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«OH, RANGER!"

A Book about the National Parks

*y

HORACE M. ALBRIGHT
and FRANK J. TAYLOR

OH, RANGER!" is the first com
plete story of the national parks.
It is a colorful tale of their history,
their lore and traditions, their un-
equaled beauty, the lives and ad
ventures of the rangers who run
them.

Its pages are filled with interest
for anyone who enjoys a good story.
Dudes and Sagebrushers — bears and
Indians — forests and streams and
mountains — all are described and
characterized in a wealth of narra
tive and incident.

"OH, RANGER!" will increase many
fold the enjoyment of those for
tunate enough to visit the parks this
season and in future seasons. Packed
with information concerning these
national vacation areas, it will help
the summer tourist to make the
most of his limited excursions.

"OH, RANGER!" is authentic in its
facts and keen in the humor of its
stories. It is profusely illustrated
with whimsically apt sketches and
a variety of well-chosen photo
graphs. The delightful combination
of amusement, information, and
narrative which the book holds com
mends it to the entire reading pub
lic.

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

STANFORD UNIVERSITY

CALIFORNIA

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From the collection of the

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San Francisco, California
2006

Harry Yount, of Yellowstone,
the first national park ranger

"Oh, Ranpg

oA Book about the National Parks

By
Horace M. Albright and Frank J. Taylor

Illustrated by
Ruth Taylor White

Stanford University Press

Stanford University, California

1929

J. TATLOB

OWTTTD rr ATM or

THE RANGERS
STEPHEN TSTNG MATHER

51 S964

A Word of Introduction

To me no picture of the national parks is complete unless it includes
the rangers, the "Dudes," the "Sagebrushers," and the "Savages." I
like to picture the thousands of people gathered about the park camp-
fires, asking questions of the rangers. In fact, I like to be at the campfire
myself, and listen to the thousands of questions asked about the parks
and their wild life. Especially am I interested in the replies of the
rangers. These men of the mountains have become keen students of
human nature. In their brief, informal talks, they have learned to
anticipate many of the questions of the visitors.

I like the idea of this book, "Oh, Ranger!" It tells the story of the
parks in the simple, informal style of the rangers. It gives the rangers
the credit due them for their fine work in guarding the national parks
and preserving them in their primeval beauty. It breathes the spirit
of the people who belong to the parks, who make possible the parks as
they are today.

They are a fine, earnest, intelligent, and public-spirited body of men,
these rangers. Though small in number, their influence is large. Many
and long are the duties heaped upon their shoulders. If a trail is to be
blazed, it is "send a ranger." If an animal is floundering in the snow,
a ranger is sent to pull him out; if a bear is in the hotel, if a fire
threatens a forest, if someone is to be saved, it is "send a ranger." If a
Dude wants to know the why, if a Sagebrusher is puzzled about a road,
it is "ask the ranger." Everything the ranger knows, he will tell you,
ex-cept about himself. "Oh, Ranger!'' now tells you about him.

The national parks are more than the storehouses of Nature's rarest
treasures. They are the playlands of the people, wonderlands easily ac
cessible to the rich and the humble alike. They are great out-of-doors
recreation grounds, where men, women, and children can forget the
cares and the sounds of the cities for a few days. The serenity of the
i mountains and the forests is contagious. With three million Americans
under its spell each year, if only for a short time, it is a powerful in
fluence in our national life. It has been one of the pleasures of my work
as Director of the National Park Service to tell the people about their
parks, to urge them to see their wonders, and to find new and easy ways
for visitors to reach the parks. The whole purpose of Congress in
creating the national park system was that the American people might
enjoy them and benefit by them forever.

So I am glad of the opportunity to write this short introduction to
"Oh, Ranger!'' which tells the story of the parks in a new and interesting

vu

viii ***** "Oh, Ranger!"

way, and to say a word about its authors. Horace Albright has served
the national parks since the service was organized, first as assistant
director in Washington and then in the field. He is an indefatigable
worker, a true lover of the mountains. He knows the rangers and un
doubtedly knows the parks better than any other man in the service.
Frank Taylor has been a friend of the parks for many years, as news
paperman and writer. He, too, has spent much time in them and has
helped bring their possibilities to the attention of the people. It is a
happy circumstance that two men who themselves have the genuine
spirit of the rangers and who are so intimately informed in the affairs of
the parks and their people should have collaborated to produce this book.

STEPHEN T. MATHER

Director, National Park Service
WASHINGTON, D.C.

March 1, 1928

Table of Contents

"Oh, Ranger!" ""

Dudes and Sagebr ushers 17

Speaking of Bears 33

Wild Animals You May Know 47

Coin' Fishin' 65

"Indians!" 81

Nature's Notes 97

"Hey, Hiker!" HI

The Story of the National Park Service 121

The National Parks and Monuments 139

Index 171

List of Illustrations

Frontispiece
Harry Yount, of Yellowstone, the first national park ranger

Following page 2

A national park ranger cabin

A national park ranger riding patrol

Horace M. Albright, former Superintendent of Yellowstone Park, now

Director of the National Park Service
Ready for the trail to the Grand Tetons
Many Glaciers Hotel, Glacier National Park
Longs Peak, Rocky Mountain National Park

Following page 34

Bears raiding a garbage can in Yosemite

Bear cubs in Yosemite Park

"This is the bedtime story hour, friends. Once there was a bear . . . . "

Saturday night

Mount Rainier, from Tatoosh Range, Mount Rainier National Park

A view from Timberline Ridge in Mount Rainier National Park

Following page 66

The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and Yellowstone Falls

Old stagecoach in Yellowstone

A buffalo roundup in Yellowstone

Sagebrushers camping at Paradise Valley, Mount Rainier National Park

Young deer in a national park

Old Faithful Geyser, which erupts every hour

Following page 98

Yosemite Valley, with Half Dome in the background
Yosemite Falls

Half Dome, above Yosemite Valley. A view from Glacier Point
The Wawona Tree, Yosemite National Park

xi

xii * * * * * "Oh, Ranger!'

Following page 130

Looking north from Yavapai Point in Grand Canyon National Park
A Blackfoot Indian camp at St. Mary Lake, Glacier National Park
Hopi House reproduced at Grand Canyon
Spruce Tree House, Mesa Verde National Park
Temple of Osiris, Bryce Canyon National Park
Lassen Peak, Lassen Volcanic National Park

Following page 162

Mount Merritt from Red Gap Pass in Glacier National Park
Crater Lake, in Crater Lake National Park
General Sherman Tree, Sequoia National Park
In Zion Canyon, Zion National Park

ffOh, Ranger!"

"Oh, Ranger, can I take your picture with a bear ?"
"Just a minute, ma'am, until I show this gentleman where to go
fishing."

"Where's a bear, now?"

"Well, ma'am, there was one in these woods an hour ago. Maybe
we can find him."

Five minutes for the purpose of finding a wild bear.
"Oh, Ranger, that's a lovely bear ! Stand closer to him, won't you ?

Would you mind putting your arm around
him ? It would make a peachy shot. We'd
just love it."

"Sorry, ma'am, but it's against regu
lations to hug the bears."

"Oh, pshaw! Why do they have such
foolish regulations? Well, just pretend to
be feeding him something."

Knowing the ways of bears, the ranger
declined to "pretend." He produced some
molasses chews and actually fed them to
the bear. It is dangerous business to try to
fool a bear about food.
Click! Click! Click!
Another ranger was immortalized in
picture, for the ninetieth time that day.

"It's all in the day's work," explained the ranger.
"What else do you do?"

"Well, show folks where to camp, and how to keep on the right road,
and answer questions, and see that people don't tease the animals, and
keep things orderly, and put out forest fires, and give lectures on Nature,
and rescue Dudes in danger, and 'most anything anybody wants done
around here."

"All in a day's work." That whimsical line was written at the top of
a report turned in one day by Ranger John Wegner of Yosemite, which
read as follows :

"I got phone orders at Tuolumne Meadows to pack up and come in
over Sunrise Trail. Started at sunrise. Everything haywire, including
cranky pack horse which kept getting off trail. Phoned in at Vernal
Falls station. Ordered to hurry down, help catch two auto thieves
which broke jail just after breakfast. Assigned to guard Coulterville

1

"OA, Ranger!"

Road. Only transportation was Chief's personal auto which I could
have if I could find man who borrowed it from Chief. Chief didn't
know who that was. Guarded Coulterville Road until 3 :00 A.M., when
ordered to Valley to beat brush by the river
with flashlight to locate thieves. Found one
thief and captured him just before dawn.
Somebody else assigned to guard him, but be
fore I turned in, got orders to meet carload
of trout fry at El Portal and help plant them
in streams. Met fish O.K., but coming up El
Portal Road, Quad truck slipped over side of
road, but was saved from going down cliff by
being caught in tree. Cans of fish lashed to
truck, so we saved them. Job was compli
cated by necessity of keeping water aerated
in cans setting by roadside while we rushed
more water in small bucket from stream quarter of mile away. Fish all
saved. Phoned for help, and kept water in cans moving until truck
dragged back on road and fish cans reloaded. Relieved of duty, with
nothing to do but walk nine miles and go to bed."

"All in a day's work" can be almost anything for a national park
ranger. One day, at the end of a long battle for control of a forest fire,
Superintendent Lewis of Yosemite was making a final inspection be
fore telling the last ranger on the job to go to his cabin and turn in for
much-needed sleep. Every blaze was out except a small flicker in an
old tree trunk, dead but still standing. It looked safe enough, but the
rangers hesitated to leave before it was entirely out, for fear that a
sudden breeze might rekindle the forest fire. The blaze was too high to
reach with wet sacks or dirt thrown by a shovel, or by water thrown
from a bucket. The tree was too large to be cut down without help, and
Lewis hesitated to call back his already exhausted rangers. He scratched

his head and puzzled over the engineering
problem of snuffing out that small blaze.
Then he and the ranger scouted for a
spring. Finding one, they made a lot of
mud balls and carried them in their hats
to a point near the burning tree. Both
had been baseball players in their younger
days, and as Lewis afterward said, "The
old soup-bones were still in fair shape."
Cheering each other's pitching, they
heaved mud balls until the last "strike"
smacked out the last flickering blaze.

A national park ranger cabin

A national park ranger riding patrol

Horace M. Albright, former Superintendent of Yellowstone Park,
now Director of the National Park Service

Photo b\ Tod Pou-ell

Ready for the trail to the Grand Teton

Many Glaciers Hotel, Glacier National Park

Longs Peak, Rocky Mountain National Park

(Oh, Ranger!"

To. the hundreds of thousands who visit the national parks each
year, everyone in the olive drab uniform is a ranger. "Oh, Ranger !" is
the almost universal greeting preliminary to asking questions about the
park and its life. But within the ranger service there are various desig
nations, ranging from superintendents down to Ninety-Day-Wonders.
In a broad, general way, all rangers are divided into two groups : Old-
Timers and Ninety-Day-Wonders. The Old-Timers are the permanent
rangers, serving the year around, year in and year out. The Ninety-
Day-Wonders are temporary rangers, signed on for the summer rush
period of three or four months, when the travel to the national parks
nears the three-million mark.

The Old-Timers are, of course, the backbone of the ranger service.
In the summer months, they are in command at the various ranger sta
tions, assisted by the Ninety-Day-Wonders in the task of registering
visitors, directing them to camps and lodges, helping them find fishing
holes, or campsites, or wood, or what not, and in answering the millions
of questions about the parks. The Ninety-Day-Wonders are mostly
college men, with enough love for the out-of-doors to enlist for a sum
mer of hard work at long hours and low pay in the national parks. They
are a keen and resourceful group of men and what they don't know
about the great open spaces after a week in
a national park they manage to hide behind
an air of great sagacity. The majority of
these lads return to college work at the end
of summer, but a few of them succumb to
the spell of the mountains and become even
tually permanent rangers.

The Old-Timers, particularly the vet
erans in the ranger service, are born men of
the mountains, gifted with a working knowl
edge of woodcraft, of trail-blazing, of the
ways of wild life, and with sufficient in
stinctive resourcefulness in the mountains
and the forest to be able to take care of
themselves and others under any circum
stances. They are practical naturalists, and are able to handle people in
numbers. They must serve as guides, philosophers, and friends. That
seems like an imposing list of qualifications, yet the permanent park
rangers are equal to it. The mountains have put their stamp on the
Old-Timers. You can tell that by talking to them. It shows in their
faces, in their actions. They are men who can stand solitude — it takes
an unusual character for a man to be good company for himself in a
lonely ranger station, banked high with snow, for months on end dur-

4 * * * * ir "OA, Ranger!"

ing the winter. Just try living alone for a hundred days at a stretch!
Strangely enough, these are the months that the rangers love best.
Out near the mountain tops, with snows piled from five to forty feet in
drifts, they lead their lone existence, patrolling their domains, as large
almost as some eastern states, traveling on skiis and snowshoes, repair
ing telephone lines, protecting wild animals from poachers, maintaining
the peace of the wilderness through storm and blizzard. For as long as
six months at a time, winter holds most of the national parks in her icy
grip, with weather below zero, with freezing winds, blizzards, and
snowstorms alternating around the tiny log fortresses, the cabins, from
which the rangers make their patrols. During those long, cold winter
months, the higher levels of the parks are closed to travel, and the
ranger's main job is to see that his charges in the great wild-life sanctu
ary are protected, both from humans and from the elements. It takes
men of great courage, stamina, and endurance for this most difficult
work.

On winter patrol, the men must be able to endure such privation as
was faced by Ranger Liek, now superintendent of Mount McKinley
National Park, in Alaska. Liek was once lost for twenty hours in a
raging blizzard while returning on snowshoes from Upper Yellowstone.
For hours on end the storm raged, destroying every sign by which the
ranger could find his trail. Only by keeping on doggedly could he avoid
freezing to death. It was, of course, impossible to build a fire in the
blizzard. He crossed his own tracks many times, and was hopelessly lost
when he came finally to a shoreline which he recognized as Yellowstone
Lake. He must have traveled at least forty miles in covering a distance
of twelve miles, before he reached a ranger station, where he could pro
vide himself with food, shelter, and warmth.
"It's all in the day's work," says the ranger.

Whenever possible, two rangers patrol together in the deep snow
country, so that if one is hurt or taken ill, the other can render aid or go
for help. In the northern national parks, great precautions must be
taken to protect the rangers during the winter. The ranger stations are

about twenty miles apart ; in no case more
than thirty miles apart. Between each sta
tion, there are snowshoe cabins, which are
rationed in the fall and are equipped with
bedding and wood and kindling. Some
times these cabins are completely buried
beneath the snow. To provide landmarks
by which to locate the cabins, the rangers
often put up many extra feet of stovepipe
or hang a shovel in a tree top near-by. One

rOA, Ranger!"

time, looking over a report of a ranger's patrol, we noticed this item:
"Ate lunch on top of a telephone pole just east of Sylvan Pass."

The snow must have been more than twenty feet deep up there and
the tip of the pole was probably the only
place he could sit down to lunch. There are
times when the snow is forty feet deep in
Sylvan Pass, and not even the telephone
poles nor the tree tops are visible in places.
It is hard for the summer-time visitor, who
sees Yellowstone or Glacier or the other
parks only in the height of the season when1
the summer is balmy and the roads are good,
to picture the complete isolation of the
ranger stations in the dead of winter when
the snowdrifts hide even the two-storied
cabins. It takes genuine devotion to the
mountains to prompt men to make these
lonely cabins their homes during the long winter months.

Ranger Joe Douglas was crossing Yellowstone Lake on skiis in the
dead of winter. He came to a place where the snow was blown off the
ice. Skiis are of no use on the ice, so Doug unstrapped them and carried
them over his shoulder while he walked across the ice. In an unwary
moment, he plunged through an air-hole into the icy water. The skiis
bridged the hole and undoubtedly saved his life. Clinging to them,
Doug cautiously pulled himself from the water and trudged on, his wet
clothes frozen stiff about his body. Reaching the shore, he dug through
four feet of snow, located some wood, built a fire, undressed, and stood
there naked while his clothes dried by the blaze.

"It's a wonder you didn't freeze, Doug," someone said, when the
ranger told his story.

"Naw, it wasn't cold," he retorted. "It was one of the warmest days
of the winter — only 'bout seven below zero !"

It takes a rawhide constitution to stand treatment like that.

To the public, the ranger is one of the most romantic figures in life.
The term "ranger" probably originated on the southern border, in the
early days, when the roving mounted police officers, intrusted with
maintaining law and order along the frontier, came to be known as
rangers because they ranged over a wide territory. That was long be
fore either the national parks or the national forests were created. The
first national park ranger, so far as is known, was old Harry Yount,
government gamekeeper, who remained all winter long in Yellowstone
Park in 1880, to keep poachers from the territory. He was the first man
to weather a winter in Yellowstone. After that first winter alone, with

6 * * * * * "Oh, Ranger!"

only the geysers, the elk and the other animals for company, Harry
Yount pointed out in a report that it was impossible for one man to
patrol the park. He urged the formation of a ranger force. So Harry
Yount is credited with being the father of the ranger service, as well
as the first national park ranger.

In the public mind, there is little difference between national forest
rangers and national park rangers. The two groups do have much in
common, such as protection of the forests from fire, construction of
trails and telephone lines, planting of fish in lakes and streams, and
preservation of the wilderness under their charge. The differences in
their duties arise out of the fact that they are employed by different
bureaus in different departments of the federal government. The park
rangers are employed by the Department of the Interior, the forest
rangers by the Department of Agriculture.

The national forest rangers are intrusted with the administration
of a vast area of forest land, a territory fifteen times as great as that of
all the national parks together. Their duty is to see that timber is not
cut until it is fully grown, that slashings are burned, and that new for
est growths are protected. They have under their charge much grazing
land on which live stock is pastured under permit from the government.
The national forest areas include many reservoir and power sites and
the forest rangers supervise their utilization under the Federal Power
Commission's authority. In brief, the forest ranger is charged with
administration of an area which must produce the best possible crop of
timber, grass, and water power. The national forests are a business
proposition, and the forest ranger must look at them from an economic
point of view, though they are also sanctuaries of wild life and open
to the public for recreation, as a secondary consideration.

The national park ranger is not concerned with the many economic
and commercial problems that confront the forest ranger. The national
parks were set aside to preserve the natural wonders in them, and the
rangers' duty is to protect the features and resources of the parks in
their natural state. The only economic developments allowed in the
national parks are those for the convenience and service of visitors.
No hunting is allowed in the parks. The national park ranger is custo
dian of a great natural museum through which he must guide tens of
thousands of visitors each year. He must tell them about the parks, see
that facilities are provided for their comfort, pleasure, and entertain
ment. The national park ranger must be more than a skilled moun
taineer and woodsman ; he must have the ability to establish and maintain
close contacts with the public, during the summer months at least,
and then must turn to his task of protecting the wild life during the
wintertime.

"Oh, Ranger!" * * * * * 7

In old Harry Yount's day it was enough if a ranger could maintain
order in the park and protect the wild life. Today that is but the begin
ning of his job. The ranger must be a guide and an interpreter of the
mountains and their moods and mysteries. He must be a practical
naturalist, and a friend and counselor to the Dude and the Sagebrusher.
He may be entertaining a reigning prince one day and fighting a forest
fire the next. He must be tactful, courteous, and ever patient, even
when ridiculous and foolish situations are provoked by visitors.

Ranger Martindale was giving an informal talk to a group of dele
gates to a religious convention, gathered about the cone of Old Faithful
Geyser. The ranger had just explained how the cone had been formed
over a long period of years by deposits from the hot water when he
was interrupted peremptorily.

"Ranger, how long did you say it took to make this cone ?"

"About forty thousand years," Martindale told the questioner.

"Young man, do you ever read your Bible ?"

"Yes, sometimes."

"Then you know that the world is not yet forty thousand years old,
nor a half, nor a quarter of that."

"But we have measured the annual deposit on this cone and we can
calculate how long it took to build it up as high as it is," said the ranger.

"Well, if you had read your Bible more carefully, you would know
that it took the Lord only six days to make the whole world," asserted
the visitor decisively. "If He wanted to, I guess He could make ten
Yellowstones in ten minutes !"

With that he strode off.

There is the tale of the peanut tree of Mount Rainier National
Park. Guides would point out a certain pine tree near Paradise Valley
and sure enough there were peanuts sticking in the clusters of pine
needles. A family of squirrels, if not frightened by too many visitors,
usually spoiled his story. Their chief ambition in life, apparently, was
to carry peanuts, provided by friendly
rangers, to the limbs of the tree, where
the nuts remained until the wind or the
birds jarred them loose, whereupon the
squirrels tackled their job of re-peanut-
ting the pine tree all over again.

Sometimes a joke will save the day.
Sometimes, though, the wise-crack makes
trouble. There was the old lady who
asked a driver why the great piles of
wood were stacked along the road near
Old Faithful.

8 ***** "Oh, Ranger!"

"That's to heat the water for the geysers," he said, without batting
an eye.

The old lady came in to see the superintendent when she reached
Mammoth, where the office is located, to protest against deceiving peo
ple about the geysers. It was with difficulty that he persuaded her that
the wood was cut to heat water for the hotel radiators.

The rangers have learned that the public takes the wonders of
Nature so seriously that it is not good policy to joke about them. It is
hard enough to persuade people to believe the truth. There is a pine
tree growing in a cleft in the side of El Capitan, a massive rock rising
sheer for more than half a mile above the floor of Yosemite Valley.
The height of El Capitan itself is difficult for people to grasp. This
tree, perched on a shelf about a third of the way up, is eighty feet tall.
It looks to be about eight feet high, at the most. The superintendent of
Yosemite has had to bring out surveyors' calculations more than once
to prove to visitors that they are not being deceived by rangers or guides.

Among themselves and their friends, the rangers are great story
tellers, especially when they start telling "whoppers." Sometimes their
stories are marvels of invention, as, for instance, this one :

A ranger doing patrol duty on the boundary line, having run out
of supplies and being in immediate danger of starving, told how he
grabbed his trusty old gun for which only one shell remained, and,
going beyond the park line, maneuvered around carefully, hunting dili
gently so as to be sure to get the best possible results with the one shot.
Finally he came upon a brace of quail perched in a cluster of brush
close enough together for both to be bagged at one shot. Carefully
raising the gun, he fired. Imagine his great joy when on running to the
spot to pick up his two quail he found that he had killed six more, which
were on the other side of the bush and which he had not seen. Hearing
a great commotion out in a small lake near by, he saw a big buck deer
that had become frightened at the sound of his shot and had run out
into the lake and bogged down in the mud. Dropping the quail, he
hurried out into the lake and cut the buck's throat. In carrying the
deer out, he sank down into the mud himself up over his boot tops.
Upon reaching the shore, he sat down and pulled the boots off to pour
out the water and found in them a dozen nice fish. Placing the quail,
fish, and deer together so that they could be more easily carried, he was
struggling to get the load on his shoulders. This put a great strain on
his suspender buttons, and one of these flew off with such force that it
killed a rabbit a hundred yards in the rear.

Kings, queens, princes, presidents, they are all the same to an Old-
Timer. Sometimes it is difficult for these men of the mountains to
observe the amenities of courts and capitals. There was the occasion of

'Oh, Ranger!"

the visit of the King of Belgium to Yosemite National Park. Ranger
Billy Nelson, a seasoned Old-Timer if there ever was one, was detailed
to accompany the King, to act as guide and guardian.

Billy did not relish the job. He had
no fundamental objections to kings, as
such, but he feared talking to them. He
isn't much of a talker anyway. The su
perintendent coached Billy on how to ad
dress the King and the Queen and what
to say to be polite. Billy rehearsed it, r">^

scratched his old head, and allowed that J^* 1? /A^ V
he would rather fight a forest fire. He **- '
met the King out under the giant se
quoias of the Mariposa Grove, and this
is about the conversation that ensued :

"They told me what to say to you,
King," he said, "but I've forgot it, so if
it is agreeable to you, I wish you'd call me Billy and I'll call you King."

"All right," said the King, "I'll call you Billy."

"All right, King," said Billy.

They got along famously on those terms and became fast friends
during the King's stay in Yosemite. Billy has the reputation for being
about the best camp cook in the whole ranger service, and any time he
wants a reference he can name the King of Belgium. Billy was camp
cook by special appointment to His Majesty. As such he took full ad
vantage of his rights and prerogatives and more than once other mem
bers of the royal party were horrified to hear Billy call out :

"Say, King, shoot me that side of bacon, will you? How about
another cup of Java?"

Another royal visitor who enjoyed his adventures with the ranger
service was Crown Prince Gustav Adolf of Sweden. The Prince is an
experienced woodsman and a great trout fisherman. Since he seemed
to have the required qualifications, it was decided to make him an hon
orary ranger. He was delighted with the honor and wore his badge on
his tunic for the rest of the trip. His outing costume was not unlike
that of a park service ranger, and this led to an amusing incident when
the Crown Prince arrived at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon of
Arizona.

The party came by automobile, reaching the destination an hour or
so before Ranger Frank Winess, in charge of the station, expected them.
As the machine drew up, Winess stepped out, greeted the driver, ex
changed a few pleasantries, and then spotted the ranger's badge on the
Prince's breast.

10

'Oh, Ranger!"

"Hullo/' he said, extending his hand. "My name is Winess. What
park are you from ?"

When it was explained that the new ranger was the Crown Prince
of Sweden, it took Winess the rest of the day to recover the speech he
had prepared to welcome the royal visitor to the Grand Canyon !

One day the Crown Prince went fishing with Chief Ranger Sam
Woodring at Peale Island in Yellowstone Lake. After a good day, in
which the Prince caught his limit, the party made ready to leave. Ob
serving the rangers cutting wood near the cabin used as a headquarters
for fishing parties, the Prince inquired the purpose of the wood. He
was told that it was the practice in the mountains never to leave a cabin
without wood, and that those in the cabin were supposed to replenish
the supply for the next occupants, who might possibly arrive in the
night or in distress.

"All right," he said, "since I am a ranger I will insist upon cutting
my share of the wood."
Which he did.

There are times, however, when visiting celebrities are a bit unwill
ing to obey the rules of the ranger service. The rangers have one rule
which says that no names shall be written on the cones of the geysers
in Yellowstone. It is hard for the ranger to understand why anyone
should want to disfigure a marvel of Nature by writing his name upon
it, yet that used to be a widely accepted custom of the traveling public,
just as carving initials in trees was the regular thing to do. It is pleas
ing to note that this custom is disappearing everywhere, and perhaps
the education that has been carried on in the national parks has had
considerable to do with ending the practice of disfiguring trees.

One day a local celebrity from an eastern city was smitten with the
urge to write his name upon the cone of Old Faithful, a place where
the name would endure for several years before the geyser could elim
inate it by natural processes. This man was caught red-handed by a

ranger, who arrested him. He was of
fered the choice of mixing up some soap
suds and scrubbing the name off the cone
or going before the United States Com
missioner for prosecution. He sputtered
considerably about his rights, but finally
decided to use the soapsuds, influenced
largely by the fact that if he appeared
before the judge and were fined, his
name would be in the papers and he
would become celebrated in a manner
that did not appeal to him. Nevertheless,

"O/z, Ranger!" * * « * * 11

it was humiliating to have to scrub a geyser cone before a large and not
too friendly audience, and before the job was done he was angry all
through. He came to headquarters to protest about the tyranny of the
rangers. The superintendent happened to be out at the time and the
gentleman unburdened his anger, in abusive terms, to the assistant.
Finally he said :

"Well, it's about what you'd expect from these rangers. They're
the dregs from the cities, out here in the mountains because they couldn't
make a living anywhere else."

"Yes, I guess that's it," said the assistant, dryly. "That ranger who
made you wash the geyser never had a chance. He's nothing but a
grandson and a great-grandson of two presidents of the United States."

The ranger was William Henry Harrison III, a Ninety-Day-Wonder
for the third consecutive summer.

Of course, not many rangers can claim the distinctive background
of Ranger Harrison. They don't need to. It is not his distinguished
forbears that made Harrison one of our best rangers, but his willingness
to work, his devotion to duty, and his resourcefulness. The first requi
site of a good ranger is that he be a gentleman, which hasn't anything
to do with his birth or his family connections, but much to do with his
manner toward his fellow-men. As a matter of fact, most of the Old-
Timers are men who have worked their way up through the ranks,
many of them without the benefit of education other than that which
they have received in the mountains and the forests.

A remarkable ranger is Sam Woodring, formerly chief ranger of
Yellowstone, now superintendent of the new Grand Teton National
Park, just south of Yellowstone. Woodring was an old army packer. For
years his job was to get supplies through to the outlying stations in the
Philippines. He was a packmaster on the Mexican border for General
Pershing, and was at Vera Cruz with General Funston. He came into
Yellowstone from the army in 1920 and joined the ranger force. He had
had charge of the army pack train in the park in 1915 and 1916. Ranger
Woodring was in charge of the pack train organized for President
Roosevelt when "T. R." was hunting wolves in Texas. Roosevelt was
but one of many notables with whom Woodring became fast friends
while out on the trail in the wilds. Two other presidents who intrusted
themselves to his care while out in the mountains were Warren G. Hard
ing and Calvin Coolidge. The Chief has made some remarkable winter
scouting trips in his day, and his life has been a round of adventure. Not
long ago he went to Glacier National Park to help Chief Ranger Carter
gain control of a raging forest fire near Lake McDonald. In the dense
forest, the two rangers and their squads were unable to see the fire, as a

12 ***** "Oh, Ranger!"

high wind whipped the smoke through the valley. For hours they were
given up for lost, as they worked to backfire a break against the oncom
ing flames. It was not until the next day that they discovered that the
flames had leaped over their heads, above the tree tops, while they were
battling in the smoke near the ground.

The oldest Old-Timer in the service is Jim McBride, of Yellow
stone. Ranger McBride first came to the park before there were any
rangers, as a driver for a quartermaster wagon. He learned the roads
and trails of the park as a wagoner and mule skinner. In those days
they had a different company of soldiers in the park almost every sum
mer, and it was necessary to maintain a small force of guides or scouts
to show the new troopers to their posts and to keep them from getting
lost. These scouts were really the forerunners of the rangers and were
indeed the first rangers. They fought off the poachers and tried to
protect the wild life of the park. Jim was one of these Old-Timers, so
long in the service that he is a personification of the name by which we
call the permanent rangers.

There were picturesque and interesting events in the lives of those
early rangers, as Jim can tell. There were stage robbers to be captured
and buffalo poachers to be caught and brought to justice. One of the
most notable tales is of the capture of Ed Howell, the buffalo poacher.
He was caught red-handed by Scout Burgess and two assistants in the
act of skinning a buffalo on a remote tributary of the Yellowstone River,
in the dead of winter. Remember, rangers were called scouts in those
days. Howell had several buffalo hides in his camp. After capturing
him, the rangers were unable to bring about his punishment because of
inadequate laws. The story of the catching of this notorious poacher
and his escape from punishment caused great public indignation and
undoubtedly had much to do with the passage by Congress of more
stringent laws for the protection of the buffalo.

Jim McBride was assigned one time to track down a robber who
had pulled off a sensational hold-up of stagecoach passengers in the
park. He nabbed a bad man suspected of being the robber in a remote
part of the park, and had to bring the rascal in alone. It was a trip of
several days, and one night the fellow managed to loosen the ropes with
which Jim had bound him. Jim awoke at daybreak just in time to see
the former prisoner approaching him with an axe in his hand. When
asked what he said to the alleged bandit, Jim replied :

"I said, 'Good morning, when did you wake up ?' "

He recaptured the man and brought him to headquarters.

Risking his life to save that of another is something that every
ranger must be ready to do, any time he is called upon. Visitors to the
national parks unfamiliar with trails and with mountain climbing often

"O/z, Ranger!" * * * * * 13

overestimate their endurance or their ability to find their way through
the forests. The Yosemite National Park ranger force holds the record
for the number of rescues effected along trails, for the reason that
travelers in that park are more prone to strike out alone. Not that hiking
over the trails is unsafe, for the contrary is true and thousands upon
thousands of people hike safely over park trails each summer without
guides. There are six hundred miles of trails in Yosemite National
Park alone. One would think that would be mileage enough for any
hiker for one season, but every year a few visitors insist upon blazing
their own trails and consequently become lost. Chief Ranger Forest
Townsley of Yosemite has made some remarkable rescues of hikers
who have undertaken to find their own trails or make short cuts down
the sides of cliffs and have found themselves stranded and helpless.
Townsley is a giant in stature and a man of great courage, and dozens
of times he has lowered himself down a precipitous cliff hand over
hand to tie a lost Dude securely so that the rangers above could drag
him to safety.

One of the most daring rescues in park history was made in the
Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. Two boys employed by the hotel at
the Canyon undertook to reach the base of the lower falls on the north
side. This slope is so steep that it is practically impossible to scale it,
and the two boys found themselves helpless at the bottom of the Canyon,
nearly half a mile deep, with the raging river on one side of them and
the precipitous cliff on the other. They were seen by some tourists who
reported their plight to the rangers. One lad was able to climb to a
point where he could reach a rope and be pulled to safety. The other
boy fell thirty feet while scaling the wall, cut a deep gash in his hip and
suffered many abrasions of the body. He lay in the heavy cold mist
from the falls, exhausted and half frozen, unable to reach the ropes
thrown to him. Ranger Ross finally lowered Ranger Kell, his assistant
in summer and a Yale varsity football star in the fall, and Remus
Allen, a hotel employee, down into the Canyon at a point below the
falls. They worked their way up the gorge, sometimes wading through
the roaring river. They finally reached the wounded boy, rendered first
aid, and dragged him perilously across loose rock and shale to within
150 feet of the top of the Canyon, where they could reach a rope low
ered by Ross and his assistants. It took four hours for them to make
the rescue, once they were lowered into the Canyon, and all of that
time they were in danger of slipping into the plunging river below, in
which case their lives would virtually have been thrown away.

In that as in most cases the victims had no business getting lost. But
once their lives are in danger, there is nothing for the rangers to do but
risk their own to save the others. That is part of every ranger's duty.

14 ***** "OA, Ranger!"

The rangers of Mesa Verde National Park tell of a
rescue achieved by one of their number of a woman de
scribed as "a bachelor girl of indeterminate age." This
girl became panic-stricken while ascending the trail from the
Square Tower House, reached by ancient foot holes carved in
the rock by the Cliff Dwellers. For safety's sake, a rope is in
position to assist the climber in pulling himself up. The climb
is not a difficult one for a normal person, but this girl, becom
ing semi-hysterical, planted her feet in two of the holes and
clung on to the rope for dear life, screaming for help. She
ignored the ranger's assurance that she was in no danger, and
refused to budge.

Finally he went down to rescue her. Finding both hands
and both feet busy holding on, when the ranger reached her
the woman reached over and planted her teeth in her rescuer's
arm. She kept them there while he gallantly carried her to the
top of the climb, despite his protests that the tooth-hold was
painful, unnecessary, and against the rules of the National Park Service
ranger force.

The National Park Service goes to great lengths to warn visitors
against taking chances. They present every arrival in the national parks
with a manual explaining the simple rules and regulations. These are
three in purpose : first, to preserve the natural state and the wild life of
the parks; second, to protect the lives and persons of visitors; and
finally, to assure everyone an equal opportunity to enjoy the wonders
and the advantages of the national parks. The rangers are often asked
why they take the trouble to register the names and addresses of visitors
to the parks. That is a large job in itself. Often it is resented by visi
tors who like to travel incognito. That registration is for the protection
of visitors, for the purpose of knowing how to reach them in case of
emergency, and finally to catch criminals or other undesirables who
may take to the national parks as a refuge.

Winter patrolling introduces an added element of sport into the lives
of the rangers in the trapping and shooting of predatory animals such
as wolves, coyotes, and mountain lions. The most numerous of these
predatory animals are the coyotes, found in all the parks and killed
each winter in large numbers. One of the Yellowstone rangers, Ted
Ogston, sets his quota at one hundred coyotes each winter.

The most dangerous of the predatory beasts is the mountain lion.
These great cats, sometimes measuring twelve feet from nose to tip of
tail, are cruelly destructive of deer and antelope. As a rule, they eat
only hot, fresh flesh of a newly killed animal, generally making but one
meal off each kill. Their practice is to disembowel their victims, feed

"Oh, Ranger!" * * * * * 15

on the warm flesh, and leave the greater part of the carcass untouched,
although they occasionally bury the remains to eat later. However,
they prefer to kill another deer or antelope rather than eat flesh that is
cold. Since they are so wantonly destructive, the rangers hunt down
the mountain lions, but never to the point of extinction. They are crafty
animals and fierce fighters.

Two Yosemite rangers, whose dogs cornered a lion in a tree one
winter, tell of the fight that ensued. The dogs surrounded the base of
the tree, barking. As the top swayed in the wind, the big cat snarled
and threatened to leap upon his pursuers. Two shots rang out. Both
were effective. The great cat snarled and hissed, leered at his enemies,
then plunged, claws outspread, straight down upon them. The rangers
barely escaped from the spot where the lion plunged into the snow. A
young and inexperienced dog charged too near the wounded beast. The
great jaws snapped, the lion shuddered and died with his teeth grip
ping the dog's snout like a steel vise. The rangers had to pry the jaws
loose to release the unfortunate canine. His nostrils were pierced by
two great teeth. It was a year before he was any good. He never at
tacked another mountain lion.

The rangers have grown to love all wild life except those predatory
species which they so often observe destroying young antelope, deer, or
elk. Aside from these outlawed animals, a national park ranger is never
known to kill a native animal or bird of the park, or to express a desire
to kill. The states surrounding the national parks have open seasons on
deer, elk, moose, and other animals, and on birds. Around the parks are
some of the best hunting lands in the country, yet never does a ranger
ask permission to go outside the park to hunt. He apparently loses all
desire to kill, though hunting might have been his favorite sport before
joining the ranger force.

Everybody who lives in a national park seems to love the wild ani
mals and wants to make pets out of them. In every park there are ranger
stations with special pets. It may be a
deer, an antelope, a woodchuck, or even
a badger. Squirrels, chipmunks, and other
smaller animals are common pets. Occa
sionally a ranger will tame a family of
skunks, and a ranger of Sequoia Park has
a family of foxes eating out of his hand.
One winter the rangers at Lake station
tamed a pine marten. This group also let
a skunk family live under the ranger sta
tion all spring without molesting them, and
the skunks never bothered the rangers.

16 * * * * * "Oh, Ranger!"

Finally one skunk died and the whole family had to be persuaded to
stay away while the floor was torn up to get out the body of the de
ceased. It is now believed by the rangers that it is unwise to make pets
out of skunks !

"All in a day's work." That recalls a bit of amateur poetry found
in one of the ranger cabins in El Dorado National Forest not long ago :

The season's over and they come down

From the ranger stations to the nearest town

Wild and woolly and tired and lame

From playing the "next to Nature" game.

These are the men the nation must pay

For "doing nothing," the town folks say.

But facts are different. I'm here to tell

That some of their trails run right through — well,

Woods and mountains and deserts and brush.

They are always going and always rush.

They camp at some mountain meadow at night,

And dine on a can of "Rangers' Delight," *

Get up in the morning when the robins sing

And break their fast at a nearby spring,

And then they start for another day

With corners to hunt and land to survey.

That trouble settled they start for more,

They're never done till the season is o'er.

They build cabins and fences and telephone lines,

Head off the homesteaders and keep out the mines.

There's a telephone call, there's a fire to fight ;

The rangers are there both day and night.

Oh, the ranger's life is full of joys,

And they're all good, jolly, care-free boys,

And in wealth they are sure to roll and reek,

For a ranger can live on one meal a week.

* "Rangers' Delight" — canned tomatoes.

Dudes and Sagebrushers

All visitors to the national parks are divided into two species,
"Dudes" and "Sagebrushers."

Dudes are those who travel by train and motor stage.

Sagebrushers roll their own cars over the mountains.

The term "Dude" originated years ago in the Yellowstone and on
the Eaton Ranch in Wyoming. In those days the tourist who could
afford the luxury of train travel was considered a person of means. He
wore his good clothes, at least until he reached the ranch or the park,
and even then he was accused of washing behind his ears. To the old-
time horse wranglers on the ranches and to the old stagecoach drivers
the infallible test of a Dude was to look behind his ears. Dudes were a
bit finicky about the niceties of life, even when they were roughing it.
Try as he might to dress as a ranch hand and look like a regular
wrangler, the Dude always gave himself away by some little foible.

From a term of derision, the title "Dude" has grown in a quarter
of a century to become one of distinction. At first it was used only by
the help in the parks. Now Dudes call each other Dudes and are proud
of it. The popularity of the Dude Ranch as a headquarters for sum
mer vacationists has helped to give the name distinction. From the
Yellowstone, the term spread to the other national parks, with certain
variations. In all the parks the Dude is
the visitor who arrives by train, travels by
motor stage, and stops at either the hotels
or the camps. Actually, a visitor's social
standing or wealth or taste have nothing
to do with his rating in a park. A Dude
is a Dude and a Sagebrusher is a Sage-
brusher. The latter may own the First
National Bank in his own home town and
arrive in the finest automobile, driven by a
liveried chauffeur, but as soon as he
crosses the park boundary he is a Sage
brusher, even if he occupies the presiden
tial suite at the Canyon Hotel.

Nicknaming of people in the national parks does not stop with the
visitors. The hired help are called "Savages." They fall into several
groups. The dishwashers are called "Pearl Divers." The waitresses
are called "Heavers." Tent girls and chambermaids are known as
"Pillow Punchers." Chauffeurs are "Gear jammers" or just plain " 'Jam~

17

18 ***** "Oh, Ranger!"

mers." Laundry girls are "Bubble Queens." Porters and bell boys are
"Pack Rats" or merely "Rats." When a young man and a young woman
step out in the evening for a stroll, they are "rotten-logging," in the
vernacular, whether or not they surrender to the temptation of sitting
out a few dances on a nice soft rotting log. Much of the help in the
hotels, lodges, and camps of the parks is recruited from colleges.
Youngsters are eager for this work during the summer vacations. One
of the great charms of life in the parks is the vivacity and enthusiasm
of these college youngsters, the Savages. Thousands of them find
healthful and enjoyable employment in this manner. Many of them
choose a different park each summer. In some parks they are selected
not only for their willingness to work but also for their ability to enter
tain camp visitors with songs, skits, and programs.

Counting Dudes, Sagebrushers, and Savages alike, the total number
of visitors to the national parks each year is approximately three million.
That figure makes the parks the greatest tourist attraction of the United
States, and possibly in the world. Rocky Mountain National Park for
many years held the lead in number of visitors, the figure being about
two hundred thousand per year, but the phenomenal increase in travel
to Yosemite to half a million a year has given that park undisputed
leadership in popularity. Yellowstone Park is now visited by upward
of a quarter of a million people each year, Grand Canyon Park by one
hundred and fifty thousand, Mount Rainier by an even greater number,
and Hot Springs Park by a quarter of a million. Crater Lake, Se
quoia, Glacier, Zion, and other parks are sought yearly each by tens
of thousands.

The Dudes are outnumbered by the Sagebrushers about four to one
in most of the parks. The majority of the Sagebrushers bring their own
camping equipment and stop over whenever a mountain, a forest, or a
fishing stream strikes their fancy. They move on only when the spirit
moves them, lingering as long as they can in the mountains they have

learned to love, out where the air is clear
and the sky is blue, up where the morn
ings are crisp, near the clouds that drift
lazily by. They delight in roughing it de
luxe, in wearing khaki and knickers and
boots and sweaters, either about their
own campfires or at some rustic camp
where food and warmth and shelter are
provided.

Traveling through the national parks
by stage is comfort itself nowadays, but
before the coming of the automobile, it

Dudes and Sagebrushers * * * * 19

was an experience enjoyed only by adventurous spirits. The trip to
Yosemite on the Cannonball Express, which made the run at what was
considered terrific speed in those days — perhaps ten miles per hour —
going from the railroad terminal to the Valley in one day, was one full
of thrills. Today that same trip is an easy run of three to four hours.
The Cannonball Express carried the mail. The contract specified the
time limit allowed to make delivery in Yosemite Valley. Hence, speed
was essential. On one occasion, the Cannonball ran into a forest fire
on a narrow road high in the mountains, at a point where it was impos
sible to turn around. The flames were sweeping down upon the coach
and the situation was one of great danger. Calling to his passengers to
cover their faces, the driver whipped his horses to a frenzy and dashed
at full speed into the fire and through it. Not one of his frightened
passengers was injured, though his horses were badly burned and the
canvas cover to the luggage at the back of the coach was blazing when
the rolling vehicle came to a stop a mile or so beyond the blaze.

Hold-ups were all too frequent in those days. Daring robbers would
fell a tree across the road and trap a stagecoach where it could not be
turned around to escape. Some of the bandits made off with great
hauls. Some were captured, some were not. One particularly daring
hold-up that has become notorious in story was staged about halfway
between Old Faithful Inn and the Lake, in Yellowstone. This nervy
bandit took a position behind a rock projecting into the road at a very
sharp curve, a point from which he could control the road for several
hundred yards in either direction. He spread out a blanket near the
road, and as the coaches came around the great rock he commanded the
drivers to stop. He directed the passengers to step out and empty their
valuables from their pockets to the blanket. The passengers were hud
dled on a hillside which the bandit controlled from his vantage point.
As the next stage appeared, he repeated the operation, keeping up all
the while a running conversation with his victims, joking about their
plight, bantering them, and generally keeping them in good humor.
This fellow single-handed actually held up the passengers of twenty-
eight stages in a row and made his get-away into the mountains with the
blanket containing about four thousand dollars.

This bandit escaped from the park, his identity unsuspected, and
he would never have been caught had it not been for a quarrel with his
wife, who in revenge revealed his secret. He was then captured, tried,
and sentenced to a term in Leavenworth. Finishing his sentence, he
went to California, where he died recently eating an ice-cream cone !

Bandit stories and other yarns of adventure in the parks in the early
days, as told by the Old-Timers, are still a source of delight to the Dudes
as they gather for the evening lectures at the hotels and lodges. Some

20 ***** "Oh, Ranger!"

of the tales have grown with the years until they have become known
as "whoppers." The whoppers started in the Yellowstone country
shortly after the first explorers returned to civilization. The stories
they told of boiling water spouts eighty feet high, of boiling mud pud
dles and hot-water pools and streams, were not believed by the wise
folks at home, who knew such things just could not exist.

Most noted of all these early purveyors of whoppers was Jim Brid-
ger, the pioneer trapper and pathfinder and one of the first white men
to penetrate the fastnesses of the Yellowstone. When Jim Bridger
found that the truth was doubted anyway, he concluded that he might
as well make his lies colossal ones. He enlarged and developed upon
them until he arrived at a state of perfection, the like of which has
never been equaled since his time. One of his best stories was an ac
count of how he caught fish in a cold stream, flopped them into a pool
of boiling water alongside the stream, and cooked them there. This
was not necessarily fiction, for there are at least a dozen places in Yel
lowstone where one could do exactly that. To vindicate Jim Bridger's
veracity in that one instance the Sierra Club, the California moun
taineering society, on the occasion of an outing in the Yellowstone did
cook trout and make coffee in a boiling pool. So the distance between
the truth and the whopper is not very great after all.

A few years ago, in the course of a summer spent in the Yellowstone,
Harry W. Frantz, the well-known Washington correspondent and
writer, became interested in these whoppers from the old days and
gathered from some of the Old-Timers their most whopping whoppers.
He used to come to the evening meetings in old buckskin clothes, a
Buffalo Bill hat and long, black whiskers. Interrupting the ranger's
talk, this picturesque character, who apparently had just straggled into
the audience, would demand :

"Ranger, where does the West begin ?"
The ranger never seemed to know.

"Well, I'll tell you," the old man would say. "It's halfway between

St. Paul and Minneapolis. I know, be
cause I came out here in the 'sixties when
there wuz nothin' but sagebrush an'
Injuns as far as the eye could see. I
helped to start the West, right there. Say,
would you like to hear about some of the
Injun fights?"

