedition. For a number of years this peak was called James Peak, in honor of the naturalist in the Long exploring party.

Pike's Peak has what Montesquieu calls the "most powerful of all empires, the empire of climate." It stands most of the time in the sun. All over it the miner and the prospector have searched for gold, mutilating it here and there with holes. Fires have scarred the sides, and pasturing has robbed it of flowers and verdure. The reputed discovery of gold at its base started a flood of gold-seekers west with "Pike's Peak or bust" enthusiasm. But the climate and scenery of this peak attract people who come for pleasure and to seek for health. It has thus brought millions of dollars into Colorado, and it will probably continue to attract people who seek pleasure and refreshment and who receive in exchange higher values than they spend. Pike's Peak is a rich asset.

The summit of Pike's Peak is an excellent place to study the effect of altitude upon lowland visitors. Individual observations and the special investigations of scientific men show that altitude has been a large, unconscious source of nature-faking. During the summer of 1911 a number of English and American scientists, the "Anglo-American Expedition," spent five weeks on Pike's Peak, making special studies of the effects of altitude. Their investigations explode the theory that altitude is a strain upon the heart, or injurious to the system. These men concluded that the heart is subjected to no greater strain in high altitudes than at sea-level, except under the strain of physical exertion. The blood is richer in high altitudes. For every hundred red corpuscles found at sea-level there are in Colorado Springs, at six thousand feet, one hundred and ten; and on the summit of Pike's Peak, from one hundred and forty to one hundred and fifty-four.

"The danger to people suffering from heart trouble coming into high altitudes is grossly exaggerated," says Dr. Edward C. Schneider, one of the Anglo-American expedition. "The rate of circulation is not materially increased. The blood-pressure on the Peak is not increased; it is even lowered. The heart—if a person exercises—may beat a little faster but it does not pump any more blood. The pulse is a little more rapid. If a man suffering from heart trouble rode up the peak on a train, remained in his seat, and did not exert himself physically, his heart would not beat a bit faster at the summit than when he left Manitou. But if he walked about on the summit there would be a change, for the exercise would make the heart work harder." But exercise is not injurious; it is beneficial.

As I found in guiding on Long's Peak, the rarefied air of the heights was often stimulating, especially to the tongue. Rarefied air is likened by the scientists to "laughing-gas" and furnishes a plausible explanation of the queerness which characterizes the action of many people on mountain-summits. "We saw many visitors at the summit," said Dr. Schneider in explaining this phase, "who appeared to be intoxicated. But there was no smell of liquor on their breath. They were intoxicated with rarefied atmosphere, not with alcohol. The peculiar effects of laughing-gas and carbon-monoxide gas on people are due to the lack of oxygen in the gas; and the same applies to the air at high altitudes."

The summit of Pike's Peak is roomy and comparatively level, and is composed of broken granite, many of the pieces being of large size. A stone house stands upon the top. In this for many years was a government weather-observer. A weather station has just been re-established on its summit. This will be one of a line of high weather stations extending across the continent. This unique station should contribute continuously to the weather news and steadily add to the sum of climatic knowledge.

This one peak has on its high and broken slopes a majority of the earth's climatic zones, and a numerous array of the earth's countless kinds of plant and animal life. One may in two hours go from base to summit and pass through as many life zones as though he had traveled northward into the Arctic Circle. Going from base to summit, one would start in the Upper Sonoran Zone, pass through the Transition, Canadian, and Hudsonian Zones, and enter the Arctic-Alpine Zone. The peak has a number of places which exhibit the complexity of climatic zones. In a deep cañon near Minnehaha Falls, two zones may be seen side by side on opposite sides of a deep, narrow cañon. The north side of the cañon, exposed to the sun, has such plants as are found in the Transition Zone, while the cool south side has an Hudsonian flora. Here is almost an actual contact of two zones that outside the mountains are separated by approximately two thousand miles.