The Dudes always would.
"Well, it wuz in the fall o' sixty-nine
an' the Injuns out here wuz thicker 'n
fleas on a yaller dog. I ran into thou-

Dudes and Sagebrushers * * * * 21

sands of 'em, right here on this spot where we're talkin' now, an' when
they saw me they started to chase me. Their war whoops wuz blood-
curdlin', an' they waved their tommyhawks an' came right after me. I
ran up yon' canyon, hopin' to get away from 'em. But they kep' on
comin' an' gamin' on me. I ran faster an' faster, but they kep' a-gainin'
an' a-gainin' an' pretty soon they caught up with me. I saw something
had to be done, an' I looked up. To the
left o' me wuz a cliff a mile high and to
the right o' me another one half a mile
high, an' then all of a sudden I came
'round a bend an' right in front o' me
wuz a cliff two miles high. I wuz trapped.
That's all they wuz to it — trapped, where
the devils couldn't help but get me."

Dead silence, as the old fellow fin
ished his story.

Some Dude always broke it with : ^* ^F mf, 11

"Well, what did they do to you ?"

Trembling with emotion, the old man
said: "By God, they killed me!"

Another whopper that always made a hit with the Dudes was the
story originally told by "Buffalo" Jones of how he saved the great
American bison from extinction. He galloped into the Yellowstone one
time, he said, to find the last of the bison being killed by the wolves and
the coyotes. In fact, they were all dead but a few calves, which the
wolves were just proceeding to kill.

"I roped eight calves and saved them," he asserted, "though the
wolves and the coyotes were surrounding us by the hundreds. As soon
as I got one calf, I tied my hat to it, knowing the brutes would never
touch anything tainted with the fresh scent of man. To the next calf I
tied my coat, to the next my vest, and so on, until I didn't have anything
on but my socks. When I had saved the eighth, I picked it up in my arms
and galloped back for the seventh, which was surrounded by wolves. I
then hurried back to the sixth and grabbed that calf just in the nick of
time. I tied the lasso around these calves and fastened the end to the
horse's neck and raced to the other calves and saved them again just in
time. The strain of saving them all was so great that I fainted, but just
then my boys came up and drove off the wolves and gave me some
whiskey and saved the calves again so that the buffalo was never entirely
wiped out."

It is a happy custom which has grown up in all of the national parks
for the Dudes and Sagebrushers to gather after dinner about the fire,
either in hotels, lodges, or in the private camps, for informal enter-

***** "Oh, Ranger!"

tainment, starting usually with singing and other musical entertainment
and then resolving into the evening discussions with the rangers sta
tioned near by. The rangers talk of the natural wonders, or of the wild
life, or sometimes tell tales on the Dudes and Sagebrushers themselves,
to their evident enjoyment. The evening fireside gathering has become
so popular in some of the parks that the rangers have built open-air
assemblies with logs for seats and bonfires for the stage lights. While
not as comfortable as the lobbies of the hotels, the campfires give an
added atmosphere. Many times the campfire lures prominent guests
away from the hotel for the evening. The firelight flickering on the
trees, the odor of burning pine, the witchery of the starry sky over
head, the comradery of the camp, combine to cast a spell over the visitor.

From every corner of the land they gather, swapping ideas, talking
over road conditions, telling their adventures and listening to those of
their new-found neighbors, or enjoying the impromptu entertainment
of a band of informal musicians. There is always somebody who can
do something under the spell of the campfire.

"I have met people here from every state in the union," exclaimed
President Harding after he had visited a number of these camps. "This
is a cross section of America. The country is turning to the national
parks for recreation. There are no finer playgrounds in the world."
Like many another observer, he was enraptured by the spirit, the fra
ternity, of the campfire "town meetings."

It has always seemed to the rangers that the Sagebrusher has the
advantage over the Dude in the enjoyment of this out-of-doors fun in
the national parks. The Dude seems always in a hurry, always trying
to keep up with an itinerary laid out for him by some railroad or travel
agent before he started. Seeking to give the Dude a fine, large travel
bargain for his time and money, the agents often hurry him through
the parks at a breath-taking clip. Mr. Dude may see more scenery in
that way, but he is forced to pass up a lot of the real fun of being in
the mountains — this life about the campfires, so colorful, so rich in
song and tradition, the chance to shake off the years and be young once
more for a few days or a few weeks.

The Dude is not the only visitor who does his sight-seeing fast. Not
long ago a ranger at the entrance to Rocky Mountain Park was telling
of some motorists who came to the checking station and asked :

"How long does it take to see this park?"

"You could do a good part of it in two days," said the ranger.

"Too long. We haven't time. Gimme a sticker, will you, so I can
prove I've been to Rocky Mountain."

This happens occasionally at all of the parks. Why such visitors
come, no one knows. Where they are going, no one knows — least of

Dudes and Sagebrushers * * * * 23

all they themselves. But these are the exceptions to the rule among
the Sagebrushers, who, having their own transportation facilities, are
inclined to take their vacationing more leisurely. Having no schedule,
they make the side trips, explore for fishing streams and lakes, stop
over a few days or a few weeks sometimes at a site that pleases their
fancy. The Sagebrushers have always been the nomads of the parks.

Sagebrushers derive their nickname from the early days when their
forerunners arrived at Yellowstone, Yosemite, and other older national
parks in covered wagons. Days on end they drove their horses or mules
across the plains, en route to the parks, camping each night in the sage
brush. Roads were bad, stores were few, and the early camper was
obliged to bring with him such comforts of home as he expected to
enjoy in the park. The trip was sufficiently strenuous and hazardous
that he stayed some time in the park, often a month or more. It took
the old-time Sagebrusher eight days to make the loop in Yellowstone.

The first Sagebrushers to forsake their covered wagons for the
noisy early automobiles were not very hospitably received at the gates
of the national parks. They were told to park their cars outside the
boundary lines, until in 1913 the first autos were permitted to enter
Yosemite Valley as an experiment. The authorities there were sus
picious of the little juggernauts. The owners were instructed to drive
them to the parking area in the center of the Valley, where the tiny
machines were chained to great logs. By heck, they were not going to
have any of those two cylinder buggies starting up and running away !

These stern restrictions quite naturally met with much protest on
the part of automobilists, particularly in California where the automo
bile clubs were growing strong. The main concern over the use of
automobiles was not for the safety of occupants of the machines but
for the safety of Dudes riding in stages whose horses might become
frightened at the automobiles. For a time, there was discussion of
building special roads to the parks for automobiles. This plan was
abandoned because of the expense, but in most of the parks certain
hours were set aside when automobiles could use the roads. During
these hours, the horse-drawn vehicles were ordered off the roads. Many
people who opposed the admission of autos insisted that the use of a
machine in the mountains was but a fad which would pass. The fad
has not yet passed, though authorities are now faced with a new prob
lem of the same nature, the admission of the airplane. The rangers
still deny planes permission to land in the parks on grounds of safety,
and the time may soon come when these worries may seem as unneces
sary as those of earlier officials with regard to the automobile.

The increase in travel to the national parks since the automobile
came into general use has been phenomenal. Twenty years ago a good

24 « * * * * "Oh, Ranger!"

season meant perhaps forty thousand visitors to the parks. Most of
them came by rail. Today the figure is three million visitors per season,
four out of five of whom come in private automobiles. The safety
record of the parks is truly remarkable. In the past fifteen years, almost
a million cars have driven to Yosemite Valley with but a single fatal
accident within the park. Where is there a city that can equal such a
traffic record ? In the other parks, accidents have been equally negligible.

The average motorist is more careful in his driving when he
reaches the narrow mountain roads. He knows the traffic regulations
are enforced by the rangers and he observes them. These regulations
are quite simple and are easily understood, even by motorists un
familiar with the trick of mountaineering in an automobile. The experi
enced mountain driver knows how to "play safe" on mountain roads.
He makes sure that his car is in good condition before starting for the
parks. Driving over mountain roads, on which there may be occasional
rough stretches, is a test of any car. At high elevations where the
atmosphere is thin the motor is under additional strain. It should be in
good tune for this extra work. It requires more gas per mile, inci
dentally.

The veteran Sagebrusher is not ashamed to use low gear in the
mountains. He uses it not only to go up hill, but to go down hill and
to hold the car back on the short level stretches where curves make it
unsafe to go faster than fifteen miles an hour. He knows that use of
compression to hold back the car on downhill stretches not only saves
his brakes but gives him an additional factor of safety in case of emer
gency. Yet it is surprising how many inexperienced mountain drivers
think that low gear is used only to start the car. The old-timer in
the mountains knows that fifteen miles per hour is a good speed on
curved roads, twenty to twenty-five is fast enough on the level stretches.
He never ventures into the mountains anywhere without a set of tire
chains. The occasional rains in the mountains may make the road wet
and slippery. The machine without chains is a menace not only to
its occupants, but to all others on the road. Yet no matter how often
the rangers repeat this counsel, some motorists prefer to learn the lesson
by experience.

From these remarks, the impression might be created that the roads
of the national parks are hazardous. The contrary is true, as the parks'
safety record would indicate. But in the mountains, when showers or
a brief snowfall may take place any time, roads sometimes become
slippery temporarily. The motorist with chains seldom has trouble.
The government has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars improving
the roads of the parks and has embarked upon a fifty-million-dollar
road-building schedule, but even paved roads, such as are now found in

Dudes and Sagebrushers

25

parts of Grand Canyon, Crater Lake, and Yosemite Park, will not elimi
nate the occasional need for chains.

It goes without saying that sight-seeing and driving never go well to
gether. The experienced mountain driver parks his car at the side of the
road so that others may pass easily, and then enjoys the scenery. It
would seem that this suggestion is unnecessary, but the beauties of the
park are distracting and the driver sometimes forgets to keep his eye
on the road. The driver who parks his car and leaves it should make
doubly sure that his brakes are set and
his car in low gear. Otherwise he may'
find himself in the position of a Sage-
brusher who visited Crater Lake recently.

This Sagebrusher left his car, a new
limousine of expensive make, on the rim
of the lake along with a dozen other cars,
while he walked down the trail to the
lake shore, a thousand feet below. While
returning he heard a crash, and looked
up to catch but a fleeting glimpse of an
automobile catapulting past him and crash
ing through the trees. It came to rest, a
total wreck, far below him. Returning to the rim, the Sagebrusher met a
party of Dudes to whom he narrated excitedly the fearful and wonder
ful story of the car that just missed him and had crashed on the rocks
below. Glancing about as he neared the end of his story, he said: "It
smashed into a big tree and — and — and, my Lord, it was mine !"

The experienced Sagebrusher never loads a half -ton car like a ten-
ton truck. The beginner often reaches the steep grades of the mountains
with luggage tied on both sides of the car, on the front, on the back,
with a bed spring on the top and goodness knows what inside the old
bus. Sometimes the women and children are literally buried in camping
equipment, while the driver himself can barely see the road ahead.
What any of them might see of the beauty spots along the roads is
often hidden by the marvelous collections of windshield stickers that
are the pride of so many amateur motorists. Some of these motorists,
with their cars laden with stoves, beds, groceries, and what not, would
never reach the parks were it not for the unfailing kindness of other
motorists.

Long experience has taught the rangers that the all-wool blanket is
the only kind to have in the mountains. In the summer time, when the
nights are cool but not cold, the ranger uses a sleeping bag with but one
double wool blanket in it. In the autumn, when he camps out at freez
ing temperature, he adds one more wool blanket around the sleeping

26 * * * * * "Oh, Ranger!"

bag but inside the oil-skin cover. Since showers are frequent up in the
mountains among the clouds, the rangers advise every Sagebrusher to
have his bedding in oiled silk or other waterproof cover. The warmest

place to sleep is on the ground. It may
take the tenderfoot some time to become
accustomed to sleeping on the hard
earth, but he will find that it requires
much less bedding than the air mat
tresses, army cots, or other ingenious
portable beds. Of course these com
forts are highly desirable, if they do not
overburden the car.

A list of necessities for the Sage
brusher who proposes to camp out in

v the parks would include the following:

S one light-weight tent; one oiled-silk

sleeping bag for each member of the party, or other good beds with
all-wool double blankets ; one gasoline camp cook stove, one frying pan,
two pots, a coffee pot, and a compact set of plates and utensils ; fishing
tackle, an axe, a shovel, a hot-water bottle, several yards of mosquito
netting, a flashlight with extra batteries, an emergency medical kit with
common remedies and bandages; a day's supply of food, to be re
plenished en route and increased in case of excursions into remote, un
settled areas ; a complete set of car tools, two spare tires, a tow rope,
and by all means a good set of tire chains.

That amount of equipment will see the average camper through in
fine shape. Of course as he goes along the Sagebrusher's inventive
ability will assert itself and from time to time he will devise new
wrinkles in camp equipment, until after a season or two the rangers will
be listening to him explaining how he enjoys "all the comforts of home."
Arriving at a national park boundary, the Sagebrusher will be re
ceived, registered, and checked in by a ranger at a station. This is for
the protection of the Sagebrusher, so that in an emergency the rangers
may find him and so that undesirables may be kept out of the park. This
registration is resented by some visitors, who feel that the rangers are
making undue inquiries when they ask the address, the occupation, the
name of the car, and other details. One question always asked is,
"Have you any firearms ?"

A young Sagebrusher at Mesa Verde Park, who found this regis
tration irksome, replied to this question angrily :

"Yes, of course, I carry matches. What do you think I am, a kid ?"

The rangers examine all guns, make sure they are not loaded, and

then seal them, so that no shooting can be done in the park. The guns

Dudes and Sagebrushers

27

must be checked out, still sealed. Most of the heavy artillery carried
into the parks is brought by visitors from the cities of the East. Start
ing the long trip for the wild and woolly West, they want to make sure
that they can at least die fighting if death
at the hands of the Indians or bandits or
bears is to be their fate. Westerners as a
rule do not carry firearms. Knowing the
West, they feel quite safe among the In
dians, the bad men, and the bears. The
New Yorker's impression of the West
undoubtedly is derived from hair-raising
adventure stories in the magazine thrillers
and in the conventional wild-west movies.
As a matter of fact, the easterner is much
safer in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, or
Hangtown, California, than he is on a
street corner in Chicago or New York.

From the ranger who checks him in, the Sagebrusher will receive
a free guidebook, map, and other literature prepared by the govern
ment for his benefit. The ranger is ready to answer questions and to
help plan the trip through the park. Occasionally a Sagebrusher ignores
this assistance, tosses his literature into the car and follows the next
fellow, who as like as not is wandering aimlessly. The rules and regu
lations of the parks are extremely simple and are made solely for the
purpose of protecting the park, the wild life, and the visitors. They can
be read in ten or fifteen minutes, after which another five minutes
spent in discussion with a ranger will enable the visitor to know where
the main attractions lie, where he can camp, which are one-way roads,
and where food and other supplies are available, or where he can find
meals and lodging and at what prices.

Ninety-nine out of every hundred visitors are quite in sympathy
with the simple and reasonable rules of conduct in the parks. They
are, in brief, as follows: Avoid speeding, never leave fires burning,
clean up campgrounds before leaving, don't tease the animals, never
carve names on trees or rock formations, leave the wild flowers for
others to see and enjoy, and in general help the rangers protect the
parks for the three millions who will be coming next year.

In the parks the motorist finds campsites cleared and prepared for
him. They are equipped with running water, rough tables, and sanitary
facilities, including flush toilets. Wood is available nearby. Some of
these campsites have fireplaces, for the first-comers at least, and nearby
are stores where supplies can be purchased, and in the larger parks,
cafeterias where meals are served at reasonable prices. Near many of

28 ***** "Oh, Ranger!"

these campsites are tents, already set up, to rent at ridiculously low
rates for housekeeping purposes. These tents are equipped with beds,
stoves, and tables, and all the Sagebrusher needs is his own bedding.
Each year the park engineers develop new campsites or increase the
capacity of the old ones. Each year the Sagebrushers demand still
more campsites.

It is a thrilling sight to visit the camp at Fishing Bridge, Yellow
stone National Park, or near Stoneman Meadow, Yosemite National
Park, or any of the dozens of others, and see from five hundred to a
thousand city folks busy with their little fires, the odor of a hundred
coffee pots and a hundred frying pans filled with bacon wafting across
the woods. Look into almost any camp and you will find fresh-caught
trout sizzling in the pans. Visit any of the scores of campfires after
supper and you will find half a dozen families swapping experiences
of the road.

A generation ago, camping out was a means of getting away from
the conveniences and conventionalities of home. It was the complete
change from civilization to primitive life, from niceties to hoboing. The
rougher the camping, the better. The camper wanted hardships, sought
them out. Not any more. Camping, to the average Sagebrusher, is
merely an economical means of traveling about the country, of seeing

the sights that formerly were available
only to the well-to-do, the Dudes. The
modern Sagebrusher wants a camp
that is almost as convenient as home.
Many of them have such camps. It is
an education in organization and in
housekeeping to see how some of these
camping layouts are planned and used.
That is one of the joys of Sagebrush-
ing, seeing how the other fellow lives,
just a few yards away from you be-
hind that clump of trees.

Nevertheless, and in spite of the
fun there is in campfire cooking, the
rangers say that the average family of Sagebrushers would enjoy them
selves more if they took advantage of the luxury of the cafeterias in
the national parks. That would relieve the women folks of the drudgery
of cooking and dishwashing, something the male Sagebrusher usually
avoids by declaring seriously that he must go out and provide the fam
ily with a mess of fish. The role of the provider is a complacent one.

Sagebrushers bound for the national parks or traveling in the parks
will do well to refuse rides to tramps, whether they be men or women.

Dudes and Sagebrushers

29

This observation applies to motoring anywhere at any time. Unless he
knows the person who begs for a ride, the motorist endangers himself
and his car. The newspapers are full of reports of kind-hearted motor
ists being killed or injured by tramps »
whom they kindly picked up for a ride on
their way; and there are many more
stories of cars being stolen by these bums.
It is no longer a rare occurrence for
women to steal cars from people who
have befriended them, and often these
days we hear of women hikers using guns
or knives in taking possession of cars and
their contents.

In the national parks the tramp is re
garded with suspicion. If he appears at
the gates afoot, he must produce a bedroll
or a roll of greenbacks with which to
rent a bed at the hotels or camps, or the rangers turn him back. The
same thing applies to women afoot. However, most of the tramps get
into the parks in the cars of the bona fide Sagebrushers, and the rangers'
problems arise usually when the bums seek beds or meals for which
they have no money to pay. Hotel, camp, and lodge owners in the parks
are authorized to give their night watchmen keys to vacant tents and
cabins, with instructions to examine them at different times during the
night, and if anyone is found therein to take very essential parts of any
clothing lying around to hold until the rangers can arrest the person
who is stealing a bed.

One morning the rangers had a call from Old Faithful that two
tramps had been caught in a cabin of the lodge there. Their trousers,
shoes, and hats had been taken by the night watchman and they had
come barefooted with blankets wrapped around them to the ranger
station to tell about their predicament. They were from good families
in Racine, Wisconsin, and were students of the state university. They
had plenty of good references. They wanted their clothes back. They
told this story: they had agreed to start from Madison with eight dol
lars apiece and go to San Diego on that amount, bumming rides, meals,
and lodging as they came west. They had not intended to include
Yellowstone Park in their itinerary, but upon arriving at Cheyenne they
begged a ride with a congenial party headed for the park and hastily
revised their plans. Upon arriving at the park gate, the crowded con
dition of the car, the evident feeling on the part of the owner that he
would like to get rid of his guests, and the registration of the two from
a town widely separated from the home of the car owner attracted the

30 ***** "Oh, Ranger!"

attention of the rangers, who made the boys get out of the car. As they
had only about three dollars apiece, the rangers told them to go back
to Cody or some other town and earn enough money to pay their way
through the park.

Of course, the young fellows simply went down the road, then
turned into the timber and walked into the park some distance from
the ranger station. Several times they thought they could have begged
rides, but rangers were always near by and they were afraid to stop
the cars. Motorcycle rangers still further increased their fears. They
had to spend their remaining dollars the first night in the park for
meals and lodging. They were broke when caught. They were told
that their bumming days for the present were over ; that they could do
one of three things: wire home for one hundred dollars apiece, then
leave the park ; go to work on road maintenance in the park at regular
wages and stay until they earned that much; or go before the judge
with a jail sentence for vagrancy certain to be imposed on them. They
finally decided to wire for money, which they received before the day
was over.

The park officials took occasion to lecture these boys, pointing out
that they were pursuing a course which was morally criminal. True,
they had not stolen anything which the law could punish them for ex
cept the bed in the lodge, but they had been stealing happiness from
people all the way from their college town, they had spoiled vacations
by crowding kind-hearted families, they had eaten food which other
people had paid for, they had slept in and perhaps impaired robes, extra
bedding, and other equipment which did not belong to them ; in short,
they had been thieves of a sort and that after all a thief is a thief no
matter what he steals and no matter whether the law can reach him or
not. This talk made an impression on the boys and they promised they
would never "bum" another ride as long as they lived.

One night at Yellowstone two attractive girls appealed to the rangers
for help. They claimed to be hikers but were broke and wanted to know
if there was any place provided by the government where they could
sleep. They said they were from Cleveland and had come thinking it
would be lots of fun to hike through the park. Asked how long it had
taken them to "hike" from Cleveland, they said eight days. Anybody
could tell by looking at them that the sun had never shone upon them
nor had their feet ever touched a dirt road. But here was a problem
that had to be solved, so the rangers called up the laundry and fortu
nately found that a few girls were needed. The two were sent to the
laundry to work until they could earn enough to travel.

This type of walker must not be confused, of course, with the legit
imate hiker, who comes to the national parks to spend his days afoot

Dudes and Sagebrushers * * * * 31

on trails, journeying from camp to camp and paying his own way, or
camping overnight with his own equipment carried on a burro. There
are thousands of miles of trails in the parks and six hundred miles of
them in one park, Yosemite, over which tens
of thousands of visitors, both Dudes and
Sagebrushers, tramp each year, to their
great enjoyment. In fact, the trails provide
the only way that many of the more beau
tiful spots in such parks as Yosemite, Gla
cier, Rocky Mountain, and Sequoia can be
reached, and along the Pacific Coast hiking
has become one of the most popular of
sports as well as a most healthful one. This
type of hiker is welcomed to the parks, for
he is almost invariably a true lover of the
mountains, appreciative of the opportunity
to hike that the national parks offer.

Tramping over the park trails one is struck by the great number
of women making the trail trips alone. Dressed in khaki outing suits,
with strong boots, their knapsacks strapped to their backs, they trudge
over the mountains from camp to camp, as safe as they would be in
their homes. During the summer months, the school teachers and other
feminine vacationists in the parks are so numerous that they far out
number the men. In most of the parks, for the benefit of women who
are traveling alone there are numerous walking parties under the charge
of ranger naturalists making the trail trips from the different camps.
In Yosemite, the concessioner company operates a chain of camps ex
tending through the High Sierra at strategic points along the trails
where the hiker or the trail rider may find food and lodging at a mini
mum of expense, thus relieving him of the burden of carrying a roll of
blankets or a pack of supplies. In Glacier Park chalets located on the
trails all through the mountains furnish the same type of service.

Trail riding is another recreation that adds to the fun of the Dude
or the Sagebrusher. At strategic locations in all of the parks, pack ani
mals and guides are available to take the visitor over the trails to the
remote attractions not reached by automobile roads. The horses and
mules used by the trail riders are trained for this type of work. Even
the novice at riding can manage them by allowing the animal to use his
own judgment in the matter of speed and in picking his way along a
narrow trail.

Many and peculiar, at times, are the incidents in the life of the
national parks. There is always something doing, for either the Dude
or the Sagebrusher. The main object of the parks, of course, is to pre-

32

'Oh, Ranger!"

serve the wonders of the parks for the enjoyment of the people. They
are the people's parks and the few regulations imposed by the rangers
are for the enjoyment of the visitors, present and future. The rangers
are deeply conscious of that fact and whether the tourist comes as a
Dude or a Sagebrusher, the ranger, wherever met, is at the service of
the visitor to help him find the hotel or lodge he seeks, or the campsite
he wants, or to tell him where to fish or how to reach a certain moun
tain or view a waterfall or find the trail to the big trees. The Dudes
and Sagebrushers number three million per year. The rangers number a
mere two hundred. Each ranger, then, must serve fifteen thousand
visitors a year. He does his best, but at times he is a bit rushed. Those
are the times when he needs the co-operation of the Dudes and Sage
brushers. Those are the times when he craves their patience and charity.

Speaking of Bears

"Oh, Ranger ! Where can I see a bear?"

The bears are, without doubt, the greatest single atttraction in the
parks, at least from the visitor's point of view. Geysers, waterfalls,
mountains, canyons, great trees centuries old, all fade into secondary
importance in the visitor's interest when a bear ambles into sight.
Furthermore, they remain of secondary interest as long as the bear con
tinues his antics. The rangers say that in Yosemite National Park a
visitor will look at Yosemite Falls, half a mile high, one minute and then
turn around and watch a bear one hour.

This amazing interest of the American public in bears goes back to
childhood days. Boys and girls are raised on bears. They are brought
up on Little Goldlilocks and the Three Bears, and numerous other bear
tales. Bears are no longer wild animals to us. They have become per
sonified. They are like people, and the visitors to the parks want to treat
them as such. That probably explains some of the foolish things people
try to do with the national park bears.

"Fooling a bear" is something that just shouldn't be done. We had a
bear in Yellowstone known as Mrs. Murphy. There had been several
complaints about Mrs. Murphy, who was accused of nipping visitors'
hands and feet, so a ranger was assigned to shadow her for a day and
see what was happening. He reported as follows :

One Sagebrusher, for the sake of a picture, held some bacon in his
mouth and coaxed the bear to remove said bacon from his mouth. He
got his picture and also escaped without injury. That Sagebrusher was
lucky.

Another tourist tried to make Mrs. Murphy jump for candy, like a
dog. Mrs. Murphy reached up, knocked the man's hand down so that
she could reach the candy. That frightened the tourist considerably, but
he escaped without injury. He, too, was lucky.

A Dude, with no candy or food, held out
his hand as though there were candy in it.
That made Mrs. Murphy angry and she
nipped the man on the toe. He retaliated
by kicking Mrs. Murphy on the nose,-
which is a bear's most sensitive spot. She
responded by whacking the Dude with her
paw. He was bruised but not badly hurt.
He was lucky.

Fully two score people fed Mrs. Murphy

33

34 * * * * * "OA, Ranger!"

and her cub that day in the proper way, by throwing candy to her, and
were entertained for hours by the bears with no incidents nor accidents.

The only innocent visitor to suffer injury was a Dude who, disre
garding a ranger's warning, insisted upon walking between Mrs. Mur
phy and her cub, to take a snapshot of the cub. Apparently believing
her cub in danger, Mrs. Murphy rushed the Dude, tore out the seat of
his ice-cream pants, and, as she thought, saved her cub. The Dude rode
the rest of the day in a blanket to seclude a certain blushing and over
exposed portion of his anatomy.

After receiving this report, the rangers decided that Mrs. Murphy
was no more guilty than the Dudes and Sagebrushers who attempted to
fool her with food that did not exist.

There are two kinds of bears in the national parks, grizzlies and
black bears. The grizzlies can be seen only in Yellowstone National
Park and occasionally in Glacier and Mount McKinley National parks.
Otherwise, they are almost extinct, being much prized by hunters and
trappers for their fine gray fur, tinged with silver tips. The grizzly is a
wonderful animal, perhaps the strongest and most ferocious beast of
the American forest.

Indirectly Yosemite National Park was named after the grizzly.
"Yo-semite" was the Indian word for "the Grizzly." It was chosen as
the tribe name following a valiant fight by a brave, who, single-handed
and unarmed, slew a ferocious grizzly on a trail near Yosemite Valley.
The Yosemites themselves were a fierce, warlike tribe, and they were
well named after the grizzly. It is greatly to be regretted that the grizzly
bear has entirely disappeared from Yosemite National Park, hunted
down and exterminated before the territory became a protected area.

Grizzlies are true animals of the forest. They avoid human habita
tions, roads, camps, and are seldom seen by the average visitor to the
national parks. At the Canyon in Yellowstone, as many as twenty-five
of them can be seen at dusk, feeding at the garbage pit. They are shy
and take to the forest upon sight of humans. This seems strange in view
of the fact that the grizzly is master of the forest. The other bears fear
him, and flee to the tree tops as soon as a grizzly approaches. The grizzly
cannot climb trees because his claws are too long to give him purchase
in the bark. The grizzly can be recognized by his broad head and by the
hump over his shoulders, as well as by the silver tips of his fur.

At the Canyon, two grizzlies, while but cubs, became separated frojn
their mothers and fell in with the black bears. From the black bears
they learned strange ways, including familiarity with humans. They
frequented the camps of the Sagebrushers and learned to beg, something
that a self-respecting grizzly will never do. These two grizzlies, as they
matured, have given the rangers some worry because a grizzly when

Bears raiding a garbage can in Yo Semite

Bear cubs in Yosemite Park

"This is the bedtime story hour, friends.
Once there was a bear . . . ."

Saturday night

Mount Rainier, from Tatoosh Range, Mount Rainier National Park

A view from Timberline Ridge in Mount Rainier National Park

Speaking of Bears * * * * * 35

"fooled" or provoked is a dangerous animal, and we have trembled to
think what they might do if some foolish tourist attempted to tease
them.

The black bears are the bears that most people know. In spite of the
popular belief to the contrary, there is no species known as the brown
bear. Black bears may be either blonds or brunettes, just as are humans.
The blonds of the bear family are brown, or cinnamon. There are
various color phases ranging from light brown or tan to the deep black.

The black bears are the clowns of the forest. They are full of tricks
and their antics never fail to give the Dudes and Sagebrushers a thrill.
After all, a bear does seem terribly human, and when he sits on his
haunches, his fore paws spread out before him, his head up like that of
a human, he almost invites you to talk to him. As a matter of fact, most
people do talk to the bears, just as though the animals could understand,
and the things that are said by the Dudes and Sagebrushers are as funny
to us as the bears must be to them.

"Come on, Mr. Bear, get some candy. That's right. Come on, right
over here, so we can take your picture. There it is. Here's another
piece ! Attaboy, nice bear ! Here's some more. No, don't come so close.
Stay over there, in the sun, where we can take your picture. Attaboy.
No, go on away, that's all the candy I have. G'wan away. That's all.
I tell you that's all there is !"

The bears have heard that particular line of thought so frequently
that they must know it by heart. The funny part of it is that no matter
how much the Dude denies he has more candy, the bear knows for sure
whether or not Mr. Dude is telling the truth. A bear has a marvelous
nose. His nose knows, and no fooling. If
the Dudes only realized this, they wouldn't
try to lie to the bears about having no
more candy.

It is this nose for candy, or nose for
bacon — almost equally tempting to a bear
— or the nose for ham, another great weak
ness with bruin, that leads the bears of the
national parks to break into motor cars
searching for food. They know when food
is left in a car. We warn Sagebrushers to
remove all food from their cars at night,
but occasionally the warning is forgotten or ignored, and then we re
ceive a complaint that a fine car has been scratched up or the window
smashed by a hungry bear. Out in Yosemite National Park the Sage
brushers have been talking of taking out bear insurance to cover this
form of damage to cars.

36

"OA, Ranger!'

Of course, Mr. Bear is just as likely to visit your camp if his nose
knows there is bacon about. The best way to be sure of your bacon,
when on a camping trip, is to hang it in a tree so small that the bear
cannot climb it. Large bears cannot climb small trees. They must choose
large ones, so that they can hug the trunk while they fasten their claws
into the bark.

Even this scheme is not always a sure way of protecting your meat
from the bears. One Yosemite ranger tells of seeing a mother bear try
ing to get a ham from a small tree which she could not climb. After
trying vainly to shake it down, she went into a huddle with her cubs.
In a short time one of the cubs climbed the little tree, chewed the ham
loose and knocked it to the ground. The old bear seized it and, with the
cubs scampering after her, raced off through the woods, elated over
prospect of a feast. About the only sure way the rangers have found to
keep a ham out of reach of bears is to suspend the meat on a rope half
way between two trees and high enough so that all a bear can do is sit

on his haunches and survey the pros
pective meal wistfully. After a while he
will amble off, growling to himself, "Sour
ham !" or words to that effect.

The easiest way to scare a bear is with
noise. Beat a tin pan or rattle some pans
in a pail and the bear will lose no time in
his retreat. Oftentimes this is more dis
astrous than the robbery. One of the
rangers, stationed at a lonely cabin, was
pestered so much at night by bears whose
noses knew of his bacon that he could
hardly sleep. He would be wakened by
their clawing and scratching at the door. Tiptoeing to the door, he would
throw a chunk of wood at them. They would scamper off in great haste,
apparently frightened to death. In an hour, their noses would lead them
back, lured by the scent of bacon. Finally, the ranger hung up a pail,
rilled with tin cans, pans, and other metal objects, adjusting it with a
trigger which the bears themselves would set off with their clawing.
The device worked so well that when the pail, pans, and cans came clat
tering to the ground the bears took away the whole railing of the cabin
porch in their hurry. But they never came back.

It is never a good plan to go out and give the bothersome bear a kick
on the tail. In the first place, a bear has no tail to speak of and in the
second place he may resent the ceremony. A ranger in Rainier Park tells
the story of a little bear that had been pestering him about the cabin,
knocking over the garbage pail every night. Finally the ranger lost

Speaking of Bears

37

patience and planned to punish the little bruin. The next night, hearing
the customary crash outside, he went out with vengeance in his eye. All
he could see was the tail end of a bear protruding from a large garbage
can. Apparently, bruin was stuck in the
can. The ranger was about to take ad
vantage of the unique opportunity to
spank the bear when the latter got loose
from the garbage can and stood up. In
stead of the little bear he had expected it
was a big fellow six feet tall in his stock
ing feet. The ranger immediately aban
doned the idea of spanking the bear !

This same ranger tells of tracking a
mother bear and three cute cubs through
the woods for miles, trying to take a pic
ture of them. They refused to leave the
dark woods in which picture taking was an impossibility. The mother
bear preceded her cubs, tearing bark from trees and overturning rotten
logs, while the cubs hungrily hunted in the bark and decayed wood for
grubs, ants, and other choice morsels of food. Finally she tore the bark
off a dead hemlock near the edge of the woods, then hustled her family
out into the long grass of the meadow where she and the cubs rolled
over and over in the grass. This was just the opportunity the ranger
wanted for his picture. Hurrying to the edge of the woods, he took
position and focused his camera. He didn't focus long. Out of the
hemlock tree trunk, abandoned by the bears, there buzzed a swarm of
angry hornets. The bears were rolling to shake off the attacks of the
vindictive insects whose home they had wrecked.

As a rule, bears do not visit camps or cabins when the occupants are
about. They have learned that Sagebrushers and racket are closely akin,
and in order to avoid the racket they avoid the Sagebrushers as well.
The establishment of the bear pits in all of the national parks where
bears are common has helped to keep them away from the camps and
cabins. A bear's apparent object in life during the summer is to eat
enough to make up for the six months of winter when he is fasting, and
Mr. Bear knows he can eat a lot more in an eight-hour day if he eats
"combination salad" at the bear pits than he can if he nibbles at tidbits
stolen from campers.

"Combination salad" a la bruin is the edible food from the kitchens
of the hotels and camps, which is dumped in enormous piles at the pa
vilions of the bear pits. Around these pits are built fences to keep the
visitors at a safe distance, not so much to protect the people from the
bears as to protect the bears from the people. That recalls the remark

38

fOh, Ranger!'

of a ranger at Old Faithful, in response to the question of a Dude as to
why the ranger carried a high-powered rifle.

"Is that to shoot the bears if they bother the people?" he asked.
"Naw, it's to shoot the people if they bother the bears," wise-cracked
the ranger. "Every now an' then I have to shoot a few people."
You should have seen that Dude's jaw drop.

The facts are, we have a rifle there as a safety-first proposition.
Sometimes as many as two dozen bears will gather at the "combination
salad" plate at one time. The rule in Beardom is that the biggest bears
can eat all they want first, then the next sized bears come along, and so
on, until if there is anything left the little fellows can have some. Some
times there is a difference of opinion among the big fellows as to who
is biggest and first, and if they got to fighting it might be dangerous to
visitors to the park, particularly when several hundred of them are
crowded around the inclosure. When a bear takes a notion to make a
get-away, he goes. He doesn't look to see if people are in the way.

Ranger Arthur Chapman, Jr., son of the author of "Out Where the
West Begins," tells of an amusing adventure at the Old Faithful "salad
bowl" one time when one of these little bears grew tired of waiting for
the old ones to finish eating. He was hungry and the salad was disap
pearing at an alarming rate into the mouths of three huge bears wal
lowing improvidently in the middle of the bowl. The little bear, con
trary to his usual policy of waiting patiently on the woods side of the
pit, came around to the side the people were on, where there were a lot
of cans and pans between the spectators and the pit. He walked slowly
to a pile of tin cans about fifty feet from the bears, fanned his anger

into a frenzy, slammed cans noisily in
every direction, growled loud enough to
be mistaken for half a dozen bears, and
charged across more cans at the "salad
bowl."

The suddenness and the noise of his
attack frightened the big bears, who ran
off to the woods, perhaps fearing the ar
rival of a grizzly. They left the "salad" to
the victorious little bear, who ate greedily.
On the following evening, he attempted
to duplicate his bluff. This time the big
bears were wise. Instead of running, they charged at the little bear. It
was his turn to beat a fast retreat. He ran straight for the crowd of
people watching the bears from the railing around the pit. It looked as
if the time had come for the ranger to use the rifle, what with those
angry big bears tearing after that little fellow and all headed for a crowd

Speaking of Bears * * * * * 39

of people. Fortunately, the big bears stopped their pursuit suddenly and
returned to their feast. Only the little bear ran into the crowd, which,
in less time than it takes to tell it, faded away leaving a lane for his
escape.

In Yosemite National Park the bear pits are located some distance
from the camps and lodges and the feeding of the bears is made a great
event. In the evening just after dark, Dudes in motor stages and Sage-
brushers in their own cars drive to a spot along the Merced River. All
is quiet and dark. Suddenly the lights are flashed on across the river,
revealing the "salad bowl," with anywhere from half a dozen to a score
of bears growling and feeding as the bear man dumps numerous garbage
cans of supper for them. A tree stump in the middle of the platform
is painted with syrup each evening, and there is great rivalry among
the bears to get at this. Bears are like little boys in one respect — they
prefer desserts to entrees, any day.

An odd impasse between the Yosemite bears and the Yosemite au
thorities came about a short time ago when a new garbage incinerator
was installed in the park. It was decided that henceforth the garbage
would go to the incinerator, instead of to the "salad bowl," and the
bears became real cantankerous as a result. They raided camps, stole
from the store and the market, and banged garbage cans around fero
ciously each night, raising havoc in general. The newspapers on the
Pacific Coast took up the issue for the bears in their news and editorial
columns, insisting that the Yosemite bears were on strike and that they
were resorting to sabotage as a protest against the new incinerator.
Reporters created the fiction of a bear's union known as "The Amalga
mated Brotherhood of Black, Brown, and Cinnamon Bears," and pub
lished daily telegraphic reports of the strike activities.

Public interest in the matter was great, and the rangers received
dozens of letters from newspaper readers protesting against the out
rageous treatment of the bears. We finally wrote to Superintendent
Lewis of Yosemite, offering to give the Yosemite bears plenty of garbage
and an eight-hour day if he would send them up to Yellowstone. After
that, the Yosemite authorities relented and restored the "salad bowl,"
and the end of the strike was hailed generally as a great victory for the
Amalgamated Brotherhood of Black, Brown, and Cinnamon Bears.

Bears are always doing unexpected and perverse things. That is
one of the reasons they seem so human. There is always a surprise in a
bear. There is always some play in him. He loves to fool somebody
else, but he doesn't like to be fooled himself. That is human. He wants
his own way. He has his moods when he is sulky, when he is friendly,
or when he is just plain ornery. The way to a bear's heart is through his
stomach, the female of the species being just as susceptible in this

40

'Oh, Ranger!"

as the male. Another human attribute, poets to the contrary! When
a bear is hungry he is cross. When he is full of "salad" he is sleepy ;
when he is eating he doesn't want to be bothered. So there you are !

One of the funniest things in the
world is a bear with a bottle of syrup. He
will act for all the world like a drunken
sailor, in full sail, as he wobbles about
trying to get the syrup out of the bottle
and into his mouth. The rangers at Se
quoia Park tell of a bear that stole a bottle
of vanilla from a camp and actually found

0 ^H^HHfe tne flavoring so potent that it interfered
6 in with his faculties. Trying to find his way

home, this bear walked head on into a
two-thousand-year-old sequoia tree. Un
abashed, he tried to push the tree out of
the way. The sequoia stood pat, and it required some assistance from
the rangers to get the hilarious bear back on the trail again.

Sagebrushers at Mammoth Auto Camp in Yellowstone awoke one
morning to find a bear sitting on the limb of a tree with his head caught
fast in a hole in the tree. He had attempted to steal the squirrels' winter
supply of nuts and bread crumbs, and in working his head around in
the hole probably caused his head to swell a little. Anyway he could
not get it out, and there he was on the limb of the tree with no chance
of extrication except with human help. A ranger climbed the tree and
got above the bear's head, and carefully chopped the hole larger, until
bruin toppled from the limb with a resounding bump. With a "woof,
woof," he was off through the timber.

Occasionally tame bears are given to the rangers by people outside
the park who have raised them from tiny cubs. They either grow too
big for family pets or the people owning them wish to move and cannot
take their bears with them. About two years ago, a lady brought two
bears over to Yellowstone. They were four years old and big fellows,
one black, the other brown. She wanted them liberated in the park to
live happily until the natural end of their lives. We found, however,
that she had been too successful in taming them. They did not want to
be wild bears again. They were just like dogs. We had to build a pen
for them to keep them out of the lobby of the hotel, or from eating off
the dining-room tables. When winter came, the chief ranger built a
little log cabin in the pen for them to use for hibernation. It had one
small door in the end. One day while he was inside the cabin chinking
it to keep out wind and snow, one of the bears walked in, thus blocking
the door. It took the chief about half an hour to coax the bear to go

Speaking of Bears * * * * * 41

out, so that he himself could turn around and escape. After that the
chief closed the door when he entered the bear's house.

The life of a bear in his natural state is full of paradoxes. He is
born while the mother is in hibernation, in a close, evil-smelling, almost
air-tight cave. She is asleep, not as sleep is ordinarily known, but in a
state of coma, almost lifeless, barely breathing. She has been asleep for
three or four months, with all normal functions of her body suspended.
New-born bears are tiny, hairless little things, no larger than squirrels.
They snuggle up in the warm hair of the sleeping mother bear's breast,
and there they suckle and slumber, growing a little, acquiring a coat of
fur. When she awakes in the spring, they are perhaps a month old. She
is weak and mangy as she leaves the cave in search of food. She leaves
the little ones in hiding in the cave for two weeks or a month longer.

All bears hibernate, of course, males as well as females. The latter
seem to suffer no more from their long fast than do the males, in spite
of the strain of bearing the young and feeding them a month on reserve
strength from the last summer's food. One would think that the raven
ous bear, fresh from hibernation, would eat everything in sight. But
that is not the case. The bears spurn the food proffered by human
friends for a month or more, rooting in the forest for certain herbs,
roots, and natural food which their appetites crave. Then they are ready
for the long-distance championship salad-eating contest.

The little bears seem to grow before your eyes, once they are brought
from the cave by the mother bear. They are soft, fluffy, lively, the
cutest little animals alive. No wonder they are so popular with the
camera fans ! No wonder, now and then,
a visiting Dude forgets the invariable rule
of the mother bear that no one shall come
between herself and her babes! No
wonder the Dudes and Sagebrushers love
to watch those little fellows going through
that first year of schooling under the
coaxing, the guiding, and the spanking of
the mother bear.

About the first thing the little bears
must learn to do is to climb trees and to
climb them fast, for safety's sake. The
black bear's main worry is the grizzly,
and the only sure way to avoid a grizzly is to climb a tree. More than
once the rangers have seen a grizzly approach a "salad bowl" and
watched the black bears scamper to tree tops, where they patiently sit
until the grizzly has eaten his fill. You would think to look at them that
the black bears were up in the trees from choice, so utterly oblivious are

42 * ***** "Oh, Ranger!"

they to the actions of the grizzly. However, as soon as Mr. Grizzly
leaves the bowl the other bears come down from the tree tops in a
hurry, to take his place at the feast.

A bear up a tree never fails to excite
;the curiosity of the Dudes and the Sage-
'brushers. They form a circle around the
tree, with cameras pointed upward, and
hundreds of films are exposed for a pic
ture which, unfortunately, is seldom a
success. The bear is generally too high
for good pictures or he is shaded by the
foliage of the tree, and the most the pic
ture will show is a shapeless black spot
which must be pointed out and explained.
"That's the bear I shot in Yellow
stone," they'll tell you later, proudly dis
playing a picture. "See that black spot? Well, that's the bear."

The bear cubs are often elected to the task of climbing the trees to
shake down nuts and fruit to the mother bear. After she has eaten all
summer, the old bear begins to fatten and she is careful about climbing
trees for fear the limbs will break. Then is when she makes the cubs do
the work. In Yosemite especially have the mother bears worked this out
to a fine science. Some of the early settlers in Yosemite planted apple
trees about the valley, long before it became a national park. Every
autumn the cubs are sent up these apple trees to knock fruit down to the
mothers. Whenever a cub falls down on the job or returns to the
ground to eat some apples himself, he is cuffed and sent crying back to
the tree top. Not until the parent is fully satiated with apples can the
cubs take their turn at eating.

Dudes are always asking about the private life of the father bears.
Are they faithful husbands? Are they good providers? Do they do the
spanking of the cubs, as in the case of humans ? And so forth.

We dislike to expose the weaknesses of the national park bears, but
candor forces us to admit that the father bears are not much account
as such. As for their family life, it just isn't. The males hibernate in
separate apartments, or dens, all winter long. They are not present when
the young are born. They don't even send flowers. The little cubs prob
ably never know who is their father, unless perchance the mother bear
should meet him and introduce him to his offspring sometime during
that first summer. The mother bear takes the cubs to her den during
their first winter in hibernation. But once the winter is over she is tired
of them, and she chases them away to forage for themselves as soon as
spring comes. After that the cubs are not on speaking terms with

Speaking of Bears

43

either mother or father. No wonder they turn to the Dudes and Sage-
brushers for kindness and candy !

It is strange indeed that the bears should prosper and increase in num
bers under these harsh conditions of
youth. But they do. They are increas-
ing so rapidly in Yellowstone that it is
becoming a problem to know how to
handle them all. Bears are sluggish,
easy-going creatures, but they are quick
to learn. The hold-up bears are an ex
ample. A few years ago a bear we called
Jesse James learned that by stopping
automobiles on the road he could be
fairly sure of a hand-out, some candy or
cookies, or food of some kind. Other
bears were quick to learn the same trick,
and now there are a score of hold-up bears in the park.

One of the hold-up bears gave birth, not long ago, to two cubs which
were named Tom and Jerry, after due consideration by the rangers.
These cubs had the makings of two of the biggest rascals in the park.
They were full of fun, their antics always attracting the Dudes and the
Sagebrushers. The cubs learned the hold-up business when quite young,
and their business was so profitable that the mother bear stayed with
them the second summer, contrary to the usual custom. Apparently she
hesitated to part from her prosperous and successful offspring. We
wondered how long she would stay with them and whether Tom and
Jerry would stand by their mother, as all good young bears do in the
story-books but don't in the national parks. We were not long waiting
for an answer, for the next summer cub Jerry showed up with her own
cubs, and the rangers had hastily to change the name to Geraldine.

In the spring, the park superintendents come in for considerable
criticism because of the unkempt appearance of the bears. Early one
season a woman visitor asked to be taken to see a bear. A ranger helped
her find one. The bear they located was as thin as a rail. His skin
seemed to hang like a big loose sack on him. One side of him was en
tirely without fur. The vermin got into it during the winter and ate it
off. One eye was closed. He was cross and mean. He certainly looked
like the morning after a terrible night out. The visitor was quite dis
gusted.

"Well, when I want to see a bear next time, I shall go to Bronx Zoo,"
she said. "We have bears that look like bears. This one looks like he had
three feet in the grave !"

If she could have seen that same bear three months later, she would

44

"OA, Ranger!"

never have recognized him. His fur was thick and soft, he was sleek
and fat, his disposition was made over. He was a changed animal. That
literally is what happens to the bears of the mountains in the summer.
They eat enough to replace the exhausted tissues, they grow new fur,
they are almost new bears by the time the tourist season closes. Folks
who want to see the bears at their best should see them during the late
summer or the early autumn.

The greatest collection of bears in any national park is in Yellow
stone, where we have both the grizzly and the black bear. Both can be
seen easily. In Glacier National Park there are grizzlies and blacks, but
the grizzlies are not so easily seen. Yosemite National Park has a great
many black bears, and they are very tame and easily seen and photo
graphed. Sequoia National Park has some fine black bears and possibly
a few grizzlies, one having been seen recently. Rainier National Park
has black bears, as have Crater Lake, Lassen, and Rocky Mountain Na
tional parks. There are no bears at Grand Canyon, Bryce, or Zion parks.
One of the early bear stories that caught the fancy of folks was the
story of Buffalo Jones and the bad grizzly. Buffalo Jones was one of
our early scouts, a genuine man of the mountains, later appointed chief
gamekeeper of Yellowstone. He was annoyed by a certain big grizzly
that persisted in robbing camps. Buffalo Jones was authorized to dis
cipline the grizzly, but was admonished not to injure the animal. It
puzzled the old scout considerably. He scratched his head and tried
to think how he could punish the bear and still not hurt him. Finally,
he rigged up a noose, caught the grizzly on one of his prowling expedi
tions, drew the rope tight under the bear's fore paws and around his
shoulders, and pulled the rope over the limb of a tree. With the grizzly
suspended a few inches off the ground, in a helpless position, Buffalo
Jones proceeded to spank the bear as one would spank a bad boy. The
grizzly yelped and whined until he was let down to the ground. Then
he made a bee-line for the woods and was never seen around camp again.
We have often thought of offering complaining Dudes the oppor
tunity to spank the bears that they wanted
shot, on condition that they capture the
bears as did Buffalo Jones. Not long ago,
when the man who dumped the "salad" at
the Canyon complained that a bear had bit
ten him and insisted that the animal be
punished, the rangers said, "Point out the
guilty bear and we'll punish him."

Just then a bear came out of the woods.
"There he is," said the man. "That's the
one that chewed me."

Speaking of Bears « * * * * 45

"No, it's this fellow over here," insisted his companion, as another
bear approached on the opposite side.

They fell into a heated argument as to which was the bad bear.

"Well, we can't shoot all the bears," the rangers told them. "First
you'll have to get the evidence to convict the bear."

A bear is presumed to be innocent until proved guilty. The rangers
call the witnesses against the bear and question them about the alleged
damage or injury, then seek to establish the identity of the bear. If the
bear can positively be identified by the complaining witnesses, and there
is general agreement on one bear, the bear is in a fair way to be con
victed, but if, as almost always happens, the witnesses cannot agree on
the identity of the bear, the rangers refuse to touch any bear or hold any
one bear responsible for the trouble.

One time a big ranger of Scandinavian birth was sent to investigate
a series of complaints against "a big brown bear" made by the boss of a
road camp. It was alleged that the bear had stolen a ham ; that he had
torn open a case of maple syrup and had clawed holes in every can and
drained them of their contents ; that he had sneaked into the kitchen and
eaten a large pan of applesauce which was to have been dessert at sup
per, and had also eaten up all the stewed dried peaches that had been
cooked for breakfast ; that he had taken one overshoe from each of three
workmen while they were eating dinner, and had committed other
felonies. There were fully ten other counts in the indictment.

The ranger called the crew together and told them that he had the
instructions and power to run the bear out of the country if he could
be identified. Just then a big brown bear ambled across the open in
front of the assembled group. One man excitedly pointed him out,
"there he is now," but several said that was not the bear. A few mo
ments later, two other bears were seen walking around a nearby build
ing. One of them was declared to be the bear. But this bear was
eliminated from consideration right away by other men who claimed
positively that he was a good bear who had never harmed anybody or
anything. While the investigation went
on a half-dozen bears came around, but
each had as many defenders as he had ac
cusers. No more than two men could
agree on any one big brown bear. It was
certainly a "hung jury." Finally the
ranger became disgusted and declared,
with Scandinavian accent, "Ya can all
come to blazes, ya don't know which
bear ya mean and none of 'em will be
touched !"

46 * * * * * "OA, Ranger!"

Illustrating the intelligence of bears, Ranger Chapman tells the story
of Betsy, the big black bear that used to come to the back door of the
mess house when the cook called. The cook used to give Betsy a pail full
of scraps with the admonition to "bring the pail back." Half an hour
later, Betsy would come back out of the woods, the handle of the empty
pail in her jaws. "I won't claim that she washed and dried the pail after
each meal, but she never failed to bring it back," says Chapman.

Lest the impression be created by these remarks about our bears that
they are the scavengers of the forests, let us consider the bear's diet. As
a matter of fact, bears are omnivorous. They will eat almost anything.
Garbage meets with their entire approval, once they have adjusted their
stomachs to rough food by eating certain roots and herbs after coming
from hibernation. But the bears lived in Yellowstone long before the
advent of the hotels and camps and the "combination salad." They eat
berries, green grass, bulbs, and certain wild flowers, such as dogtooth
violets, snow lilies, and spring beauties. They are not too fastidious to
eat wild onions. They like nuts. A mouse or a gopher or a trout is a
relished tidbit, and ants and ant eggs make fine hors-d'oeuvre.

To see a bear amble along, one would think he is too slow to catch
these little animals. Yet a bear can show the most amazing bursts of

speed, when occasion demands. Trout
fishing is an example. Mr. Bear lies on
the bank of a trout stream, one paw idling
in the water, to all intents and purposes
sound asleep. Suddenly like lightning
comes a flash of his paw, and a trout is
flopping on the grassy bank, and a thor
oughly alert bear is licking his chops in
contemplation of fish for supper.

It has been but a few years since the
bears of the national parks were harassed
by visitors and regarded as menaces.
When the National Park Service was
formed, it was decided to exclude dogs
from the parks. That was really the beginning of the era of friendship
between mankind and the bears. The rangers were criticized then, and
still are for that matter, for permitting the bears to roam at large
through the parks. Now, of course, there would be a tremendous pro
test from the public if we did anything to interfere with the opportunity
to see the bears. The Dudes and the Sagebrushers demand their bears.
The present generation has been raised on bear stories, and real, live bears
give them the thrill of their vacation. That is why they are the greatest
single attraction in the national parks.

Wild Animals You May Know

"As I watched the wild life of the park today, unconcerned and
unmindful of the human beings about them, manifesting their confidence
in the security of the situation, I thought how helpful it would be to
humankind if we could have a like confidence in one another in all the
relations of life."

President Harding, who made the foregoing observation following
a visit to Yellowstone Park, is not the only visitor who has thrilled at
this neighborliness of the animals of the national parks. Having no one
to fear, other than their natural enemies of the forest, the other animals
have followed the lead of the bears and made friends with mankind.

Though the bears have been the favorites of the Dudes and the
Sagebrushers, they are by no means the most numerous of the wild
animals of the parks. In all the parks together there are probably not
more than a thousand bears, of which perhaps two hundred are grizzlies,
the latter found only in Yellowstone, Mount McKinley, and Glacier
parks. On the other hand, there are more than thirty thousand deer,
scattered through all the parks. In Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, and
Wind Cave together there are eight hundred antelopes. In Yellowstone,
Glacier, Rocky Mountain, and Yosemite parks there are twenty thou
sand elk. In Glacier and Mount Rainier there are two thousand moun
tain goats. In Glacier, Mount McKinley, and Yellowstone parks there
are seven to eight hundred moose. In Mount McKinley, Glacier, Yel
lowstone, Rocky Mountain, and Grand Canyon parks are perhaps
seventy-five hundred mountain sheep. And so on. Of smaller animals
and birds there are countless legions, well distributed through all the
parks. The rangers are often asked how they know how many wild
animals there are in the parks.

"We go out and count them," is the answer. Dudes usually take
that to be a joke and laugh. The rangers do take a census of the
animals each year, and the job is no joke.
It is not as impossible as it sounds, for
the reason that many of the wild animals
congregate in the wintertime, when the
snows are deep, in certain sheltered areas
where the rangers provide them with
food. Quite true, the count is not en
tirely complete, but is sufficiently so to
enable the rangers to estimate the number
of animals each winter, so that they know

47

48 ***** "Oh, Ranger!"

whether or not the wild life is prospering and increasing. Caring for
the wild life, providing it with food in the wintertime and protecting
fur-bearing animals from poachers, is one of the major jobs of the
rangers, authorized in the organic acts creating the national parks.
Since civilization has driven the wild animals out of their natural winter
feeding grounds at the lower levels outside the parks, the rangers must
not only protect the animals but in many instances must provide them
with food through the long winters.

Next to the bears, the wild animal of the greatest interest to visitors
is the buffalo, found only in Yellowstone Park except for a small herd
recently introduced at Wind Cave Park. Some curious mistaken im
pressions prevail regarding the buffalo. Nearly everybody thinks the
buffalo is virtually extinct. Every visitor to Yellowstone wants to see
a buffalo before the last of the Thundering Herd has passed to the
Great Beyond.

"How many are there left?" they inquire solicitously.

"Oh, there were about a thousand last season and there are a couple
of hundred calves born each year," the rangers explain. "They're in
creasing so fast we have a hard time finding feed for them. We are
trying to give away some of them. Can you use a nice buffalo ?"

This strikes most people as astounding. The effective publicity of
the conservationists, which actually did save the buffalo from extinction
a generation or two ago, has created an interest in and a sympathy for
the buffalo that is nation-wide. The number of buffaloes today is piti
fully small compared to the vast herds that blackened the plains in
the days of the 'Forty-niners. But there are several fine herds in exis
tence and they are increasing all too rapidly for the peace of mind of
their custodians. A buffalo is a huge animal, with a voracious appetite.
He weighs a ton and it takes nearly a ton of hay each year to feed him.
Finding forage for a thousand buffaloes is a serious problem in a national
park where the grazing lands are limited in area. Rather than deny
the park buffaloes sufficient food, it has been the policy to give buffaloes
to zoological gardens, city parks, or private owners who have the land on
which to graze small herds.

Owners of some of the private herds, finding their buffaloes increas
ing too rapidly, conceived the idea of selling buffalo meat to give
present-day Americans a chance to enjoy a taste of the food that was
so important to the Indians and to the pioneer settlers of the West. It
could not be sold ! Sympathy for the poor buffalo had ruined the mar
ket for the meat. A railroad, traversing the great buffalo country,
undertook to popularize the delicacy on its trains, and met with the
same opposition. In Canada, where public officials found it necessary
to curtail the natural increase of the most numerous buffalo herd in

Wild Animals You May Know * * * 49

the world, the government was obliged to reduce the buffalo meat to
pemmican, by drying, and furnish it to hunters and trappers of the
Hudson Bay region. The Canadians have been more successful in
popularizing the buffalo steak on the Western trains serving their na
tional parks.

This keen public sympathy for the buffalo dates back to the early
'nineties, when Americans first became thoroughly aroused over the fate
of the bison. The American Bison Society, and other organizations, as
well as several magazines, undertook to save the buffalo from extinc
tion, which at that time seemed practically inevitable. The late Emerson
Hough, representing Forest and Stream, sent by George Bird Grinnell,
famous editor of that magazine, visited the Yellowstone in the dead of
winter in 1894, just at the time that Scout Burgess caught Ed Ho well,
the notorious poacher, in the act of skinning some buffaloes he had killed
in the park. Because of the inadequacy of the laws protecting the buf
falo, the only punishment that the rangers inflicted was to eject Howell
from the park, after which he returned to his poaching. This thor
oughly aroused both Grinnell and Hough. In a series of articles and
editorials, these two writers warned the nation of the passing of the
buffalo. Congress was moved to legislate in 1894 for the punishment
of poachers in Yellowstone. In 1901 a sum of $15,000 was set aside to
establish a new herd of buffaloes in that park.

By that time, the herd in Yellowstone had been reduced by avari
cious poachers to twenty-two animals roaming wild in the park, four
held in captivity at the lake by E. C. Waters, operator of a boat line,
and four more at Henry's Lake, captured and saved by R. W. Rock.
The only other wild buffaloes were fifty animals at large in northern
Colorado. These were subsequently wiped out by poachers. There
were, however, two fair-sized herds in captivity outside the parks, one
in Texas, known as the Goodnight Herd, and another in Montana, the
Pablo-Allard Herd. The latter was subsequently sold to the Dominion
of Canada and established in the Canadian national parks. There were
a few small herds in city parks and some buffaloes running wild in
Canada. The total number of buffaloes in the world was estimated at
sixteen hundred.

The turning point for the Yellowstone buffalo was 1902, when
Colonel C. J. ("Buffalo") Jones arrived in the park to serve as game
warden. He negotiated the purchase of eighteen buffalo cows from the
Pablo-Allard Herd and they were delivered at Mammoth by Howard
Eaton, the famous Wyoming guide. "Buffalo" Jones went to Texas and
brought back three bulls from the Goodnight Herd. Two calves were
captured from the wild herd on the Lamar River. This gave the park
three strains of blood for the little herd at Mammoth that grew into

50 ***** "Oh, Ranger!"

Yellowstone's now famous Thundering Herd. The park buffaloes actu
ally served in the filming of the motion picture of that name.

By 1911 the so-called tame herd, which was not tame at all except
that it was provided with hay in winter and was kept under control by
the gamekeeper, had increased to 147 animals. In that year, hemorrhagic
septicemia attacked some of the younger animals and fifteen per cent
died. It was then that the rangers began vaccinating the buffaloes. Dudes
and Sageb rushers think this is another joke. Quite the contrary ! Three
times the disease has threatened the herd and each time it has been
checked by vaccination. One of the really strenuous jobs for the
ranger, when he has nothing to do until tomorrow, is rounding up the
buffalo calves, herding them into a corral, and vaccinating them with a
serum developed by the United States Bureau of Animal Industry.

The Yellowstone herds are thriving. The "tame" herd has long
since outgrown the quarters at Mammoth and is located on the Lamar
River, except for a few specimens kept in the corral at Mammoth where
visitors can see them easily. This herd numbers more than nine hun
dred animals and would now have exceeded a thousand in strength had
not a considerable number of buffaloes been given away. The wild herd,
numbering around one hundred animals, roams the eastern section of the
park. It has never been under any kind of control. To feed the Yellow
stone buffaloes through the winter, it is necessary to raise a thousand tons
of hay each year on ranches within the park. If the rangers did not
feed the buffaloes they would range out of the park when the snows are
heavy. Once in a while a buffalo will do that. One day the rangers
received a frantic long-distance phone call from one of the town offi
cials of Gardiner, Montana.

"Say, come down and get your buffaloes, will you?" he urged anx
iously. "Two are loose in our main street and business is at a standstill.
It's serious !"

The situation in Gardiner, as the rangers found it, was not only
serious but funny. Two big buffalo bulls were parading up and down

the main street. Not another creature
was stirring. Every door was closed,
every store was empty, every window
was full of faces peering apprehensively
at the new bosses of the town. There
was a sigh of relief when the rangers
drove the buffaloes back to the park.
Then Gardiner -came to life again.

In 1923, Congress authorized the park
service to give away surplus buffaloes to
zoos, parks, and private individuals who

Wild Animals You May Know

51

had the proper facilities for handling them. When this announcement
was made through the press, the rangers received a flood of inquiries
from people interested in buffaloes. Some of them were quite humorous,
indicating the hazy notions that people have about the size and habits
of the buffalo.

One little girl wrote from New York asking for a "cute, gentle little
buffalo to play with." Two boys wanted a calf apiece as pets. One
farmer from Nebraska wrote for some buffaloes to entertain his guests
on Sundays. "It's kind of quiet around here," he said. "We're great
hands to entertain and we'd like a couple of buffaloes." A man from
Georgia sent a check for shipment of three buffaloes, then wired, just
before they were caught, to withhold shipment. "My wife has convinced
me that with four children and three buffaloes, our two-acre lot would
be too small," he said. "She is afraid the buffaloes might hurt the chil
dren." Another family wanted a buffalo because their children had
tired of playing with their cats, dogs, and rabbits, and perhaps a buffalo
would interest them.

After the buffaloes had been shipped, some unique complaints came
in from the new owners of the animals. Some said that the buffaloes
were too large; they wanted small ones. The rangers ship only the
young ones, as a matter of fact, because the crating and expressing of
a full-grown one-ton buffalo is some job in itself. The cost of catching
and crating a buffalo is about seventy dollars. The animals are shipped
by express so that they will arrive promptly and in good condition.
Preference is given to game preserves, forest reserves, zoos, and parks,
but many buffaloes have been sent to private estates and asylums. One
of the largest pair of buffaloes was sent to the estate of Florenz Ziegfeld
of the "Follies," while a herd of sixteen was shipped to the Famous
Players-Lasky Company for use in the movies, after which this herd
was to be released on Catalina Island, off the coast of California. Buf
faloes have been shipped to practically every
state in the union during the past five years.
Each autumn the rangers join the buffalo-
keepers in a great roundup, at which time the
animals are counted, the herd is inspected,
and the animals for shipment are singled out.
These roundups are about the last opportuni
ties to see in this country the fearful and im
pressive buffalo stampedes.

Because of the prevalent idea that buffa
loes would make good pets, it was necessary
to get out a public warning to applicants for
buffaloes a few seasons ago. Some of the

52 * * * « « "OA, Ranger!"

letters from new owners were made public, and this caught the fancy
of the newspapers of the country. It was the occasion of a headline
writers' holiday, and some of them stretched themselves to compose
such lines as these : "Buffaloes not affectionate — won't wag tails or make
pets." "Buffaloes not good pets, puppies better." "Little girls mustn't
play with bad buffaloes." "Can't tickle buffalo's hoof and get away
with it." "Buffalo not family pet, Hoosier learns." "Pet buffalo resents
petting." "Buffalo just ain't nice pet." "Uncle Sam informs little girl
'affectionate' buffalo just isn't." And there were hundreds of others !

One other newspaper headline about a buffalo cost us a very dis
tinguished visitor. A wealthy American woman who had married into
the nobility of Europe and had become a duchess was traveling in the
West with a private car in which was built a specially made apartment
with bath for her two-pound Pekinese dog. Her secretary telegraphed,
asking that the rangers set aside the rule forbidding dogs and cats in
the park so that the Duchess could visit Yellowstone with her Pekinese.
If she could not bring the dog, she would not come. She was finally
advised that she could bring in the two-pound Pekinese if she would
keep it on a chain, a courtesy extended to all through travelers with
dogs. Someone laughingly remarked to the chief ranger, "You'd better
make provision to protect our buffaloes."

The rangers got a laugh out of the idea and told it to a newspaper
man. The next day it was in newspapers all over the country. The
Duchess saw it and was so angered that she refused to visit the park
either with or without her Pekinese. So the buffaloes are still safe.

In the fall of 1924, a buffalo cow was sent to Lincoln Park, Chicago.
In May of the next year, there came to the park a card in a small
envelope, a typical "stork" announcement, with a stork carrying a baby
in its bill at the top of the card. Below was the following :

"Arrived May 8, 1925
Baby Buffalo
Weight 120 pounds
Mr. and Mrs. Buffalo"

One of the regrets of the rangers is that they cannot keep the Yel
lowstone buffalo herd near a road where the Dudes and Sagebrushers
can see hundreds of animals in action. The herd is too powerful and
unwieldy to be turned loose near the tourist camps or the hotels. At
present the animals are secluded in the Lamar Valley, Behind a strong
drift fence running from Mount Norris on one side of the valley across
to Mirror Plateau on the other. This fence is seven feet high, built of
logs from nine to eighteen inches in diameter. The location is fine for
the buffaloes but is not near enough to any road for visitors to see the

Wild Animals You May Know * * * 53

big herd, except by taking a long horseback trip. There is a fine loca
tion for part of the herd near the road from Canyon to Tower Falls,
where motorists could look down on the buffaloes from a hill over Ante
lope Creek Basin, and sometime it is hoped
that this can be fenced so as to control the
buffaloes and protect the public.

The park service also hopes for funds
with which to establish buffalo herds in
some of the other parks, particularly Gla
cier National Park, where there is ample
room and good conditions. However, the
cost of establishing such a herd, includ
ing transportation and fencing, is about
$15,000, making it a more or less expensive
undertaking that must await the contribu
tion of funds either by Congress or by pri
vate individuals. At the present time there
are a few buffaloes in two of the other national parks, Wind Cave and
Sullys Hill. There is no doubt about the great public interest in the
comeback of the American bison which used to roam the plains in
millions, the wonderful animal which President Roosevelt called "the
most distinctive game animal on this continent and certainly the animal
which played the greatest part in the lives of the Indians and most
deeply impressed the imagination of the old hunters and the early
settlers."

Next to the bear and the buffalo, it is the beavers that interest the
visitors in the parks. These ingenious and resourceful little animals
are like the bears in that they have many almost human attributes, though
a very different set of them from the traits that are bruin's. The
beavers are like humans in that they are always trying to improve upon
Nature. They are forever damming a stream or changing its course, or
cutting down a tree, or building a new house. A beaver is never satis
fied to let well enough alone. There are plenty of natural shelters in the
woods, but these are not good enough for Mr. Beaver. Like his two-
legged friend, Mr. Man, the beaver must gather all his family about
him, even the distant relatives, build a tenement house, and crowd into
it. The house is always overflowing, it always needs additions, new
gables, or new roofs, or new rooms. Life in a beaver colony is just
about as unsettled as it is in a great city. Perhaps that is why people
are fascinated by beavers and their work.

Fortunately the beavers are prospering in many of the national
parks. The beaver, like the buffalo, was threatened with extinction
years ago, though his numbers never decreased in proportion to those

54 * * * * * "OA, Ranger!"

of the buffalo. However, game laws protect the beavers now, even outside
the parks. Western beavers imported to some of the eastern states
have so increased in numbers that they are a problem to the parks and
forests. The most numerous beaver colonies in the national parks are
in Rocky Mountain, Yellowstone, Glacier, Grand Canyon, and Rainier
National parks, where water is plentiful and where streams run all
year long. No beaver can live happily without the daily opportunity to
build or patch up the dam. As 'most everyone knows, the beavers live
in a house built of logs and sticks surrounded by fairly still water, but
they also burrow into stream banks in places, instead of constructing
houses. If a lake doesn't exist, the beavers make one by damming a
stream. The top of their house projects well above the water, but the
entrance is always under water, and the beavers have to swim home
and then go upstairs to dry quarters.

"Busy as a beaver." This figure of speech has amused many a
Dude, after watching the ways of beavers in the parks. Beavers do
their work at night. They sleep all day, which is unfortunate, for it
makes it hard for visitors to get a good glimpse of them. The beaver
does most of his work with his long, sharp teeth. With them he cuts
down trees much as a woodsman would do with an axe. Aspens and
other species of cottonwoods are the beaver's favorite trees. The bark,
especially the inner layer of bark, is food, while the logs go to make
his house bigger or his dam higher.

A colony of from thirty to fifty
beavers can accomplish an amazing
amount of work. In Beaver Lake Valley,
near Obsidian Cliff in Yellowstone Park,
they have erected a dam which is a third
of a mile long. After they had cut all
the trees in the lake they had formed, an
operation which took several years, they
cut the dam to let the water out, probably
in order that the trees might grow again.
The park service wanted to keep the lake
there for exhibition purposes, so engi
neers repaired the dam the beavers had cut. The beavers cut it again.
The engineers repaired it again. The beavers cut it once more. The
engineers finally gave up the contest. The beavers are the only form
of life in the national parks that can defy the rangers and get away
with it. Incidentally, outside interests are not allowed to build dams in
the park for irrigation purposes, but the beavers do it right along and
kill and cut thousands of trees. There is nothing to do about it. The
beavers stay right on the job and rebuild their dam as often as the

Wild Animals You May Know * * * 55

rangers blow it out, or they cut it as often as men repair it, if that
happens to be their wish at the time.

Beaver colonies usually make their homes in the vicinity of aspen
groves. They will cut down cottonwoods two feet in diameter, but
prefer small trees. Once cut down, the trunks and branches of the
smaller trees are cut in sections, from one to three feet long. These
are carried over to the beaver house and are "salted down" for the
winter. When the beaver family wants breakfast in a hurry of a winter
morning, one or more beavers select a log from the pile and take it into
the house, and the whole family gathers around for a snack. The beaver
holds the stick in his fore paws and gnaws fast and furiously.

Beavers use various types of construction. They make dams, lodges,
burrows, and canals, the latter often enterprises that call for consider
able engineering skill. These canals are used to float logs to the house,
thus solving the transportation problem for the beavers. The large flat
tail of the beaver is popularly supposed to be useful for slapping mud
on the house to plaster it, but this is not the case. The tail is the rudder
by which Mr. Beaver steers his log and himself to his house, when
swimming with a load. He uses it as a rudder and a propeller, too ; he
also slaps it on the water to warn other beavers of what he thinks is
danger. The beaver is as skilful with his fore paws as is the squirrel. He
uses them in much the same way, to hold his food, to build his house,
and to dig. His teeth, which seem to grow as he uses them — occasion
ally so long that he cannot close his mouth, and so dies — are useful
mainly for gnawing trees in felling them and in cutting them for food
and construction purposes.

"How can I see a beaver ?"

This question is hard to answer. It takes much patience. The
beaver dams are easy to locate in streams or lakes near aspen groves.
The little animals are cautious about showing themselves during the
daytime, particularly if strangers are about. The best way to see them
is to take a location not too near a beaver headquarters and remain
perfectly quiet until their activities begin. Generally, some beaver will
not be able to restrain his urge to add a new stick to the dam or to put
a gable on the house. Or perhaps the engineer beaver will be out in
specting things, planning a night's work for the whole construction gang,
which incidentally includes the women and children as well as the men
of the colony.

This is good advice if you want to see any of the wild animals or
the wild fowls of the parks. The majority of visitors cannot control
themselves when they see a deer or a beaver or an elk or other wild life.
They rush out in the middle of the colony or herd or flock, as the case
may be, and begin snapshooting right and left. The result is that they

56 ***** "Oh, Ranger!"

scare the wild animals and birds away and not only spoil the scene for
the next arrivals but actually lose out on their own snapshots. The
way to get good pictures of wild life is to remain perfectly still until
the animal, unfrightened by sudden movement or by the noise of a
machine, comes close enough for a good shot. It requires great patience
and considerable skill to stalk game for pictures. It is one of the most
fascinating sports in the world.

Some of the rangers have made remarkable pictures of wild life by
following this patient course. Ranger Scotty Bowman, at Tower Falls
in Yellowstone Park, has established such friendly relations with a colony
of beavers that they will let him pet them, though at first they would
growl and blow at him in hostile manner. Wild animals live by avoid
ing enemies. Their safety depends upon their ability to flee. Intuitively
they have learned to take no chances. If they are not sure whether or not
a newcomer is dangerous, they assume that he is an enemy and take to
the woods. The person who wishes to establish himself on good terms
with any of the wild animals or birds of the national parks must first
let them get well acquainted with him. Mr. Beaver is just like all the
rest of his neighbors. He wants to watch the newcomer, and decide
about him personally, before he effects any entente. It takes patience,
oodles and oodles of it.

Perhaps the greatest beaver city in any of the national parks is one
discovered by Ranger Macy in Mount Rainier National Park along the
Nisqually River, which is formed by the glacier of the same name. In
the icy waters of this stream, the beavers have built a city covering
twenty acres — houses, dams, ponds, canals, a maze of engineering. It
must have taken several generations of beavers to have achieved that
job. This is another instance in which the beavers resemble their human
friends. One generation carries on where the other left off, one beaver
engineer and his gang complete what a predecessor started. The whole
colony stays with the work until the project is completed. One often
wonders what unseen and unknown spirit or force guides these little
animals, enabling them to stay with their complicated engineering feats
without maps or plans or designs until twenty acres is covered with
construction. There is no other animal like them, only humans excepted.

Next, in point of thrill they give the Dude, comes the moose. These
big animals are really rare beasts even in the national parks where they
are protected. The average visitor is excited by a moose track, let
alone the moose himself. The moose is a lonely animal. He prefers
life in the solitude of the back country. He haunts the marshes at the
base of high lakes, or those that play hide-and-seek with the rapids of
the mountain streams. He takes his stand in the willows and brush, and
when the visitor comes upon him unawares the moose takes one long,

Wild Animals You May Know * * * 57

scrutinizing look, then turns and bounds into the woods. The moose is
a great lover of solitude. He who seeks to stalk a moose and take his
picture must leave the beaten paths and explore the wilds of Yellow
stone, Glacier, or Mount McKinley Na
tional parks. Occasionally the visitor
catches sight of a moose along the road,
but it is only a fleeting glimpse, for after
that one lingering look, peculiar to the
moose, he is off again for solitude.

In Yellowstone in recent years the
moose have spread over all parts of the
park. Occasionally a mother moose and
one or two calves will be seen in the wil
lows along the roads. Bridger Lake, in a
region which is proposed as an addition to
Yellowstone Park, is a favorite feeding
ground of the moose. The moose come to this shallow lake and wade
out in the water to browse on lily pads and other aquatic vegetation.
They hold their heads under water for unbelievably long periods, while
nipping off the grasses at the bottom of the lake. Unfortunately, the
state of Wyoming permits hunters to kill moose in this region, one of
the best places for Dudes from the ranches to see moose in their natural
habitat. It is estimated that there are six hundred moose in Yellow
stone Park and at least one hundred in Glacier Park, mainly on the
western side, and visitors can see them most easily in the vicinity of
Lake McDonald. They are seen also in Mount McKinley Park.

Another elusive animal is the mountain sheep found in Glacier,
Yellowstone, and Rocky Mountain parks, and in Mount McKinley
where the beautiful Dall sheep lives. Mountain sheep have also been
seen in Grand Canyon Park, and years ago they were native in Sequoia
and Yosemite parks, from which areas they were unfortunately ex
terminated before the creation of the parks. Mountain sheep stay at
or above the timber line in the summer time, but are seen in the lower
valleys during the winter. In Glacier National Park trail parties see
these wary animals almost daily on the trips to Iceberg Lake, Swift-
current Pass, Going- to-the-Sun chalets, and other high places. During
the wintertime, the rangers feed the sheep around Many Glaciers
Hotel to keep them from migrating to the lower levels where they would
be killed by the Indians.

In Rocky Mountain Park sheep are found near the summit of the
Rockies along Specimen and Flattop trails. Occasionally they are seen
along the Fall River Road, where it crosses the mountains at an eleva
tion of more than eleven thousand feet. In the winter these sheep come

58 * * * * * "Oh, Ranger!"

down into the Big Thompson and Fall River valleys. In Yellowstone
the sheep are hard to see during the summer time, except near the sum
mit of Mount Washburn. Unfortunately, unthinking Sagebrushers,
seeing these animals early in the morning, chase after them trying to
take close-up snapshots, and so drive them out of the region. This is
regrettable for it denies the rest of the visitors to Mount Washburn
during that day the opportunity to see the bighorn mountain sheep,
really a rare sight.

An animal similar in habits to the bighorn sheep is the Rocky Moun
tain goat. He is seen only by those who climb the high peaks, for the
mountain goat loves to perch on crags far above the rest of the animals,
with the world spread out at his feet. They are seen most frequently
on the high peaks of Glacier Park and on the slopes of Mount Rainier.
Being easily frightened, they lead precarious lives. It is indeed remark
able that they can exist at all on the rare grasses and flowers found well
above the timberline and just below the topmost snow-capped moun
tain peaks.

The most familiar animal in the national parks is the deer. Protec
tion from hunters has not only increased their numbers but has made
them quite tame and friendly. These gentle, graceful creatures are
found in all of the parks, to the great delight of visitors, from whose
hands the deer have learned to eat raisins, bread, or what have you.
The rangers estimate that there are more than thirty thousand deer in
the parks, and many more in areas surrounding the parks. The park
deer are of three varieties: the mule deer, so named because of his
long, alert ears, the most prevalent species ; the white-tailed deer, found
mainly in Glacier and Yellowstone parks; and the black-tailed deer,
seen on the western slopes of Mount Rainier.

Deer are easily tamed. They are quite gentle and are the pets of
many rangers and employes in the parks. They come to beg food, and
in some of the parks have learned to answer the call of rangers to
"come and get it," the "it" being oats from the stables. In fact, the
deer have become so much at home among humans that they
wear out their welcome. In Yosemite Valley they have eaten
the flowers and plants about the houses of the employes and
rangers and have virtually wiped out the evening primrose, a
delicacy which delights the deer's palate. This has raised an in-
kteresting problem for the rangers. Conservationists of flowers
claim the deer should be ousted to preserve the
wild flora. On the other hand, conservation
ists of animals claim that the flowers were
there to feed the wild fauna. So there is the
issue. Flora or fauna?

Wild Animals You May Know * * * 59

The deer do about as they please, regardless of the rangers. One of
the hardest things in the world is to make a deer do something he
doesn't want to do. The rangers would much rather capture a bear and
get him ready for shipment than box a deer for a trip to a city zoo.
The deer does not bite, but he is much quicker and is nervous and
strong, and often strikes viciously with his feet when afraid he is
going to be hurt or captured. In some parks deer are now so numerous
that they can well be spared. In fact, it is claimed by some scientists
that in certain of the national forest areas near national parks the deer
are too numerous, notably in the Kaibab Forest on the north rim of the
Grand Canyon. It is asserted that the vast herds of deer there have
wiped out the aspens and that they are now ruining other trees, even
young pines and firs, by eating leaves and bark, and that they are
starving in the wintertime. The park rangers disagree with this point
of view and believe that there is still sufficient food for the Kaibab deer.

In 1924 a cattleman of Arizona proposed a relief for this situation
by offering to gather together a band of cowboys and drive eight thou
sand deer from the Kaibab region down into the Grand Canyon, across
canyons, streams, and the Colorado River, and up the steep slope to the
south rim. At one point it was necessary to drive the deer in single file
along a narrow ledge trail for eight miles. It is hard to imagine any
thing more difficult than the job these cowboys attempted. They were
to receive two dollars and fifty cents a head for all deer delivered to
the south rim. The rangers advised them that the drive could not suc
ceed, but assisted in every way possible. The cowboys assembled, like
wise motion-picture men and newspaper correspondents, and the drive
was on. Not one deer ever reached the south rim. They simply refused
to be driven anywhere.

The rangers are attempting a more simple, albeit slower, plan of
populating the south-rim area with deer. Several small fawns were
brought by rangers on pack horses to the south rim and are being
raised on bottles. They are doing well and, if they prosper in their new
home, which will be the only one they will have known, visitors to the
south rim will see plenty of deer.

The rangers are fond of these friendly, inquisitive animals
and find it hard to understand the enthusiasm of hunters for
killing deer. The rangers of Yosemite claim that the
deer know exactly where the park boundary line
runs. Along the Wawona Road, which parallels the
boundary for several miles, the rangers point
out plenty of deer on the protected park side
of the road and call attention to the fact that
there are none on the unprotected side, a few

60 * * * * « "Oh, Ranger!"

rods away, where the deer can be killed in hunting season. These
rangers claim also that the deer, when grazing outside the park, on
hearing the report of a rifle will invariably run for safety behind the
park line, where hunters cannot follow. Whether this is intelligence on
the part of the deer, or mere coincidence, is hard to say. Yet it does
seem that a deer can always pick a visitor who is friendly and possibly
the possessor of food, with whom to fraternize.

A fine animal that was saved from extinction by the scouts, soldiers,
and rangers of Yellowstone Park is the Rocky Mountain elk. The elk
has long been a favorite victim of hunters because of his great antlers.
Outside the parks and mountain country adjoining Yellowstone the elk
were virtually wiped out a few years ago. The Yellowstone herds, en
joying protection since the creation of the park in 1872, have increased
until it is estimated that there are forty thousand elk in the park and
in the seven national forests surrounding the Yellowstone. The elk
range over much of the park and are easily seen at a distance by the
Dudes and the Sagebrushers.

The elk is a magnificent animal, noble, stately, as large as a horse.
The bull elk, adorned with large, well-proportioned horns, is the hand
somest animal in the parks. At least, the rangers think so. When run
ning, he makes a magnificent picture. In September and October, during
the mating season, his shrill bugle or challenge, ringing through the
crisp air on a moonlight night, is one of the most thrilling sounds of
the mountains. The elk, though easily seen at a distance, is wary of
humans and the visitor who wants to take his picture must stalk him
slowly and cautiously.

Being a grazing animal, the elk will not rustle for food at the higher
levels when the snows come. He moves to the lower altitudes, seeking
grass. Late in the fall, when the storms become bad, great herds of
elk may be seen leaving the park and the adjoining game preserves,
moving out into the area where they are unprotected. This is the time
when hunting is permitted in the neighboring states. Many elk are
killed by hunters, sometimes under revolting circumstances. Often the
great animals are mowed down with repeating rifles by hunters behind
rocks. There is no chance to scatter. Knowing only the complete pro
tection afforded in their summer haunts, the elk are like lambs slaugh
tered in a farmyard. The rangers fail to see the sportsmanship of
shooting the elk down in herds. Each hunter is allowed but one elk,
and it happens at times that after wanton killing there are dozens of
animals left on the snow after each killer has selected his victim.

Terrible as are these slaughters, there is one other practice of the
hunters that rouses the rangers to even greater anger. That is the prac
tice of extracting the two large teeth from elk which are foundered in

Wild Animals You May Know # * * 61

the snow, while the animals are too weak to resist. These large teeth
are prized by jewelers for good-luck pieces. They are also needed by
the elk to masticate his food, and without them he is unable to forage
for himself and starves to death. Some
times the great animals are illegally shot
by poachers for their teeth only. The
body of the elk is left in the snow, where
the hunter ended the animal's life. The
elk that remain in the high mountains have
a difficult enough battle for life during the
winter months with the elements. Often
the rangers are called upon to rescue them
from snowdrifts. So it stirs to genuine
anger those who are fond of wild life
when hunters prey cruelly on these fine animals when they are least
able to flee for their lives.

Of recent years the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks has
co-operated with the rangers to fight the cruel practice of stealing teeth
from the elk. Use of elk teeth has been outlawed by the order. Like
wise, public-spirited citizens are assisting financially in the purchase of
great ranches both to the north and to the south of the park where the
elk can graze under protection during the long winter months. Of
course the elk, being a huge animal, requires much food and there is
to be considered the possibility that the animals may increase too
greatly. There is no objection on the part of rangers to sportsmanlike
hunting, if the elk are given a chance to escape. Their protest is against
ruthless slaughtering of animals accustomed to protection.

Elk are found in smaller numbers in Glacier and Rocky Mountain
parks. In the latter park they are the offspring of animals shipped
from Yellowstone after the native herds had been wiped out by hunters.
Elk once ranged the slopes of Mount Rainier, but this species, larger
animals than the Rocky Mountain elk, are now confined to the Olympic
Peninsula. In Yosemite Valley is a band of San Joaquin Valley elk, a
smaller and different species from those of the Rockies. They were
brought to Yosemite to save the species from extinction and are pros
pering beneath the shadows of Half Dome and the other great Yo
semite peaks, against which the elk form a picturesque foreground.

Antelopes may be seen in Yellowstone and Grand Canyon parks.
These beautiful little animals, fleet of foot and alert of sense, once
ranged the plains east of the Rockies in tens of thousands. Now the
herds in the two parks number not more than eight hundred. They
are practically extinct in most states, though in Wyoming, Oregon, and
Nevada they have made a notable increase in numbers under stringent

62 ***** "Oh, Ranger!"

protection from hunters. For a time it seemed certain that this inter
esting little animal was doomed to extinction, but of recent years lovers
of wild life have felt more easy about the antelope's future. Private
donations have assisted greatly in building the park herds by the acqui
sition of lands at lower levels where the antelope may feed during the
winter.

The antelope is easy prey to predatory animals, especially while
young. It is an interesting fact that the little antelope is born without
scent and his fur so blends into the landscape that it is almost impos
sible to see him, even at fairly close range. It is said that if the tiny
antelope remains still, a coyote can neither see nor smell him at twenty-
five feet distance. The antelopes of the Grand Canyon herd were raised
by the rangers from tiny kids, captured in northern Nevada. They were
reared on bottles near Reno, then were sent by rail to the park. Here
in crates they were strapped on pack mules and taken down the Hermit
Trail to the Tonto Plateau. There they have grown to full maturity
and are rearing their young naturally.

Because of his grace, color, and beauty, the antelope is a great
favorite with amateur photographers, who in their eagerness to get a
good snapshot approach the animals without care. Often they try to
catch up with the antelope, if they miss their first shot. The photog
rapher who can catch an antelope on the run has not yet been born.
The visitor eager to take good animal pictures should come equipped
with long-range lenses, or else must learn the patient art of stalking
wild life. Any sudden movement frightens wild animals and ruins the
picture not only for the photographer but also for others to come.
Those who are successful in taking wild-animal pictures have developed
a fine technique. The Crown Prince of Sweden, an experienced pho
tographer of wild life, crawled a quarter of a mile on his hands and
knees and finally on his stomach to take pictures of mountain sheep on
Mount Washburn in Yellowstone.

The photographer must have infinite pa
tience. He must keep his friends out of
; sight, as well as himself. He must move
ever so slowly and cautiously toward the
animals, or else sit patiently and wait for them
come to him. Or he can set up his camera in
which animals are known to frequent and pull
er by means of a thread. The telescopic lens
fitted to his camera will help bridge the distance to his
'shot." The rangers will give him pointers on where to find
animals and how to get the pictures. Most of the rangers
Id-life camera fans and have taken good pictures. They have

Wild Animals You May Know * * * 63

found, as the visitors will also, that hunting with a camera is vastly
more sporting and exciting than is hunting with a gun, particularly
with the new hand motion-picture cameras which show the movements
of these inhabitants of the forest.

In addition to the animals already mentioned, there are literally
scores of smaller animals and birds, and also that interesting and some
what unwelcome group, the predatory animals. The latter include moun
tain lions, bobcats, wolves, and coyotes — the born killers of the forest,
some of which kill for the mere love of killing, the same motive that
seems to animate mankind except that the predatory animals do need
to kill for food. These animals are seldom seen, with the exception of
the "dogs," as the rangers call the coyotes. All are hunted by the
rangers, not with the purpose of extinction, for each belongs in the
wild-life picture of the parks, but for the purpose of curtailing their
numbers so that they will not exterminate other species, such as the
deer or the antelope. In fact, in recent years few mountain lions have
been killed in any of the parks. The mountain lion raises cubs but once
every two years, and therefore does not increase rapidly. Unless a par
ticularly ruthless killer becomes a menace, the lion is allowed to live.
The same is true of the bobcats, lynxes, and wolves. The coyote is a
prolific breeder on the other hand, raising a litter of puppies each year.
Hence the coyote is hunted down quite ruthlessly. The purpose of the
rangers is to preserve the natural status quo between animals as nearly
as possible under the peculiar circumstances by which so many species
have been crowded by civilization into comparatively small areas.

The Dude or the Sagebrusher with a hankering for a hobby that is
different will find unique opportunities in the study of the animals and
birds of the parks. Living with the denizens of the woods as neighbors,
he will find them cheerful, resourceful, and enthusiastic. They make
the most of their respective situations. He will marvel at their energy,
their persistence. He will wonder at the ingenuity of the steam-heated
birds' nests of the Yellowstone geyser basins. He will tremble at the
isolation of the osprey's nest atop tall pinnacles in the Canyon. He will
laugh at the story of the male osprey whose mate makes him sit on the
nest at night so that she can know where he is. The audacity of the
grouse family that held up a presidential party while the chicks crossed
the road, the lightning quickness of the osprey as it dives into the rapids,
returning over the tree tops with a struggling fish in its talons, the
genius of the otters who live in winter in warm-water pools just a few
feet from icy trout streams, the muskrats that enjoy salad in the winter
time because the warm streams they inhabit keep the grass and plants
growing during freezing weather — all these and many more true tales
of wild life serve to make up the saga of the great game preserves, the

64 * * * * * "O/z, Ranger!"

national parks. It is all very moving and stimulating, and many is the
visitor who feels the urge, along with the rangers, to take his pen in
hand and put it all on paper, perhaps in verse as did a ranger in Sequoia
Park after watching the invasion of 'possums into that region :

'Possums from Missouri, that's what the people say,

Moving to Sequoia and now well upon their way.

'Possums coming singly, others come in pairs,

Mothers carrying baby ones in pouches lined with hairs,

Big 'possums, little 'possums, lean ones and fat,

All moving to Sequoia — now what do you think of that?

There is romance in the lives and the ways of every one of these
animals of the parks. That is their great appeal. Wild life is full of
problems, just as is human life. Everywhere there is a plot. Every
where there is a struggle. Everywhere there is a story. Never before
in the history of mankind have three million people a year been able to
enjoy it so intimately.

Coin' Fishin'

"Oh, Ranger, where can I catch some fish ?"

Sometimes that question is a hard one to answer. It isn't always the
fault of the fish, either. There are anglers and anglers, in the national
parks. Some seem to be able to step out and catch trout in the morning,
in the evening, any time. Others have no luck, even when they are wear
ing a rabbit's paw, a horseshoe, a turkey wishbone, and a Columbian
half-dollar, all at the same time. The wary trout is no respecter of good-
luck omens. Catching him calls for an indefinable something that some
call fisherman's luck, that others call skill — whatever it is, you need it
when you are "goin' fishin'."

"Where can I catch some fish?"

The Old-Timer always plays safe by answering, "Well, Sir, I'll tell
you where I saw some nice ones, and I wouldn't be surprised if you
could catch a few of them."

Knowing where the fish are is half the game, when you are goin'
fishin'. There isn't much use fishing in waters where there are no fish
to be tempted by your lure. Not long ago there appeared an article by
Herbert Hoover, honorary president of the Izaak Walton League, in
which the writer contended that it was the inalienable right of every
American to catch a nice string of fish at least once each year. He
touched upon the ennobling and uplifting effect this would have upon
the American's soul, and indicated that as a panacea for unrest, discon
tent, and so on, there was nothing in the world like goin' fishin'. He
advocated the expenditure of sufficient funds to see that all good fish
waters of the country be adequately stocked with the right kind of fish.
Then at least the fish would be there to be caught, and the man who
could not catch his share would have nobody but himself to blame.

The rangers have noted the spiritual aspects of catching fish and
have subscribed for a long time to the proposi
tion that everybody ought to catch fish. They
have made considerable headway already in the
matter of stocking the barren waters of the
national parks. To do this they have on nu
merous occasions carried cans of tiny trout to
remote streams and lakes high in the moun
tains, sometimes on horseback, often on foot,
strapping the cans on their backs. That is
work, as anyone who has carried a five-gallon
can of water for five miles over a rocky trail can

65

66

"Oh, Ranger!"

testify. These baby trout are known as fry. When the ranger with a
can of fry arrives at a lake to be stocked, he gradually fills the can with
water from the lake, to accustom the little fish to the temperature of the

water so that the dive into their new home
will not be too great a shock to them.

It takes several years after a barren water
is stocked with fry before it becomes a good
place for fishing. Hence the planting of fish
must precede the building of trails or roads
which make the lake or stream accessible to
the angler. There are planted each year in
the national parks about six million baby
trout. This is but a small beginning com
pared to the billion nearly grown trout which
Mr. Hoover and the Izaak Walton League
would like to have planted each year, but it
is a start. Of course, the various states plant
many other millions of fish. The propagation of fish has passed beyond
the experimental stage. It has been demonstrated in the national parks
that it is possible to keep more trout in the streams and lakes than the
anglers can pull out with the aid of flies, spinners, and other lures, not
overlooking the humble angleworm, who is frowned upon in the best
circles but who manages to retain his standing with small boys every
where and with certain other older fisher folk from "down East."

In the national parks the rangers, in the course of their plantings,
have learned some interesting and important facts about the rearing of
fish. One of the most fundamental lessons is that it is unwise to mix
breeds of trout in the same lake or stream unless their habits of life be
quite similar. All fish, and trout in particular, are cannibalistic. The
trout must be protected not only from destruction by greedy humans or
by stream pollution, but also from other members of the finny tribe.
Consequently, it is advisable in the parks to reserve a certain water for
a particular variety of fish and raise another kind somewhere else. That
system makes the sport more interesting for anglers, too.