The varied climate of this peak makes a large appeal to bird-life. Upward of one hundred species are found here. People from every part of the Union are here often startled by the presence of birds which they thought were far away at home. At the base the melodious meadowlark sings; along the streams on the middle slopes lives the contented water-ouzel. Upon the heights are the ptarmigan and the rosy finch. Often the golden eagle casts his shadow upon all these scenes. The robin is here, and also the bluebird, bluer, too, than you have ever seen him. The Western evening grosbeak, a bird with attractive plumage and pleasing manners, often winters here. The brilliant lazuli bunting, the Bullock oriole, the red-shafted flicker, and the dear and dainty goldfinch are present in summer, along with mockingbirds, wrens, tanagers, thrushes, and scores of other visitants.

A few migratory species winter about the foot of the peak. In summer they fly to the upper slopes and nest and raise their young in the miniature arctic prairies of the heights. With the coming of autumn all descend by easy stages to the foot. The full distance of this vertical migration could be covered in an hour's flight. Many of the north-and-south-migrating birds travel a thousand times as far as these birds of vertical migration.

The big game which formerly ranged this peak included buffalo, deer, elk, mountain sheep, the grizzly, the black bear, the mountain lion, the fox, the coyote, and the wolf. Along the descending streams, through one vertical mile of altitude, were beaver colonies, terrace upon terrace. No one knows how many varieties of wild flowers each year bloom in all the Peak's various ragged zones, but there are probably no fewer than two thousand. Along with these are a number of species of trees. Covering the lower part of the mountain are growths of cottonwood, Douglas spruce, yellow pine, white fir, silver spruce, and the Rocky Mountain birch. Among the flowering plants are the columbine, shooting-star, monkshood, yucca or Spanish bayonet, and iris. Ascending, one finds the wintergreen, a number of varieties of polemonium, the paintbrush, the Northern gentian, the Western yarrow, and the mertensia. At timber-line, at the altitude of about eleven thousand five hundred feet, are Engelmann spruce, arctic willow, mountain birch, foxtail pine, and aspen. At timber-line, too, are the columbine, the paintbrush, and a number of species of phlox. There are no trees in the zone which drapes the uppermost two thousand feet of the summit, but in this are bright flowers,—cushion pinks, the spring beauty, the alpine gentian, the mountain buckwheat, the white and yellow mountain avens, the arctic harebell, the marsh-marigold, the stonecrop, and the forget-me-not. One summer I found a few flowers on the summit.

Isolation probably rendered the summit of this peak less favorable for snow-accumulation during the Ice Age than the summits of unisolated peaks of equal altitude. During the last ice epoch, however, it carried glaciers, and some of these extended down the slopes three miles or farther. These degraded the upper slopes, moved this excavated material toward the bottom, and spread it in a number of places. There are five distinct cuplike hollows or depressions in this peak that were gouged by glaciers. The one lying between Cameron's Cone and the summit is known as the "Crater." A part of this is readily seen from Colorado Springs. Far up the slopes are Lake Moraine and Seven Lakes, all of glacial origin.

The mountain mass which culminates in Pike's Peak probably originated as a vast uplift. Internal forces appear to have severed this mass from its surroundings and slowly upraised it seven thousand or more feet. The slow uprising probably ended thousands of years ago. Since that time, disintegration, frost, air, and stream erosion have combined to sculpture this great peak. Pike's Peak might well be made a National Park.