Yellowstone Park gives an illustration of this. The native trout of
the Yellowstone is the cutthroat, or the redthroat, as Dr. Henry van
Dyke says the species should be called. He is a fine, gamy fish, grow
ing to good size, a popular trout with anglers. In the early days, before
the authorities had studied trout propagation, other trouts were imported
and planted in the same waters with the cutthroat. The rainbow was
brought from California, the brook trout from the Atlantic Coast
streams, and the Loch Leven from more distant points. The cutthroats
and the rainbows spawn in the spring. The trout brought from the East

Photo, courtesy Union Pacific System

The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone
and Yellowstone Falls

Old stagecoach in Yellowstone

A buffalo roundup in Yellowstone

Sagebrushers camping at Paradise Valley, Mount Rainier Park

a national park

Old Faithful Geyser,
which erupts every hour

Photo, courtesy Union Pacific System

Coin' Fishin' * * * * * 67

spawn in the autumn. In general, spawning fish are probably too oc
cupied to be eating each other's eggs. The great destruction of eggs and
fry may be due to the presence of fish that spawn at other seasons.

The rangers try to regulate the fishing seasons so that no fishing is
done while the trout are spawning. However, in the Yellowstone where
trout are spawning both spring and autumn, this is practically impos
sible. Of course, it is too much to expect the chap who has come a
thousand miles to go fishing to throw back the fine trout he has just
caught because it happens to be a species spawning at the time. Most
of the experienced anglers do that, not only to assist in the task of keep
ing the waters stocked, but also because spawning fish are not the best
eating. The meat is somewhat soft and lacks the fine taste it would have
at other seasons. This is a fine practice, one that should be encouraged.
If the fish is handled with moist hands when removed from the hook,
there is usually no serious injury inflicted. Thrown back into the water,
the grateful trout swims off, a wiser, more wary fish thereafter.

The rangers realize that these technical aspects of trout life are not
so interesting to the Sagebrusher as the answer to the question, "Where
can I catch some fish?" The Sagebrusher has driven a hundred miles
that day, his mouth watering for trout. Even as he cross-examines the
first ranger he meets, he can smell those trout frying in the pan. He has
separated the old rod from the place of honor in that moving van, his
auto, and he craves action. It is up to the ranger to direct him to the
lake where fishing is good. Not until his family has been fed with trout
is the Sagebrusher interested in the story of how the rangers have spent
the last six years keeping that particular lake stocked for this season's
fishing.

The Sagebrushers are the fishermen of the national parks. And the
fisherwomen, too. The Dudes, coming to the parks on trains and travel
ing on prearranged schedules, find it difficult to take time for fishing. It
takes time and patience to angle for trout. It can't be done on an
itinerary. The trout are the greatest little itinerary busters in the world.
Give a normal, growing, healthy trout half a chance and he will ruin the
most adamant itinerary. The rangers saw that happen when President
Coolidge came to the Yellowstone. Advance agents worked out in fine
detail a schedule of travel, with every move timed to the minute. It
lasted only until the presidential party reached Yellowstone Lake, where
the cutthroats got into the Coolidge itinerary and what they did was
plenty.

That's the way it goes. Strong, hardy men, of sterling character,
leaders in the church and respected in their communities, will go out
with a rod and reel swearing by all that is mighty that they have but an
hour to spare and promising their wives to return for dinner. Do they ?

68 * * * * * "Oh, Ranger!"

Why, just the "goin' " part of goin' fishin' takes that long. First there
is the ceremony of hauling out the old pipe (used only when the annual
assault on the trout is made), scraping it, knocking it on the trunk of a
tree, stoking it, coaxing the fire in its bowl, tasting the first few puffs
with meaning smacks of the lips, and then getting down to business.

Next comes the luring of the lures out of the lining and the band of
the old hat, used the year before. This practice is frowned upon by the
more particular anglers nowadays, who hold that flies should be kept in
fly books. Even so, bringing them out, inspecting them and talking
about them, reviewing the artillery and soaking the leaders, is quite a
ceremony. Then there is the rod to be pieced together and strung with
the best line in the U.S.A., something owned by every other angler him
self in person. After a few flourishes of the rig as finally assembled, the
angler addresses himself to the waters and the fly whistles over his head
and out where a trout "ought to be." Sometimes he is. Wham! The
line is jerked taut and the match is on, a battle of wits between a
flashing, zigzagging, fighting trout and an excited, eager opponent on
shore or in the boat, the odds somewhat against the trout at that stage of
the game.

Sometimes the best of charms fail, and one by one the pretty flies
find their way back into the hat lining or into the fly book, and at last
out comes the old spinner that did the work the year before, a last resort
which fly fishermen always seem reluctant to use. Of course, there is
many a lure between the Royal Coachman and the humble angleworm,
and though most anglers are too proud to use anything but flies at the
start, their pride unbends after a few hours and many are the tricks that
are played on the poor old trout. He is offered rubber minnows and
wooden frogs and bright-colored what nots until he just cannot keep
his appetite in curb.

One sees some odd outfits in the parks. Travelers are always looking
for compact equipment. Some of it is of little use. Some of it is excel
lent. What to bring seems to puzzle many would-be anglers, judging by
the questions they ask the rangers. The experienced angler, of course,

knows exactly what he wants, and seeks no
advice. But for the novice, a few suggestions
may not be amiss. Everyone cannot afford the
elaborate and costly complete outfits. The be
ginner at this royal sport often prefers to rent
fishing tackle at the stores found in all of the
national parks. That is economical, but it is
not so satisfactory for the Sagebrusher who
may want to stop and angle en route from
point to point.

Goin' Fishin' * * * * «r 69

Those who yearn to fish ought to equip themselves with good tackle.
If they are novices, they might well take some lessons in the use of a
split bamboo rod, lest the first time they get a fair-sized fish on the end
of the line they jerk him into the air and break the delicate tip, if not
the whole rod. It is necessary to know just how much strength to put
into the hooking of a fish in order to protect the rod. It is not a bad
idea for the novice to try a steel rod at first, one capable of standing
hard knocks. Besides, a steel rod can be used for trolling and casting
with a heavy spinner, upon which the beginner must rely to bring home
the fish when he is just learning the sport. As he learns more about the
technique of casting, he can get a fly rod and better tackle, smaller flies,
and finally in all probability barbless hooks will become a part of his
standard equipment.

As to lines, it never pays to buy a poor or cheap one which loses its
life and vigor when it gets wet. It wraps around everything in sight, is
hard to untangle, and never gets far out over the water. Cheap line may
be all right for bait fishing from a boat or for trolling, but if there is
any casting to be done, it takes a good line to achieve the snare and
delusion.

Leaders are essential in fly fishing and trolling and must be kept in
good condition. If carefully preserved, leaders will last a long time.
They must always be soaked before using, of course. The weight and
strength must be in proportion to the fish to be caught if one is not an
expert. Never try to land a ten-pound Mackinaw with a leader made for
one-pound fish. Many people just learning to fish tie spinners and even
flies right on to the line and throw them out into the lake or stream.
This is wrong, for the simple reason that the fish can see the line. The
leader has a definite and important value that everybody should learn
right at the start, that of deceiving the fish into thinking the artificial
fly is a real one.

The reel is an important part of fishing tackle and the advice to give
about reels for the beginner is to get a good one. A weak reel will let
your line run out and will even tangle it up
in winding or unwinding. Of course, many
experts prefer the automatic reel, but it is
not a necessary part of the ordinary equip
ment and it takes skill to use it effectively.
Besides, it is expensive.

Getting down to lures, here again experi
ence counts a lot. Bait fishing makes pos
sible the use of a small variety of lures. The
spinner is more effective at certain times
than at others. When fish are feeding deep,

70 * * * * * "OA, Ranger!"

they will not rise to a fly. Trolling becomes necessary in order to get
them. Spawning fish, especially females, will fight a spinner, and at the
spawning time of the year the spinner will furnish a lot of fun to the
person who does not realize that every time he catches a spawning
female he destroys an important potential factor in the maintenance of
good fishing in that water.

Most of the rangers are fly fishermen and they consider the use of
the fly the best sport there is in the national parks or elsewhere. Every
body who aspires to be a fisherman should learn to cast. It takes time
and patience to learn, but it is a fascinating pastime. He who once gets
into the spirit of it will stand and cast for hours without trying to get a
fish, just as a golfer will spend all day knocking his little ball around,
practicing the fine points of the game. The use of flies, of course, de
pends on what the fish will bite. The best thing to do upon arriving at a
new lake or stream is to watch the water and see what the fish are
jumping for, if they are jumping at all. If the trout are after a dark
insect, use a black gnat or brown hackle or some other dark fly. If
moths are flying, use bigger flies of the same color as the prevailing
moth or other large insect. The most popular light flies in the national
parks are the Queen of the Waters and the Royal Coachman. But one
should have a fairly good variety of flies, both large and small, light,
dark, and medium, and keep them in a fly book and not around the hat
band — although a few flies in the hatband do give the impression that
one is really goin' fishin'.

The rangers try to tell visitors where to go to fish and what to use
in the way of a lure, but whether or not one is successful will depend
upon skill, in the first place, and the number of fishermen who have
been there before, in the second place. By August, in many of the
parks, the fish have become pretty sophisticated and wary, especially
along the roads, and no lure will fool them, unless in the hands of an
Old-Timer who has learned how to fool them under any and all circum
stances. It has been said in some parks that toward the end of the season
along the roads the only lure that will attract a trout is a club sandwich,
and even then the fish insist that only chicken and fresh tomatoes be
used in the sandwich.

After the trout have been caught, they should be carefully cleaned,
and the fisherman should do this himself. The real angler never takes
the fish to camp for the women folks to clean. A good fisherman can
clean a fish in less time than it takes to tell about it, and he ought to do
it as part of the day's work. As a matter of fact, it will be the only
work of the day, since everything else is great fun. Most Sagebrushers
like to fry their fish over the open fire and that is the best way to cook
them, according to the notion of rangers and other mountain men. Fry

Coin' Fishin9 * * * * * 71

them in bacon grease and serve them with a little bacon. Dutch-oven
biscuits with fish and coffee at night, and flapjacks with them in the
morning, are camp meals de luxe.

Have you ever heard of a "ranger sandwich"? It is made of the
left-over supper biscuits, the left-over morning hot cakes, the left-over
bacon and fish from both meals, a little butter, and, if eggs were left
over, put them in too. This combination sounds terrible, but next day
about noon, if one is walking, fishing, or riding horseback in the fine
fresh air, a "ranger sandwich" will taste better than the best meal the
hotel can put up. Besides, it is economy in the use of food, an important
factor in the mountains.

The lure of trout fishing isn't entirely in the catching of fish. It is
in the uncertainty of it, the sporting element, the gambling of time and
wits against the habits of the trout. Sometimes it would seem that an
glers are greater fish than the trout. They will bite on anything ! They
will trudge miles upon miles, with nary a grumble, because somebody
has told them of seeing whopping big trout in a certain remote lake.
That recalls a fishin' story. One time when a newspaper writer was
visiting Yellowstone he noticed a big club near the cabin occupied by a
ranger stationed at Slough Creek.

"What's the club for?" asked the writer.

"Aw, that's my fishin' club," explained the ranger.

"Fishin' club?"

"Yeah, fishin' club. I take it when I go fishin' down the stream.
There's a big trout in there that's grabbed every fly I had but one and
bit the leader in two. I take the fishin' club along to whang the big
devil over the head and drive him away so I can catch some of the
other fish."

That story soon appeared in the papers, and during the rest of the
summer Sagebrushers kept dropping into the office to ask the location
of the stream with that big fish in it that had to be hit over the head
with a club. Some of them displayed

the double, extra-heavy deep-sea tackle / \

they had brought along with which to / \

drag the "big devil" out of the water.

At that, deep-sea tackle is hardly too
heavy for some of the big fish occasion
ally caught in the parks. In Glacier and
Yellowstone parks, lake or Mackinaw
trout twenty pounds in weight have been
caught from the deep waters, while in
Yosemite they occasionally catch Ger
man Browns that weigh almost that

72 ***** "Oh, Ranger!"

much. These big fellows will not rise to a lure, as a rule, and must be
attracted by bait, lowered with sinkers. The big trout are not sporty.
As age and size creep upon a trout, he becomes less interested in the
active life. He feeds on the bottom of the lake. His meat is not as good
as that of the younger and more active fish. The big fellow simply uses
his weight and strength to break the line, if he can. He uses none of the
tricks of the one- to five-pounder.
Fishin' stories!

The national parks are the places to hear them. The rangers are the
boys to tell them. Give Joe Douglas, assistant chief of Yellowstone, his
chance. Doug is a practical fellow, a good woodsman, a horseman, and
a packer. He is supposed to know something about mules, as well as
fish. Until he told the following story, Doug had an enviable reputation
for veracity.

Doug and a companion were out on a pack trip and ran short of
rations. They pitched camp alongside an attractive trout stream. Doug
is so sure of his angling that he is always counted upon to supply a camp
with fish. So, after turning their horses and the pack mule loose to
graze in the meadow, Doug turned to fishing. They were biting that
day. As he caught them, Doug tossed the trout on the bank a safe dis
tance from the stream and cast out for more, planning to gather them
up as he returned to camp. Within a short time he had landed twelve
fine trout. He cut a forked stick on which to string the fish and turned
just in time to see, to his amazement, his pack mule devouring his last
catch. Further investigation revealed that the mule had followed him
stealthily and eaten every trout he caught. Doug insists this is not a fish
story but is a true account of mule- and fish-facts.

Then there is the famous Jim Bridger story of the mountain-
climbing trout he saw in Yellowstone, fish which could "pack over the
hump of the Rockies," the continental divide. That was regarded as a
colossal lie until Two Ocean Pass was discovered. This pass also ex
plains how trout climbed above Yellowstone Falls, into Yellowstone

River, and into the lake of the same name.
It is really a deep, meadow-covered pass
in the continental divide with two con
necting streams, Atlantic and Pacific
creeks, each flowing ultimately into its
respective ocean. Fish can easily move
from one stream to the other. There can
be no question but that the cutthroat trout
came over into the Yellowstone head
waters from the Snake River and its
tributary, Pacific Creek.

Goin' Fishin' * * * * * 73

"In which park will I find the best fishing?"

The rangers hear that question frequently, especially when they are
away from the parks on vacations. There is good fishing in practically
all of the parks, though it is better at times in some than in others.
There are different kinds of fish to be caught, and the angler's prefer
ence in the matter of fish must be considered. Experienced anglers have
their affections for certain kinds of fish and look upon all other members
of the finny tribe with something approaching disdain. The steelhead
angler insists there is no fishing like steelhead fishing, while the golden-
trout devotee claims the steelhead isn't even a trout. So there you are !

Most of the fish found in the national parks are trout. The lakes and
streams of the parks are at a high elevation. In these icy waters, fed
continually by snows and glaciers, the trout is right at home. The trout
likes cold water. In the Lyell Fork of the Tuolumne River in Yosemite
Park the trout go so far upstream that they almost reach the ice of the
melting glaciers. In these high, cold waters trout do not grow to large
size, but they are far more delicious eating than the big fellows found
farther down stream. The different varieties of trout found in national
park waters are as follows :

The rainbow, so called because of the shafts of color that run length
wise on his body, is a native of California. The rainbo.w is found in
natural state in Yosemite and Sequoia parks. This fish seldom weighs
more than two pounds, but he is the gamest, hardest-fighting trout of
all, and is a great favorite with anglers. The meat of the rainbow is
usually pink, almost the color of salmon. As a matter of fact, many of
the trout belong to the salmon family, being really fresh-water salmons.
The rainbow has been successfully introduced into Yellowstone, Mount
Rainier, Crater Lake, Rocky Mountain, and other parks.

The golden trout, a native of Sequoia Park, is the most beautiful of
trout. This fish is usually found in small streams and does not grow
very large, although in certain lakes it has been known to weigh two
pounds or more. The face of this trout is olive, its sides and belly are a
light golden, while down the middle of its sides are scarlet stripes. Along
the middle line of the belly is a scarlet band. Dr. David Starr Jordan,
who first described this trout, named it Salmo Rooseveltii, in honor of
President Roosevelt.

The cutthroat, or redthroat, so named because of the deep red dash
or blotch between the branches of the lower jaw, is the native trout of
Yellowstone, Glacier, and Rocky Mountain National parks. It is found
mainly in the higher waters of Yellowstone, and above the falls. The
cutthroat normally grows to be a good-sized trout, three or four pounds
in weight, and occasionally is found much larger, even running up to
ten or more pounds. Where the cutthroat is the native trout and where

74 ***** "OA, Ranger!"

it thrives we keep exotic trout out of its waters. The cutthroat is a
gamy, tasty fish, much appreciated by fishermen.

The German Brown, or von Behr, is a trout imported from Eu
rope. He is usually the color of the bottom of the stream or lake he
inhabits, and is hard to see. This trout is distinguished by the dark
brown spots on the pale brown body. This was the "brook trout" of
England, made famous by Izaak Walton in his memorable work, The
Compleat Angler. The German Brown grows to a large size, if he
escapes the fisherman's bait, in Yosemite attaining ten to fifteen pounds.

The Loch Leven was imported to the United States from the lakes of
the Scottish Highlands. It originated in Loch Leven, immortalized in
Sir Walter Scott's poem, The Lady of the Lake. In markings, the Loch
Leven is much like the German Brown, dark brown spots on a light
brown body. It is a much more lively fish than the German Brown and
is found in many of the lower-level lakes and streams of the parks.

The eastern brook trout was brought to the national parks from the
lakes and streams of the Atlantic Coast. It is a light colored, bright,
speckled trout, often called "the speckled beauty." Eastern brook trout
grow to larger sizes in western waters than they do in the East. It is
a favorite with the bait fishermen.

The Dolly Varden, or bull trout, sometimes called the red-spotted
trout, is a stoutly built fish, with a large head and a broad flat snout. It
is olive colored with red spots about the size of its eyes. These spots are
red on the sides of the fish and paler on the back. It is found in Glacier
and Mount Rainier National parks and is abundant in streams of the
West.

The Mackinaw, or lake trout, is the fish for the angler who wants to
have his picture taken with a big one. These trout attain three feet in
length and weigh twenty pounds in some of the lakes and larger smooth-
water rivers. The Mackinaw has light spots of a reddish tinge on a dark
or pale gray body. The Mackinaw lives down deep in the water. To
capture him it is necessary to use bait or spinners well weighted for a
lure. He is not a fighter, but because of his great weight and strength
will play havoc with light tackle.

In addition to the trout there are two other fine fish found in the
Rocky Mountain national parks: the grayling, a native fish, slender,
graceful, beautiful, with pearl-like luster, large hard fins, a good fighter,
but not large, usually from one to two pounds when full grown. The
grayling has white meat, is good eating, and resembles the trout in
habits. The Rocky Mountain whitefish is similar to the grayling, with
smaller fins. He has a sucker-like mouth and must be handled with care
by the fisherman. The whitefish, unlike the grayling, is not sporty, and
is sought only because it is good eating.

Gain' Fishin' * * * * * 75

Occasionally other kinds of fish are found in the waters of the parks,
but not frequently. In the early days, when the stocking of streams was
a haphazard matter, largely in the hands of well-meaning individuals,
fish of many kinds were planted in the
streams and lakes. Gradually the trout
have been eliminating the others, and
sometimes have eliminated other trout. If
a native trout will not live in a certain
lake or stream, then the rangers try an
other kind. In some lakes in Yellowstone
they have tried practically every variety
of trout, without success. Sometimes this
is due to lack of food, sometimes to pe
culiar contents or to temperature of the
water. In view of this, it is always well
to talk over your fishing plans with a
ranger when you enter a park. He can at least save you the time you
might spend fishing in waters where fish cannot live. And he may be
able to tell you just where you can catch them.

To recapitulate, park by park, these are the kinds of fish that anglers
may expect to find in the different parks they visit :

In Yellowstone, the native is the cutthroat, which is the only trout
found in the eastern half of the park. In the Gibbon River and in the
lakes at its headwaters, there are rainbow trout. Brook and Loch Leven
trout are found in the streams on the west side of the park. Mackinaw
are in the Snake River and in Shoshone, Lewis, and Heart lakes, and
are found just south of the park in Jackson Hole lakes. Grayling are
found in some of the lakes and streams of the Madison River water
shed, and whitefish in the lower Yellowstone River and in the Madison.
No fishing license is required in Yellowstone Park.

In Glacier National Park, the native trout is the cutthroat. Rainbow
trout, Dolly Varden, eastern brook, and grayling have been introduced,
and lakes are well stocked. No fishing license is required.

In Rocky Mountain National Park, the native is the cutthroat. Rain
bow and eastern brook have been planted. Whitefish are also found in
the lakes. A Colorado state fishing license is required and can be secured
in the park.

In Mount Rainier National Park, fishing is sometimes difficult, due
to "glacier milk" in the waters of streams. The glaciers empty quantities
of ground rock into the streams each summer. Yet many trout are
caught each year in this park, rainbow, cutthroat, Dolly Varden, and
brook. No fishing license is required.

Crater Lake, having no streams flowing from it, was not stocked

76 ***** "Oh, Ranger!"

with fish when discovered. One of the pioneers of Oregon, Will G.
Steel, superintendent of the park for several years and now United
States Commissioner there, took it upon himself to carry trout to the
lake in cans. They have prospered, and now Crater Lake offers good
rainbow and black-spotted trout fishing. No fishing license is required.
An interesting sidelight upon the introduction of fish into Crater Lake
was the problem of finding food for the fish. The trout at first refused
to grow because of the scarcity of fish food in the lake. A fresh-water
shrimp was finally found that grew rapidly in the lake and the trout
began to grow large and fat as soon as the shrimps became plentiful.

In Lassen National Park the streams are well stocked with the native
California rainbow trout. The usual California fishing regulations pre
vail here and a California license is required.

Yosemite National Park, with more than three hundred lakes and
streams, is well stocked with trout. More than a million fry have been
planted each year for several years in the waters of this park, and a new
rearing pond in Yosemite Valley now supplies the park with fingerlings.
The native trout is the rainbow. In addition there are German Brown,
eastern brook, Lock Leven, cutthroats, and a number of other exotic va
rieties, among them the steelhead, always prized by anglers. The steel-
head is a sea-running form of the rainbow trout, recognized by its small
head, its silvery body, and its large scales. Introduced into several Yo
semite lakes, this trout, ordinarily found only in the coast streams, has
increased in numbers and grown to good size. A California fishing
license is required, and can be obtained in the park.

In Sequoia National Park the natives are the California rainbow and
the golden trout. The steelhead, Loch Leven, and cutthroat have been
introduced to Sequoia waters and have done well. A California fishing
license is required.

Grand Canyon National Park offered some problems when the
rangers undertook to stock its waters, naturally barren, with trout.
There were fish in the river, but the waters were so muddy that fishing

was not attractive. In 1925, 50,000 cut
throat trout eggs from Yellowstone were
shipped 1,200 miles by express to the
north rim of Grand Canyon, thence 250
miles by motor truck, 35 miles by pack
animals, and one mile on the backs of
rangers to the waters of creeks flowing
into the Colorado River on the north
slope. This was one of the most difficult
plants undertaken by the rangers. Dur
ing the entire distance, the eggs were

Coin' Fishin' * * * * * 77

packed in ice, to maintain the temperature of Yellowstone streams across
the hot deserts of Arizona, until they could be planted in the cold waters
of Shinumo Creek. The planting was entirely successful and fishing is
already good in the streams stocked. Similar
plantings have since been made in Bright Angel
Creek and other waters of the park.

Some of the best fishing waters in the na
tional parks were originally barren of fish. This
was due, no doubt, to the high altitudes of the
lakes and streams of the parks and to the
waterfalls in the parks which barred the up
stream progress of the fish. The trout, like the
salmon, is able to negotiate difficult rapids and
small waterfalls in his search for the head
waters in which to spawn, but not such enor
mous falls as Vernal, Nevada, and the Yellow
stone. Originally all of the northern and west
ern waters of Yellowstone were barren of fish. Most of the better
streams and lakes of Yosemite were devoid of fish, likewise those of
Sequoia, Glacier, and other high-altitude parks.

In their natural state trout spawn under difficulties at best. As the
spawning time approaches, the fish push up toward the shallower waters,
where the female selects a spot near the bank of the stream and pre
pares her nest by washing out the sand with her tail and pushing aside
the gravel with her nose. After forming a slightly concave depression,
she deposits a part of her eggs on the newly cleansed gravel, and the
male, which up to this time has been playfully swimming around the
nest, emits milt upon them almost simultaneously. The female then
covers the eggs with the loose gravel. The spawning, impregnating, and
covering are repeated continuously until the eggs are all laid. The eggs
of trout are heavy and non-adhesive. They will sink, therefore it takes
current to wash them away. Often flood waters destroy all eggs laid in
a stream.

When the tiny fish is first hatched, he has a large stomach, like a
pollywog, which makes it difficult for him to navigate. He falls easy
prey to a passing fish, which may eat hundreds of little fish in a day.
Life is a precarious proposition, with the odds all against the small fish
until he grows the size of a fingerling and can take care of himself.

The rangers and the representatives of the United States Bureau of
Fisheries and the state hatcheries have sometimes planted in one year as
many as eight million fry, just hatched, in the waters of the national
parks. It is doubtful if more than one in ten survives the first year, with
all the existing hazards. For this reason the rangers are gradually dis-

78 * * * * * "O/z, Ranger!"

continuing the practice of planting fry, except in barren waters where
the fry are safe from older fish. In many of the parks rearing ponds
are being built, in which the little trout can be raised to fingerlings. In
these ponds the trout are fed on beef liver. They grow rapidly, and
within a year after they are hatched are well able to fight for themselves.

Everybody, of course, wants to "catch the limit." The inference al
ways is that the angler could have caught a great many more if it had
not been for the limit. All anglers like to infer that. Limits in the na
tional parks have varied to conform to the regulations in the different
states. Most of the state limits have been too generous. Twenty-five
fish are too many for one person, yet when the limit is twenty-five the
sporting fisherman feels that he must catch the limit to be a good sport.
In Yosemite the rangers tried the experiment of holding the limit at ten
fish, though the state limit is twenty-five. The limit of ten proved en
tirely satisfactory to most fishermen. They wanted to be able to say
they caught the limit. One way to increase the sport of fishing for a
limit of ten is to fish with barbless hooks, from which the trout may
escape if the line is not taut. Barbless hooks do not injure the fish, and
if the limit is passed they may be thrown back.

The greatest fishing spot in any of the parks is the Fishing Bridge
of the Yellowstone River, just below the lake of the same name. This
is the outlet of the lake, and here the cutthroats gather in great numbers,
working up the stream to the lake. On the bridge crossing the river one
can count as many as fifty fishermen at a time, and every one of them
seems to be catching fish. Sagebrushers love to camp by this spot so
that they can fish early and fish late, without being far from camp, and
recently the rangers laid out a large campsite there. Walk through it
any evening and you will find trout frying in the pan over almost every
campfire.

Fishing in the Yellowstone brings some unusual thrills, with the
great variety of streams and lakes, the beauty of swift-flowing waters
of the big rivers and small creeks, and the thought that some of the cut
throat may have crossed the continental divide through Two Ocean
Pass; but the greatest of all thrills is "the music of the lakes." Ever
since the Yellowstone was discovered, on Lake Yellowstone and on Sho-
shone Lake, strange sounds, sometimes like moans, again like the low
humming of a tune, and again like sweet music, have been reported by
anglers. Curiously, the sounds are heard when the air is still, the sky
clear, and the water smooth as glass, and rarely ever except in the
morning.

These strange sounds were first described in the early 'seventies. In
1891 Professor Edwin Linton of Washington and Jefferson College,

Coin' Fishin' * * * * * 79

and Stephen Forbes of the Illinois State Natural History Survey, had an
experience which Dr. Forbes described as follows :

"Here we first heard, while out on the lake in the bright still morn
ing, the mysterious aerial sound for which this region is noted. It put
me in mind of the vibrating clang of a harp lightly and rapidly touched
high up above the tree tops, or the sound of many telegraph wires swing
ing regularly and rapidly in the wind, or, more rarely, of faintly heard
voices answering each other overhead.

"It begins softly in the remote distance, draws rapidly near with
louder and louder throbs of sound, and dies away in the opposite dis
tance; or it may seem to wander irregularly about, the whole passage
lasting from a few seconds to half a minute or more.

"It is usually noticed on still, bright mornings not long after sunrise,
and it is always louder at this time of day ; but I heard it clearly, though
faintly, once at noon when a stiff breeze was blowing.

"No scientific explanation of this really bewitching phenomenon has
ever been published, although it has been several times referred to by
travelers, who have ventured various crude guesses at its cause, varying
from that commonest catch-all of the ignorant, 'electricity/ to the whis
tling of the wings of ducks and the noise of the 'steamboat geyser/ It
seems to me to belong to the class of aerial echoes, but even on that sup
position I cannot account for the origin of the sound."

In 1919 Dr. Hugh M. Smith, then United States Commissioner of
Fisheries, had a series of adventures on Shoshone Lake with these
strange sounds. The following is a part of his report on these experi
ences :

"The surface of the lake was glassy, the air was still, a faint haze
overhung the water, the sky was cloudless, and the lake for a consider
able distance out was in the shadow of heavily timbered hills. The canoe
had barely gotten under way and was not more than twenty meters from
the shore when there suddenly arose a musical sound of rare sweetness,
rich timbre, and full volume, whose effect was increased by the noise
less surroundings. The sound appeared to come from directly overhead,
and both of us at the same moment instinctively glanced upward ; each
afterward asserted that so great was his astonishment that he was almost
prepared to see a pipe organ suspended in mid-air. The sound, by the
most perfect graduation, increased in volume and pitch, reaching its
climax a few seconds after the paddling of the canoe was involuntarily
suspended ; and then, rapidly growing fainter and diminishing in pitch,
it seemed to pass away toward the south. The sound lasted ten to fifteen
seconds and was subsequently adjudged to range in pitch approximately
from a little below center C to a little above tenor C of the pianoforte,
the tones blending in the most perfect chromatic scale."

80

(Oh, Ranger!'

The sounds are still heard and remain unexplained. Hardly a sum
mer goes by without some excited fisherman coming in with a tale about
the weird sounds from the air above the lakes.

The national parks are already the rendezvous of the trout anglers.
They can be made the finest fishing places in the country. They enjoy
certain advantages peculiar to themselves. They are at the headwaters
of streams where the water is cold and invigorating the year around,
just right for the gamy trout. These waters cannot be spoiled by pol
lution, the greatest enemy of the fish. The winter seasons, when the
parks are little frequented, give the fish their opportunity to increase
and grow. In at least half a dozen of the parks there are literally scores
of lakes and streams ideal for trout propagation. All that is needed to
complete this picture of fisherman's paradise is sufficient money to build
rearing ponds and raise the fish from fry to fingerlings.

The mellowing influence of goin' fishin' has already been mentioned.
It is something that must be tasted to be enjoyed. Give a ranger the
hardest-shelled, most pompous dignitary in business or public life to
take out in the mountains, just fishin'. Watch him pull out the old pipe,
draw down the old slouch hat, loll around the campfire with the boys.
See him unbend, become "reg'lar." Keep an eye on him while he is
fishing. There is hope and optimism in his eye, there is youth in his
fingers as he zings out his line over the water. The way he jumps when
that trout hits the line ! Note that smile as he holds the speckled beauty
high for inspection ! "Ain't he a fish, though !" Hear him say it. Take
a deep breath as the trout hits the pan, alongside the coffeepot, over an
open fire. Aroma, oh, man! What if the fish is overdone? What if the
coffee is strong enough to paint a cabin? No chef could ever put into
food that delicious flavor of the mountains, tasted by a fellow when he
has been gom' fishin'.

"Indians!"

"Indians! There! See them? Real, live Indians !"

The very word sets the blood a-tingle. Generations of John Smiths,
Miles Standishes, George Washingtons, Daniel Boones, Kit Carsons,
and other famed American Indian fighters stir in their graves. In a flash,
their exploits live again in the mind's eye. It is bred in the bones of the
American to thrill at the cry of "Indians!" Some mother among his
ancestors hides her children, some father thrusts a gun between the logs
of a cabin wall. It is life or death.

"Bang ! And another redskin bit the dust." The romantic, ever vic
torious fights of the dime-novel heroes flicker before the mind. In an
instant there is flashed a whole history of Indian fights, the wresting of
a continent from a race of red men. Like as not, the modern American
has never seen a real Indian. That does not lessen his interest in them.
In a vague sort of way, he believes the Indian is a species almost extinct.
His great hope is to see a few of them outside the movies before the last
of the redskins "bites the dust."

Actually, it is not true that the Indians as a race are departing from
this earth. The facts are that since they ceased fighting the white man
and condescended to live as his neighbor, the American Indians have
been increasing in numbers. In 1877, when the Sioux, Nez Perces, and
other tribes were still on the warpath, it was estimated that there were
250,809 Indians in the United States, not counting some 20,000 Alaska
natives and about 6,000 Sioux who fled under Sitting Bull to Canada,
following the Custer massacre. In 1926, the census gave the Indian
population as 349,876. The Indians increased 27,161 between 1911
and 1926.

The average Dude or Sagebrusher is not interested in Indians who
have become civilized, who wear store clothes,
ride in automobiles, and look like any other brand
of humans. The Dude wants to see "real Indians,"'
the kind that wear feathers, don war paint, make
their clothes and moccasins of skins. Give him
one such Indian and the Dude is much more ex
cited than he would be if he had seen a whole na
tion of Indians at the humdrum pastime of mak
ing their living in peaceful pursuits. In fact, he
is hardly sympathetic with the efforts of the In
dian Bureau to make the Indians self-supporting
and independent in the white man's way. It does

81

82 ***** "O/2, Ranger!"

not particularly interest him that there are remnants of 341 Indian
tribes in the United States, that there were more than 10,000 Indian
soldiers in the World War, that 69,892 Indian children are in schools,
that the total value of Indian property is $1,693,844,806, or that the
area of the Indian reservations in 1924 was 68,696,448 acres, or about
eight times that of all the national parks and national monuments to
gether.

Even so, about the best place for the Dude or the Sagebrusher to see
the Indian in his natural state is in some of the national parks. The
Indians have been closely associated with the parks since their dis
covery. The Indian knew the monuments that are the basis for the
parks long before the white man. The wonders that have attracted the
white man were objects of worship or fear to the red man. They formed
the nucleus of legends told by his wise men. Many of them are the red
man's explanation of how the earth was created. If the Indian did not
live within the shadow of a monument, or what is now a national park,
he lived near enough so that his priests could perform ceremonies on
proper occasions giving due credit to the gods who were supposed to
live in the waterfall, on a great cliff, or within the earth beneath a vol
cano or a geyser basin.

So it seems particularly appropriate that the national parks, intrusted
with preserving a small part of the American continent in its natural
state, should contain practically the only Indian tribes which are still
living as they did before Columbus discovered America. This all came
about quite naturally. The lands that are now in the national parks for
the most part were not suitable for settlement by the white pioneer.
Either they were too remote from cities or railroads, or they were too
rugged for development, or they were set aside in reservations at an
early date by the government. Since the white man did not need these
hunting grounds, the Indian who lived in national park territory was
allowed to go his way without much disturbance, except when he waged
war on the whites.

The visitor is certain always of seeing Indians at Grand Canyon
National Park in Arizona. The Canyon cuts diagonally through the
heart of the Indian country of the Southwest. Immediately adjacent to
the park, east and southeast, is the vast Navaho reservation, really sev
eral reservations joined together. It includes the Hopi Indian lands. In
this area live 35,000 Navahoes and 2,500 Hopis. West of the Grand
Canyon is the Truxton Canyon agency of the Hualapai Indians. In the
park itself is the Havasupai reservation, home to about 180 Havasupais,
all that remain of this primitive nation. Between the North Rim of the
Grand Canyon and the Utah parks lies the extensive Kaibab reservation,
set aside for the Piutes. However, few Indians live on this reservation.

"Indians!" ****** 83

Within the park itself, Navahoes, Hopis, and Havasupais are seen
almost always at the South Rim, Bright Angel Camp, and other points.
Perhaps the greatest object of interest is the Hopi House on the South
Rim, an exact replica of one of the ancient
Hopi houses on a mesa in the reservation.
Here are seen real Hopis in their native cos
tumes, the women making the pottery for
which they are skilled, the men engaging in
their interesting and picturesque dances each
afternoon.

These Hopis are members of the oldest
race in the Southwest. They were a settled
nation of Indians who attained a consider
able degree of culture and skill at the arts.
They built their homes of adobe, in the form
of picturesque pueblos, situated high on the
mesas where they could defend themselves from their warlike nomadic
neighbors. The Hopis, unlike the majority of the Indians, derive their
living from their little farms. They keep domestic animals, raise corn,
and carry on their interesting arts and crafts quite independent of the
outside world.

By taking the side trip from Grand Canyon Park over the Navahopi
Road, visitors can find the Hopis at work in their villages exactly as they
lived before the Spaniards discovered and attempted to conquer this
region three centuries ago. Here the Dude can see the Hopi maiden
grinding blue corn, to be used in her wedding ceremonial. The Hopis
raise many kinds of corn, blue, red, yellow, and other colors. Each
color has a significance. They are careful in their dress, neat in their
appearance. Their houses are clean in spite of the fact that they keep
their dogs and pigs in the courtyards, which often form the roof of the
families living in the apartments one story below, the Hopi villages
being constructed in terraces on the cliffs. The Hopis dress in colorful
costumes and wear bright-colored bands around their heads. This is
their chief distinguishing feature.

Navahoes are seen in considerable number in Grand Canyon Park.
Many of them find employment with the government or the public
utilities in the park. They are good workers and a fine nation of Indians.
They never have been dependent upon the government for food and
shelter, being successful shepherds. Their sheep furnish them with
meat for food and wool for clothing. At their villages, where the Nava
hoes lived in crude hogans made of brush and sticks and mud, many of
the men worked as silversmiths, making bracelets, rings, pins, and other
ornaments, often decorated with turquoise settings. These are highly

84 * * * * * "Oh, Ranger!"

prized, not only by the natives but by the Dudes and Sagebrushers who
visit the reservation. The Navahoes are great gamblers, a habit which
often costs them their beloved jewelry, since the losers must often pawn
their trinkets at the traders' stores to pay their debts.

The Havasupai village is far down in the Havasu Canyon, a beautiful
valley with trees and waterfalls, several thousand feet below the rim of
the Grand Canyon. Here are the homes of the last of the Havasupai
nation, a tribe of Indians that lived by cultivating corn, making baskets,
and hunting. The Havasupais still live exactly as they did before the
white man came, except that some of the men work for the government
on the roads, while to their usual crops they have added melons, figs,
and peaches. Once Uncle Sam built every family of Havasupais a
wooden cottage, but the natives used these buildings for the storage of
food and farm implements, preferring to live in their crude huts re
sembling Navaho hogans.

The only way to reach Havasu Canyon is via the perilous Indian
trail, best described by an old Indian one day, when he said :

"I ride 'em horse home. Go down, go down some more, go down,
go down some more, go down, down some more. Horse slip, I jump.
Horse go down, go down some more. He catch 'em plenty dead at
bottom."

The famous Snake Dance of the Hopis is held each year in August,
usually at a different village on the reservation near Grand Canyon Park.
The dancers actually carry live rattlesnakes in their teeth during the
ceremony. The dance is held for the purpose of bringing rain to the
land. The snakes are supposed to carry the Hopi prayers for rain to the
gods, who are thought to live underground. Quite often it rains within
a short time after the dance, so the Hopis have grounds for continuing
their belief in the potency of the Snake Dance.

In the mountains west of Santa Fe, New Mexico, and above the oc
cupied pueblos are several scenic valleys in which lie numerous ruins of
ancient Indian civilizations, among them the ruins of Puye, Otowi,
Tsankawi, and Frijoles Canyon. These valleys,
with their interesting ruins and unique scenery,
will be made into the new National Park of the
Cliff Cities. Many of the ruins lie in, against,
or on top of cliffs of tufa and other soft rock
into which the early peoples could dig with
\i\ their crude implements. Santa Fe, to be the
headquarters of the proposed new Cliff Cities
Park, will also be headquarters for all National
Park Service archaeological work in the South
west. It is, incidentally, the oldest city in the

"Indians!" * * * * * * 85

United States. Taos, farther north, is a spectacular pueblo. In fact,
there are two great pueblos at this place, one on each side of fine moun
tain streams. High mountains rise back of the Indian villages and the
whole scene is one of such charm and beauty that it has attracted artists
and writers from all over the nation. The Taos region has three settled
sections : the Indian villages, San Fernando de Taos, the American town
near which Kit Carson is buried, and Ranches de Taos, a very old
Mexican town farther south. In the Mexican town is an ancient mission
church.

Mesa Verde National Park was created to preserve the most re
markable ruins of prehistoric inhabitants of the Southwest that remain
anywhere. There are two types of ruins, one embracing great buildings
under overhanging cliffs, and the other old pueblos on top of the mesa.
The former occupants of these cliff dwellings are thought to have been
the ancestors of the Pueblo, Hopi, Zufii, and other pueblo-dwelling In
dians of New Mexico and Arizona. The park is joined on the south by
the Southern Ute reservation, and southeast a short distance is the
Jicarilla Apache reserve.

The superintendent of Mesa Verde Park, Jesse L. Nusbaum, is an
archaeologist of note, and around the campfires at night he tells the
story of the ancient dwellers on the Mesa Verde as it has been pieced
together from pottery, baskets, and other artifacts. He employs Nava-
hoes in the work of maintaining the park roads and trails. These Navaho
men have their wives and children with them and park visitors are priv
ileged to see a real Navaho village in the park. There are always Navaho
women weaving blankets, others doing camp work, and usually there is
a baby or two to lend more interest to the scene. In the evenings, the
Indians give native dances after the superintendent's talk.

Occasionally the spectacular play, Fire, written by Mrs. Nusbaum,
and embodying the legends of the Navaho nation in relation to the very
valuable element, fire, is produced. This play is written in such a way
as to make it possible to use Navaho Indians as actors. The great cliff
dwelling known as Spruce Tree House, near headquarters, is the stage
for the play and flares furnish the lights, as there is no electricity avail
able. The actors, the stage, the lighting, and the
action of the play itself make this production one of
the finest things that has ever been undertaken in a
national park.

Trained guides take the park visitors through
the principal ruins and explain to them the life and
customs and industries of the builders of these great
structures who thrived for centuries, then disap-l,
peared from the face of the earth. Mesa Verde Park

86

'Oh, Ranger!"

is also one of the best places to go to see modern Indians, but how much
more interesting is a place like this park where one can see the civiliza
tion and culture of tribes that have disappeared, as well as that of those

who are still in the flesh !

Just as the parks and monuments of the
Southwest offer the best opportunity to see
the desert Indian at home, so Glacier Na
tional Park is the place to see the Plains
Indians in real life. Here the visitor sees
the picturesque and colorful tepees of the
Blackfoot Indians, one of the outstanding
tribes of Plains Indians. They were mighty
hunters and valiant warriors, tall, proud,
dignified, the very personification of the
redskin of story-book fame. The Plains
Indians ranged over the vast, gentle eastern
slope of the Rockies, living almost exclusively by hunting. Many were
the wars they fought with the white pioneers, even resisting the troops
sent to conquer them.

The Plains Indians lived an entirely different life from that of the
Southwest natives. Of the arts and crafts of civilization they knew
nothing. They neither wove baskets nor made pottery. On the other
hand, they were fine physical specimens, tall, slender, athletic, and hand
some. Their food they garnered by killing animals. The skins and hides
served to make clothes and to provide shelter. They were more or less
nomadic, each nation by common consent or superior prowess control
ling vast hunting grounds. The men hunted the animals, the women
dried their flesh so that it kept all winter long. The men had captured
and tamed the wild horses, descendants of those loosed on the plains by
the early Spaniards. The warriors were skilful riders.

Of all the Plains Indians the Blackfeet, so called because their moc
casins were often black from walking on the burned prairie grass, were
the most distinctive. Bound together by a strong racial pride, this nation
was deeply concerned in resisting not only the invasion of the white
man but the introduction of his ways into Indian life. Warlike, preda
tory, and inconsiderate of their neighbors, the Blackfeet were possessed
of a strong sense of destiny. They were noble and handsome in appear
ance. Their features were more finely carved than those of the neigh
boring Indian tribes. It was the profile of Two-Guns-White-Calf, pres
ent chief of the Blackfeet, that was used for the reverse side of the
buffalo nickel. Their complexions were lighter than those of other
Indians, the men being almost tan, the women often so fair they were
very nearly white. The noble bearing of their old men was extraordi-

"Indians!" * * * * * * 87

nary, the object of much admiration and wonder on the occasion of the
visits of the Blackfoot chieftains to Washington to see the Great White
Father. There were many orators among the Blackfeet. They loved to
harangue their people and urge them to resist the white man's ways.

It is a happy circumstance that this fine nation of Plains Indians
should live still on the border of Glacier National Park. The ancient
hunting grounds of the Blackfeet included the eastern half of the park.
Within the park is a great cliff over which the Blackfeet were accus
tomed to drive herds of bison in their annual hunts. The buffaloes were
killed by crashing to the rocks below. This cliff was a prized asset of
the Indians, who otherwise were forced to ride among the buffaloes in
stampedes and kill them with bow and arrow, or by the hazardous ex
pedient of thrusting knives into the great beasts while riding at full
speed. The Blackfeet are no longer allowed to hunt in the park, since it
is a game refuge, but they still pitch their picturesque tepees near the
hotels and lodges and camp there during the summer. Their summer
villages are of tremendous interest to Dudes and Sagebrushers, who love
to gather about the Indians, both at the villages and in the hotel lobbies.

The Blackfeet, while usually quite solemn and dignified, have in fact
a good sense of humor. Frequently they elect distinguished visitors to
honorary membership in their tribe, bestowing the honor with fitting
ceremonies and giving the new members appropriate Indian names.
Sometimes, however, the naming of the honorary tribesman is the oc
casion for a practical joke. Once they decided to take into the tribe a
guide who had been friendly to the Indians but who was known as a
great liar because of the extravagant stories he told the Dudes whom he
escorted over Glacier Park trails. When his Indian name was trans
lated it was found to mean literally "Sits-Up-Straight-in-the-Saddle-
and-Lies."

The Blackfeet have always been proud of their mountains. They
claim that they had names for all the principal features of the park area
that formerly belonged to them. The translations of many of their
names have been given to Glacier Park peaks, lakes, and waterfalls, such
as Going-to-the-Sun, Almost-a-Dog, Four
Bears, Rising Wolf, and Little Chief Moun
tains, Two Medicine and Red Eagle lakes,
Morning Eagle Falls, and so on. The Black-
feet assert that the white man has taken
from the mountains, lakes, and rivers many
of their best and most cherished names and
has put on white men's names that do not
sound so well and do not belong in the park.
Back in 1915, three distinguished Blackfeet,

88 * * * * * "Oh, Ranger!"

Bird Rattlers, Curly Bear, and Wolf Plume, came to Washington to
protest to the Secretary of the Interior against the use of white men's
names in Glacier Park. They were promised that henceforth only In
dian names or their translations would be used
in Glacier National Park, and that policy is
still in effect.

Other Indians in early days occupied the
western part of Glacier Park beyond the con
tinental divide. These were the Flatheads and
\ VT "%£^ tne Kootenais, but they were inferior to the

\ ^SJ Blackfeet. Today they reside at considerable

distances from the park. The old Flathead reservation southwest of
Glacier Park has been opened to settlement and the Indians are seen only
if the Sagebrusher explores the byways off the main highways.

Indians have figured prominently in the history of the Yellowstone.
Indirectly, they were the cause of its discovery, and more directly they
were responsible for its isolation for almost half a century after the dis
covery of the geysers, the hot springs, and the canyon and lake. Trav
elers and explorers hesitated to make the trip to Yellowstone for fear of
annihilation by hostile Indians. For two generations the territory that is
now the park was visited only by intrepid trappers.

There were four great tribes of Indians living about the Yellowstone
territory. They did not live in what is now the Yellowstone, for fear of
incurring the wrath of the "Evil Spirit" who was supposed to reside
among the geysers and the hot springs, and also because the country
was inaccessible and there was better hunting in the valleys below the
park region. The Indian name for the Yellowstone was "Burning Moun
tains," and it is easy to understand their superstitions. Only when they
were pursued and sought refuge to save their lives would parties of
Indians come into the Burning Mountains. There are still relics of their
tepees along the road from Roosevelt Camp to Mammoth and in the
Gallatin section of the park. These tepees were but temporary affairs
hidden in the forests and erected no doubt for the purpose of hiding
their smoke from their enemies. Yellowstone was somewhat of a battle
ground for the four tribes who lived around it, the Crows, the Black-
feet, the Bannocks, and the Shoshones.

The Crows, or Absaroka as they called themselves, lived in the region
between the Yellowstone and the Big Horn rivers and in the Big Horn
Valley and mountains of that name, east of what is now Yellowstone
National Park. They were great nomads and marauders. When the
white settlers first came into the Montana area, the Crows stole many
horses and such other property as they could carry off under the cover
of night. They were expert horsemen and it was almost impossible to

"Indians!" ****** 89

catch them, especially if they took refuge behind the Absaroka Range in
what is now Yellowstone. Nevertheless, they were regarded as the
friends of the whites, and never went to war against the settlers. They
helped John Colter, the early explorer,
and Crow scouts were guides for Cus-
ter's army and were with him in 1876
when he and his troops were massacred
on the Little Big Horn by Sitting Bull
and the Sioux.

The traditional enemies of the Crows
were the Blackfeet, the Indians of Gla
cier Park. Whenever roving bands of
Crows and Blackfeet met, a battle in
variably ensued, in which the Blackfeet
were usually victorious. The Blackfeet
were regarded as the enemies of the whites, though they never went on
the warpath as did the Sioux. The Blackfeet, by "pot-shooting" every
white man they could find, probably killed more settlers than any of the
tribes that took to the warpath. The relations of the Crows and the
Blackfeet to the white men have been traced back to a comparatively
small incident in the life of John Colter.

When the Lewis and Clark Expedition returned from the Pacific
Coast in 1806, passing within one hundred miles of Yellowstone Park,
Colter, one of the scouts, asked permission to stay in the Rockies and
accompany two other fur traders working up the Missouri River. He
had been away from civilization four years, yet he was ready for more
of the wilderness and hardship in order to explore virgin country. In
1807, Colter, in the employ of a Spanish fur trader named Manuel Lisa,
pushed up the Yellowstone River, seeking to make friends with the
neighboring Indians for the fur trader. He fell in with a band of Crows
and accompanied them south on a hunting expedition. The Crows met
a band of Blackfeet and a battle followed. Colter quite naturally fought
on the side of his friends, the Crows, and this time, contrary to the usual
outcome of Crow-Blackfoot battles, the Crows were victorious. This
increased the enmity of the Blackfeet for the white men, but helped
establish friendly relations with the Crows. Thereafter the Crows were
the friends of the white traders pushing into the Yellowstone.

The third tribe of Indians was known as Shoshones. This great
nation lived south and southeast of the park. The Shoshone tribes living
on the border of Yellowstone were peaceful Indians. They were known
derisively by the Crows and the Blackfeet as "fish-eaters" and "root-
diggers," because of the manner in which they garnered their food.
They dug their roots, dried them, and ground them into flour, from

90 ***** "Oh, Ranger !f>

which they made a pastry known as "sour dough." The Shoshones liked
fish, a food which the Crows and the Blackfeet despised and would eat
only when facing starvation. A branch of the Shoshones called Tukua-
rika, but dubbed "sheep-eaters" by the whites, actually dwelt in Yellow
stone Park in the northern, eastern, and southern parts. They were a
timid people, small in stature and lacking in brains and initiative. They
were often seen in the park in the early days.

A fourth nation of Indians, who probably saw more of the park than
any others in the early days, were the Bannocks. These lived to the west
of the park in what is now Idaho. These Bannocks were a peaceful
tribe who crossed the Yellowstone every summer to get to the buffalo
country. They feared this crossing and preferred to keep out of the
domain of the Evil Spirit, but their fear of the Blackfeet and the Crows
was even greater. Consequently the Bannocks braved the Yellowstone
each summer to avoid fights and to get their supply of dried buffalo
meat.

Another Indian episode that figures prominently in Yellowstone an
nals is the memorable flight of Chief Joseph and his Nez Perce Indians
across the park in 1877. The Nez Perces, so named by the early French
traders because this tribe pierced their noses and wore nose rings, lived
in western Idaho and eastern Oregon, well outside the Yellowstone ter
ritory. They were discovered by the Lewis and Clark Expedition and
made friends with the white man at once. Missionaries and traders and
trappers lived among them, converting the Nez Perces to Christianity.
One of these converts was Chief Joseph, an Indian of remarkable ability,
integrity, and intelligence. He eventually became chief of the tribe.

The Nez Perces, by a series of treaties, ceded the white settlers im
portant tracts of farming land within their hunting grounds. Much of
this was done on the advice of Chief Joseph, contrary to the wishes of
other and older counselors of the tribe, who viewed with great alarm the
encroachment on the Nez Perce lands. Finally in 1877, when a gold
rush caused miners to settle in the heart of the Nez Perce lands regard
less of treaty rights, the young braves of the tribe revolted and several
white men were slain. The fighting was against the counsel of Chief
Joseph, who urged patience and peace; but once the white men were
killed he realized that the government would demand vengeance upon
his tribe. This was the beginning of one of the most memorable Indian
wars in American history.

Chief Joseph decided that the only chance for his tribe was flight to
Canada. Accordingly, incumbered by women, children, and the tribe's
belongings, he led the Nez Perces out of the Wallowa Valley in eastern
Oregon, across Idaho, into the fastnesses of Yellowstone, across the
park, and almost across Montana, fighting all the way, until within thirty

"Indians!" ****** 91

miles of his goal most of the Indians were trapped and captured. At the
start, Chief Joseph was harassed by soldiers from the west. He fought
them off, outwitted parties sent to block his path, outgeneraled troops
sent to meet him in Yellowstone and Mon
tana, and in spite of his great handicaps and
lack of supplies, held his band together. While
in the Yellowstone, the Nez Perces captured
two separate parties of tourists, exchanged
their tired horses for the fresh ones of the
visitors, confiscated part of the supplies, and
pushed on, with women and children, always
eluding the troops. In this remarkable hegira,
Chief Joseph led the Nez Perces over half a
dozen mountain ranges, through passes that
were considered impassable, all the time in
strange country, until he reached northern
Montana, the old buffalo hunting grounds of
the Nez Perces.

Chief Joseph and his exhausted tribesmen were surrounded by two
troops of militia on Snake Creek in the Bear Paw Mountains, within
sight almost of freedom. General Miles, whose admiration had been
stirred by Chief Joseph's gallant flight, persuaded the Nez Perces to
surrender on condition that they would be returned to their old home.
General Miles's agreement, made in good faith, was ignored by the
government, which treated the Nez Perces as criminals and sent most
of them to Leavenworth Prison and later to Indian Territory, where
many died; but in 1885 Chief Joseph and the remnant of his tribe were
removed to a reservation in Washington. Here the old warrior lived
for twenty years, aiding and counseling his people. Once he made the
long trip to Washington, D.C., to visit President Roosevelt and General
Miles. Chief Joseph's story is a part of that of the Yellowstone, though
his people never lived in the park other than during the brief period
when they sought refuge there. When the old Indian died in 1904, there
passed away perhaps the most remarkable man his race produced, in
modern years at least.

Just as the Blackfeet are a part of Glacier National Park, the Crows
are coming to be associated with Yellowstone Park. In 1925 a group
of Crows were allowed to come to Yellowstone Park and help round up
the big buffalo herd. They wore their ancient hunting costumes and
rode bareback as they chased the buffaloes over the hills of the Lamar
River country. Crowds of Sagebrushers went out each day to see the
Indians bring down the buffaloes from the mountains. One day a buffalo
was killed accidentally and was given to the Indians. One old Indian

92 * * * * * "Oh, Ranger!"

remembered how to prepare it for drying, and all through the night
the Indians worked on that buffalo, cutting the meat into small pieces
and pounding it into thin sheets which they hung on a line to dry. The
next day it looked from a distance as if the Indians had put out a big
washing, as the buffalo meat occupied many long lines strung between
the trees. The Indians would not eat the meat in the park. They said
they were going to take it back to the reservation with the hide and head
and there have a big dance.

The national park pageants, most of which were developed by the
late Garnet Holme, former pageant master of the National Park Service,
preserve much of our Indian lore. Tenaya, a pageant of Yosemite
named after the Indian chief who ruled Yosemite Valley when the white
men came, pictures the wresting of the famous valley from the Indians.
Ursa of the Redwoods enacts the legends of the giant redwoods in
Sequoia National Park. Casa Grande pictures the ceremonies by which
the desert Indians of Arizona and New Mexico sent their prayers to
the rain gods. In all of these out-of-door dramas, Mr. Holme has
delved into history and attempted to preserve the legends and the true
stories of the Indians as nearly as can be done. Another fine pageant
is The Masque of the Absaroka, presented by the people of Bozeman,
Montana, preserving legends of the Crows. The National Park Serv
ice has encouraged these pageants as a means of reviving the pictur
esque and interesting Indian ceremonies, one of the first features of
Indian life to disappear when the native adopts the white man's mode
of living.

The region that is now Rocky Mountain Park was a favorite hunting
ground of Arapahoe and Cheyenne Indians. They visited this country
at all times of the year, but the higher elevations only in the summer
and fall. Indian names were bestowed on many features of the park
territory, and translations of them were used a long time ago by the
whites, but unfortunately nearly all have vanished now. Battles were
fought in what is now park territory, according to evidence revealed by
rock piles and other apparently human interference with natural condi
tions that cannot be traced to white settlers. The Rocky Mountain Park
region, especially the Estes Park open country, must have been a para
dise for Indian hunting at certain times of the year, and one can imagine
today great villages of tepees amid the red and yellow aspen leaves
of autumn when the deer and elk come down from the higher areas with
the first storms.

West of the Rockies, doubtless, Shoshones, Utes, and other tribes
of Wyoming and Utah perhaps came to hunt in what is now the Grand
Lake region of Rocky Mountain Park and perhaps in these remote re-

"Indians!" ****** 93

gions there were conflicts between the parties whose year-around terri
tories were on opposite sides of the continental divide.

The Indians of the Zion Park country were Piutes, a tribe that
ranged over much of Utah, nearly all of Nevada, and into eastern Cali
fornia, beyond the Sierra. There were Piutes in Owens Valley in the
Sierra Nevada, and in the 'sixties they were so fierce and warlike that
the United States had to send in troops to quell them. Fort Inde
pendence was built as a base for these troops. Today these Indians can
be seen in short side trips from Yosemite Park.

The Piutes were troublesome to the early emigrants, first to the
Mormons, then to the California gold seekers. A string of early Mormon
forts was built in Utah as a protection from these redskins. One of
these forts is at Pipe Spring in northern Arizona, and is now in a
national monument, protected by the National Park Service. This fort,
however, was used mostly for the protection of early settlers from
marauding bands of Navahoes from the Southeast.

One of the worst massacres recorded in American history was the
Mountain Meadows Massacre in southern Utah, perpetrated by Piutes
and the renegade whites who led them. This occurred not far from Zion
Park on the road to California. An entire emigrant train was overtaken
by these Indians and their white leaders, and most of the members of the
pioneer party were slain.

Salt Lake City was the haven of safety and peace, the Zion of the
early Mormon settlers. In southern Utah, the canyon of the Mukuntu-
weap Creek, a branch of the Virgin River, was a place where the
Mormon pioneers of the southern part of the territory could hide from
the Indians in time of danger. They called this canyon Little Zion, and
today this canyon is the main feature of Zion National Park. In it and
in the Parunuweap Canyon near by are many indications of prehistoric
peoples. There were cliff dwellings in these canyons as well as other
structures on the cliffs and on the valley floors.

In the California national parks, one finds traces of an entirely
different type of Indian. The natives who live in the foothills of the
Sierra Nevada are known as Digger Indians. They are rated low in
the classifications of Indians. Life was simple for them. In a balmy
climate, they needed little shelter and they eked out a living on nuts,
roots, plants, and such small animals as they could shoot, adding to this
diet the delicacy of grasshoppers. They were of the same general type
of Indian as those whom the Franciscan padres gathered in the Cali
fornia missions. Under the direction of the missionaries, the California
Indians were fair workers, but in their natural state they developed no
art other than basket making.

In Sequoia National Park, the Potwisha tribe of Diggers lived and

94 * * « « « «OA, Ranger!"

thrived. The dividing line between their territory and that of the next
tribe, the Watchumna, was at Lime Kiln Hill near Lemon Cove. The
earliest visitor to the region that is now Sequoia Park was Hale D.
Tharp, who came into that country in 1856. He told Judge Fry, who
was for years ranger and superintendent of the park, that when he first
entered the valley of the Kaweah River there were two thousand Indians
along the main river and its branches above Lemon Cove.

In Yosemite Valley, there lived an outstanding and remarkable band
of Indians, a branch of the Miwok tribe. They called themselves the
Yosemites, after the grizzly, a name chosen after a battle in which one
of their braves overcame a great bear. The Yosemites found in the
valley of Ahwahnee, "peaceful, grassy vale," as they called Yosemite
Valley, all that an Indian tribe could ask of its gods. It was a good
hunting ground. It was plentiful in acorns, from which the Yosemites
made a meal. It enjoyed a fine climate, and best of all it was so
secluded that the Indians were sure it would never be reached by the
white man.

Under the direction of an able chief, Tenaya, the Yosemites de
veloped into a warlike nation. They accepted into their tribe the refugees
from other California tribes, many of them wanted for depredations
on the white settlers below. In this manner Tenaya built up the strength
of his fighting force, and he also became responsible for the acts of
Indians whom he could not control. When the gold miners began push
ing up the Merced River until they were dangerously near the stronghold
of the Yosemites, some of Tenaya's braves went on the warpath, killed
miners, raided and burned stores, and raised havoc until the whites, in
retaliation, sent various expeditions to punish the Indians. On one such
occasion Tenaya and his braves, with wives and children, fled up over
the mountains to the land of the Monos, a tribe of Nevada Indians with
whom the Yosemites traded acorn meal for pine nuts and the obsidian
with which they made arrowheads. The Monos were related to the
Piutes. From the desert tribes farther east they had acquired horses
and had learned to ride them skilfully. The Monos were proud of
their horses.

In the hour of need, the Monos gave the Yosemites shelter and
food. Tenaya accepted it gratefully. He stayed with the Mohos until
the white men departed from his stronghold, then he led his people
back to Yosemite Valley. The Yosemites repaid the hospitality of the
Monos by stealing some of their horses. Not being riding Indians, the
Yosemites valued the horses only as food. When the angry Monos over
took the Yosemites, the latter were gorging themselves on horseflesh.
In the battle which followed, they were no match for the Monos, who
practically wiped out the Yosemite tribe, including Tenaya himself.

"Indians!" * * * * * * 95

Lassen Volcanic National Park, in northern California, is historic
ground. One of the old emigrant trails runs through the northern part
of the park and is today one of the most interesting features of the
region. Northeastward are the lava beds where the famous Modoc War
took place in 1872 and 1873. This war was a bitter one, and many
settlers and soldiers as well as Indians were killed. The Modocs still
inhabit the Lassen country and are to be found all the way up to
Oregon, where their ancient contacts were made with the Klamaths;
but they rarely come into the park and the visitor to that region should
look for Indians in the more northerly valleys.

Crater Lake National Park is in the heart of the country of the
Klamath Indians. As one goes toward the south or east entrances of
this park, he passes through the Klamath Indian reservation, which has
many broad mountain meadows and splendid forests. The Klamaths
were troublesome when the whites first came into their territory, and
the government had to build Fort Klamath and station troops there to
keep the Indians quiet; but it was not long until they came under the
influence of missionaries and turned to peaceful pursuits. Old Fort
Klamath was a picturesque reminder of the early days of Oregon, and
stood near the road to Crater Lake Park until very recently. Crater
Lake Park figured prominently in the legends of the Klamaths.

The Indians west of Rainier Park were Diggers resembling in
many respects those of the tribes of the California coast and interior
valleys. They were the Nisqually, the Puyallup, and the Cowlitz tribes,
all short, flat-faced, unattractive Indians who gave the white settlers
very little trouble and did not quarrel much among themselves. They
speared fish, principally salmon, dug clams in the sands of Puget Sound,
and in summer gathered berries and roots in the hills.

Quite different are the characteristics of the Yakimas and Klickitats
who lived beyond the park territory on the east. They resembled the
Plains Indians. They were tall, lithe, and had strong features. They
owned horses and were excellent riders. They were hunters, and each
year came to the great mountain to stalk the wild goat, deer, bear, and
the big elk which formerly roamed that country in large bands.

Many of these northern tribes feared Mount Rainier and refused
to venture above the snow line. The Indians viewed with alarm the
efforts of the white man to climb Mount Rainier. The records of various
parties which undertook to scale the mountain tell of the difficulty of
securing Indian guides. There is preserved in the records of the
Stevens party a sincere warning voiced by Sluiskin, the Indian guide to
the expedition, who refused to go beyond Paradise Valley. Said he to
his white friends :

"Listen to me, my good friends. I must talk to you. Your plan to

96 ***** "Oh, Ranger!"

climb Takhoma [one of the Indian names for Mount Rainier] is all
foolishness. No one can do it and live. A mighty chief dwells upon
the summit in a lake of fire. He brooks no intruders. Many years ago
my grandfather, the greatest and bravest chief of all the Yakima,
climbed nearly to the summit. There he caught sight of the fiery lake
and the infernal demon coming to destroy him and he fled down the
mountain, glad to escape with his life. Where he failed, no other Indian
ever dared make the attempt. At first the way is easy, the task seems
light. The broad snow fields, over which I have often hunted the moun
tain goat, offer an inviting path. But above them you will have to climb
over steep rocks overhanging deep gorges, where a misstep would hurl
you far down, down to certain death. You must creep over steep snow
banks and cross deep crevasses where a mountain goat could hardly
keep his footing. You must climb along steep cliffs where rocks are
continually falling to crush you or knock you off into the bottomless
depths. And if you should escape these perils and reach the great snowy
dome, there a bitterly cold and furious tempest will sweep you off into
space like a withered leaf. But if by some miracle you should survive
all these perils, the mighty demon of Takhoma will surely kill you and
throw you into the fiery lake/'

The impassioned warning of Sluiskin of the Yakima is expressive
of the Indian's reverence for the wonders that are now the national
parks. The Indian lived daily in the shadow, not only of the mountains,
the cliffs, and the waterfalls, but of death. He lived as a wild thing
lived, by the caprices of Nature. Life was to him fickle, hazardous,
difficult. Little wonder that he resisted, albeit futilely, the invasions
of the white pioneers into his hunting grounds.
Natural it was that he fled for a last refuge to the
lands of his gods. No picture of the national
parks is complete without the story of the Indians
that lived in them. Elsewhere, the white men
have changed the Indian and his manner of life.
In these few spots, where the devastation of civi
lization is held in check, it is fitting that the red
man, too, should be found still living as a child in
the arms of Nature.

Nature's Notes

"Oh, Ranger, Ranger !"

The ranger paused in his talk to a group of Sagebrushers gathered
at the upper end of Yosemite Valley.
"May I ask a question?"

"Yes, ma'am," said the ranger, with a twinkle. "Ask me a hard one."
"Where is the other half of Half Dome?"
Everybody laughed but the ranger.

"Well, it's a long story," began the Old-Timer. "Everybody sit down

on the log and I'll tell it. Of course, what
I'm telling you happened a long time ago
and it is just theory, but so far as I can
learn it is as near the truth as anybody has
been able to come. Nature leaves her notes
to account for everything that has happened in the
wilderness, but sometimes it is hard to read them.

"Do you see that other dome up there, the round
one, opposite Half Dome? It is known as North
Dome, the perfect dome. Half Dome once looked like
that, only much larger. The domes are peculiar to
this country. They are solid granite, pushed up
through the softer rock. They peel off in layers, be
cause of the action of the heat and cold.
"The other half of Half Dome was plucked away by the glaciers.
"It happened this way, if we read Nature's notes correctly. When
the glaciers came in contact with the rock of Yosemite, the rock con
tracted under the extreme cold. That cracked enormous pieces of rock
loose from the mountain and they were slowly pushed away by the
glaciers. That is what happened to half of Half Dome. It was plucked
from the mountain, cracked up, and pushed away by the ice. It is scat
tered in boulders down the Merced River Canyon."

The ranger paused for the next "hard one." It was not long in
coming.

"How high is Half Dome ?" asked a Sagebrusher.
"It towers about a mile above where we are sitting," he said.
"Do you mean to say that a glacier could carry away half of a moun
tain a mile high ?"

"That is the theory, sir. As a matter of fact, there were probably
two glaciers that did the work. During the Ice Age, one pushed down
Tenaya Canyon and became wedged between Half Dome and North

97

98 ***** "Oh, Ranger!"

Dome. It finally pushed through and met head-on with the other glacier
slowly moving down the Merced Canyon. The two of them churned
around with billions of tons of weight behind them and finally plucked
and scraped at the cliffs until they carved the present walls of Yosemite
Valley.

"You can find a record of what happened on those walls up there.
If you look closely, you will see spots where the cliffs have been polished
almost as smooth as the marble of a bank building. Granite does not
crack so smooth naturally. The glaciers, scraping away at the sides of
the mountain, polished that rock. That is one of the ways that Nature
chooses to leave her notes for men to puzzle about. Near Tenaya Lake
and again near Merced Lake are perfect examples of glacier polish on
the cliffs.

"Here in Yosemite Valley, the biggest job of the glaciers was to
carve Yosemite Valley deeper and deeper. Streams had already carved a
deep gorge, but the glaciers made it wider. When they melted, the gorge
became a lake. The streams next dumped sediment into the lake and it
became a valley. You can see the same process happening over again,
on a much smaller scale, at Mirror Lake. There the streams are now
filling up the lake, just as they have already filled Yosemite Valley with
fine silt several hundred feet deep. Glacier Point, thirty-two hundred
feet above the valley, was left suspended by the glaciers when they
melted. One of Nature's little jokes was to leave a great rock suspended
over the cliff, almost half of it projecting over the rim. That is known
as Overhanging Rock."

One of the ranger's most important jobs is telling the visitors to the
parks how it all happened. In all of the parks there exist phenomena of
Nature. These marvels were, of course, the reason for setting aside the
area as a national park. The visitor is not satisfied to come and look at
a beautiful mountain. He wants to know why it is there, what happened
to make it, and if it will always look as it does at the time he sees it.
Some of the answers to his questions are the solutions to the riddles of
the universe. They call for scientific explanations in simple terms which
the layman can understand.

The story of the national parks, from a natural history point of
view, is an interesting one. In the early days many fakes were perpe
trated upon the unsuspecting visitor by guides ill-trained to tell of the
ways of Nature in the creation of the earth. Often the true answer to a
question was not known. So the guide told the Dude that half of Half
Dome was shaken down in a great earthquake. To give visitors the true
answers to their questions, as well as they can be read from Nature's
notes, a staff of ranger naturalists is found in the parks. Their business
is to study the mountains and their children, the glaciers, the forests,

Yosemite Valley, with Half Dome in the background

Yosemite Falls

George E. Stone Photo

Half Dome, rearing its bulk one mile above
Yosemite Valley. A view from Glacier Point

The Wawona Tree, Yosemite National Park,

a sequoia so huge that the road passes through its trunk

George E. Stone Photo

Nature's Notes * * * * * 99

the animals, the streams, and the cliffs. They are under the direction of
a chief naturalist, Ansel F. Hall, a recognized authority of fine scientific
standing.

The nature-guide idea was first undertaken a great many years ago.
Dr. H. S. Conard, of Grinnell College, Iowa, former head ranger
naturalist of Yellowstone, is the third generation of nature teachers who
have taken students and friends afield to study the secrets of the hills
and forests. The first excursions into the national parks were conducted
by men of scientific training, often college professors and teachers.
Later, when travel increased, it was difficult to find men adequately
trained to talk of the parks' wonders authoritatively. Enos A. Mills, of
Rocky Mountain Park, and Dr. Harold C. Bryant, of the University of
California, were pioneers in the movement to train ranger naturalists so
that they might tell visitors the interesting truth about the national parks.

The regular rangers, though not scientifically trained as a rule, have
made themselves reliable practical naturalists to cope with the barrage
of inquiries which they are sure to meet each summer. Long experience
has taught them never to laugh at any question, albeit foolish. "When
do the geysers freeze over?" The Yellowstone ranger hears that daily.
Anyone who stops to think would know the geysers do not freeze over.
Yet the ranger must keep a straight face and answer the question seri
ously. Behind it may be an earnest desire for knowledge. There is some
thing of the explorer in every person. When he has discovered a
petrified tree, he wants to know how wood came to turn to stone, how
long ago it happened. It makes the visit to the petrified tree doubly
interesting to be informed by the ranger naturalist that the wood did not
turn to stone but that the grain of the tree, decaying, was replaced by
silica from the water, that it happened many thousands of years ago,
and that no eruption has taken place in that great span of years to
destroy the relic of the last of the earth's upheavals.

Recognizing the educational possibilities of this interest in the natural
phenomena of the parks, the National
Park Service aims to keep at least one
ranger naturalist in each park. In the
larger parks a considerable staff is main
tained, directed by a head naturalist who
is also in charge of the park museum. In
Yosemite, several ranger naturalists are
on duty on the floor of Yosemite Valley,
one at Glacier Point, and at times others
are stationed at the Big Trees, Tuolumne
Meadows, and other points where Dudes
and Sagebrushers gather.

100 * * * * if "Oh, Ranger!"

In Yosemite, the whole history of the region from its formation by
the ancient upheavals of the earth through the eons of the glacial carv
ings to its present status, including the living conditions of the Indians,
the coming of the whites, and the early stagecoach days, is pictured by
means of exhibits in the fine, new fireproof museum, the gift of the
Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial Foundation. Here in a few hours
can be visualized the whole story of Yosemite. Similar museums are to
be built in the other parks.

Following the excursion through the museum, the visitor is ready for
the walking trips with the ranger naturalists to see and study Nature's
notes just as the scientists themselves have found them and from them
pieced together what is known of the story of the earth.

Returning, for the moment, to the ranger naturalist and his party at
the upper end of Yosemite Valley, one of the party is saying, "I wish I
could see a glacier at work !"

"You can do that, ma'am, if you can stay over a few days. Take the
trip up to Tuolumne Meadows and join a horseback party up to Lyell
Glacier. That is one of our best small living glaciers. It is hardly big
enough to tackle a job like carving Yosemite Valley, but it is grinding
away at the side of Mount Lyell, the highest peak in the park. You can
see the glacier dragging down boulders from the side of the mountain
and breaking them up or dumping them into upper Lyell Fork, where the
Tuolumne River starts. Of course, you'll have to stay a while up there
if you want to see much work done. Lyell Glacier only moves a few
feet each summer. If you selected a boulder at the top of the glacier to
watch, it would probably take a hundred or so years to get it down to
the bottom of the glacier. Glaciers are slow, but they are sure.

"Of course, if you want to see some fast-working glaciers, you might
stop off in Mount Rainier National Park. The mountain is farther north
|'and is steeper, also the climate is more severe
^ and much more snow falls in winter. Glaciers
move faster because there is more ice behind them
to make pressure. Some of those glaciers move
along fifty or sixty feet a year. Most of the move
ment is in the summer time when the ice is cracking
and grinding more rapidly. The Mount Rainier gla
ciers are harder workers than the Yosemite glaciers.
They carry so much rock and earth that they are black.
However, an industrious glacier has its disadvantages. The
Mount Rainier glaciers fill the streams with glacier milk and
that is bad for the fishing. You see, the glacier scoops up rocks
from the mountain side and scrapes them together as it slides
down the slope, grinding them to a fine powder, which the glacier

Nature's Notes * * * * < * 101

deposits in the streams. It gives them a gray, milky color and is called
glacier milk. Sometimes it is called rock flour. Mount Rainier contains
some of the greatest glaciers in the land. You ought to stop off and see
that mountain. It's a beauty and one of our most interesting mountains."
"Tell us some more about mountains."

"All right. There are two kinds of mountains, those that are pushed
or tilted up, and those that are piled up by successive lava flows from
volcanoes. The Sierra Nevada was pushed up. It is tilted, the eastern
edge of the uplift being from twelve to fourteen thousand feet above
the sea and from five to eight thousand feet above the territory im
mediately surrounding it. The western edge is buried beneath the silt
of the San Joaquin Valley. Its slope on the western side is so gradual
that if a highway could be built from the San Joaquin to the summit of
Mount Lyell in a direct line, the grade would be but two per cent. Yet
the Sierra Nevada is supposed to be a terribly rough and rugged moun
tain range. It is, as a matter of fact, because of the canyons that have
been cut into it by streams and glaciers. On the eastern slope, the tilt is
almost perpendicular. It is a formidable barrier. It is explained by
scientists that the Sierra Nevada is a single mountain four hundred miles
long and eighty miles wide, the biggest mountain in the world. John
Muir tells of a terrible earthquake in 1872 which raised the Sierra Ne
vada thirty-two feet. This was a tremendous upheaval, but you can imag
ine how puny it must have been compared to the original upheavals which
pushed the whole mountain, eighty miles wide and four hundred miles
long, out of the earth, making a brand new mountain of solid granite.

"Mount Rainier, on the other hand, is an example of a mountain
that was piled up. They say that the whole state of Washington, which
Mount Rainier dominates, was a level plain or else it was under the sea.
It's hard to tell what was under a mountain originally. A volcano starts
blowing out lava and rocks and ashes. It keeps piling up and piling up
and piling up some more. I don't know how long. Call it a million years.
Finally, Mount Rainier was built up with lava outpourings to a height
of almost three miles. Then the volcano quit working. Snow after snow
fell on the mountain as it cooled off. It packed into the crater and became
ice. The ice expanded and contracted, as the weather changed, cracking
off part of the crater. The ice flowed down the mountain side. Surely,
ice can flow. It isn't as solid as it looks, and it will flow when there is
enough pressure behind it.

"Ever since they started flowing down the sides of Mount Rainier,
the glaciers have been grinding down that old mountain. They have
probably taken two thousand feet off the top of Mount Rainier in the
last million years. In another ten million years there probably won't be
much to look at on Mount Rainier. That's what worries the rangers.

102

(0h, Ranger!"

But about the only thing that can save the situation is another volcano
and the only national park in which we have a steadily working volcano,
Mauna Loa, is in the Hawaiian Islands. We have a live volcano in
Lassen Volcanic National Park, but it doesn't work very steadily.

"While we are on the subject of mountains, I want to call your at
tention to Crater Lake. Where the lake now stands, there was once a
great mountain which a volcano was piling higher and higher. It
finally was piled up so high that it collapsed into itself. The sides
of the mountain were not strong enough to sustain the weight of the
peak. You never think of a mountain as being hollow, do you? Well,
this one was. Mount Mazama, it is called. Nobody ever saw it, of
course, because this all happened a million years ago, more or less. It
must have been a whopping big mountain, for when that whole peak
caved in it left a hole many thousand feet deep. The great depth ac
counts for the remarkable deep blue color of Crater Lake. A curious
feature of Crater Lake is that, though there is no outlet for the water,
it is fresh. That is probably because no streams flow into it, the lake
being located on a mountain top. Its waters come from rainfall and
melting snows that fall into the lake. There is just about enough of this
water to counteract the sun's evaporation.

"But we started to talk about mountains, didn't we ? It is difficult to
stick to the subject. The mountains seem to be connected in some way
with everything. Either they supply the water, or the wood, or the coal,
or the mineral, or the scenery, or the plants, or the animals. When you
stop to think about it, you can understand why we rangers feel there is
nothing like the mountains anywhere in the world. And for nice,
friendly, busy, obliging mountains, the kind you want to live with day
in and day out, there are none like the mountains of the national parks.
Every superintendent and every ranger feels that the mountains of his
particular park are the best in the world. He would stack his mountains
up against any other mountains any day of the year.
They might not be so high or so broad or so hard as
certain others, but they are superior in some way, and
that is what counts."

Build a mountain and then tear it down !
That seems to be Nature's whimsical way
of working. The Rocky Mountains were
once the bottom of a shallow sea. The
rangers can take the visitor out in the Yel
lowstone and show him fossil sea fish and
shells. On top of the sea shells he will find
a sandstone deposit, the remains of deposits
of an ancient lake. On top of that he may

Nature's Notes * * * * * 103

find a forest. The forest may be covered with volcanic mud or ash.
Then more sandstone ; thea gravel, the deposit of a river. In one part
of the park they know of twelve forests, buried one on top of the other,
volcanic mud deposits between them. Eons passed while these forests
were growing, each above the tallest tops of its predecessors.

In Yellowstone are found several of these petrified forest areas.
Lava and ashes destroyed the trees, mud covered them up and provided
silica, which replaced the wood cells, preserving for all time the grain of
the wood. The preservation of the rings of these ancient trees is of the
greatest importance in piecing together the story of the earth. For a
long time scientists thought that a large, fat ring indicated a moist, warm
year, and that a thin ring indicated a year of drought. It is definitely
established that these rings do contain the secrets of climatic records in
prehistoric years. In the great redwoods of Sequoia and Yosemite
parks, some of which have fallen in recent years, naturalists have traced
by means of rings the weather records for the past three or four thou
sand years. Now if they can connect the record of the rings of the
sequoias in their ancient youth with that of the petrified big trees in
other parks and monuments, it may be possible to trace the weather re
port back to the time of the Garden of Eden, or beyond.

Nature leaves her notes in unexpected places !

The Carnegie Institution, under that great scientist, teacher, and
executive, Dr. John C. Merriam, is conducting extremely interesting in
vestigations of tree rings. Dr. Ellsworth Huntington has traced back
climatic conditions for thousands of years already. Other scientists,
working with archaeologists and ethnologists, have studied tree rings in
wood found in cliff dwellings and other prehistoric structures and have
traced human migrations, age of buildings, progress of forgotten people,
and other important data.

From the study of the record kept in recent years of the rate of
deposit of limestone on the cone of Old Faithful, it has been discovered
that it took the geyser at least forty thousand years to build up its cone.
Some of the other geysers took much longer. Castle Geyser is estimated
to be 250,000 years old. Liberty Cap, that queer -cone near Mammoth
Hot Springs, took ages to build. No one knows how long it has been
extinct, yet for centuries nothing has toppled it over. For all the heat
and the weird activity below the earth, the surface has been at rest for
many, many years.

Yet it is recorded in the diaries of early hunters and trappers of the
Rockies that a volcano was seen to spout brimstone and fire in the Yel
lowstone area as late as 1811. Unfortunately these early woodsmen kept
poor records and the rangers cannot now identify the peak the pioneers
saw erupting. Equally unfortunate is the fact that many of these early

104

'Oh, Ranger!1

mountaineers, finding their stories were considered great lies, made a
sporting proposition of it and told whoppers. Jim Bridger told gravely
of how his horse walked across a canyon from rim to rim, in mid-air,

without descending a foot. He explained
this feat by allowing that the force of
gravity had become petrified temporarily.
Finding that his hearers were as yet un-
petrified, he told of finding a petrified
forest in which there were petrified birds
singing petrified music!

In Yellowstone National Park, because
of the variety of the wonders, it has re
quired a widely scattered force of ranger
naturalists to answer the questions of the
Dudes and the Sagebrushers. Yellow
stone Museum, at Mammoth Hot Springs,
is the headquarters of the nature-guide
service. In it are found mounted ex
amples of some of our bird and animal
life, displays of beaver carvings, maps and models illustrating the opera
tion of the geysers and the hot springs, and a fine display of color paint
ings of Yellowstone wild life, the excellent work of Naturalist E. J.
Sawyer. At each of the main campsites in the park are to be found as
sistant naturalists, some of them regular rangers who have developed a
bent for science, some of them naturalists on the force for the specific
purpose of answering questions.

Gather around the campfire any summer night and listen to the ques
tions that are asked these ranger naturalists. They run the gamut of the
creation and the development of the world, and the resourcefulness the
ranger naturalists show in answering some of the hard ones is amazing.
Not only have they learned the true answers to most of the questions,
but they have also gathered together a fine fund of anecdote and
romance with which to enliven their discussions.

"Ranger, where is the mountain of glass?" someone will ask.
"You probably refer to the Obsidian Cliff on the road between
Mammoth and Norris Geyser Basin," explains the ranger. "It really is a
mountain of black glass thrown up from the interior of the earth by
ancient volcanic action. This lava cooled so quickly that it did not crys
tallize. This hard substance, obsidian, was much prized by the Indians
for making arrowheads. Jim Bridger used to tell one of his famous
yarns about the Obsidian Cliff. He claimed that when he passed through
the valley on which Obsidian Cliff borders, he saw ahead of him a big
bull elk. He took careful aim and shot at the animal, which kept on

Nature's Notes

105

grazing. Bridger crept closer and fired again. Nothing happened.
Three, four, five times he aimed very carefully at the elk and shot, each
time creeping closer. He then suddenly found himself face to face with
Obsidian Cliff. He had been shooting at the elk, he said, right through
the mountain of glass and of course his bullets glanced off the moun
tain and missed the elk !"

Another curious formation that amazes many people is that of the
pentagonal columns which hold up the cliffs on both sides of the Yellow
stone River near Tower Falls. These columns are lava that cooled and
cracked into remarkably symmetrical geometric figures. There are miles
of them and were it not for the many other wonders of the park they
would be an outstanding attraction in themselves.

"Ranger, what is the cause of the heat under the park?"

"That is quite a question. The story the geologists tell us is that
Yellowstone was once a part of a great shallow sea. There are evidences
of fossil shells and sea animals found in parts of the park. The theory
is that ages ago there occurred a mighty upheaval of mountain masses,
forming the Rockies. This was followed by a long period of volcanic
activity. The Yellowstone region included several volcanoes, which,
with their lava outpourings, formed the great plateau of the park.
Blankets of lava spread out over the area, cooled, were covered with
forests. Later, becoming active again, the volcanoes again belched forth,
repeating the building-up process.

"The great volcanoes spent their energy, finally, and became quiet,
but in many places their furnaces have not yet cooled. They are dying
out slowly, but it may take thousands of years for them to cool entirely.

"Why do geysers erupt ? Well, you have watched a coffee percolator
in action. The geyser works much the same way. The water of geysers
and hot springs comes originally from rain and melting snow. Flowing
down and coming in contact with lava flows which have but partially
cooled, it is heated. The geyser's tube is so long and so narrow that as
the water is heated at the bottom it cannot rise to the sur
face in natural hot springs. Hence it collects at the bottom,
the very hot water held down by the pressure of other water
on top. Steam is formed below while there is still some
water at the upper end of the tube. The
steam finally forces its way upward through
the water in the tube, emptying the tube
through a volcanic eruption. After the steam
and hot water are out, the geyser is quiet until
enough water and steam gather to repeat the
process. In the museum a miniature geyser,
has been built to illustrate this action."

106

rOA, Ranger!"

Everybody wants to know how deep is the fire that heats the water
for the geysers. Sometimes the inquiry is made with a note of appre
hension in the voice. Authorities can but guess at the answer to this
question, but most of them think that the heat is at least a mile below
the surface of the earth. In some spots the hot rocks may be even nearer
to the surface, so near in fact that vegetation cannot grow. On the other
hand, these hot rocks near the surface may be heated by steam from
farther down.

"Where is the grasshopper glacier, Ranger ?"

Many people have heard of these curiosities, of which there are sev
eral in the Yellowstone region. The best-known grasshopper glaciers
are in the Beartooth National Forest just outside the northeast corner
of Yellowstone. There are countless millions of grasshoppers imbedded
in the ice of these glaciers. They have been there for centuries, frozen
solid. When the sun melts the ice, the grasshoppers disintegrate and the
pools at the base of the walls of ice are dark brown in color from the
grasshopper "tobacco juice." How they came to be in these glaciers in
such quantities is but surmised. The supposed explanation is that year
after year great clouds of grasshoppers, passing like a scourge over these
mountains, were caught in snowstorms which forced them down. As
the snow froze to ice, the grasshoppers were imbedded in it.

Another mystery that the rangers must clear up often for visitors is
that of the "red snow" of the park glaciers. This "red snow" is really not
snow at all, but a sort of lichen, scarlet in color, which lives in snow. It
is found in several of the parks on glaciers and old snow fields.

Curiosities which rank with the grasshopper glaciers are the nests of
ladybug colonies found on the highest peaks of the Sierra Nevada.
Climb Mount Lyell in Yosemite National Park at the end of summer,
and at the topmost peaks, beneath the rocks, far out of reach of food,
you will find millions and millions of ladybugs. Often they are so thick
in these mountainous hives that you can scoop them up with your hands.

There are men in California who make a busi
ness of going to high Sierra peaks to gather
ladybugs by the bag full. They are sold by
the pint or quart at fancy prices to farmers
and orchardists of the valley, who prize the
little bugs for their voracious appetites for
certain pests, principally lice, that eat plants
and the leaves of trees. But what instinct
leads them to fly hundreds of miles to the highest
mountains on the continent to pass their winters
in zero weather, far from food, is still a mystery.
'Ranger, where is timberline ?" That always interests

Nature's Notes * * * * * 107

people. Timberline is something that changes with the latitude. In the
Arctic circle, timberline is not far above sea level. At the Equator it is
said to be about three miles high. It varies in a very definite ratio be
tween altitude and latitude. One mile straight up in the air is the
equivalent of eight hundred miles north or south from the Equator. Of
course, exception must be made to the rule to allow for warm or cold
currents of the ocean, or other conditions which may change the tem
perature materially in certain parts of the earth. The angle of a moun
tain slope is a factor. Timberline is higher on a southern slope which re
ceives the sun's rays than it is on a northern slope which is in the shade.

This can best be illustrated by an unusual condition in Yosemite
Valley, where the steep southern wall is constantly in the shade and the
north wall is in the sun all winter long. In the valley, the condition of
life zones is unique. The south side of the valley is the home of flowers
and trees which ordinarily grow a hundred miles or more to the north.
The north wall is the home of flowers and trees found far to the south
of Yosemite Valley. The equatorial side of the valley is the colder.
Incidentally, this condition has given Yosemite Valley a remarkably
rich flora and made it the happy hunting ground of the naturalist. To
the cold shade of the south wall of Yosemite Valley trees have migrated
from the north and from higher altitudes. In the warm sunlight of the
north side of the valley, where there is reflected warmth from the cliffs
of that side, are found plants which are known to have thrived in regions
as far south as Mexico. People enjoy the climate of the north side of
the valley as much as the plants do, and they live there in the reflected
sunlight and warmth of the valley wall, but they only have to go a short
distance into the shadow of the south wall to find arctic conditions, cold
snow, winter sports.

Timberline is five hundred feet higher on the south slope of Mount
Washburn and other high Yellowstone peaks than it is on the north
slope. In Yellowstone, timberline ranges
from ninety-five hundred to ten thousand
feet. The top of Mount Washburn is in
the Arctic-Alpine zone, well above timber-
line. It is here that one finds the gorgeous
gardens of flowers growing right against
snow banks. These little plants thrive a
while in the intense sunlight unfiltered by
the heavy atmosphere of the lower levels.
The sun's rays bring them out in gorgeous
carpets that blanket the higher peaks of
Yellowstone, Rocky Mountain, Glacier,
and Rainier National parks.

108 ***** "O/z, Ranger!"

Life zones are groups of plants and animals living together in agree
able communities. Making a trip from the San Joaquin Valley in Cali
fornia through Sequoia National Park to the summit of Mount Whitney
is the equivalent of making a journey from Mexico to the Arctic circle
at sea level. As many different kinds of plants and animals would be
found on this short trip as on vastly longer trips from south to north.

Most of the national parks, because of their variety of altitude, in
clude several life zones. There are five zones in Yellowstone, for ex
ample, reaching from the Alpine zone at the top of Mount Washburn
and Electric Peak, through the Sub-Alpine zone, the Hudsonian, the
Canadian, and the Transition to the Upper Sonoran zone. These five
zones account for the wide range of trees, flowers, birds, and animals in
the Yellowstone. Almost equally great is the variety of life zones in
many of the other parks, each of which offers a special field of study for
the ranger naturalist and his staff before they can answer the questions
sure to be put to them by visitors.

"Well, Ranger, how did arctic plants get to Yellowstone from the
Arctic circle ?"

"That is a question which seems to worry a good many people.
Sometimes they ask me if the birds bring the seeds when they migrate.

It is very doubtful if they do. The generally
accepted explanation is that North America
once had a much colder climate than it now
enjoys. When the great glaciers spread over
the continent, during the Ice Age, the plants
of the Arctic circle naturally were pushed
south, while the more tropical plants were
either killed off or were pushed still farther
south. When the ice blanket melted and the
climate became warmer, the cold-loving
plants in the south died out or slowly crept north, follow
ing the glaciers back to the Arctic circle. Some of these
plants, instead of migrating northward, worked up the
slopes and, having established themselves comfortably on
the mountain tops and finding the climate congenial, stayed
there when their comrades followed the ice back to the Arctic circle.
Other and more tropical plants came in and surrounded these little belts
of arctic plants, isolating them on the mountain tops.

"These migrations of the flowers and trees form the most fascinating
study in the world, once you get into it. A good place to see the flowers
migrating is on Mount Rainier, where the glaciers are still retreating, a
few feet each year. Each inch they give up is eagerly swallowed up by
the army of the flowers, marching up the mountain side. It is said that

Nature's Notes * * * * * 109

sometime the flowers will swallow up all the mountain side that now
belongs to the great ice sheets. Some day, unless there is another ice
age, the flowers will capture the mountain."

Of course, present-day Dudes and Sagebrushers will not see the
mountain humbled. These migrations of the flowers have taken thou
sands and thousands of years. In the course of the migrations many
species of flowers have been lost entirely. For that matter many new
ones have been formed, too, by the flowers and trees adapting them
selves to new conditions and climates.

Almost equally interesting is the distribution of animals through the
life zones. The migrations of the animals are easier to understand. They
are not attached to the earth. They can move about and find new homes
quite easily. Yet they were distributed through their zones in much the
same manner, each animal following the climate that suited him best. So
it is that we find the mountain sheep and the little cony, or rock rabbit,
in the Hudsonian and Sub- Alpine zones of all the national parks, iso
lated from their kind by many miles of warmer climate which they shun
and avoid. There are still species of finches and ptarmigan which prefer
to raise their young in the rigorous and cold Arctic-Alpine summits of
Rocky Mountain and Glacier National parks, close to the glaciers.

"Ranger, why are the colors of these mountain-top flowers so deep
and brilliant ?"

"Well," answers the ranger, "scientists have never figured that out
exactly and we don't know for sure, but a ranger naturalist in one of
the parks has ventured the opinion that the reason lies in the fact that
there are so few insects on the mountain tops. Insects pollinize the
flowers and it would seem natural that they would be attracted to the
more brilliantly colored ones, hence these species are pollinized and re
produced, while the poor pale and colorless plants in time disappear or
at least are not so numerous as to be conspicuous."

Many are the marvels of life at the snowline ! For instance, in many
parks little willow trees grow that are only two inches tall. They grow
up in the Arctic region, too, and are the winter food of the reindeer.
"Red asparagus," or snow plant, is another weird example of life. It is
a parasite plant. True flowering plants take their food or manufacture
it from the air and water. They have green stems and leaves, green
being chlorophyll, an essential to their lives. In the case of the snow
plant, it manufactures its food from dead or decayed vegetable matter,
hence it does not resemble other plants. It is scarlet in color and to all
but close observers its general appearance is that of an unusually large
stalk of asparagus, hence the name sometimes used, "red asparagus."

As a general rule, flowering Alpine plants, grasses, and lichens will
grow for a thousand feet above the line of the last stunted and gnarled

110 * * * * * "Oh, Ranger!"

growths of timber. By the trees and flowers he finds about him, the
ranger naturalist who knows the life zones of his park can estimate the
altitude of any given locality. In the Sierra Nevada, the Old-Timers can
tell the altitude very readily by the combinations of trees, the sugar pine
refusing to grow below the six-thousand-foot level, the digger pine re
fusing to advance above the four-thousand- foot level, the juniper, the
Jeffrey pine, and the tamarack each choosing its own small sphere on the
generous mountain sides.

There is no more fascinating pastime for the Dude or the Sage-
brusher from the city than to join the nature-guide parties in Yosemite,
in Yellowstone, or in any of the other national parks, and see how
Mother Nature's plans are working out before his own eyes, on the
mountain side, where each foot of soil is disputed by a silent and per
sistent army of plants or trees. A week in the parks with a ranger
naturalist with whom to talk things over makes a year with books about
these same subjects more fascinating than it could ever be otherwise.

"Hey, Hiker!"

Hello, hiker, how does it go ?