The Conservation of Scenery

The Conservation of
Scenery

The comparative merits of the Alps and the Rocky Mountains for recreation purposes are frequently discussed. Roosevelt and others have spoken of the Colorado Rockies as "The Nation's Playground." This Colorado region really is one vast natural park. The area of it is three times that of the Alps. The scenery of these Colorado Rocky Mountains, though unlike that of the Alps, is equally attractive and more varied. Being almost free from snow, the entire region is easily enjoyed; a novice may scale the peaks without the ice and snow that hamper and endanger even the expert climbers in the icy Alps. The Alps wear a perpetual ice-cap down to nine thousand feet. The inhabited zone in Colorado is seven thousand feet higher than that zone in Switzerland. At ten thousand feet and even higher, in Colorado, one finds railroads, wagon-roads, and hotels. In Switzerland there are but few hotels above five thousand feet, and most people live below the three-thousand-foot mark. Timber-line in Colorado is five thousand feet farther up the heights than in Switzerland. The Centennial State offers a more numerous and attractive array of wild flowers, birds, animals, and mineral springs than the land of William Tell. The Rocky Mountain sheep is as interesting and audacious as the chamois; the fair phlox dares greater heights than the famed edelweiss. The climate of the Rocky Mountains is more cheerful than that of the Alps; there are more sunny days, and while the skies are as blue as in Switzerland, the air is drier and more energizing.

But the attractions in the Alps are being preserved, while the Rocky Mountains are being stripped of their scenery. Yet in the Rocky Mountains there are many areas rich in perishable attractions which might well be reserved as parks so that their natural beauties could be kept unmarred. It is to be hoped that the growing interest in American scenery will bring this about before these wild mountain gardens are shorn of their loveliness.[1]

The United States is behind most nations in making profitable use of scenery. Alpine scenery annually produces upward of ten thousand dollars to the square mile, while the Rocky Mountains are being despoiled by cattle and sawmills for a few dollars a square mile. Though Switzerland has already accomplished much along scenic conservation lines, it is working for still better results. It is constructing modern hotels throughout the Alps and is exploiting the winter as well as the summer use of these. The Canadian Government has done and is doing extensive development work in its national parks. It is preparing a welcome for multitudes of travelers; travelers are responding in numbers.

The unfortunate fact is that our scenery has never had a standing. To date, it has been an outcast. Often lauded as akin to the fine arts, or something sacred, commonly it is destroyed or put to base uses. Parks should no longer be used as pigpens and pastures. These base uses prevent the parks from paying dividends in humanity.

There is in this country a splendid array of Nature's masterpieces to lure and reward the traveler. In mountain-peaks there are Grand Teton, Long's Peak, Mt. Whitney, and Mt. Rainier; in cañons, the vast Grand Cañon and the brilliantly colored Yellowstone; in trees, the unrivaled sequoias and many matchless primeval forests; in rivers, few on earth are enriched with scenes equal to those between which rolls the Columbia; in petrified forests, those in Arizona and the Yellowstone are unsurpassed; in natural bridges, those in Utah easily arch above the other great ones of the earth; in desert attractions, Death Valley offers a rare display of colors, strangeness, silences, and mirages; in waterfalls, we have Niagara, Yellowstone, and Yosemite; in glaciers, there are those of the Glacier and Mount Rainier National Parks and of Alaska; in medicinal springs, there is an array of flowing, life-extending fountains; in wild flowers, the mountain wild flowers in the West are lovely with the loveliest anywhere; in wild animals of interest and influence, we have the grizzly bear, the beaver, and the mountain sheep; in bird music, that which is sung by the thrushes, the cañon wren, and the solitaire silences with melodious sweetness the other best bird-songs of the earth. In these varied attractions of our many natural parks we have ample playgrounds for all the world and the opportunity for a travel industry many times as productive as our gold and silver mines—and more lasting, too, than they. When these scenes are ready for the traveler we shall not need to nag Americans to see America first; and Europeans, too, might start a continuous procession to these wonderlands.

In the nature of things, the United States should have a travel industry of vast economic importance. The people of the United States are great travelers, and we have numerous and extensive scenic areas of unexcelled attractiveness, together with many of the world's greatest natural wonders and wonderlands which every one wants to see. All these scenes, too, repose in a climate that is hospitable and refreshing. They should attract travelers from abroad as well as our own people. The traveler brings ideas as well as gold. He comes with the ideals of other lands and helps promote international friendship. Then, too, he is an excellent counter-irritant to prevent that self-satisfied attitude, that deadening provincialism, which always seems to afflict successful people. Develop our parks by making them ready for the traveler, and they will become continuously productive, both commercially and spiritually.