How far to camp — a mile or so ?

Just a little way farther,
Just around the next corner,
Just this big hump and another,
Just a mile or two more.

How far is a mile, I'd like to know,

When you're hitting the trail on a tramp ?

Oh, a mile is as far as you've yet to go
Till you've hoofed it on into camp.

— Rhymes of the Rangers

"Ranger, what's the best time to hit the trail?"

The Old-Timer reflected, recalling many seasons in the mountains.

"Well, it all depends," he surmised, finally. "June's when the trails
thaw in these parts. June's when the mountain flowers poke their heads
through the snow. Some would say June's the time to hit the trail. But
then there's July when the trails are drier and the woods are in full
leaf and the snow's all melted except on the north slopes of the peaks.
On the other hand, by August the bugs are gone and camping is more
comfortable. For myself, I like to hit the trail about September, when
the season's over and there's a touch of autumn in the air. You can
take your choice."

"What kind of a mountaineer are you?" he asked, as if by after
thought.

"Oh, fair to middling, but nothing wonderful."

"Not what I meant," insisted the Old-Timer. "How do you classify?
Club mountaineer, free-lance mountain climber,
nature lover, trail rider, or just a plain ordi
nary hiker? There's all kinds on the trails,
you know."

"I didn't know it made any difference, but
I guess I'm just a plain hiker."

"It makes a difference in what you're try
ing to do in the mountains," explained the
ranger, "and that has something to do with
when you'd best hit the trail. F'r instance "

He went on to explain that club mountain
eers come in bevies, pitch their tents near some

111

112

{Oh, Ranger!'

mountain they have adopted for the time being, and camp for a long
enough time to give everyone in the party a chance to climb the highest
peaks in the region. These expeditions include men and women. The
organized climbs must be made when climbing is best, for safety's sake,
generally in the middle of the summer, which is about the only time a
large party can reach the tips of the highest mountains.

Free-lance mountain climbers are hardy souls who make it a hobby
to climb every high mountain they can reach, often under the most diffi
cult circumstances, sometimes in the dead of winter. They seldom
bother with camps. They operate singly or in twos and threes against
the heights. Since they are experienced mountaineers and know enough
to come well equipped, the free-lances are as a rule well able to take care
of themselves. They hit the trail any time of year and think nothing of
blazing new routes up the peaks.

Nature lovers don't care a hang what is up on top of the mountain.
The trail lures them not because it leads to the earth's high spots but
because it winds through woods and meadows and dells and across car
pets of flowers. The nature lovers are looking for butterflies and ani
mals and wild things that blossom of their own free will. They meander
over the trails at leisure, fluttering about some ranger naturalist like so
many disciples about an apostle. The flower lovers are on the trails as
long as Dame Nature holds open house in the great out-of-doors.

Trail riders are a breed to themselves.
The old hands at the sport love the smell
of the saddle, and the tenderfoot is thrilled
by the adventure of it all. You would
think that a narrow ledge, flanked by a
high granite wall on the one side and a
hundred-foot drop on the other, would be
the last place in the world to learn to
ride. But the trail ponies know their stuff,
and if the trail rider but gives his mount
the rein he will follow the guide's horse
to the end of the trail. Trail-riding is fun
in itself, and the time of year makes not
much difference — in fact, they trail-ride
the snowdrifts in some parks.

The plain and lowly hiker, with his
camera in his hand and perspiration on
his brow, outnumbers all the aforemen
tioned gentry of the trails something like four to one. The hikers are
the ordinary folks, sick of the sight of old brick walls, longing for a
look at the wilderness, hoofing it along the winding path for no other

'Hey, Hiker!'

113

reason than the fun of it. All the hiker asks is a well-marked trail,
leading somewhere at the end of day. All the service he wants is an
extra pair of socks, a big bite of lunch, and a camera with which to
shoot the stag that stares pop-eyed from the azaleas. The national park
trails just fill the bill for the hiker, for he can leave cares behind and be
sure of a meal and a bed at the end of the day for almost as little as it
costs to stay at home.

"You can rate yourself, brother, and take your choke," concluded
the Old-Timer. "I reckon the time for you city fellers to hit the trail is
any time you can get away from four walls and a roof."

No one who has tasted the freedom of the trail will argue about that.

Every so often someone bewails what the automobile is doing to
the American's ability to walk. Well, it is enabling millions of them to
find out where to hike, as a few days on any of the thousands of miles of
trails in the national parks or the national forests will prove. The call
of the trail is irresistible. Some lingering spark from the days when our
ancestors were trail-blazing flares up in each of us once or twice or
thrice a year, and there burns the longing for the winding trail that
leads now over mountain passes, now through fragrant forests, now by
rushing waters or past ramparts of rock. Then a million at a time take
to the trail during some months, yet so great is the magic of the wilder
ness that many multitudes can be swallowed without disturbing its
serenity.

The legions of stay-at-homes who know the trail but vicariously,
some because of apprehensions of the rigors of the wilderness, some
because it is too much work, others because of queer notions of the
dangers involved, have some queer ideas about the trail. To answer a
few of the questions that are asked of the rangers :

Nope, you don't meet wild Indians in the Western woods any more.
You may see some tame ones working on the trails, but they won't
molest you. ^ \

Yes, you might meet a bear. Just give
him a chance and he will amble into the
woods. No, you needn't fear wolves, or
mountain lions, or tigers, or wild elephants!

Altitude? Yes, it affects some people.
Those with weak hearts should avoid trails
that lead into the high mountains.

Yes, carry a compass, if you wish, but
in the high western mountains you don't
need it as much as in the eastern woods, be
cause in the Rockies or the Sierra or the
Cascades you can always see some high

114 * * * * * "Oh, Ranger!"

peak for a landmark. Yes, sir, the trails are well blazed, with diamond-
shaped slashings on trees, and small piles of rocks, known as ducks,
and junctions are marked, but it's a fact that some hikers can't read or
won't, and some of them do get lost.

Yes, ma'am, women can do it. Thousands of them do hit the national
park trails without male escorts. In fact, more women are seen on the
park trails than men.

No, you don't need a guide to hike the park trails, but sometimes
it adds to the fun to join a party under the leadership of a ranger
naturalist, who conducts hiking expeditions without charge.

Guns are out, friend. No shooting, except with a camera. In fact,
guns are forbidden in the parks.

Shoes? They're the most important item of your costume. When
you hit the trail, the shoes do the hitting all the way. Cheap, poorly
made shoes are no economy. Good shoes, with strong soles, are essen
tial. High ones are preferable, large enough so that you can wear two
pairs of socks, silk or cotton next to the feet, wool next the shoes.

Clothes? Well, something tough and warm. Khaki knickers stand
the gaff. Women as well as men wear them. A light raincoat is useful
in occasional showers. A warm woolen sweater is needed for the cool
mountain evenings, when the campfire warms only one side of you at
a time.

Yes, bring a knapsack, one that rides comfortably on the back. It
will hold the raincoat, sweater, the extra pair of socks, the flashlight,
the toothbrush, and the lunch. The hands should carry nothing, unless
a walking stick.

A camera ? By all means. Preferably a small one that straps on the
belt or hangs from the shoulder. Bring plenty of films.

A first-aid kit of the Boy Scout type is useful. You probably will
never use it, but if you need it at all you need it a lot.

No, speed isn't the thing on the trail. The race is to the tortoise,
with the slow but steady "poison oaker" stride. They seem to be just
barely moving along, but they keep going while the speed-burners have
to rest.

Oh, yes, put in a few ounces of discretion.

Trouble? Forget it, unless trouble troubles you. Then have some
one call up the rangers on the nearest trail telephone and they will ar
range a "drag out."

The "drag out" is the emergency service maintained day and night
by the national park rangers for hikers in distress. Maybe night falls
on a hiker who neglected to bring a flashlight. Maybe he loses his nerve
on a steep down stretch of the Ledge Trail. Maybe she has missed the
trail and is lost. Maybe it's a turned ankle, or a more serious accident.

"Hey, Hiker!" * * * * * US

Maybe it's morning, noon, or past midnight — a ranger is always on duty
at headquarters to make the "drag out" if need be. Most of them are
unnecessary, but the rangers must always respond to the call for help
for the sake of one in ten who actually
needs it.

One day the "drag out" call came to
headquarters in Sequoia National Park.

"Fat man stuck in a cave," said the
voice on the telephone. "Send a ranger —
better send two or three rangers."

Arriving at the cave, the rangers found
a hiker of great avoirdupois who had left
his discretion at home and who had tried
to push his way between two great boulders
into a cave much visited by hikers in that
park. The boulders weighed many tons and
could not be budged. Other hikers had pressed their weight against the
broad expanse of the fat man's trousers and had tried to push him into
the cave, with no luck. Then they tried to pull him out, but failed
equally dismally. Two courses lay before the rangers. They could dyna
mite the rocks and loosen the fat man, but that would destroy a scenic
asset and it might injure the prisoner. They could allow him to fast
until he reduced sufficiently to be released. The latter course was
adopted. It took three days to make that "drag out."

In Yosemite the call for help came from a trail rider. The rangers
hurried up the trail and found that a San Francisco sports writer had
been riding a mule, when the animal shied at something and jumped,
scraping the rider's head on an overhanging boulder. He was scalped
as neatly as if a redskin had done it, except that no self-respecting In
dian would waste time scalping a bald-headed man like this sports
writer. He was a pitiful figure, and was rushed to the hospital, where
his scalp was sewn back on his head by the surgeon in attendance. His
scalp healed, and shortly thereafter his hair began to grow. Today he
boasts the finest locks of any sports writer in San Francisco, which may
not be saying much ; but anybody wishing to take this cure for baldness
may have the man's name on application.

One day last summer three ambitious youngsters from Iowa arrived
in Rocky Mountain Park in an old car, and without delay or preparation
set out to climb Longs Peak. They reached the peak by late afternoon,
and started down by what they thought to be a short cut. The route be
came increasingly steep and their shoes, without hobnails, slipped on the
granite. The lads threw discretion to the wind and two of them tossed
their shoes ahead of them, hoping to find them below. One boy stuffed

116

fOA, Ranger!"

his shoes inside his shirt and his ounce of judgment undoubtedly saved
the lives of all three, for it was but a short time until they were trapped
on a narrow ledge, with bruised feet, unable to proceed. The boy with

the shoes made his way perilously back to the
peak and down the regular trail to call the
rangers. It was night when he reached the
ranger station. Darkness, broken by lightning
storms, delayed the "drag out" until the next
day, when the two barefoot boys were found
on their precipitous ledge, almost frozen.

Foolhardy recklessness causes practically all
of the distress on the trails. Youngsters insist
on blazing their own trails, against warnings
of old-timers of the mountains. Two youths
made their way into the Grand Canyon of the
Yellowstone, below the falls, and were unable
to climb out up the steep walls. They were
seen by another hiker, or they might have been
there yet, for no human call for help could carry above the din of the
falls. It was one of the most difficult "drag outs" ever accomplished by
the national park rangers, and it required many hours, during which
the three men who did the rescue work were in constant danger of
slipping into the raging torrent below — all because two hikers forgot to
pack a little discretion in the old kit bag when they hit the trail for a
holiday.

The world's record for "drag outs" is held by the rangers of Grand
Canyon National Park, where the approaches to the park are at a high
elevation. From the rim of the Canyon trails wind down to the river,
and many people undertake the hike down into the Canyon. It is down
hill all the way, and as the hiker continues to a lower elevation, respira
tion becomes unconsciously easier, until by the time the visitor has
reached the river, he feels fine and not the least tired and considers him
self something of a hiker. Where they drop out is on the way back, up
hill all the way, with altitude against them. It is exactly the reverse of
the average hike. The "drag out" mules earn their keep at Grand
Canyon, and the saying is that, though it's the same identical trail up
or down, "it's seven miles down and seventy-seven miles back."

It should be added here that the hiker who keeps himself in trim by
frequent walks about his home, who plans his trips and knows where he
is going and about how long it will take, who understands his own
physical condition and knows what he is equal to, almost never is humil
iated by having to submit to a "drag out.1' The rash ones, the blunder
ing ones, those who start out for a little walk and can never turn back

"Hey, Hiker!" * * * * * 117

as long as there is another bend in the trail, are the kind who make work
for the "drag out" crew.

Of course, the confirmed hiker is not satisfied to hit the trail once
or twice or three times a year when he can get away for a trip into the
high mountains. He seeks out kindred spirits in his own neighborhood
and together they explore the trails or country roads near by, and the
first thing you know a new trail club has been born. The growth of
these trail or mountaineering clubs until every city of importance has
at least one and sometimes several would indicate that, the automobile
to the contrary notwithstanding, Americans are using their legs for
other purposes than to step on the gas. Trail clubs are not new to this
generation, of course. The forerunner of them all in America, the
Appalachian Club, celebrated its golden anniversary not long ago.

When you form a club, you've got to have a purpose, with a capital
P, as the politicians say. All these trail clubs that dot the United States
felt that need, one by one, as they were born. The ideal purpose for a
club, as anybody knows who ever started a club, is to save something.
It is a happy circumstance that one and all of the trail clubs, looking
about, settled upon some bit of wilderness to save. Each club adopted
a mountain and mothered it, as it were, with all of its glaciers, forests,
streams, and meadows. Thus it has come about that most of the more
worth-while mountains of the land have been adopted and saved for pos
terity. There are those who don't belong to any trail club and who
think that the mountains might have been saved anyway, but this is a
matter of doubt and there is no questioning the fact that the various
mountaineering and trail clubs have played an important part in crys
tallizing public sentiment so that much of our wonderful wilderness
could be saved from civilization before it was too late.

When the Appalachian Club was formed half a century ago by a
handful of trail enthusiasts in Boston, it seemed as if the wilderness
known as the West never could be swallowed up. Yet within a man's
lifetime that almost happened. The Appalachians first turned their
attention to the White Mountains, which were then an impenetrable
wilderness known to but a few trappers and timber prospectors. The
Appalachians mapped the White Mountains and found no connected
trail system by which they could tramp for days on end, though there
were many short trails leading off from resorts or stations. It was then
that the idea of the "Long, Long Trail" was evolved.

The Appalachians, being both naive and enthusiastic, dug down into
their own pockets to pay for the building of a considerable number of
connecting trails, joining the short by-paths of the White Mountains
into more extensive routes. The public liked the idea and soon many
feet were plodding over the trails that were built for the discriminating

118 * * * * * "Oh, Ranger!"

few. After that the Appalachians, and the trail clubs that were to fol
low, concluded that the way to build trails was to have the state or the
national government do it. The trail clubs concentrated their activities
upon the erection of camps and shelters and upon focusing public atten
tion on the recreational possibilities of publicly built trails.

Today the Appalachian Club numbers its members by more than
four thousand. It has a notable clubhouse in Boston and chapters in
New York and several other eastern cities. Its leaders conduct weekly
walking trips in the country about these population centers and head
annual expeditions into the more remote wilderness. The club operates
a chain of lodges and camps along the main trails of New England,
capable of accommodating several hundred members each night. It was
sponsor of a trail conference at which representatives of state govern
ments and of trail clubs met and planned a great interstate continuous
trail system extending from Georgia up the backbone of the eastern
mountain range all the way to the northernmost tip of Maine. When
this system of trails is connected, the eastern hiker can hit the trail
anywhere along the "Long, Long Trail" and keep going for weeks on
end without leaving the wilderness, yet all the time be within a hundred
miles of a metropolis.

After the Appalachians had demonstrated what trails could do for
the White Mountains, a group of trail lovers in Rutland, Vermont, as
sembled, organized, and adopted the Green Mountains as their particular
orphan. The goal of the Green Mountain Club was the building of two
hundred miles of trails in their mountains. This was achieved and met
with such general approval that the club grew into a widespread organi
zation with chapters in half a dozen cities, including New York, which
strangely enough, is more or less a hot-bed of trail clubs. It is the
headquarters of the Tramp and Trail Club, the Inkowa Club, the
Fresh Air Club, the Wild Life Council, the Camp Fire Club, the Boone
and Crockett Club, and various other similar societies.

When it comes to doing something big, the Boy Scout badge goes
to the Sierra Club of California. Casting about for some bit of wilder
ness to which to be big brother and big sister, this trail society, founded
in 1892 under the leadership of John Muir, the noted naturalist and
sage of the mountains, adopted the biggest mountain in the world, the
Sierra Nevada. According to scientists, there are only two kinds of moun
tains on this earth, those that are piled up by volcanoes and those that
are pushed up by Nature through eons of internal earthly convulsion.
The Sierra Nevada is one of the latter, being a great block of granite
four hundred miles long and almost a hundred miles wide, pushed out
of the earth until its crest averages an altitude of more than two miles
above sea level. As if size were not enough, this giant mountain is head-

"Hey, Hiker!" * * * * * 119

quarters for numerous living glaciers, the world's oldest and largest
trees, the highest waterfalls, and the tallest peak in the United States.
Next to this peak, strangely enough, lies the country's lowest region,
Death Valley, four hundred feet below sea level.

It goes without saying that looking after this vast area has kept the
club busy. At least once each year the club pitches its official tent as
near the timberline as possible, somewhere along the long John Muir
Trail skirting the skyline of the Sierra, and literally hundreds of Sier-
rans, men and women alike, undertake personal inspections of the great
Sierra peaks. It is the practice of the Sierrans to do things right, which
can be interpreted as meaning that when the commissary pack train
pitches camp there is plenty of food and blankets for an army of trail
trekkers. The Sierrans hold that camp comfort adds to the joy of moun
tain climbing. It likewise is the practice of this organization to scour
California for the best camp cook in the world, it being assumed that
this dignitary will be found somewhere in that fair state, and his pres
ence adds to the zest of mountaineering.

This annual outing of the Sierra Club is a momentous affair, and the
Sierrans take no chance of being incapacitated. To keep fit for the big
hike each summer, they organize trail trips each week-end from San
Francisco and Los Angeles, into the near-by mountains with which those
favored cities are blessed. For all its enormous size, there probably is
no mountain in the world so well explored, so thoroughly trailed, and
so easily accessible as the Sierra Nevada. Six months of the year its
higher regions are locked in the arms of winter, but during the arid Cali
fornia summers Sierra trails are dry and safe and the atmosphere is
perfect for hiking. Four great national parks, Sequoia, Yosemite, Gen
eral Grant, and Lassen, lie in this fastness, and half a dozen national
forests. All are centers for expeditions each summer.

You've heard of the Mazamas. Well, they live in Oregon. Their
name they share with a mythical mountain said by geologists to have
been the highest in the United States. It stood sixteen thousand feet
high at one time, and belched forth from its volcano until so much of
its interior had been blown out that the whole peak caved in, forming
what is now Crater Lake. Too late the Mazamas organized to protect
this mountain. It is a matter of opinion what they might have done
about it had they been on the job at the time. Nevertheless, they are the
patrons of the defunct mountain and the more practical minded of the
Mazamas have turned their attention to Mount Hood, not so high
but probably as beautiful — at least to the eyes of a Mazama. Every
time some engineer proposes to build an incline up Mount Hood,
the Mazamas set up a terrific protest, with the result that all such ideas
have failed. Mount Hood is reserved for those who travel by trail,

120 ***** "Oh, Ranger!"

as the Mazamas do, not only on its slopes, but in the verdant forests
of Oregon.

The trail devotees of Washington found themselves well supplied
with noble mountains, what with Rainier, Olympus, Baker, and others.
Their society is called the Mountaineers, with headquarters in Seattle
and chapters in Tacoma and Everett, while on the other side of the
Cascades they are assisted in mothering the mountains by the Mountain
Club of Spokane, independent but devoted to the same forests and trails.

There are numerous other trail clubs, each active in its sphere. The
largest of the Rocky Mountain trail clubs is the Colorado Mountain
Club, with headquarters in Denver. The annual summer outings of this
club are spent high on the trails of Yellowstone, Glacier, or Rocky
Mountain National parks. The winter outings of the Colorado Moun
tain Club are held at Fern Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park,
where for several days each February its members revel in snow sports
at zero temperatures.

Nor is it necessary to have near-by mountains to adopt to justify a
trail club. Chicago has a Prairie Club, with many hundreds of members,
devoted to the cause of saving a little of the wilderness in the Great
Lakes region. The Prairie Club turns to both the Rocky Mountains and
the Appalachians for annual outings on the trails. The Pennsylvania
Alpine Club, with chapters in several cities, musters several thousand
trail enthusiasts pledged to the protection of the forests, the mountains,
and the wild birds and animals of that state. And there are numerous
other societies, among them the Izaak Walton League, the rolls of which
include the names of 150,000 fishermen, hunters, and lovers of the out-
of-doors interested in the conservation of the wilderness.

The Story of the National Park Service

The national park idea was born in 1870 around a campfire near
the junction of the Firehole and the Gibbon rivers in what is now
Yellowstone National Park. At that time, Yellowstone was a wilderness
more popularly known as "Colter's Hell," so named from the stories
told about the area by the intrepid trapper and hunter, John Colter.
The remarkable features of the Yellowstone were first described by
David E. Folsom and C. W. Cook of Montana, who explored part of
what is now the park in 1869.

It was in 1870 that the now famous Washburn-Langford exploring
party, assisted by Lieutenant Gustavus C. Doane and five cavalrymen,
undertook the complete exploration of the Yellowstone. The party con
sisted of General H. D. Washburn, commander ; Samuel T. Hauser,
Cornelius Hedges, W. C. Gillette, Walter Trumbull, Truman C. Everts,
Benjamin Stickney, Jacob Smith, and N. P. Langford, all residents of
Helena, Montana, then a frontier settlement.

This party was tremendously impressed with the geysers, the hot
springs, the boiling mud pots, the lake, the canyon, and the waterfalls,
and because one of their number, Truman C. Everts, became lost, the
explorers lingered long in the vicinity of Yellowstone Lake, hoping to
find Everts. Giving him up as lost (he was later found by searchers
after enduring almost unbelievable hardships), the party pushed on
toward Virginia City, Montana, hoping to avoid the early snowfall. The
birth of the national park idea has been described by Nathaniel P. Lang-
ford, who afterward served as first superintendent of the park.

"It was the first camp we made after leaving the lower geyser
basin," he wrote. "We were seated around the campfire, and one of our
number suggested that a quarter-section of land opposite the great falls
of the Yellowstone would be a source of profit to its owner. Another
member of the party thought that the upper geyser basin would furnish
greater attraction for pleasure seekers.

"Mr. Hedges then said that there ought to be no private ownership
of any portion of that region, but that the whole of it ought to be set
apart as a great national park. The suggestion met with a quick and
favorable response from other members of the party, and, to quote
from a recent letter of Mr. Hedges to me, The idea found favor with
all, and from that time we never lost sight of it/

"On our return, Mr. Hedges advocated the project in the public

press All this was several months prior to any government

exploration."

121

122 ***** "Oh, Ranger!"

Less than two years later, on March 1, 1872, Congress created
Yellowstone National Park, setting aside an area approximately 62
miles long and 54 miles wide, consisting of 3,348 square miles, or
2,142,720 acres, "for the benefit and enjoyment of the people forever."

It is true that the area which is now Hot Springs National Park
had been set aside for the public benefit forty years before, but a national
park was not created at that time. Likewise, in 1864 Congress had
passed an act turning over to the state of California the areas that are
in Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove of Big Trees, but the
Yosemite National Park was not created until 1890 when another act
of Congress set aside the great area of high mountain peaks, glaciers,
forests, valleys, and waterfalls of the Sierra Nevada, approximately
the present area of Yosemite Park. Curiously enough, by that time the
federal government had lost control of Yosemite Valley and the Mari
posa Grove of Big Trees, the two outstanding attractions of Yosemite
Park. They had been ceded to the state and were administered by state
officials. This division led to many disputes, culminating in a disagree
ment over which group of authorities should fight a forest fire on the
wall of Yosemite Valley halfway between Yosemite Valley, the state's
domain, and the rim, under control of federal authorities. While the
dispute continued, the fire raged, doing considerable damage, and rous
ing public indignation. This led to the popular demand for one authority
in Yosemite, and in 1906 the state ceded the valley back to the federal
government.

Sequoia and General Grant National parks were established by
Congress in 1890 to preserve the choice groves of big trees, among
them the General Sherman Tree, generally conceded to be the largest
in the world. Mount Rainier National Park was formed in 1899,
Crater Lake in 1902, Platt Park in 1903, Wind Cave in 1903, Sullys
Hill in 1904, Mesa Verde in 1906, Glacier Park in 1910, Rocky Moun
tain in 1915, Hawaii and Lassen Volcanic parks in 1916, Mount Mc-
Kinley in 1917, and Grand Canyon, Lafayette (now Acadia), and Zion
in 1919. Bryce Canyon became a national park in September, 1928, and
Grand Teton National Park was established on February 26, 1929. The
other proposed national parks, indorsed by the National Park Service,
include the National Park of the Cliff Cities in New Mexico, the Great
Smoky National Park in North Carolina and Tennessee, and the Shen-
andoah Park in western Virginia. A Redwood National Park in north
ern California is also a possibility, although the redwood park areas may
all be preserved as part of the California state park system. As a general
policy, the National Park Service encourages and assists state authorities
in any way possible in the development of state parks, though the federal
government has no jurisdiction over them.

The National Park Service * * * * 123

It will be seen that in the early days national parks were created
from time to time by Congress without any particular policy governing
their establishment. Some of the parks were established as a part of
local activities of the states. It was many years before the idea evolved
that the greatest of these scenic wonders should be gathered together
by the federal government under one management guided by a broad
policy. There was no bureau in Washington to govern the parks ac
cording to a comprehensive plan and policy until 1916. Previous to
that time the parks were looked after by the Secretary of the Interior
as a part of the miscellaneous activities of his department. To keep
order in the parks, the Secretary of the Interior called upon the War
Department for troops, which were stationed in Yellowstone, Yosemite,
General Grant, and Sequoia parks each summer.

In the parks where the troops were on patrol, the acting superin
tendent was a military officer, usually changed each year. He reported
to the Secretary of the Interior as well as to the War Department. In
Yellowstone there was still further division of authority in that all
improvements were under the army engineering corps and of course
no engineer officer would be required to report to the superintendent,
who was a cavalry officer. Consequently, there were times when the
park roads were not available to the public because the engineers would
not take instructions from the superintendent who was chiefly respon
sible for provisions for the traveling public. On the other hand, it is
only fair to say that there were some remarkably able army officers in
charge of the parks from time to time, men deeply interested in their
work and eager to render every possible service to the public.

A superintendent who deserves special mention was Nathaniel P.
Langford, who had charge of Yellowstone during the first five years
after the creation of the park. Mr. Langford not only served without
remuneration, but paid all his own expenses as well. He had no as
sistance and lacked adequate authority, and in his constant struggle to
protect the park from depredations he had little to aid him except per
suasion and discussion. Yet he was able to do much to protect the park
in those early days and kept visitors from carrying away valuable
exhibits.

In parks not placed under military control, the superintendents were
often political appointees, chosen because of favors to their parties
rather than because of particular qualification for their work. Fortu
nately, some of these men were very good executives. In some cases,
they made miserable failures of their tasks of preserving the park
wonders for the future. Appropriations were small, and with the excep
tion of the Yellowstone, Crater Lake, and Mount Rainier National
parks, where road systems were built by the army engineers, very little

124 * * * * * "OA, Ranger!"

road building was done at all. There was little money for the main
tenance and protection of the parks. In the early days, following Mr.
Langford's administration and preceding the coming of the military,
protectors of the Yellowstone received little compensation and their
earnings came principally from dividing fines and fees with justices of
the peace who were appointed for the territories in which the park lay.
This system was particularly vicious because the visitors to the parks
were harassed and fined for minor infractions of the rules or for no
breach of conduct at all, in order that the justice of the peace and the
arresting officer might increase their incomes.

The politicians who followed the public-spirited Langford and his
successor, Colonel P. W. Norris, in Yellowstone, were so careless and
inefficient in the performance of their duties that employment of troops
was necessary to preserve the park from despoliation. Fort Yellow
stone was built at Mammoth Hot Springs, not so much to combat red
skins, as was commonly supposed, as to keep the "white Indians," the
grafters, and exploiters out of the nation's playground.

When Yosemite and Sequoia parks were created in 1890, troops
were assigned to them at once. These parks never had civilian admin
istrations the year around until 1914, when troops were removed and
National Park Service officials assumed their duties. In Yellowstone,
the cavalry stayed until 1918 ; likewise the army engineers.

As a rule, it took from three to seven years after the creation of a
national park before funds for its care and upkeep were provided, and
up to 1910 there was little that a non-military park superintendent could
do. In that year, following the formation of Glacier National Park,
the American Civic Association, led by its vigorous and able president,
Dr. J. Horace McFarland, who had carefully watched the growth of
the national park idea for years, launched a campaign for the creation
of a national park bureau. The Secretary of the Interior, Walter L.
Fisher, and President Taft himself, urged Congress to set up a central
bureau for the administration of the parks. The President sent a special
message to Congress on the subject. Senator Reed Smoot of Utah and
Congressman John E. Raker of California introduced identical bills in
the Senate and the House creating such a bureau.

That was the situation when Franklin K. Lane became Secretary
of the Interior in 1913 upon the inauguration of President Wilson.
The parks were the orphans of the federal government. They were
nobody's charge and anybody's worry. Officials looked after them in
odd moments as best they could. Fortunately, in spite of the many
political wires pulled for the private exploitation of the parks, the vari
ous secretaries and their assistants frowned upon all commercial de
velopment, thus establishing a precedent and a policy. Credit for this

The National Park Service * * * * 125

goes largely to W. B. Acker, chief clerk of the Department of the In
terior and an able official and astute attorney.

In 1913, Secretary Lane called Dr. Adolph C. Miller of the Univer
sity of California to become his assistant, devoting his particular atten
tion to the national parks. However, he was soon drafted by the
President to work on banking problems and Secretary Lane was again
looking for a man to adopt the national parks. This time he called
upon his old college friend, Stephen T. Mather, a Californian, living at
the time in Illinois, a man familiar with the great out-of-doors and the
West, and a lover of the mountains. Mr. Mather became assistant sec
retary, and when by Act of Congress of August 25, 1916, the National
Park Service was established, he became the first director. Mr. Mather
held that position until January 12, 1929, under three administrations,
two of them Republican and one Democratic, serving under five differ
ent secretaries of the Department of the Interior.

The act creating the National Park Service gave its officers author
ity to "promote and regulate the federal areas known as the national
parks, monuments, and reservations," and enunciated the fundamental
purpose of the parks : "To conserve the scenery and the natural and his
toric objects and the wild life therein, and to provide for the enjoyment
of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them un
impaired for the enjoyment of future generations."

Those were broad and comprehensive powers. Exercising them,
however, was another matter. For years private interests had advanced
schemes for the commercialization of the parks, the using of park lands
for cattle and sheep grazing, the diversion of waters for irrigation and
power, the invasion of the mountains by ugly mining shafts. One of
these schemes was successful, the plan of the city of San Francisco
to dam the Hetch Hetchy Valley, a miniature Yosemite, flooding the
valley with a lake. Another persistent proposal was the draining of
water from Yellowstone Lake for power purposes and the elimination
of parts of the southwestern area of the park for reservoir sites.

The first job of the new National Park Service was to save the
parks from the exploitation schemes already undertaken. In the case
of Hetch Hetchy, the building of the dam was already authorized by
Congress, and nothing could be done. Under Mr. Mather's administra
tion the National Park Service has taken the position that if the natural
features of a park are sufficiently important and valuable to be placed
within a national park by an act of Congress, they should forever re
main there, regardless of their value from a commercial point of view,
and if they are not of national park caliber, they should be eliminated
from the park by appropriate legislation. The National Park Service
has opposed the creation of parks in certain areas because they did not

126 * * * * * "Oh, Ranger!"

measure up to the standard of the other parks. Likewise, the service
hopes to see certain areas added to some of the parks, notably a section
of the Kings country bordering on Sequoia National Park, Mount
Banner and Mount Ritter, The Devil Postpile, and Thousand Island
Lake southeast of Yosemite Park, the Never Summer Range and the
glaciers and peaks south of Rocky Mountain Park, and possibly a section
of fine California coast redwoods to preserve the primeval splendor of
these great trees. Since most of these areas are now federal lands, their
addition to the parks involves merely transfer from one government
department to another.

The National Park Service since its establishment has never had
any political standing. Appointments are made on a merit basis, in
accordance with civil service rules and regulations. Even the director
is a civil service employe. Secretaries of the Interior, since the crea
tion of the park service, have taken so great an interest in its develop
ment and welfare that they have resisted efforts to inject politics into
the handling of the parks or the appointment of park officials.

It is the policy of the National Park Service to keep its organization
small. It has no ambition to be the biggest bureau in the government
service. It does not seek to build up a corps of experts in every activity
which touches national park operations. It has a small engineering or
ganization for planning purposes and to execute certain lines of con
struction. It has a landscape engineering department which supervises
all building plans, approves plans and layouts for hotel and other conces
sioner developments, and has charge of all planting work, modification
of scenic areas through installation of roads, trails, and telephone lines.
It has an educational division which supervises the work of interpreting
the parks to their visitors, has general oversight of museums, natural
history activities, research, and so on. For all specialized scientific serv
ice, the National Park Service calls on other bureaus. For insect control
work in the forests, the Bureau of Entomology is our adviser. Road
construction is under the Bureau of Public Roads. The United States
Public Health Service designs all water and sewer systems and over
sees their construction. It also keeps a sharp oversight of conditions of
health in the parks, but at our request. The parks are exceptionally
healthy places and epidemics are almost unknown. Streams and lakes
are stocked with fish through co-operation with the Bureau of Fisheries.
The Biological Survey, the Geological Survey, the Forest Service, are
other bureaus that co-operate closely with us.

The administration of some of the parks is complicated by the fact
that before they were established as parks, private and state holdings
existed in them. For example, in Yosemite National Park there are
large timber and land holdings. Many of these grants have been bought

The National Park Service * * * * 127

up, or the owners have been persuaded to exchange their lands for other
public lands. Some have refused to do this. In Yosemite, and in Gla
cier, too, the National Park Service is exchanging timber away from
the roads for important stands held by the private timber companies
along the roads leading into the parks. The park service has been much
criticized for permitting the cutting of timber in Yosemite. As a matter
of fact, there is nothing the service can do about it. The timber came
into the hands of the private owners before the national park was
created. The best the service can do is to trade timber in remote areas
for timber that borders on the roads, so that the visitor will not have to
pass through barren areas of cut-over forests en route to Yosemite
Valley.

Practically every one of the national parks except Yellowstone has
the problem of private holdings with which to contend. In some of the
parks the holdings are in remote places where they do not interfere with
park operations. Others, such as Rocky Mountain, Yosemite, Glacier,
and Hawaii National parks, are invaded by relatively large holdings.
In 1927 Congress appropriated a fund of $50,000 to be used in the
purchase of private lands within the parks, provided that in such acqui
sitions the government funds were matched dollar for dollar with
funds privately contributed. This policy of appropriation, if continued,
will result in practically all private holdings in the national parks being
returned to the public.

In some of the parks, proposed revisions of the park boundaries
will eliminate many private holdings. Revision of the Rocky Mountain
Park line has eliminated already more than eighteen thousand acres.
When such revision can be accomplished without losing important fea
tures, or without complicating park operations, it is the policy of the
service to make the change.

A similar condition in Yosemite obtained with respect to roads.
Prior to the creation of the National Park Service, all of the roads built
into Yosemite Valley were privately constructed and owned. The Wa-
wona Road was constructed by a turnpike company which at first trans
ported passengers by horseback, then by horse-drawn stage, and finally
by automobile. One of the first problems of the new park service was
to persuade this company to turn the road over to the public in ex
change for a grant for the exclusive use of the road for stagecoaches
during a certain number of years under government maintenance.

An even more interesting situation prevailed with respect to the
Tioga Pass Road, one of the most spectacular scenic drives in any of
the parks. This road was built by a mining company across the heart
of territory that is now Yosemite Park, before the creation of the park
service. Fortunately, the mines did not pay and they were abandoned.

128 * * * * * "Oh, Ranger!"

The company still owned the road. Government funds were lacking to
purchase it, and Director Mather, with some friends, bought it privately
and deeded it to the federal government, thus providing Yosemite with
a route into the high Sierra country.

In Grand Canyon there have been some delicate administrative prob
lems that have hampered the superintendents and the rangers in their
efforts to serve the public. Most of them arose from private ownership
of holdings in the park. Local Arizona politicians, through control of
affairs in a county adjoining Grand Canyon National Park, tried to
block government access to the Bright Angel Trail, the main route into
the Grand Canyon. It was this situation which roused President Roose
velt to declare the Grand Canyon a national monument in 1908. That
checked privateering, and in 1919 Congress made the area a national
park. However, it was not until 1926 that the last mining claim was
canceled by the courts, after it was proved that minerals did not exist
in sufficient quantities to justify the claims.

In the meantime, other trails have been built into the Grand Canyon,
and the original offer of the federal government to the county in ques
tion has been reopened ; namely, that in exchange for government
ownership of the Bright Angel Trail the United States will build an
approved approach road to the park through that county. Sometimes it
is impossible to "do business" with the local owners of roads and trails.
The instance of the Coulterville Road into Yosemite Valley is an inter
esting example. Failing in their efforts to persuade the owners of this
road to make it public property, the park superintendent ceased to main
tain the road within the park. The public traveled the roads which were
improved and kept up. Today the Coulterville Road has almost reverted
to Nature.

In one corner of Yosemite Park an old privately owned homestead
has been cut up into summer homesites and put on the market. Fortu
nately, it is so located that it does not interfere with the activities of the
park. But, unfortunately for the victims, many of whom undoubtedly
buy lots in Yosemite expecting to be within sight of Yosemite Falls,
the mere fact that this homestead is within the boundaries leads
"suckers" to believe that the enterprise has government approval. Quite
the reverse is true and the public should realize that any scheme to
exploit lands within the parks has strong government disapproval
upon it.

Before the boundaries of Rocky Mountain National Park were
revised, visitors often were obliged to go miles to find a place to camp,
for the reason that the roads ran through private lands plastered with
"No Trespassing" signs. This often stirred Sagebrushers to anger and
criticism of the National Park Service. Of course, this situation was

The National Park Service * * * * 129

inherited by the service when Rocky Mountain Park was created, and
as soon as funds were available private lands were purchased to make
public campsites.

It is the policy of the Department of the Interior to secure, whenever
possible, the exclusive jurisdiction of national park territory for the
federal government. Yellowstone Park, being older than the states in
which it lies, has been completely under jurisdiction of federal authori
ties. The same is true in Hawaii and Alaska. In the other parks, the
states have certain civil and criminal jurisdiction, though some of them
have ceded this authority to the federal government, withholding only
the right to tax private property and sometimes to collect fishing license
fees. Some states, notably Arizona and Utah, have thus far not given
up jurisdiction, thus compelling the park service rangers to go about the
protection of park property just as a private property owner would
remove a trespasser from his own home. This complicates administra
tion somewhat and is one of the problems that remains to be smoothed
out by federal and local officials.

It is the policy of the National Park Service to keep vast areas of
the parks in an absolutely natural condition, and for that reason road-
building plans contemplate making accessible only the most unusual and
distinctive features of the parks. As a rule, one main highway across
a park is enough, and as a matter of fact to build one such highway
according to modern standards will take all funds available for many
years to come. To care for the enormous number of Sagebrushers who
come to the parks each year, it is necessary to hard-surface all roads and
make them dustproof, else the beauties of the parks are destroyed by
those who want to enjoy them.

Leading off from the roads are trails over which the wilderness
lover can find the solitude he craves. Some sections of the parks are
denied even to the trail rider. They are remote areas reserved for
Nature exclusively and for future scientific study. About the only
wilderness areas remaining in the United States are found in the
national parks. Vast areas, including more than half of the territory of
the parks, are so far off the beaten paths that they are visited by but
few parties a year. It is hoped that they will never become civilized,
even when the airplane makes all spots of the earth accessible, that they
will remain as wild, as unblazed and untouched as were the mountains
of the West when Jim Bridger and Kit Carson and other pioneer scouts
first pushed into them.

The northern half of Yosemite Park is a wilderness area of more
than a quarter of a million acres. Nearly all of Glacier Park, fully two-
thirds of Yellowstone's great area, the vast Kern River extension of
Sequoia Park, are all untouched, unblazed wilderness. The same is true

130 ***** "Oh, Ranger!"

of much of the Grand Canyon below the rims, that part of Zion above
and beyond the rims, a very large part of Rocky Mountain Park, and
over three-fourths of Mount Rainier Park. All these areas are acces
sible only to the person who so sincerely desires to get away from
civilization that he will ride the trails for days on end with only guides,
wild animals, mountain peaks, turbulent rivers, forests, and glaciers for
company. In the vast areas colloquially known among the rangers as
"the back country," the nature lover can find solitude enough. This is
the realm of Nature. It will never be touched by the road builder, it
will never hear the thrum of the motor, if the wishes of the National
Park Service officials are respected.

Of course, it is necessary that there be housing and transportation
facilities in order that the parks may be visited and enjoyed by the
public. In the earliest acts of Congress relating to the parks, provision
was made for the granting of concessions under franchise for private
concerns to erect hotels, transportation lines, and other service facili
ties. This policy, still fixed by Congress, continues. The Secretary of
the Interior is authorized to grant franchises for terms not exceeding
twenty years for the construction and operation of facilities in the
parks. The secretary approves the franchises, which are specific grants
of privileges to be exercised within the park boundaries. These privi
leges must be exercised in accordance with the law and the rules and
regulations governing the parks. Service must be rendered according
to standards laid down by the secretary and his representatives and at
rates prescribed by the secretary.

It is the policy of the secretary not to grant more than one franchise
for the furnishing of a certain type of service as long as the service
rendered is in accordance with the standards laid down by him. If any
extensions of service are necessary, the secretary calls upon his fran
chise holder to furnish the additional service. If the operator refuses
to comply, the secretary may cancel the franchise or he may let another
operator furnish the needed service. In other words, the franchise
holder has the preferential right to furnish additional service when
need arises. The franchises are not monopolistic or exclusive and the
secretary never at any time ties his hands in such a way as to make
impossible the granting of new privileges, should they be necessary in
order to furnish adequate facilities or to meet new demands of the
public.

In the early days of the parks, no one was able to furnish sufficient
capital to build hotels and to establish transportation lines except the
railroads. In the case of several of the parks, all of the early facilities
were established by interested railroads in order that they might offer
proper accommodations for their passengers. Even today this condition

Looking north from Yavapai Point
in Grand Canyon National Park

A Blackfoot Indian camp on the shore
of St. Mary Lake, Glacier National Park

Ho pi House reproduced at Grand Canyon

Spruce Tree House, Mesa Verde National Park

Temple of Osiris, Bryce Canyon National Park

Lassen Peak, Lassen Volcanic National Park

The National Park Service # * * * 131

still prevails in some of the parks, notably Zion and Bryce Canyon
National parks and the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, where the
Union Pacific has financed improvements valued at two million dollars,
and the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, where the Santa Fe Railroad
and Fred Harvey have constructed facilities at the cost of several mil
lion dollars. Also in Glacier Park the Great Northern built a magnificent
chain of hotels and chalets. In Yellowstone, the hotels were built
originally by the Northern Pacific Railroad. Later they were taken over
by another company, which operates both the chain of hotels and the
extensive motor transportation system. In Mount Rainier National Park
the hotel was originally financed by the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul
Railroad, and later was taken over by a group of citizens of Seattle and
Tacoma, interested in developing travel to the Northwest. Public-
spirited citizens of Portland financed the establishment of facilities in
Crater Lake Park.

In Yosemite the history of the operators in the park has been a
varied and an interesting one. The first inns in the valley were little
more than bars, and greater emphasis was laid on this phase of hospi
tality than on comforts. Californians were quick to appreciate the busi
ness possibilities of travel, even in the early days, and within three years
after the first party of tourists, led by J. M. Hutchings, visited Yosemite
Valley in 1855 two inns had been built in the wilderness. The first of
these was a saloon, built in the fall of 1856, to accommodate those early
travelers who demanded their whisky and their game of cards even in
the shadow of El Capitan. The next year it became apparent that visitors
wanted to eat as well as to drink in Yosemite, and the restaurant feature
was added as an afterthought. This building later became Black's
Hotel, famed mainly as the home of John Muir after his rupture with
Hutchings.

The second of these inns was a blue canvas structure erected by a
man named Beardsley and later torn down to make way for a wooden
structure which Hutchings bought. For years Hutchings' House was
one of the landmarks of Yosemite and one of California's famous hos-
telries. It achieved its personality more through the geniality of its
host than because of its comforts, which were notoriously lacking. For
some time Hutchings' House consisted of two rooms, one upstairs, one
down. The women were herded upstairs to sleep. The men stayed down.
Visiting notables, often nobles from abroad, slept side by side with
nobodies from anywhere. Later, Hutchings improvised rooms of paper
walls, with curtains for doors, and gentlemen were allowed to sleep
with their wives in Hutchings' House, though even whispers were heard
all through the house and the shadows made lively pantomimes on the

132 ***** "Oh, Ranger!"

partitions. These little discomforts, for the most part, were taken good-
naturedly by the guests and laughed off as the shortcomings of a host
who recited poetry as he served breakfast in the morning.

A part of the old Hutchings' House still stands, near the Sentinel
Hotel, known today as Cedar Cottage. Another old inn, popular in its
day, was Leidig's Hotel at the foot of Sentinel Rock. The old Stone-
man House was built by the state of California to attract visitors to the
leading wonder of the Golden State. It was destroyed by fire. Another
picturesque inn was Snow's House at the foot of Nevada Falls, crude
in its accommodations but warm in its hospitality. Another show place
was John Smith's Cosmopolitan House, a place of simple exterior, but
equipped with a barber shop, a pool hall, a writing-room, and — wonder
of wonders — bathtubs with hot and cold water. Smith packed in on
horseback the furnishings for his hotel, including bathtubs, full-length
mirrors, elaborate glass goblets, and an amazing array of luxurious
equipment.

The originator of the permanent camp idea in the national parks and
probably in the United States as well was W. W. Wylie, who in the
early 'nineties began taking parties through Yellowstone National Park
with covered wagons, saddle horses, and other movable equipment and
stock. For years he took ever increasing numbers of people through the
Yellowstone, making camp each night, putting up cook tent, sleeping
tents, canvas shelters for horses and wagons. The melodian furnished
music for community singing around campfires in the evening, and
Professor Wylie lectured for a while each evening on the features of
the park. After a while his parties grew so large that he had to have
several outfits. He purchased comfortable stages for his guests. Soon
he found that he could not keep on moving these big parties with equip
ment that had to be taken down each morning and set up each night.
He arranged finally to leave his camps standing at several points in the
park. His application was resisted by the railroad owning the big hotels,
which were not paying interest on their cost, and with which the camps
were competing. Mr. Wylie won his case, however, on the ground that
there was a demand for cheaper service than the hotels furnished.
Meanwhile, the railroad established a policy of rate-making which pro
vided that reduced summer excursion fares should apply only to the
park hotels and should be sold only in connection with hotel tickets.
This came near ruining the camp business, but Mr. Wylie fought the
company before the Interstate Commerce Commission and won the
right to have all excursion tickets read either via the hotels or camps.
Afterward the railroad sold the hotels and so did Mr. Wylie sell the
camps, which are now known as the lodges of Yellowstone.

One summer in the 'nineties, Mr. and Mrs. David A. Curry, at that

The National Park Service * * * * 133

time teachers from Indiana, took a party of people through the Yellow
stone via the Wylie Camps, or "Wylie Way," as they were known for
years. When the Currys came to California a year or two later, they
started business in Yosemite Park along the lines of Mr. Wylie's camps
in Yellowstone. The Curry Camping trips eventually grew into Camp
Curry, one of the most successful undertakings in any of the parks.

Many years later, in 1917, Mr. Wylie, then an old man, pioneered in
establishing camps in Zion Park and on the North Rim of the Grand
Canyon of the Colorado. The last Wylie Camp was purchased in 1927
by the Utah Parks Company, a subsidiary of the Union Pacific system,
to be operated as part of its utilities on the North Rim. Mr. Wylie, in
retirement, looks back with great pleasure on the progress of the camp
ing idea that he originated years ago in the Yellowstone.