Our established scenic reservations, or those which may be hereafter set aside, are destined to become the basis of our large scenic industry. The present reservations embrace fourteen National Parks and twenty-eight National Monuments. Each Park and Monument was reserved because of its scenic wonders, to be a recreation place for the people. The name Monument might well be changed to Park. The Monuments were set aside by executive orders of the President; the Parks were created by acts of Congress. Each Park or Monument is a wonderland in itself. All these together contain some of the strangest, sublimest scenes on the globe. Each reservation is different from every other, and in all of them a traveler could spend a lifetime without exhausting their wonders.

I suppose that in order to lead Americans to see America first, or to see it at all, and also to win travel from Europe, it is absolutely necessary to get America ready for the traveler. Only a small part of American scenery is ready for the traveler. The traveler's ultimatum contains four main propositions. These are grand scenery, excellent climate, good entertainment, and swift, comfortable transportation. When all of these demands are supplied with a generous horn of plenty, then, but not until then, will multitudes travel in America.

Parks now have a large and important place in the general welfare, and the nation that neglects its parks will suffer a general decline. The people of the United States greatly need more parks, and these are needed at once. I do not know of any city that has park room extensive enough to refresh its own inhabitants. Is there a State in the Union that has developed park areas that are large enough for the people of the State? With present development, our National Parks cannot entertain one fifth of the number of Americans who annually go abroad. As a matter of fact, the entertainment facilities in our National Parks are already doing a capacity business. How, then, can our Parks be seen by additional travelers?

For a travel industry, the present needs in America are for cities at once to acquire and develop into parks all near-by scenery; for each State to develop its best scenic places as State Parks; and for the nation to make a number of new National Parks and at once make these scenic reservations ready for the traveler. Systems of good roads and trails are necessary. In addition to these, the Parks, Monuments, and Reservations need the whole and special attention of a department of their own.

A park requires eternal vigilance. The better half of our scenic attractions are the perishable ones. The forests and the flowers, the birds and the animals, the luxuriant growths in the primeval wild gardens, are the poetry, the inspiration, of outdoors. Without these, how dead and desolate the mountain, the meadow, and the lake! If a park is to be kept permanently productive, its alluring features must be maintained. If the beaver ceases to build his picturesque home, if the deer vanishes, if the mountain sheep no longer poses on the crags, if the columbine no longer opens its "bannered" bosom to the sun, if the solitaire no longer sings,—without these poetic and primeval charms, marred nature will not attract nor refresh. People often feel the call of the wild, and they want the wild world beautiful. They need the temples of the gods, the forest primeval, and the pure and flower-fringed brooks.

It would be well to save at once in parks and reservations the better of all remaining unspoiled scenic sections of the country,—the lake-shores and the seashore, the stream-side, the forests primeval, and the Rocky Mountains. There is a great and ragged scenic border of varying width that extends entirely around the United States. This includes the Great Lake region and the splendid Olympic Mountains at the northwest corner of the country. Inside of this border are other localities richly dowered with natural beauty and dowered, too, with hospitable climate. The Rocky Mountain region is one splendid recreation-ground. There are many beauty-spots in the Ozark Mountains of Missouri and Arkansas, and there are scenic regions in New York, Pennsylvania, and western North Carolina, and the State of Idaho embraces many scenic empires. These contain scores of park areas that will early be needed.

Every park is a place of refuge, a place wherein wild life thrives and multiplies. As hunters are perpetually excluded from all parks, these places will thus become sanctuaries for our vanishing wild life. All wild life quickly loses its fear and allows itself to be readily seen in protected localities. Wild life in parks thus affords enjoyment by being readily seen, and from now on this life will become a factor in education. Children who go into parks will be pleasantly compelled to observe, delightfully incited to think, and will thus become alert and interested,—will have the very foundation of education. Perhaps it is safe to predict that from now on the tendency will be to multiply the number of parks and decrease the number of zoölogical gardens.

Scenic places, if used for parks, will pay larger returns than by any other use that can be made of their territory. Parks, then, are not a luxury but a profitable investment. Switzerland is supporting about half of her population through the use of her mountain scenery for recreation purposes. Although parks pay large dividends, they also have a higher, nobler use. They help make better men and women. Outdoor life is educational. It develops the seeing eye, supplies information, gives material for reflection, and compels thinking, which is one of the greatest of accomplishments. Exercise in the pure air of parks means health, which is the greatest of personal resources, and this in turn makes for efficiency, kindness, hopefulness, and high ideals. Recreation in parks tends to prevent wasted life by preventing disease and wrong-doing. The conservation of scenery, the use of scenic places for public recreation parks, is conservation in the highest sense, for parks make the best economic use of the territory and they also pay large dividends in humanity.

The travel industry is a large and direct contributor to many industries and their laborers. It helps the railroads, automobile-makers, hotels, guides, and the manufacturers of the clothing, books, souvenirs, and other articles purchased by travelers. Perhaps the farmer is the one most benefited; he furnishes the beef, fruit, butter, chickens, and in fact all the food consumed by the traveling multitude. A large travel industry means enlarging the home market to gigantic proportions.

The courts have recently expressed definite and advanced views concerning scenic beauty. In Colorado, where water has a high economic value, a United States Circuit Court recently decided that the beneficial use of a stream was not necessarily an agricultural, industrial, or commercial use, and that, as a part of the scenery, it was being beneficially used for the general welfare. The question was whether the waters of a stream, which in the way of a lakelet and a waterfall were among the attractions of a summer resort, could be diverted to the detriment of the falls and used for power. The judge said "No," because the waters as used, were contributing toward the promotion of the public health, rest, and recreation; and that as an object of beauty—"just to be looked at"—they were not running to waste but were in beneficial use. He held that objects of beauty have an important place in our lives and that these objects should not be destroyed because they are without assessable value. The judge, Robert E. Lewis, said in part:—

"It is a beneficial use to the weary that they, ailing and feeble, can have the wild beauties of Nature placed at their convenient disposal. Is a piece of canvas valuable only for a tentfly, but worthless as a painting? Is a block of stone beneficially used when put into the walls of a dam, and not beneficially used when carved into a piece of statuary? Is the test dollars, or has beauty of scenery, rest, recreation, health and enjoyment something to do with it? Is there no beneficial use except that which is purely commercial?" This decision is epoch-marking.

Taken as a whole, our National Parks and Monuments and our unreserved scenic places may be described as an undeveloped scenic resource of enormous potential value. These places should be developed as parks and their resources used exclusively for recreation purposes. Thus used, they would help all interests and reach all people. South America, Switzerland, Canada, and other countries are making intensified and splendid use of their parks by reserving that wild scenic beauty which appeals to all the world.

Parks are dedicated to the highest uses. They are worthy of our greatest attentions. It is of utmost importance that the management of Forest Reserves and the National Parks be separate. In 1897 the National Academy of Sciences in submitting a plan for the management of the Forest Reserves recommended that places specially scenic be separated from the Forest Reserves and set aside as Parks and given the separate and special administration which parks need. If scenery is to be saved, it must be saved for its own sake, on its own merits; it cannot be saved as something incidental.

Multitudes will annually visit these places, provided they be developed as parks and used for people and for nothing else. Grazing, lumbering, shooting, and other commercial, conflicting, and disfiguring uses should be rigidly prohibited. Scenery, like beauty, has superior merit, and its supreme use is by people for rest and recreation purposes.