Most of the other park concessions had equally humble beginnings.
The Longmire family and John Reese pioneered in Mount Rainier Park.
Will G. Steel and Alfred L. Parkhurst first developed service at Crater
Lake. Visitors to Grand Canyon for many years camped out overnight
on the long trip overland from Flagstaff to the Canyon at crude lodges
built by W. W. Bass and Captain Hanse. Improvements in automobiles
and the building of new roads and railroads have brought new thousands
demanding accommodations. Many of the pioneers in the business of
entertaining guests at the parks have had to sell out to great companies
with sufficient capital to meet present-day demands. Whenever difficul
ties have forced the retirement of these pioneers, the National Park
Service has insisted that they be paid fair value for their properties,
though failure to render service under terms of the franchises meant
forfeiture of concessions. These pioneers labored against great natural
difficulties, short seasons, remote distances, and uncertain travel, and
they deserve both sympathy and praise.

Present-day operators likewise have their problems. In Grand Can
yon Park, for instance, the operators of El Tovar Hotel must haul
water for hotel use, gardening, and other purposes in tank cars for one
hundred miles by rail at a cost of three dollars per thousand gallons.
On the North Rim, water is pumped thirty-five hundred feet, more than
half a mile, from a stream in the Canyon. This stream first generates the
electric power which operates the pumps to force the water to the rim.
Many of the hotels and lodges are great distances from railroads.
Hauling perishable foodstuffs to these establishments was extremely
difficult in the days of horse-drawn vehicles. It is still costly, even with
motor trucks, and must be taken into consideration in the fixing of rates
for service at the park hotels and lodges. In many of the more remote
camps, supplies must be packed in on mules over high mountain trails —
a process which naturally runs up expense.

134 ***** "OA, Ranger!"

In practically all of the parks the main concessions are now in the
control of one company, charged with offering the visitor every service
he needs whether it is profitable to the concessioner or not; but this
company rarely has privileges in more than one park. Large companies
can do this, compensating for temporary losses in one branch of the
service by profits in other branches. Each year the concessioner must
submit a plan for his operations during the ensuing year, together with a
schedule of rates, to the superintendent of the park, who in turn submits
it to the Secretary of the Interior at Washington. In this way, the
public is assured of the services that are needed at fair and reasonable
rates, and the citizens who invest their capital in the expensive hotels,
lodges, and stage lines, needed to give good service, are assured that they
will make a fair return on their investment. It is the aim of the
National Park Service to have a type of service in every park to suit
every taste, ranging from simple housekeeping camps up to luxurious
hotels.

It is part of the work of the superintendent and his rangers to see
that the visitor to the park receives the type of service he wants. Sage-
brusher Jones arrives in his Super-Four, loaded with Mrs. Jones, all the
little Sagebrusher Joneses, sundry bedding, camp stools, pots and pans,
and food. He wants to see the park as inexpensively as possible, and
intends to establish his own household with his own equipment, plus
whatever the park can supply.

"All right," says the ranger, "there's a fine camp for you, right over
there. It costs you nothing. If you want a tent already put up, you can
get it for a dollar a day from the housekeeping camp headquarters.
There's a store over here and a cafeteria. Help yourself to wood from
this pile. If you don't find everything all right, let us know. Baths?
You can get hot or cold showers in that little building for twenty-five
cents apiece."

The Simplex Sixes arrive in the park in their new car. They are
Sagebrushing it de luxe, as it were. They want to wear their sweaters,
knickers, and rough clothes.

"Well, you'd better stay away from the hotel, then," says the ranger.
"You girls can get into the dining room in any old clothes, but the old
gentleman there can't get in without his coat on. I don't care if his
chamois jacket did cost a hundred bucks. The dining room isn't open
to anyone without his coat. You'd better go to the camps. There's
more life there, the cabins are just as comfortable as hotel rooms, and
you can wear your jacket if you want to. That's the way I would go,
if I were here for fun."

Along come the S trait- Aights, with their liveried chauffeur. They
have the money and the clothes (in the big trunk on the back) and they

The National Park Service * * # * 135

want all the service that money can buy. They consult the ranger at
the ranger station.

"Yes, sir, there certainly is a good hotel in this park," he tells them,
"you can have all the comforts of home, including a bath. Meals are
fine, American plan, yes, sir. That's where you want to go."

Probably the ranger has never had a meal at the fine hotel, but he
knows the kind of people who do have them there. That is his business.
Then there are the Dudes. The New York Dudes, you know, with the
trunk full of hiking clothes, riding clothes, morning clothes, afternoon
clothes, lounging clothes, and evening clothes. They are headed for the
hotel. The Dude from Oshkosh who had been teaching school all winter
to save up a couple of hundred dollars for a vacation in a national park
is something else again. She wants good value for her money. She goes
to the camps. But everybody gets what he wants. That is the national
park policy.

And where does the ranger live?

He has a bunk in a cabin, or a rangers' clubhouse, but he doesn't use
it much except when he is asleep. After the Dudes and Sagebrushers
have been directed to the camps, lodges, or hotels, the ranger has to see
that the water supply is plentiful and pure, that the electric light plant
is going, that the wild animals are protected, that the telephone and
telegraph lines are working, that the vandals are rounded up and
brought to justice, that the roads and the bridges are kept in repair, that
the forest fires are put out, that the sanitary system is working, that
the fish are planted in the lakes and streams, that the trails are rebuilt,
that nobody is lost in the mountains anywhere, that the geysers are
working, that nobody carves his initials on the big trees, that the museum
is kept open, that the stages run on time, that the traffic moves in the
right direction, and after that — well, there isn't much of anything to do
until tomorrow.

"What do rangers do all winter?" Dudes and Sagebrushers are al
ways asking that question. There seems to be an idea that rangers must
pine away for want of something to do. As a matter of fact, the rang
ers have plenty of work all winter long. In the evenings they are ready
for rest. They are great readers, not merely of popular magazines
alone, but of the so-called quality magazines. Many of them are good
writers, and contribute frequently to magazines and Sunday newspapers.
Some of them are studying, through correspondence courses. Ranger
James V. Lloyd of Yosemite has completed an education interrupted
when he was obliged to go to work as a boy, finishing courses in for
estry, writing, photography, and various other subjects. He has become
the most frequent ranger contributor of articles and photographs on the
national parks to the newspapers and magazines of the West.

136

'Oh, Ranger!"

But even with the opportunity winter brings to the rangers, each to
pursue his hobby, they are glad to see the spring, for — if spring comes,
can Dudes be far behind? In the rhyme of Ranger Dan Anderson :

There's a bunch of spoutin' geysers blowin' steam for all they're worth,

And the waterfalls are makin' quite a din,

And the fragrance of the flowers wastes upon the empty air

While waitin* for the season to begin.

The ranger's gettin' ready for the comin' of the Dudes,

For in winter they are lonesome as all sin,

And the bears are growlin* hungry 'round the empty garbage dumps

While waitin' for the season to begin.

Soon the folks will ask fool questions 'bout everything in sight,
And the 'jammers claim the tips are extra thin,
But in spite of all the cussin' one and all we're mighty glad
To be waitin' for the season to begin.

The National Parks and Monuments

Glimpses of the National Parks
and Monuments

"Oh, Ranger ! I have just time enough to see one national park. Which
one has the best scenery ?" Now that is a hard question. It is also one often
asked by those who have yet to see their first national park and who have a
vague idea that a national park is "something like a city park, only larger."
Actually, the national parks bear little resemblance to most city parks. Where
the city parks are cultivated areas, the national parks are regions where
Nature is permitted to take her own wild course with trees, flowers, animals,
hills, and dales. The National Park Service seeks to keep the parks in as wild
a state as possible. Only such roads, trails, and buildings are allowed as are
absolutely essential to the comfort of travelers. Each of the fifteen major
national parks is supreme in its own way, and each is different. Each was
formed to preserve to posterity some striking and outstanding wonder.

Mount Rainier, for example, is a beautiful, stately, snow-covered moun
tain, an extinct volcano, down the sides of which flow twenty-eight glaciers
or rivers of ice. Yellowstone National Park contains more hot-water geysers
than can be found in all the rest of the world put together. Nowhere else in
the world will the traveler find granite walls so stupendous as in Yosemite,
nowhere else will he find waterfalls so high and astounding, or cliffs so
precipitous. Sequoia National Park is the home of the finest groves of giant
sequoias, including the largest and oldest living thing on earth, the General
Sherman Tree. Crater Lake fills, with a deep blue, the cavity left when the
top of Mount Mazama, one of America's greatest volcanoes, caved in and
disappeared into its own depths, ages ago. Mount McKinley National Park
contains the highest peak on the American continent, rearing its crest twenty
thousand feet above the sea. Grand Canyon National Park, in Arizona, ex
hibits the mightiest and most colorful chasm in the world. Mesa Verde Na
tional Park preserves the ruins of a remarkable ancient American civilization.
Hawaii National Park offers stupendous exhibits of volcanic activity, and
much of the time a lake of boiling lava. And so on, through the whole list of
the national parks.

Besides the national parks there are thirty-three national monuments
under the direction of the National Park Service. National parks are reserved
and dedicated by act of Congress, and, as a rule, they have been carved out of
the public domain and set apart as national parks because they contain
scenery or other natural phenomena so unusual and distinctive as to make
their preservation in essentially their primal condition of national importance.
Originally it was believed that only areas of considerable size should be
included in national parks, but long since the element of size has been dropped
as an essential factor in creating parks.

National monuments are set aside by order of the President under the Act
of Congress of June 8, 1906, which is known as the "Antiquities Act." It
authorizes the Chief Executive to "declare by public proclamation historic

139

140 * * * * * "OA, Ranger!"

landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic
and scientific interest that are situated upon lands owned or controlled by the
Government of the United States to be national monuments." Another
section of this law permitted the President to accept donations of land which
might be established as national monuments. It sometimes happens, as in
the case of Acadia National Park, that Congress elevates a national monu
ment to the status of a national park, and it is not unlikely that one or two
of the smaller national parks will be reduced eventually to the status of
monuments.

In the beginning, the Antiquities or National Monument Act was inter
preted to authorize only the reservation of small areas including landmarks,
historic structures such as old missions, prehistoric buildings such as cliff
dwellings, and unusual features of scientific interest such as the Petrified
Forest in Arizona, certain fine caves, Muir Woods, et cetera. In 1908 Presi
dent Roosevelt, in order to stop exploitation of the Grand Canyon of the
Colorado through mining claims and other filings on land which had no legal
basis, ordered a national monument created nearly a thousand square miles in
area on the ground that the Grand Canyon possessed "scientific interest." His
power to do this was questioned in the courts, but he was sustained by them.

Theoretically, on the precedent of the Grand Canyon case, any president
could make a national monument include any area that the nation might
want or that should be preserved for all time, but, practically, Congress
would not permit such a general usurpation of its powers and could control
the reserving of such monuments by refusing to appropriate funds for their
upkeep.

As a matter of fact, were it not for this question of funds for upkeep
and operation, the national monuments and national parks would be almost
on the same basis, for the National Park Service Act of 1916 authorizes both
parks and monuments to be administered in the same manner and under
identical policies. Today, Carlsbad Cave National Monument in New Mexico,
Petrified Forest and Casa Grande National monuments in Arizona, and
Pinnacles and Muir Woods monuments in California are operated exactly
like national parks, while Sullys Hill National Park in North Dakota is
handled like a monument, owing to lack of funds.

In spite of this seeming confusion between parks and monuments, no one
will deny that Congress, in declaring the establishment of parks and in pro
viding for them, has properly distinguished between the various reservations
on a basis of merit, giving the great outstanding features, historic, scientific,
and scenic, national park status, the lesser features being left to presidential
reservation as monuments. And as monuments, because of public interest or
because of discovery of more important features, claim national park status,
Congress elevates them. It is likely that Carlsbad Cave National Monument,
under the National Park Service, and the Bandelier National Monument,
under the Department of Agriculture, both in New Mexico, may become
national parks, the latter the National Park of the Cliff Cities near Santa Fe.

It should be noted here that there are fifteen monuments under the
Department of Agriculture and eleven under the War Department, because

National Parks ***** 141

they lie within national forests or military reservations. It is more economi
cal to protect these monuments with forces of these other departments, but
it is believed that the policies governing them will ultimately be those of the
National Park Service. As a matter of fact, the War Department has taken
the position that the National Park Service should take over not only its
national monuments but also the national military parks, which include
Gettysburg in Pennsylvania, Shiloh in Tennessee, Vicksburg in Mississippi,
Chickamauga and Chattanooga in Georgia and Tennessee, and Antietam in
Maryland, all battlefields of the Civil War, but most of them also very
scenic and otherwise possessed of park characteristics.

There are also two other national military parks, Guilford Courthouse in
North Carolina, a Revolutionary War battleground, and Lincoln's birthplace
in Kentucky, containing the log cabin and part of the farm where Abraham
Lincoln was born. This latter park, it seems, should have been under the
National Park Service from its establishment, as there never has been any
military significance to its creation and maintenance. So it appears that there
will be ultimately a consolidation of national parks, national monuments, and
national military parks under the National Park Service, which is equipped by
experience, personnel, legal authority, and general policies to administer and
protect them all in the interest of the nation.

Of the national monuments now under the National Park Service, two
are in California, eight are in Arizona, six in New Mexico, one in Nebraska,
three in Colorado, four in Utah, two in Wyoming, one in South Dakota, one
in North Dakota, one in Montana, one in Idaho, and three in Alaska.

All of the monuments in Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah, with the excep
tion of the Carlsbad Cave and the Dinosaur monuments, are under the admin
istration of one superintendent with headquarters at Casa Grande, Arizona.

Following is a brief description of each of the national parks and monu
ments, together with suggestions for seeing them.

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK

Yellowstone National Park lies principally in Wyoming, but extends over
the borders of Idaho and Montana. It is probably the most celebrated of all
the national parks because it contains more and greater geysers than all the
rest of the world together, the only other great geyser fields in the world
being those in Iceland and New Zealand.

Geysers are, roughly speaking, water volcanoes. They occur only at
places where the internal heat of the earth approaches close to the surface.
Their action, for so many years unexplained and even now regarded with
wonder by so many, is simple. Water from the surface trickling through
cracks in the rocks, or water from subterranean springs, collecting in the
bottom of the geyser's crater down among the strata of intense heat, be
comes itself intensely heated and gives off steam, which expands and forces
upward the cooler water that lies above it. It is then that the water at the
surface of the geyser begins to bubble and give off clouds of steam, the sign
to the watchers above that the geyser is about to play. When the water in

142 ***** "O/z, Ranger!"

the bottom reaches so great an expansion under continued heat that the less
heated water above it can no longer weigh it down, it bursts upward with
great violence, rising many feet in the air and continuing to play until
practically all the water in the crater has been expelled. Spring water, or
the same water cooled after falling on the ground again, seeps through to
repeat this process. The length of time before the geyser spouts again de
pends upon the time it takes for the water to seep back and to become
re-heated.

The celebrated Old Faithful Geyser plays with great regularity at inter
vals of about sixty-three minutes. It has never failed any visitor with an
hour to spare and patience to wait that long. Some of the largest geysers
play at irregular intervals of days, weeks, or months. Some very small ones
play every few minutes. Many bubbling hot springs which throw water a
few feet into the air once or twice a minute are in reality but small, im
perfectly formed geysers.

Nearly the entire Yellowstone region, covering an area of 3,426 square
miles, so large that two or three of our smaller states could be dropped into
it with room to spare, is remarkable for its hot-water phenomena. The
geysers are confined to six basins known as the Upper, Lower, Norris,
Shoshone, Heart Lake, and West Thumb geyser basins, lying in the middle-
western and southern portions of the park, but the other hot-water manifesta
tions occur at widely separated points. Marvelously colored hot springs, mud
volcanoes, and other phenomena are frequent. Yet the geysers and hot-water
formations are by no means the only wonders in the Yellowstone. Indeed,
the entire park is a wonderland. The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone is
renowned for its marvelously variegated volcanic coloring, a dazzling spec
tacle that fairly takes the visitor's breath with its beauty. Far below the
rim and the coloring, one sees the foaming Yellowstone River winding down
the canyon, following its plunge over a waterfall of 308 feet, nearly twice
the height of Niagara. From Inspiration Point one can stand on the rim
and gaze at two miles of kaleidoscopic coloring in the steep slopes that drop
more than a thousand feet down to the river. Here and there jagged rocky
needles rise perpendicularly for hundreds of feet like groups of Gothic spires,
and on the topmost pinnacles of some of them may be seen the nests of the
osprey, sometimes with young.

Every shade of almost every color can be found in this daring and
spectacular canyon: deepest orange, faintest yellow, reds ranging from the
softest pink to the most vivid crimson, blacks and grays and pearls and
glistening white. Greens are furnished by the dark pines, or the lighter
shades of the leafy shrubs, or the foaming emerald of the plunging river,
while above are the ever changing blues of the Rocky Mountain sky, per
forated by the fleeting, fleecy clouds. The canyon is a spectacle which one
gazes upon in silence. The favorite practice of the rangers is to blindfold
their friends who have not yet seen the canyon, take them to Artist Point or
Grand View, and then suddenly remove the handkerchief from their eyes.

Yellowstone National Park is the greatest wild game sanctuary in the
country. No rifle has been fired at the animals of the park, except to destroy

National Parks * * * 0 * 143

certain predatory beasts, for more than thirty years, and the creatures — par
ticularly the bears, the deer, and the buffaloes — have become so tame that they
can be seen at any time. The animals, the birds, and the fish of the park
have been described already in detail in special chapters devoted to them.

One peculiarly fascinating glimpse of Yellowstone's tempestuous past is
afforded in the petrified forest of the Specimen Ridge country, where many
levels of upright petrified trunks may be found alternating, like the layers
of a cake, with the levels of volcanic mud flows. That plainly shows that
after the first forest grew on the volcano's slope and was engulfed by a fresh
run of mud enough time elapsed for a second forest to grow upon that
level, and that this in turn was engulfed with a new mud flow to make the
level for another forest, and so on. There is one cliff two thousand feet high
composed wholly of these alternate levels of forests and the mud flows which
engulfed them.

The Yellowstone travel season is June, July, August, and September.
The park is practically snow-bound during the rest of the year. There are
five gateways to the Yellowstone for the Sagebrusher arriving in his own
motor: the Gardiner Gateway on the north; the West Yellowstone and
Gallatin gateways from which the motorist enters on the west boundary;
the Jackson Hole Gateway reached from Lander or Rock Springs, Wyoming,
or from Victor, Idaho; and the Cody Gateway through which one enters the
park at Sylvan Pass after passing the remarkable Shoshone Canyon and
Lake and the other wonders of the Buffalo Bill country. Several transcon
tinental railroad lines serve the Yellowstone: the Union Pacific via West
Yellowstone, the Northern Pacific via Gardiner and Gallatin gateways,
the Milwaukee via Gallatin Gateway, the Burlington via the Cody or eastern
entrance, and the Chicago & Northwestern Railway via Lander and the
Jackson Hole Gateway on the south. Railroad passengers travel through
the park in motor stages, requiring five days to make the circuit. They have
the choice of accommodations at the Yellowstone lodges, with wooden cabins
for sleeping quarters, or at the modern hotels, the hotels being slightly more
expensive than the lodges. In either case, the visitor's itinerary is worked
out by the railroads or the transportation company and his reservations are
made without bother on his part.

GRAND TETON NATIONAL PARK

In magnificent contrast to the volcanic Yellowstone and its border of
volcanic mountains, there rises to the south one of the most abrupt and stu
pendous outcroppings of granite in the Western Hemisphere, the Tetons.
From the western shore of Jackson Lake the Teton Mountains lift their
spired peaks 7,000 feet in apparent perpendicular. The master of them all is
the Grand Teton, whose altitude is 13,747 feet. Many glaciers rest upon
their slopes. At their feet nestles Jackson Hole, a region rich in romance,
once the favorite hiding place of the robber and bad man, but now a center
for the "dude wrangling" industry. The Grand Teton National Park was
established February 26, 1929.

144 * * * * * "OA, Ranger!"

YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK

Yosemite National Park, 1,125 square miles in extent, or about the size
of the state of Rhode Island, lies directly east of San Francisco on the west
slope of the Sierra Nevada. It ranges in altitude from 2,000 feet at its
western entrance to 9,400 feet at its eastern gateway, and in it are found
peaks well over 13,000 feet high. The famed Yosemite Valley is but a small
part of this enormous area.

The irregular eastern boundary is the crest of the Sierra, a rampart of
tremendous granite peaks, spattered by snow fields and glaciers, steep, domi
neering, impassable by road except at one point, the lofty Tioga Pass at the
head of spectacular Leevining Canyon. Westward from this crestline of the
Sierra flow almost countless streams, many of which converge into two river
systems, the Tuolumne River, a turbulent, rushing fury of water plunging
into Hetch Hetchy Lake and on through a steep and almost inaccessible gorge
to the plains below, and the Merced River, placid, meandering in quiet valleys,
then roaring in great waterfalls and cataracts through canyons. It is the
Merced River which, aided by glaciers in the distant Ice Age, carved the
notable Yosemite Valley. Just above Yosemite Valley the Merced forms two
of Yosemite's most distinctive waterfalls, Nevada Falls, 594 feet high, and
Vernal Falls, a drop of 317 feet.

Yosemite Valley is well known the world over for its great falls and
cliffs. The Yosemite Falls plunge in three drops, the upper and higher fall
being 1,430 feet, equal to nine Niagaras piled one on top of the other, the
lower fall a plunge of 320 feet, while between the two is a cascade in which
the water drops an additional 600 feet. The well-loved Bridal Veil Falls is
620 feet high, while Ribbon Falls, highest of all, drops 1,612 feet sheer.
Nowhere else in the world may there be seen such spectacles of waterfalls
as these.

Yet the waterfalls are not, by any means, Yosemite Valley's only attrac
tions. When the falls dry up, as is sometimes the case in late summer when
the snows have melted, the great granite cliffs of the valley more than
justify the visit. Half Dome rises in majestic dignity 4,892 feet above the
floor of the sylvan valley, El Capitan 3,604 feet, Sentinel Dome 4,157 feet,
Clouds Rest 5,964 feet, Cathedral Rocks 2,591 feet, Eagle Peak 3,712 feet,
and dozens of other points soar to similar heights. Off from the camps and
hotels and roads of Yosemite Valley wind numerous trails where the visitor
can lose himself in the solitude of the virgin forest.

Dominating Yosemite Valley and offering a commanding panorama
of literally scores of peaks of the Sierra Nevada is Glacier Point, rising
3,200 feet above the floor of the valley. A hotel and campsite on the rim offer
the visitor accommodations. One's first visit to Yosemite is a series of vast
and breath-taking views of the mountains in their splendor, and no scene is
more amazing than the one from Glacier Point. From the Overhanging
Rock at this point the embers of a great bonfire are pushed, tinkling over the
cliff each night to form the Firefall, one of Yosemite's most beautiful and
interesting customs.

National Parks * * * * * 145

To the south of Yosemite Valley is the Mariposa Grove of Big Trees,
the largest of the park's three groves of giant sequoias. The Wawona Tree,
so large that the automobile road passes through a tunnel in its trunk, is
said to be the most famous tree in the world. Its picture is in the school
geographies of many nations, and it is one of the first objects that visitors
want to see. The largest tree of the grove is the Grizzly Giant, ninety-three
feet in circumference, said by naturalists to be almost five thousand years
old. The Mariposa Grove contains many other venerable giants. Among
them are the Mark Twain Tree, 314 feet tall, the Washington Tree, slightly
smaller than the Grizzly Giant, the Telescope Tree, living though hollowed
by ancient fires so that one can gaze through its trunk to the sky, and the
Fallen Monarch, so huge that a troop of cavalry found room to gather mounted
on its trunk.

The vast high-country area of Yosemite National Park, the greater part
of it from six to twelve thousand feet in elevation, is not seen by most visitors.
Through the acquisition and repair of the old Tioga Road, a mining road
crossing the heart of the Yosemite high country and winding over the ridge
of the Sierra from Yosemite to Lake Tahoe, the traveler is offered two
hundred miles of magnificent high mountain scenery. A lodge in Tuolumne
Meadows, with a store and motor supply station, now serve the motorist,
who finds in the Tioga Road an easily accessible route to the fastnesses of
the High Sierra. High Sierra camps, operated to serve the hiker and the trail
rider, are connected by safe and well-marked trails. These camps are at
Glen Aulin on the Tuolumne River, Tenaya Lake on the Tioga Road, Tu
olumne Meadows, Boothe Lake, ten thousand feet above sea level, Merced
Lake, headwaters of the Merced River, and Little Yosemite, a halfway point
to Yosemite Valley. As a summer-time vacation region, rich in scenery and
plentiful in fishing opportunities, this Yosemite high-country trip is strongly
recommended.

Yosemite Valley is easily accessible the year around, either by motor or
by motor stage connecting with trains both at Merced and El Portal. Two
railroad lines serve Yosemite National Park, the Southern Pacific at the
Merced Gateway and at the Lake Tahoe end of the Tioga Pass, and the
Santa Fe at the Merced Gateway alone. From Merced the train traveler
can reach Yosemite via the Yosemite Valley Railroad to El Portal and thence
by motor stage, or by motor stage direct from Merced. During the summer
months motorists may enter Yosemite Valley via the Wawona Road, passing
near the Mariposa Grove of Big Trees, or the Big Oak Flat Road, traversing
the Bret Harte country and passing through the Tuolumne Grove of Big
Trees. These roads are closed by snow during the winter months, but the
Merced River route is open all year long.

In Yosemite Valley are two hotels, two lodges (operated only in the
summer months), and housekeeping camps. There are excellent campsites
for the motorists who prefer to camp out. They are equipped with running
water and toilet facilities. Stores and cafeterias operate the year around in
Yosemite Valley, and at Glacier Point and the Mariposa Grove of Big Trees
during the summer months.

146 * * * * * "Oh, Ranger!"

GRAND CANYON NATIONAL PARK

The feature of Grand Canyon National Park is a magnificent and breath
taking canyon, highly colored, a mile deep, thirteen miles wide, and many
miles long, flanked on both sides by spires, minarets, mesas, cliffs, in
fantastic designs — the whimsical carvings of the most tumultuous of the
world's great rivers, the Colorado. Pushing its way across the great plain
between the Rocky Mountains and the Gulf of California, the Colorado has
carved its channel deep into the plateau, which ranges from four to eight
thousand feet in elevation.

The Grand Canyon of Arizona, or of the Colorado, as it is more generally
called, is the world's supreme example of erosion. Happy it is that the
Canyon is a thing of rare beauty as well as a geological wonder. Its slopes
are tinted many colors, the tones of which change chameleon-like with the
movement of the sun and the clouds. The wanderer upon the rim looks
down upon miles and miles of pyramids and minarets carved from painted
depths. Miles away, and a mile below, he sees the tiny silver thread which
he knows is the giant in strength, the Colorado River.

There are two trails down the cliffs to the river from the South Rim
and they can be negotiated safely on foot or on horse. They connect over a
long suspension bridge with trails leading to the North Rim, which is a
thousand feet higher. Unless he goes by trail from rim to rim the traveler
must take a long train or motor trip, going hundreds of miles to reach a
point thirteen miles away as the crow flies. These trail trips of Grand
Canyon Park are memorable adventures, and every visitor who can do so
should take one or more of them. Hundreds of mules are used daily down
the Bright Angel or Kaibab trails to the Colorado River, across a long sus
pension bridge, and up to the opposite rim.

The South Rim is most easily reached by motor or via the Santa Fe
Railroad, which reaches the site of the El Tovar Hotel, situated right on the
rim of the Canyon. Here are seen in colorful costumes Hopi, Navaho, and
Havasupai Indians displaying their tempting wares — baskets, bowls, bead
work, and other articles. Stores, campsites, and the headquarters for the
park are located here, in addition to the picturesque El Tovar Hotel. The
Phantom Ranch, a unique camp operated in the Canyon near the river for
the convenience of visitors, is most easily reached by trail from the South
Rim — a great adventure to the visitor.

The North Rim is accessible by motor or via a motor-stage line connect
ing with the Union Pacific system terminal at Cedar City, Utah. A distinc
tive modern lodge, operated by the railroad, is perched high on the North
Rim, offering a marvelous vista. The visit to the North Rim is often made
in conjunction with trips to Zion and Bryce National parks, described else
where and served by the same railroad connections. En route to the North
Rim, travelers pass through the Kaibab Forest, the largest virgin forest in
the United States, on a plateau 7,500 to 9,300 feet above sea level. Vast herds
of deer roam this area. In recent years they have become so numerous that
the problem of feeding them in the snowy season is a serious one.

National Parks * * * * * 147

GLACIER NATIONAL PARK

Glacier National Park is so named because in the hollow of its rugged
mountain tops lie more than sixty small glaciers, the remainders of the
ancient monsters which once covered all but the highest mountain peaks of
this park. It is located in northwestern Montana right up against the
Canadian boundary. It is a richly colored land of ruggedly modeled moun
tains, enormous, twisting glacier-scooped valleys, precipices thousands of feet
high, innumerable rushing streams, and hundreds of lakes of rare beauty.
Though all the other parks possess these general features in addition to
others which differentiate them each from the other, Glacier Park possesses
them in such unusual abundance and happy combination that it is an area
of marked individuality. There is no other scenic region with which to com
pare it, except the less colorful, colder, and less accessible Canadian Rockies.
In richness of beauty it stands alone.

The fantastic carving of Glacier National Park was the work of the
glaciers in the soft rock. From the continental divide descend nineteen
principal valleys, seven on the east side and twelve on the west, each of them
with many smaller tributary valleys each with its streams, lakes, and glaciers.
Many of them have never been explored, unless perchance they were entered
by the Indians on their hunting expeditions. There are 250 known lakes in
the park, and probably many smaller ones in the wilderness that have never
yet been seen.

Bordering on the park is the reservation of the Blackfoot Indians. The
eastern half of Glacier National Park was once included in the Blackfoot
reservation, and was purchased from them by the government. The Black-
feet, perhaps the finest and most picturesque tribe of Indians in the country
today, are seen in the park in their striking costumes and their gaily
colored tepees. They are probably the outstanding attraction of the park to
many visitors. Over eight hundred saddle horses and pack animals are used
in Glacier National Park, as it can be seen adequately only by trips over the
mountain trails. Glacier is pre-eminently the trail park of the system, and it
is the settled policy of the government not to gridiron it with roads.

There are several excellent hotels and chalets for the accommodation of
visitors to the park, which is reached most directly by the Great Northern
Railroad. Motorists will find good roads leading to the park from both the
east and the west, and within the park they will have available good campsites
as well as the hotels and lodges.

MOUNT RAINIER NATIONAL PARK

Mount Rainier, towering 14,408 feet above Puget Sound, is the greatest
of a group of mountains, remnants of extinct volcanoes, that once played an
important part in building the continent out of the ancient seas. These
mountains, counting them from north to south, included Mount Baker, Mount
Rainier, Mount Adams, Mount St. Helens, Mount Hood, Mount Shasta, and
Lassen Peak. In the distant past, when the continent was in the making, these
great volcanoes belched forth millions of tons of lava and ashes, forming not

148 * * * * * «o/z, Ranger!"

only much of the Cascade Range but very probably a large part of the
Pacific Northwest. Today, with their fires quenched, they are great ice-
covered peaks, landmarks dominating the forests, plains, and cities of the
region. Mount Rainier can be seen for 150 miles in clear weather. It rises
more than two miles above the mountains at its base, unique, alone, unchal
lenged, comparable only to Fujiyama, Japan's great volcanic peak. Mount
Rainier once rose to a sharp peak, according to geologists, attaining a height
then of some sixteen thousand feet; but some ancient catastrophe caused this
peak to be blown or broken off.

The national park of which Mount Rainier is the center and the main
feature is about eighteen miles square. It includes some of the finest forest
stands of the Northwest, beautiful mountain meadows, waterfalls, and is a
great sanctuary for wild game. Paradise Valley, lying between the Paradise
and Nisqually glaciers, is the great gathering place for both summer and
winter sports, winter sports being enjoyed on the mountain slopes during the
summer time as well. From this valley a number of trails lead to the glaciers,
ice caves, and forests, and to other valleys. Here one may study the action
of the glaciers, see them move slowly, a few inches per day, toward their
destination. Here one may find perhaps the greatest collection of alpine
flowers in any of the national parks, magic carpets of blossoms, miles in
extent, vivid in color, some of them so impatient for the sunshine that they
push their heads through the melting snows.

Mount Rainier National Park is reached by the Milwaukee Railroad to
Ash ford, or by motor stage from both Tacoma and Seattle, a half -day ride
from either city. Hotels are operated the year around at Longmire Springs
and in summer at Paradise Valley, near the snowline. Motorists will find a
highway leading from Seattle and Tacoma to Longmire Springs and Paradise
Valley, and good roads extending to the two northern corners of the park as
well. Campsites are awaiting them along these roads, but hotels and lodges
are operated at present only en route to Paradise Valley. Stores and gasoline
supply stations offer commodities at reasonable prices.

ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK

Rocky Mountain National Park is unique for its record of glacial action.
Situated at the tiptop of the Rockies, this park offers unusual opportunities
to see easily the struggles of Nature and the elements at timberline, about
11,000 feet above sea level. While other parks have higher peaks within their
boundaries, Rocky Mountain Park has the highest average elevation. The
little valley of Estes Park, where is located the group of summer hotels, is at
8,000 feet elevation, twice as high as Yosemite Valley. Above this valley
the mountains rise precipitously for more than a mile, reaching up to Longs
Peak, dominating them all, 14,255 feet above sea level. Several other peaks
are almost as high as Longs.

The valleys on both sides of the range of which these peaks are a part
are dotted with lovely glades clothed in a profusion of wild flowers and
watered by streams flowing down from the snows and the glaciers. Forests

National Parks * * * * * 149

of pine and aspen grow in the valleys. Timberline in Rocky Mountain Park
is particularly interesting. The fierce, icy winds make it impossible for trees
to grow tall. The spruces lie flat on the ground like vines, and finally give
place to low birches, which give place in turn to small pine growths, suc
ceeded finally by tough, straggling grasses, hardy mosses, and tiny alpine
flowers. Grass grows in sheltered spots even on the highest peaks, a for
tunate circumstance for the great horned mountain sheep which seek these
high places. Even at the highest altitudes, gorgeously colored wild flowers
grow in profusion in the sheltered gorges.

Above timberline, the bare mountain masses rise from one to three thou
sand feet, often in sheer cliffs. Covered with snow in fall, winter, and spring,
and plentifully spattered with snow all summer long, the great granite masses
at the top of the Rockies are beautiful indeed. At sunrise and at sunset they
are rose-colored, during fair sunny days they are gray and mauve and blue,
in storms they shove their heads into the clouds, often to emerge snow-
crowned. Frequently, the visitor sees a thunderstorm born on Longs Peak.
Out of the blue sky, a slight mist will gather, becoming a cloud, growing
rapidly, swelling, sweeping the sky until, in fifteen minutes, it is thundering
and raining down into the valley below. Half an hour more and it is
sunshine again.

The easy accessibility of these mountain tops makes Rocky Mountain
Park a popular one. The park is reached by a seventy-mile rail and motor
trip, or by motor only, from Denver, Colorado. At the little village of
Estes Park, just outside the park on the east, and at Grand Lake on the west
are to be found hotels, lodges, camps, stores, and other accommodations for
the traveler, whether he comes by train or by motor. The summer season is
from June 15 to October 1, but the park is open all the year, the balance of
the time for those seeking winter sports.

SEQUOIA NATIONAL PARK

Located near the southern end of the Sierra Nevada is Sequoia National
Park, home of the largest group of giant sequoias in the world. These great
trees once were common to much of North America. They were saved from
extinction by the shelter offered by the pockets and the protected slopes of
the Sierra. Near Sequoia National Park, and under the same direction, is
General Grant National Park, a smaller area, but the site of one of the finest
of the sequoia groves.

The General Sherman Tree, with a diameter of 36.5 feet and a height
of 280 feet, is counted as the largest and oldest living thing on earth. It is
possibly more than 5,000 years of age. Around it are scores of other
venerable sequoias, almost as large and as old, while in General Grant Park
is found the General Grant Tree, 35 feet in diameter and 264 feet high.
It, too, was standing probably when the pyramids of Egypt were being con
structed, more than 2,000 years before the birth of Christ.

There are sequoia trees in several localities in the Sierra Nevada,
notably in Yosemite National Park with three distinct groves; but the

150 ***** "Oh, Ranger!"

greatest stand of them all is the Giant Forest, the largest group in Sequoia
Park. In this park, the sequoias are on the increase. The great giants are
surrounded by their offspring, mere striplings one or two thousand years old,
and still younger ones ranging in age down to the tiny trees a year or two
old, of which there are now countless thousands. The sequoias are the glory,
as they were the cause, of the Sequoia and General Grant National parks.
Scattered here and there over a large area, they cluster in thirteen separate
groves.

The sequoias are by no means the only attractions of Sequoia National
Park. The park is generously endowed with great cliffs, mountains, other
forests, streams, waterfalls, and other attractions which are dwarfed by the
glory of the Big Trees. Within the boundaries of Sequoia National Park is
a great stretch of High Sierra country, including Mount Whitney, the highest
peak in the United States, 14,496 feet high. Trails from the park lead to
Tehipite Valley in the middle fork of the Kings River, considered by many
another Yosemite, and to the main Kings River Canyon, a region of stupen
dous ruggedness and of wild beauty, comparable only to Yosemite.

Sequoia and General Grant National parks are easily reached by motor
ists from the San Joaquin Valley State Highway. Both parks are accessible
the year around. Travelers arriving by train are met by motor stages at
Exeter, California, on the Southern Pacific and Santa Fe railroads. Accom
modations at Sequoia Park include both a lodge and housekeeping camps,
while campsites for those who wish to camp out await the Sagebrusher at
both Sequoia and General Grant.

CRATER LAKE NATIONAL PARK

In the heart of the Cascade Mountains of Oregon there lies, jewel-like in
a setting of lava, a lake of unbelievable blue. The visitor who comes upon it
suddenly stands silent with emotion, overcome by its extraordinary beauty
and by a strange sense of mystery which increases rather than decreases
with familiarity. This is Crater Lake. Once, where this lake nestles in a
cavity on the mountain top, there stood a great volcano, Mount Mazama,
perhaps the highest peak in the region. Certainly it was as high as Mount
Shasta. That was ages ago. Human eyes never saw Mount Mazama. Long
before the coming of man to this continent, some great cataclysm caused the
peak of Mount Mazama to crash inward and the mountain disappeared as if
swallowed up by itself. In its place was left a crater-like abyss, the awful
depth of which no man can guess.

The volcano was not quenched. It burst out anew through the collapsed
lava in three places, forming new and smaller cones. These cones are the
islands now seen in Crater Lake, which gradually grew as the volcano died
down, and as the snows piled on the mountain top and melted into the crater
with no outlet. There is no inlet nor outlet, curiously enough, for Crater
Lake, yet the water is pure and fresh. It is supposed that the water
escapes by underground channels to reappear in the Klamath River, some
miles away.

National Parks * * * * * 151

Geologists find Crater Lake of special interest because of the way
Nature made it. Many volcanoes have had their peaks blown off. Mount
Rainier was one of these. But no other in the United States has fallen into
itself as did Mount Mazama. The evidence of this curious and titanic event
is quite conclusive, and the visitor to the park can see it for himself. The
slopes of the mountain were made of lava that ran, hot and fluid, from a
crater many thousands of feet higher. The pitch of these outward slopes
enables the scientist to tell with reasonable accuracy the probable height of
the volcano when the catastrophe took place.

Crater Lake National Park is reached by train on the Southern Pacific
Railroad lines into Medford and Klamath Falls, at which stops motor
stages make the short trip to the park. A hotel on the rim of the lake offers
accommodations. For the motorist, the visit to the park is a short side trip
from the Pacific and Dalles-California highways. He will find, in addition to
the hotel, campsites, stores, filling stations. The park is open to travel from
late June or July 1 for as long as snow does not block the roads, generally
until October.

MESA VERDE NATIONAL PARK

The Mesa Verde National Park was created to preserve the ruins of the
highest form of ancient American civilization found in the United States,
that of a nation of Indians resembling the modern Pueblos in characteristics,
whose homes still stand on the cliffs that line the Mancos River in southern
Colorado. The Indians who lived here have disappeared entirely. No trace
of their fate has been found by archaeologists. Their civilization, as indi
cated by the relics they left and by their cliff cities, was comparable in many
ways to that of the Aztecs in Mexico and the Incas of Peru.

The Mesa Verde is fifteen miles long and eight miles wide. The Mancos
River flows along it, its banks forming narrow plains above which rise
walls of rock three to five hundred feet above the river. In these walls are
small canyons in which the ancient cliff dwellers built their homes, after the
manner of modern tenements. Apparently they sought safety from their
enemies. It is thought that their cliff cities were built about 1300 A.D.

There are many ruins in Mesa Verde yet unexplored, awaiting the
pioneer who can experience anew the thrill of Richard and Alfred Wetherell,
who, while hunting in 1888, discovered, explored, and named the Cliff Palace,
one of the important ruins of the park. That is an unfortunate name, for
it is not the ruin of a palace at all, but the remains of a village with two
hundred rooms for family living and twenty-two sacred rooms for worship.
The Spruce Tree House, so called because of a great spruce growing out of
the remains, is a village that sheltered 350 inhabitants, high in the cliff.

Antiquities are not the only attractions of Mesa Verde National Park.
Its natural beauties are many. In winter the park is inaccessible, due to the
heavy fall of snow; in the autumn the region is dry and parched; but in
June and July, when the rains come, the grasses grow and the flowers are in
full bloom. Then it is a beautiful country.

152 * * * * * "Oh, Ranger!"

Mesa Verde National Park is reached by rail travelers via the Denver &
Rio Grande Western Railroad from Mancos or Durango stations, or via the
Santa Fe Railroad from Gallup, New Mexico. Stage lines connect between
these stations and the park. At least three days should be allowed for the
side trip, including the time required to travel by stage to the park. Motorists
will find roads leading to the park in good condition during the summer
months from Denver and Pueblo, Colorado, from Gallup, New Mexico, or
from Utah points. Accommodations in the park include tents and cabins at
Spruce Tree Camp near the ruins of the Spruce Tree House. Campers will
find excellent campsites available.

ZION AND BRYCE NATIONAL PARKS

Zion National Park was formed to preserve the vividly colored and
fantastically carved sandstone cliffs bordering the deep valley of the Mukun-
tuweap River, which has carved three thousand feet into the mountains north
of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado and south of the Great Salt Lake. The
canyon was given the name of Zion by the Mormons who discovered it.

This chasm is similar in size and shape to Yosemite Valley, yet it
resembles in its vivid coloring the Grand Canyon of the Colorado. Extraor
dinary as are the sandstone carvings, it is the coloring that is most amazing.
The gorgeous red of the Vermillion Cliffs is the prevailing tint. For two-
thirds of their height these marvelous walls and temples are painted gorgeous
reds. Then, above the reds, they rise in startling white. Sometimes the white
is surmounted by a cap of vivid red, remains of another red stratum which
once overlay all. Other colors are many and brilliant.

This gorgeously colored valley is reached by a seventy-mile motor trip
from Cedar City, Utah, which is on the Union Pacific Railroad. Many
travelers take a round trip which includes the visit to the North Rim of the
Grand Canyon and to Bryce Canyon, a new national park, smaller than Zion
but brilliantly colored and fantastically carved. Bryce and Zion are totally
different in every respect. Motorists find both parks easily accessible over
roads through southwestern Utah. At both Zion and Bryce canyons are
lodges, campsites, and stores offering the usual accommodations found in the
parks. A third beautiful canyon, more accurately described as an amphi
theater, lying between Bryce and Zion canyons, is Cedar Breaks, which is
also developed with adequate tourist accommodations.

LASSEN VOLCANIC NATIONAL PARK

In Lassen Volcanic National Park is preserved for public enjoyment the
only aggressive and active volcano within the borders of the United States.
Here may be studied the phenomena of volcanic activity which played so im
portant a part in the formation of this continent. Lassen Peak is the most
southerly of the chain of volcanoes which once dominated the Pacific North
west. It is located in northern California near the Nevada boundary.

From time to time this great peak resumes its rumbling and belches forth
smoke and ashes and pours out rivers of lava and hot mud, sweeping down

National Parks * * * * * 153

over the forests that cloak its slopes. Its first recent explosion was in May
of 1914. Previously, it had been quiescent for two hundred years. Since
1914 it has from time to time threatened eruption, to the great interest of
travelers in this area.

In addition to the volcano, this national park, one of the newest and least
developed and known, has other charms. It is a region of fine forests,
streams, lakes, and other mountain scenery, the heart of a popular vacation
area. One of its attractions is a boiling lake with a circumference of
approximately two thousand feet. Within the park area are numerous fissures
from which issue gases, steam, and rumblings, similar to those of Yellow
stone.

Lassen Volcanic Park may be reached by the Southern Pacific Railroad
from the west or by the Western Pacific from the south. By automobile it
is reached from Red Bluff, California, on the Pacific Highway, or Reno,
Nevada, on the Lincoln Highway. Hotel accommodations are available at
points near the park, and camping is permitted within the park.

MOUNT McKINLEY NATIONAL PARK

The highest mountain in North America, Mount McKinley, forms the
basis for creation of Mount McKinley National Park in Alaska. This enor
mous peak rises 20,300 feet, nearly four miles, above sea level. It is snow
capped the year around and down its slopes push many great glaciers, some
of them among the largest in the world. At its base are forests, meadows,
and valleys, above which the mountain towers for 17,000 feet, a magnificent
spectacle. A view of this monster two-headed mountain is one of the reasons
for a visit to Alaska.

In addition to Mount McKinley, the park is a great wild game retreat,
being the natural home of the caribou, the grizzly, and Alaskan brown bears,
fiercest and largest of the bruins, moose, the beautiful white Dall sheep, a
species of bighorn, and numerous other animals, as well as many varieties
of bird life.

Mount McKinley is reached by train which connects with boats to Alaska
at Cordova and Seward. As yet, it is a great undeveloped wilderness, but a
road is being pushed farther each year into its interior fastnesses and seven
camps have been established within the boundaries. From these, saddle-horse
trips are possible.

HAWAII NATIONAL PARK

Within Hawaii National Park are found three volcanoes of world re
nown : Haleakala on the island of Maui, and Mauna Loa and Kilauea on the
island of Hawaii. Haleakala has been inactive for centuries, but its summit
is a crater of size and beauty that makes it one of the world's show places.
This crater is eight miles long and three miles wide. Its surrounding walls
rise two thousand feet. Its broad, rolling, rainless, sandy floor is decorated
with plants famous under the name of silver swords, yucca-like shrubs three
to four feet high, whose drooping leaves gleam like polished stilettos. From

154 ***** "O/z, Ranger!"

this great reddish floor, within the lava rim, rise thirteen volcanic cones to a
height of several hundred feet. The crater was left in this state intact by
reason of the fact that side vents drained the fires below. Hence, Haleakala
is one volcano that did not destroy its crater.

Mauna Loa is known as the greatest of living volcanoes. Kilauea is
celebrated for its lake of fire. These two volcanoes are on the same mountain
range. Mauna Loa is the younger and stronger, and it has grown so high
that it has almost absorbed Kilauea. Mauna Loa soars 13,675 feet above the
not far distant sea. It is active every five or ten years. Its slopes are
covered with forests of native mahogany or koa and tangles of giant
tree ferns.

The most spectacular exhibit of Hawaii National Park is Kilauea's Lake
of Fire. In the middle of a plateau 4,000 feet high, drops a pit with vertical
sides in which Kilauea boils its lava. Occasionally lava geysers spout 150
feet in the air. At other times the lake simply boils, a seething mass of fire,
which can be photographed on the darkest night. Sometimes the lava disap
pears entirely for several years at a stretch.

These volcanoes are reached by motor from the ships that ply to Hilo,
on the island of Hawaii. Visitors can approach surprisingly near the Lake
of Fire. On the rim of Kilauea is a hotel known as the Volcano House.
Other accommodations on the order of the lodges of other parks are also
available at reasonable rates.

Throughout this park are found wonderful examples of rich tropical
plant growth, giant tree ferns as high as houses, mahogany forests, numerous
interesting trees found nowhere outside the tropics, and an abundance of
wild flowers. The forests and wild flower gardens are made the more
colorful by the gaily colored birds of the Hawaiian Islands.