Switzerland after long experience is establishing National Parks and giving these a separate and distinct management from her forest reserves. For a time Canadian National Parks were managed by the Forest Service. Recently, however, the parks were withdrawn from the Forest Service and placed in a Park Department. This was a most beneficial change. Forestry is commercial, radically utilitarian. The forester is a man with an axe. Trees to the forester mean what cattle do to the butcher. Lumber is his product and to recite "Woodman, Spare that Tree!" to a forester would be like asking the butcher to spare the ox. The forester is a scientific slaughterer of the forest; he must keep trees falling in order to supply lumber. A forester is not concerned with the conservation of scenery. Then, too, a forester builds his roads to facilitate logging and lumbering. The Park man builds roads that are scenic highways, places for people.

We need the forest reserve, and we need the National Park. Each of these serves in a distinct way, and it is of utmost importance that each be in charge of its specialist. The forester is always the lumberman, the park man is a practical poet; the forester thinks ever of lumber, the park man always of landscapes. The forester must cut trees before they are over-ripe or his crop will waste, while the park man wants the groves to become aged and picturesque. The forester pastures cattle in his meadows, while the park man has only people and romping children among his wild flowers. The park needs the charm of primeval nature, and should be free from ugliness, artificiality, and commercialism. For the perpetuation of scenery, a landscape artist is absolutely necessary. It would be folly to put a park man in charge of a forest reserve, a lumbering proposition. On the other hand, what a blunder to put a tree-cutting forester in charge of a park! We need both these men; each is important in his place; but it would be a double misfortune to put one in charge of the work of the other. A National Park service is greatly needed.

Apparently William Penn was the first to honor our scenery, and Bryant, with poetry, won a literary standing for it. Official recognition came later, but the establishment of the Yellowstone National Park was a great incident in the scenic history of America—and in that of the world. For the first time, a scenic wonderland was dedicated as "a public park or pleasure ground for the benefit and enjoyment of all the people." The Yellowstone stands a high tribute to the statesmanship, the public spirit, and the energy of F. V. Hayden and the few men who won it for us.

During the last few years the nation, as well as the courts, has put itself on record concerning the higher worth of scenery. The White House conference of governors recommended that "the beauty ... of our country should be preserved and increased"; and the first National Conservation Commission thought that "public lands more valuable for conserving ... natural beauties and wonders than for agriculture should be held for the use of the people."

The travel industry benefits both parties,—the entertained as well as the entertainer. Investments in outdoor vacations give large returns; from an outing one returns with life lengthened, in livelier spirits, more efficient, with new ideas and a broader outlook, and more hopeful and kind. Hence parks and outdoor recreation places are mighty factors for the general welfare; they assist in making better men and women. A park offers the first aid and often the only cure for the sick and the overworked. Looking upon our sublime scenes arouses a love for our native land and promotes a fellow feeling. Nature is more democratic even than death; and when people mingle amid primeval scenes they become fraternal. Saving our best scenes is the saving of manhood. These places encourage every one to do his best and help all to live comfortably in a beautiful world. Scenery is our noblest resource. No nation has ever fallen from having too much scenery.

The Rocky Mountain National Park

The Rocky Mountain
National Park

Extend a straight line fifty-five miles northwest from Denver and another line sixty miles southwest from Cheyenne and these lines meet in approximately the centre of the Rocky Mountain National Park. This centre is in the mountain-heights a few miles northwest of Long's Peak, in what Dr. F. V. Hayden, the famous geologist, calls the most rugged section of the Continental Divide of the Rocky Mountains.

This Park is a mountain realm lying almost entirely above the altitude of nine thousand feet. Through it from north to south extends the Snowy Range,—the Continental Divide,—and in it this and the Mummy Range form a vast mountain Y. Specimen Mountain is the north end of the west arm of this Y, while Mummy Mountain is at the tip of the east arm. Mt. Clarence King on the south forms the base of the stem, while Long's Peak is against the eastern side of the stem, about midway.