ACADIA NATIONAL PARK

Acadia National Park occupies a considerable portion of the Mount
Desert Island, off the Maine Coast at the mouth of Penobscot Bay. It is a
region of rugged granite mountains, bays, promontories, woods, and lakes,
renowned for its exquisite beauty since the date of its discovery in 1604 by
the French navigator, Champlain. It figured prominently in the early coloni
zation activities of the French, but was not settled until the English obtained
possession of Canada.

Acadia Park is unique in several ways. Its territory for a century was
in private hands. It has been ceded to the government piece by piece, and the
park is being increased in size from time to time by new contributions of
land. Within the modest boundaries of the park there is a wonderful over
lapping of species of plant life, from both the north and the south along the
Atlantic Coast. It is also a wild life sanctuary of importance.

Acadia Park is the most easterly of the national parks and is reached
by the Maine Central Railroad or by motor from Bar Harbor, Maine, where
the superintendent of the park maintains his office. Good roads of great
scenic beauty traverse the park. Motor-boat trips along the shoreline of the
island are an additional attraction.

National Monuments # * * * 155

HOT SPRINGS NATIONAL PARK

Oldest of all the national parks is Hot Springs, located in the Ozark
Mountains of Arkansas. Even before the coming of the white man this
region was known for the healing qualities of its waters, which flowed in
warm springs, much appreciated by the Indians. As early as 1832 the
federal government, to make these waters available to all persons at nominal
cost, established this national park. The area comprises 912 acres, including in
all 46 hot springs.

A handsome and prosperous city has grown up at the site of the springs.
There are nine bathhouses on the government reservation, and ten more in
the city, supplied with water from the park springs. The government analysis
of the waters shows them to be of mineral qualities comparable to the famous
waters of Spa, in Europe.

This interesting and useful park is reached via the Rock Island and
Missouri Pacific lines or by automobile over some of the best highways in
the South. Hot Springs has several famous resort hotels which are operated
on high standards of service.

PLATT NATIONAL PARK

Platt National Park was created to preserve sulphur and other beneficent
springs, both hot and cold, which gush from an area of one and one-half
square miles in southern Oklahoma.

WIND CAVE NATIONAL PARK

Wind Cave National Park includes a remarkable limestone cavern in
the Black Hills of southwestern South Dakota. The park has an area of
sixteen square miles.

SULLYS HILL NATIONAL PARK

Sullys Hill National Park in North Dakota is a picturesque forested
region bordering on a lake. It is a wild animal preserve and has historic
associations.

MUIR WOODS NATIONAL MONUMENT

Named in honor of John Muir, explorer, naturalist, and writer, Muir
Woods National Monument was established by a presidential proclamation
on January 9, 1908. The monument preserves a remarkable grove of red
woods nestling on the south slope of Mount Tamalpais, in a secluded valley
less than two hours' ride from San Francisco. It comprises 128 acres and
was the gift of the Honorable William Kent and his wife, Elizabeth Thatcher
Kent, and has been described as "one of the most friendly, easily approach
able woods, centuries old, permanently preserved for the benefit and enjoy
ment of the people."

These tall and noble trees narrowly escaped being cut into shingles and

156 * * * » * "OA, Ranger!"

railroad ties just before they were purchased by Mr. Kent in 1905. Even
then they were not safe. Commercial interests sought to declare the valley
in which they were located condemned to make a reservoir site, and only the
timely proclamation of the Muir Woods National Monument by President
Roosevelt saved them. The President, a great conservationist, wished to
name the grove Kent Monument. The correspondence between him and
Congressman Kent is indicative of the ideals, not only of the donor but of
the National Park Service as well. The President wrote :

"Mv DEAR MR. KENT : I thank you most heartily for this singularly gen
erous and public-spirited action on your part. All Americans who prize the
natural beauties of the country and wish to see them preserved and un
damaged, and especially those who realize the literally unique value of the
groves of giant trees, must feel that you have conferred a great and lasting
benefit upon the whole country.

"I have a very great admiration for John Muir; but after all, my dear
sir, this is your gift. No other land than that which you give is included in
this tract of nearly 300 acres, and I should greatly like to name the monu
ment the Kent Monument, if you will permit it.

"Sincerely yours,

"THEODORE ROOSEVELT"
"To the President, Washington

"Mv DEAR MR. PRESIDENT: I thank you from the bottom of my heart
for your message of appreciation and hope and believe that it will strengthen
me to go on in an attempt to save more of the precious and vanishing glories
of Nature for a people too slow of perception.

"Your kind suggestion of a change in name is not one that I can accept.
So many millions of better people have died forgotten that to stencil one's
own name on a benefaction seems to carry with it an implication of mundane
immortality as being somewhat purchasable.

"I have five good, husky boys that I am trying to bring up to a knowledge
of democracy and to a realizing sense of the rights of 'the other fellow/
doctrines which you, sir, taught with more vigor and effect than any other
man in my time. If these boys cannot keep the name of Kent alive, I am
willing it should be forgotten.

"I have this day sent you by mail a few photographs of Muir Woods, and
trust that you will believe, before you see the real thing (which I hope will
be soon), that our nation has acquired something worth while.

"Yours truly,

"WILLIAM KENT"

"THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON

"MY DEAR MR. KENT : By George ! You are right. It is enough to do
the deed and not to desire, as you say, to 'stencil one's own name on the bene
faction.'

National Monuments * * * * 157

"Good for you, and for the five boys who are to keep the name of Kent
alive ! I have four who I hope will do the same thing by the name of
Roosevelt. Those are awfully good photos.

"Sincerely yours,

"THEODORE ROOSEVELT"

PINNACLES NATIONAL MONUMENT

The spires, domes, caves, and subterranean passages of this extraordinary
area in California, about one hundred miles south of San Francisco, are awe-
inspiring and colorful. The spire-like forms which rise six hundred to a
thousand feet above the floor of the canyons give the monument its name.
In addition to its geological interest, the monument, comprising twenty-three
hundred acres, is a wild life sanctuary. In it are found a species of black-tail
deer, and it is one of the last homes of that now almost extinct species, the
condor, the largest bird found on the continent.

Pinnacles Monument is easily reached by motor from Hollister or
Soledad on the Pacific Highway, and good campsites are available for the
camper, particularly in Bear Gulch where there is a fine stream. By rail, it
is reached from Hollister on the Southern Pacific coast line.

CASA GRANDE MONUMENT

Casa Grande National Monument, in the heart of Arizona about half
way between Tucson and Phoenix, preserves the "Great House," a prehistoric
ruin of the pueblo type. These ruins were discovered in 1694 by Father Kino,
the Jesuit priest and the founder of Tumacacori Mission. In addition to the
Great House there are ruins of a considerable city built by the ancient
Americans in the heart of the desert. Students think that these people, who
attained a fair degree of civilization, left the Casa Grande ruins at least seven
hundred years ago, and that their civilization may have flourished twelve
hundred years, as indicated by the improvements made in their masonry. It
is possible that their city antedated Christianity.

Casa Grande is one of the most easily seen of the old pueblo ruins. It is
near the Old Spanish Trail and the Bankhead Highway between Phoenix
and Tucson, not far from the town of Florence. It can also be reached from
the Casa Grande station of the Southern Pacific Railroad. Winter and
springtime are the most desirable times to visit Casa Grande, because of the
heat on the desert at other times of the year. Motorists who enjoy camping
are urged to pitch their camps in the desert, under the open skies, a rare and
enjoyable experience on the Arizona desert.

TUMACACORI MISSION

Tumacacori Mission, located forty-nine miles south of Tucson, Arizona,
on the road to Nogales, was constructed by the Papago Indians about 1691
under the direction of the Jesuit padre, Eusebio Francisco Kino. It ante
dated the California missions by a century. After prospering for almost 150

158 ***** "Oh, Ranger!"

years, first under the Jesuits and later under the Franciscans, the mission
was attacked by the Apache Indians who drove the padres away, disbanded
the Papago Indians, and looted the mission. It was in a state of decay when
discovered by the American explorers, following acquisition of the territory
from Mexico in 1850. The mission is being reconstructed along its original
lines as rapidly as funds will permit. It is unique among the missions in
that it is built of burned brick. It is one of the most interesting of the chain
of missions in the Southwest, and historically important because of its great
age. During one of the Indian uprisings, the famous bells of the mission were
buried in the sands of the desert. They are still lost, though thousands of
visitors have joined in the hunt for them.

Tumacacori is near the Tucson-Nogales Highway, and is reached from
Nogales on a branch line, or from Tucson on the main line of the Southern
Pacific Railroad.

PETRIFIED FORESTS OF ARIZONA

The Petrified Forests of Arizona extend over a wide area. In them are
found fossil remains of great trees which fell thousands of years ago.
Erosion has brought them to the surface of the soil again, after being buried
for ages. An area of one hundred square miles, containing three distinct
petrified forests, has been set aside in this monument. The most remarkable
of these forests from the visitor's point of view is the Rainbow Forest,
where the silica which replaced the original grain of the trees has assumed
many and brilliant colors. The ground about these logs is literally paved
with chips of agate, onyx, carnelian, and jasper.

A visit to the Petrified Forest National Monument is one of the real
experiences of a trip through the Southwest, and one that travelers in the
region should not overlook. The monument is reached by motor from Hoi-
brook, Arizona, on the National Old Trails Road, while railroad travelers
approach the area from either Adamana or Holbrook on the Santa Fe
Railroad.

MONTEZUMA CASTLE

Situated in a cavity in the face of a vertical cliff eighty feet above the
plain at its base, Montezuma Castle is a most remarkable cliff dwelling. It
takes three enormous ladders to reach the lower entrance to this fortress
home, and the pueblo builders who lived here in ancient times undoubtedly
chose the site for security. The prodigious amount of work necessary to
construct this great house on the cliff and to transport supplies to it bespeak
the untiring energy of these people. The Castle accommodated about three
hundred people. In it have been found pottery of a fair character and im
plements of warfare, hunting, and agriculture. Below, along Beaver Creek
at the foot of the cliff, were the communal farms.

Montezuma Castle is in Yavapai County, Arizona, reached from Flagstaff
on the Santa Fe Railroad, or by motor over the National Old Trails Road, or
via the Jerome-Prescott Road.

National Monuments * # * * 159

WUPATKI NATIONAL MONUMENT

When the Snake families of the Hopi Indians journeyed east out of the
Colorado River Canyon, where as their legend has it their ancestors came
up out of the underworld, they stopped at Wupatki on the Little Colorado
River, thirty-two miles northeast of Flagstaff, and built a temporary city.
The ruins of this pueblo now constitute the attraction of the Wupatki
National Monument. The Indians deserted their red sandstone houses many
generations ago and went to live with the rest of the People of Peace, as the
Hopis call themselves. They are one of the most picturesque tribes of the
Southwest. Their famous annual snake dances, dedicated to the rain gods,
have made them famous the world over. The ruins of Wupatki Monument
are an important link in the chain of evidence by which the story of these
ancient people of the desert is being gathered. Motorists may reach them
on the Tuba City Road from Flagstaff, which is the nearest railway station,
being on the Santa Fe Railroad.

NAVAHO NATIONAL MONUMENT

The Navaho National Monument is in northeastern Arizona, within the
Navaho Indian reservation. It contains ruins of prehistoric dwellings,
pueblos built in natural caves by the fortunate discoverers. They are in a
good state of preservation. Betatakin, one of these caves, is 450 feet long
and 150 feet deep, carved in the red sandstone of a beautiful canyon. Within
the cave was a never failing spring of pure water, supplying the needs of the
inhabitants, who lived in 120 rooms constructed in the cave. Kitsil is another
cave pueblo, even larger, with 148 rooms in it. A riot of color greets the
visitor to these caves, the surrounding walls resembling the Grand Canyon in
texture. The Navaho Monument is reached by motor stage from Grand
Canyon or from Flagstaff, both on the Santa Fe Railroad, or by motor from
either of these points over the National Old Trails Road to Kayenta, where
pack and saddle animals and Indian guides are engaged for the trip up the
canyon to the monument.

PAPAGO SAGUARO MONUMENT

Nothing that the visitor to the Southwest sees makes a greater impres
sion on him than does the giant saguaro cactus of Arizona and neighboring
states. These enormous cacti grow into veritable trees, while around them,
less huge but equally novel, are the barrel cactus from which candy is made,
the cholla, more popularly known as "jumping cactus" from its habit of
connecting itself with any passing object, and various other species of cacti.
With the increase in irrigation, many of the finer stands of the giant saguaro
cactus are being cleared off to make way for farms.

The Papago Saguaro Monument preserves one of the most picturesque
of these stands of giant saguaro, not far from Phoenix, on the Tempe Road.
It also contains other cacti plants of the desert, as well as certain birds that
are found nowhere except in the vicinity of the giant saguaro. The monu
ment area of nineteen hundred acres includes Hole-in-the-Rock Mountain, a

160 * * * * * "Oh, Ranger!"

curious purple rock mountain with a tunnel through it, projecting out of the
desert sands. The Papago Monument is reached by a short drive from
Phoenix which is on both the Southern Pacific and the Santa Fe railroads.

PIPE SPRING NATIONAL MONUMENT

In 1858 Brigham Young, the Mormon chief, sent Jacob Hamblin, famous
scout and crack shot, to call upon the Hopi Indians in northern Arizona.
The party camped one night at a marvelous spring in the midst of a desert
and an argument arose as to whether Hamblin could shoot a hole through a
handkerchief at twenty yards. Hamblin hit the square of silk, but the force
of the bullet only swept the handkerchief away. Chagrined by the laugh that
followed at his failure, Hamblin challenged one of the party to stick up his
pipe. Hamblin shot the bottom out of it like a flash without breaking the
bowl. That was the origin of the name given to the old Mormon fort which
was built soon thereafter at the site of this remarkable spring. The fort was
an important outpost against marauding Indians, and was the center of a
cattle industry established by the Mormons. The spring still flows at the
rate of a hundred thousand gallons of pure, cold water a day, a refreshing
oasis as well as a scenic attraction to the traveler over the main road from
Zion National Park to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon of Arizona.

CARLSBAD CAVE NATIONAL MONUMENT

Located in the Guadalupe Mountains in southeastern New Mexico is one
of the most beautiful and remarkable natural caves in the country, the
Carlsbad Cave. This cave was once known as Bat Cave because of the
thousands of bats which inhabited it. At dusk each evening these little
mammals poured forth for three hours through a large natural opening in
such enormous numbers that it was said they looked like smoke from a
chimney. In the early morning they returned and with incredible swiftness
folded their wings in mid-air and darted into the opening.

The exploration of the cave was not undertaken seriously until 1923,
when a party searched for six months without penetrating all of the lofty,
spacious chambers, connecting corridors, and alcoves, many of them of
remarkable beauty and form. The Big Room is more than half a mile long,
is 400 feet wide in places, and is 348 feet high at one place. Here the
stalactites are of infinite variety and shape, ranging from almost needle-like
proportions to massive pendants. The stalagmites rising from the floor are
equally interesting, one group resembling the tall and graceful totem poles
of the Alaska Indians. In some places they rise to the ceiling, like cathedral
columns. Another remarkable room is the Music Room, with its formations
resembling huge organ pipes. Here the stalactites, when lightly tapped, give
off musical sounds. Others resemble curtains.

The reservation includes 719 acres, but the extent of the caves is not
known, many of them being as yet unpenetrated. They await the explorer.
Paths, stairways, and railings make the main rooms safe for the visitor, while

National Monuments # # * # 161

flood lights are installed in some of the rooms. The cave is twenty-six miles
from Carlsbad, New Mexico, on the Ozark Trails and on a branch line of
the Santa Fe Railroad.

CHACO CANYON

As skilful architects the prehistoric builders who lived in Chaco Canyon,
New Mexico, between Albuquerque and Gallup, were without equals in the
whole of the United States. No written word is left of these people whose
cultural material, recovered from abandoned rooms, reveals greater variety,
technique, and beauty of design than that of any other of the ancient peoples
of the Southwest.

Pueblo Bonito, "Beautiful Village," the largest of the ruins, is a great
semicircular structure, originally five stories high. It was 667 feet long and
315 feet deep, an enormous building, and it has been characterized as the
largest apartment house built anywhere in the world prior to 1887, housing
1,300 people. This structure is but one of eighteen villages in the Chaco
Canyon, several of the others being almost equally remarkable in construc
tion, though not as large. Near some of the ruins evidences of ancient
irrigation engineering are plainly traceable.

Chaco Canyon is one of the larger national monuments, comprising
20,629 acres. The ruins are most easily reached from Thoreau, on the Santa
Fe Railroad, or by motor over the Old Trails Highway from either Albu
querque or Gallup, New Mexico. There is a small store at Chaco Canyon
and limited accommodations are available. Motorists should be prepared to
camp, sites being plentiful.

EL MORRO

Ordinarily, carving upon the walls of monuments is an act frowned
upon and punished by fine, but in the case of El Morro the carving
upon the sandstone wall was the occasion for making a national monument.
On the smooth walls of this sandstone cliff, in west central New Mexico, the
early Spanish explorers carved records of their exploits and of their expedi
tions against the Indians. The earliest of these Spanish records is that of Don
Juan de Onate, governor and colonizer of New Mexico, and founder of the
city of Santa Fe, the oldest city in the country, who rested by this cliff on
his return from a trip to the head of the Gulf of California in 1606, fourteen
years before the Pilgrim Fathers landed at Plymouth. Don Juan records
that the Indians "gave their obedience" and that he granted them favor
"with clemency, zeal, and prudence." Other and succeeding Spanish con-
quistadores left their records beside those of Don Juan.

It should be added that the idea of recording exploits upon these rocks
was not original with Don Juan. He carved his record over those of pre
historic Indians who left their thoughts in pictographs, many of which are
not destroyed by the Spanish records. The Indian records may play an
important part in piecing together the history of the Southwest Indians.

162 * * * * * "Oh, Ranger!"

The visit to El Morro is an interesting side trip for motorists over the
National Old Trails Highway. El Morro is reached by rail from Gallup,
New Mexico, on the Santa Fe Railroad.

AZTEC RUIN NATIONAL MONUMENT

Situated near the town of Aztec, New Mexico, and reached by the
National Park-to-Park Highway, is the Aztec Ruin National Monument, a
large E-shaped structure of the pueblo type containing approximately five
hundred rooms. The Aztec Ruin is the largest of a group of ruins, and is
the most striking and best preserved. Relics, including a hafted axe,
potsherds, and other objects, indicate that the inhabitants of this ruin may
have been of the same peoples as the Mesa Verde Indians. It may prove an
important link in piecing together the story of these early Americans.
Excavations are being conducted by the American Museum of Natural His
tory, which deeded the ruin to the government in 1923 through the courtesy
of a trustee, Mr. Archer M. Huntington.

GRAN QUIVIRA

The Gran Quivira is the ruins of one of the important links in the chain
of Spanish missions of the Southwest. It is near Mountainair, New Mexico,
on the Santa Fe Railroad, or can be reached on the National Old Trails
Highway from Socorro, New Mexico. There are numerous Indian pueblo
ruins near by which will be preserved when excavated. Both the mission and
the pueblos are said to have been built by women and children of the Piro
tribe of Indians.

CAPULIN MOUNTAIN NATIONAL MONUMENT

Capulin Mountain, New Mexico, is a magnificent example of a recently
extinct volcano. It rises to an altitude of 8,000 feet above sea level, and the
cone stands 1,500 feet above the general level of the surrounding plain. This
steep cinder cone is surrounded by the mesas, peculiar to New Mexico. The
whole formation offers an interesting study in volcanic activity, the mesas
as well as the cone having been formed by successive lava flows. At the top
of the mountain the crater can be studied with ease. This monument covers
an area of 680 acres. It is reached via the Colorado-to-Gulf Highway or
via a branch line of the Santa Fe Railroad from the town of Dedman, or
from the town of Folsom on the Colorado Southern Railroad.

RAINBOW BRIDGE

The most remarkable natural bridge yet discovered in the world is the
Rainbow Bridge in southern Utah. This colorful bridge is not only perfect
in its symmetry, both top and bottom, but it is so huge that the dome of
the Capitol Building in Washington could stand under it without touching
the span, which is 309 feet high and 278 feet from pier to pier. The Rainbow
Bridge is now easily reached over new trails from Kayenta, Arizona, which
is also the starting point for trail trips to the Navaho National Monument.

Copyright by Hileman

Mount Merritt from Red Gap Pass
in Glacier National Park

I

»

,

-

-

Crater Lake, in Crater Lake National Park

General Sherman Tree, Sequoia National Park,
the oldest and largest living thing on earth

In Zion Canyon, Zion National Park

National Monuments * * * * 163

THE NATURAL BRIDGES OF UTAH

Three natural bridges of great size and beauty are included in the
Natural Bridges Monument of San Juan County, Utah, containing 2,740
acres. Owanchomo Bridge, the smallest of the three, has a span of 194 feet
and is 108 feet above the stream bed. The Caroline Bridge, three miles down
stream, is the most massive, having a span of 186 feet and a height of 205 feet
above the stream bed. A short distance away is the Augusta Bridge, the
largest, its span extending 261 feet and rising 222 feet above the stream bed.
This great natural bridge is 28 feet wide and 65 feet thick at its smallest
part. It is truly an enormous structure. On the Caroline Bridge are carvings
of the symbols of the Hopi dancers, while near by are ruins of cliff dwellings.
The natural bridges were formed by stream erosion which washed out the
canyons below them. These objects of great interest are reached by trail
parties, a fifty-mile trip from Blanding, Utah, on the Rio Grande Railroad
and on the Pikes Peak Ocean-to-Ocean Highway.

DINOSAUR NATIONAL MONUMENT

The greatest collection in the world of fossil remains of dinosaurs and
other prehistoric reptiles is in Dinosaur National Park in northeastern Utah.
In some ancient time this area was probably a sand bar, in which great
reptiles, floating down some prehistoric river, were mired and trapped.
Many species of the strange creatures who inhabited the earth in the dim
past were caught in these bogs. Already four hundred thousand pounds of
material, including bones and matrix, have been taken from the quarry, now
the walls of a beautiful mountain canyon.

The greatest prize of all was a skeleton of the largest brontesaurus
known to science, a creature which measured one hundred feet long and
twenty feet high, and probably weighed twenty tons in life, so huge that be
side him a full-grown elephant would appear as a dog is to a horse. There
are thousands of other skeletons in these walls, awaiting excavation. The
monument is reached by motor from Jensen, Utah, on the Victory Highway,
or from Watson, Utah, on the narrow-guage Uintah Railroad, connecting
with the Denver & Rio Grande Western at Mack, Colorado.

SCOTTS BLUFF MONUMENT

Thousands of pioneers, headed for the Pacific over the old Oregon Trail,
marked their course by a great promontory known as Scotts Bluff in the
northern part of Nebraska. As far back as 1812, trail blazers noted this
point of sandstone, towering four thousand feet above the neighboring Platte
Valley. Hiram Scott, for whom the point was named, was one of three trap
pers separated from a large party that was to rendezvous by the bluff. Scott
was deserted by his two companions when he was stricken with mountain
fever. He crawled seventy miles, hoping to rejoin the larger party; but he
was too late. Beneath the bluff which now bears his name Scott died. His re
mains were found the next year.

164 * # * * * "O/z, Ranger!"

Scotts Bluff was a guide for the pioneers en route to Oregon and Cali
fornia. It guided the missionaries in their trips among the Indians. It was
a station on the Pony Express. It figured in Indian wars. In 1847, Fort
Fontanelle was established at its base. In more recent years, a tunnel has
been bored through its base, and through it flows a great flood of water to
irrigate thousands of acres of land on the North Platte project. It is visited
by thousands each year, being one of the most popular of the monuments.
Scotts Bluff is reached by the Lincoln Highway through the North Platte
Valley or by rail from Gering on the Union Pacific and from Scottsbluff on
the Burlington Route.

HOVENWEEP MONUMENT

Hovenweep Monument preserves some unusual prehistoric towers, pueb
los, and cliff dwellings, not far from Mesa Verde National Park on the
Colorado and Utah boundary line. They represent a special architectural
type peculiar to this region, and are important in the study of the ancient
life of the Southwest. The ruins are reached from Mesa Verde National
Park, or via the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad to Dolores, Colorado.

COLORADO NATIONAL MONUMENT

Five miles from Grand Junction, Colorado, on the Denver & Rio
Grande Railroad, is the Colorado National Monument, a beautiful and pic
turesque collection of monoliths and other examples of erosion, all highly
colored. The reservation is 13,883 acres in extent, is plentifully supplied
with springs, and is a veritable forest of monoliths. It is reached by the
Pikes Peak Ocean-to-Ocean Highway and the National Roosevelt Midland
Trail. It is a fine camping spot for motorists.

YUCCA HOUSE MONUMENT

Yucca House Monument, so named because of the quantity of yuccas
growing in the vicinity, is in southwestern Colorado. The area contains the
ruins of a prehistoric Indian village yet to be excavated. It is apparently a
house of great size, built on the gentle slope of Sleeping Ute, a mountain so
named because when seen from certain points it resembles the form of a
sleeping Indian. The monument is near the road from Shiprock, New
Mexico, to Cortez, Colorado, about fifteen miles from the latter town.

THE DEVILS TOWER

The alleged works of His Satanic Majesty figure prominently in the
choice of national monuments, but nowhere is there an object of greater
wonder than the Devils Tower in the Black Hills region of Wyoming. This
great group of pentagonal volcanic columns rises six hundred feet, or higher
than the Washington Monument, perpendicularly from the surrounding plain.
The diameter at the base is seventeen hundred feet. It is one of the strangest
freaks of Nature, a spectacle never to be forgotten.

National Monuments * * * # 165

The Devils Tower played an important part in the lives of the Indians,
not only as a landmark, but also in their legends. The origin of the rock is
explained by the Indians very easily. One day, so the legend goes, three
Sioux maidens, gathering wild flowers, were beset by three bears. The
maidens took refuge on a rock, but the bears, having sharp claws, also began
climbing the rock. The Great Spirit, seeing the predicament of the maidens,
caused the rock to grow higher and higher out of the ground. The bears
climbed and climbed until they were exhausted, and then fell hundreds of
feet to their death on the ground below. Saved from the ferocious animals,
the Indian maidens made a rope of their flowers and safely lowered them
selves to the ground below.

Believe it or not, it appears as though that, or a phenomenon of similar
nature, must have happened to project this great rock so high above the
plain. The Indians also claimed that the Thunder God beat his tom-tom on
the top of the tower, thus causing thunder. The tower also served the white
pioneers in their Indian wars, being a direction point. The reservation is
1,152 acres in extent and is reached by the Custer Battlefield Highway and
the Black and Yellow Trail, or by the Burlington Railroad from Moorcroft
station. A fine campsite is available for motorists.

SHOSHONE CAVERN

The Shoshone Cavern is a regular story-book robbers' cave, its secret
entrance located high up a mountain cliff among the trees. The cavern is
about four miles from Cody and on the Cody Road, one of the main
entrances to Yellowstone Park. The entrance is about twenty feet wide and
six feet high. Once inside, the cave — a large fault in the mountains — extends
back for more than half a mile. Off it are numerous side caverns, many of
which are not yet explored. Guides are needed to find the entrance of the
cave, reached after a trail climb of a mile, and a further climb up precipitous
ladders. Inside the cavern are interesting and beautiful formations.

FOSSIL CYCAD MONUMENT

In a picturesque part of the Black Hills of South Dakota is found the
Fossil Cycad National Monument, an area of 320 acres wherein are found
deposits of ancient fern-like plants of the Mesozoic period. It is the most
interesting fossil-plant bed yet discovered. In it have been unearthed plants
of enormous size, some with unexpanded buds, enabling scientists to piece
together models of ancient flowers and fruits. This monument is reached
from the Denver-Deadwood Highway, or via the Chicago & Northwestern
Railroad from Hot Springs, South Dakota, or the Burlington Route from
Minnekahta or Edgemont.

VERENDRYE MONUMENT

Verendrye National Monument commemorates the explorations of the
celebrated French explorer and his sons, who first pushed into the Montana

166 * * * * * "OA, Ranger!"

territory in 1742 and who continued their pioneering during the following
years, dreaming of a great trapping and hunting empire which was to be the
possession of France. Their dreams failed, but their ideals are commemorated
by this monument, the most conspicuous feature of which is Crowhigh Butte,
towering above the upper Missouri River.

LEWIS AND CLARK CAVERN

So named because it overlooks the Lewis and Clark Trail for fifty miles,
the Lewis and Clark Cavern Monument is located in Montana about forty-five
miles northeast of Butte. It is near the highway known as the Yellowstone
Trail and is not far from Whitehall on the Northern Pacific Railroad. The
cave contains many beautiful stalagmites and stalactites, and curious drip
formations in its various chambers add to its interest and beauty. It is a
very large cave and is one of the finest caverns of the West.

CRATERS OF THE MOON

Nowhere else in the United States can so many features of volcanic
activity be found in a small area as in the thirty-nine square miles that make
up the Craters of the Moon National Monument in central Idaho at the foot
of the White Komb Mountains. The monument takes its name from the
fact that it resembles the moon as seen through a high-powered telescope.
The profusion of cinder cones, craters, hornitos, black lava floods, and lava
caves indicate that this section is of comparatively recent volcanic activity.
The region is rich in geologic interest. The nearest railroad station is Arco
on the Oregon Short Line. Comfortable accommodations are available here.
The monument is reached by motorists over the Idaho Central Highway from
Boise or from Yellowstone.

SITKA NATIONAL MONUMENT

Sitka National Monument, fifty-seven acres on Sitka Bay, commemorates
the "Battle of Alaska" in 1804, when the Russians finally established their
supremacy over the warlike Indian tribes of the northwest territory. It is
likewise the site of a fine collection of totem poles, sixteen in number, among
the finest in Alaska. These totem poles record the genealogy of the old Alaska
Indian tribes, each family having as its emblem an animal, which figures
prominently in the carvings of the totem pole. Each pole tells the exploits
of the family it represents. The Indians were bound by tradition to offer
shelter to traveling members of the same family, and the totem pole in the
front of a hut told the traveler whether or not he could find welcome in that
particular hut. The Sitka Monument totem poles are from two different
tribes, the Thlingits and the Hycahs. The former hollowed out their totem
poles and deposited in them the charred bones of their dead. The monument
also contains some unusual forest growth, including a "witch tree" much
feared even by the present generation of Indians, because in olden times

National Monuments * * * * 167

witch trials were held under this tree and victims were hanged from its
limbs. The monument is easily reached from the town of Sitka, a regular
port of call for the steamers from Seattle.

GLACIER BAY

Glacier Bay National Monument, containing 1,820 square miles, includes
a number of tidewater glaciers of first rank in a magnificent setting of lofty
peaks. These glaciers are higher than the masts of ships and offer unique
opportunities for the study of glacial action. The monument must be reached
by water from Alaska or British Columbia.

KATMAI NATIONAL MONUMENT

Katmai Monument is more widely known as the "Valley of Ten Thousand
Smokes." It is a volcanic belt of extraordinary recent activity in southern
Alaska. It is the largest of the monuments, with an area of more than a
million acres. As recently as 1912, Mount Katmai on the reservation erupted,
belching forth several cubic miles of volcanic materials. In the "Valley of
Ten Thousand Smokes" there are literally millions of miniature volcanoes
jetting steam or vapor into the air. They are so hot that explorers cooked their
meals over this natural steam heat. It is said that this valley is now an example
of what Yellowstone was like many, many years ago, when the Yellow
stone volcanoes were just ceasing their activity. Some scientists predict that
the "Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes" will in some future age be another
great new geyser basin.

In addition, Katmai Monument is a valuable game preserve with a
plentiful animal and bird life. At present the monument is almost inaccessible
except to organized exploring parties, but in time a harbor can be developed
and a thirty-mile road will make it easily reached by visitors. It was
thoroughly explored, mapped, photographed, and described by parties sent
out by the National Geographic Society, and its magazine told the world of
the wonders of the region.

ARCHES NATIONAL MONUMENT

This monument, established by President Hoover on April 12, 1929,
consists of two areas in Grand County, Utah, known locally as the "Devil's
Garden" and the "Windows," containing approximately 2,600 and 1,920-
acres, respectively. Within these areas are extraordinary examples of wind
erosion, formed into gigantic arches, natural bridges, "windows," spires,,
balanced rocks, and other unique wind-worn formations of sandstone.

Ind

ex

Absaroka Indians (Crows), 88

Absaroka Range, 89

Acadia National Park, 122, 140, 154

Acker, W. B., 125

Agriculture, Department of, 6

Ahwahnee, valley of, 94

Alaska, 153, 167

Albert, King of Belgium, 9

Albright, Horace M., following 2

Allen, Remus, 13

Almost-a-Dog Mountain, 87

Alpine plants, 107 ff.

Alpine zone, 108

American bison, 21, 53

American Bison Society, 49

American Civic Association, 124

American Museum of Natural History,
162

Anderson, Dan, 136

Animal Husbandry, United States Bu
reau of, 50

Antelope, 47, 61, 62

Antelope Creek, 53

Antiquities Act, 139

Apache Indians, 158

Appalachian Club, 117, 118

Appalachian Mountains, 120

Arapahoes, 92

Arches National Monument, 167

Arctic circle, 108

Arctic-Alpine zone, 107, 109

Atlantic Creek, 72

Augusta Bridge, 163

Automobile, in national parks, 23 ff.

Aztec Ruin National Monument, 162

B

Bannocks, 88, 90

Bass, W. W., 133

Bat Cave, 160

Bear Paw Mountains, 91

Beardsley, early inn owned by, 131

Bears, following 34

Alaskan brown, 153

Black, 35

Brown, blonds, 35

Chapter on, 33

Cinnamon, 35

Color phases, 35

Distribution of, 34, 44, 153

Food, 46

Grizzlies, 34, 153

Hibernation, 41

Hold-up, 43

Numbers, 47

"Salad bowl" for, 39

Taking the census of, 47
Beartooth National Forest, 106
Beaver Lake Valley, 54
Beavers, 53 ff.
Benevolent and Protective Order of

Elks, 61

Betsy, tame bear, 46
Big Horn River, 88
Bighorn sheep, 58, 153
Big Oak Flat Road, 145
Big Room, in Carlsbad Cave, 160
Big Thompson Valley, 58
Big Trees, 99, 145, 150; see Sequoia

National Park
Biological Survey, 126
Bird Rattlers, 88
Birds, in national parks, 47, 63, 142, 153,

157

Bison, American, 21, 53
Blackf oot Indians, 86, 87, 89, 91 ; camp,

following 130
Black's Hotel, 131
Black-spotted trout, 76
Black-tailed deer, 58
Bobcats, 63

Boone and Crockett Club, 118
Boothe Lake, 145
Bowman, Scotty, 56
Bret Harte country, 145
Bridal Veil Falls, 144
Bridger, Jim, 20, 72, 104, 129
Bridger Lake, 57
Bright Angel Camp, 83
Bright Angel Creek, 77
Bright Angel Trail, 128, 146
Brook trout, 66, 75, 76
Bryant, Harold C, 99
Bryce Canyon National Park, 122, 152

Temple of Osiris, following 130

169

170

(Oh, Ranger!"

Buffalo, 21, 48 ff., 53, 91

Buffalo roundups, 51, 91, following 66

Bull trout, see Dolly Varden trout

Burgess, Scout, 12, 49

"Burning Mountains," 88

Cactus, saguaro, 159

Camp Curry, 133

Camp Fire Club, 118

Camping, 25, 26, 28

Camps, Sierra, 31

Campsites, in all national parks, 27 ; see

National Parks, Accommodations
Canadian zone, 108
Cannonball Express, 19
Canyon Hotel, 19
Capulin Mountain National Monument,

162

Caribou, 153
Carlsbad Cave National Monument, 140,

160

Carnegie Institution, 103
Caroline Bridge, 163
Carson, Kit, 85, 129
Carter, Chief Ranger, 11
Casa Grande, 92
Casa Grande National Monument, 140,

141, 157

Cascade Range, 148
Castle Geyser, 103
Catalina Island, 51
Cathedral Rocks, 144
Cedar Breaks, 152
Cedar Cottage, 132
Chaco Canyon, 161
Champlain, 154
Chapman, Arthur, Jr., 38, 46
Cheyenne Indians, 88, 92
Chief Joseph, 90 f .
Cliff Cities National Park, 84, 122
Cliff Dwellers, 14
Cliff Palace, 151
Clouds Rest, 144
Colorado Mountain Club, 120
Colorado National Monument, 164
Colorado River, 59, 76
Colter, John, 89, 121
"Colter's Hell," 121
"Combination salad," 37
Compleat Angler, The, 74
Conard, H. S., 99
Condor, 157

Cook, C. W., 121

Coolidge, Calvin, 11, 67

Cosmopolitan House, 132

Coulterville Road, 1, 128

Cowlitz Indians, 95

Coyotes, 14, 63

Crater Lake, 75, 102, 139, 150, following

162
Crater Lake National Park, 150 f.

Accommodations, 151

Bears, 44

Creation of, 122

Fish, 75, 76

Indians, 95

Routes to, 151

Visitors to, 18
Craters of the Moon, 166
Crows, 88, 90, 92
Curly Bear, 88
Curry, David A., 132
Custer massacre, 81, 89
Cutthroat trout, 66, 67, 72, 73, 75, 76, 78

Dall sheep, 57, 153
Death Valley, 119
Deer, 58 ff.

In national parks, 47, 59, 146

Number of, 47, 146

Winter feeding, 146
Devil Postpile, 126
Devil's Garden, 167
Devils Tower, 164 f .
Digger Indians, 93
Digger pine, 110

Dinosaur National Monument, 163
Doane, Gustavus C., 121
Dolly Varden trout, 74, 75
Douglas, Joe, 5, 72
"Drag out," 114ff.
Driving rules, 24
"Dude," origin of name, 17
"Dude wrangling," industry, 143

Eagle Peak, 144

Eastern brook trout, 66, 74, 75, 76

Eaton, Howard, 49

Eaton Ranch, 17

El Capitan, 8, 144

El Dorado National Forest, 16

Electric Peak, 108

Elk, 47, 60, 61

Index

171

El Morro, 161
El Portal, 2

El Tovar Hotel, 133, 146
English brook trout, 74
Entomology, Bureau of, 126
Estes Park, 92, 148
Evening assemblies, 21, 22
Everts, Truman C, 121

Fall River Road, 57

Fall River Valley, 58

Fallen Monarch, 145

Famous Players-Lasky Company, 51

Federal Power Commission, 6

Fire, 85

Firearms in parks, 26, 27

Firehole River, 121

Firefall, 144

Fish (see Fishing, Trout)

Black-spotted trout, 76

Cooking, 70 f .

Cutthroat or redthroat trout, 66, 67,
72, 73, 75, 76, 78

Dolly Varden or bull trout, 74, 75

Eastern brook trout, 66, 74, 75, 76

German Brown trout, 71, 74, 76

Golden trout, 73, 76

Grayling, 74, 75

Loch Leven trout, 66, 74, 75, 76

Mackinaw or lake trout, 69, 71, 74, 75

Planting of fry, 65, 66, 76, 77

Rainbow trout, 66, 73, 75, 76

Rocky Mountain whitefish, 74, 75

Salmon, 73

Spawning, 67, 70, 77

Steelhead trout, 73, 76
Fish fry, 65
Fisher, Walter L., 124
Fisheries, United States Bureau of, 77
Fishing (see Trout)

Barbless hooks, 78

Casting, 70

Chapter on, 65

Club, 71

Flies, 68, 69, 70

License, 76

Limit of catch, 78

Lures, 66, 69

Tackle, 68, 69, 71

Trolling, 70
Fishing Bridge, 28, 78
Flathead reservation, 88

Flatheads, 88

Flattop Trail, 57

Folsom, David E., 121

Forbes, Stephen, 79

Forest and Stream, 49

Forest Service, 126

Fort Fontanelle, 164

Fossil Cycad National Monument, 165

Fossils, 102, 105

Four Bears Mountain, 87

Frantz, Harry W., 20

Fred Harvey, 131

Fresh Air Club, 118

Frijoles Canyon, 84

Fujiyama, 148

Fry, Judge, 94

General Grant National Park, 119, 122,

123, 149

General Grant Tree, 149
General Sherman Tree, 122, 139, 149;

following 162

Geological Survey, United States, 126
German Brown trout, 71, 74, 76
Geysers, 99, 103, 105 f., 141
Giant Forest, 150
Gibbon River, 75, 121
Gillette, W. C, 121
Glacier Bay National Monument, 167
Glacier milk, 75, 101
Glacier National Park, 129, 147

Accommodations, 147

Bears, 34, 44

Beavers, 54

Buffaloes, 53

Chalets, 31

Creation of, 122

Elk, 61

Fishing, 75

Game animals, 47

Indians, 86 f ., 147

Moose, 47, 57

Mount Merritt, following 162

Mountain sheep, 57

Railroad service, 147
Glacier Point, 98, 144
Glaciers, 100, 106, 147
Going-to-the-Sun Mountain, 57, 87
Golden trout, 73, 76
Gran Quivira, 162
Grand Canyon National Park, 146 f .

Accommodations, 133, 146

172

fOh, Ranger!1

Grand Canyon National Park (cont.)

Antelopes, 61

Beavers, 54

Creation of park, 122

Deer, 47, 146

Fish, 76

Game animals, 47

Indians, 82, 146

Moose, 47

North Rim, 146

Routes to, 146

South Rim, 59, 133, 146

Trails, 146

Visitors to, 18

From Yavapai Point, following 130
Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, 142
Grand Teton National Park, 11, 122,

143 ; following 2
Grayling, 74, 75
Great House, 157
Great Salt Lake, 152
Great Smoky National Park, 122
Green Mountain Club, 118
Green Mountains, 118
Grinnell, George Bird, 49
Grizzlies, 47, 153; see Bears
Grizzly Giant, 145
Grouse, 63

Guadalupe Mountains, 160
Gustav Adolf, Crown Prince of Sweden,
9,62

H

Haleakala, 153

Half Dome, 61, 97, 144; following 98

Hall, Ansel F., 99

Hamblin, Jacob, 160

Hanse, Captain, 133

Harding, Warren G., 11, 22, 47

Harrison, William Henry, III, 11

Hauser, Samuel T., 121

Havasu Canyon, 84

Havasupai Indians, 82, 83, 84

Hawaii National Park, 122, 139, 153

Hawaiian Islands, 102

Heart Lake, 75

Hedges, Cornelius, 121

Henry's Lake, 49

Hermit Trail, 62

Hetch Hetchy Lake, 125, 144

Hetch Hetchy Valley, 125

High Sierra camps, 145

Hiking, 31

Chapter on, 111

Clubs (see Trail clubs)

Equipment, 114
Hilo, 154

Hole-in-the-Rock Mountain, 159
Holme, Garnet, 92
Hoover, Herbert, 65, 66
Hopi House, 83 ; following 130
Hopis, 82 ff., 85, 159, 160
Hot Springs National Park, 18, 122, 155
Hough, Emerson, 49
Hovenweep National Monument, 164
Howell, Ed, 12, 49
Hualapai Indians, 82
Hudsonian zone, 108
Huntington, Archer M., 162
Huntington, Ellsworth, 103
Hutchings, J. M., 131
Hutchings' House, 131, 132

Ice Age, 97, 108
Iceberg Lake, 57
Indian Bureau, 81
Indian tribes —

Absaroka, see Crows

Alaska, 81

Apache, 85, 158

Arapahoe, 92

Bannock, 88, 90

Blackfoot, 86, 87, 89, 91

Cheyenne, 88, 92

Cowlitz, 95

Crow, 88, 90, 92

Of the desert, 83 ff.

Digger, 93

Flathead, 88

Havasupai, 82, 83, 84

Hopi, 82, 83, 84, 85, 159

Hualapai, 82

Klamath, 95

Klickitat, 95

Kootnai, 88

Miwok, 94

Mono, 94 f .

Navaho, 82 ff., 85, 159

Nez Perce, 81, 90 f .

Nisqually, 95

Papago, 157, 158

Piute, 82, 93, 94

Of the Plains, 86 ff.

Potwisha, 94

Index

173

Pueblo, 85

Puyallup, 95

Shoshone, 88, 89, 90, 92

Sioux, 81, 89

Ute, 85, 92

Watchumna, 94

Yakima, 95

Yosemite, 93

Zuni, 85

Indians, chapter on, 81
Inkowa Club, 118

Inspiration Point (Yellowstone), 142
Interstate Commerce Commission, 132
Izaak Walton League/65, 120

Jackson Hole, 143

Jackson Hole Lake, 75

Jeffrey pine, 110

Jicarilla Apache reservation, 85

John Muir Trail, 119

Jones, C. J. ("Buffalo"), 21, 44, 49

Jordan, David Starr, 73

Joseph, Chief, 90 f.

Juniper, 110

K

Kaibab Forest, 59, 146

Kaibab reservation, 82

Kaibab trails, 146

Katmai, eruption of, 167

Katmai National Monument, 167

Kaweah River, 94

Kell, Ranger, 13

Kent, Elizabeth Thatcher, 155

Kent, William, 155 f.

Kilauea, 153 f.

Kino, Father Eusebio Francisco, 157

Klamath Indian reservation, 95

Klamath River, 150

Klickitat Indians, 95

Kootnai Indians, 88

Ladybugs, 106

Lady of the Lake, The, 74

Lafayette National Park (see Acadia

National Park)
Lake of Fire, 154
Lake trout, see Mackinaw trout
Lamar River, 49, 50, 91
Lamar Valley, 52
Lane, Franklin K., 124
Langford, Nathaniel P., 121, 123, 124

Lassen Peak, 152; following 130
Lassen Volcanic National Park, 152 f.

Accommodations, 153

Bears, 44

Eruptions, 102, 153

Fish, 76

Indians, 95

Routes to, 153
Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial

Foundation, 100
Ledge Trail, 114
Leevining Canyon, 144
Leidig's Hotel, 132
Leman Cove, 94

Lewis and Clark Cavern Monument, 166
Lewis and Clark Expedition, 89
Lewis Lake, 75
Liberty Cap, 103
Lick, Ranger, 4
Life zones, 107, 110
Lime Kiln Hill, 94
Linton, Edwin, 78
Lisa, Manuel, 89
Little Big Horn, 89
Little Chief Mountain, 87
Little Colorado River, 159
Little Zion, 93

Loch Leven trout, 66, 74, 75, 76
''Long, Long Trail," 117, 118; see John

Muir Trail
Longmire family, 133
Longmire Springs, 148
Longs Peak, 115
Lyell Fork, 73, 100
Lyell Glacier, 100
Lyell, Mount, see Mount Lyell
Lynx, 63

If

McBride, Jim, 12
McDonald, Lake, 11, 57
McFarland, J. Horace, 124
Mackinaw trout, 69, 71, 74, 75
Macy, Ranger, 56
Madison River, 75
Mammoth, Wyoming, 8, 49, 88
Mammoth Hot Springs, 103, 124
Many Glaciers Hotel, following 2
Mariposa Grove, 9, 122, 145
Mark Twain Tree, 145
Martindale, Ranger, 7
Masque of the Absaroka, 92
Mather, Stephen T., 125, 128

174

rOA, Ranger!"

Maui, 153

Mauna Loa, 102, 153
Mazamas, 119, 120
Merced Lake, 98
Merced River, 94
Merced River Canyon, 97
Merriam, John C, 103
Mesa Verde National Park, 14, 85, 122,
139, 151 f.

Spruce Tree House, 85, 151 ; follow
ing 130

Miles, General Nelson L., 91
Miller, Adolph C, 125
Mills, Enos A., 99
Mirror Lake, 98
Mirror Plateau, 52
Missouri River, 89
Miwok Indians, 94
Modoc War, 95
Mono Indians, 94 f .
Montezuma Castle, 158
Moose, 47, 56, 57, 153
Mormons, 93, 152
Morning Eagle Falls, 87
Mount Adams, 147
Mount Baker, 120
Mount Banner, 126
Mount Desert Island, 154
Mount Hood, 119
Mount Lyell, 100, 101, 106
Mount McKinley, 153
Mount McKinley National Park, 34, 47,

122, 139, 153

Mount Mazama, 102, 139, 150
Mount Merritt, following 162
Mount Olympus, 120
Mount Rainier, 101, 120, 148
Mount Rainier National Park, 147

Accommodations, 148

Attractions, 139

Creation of, 122

Beavers, 54

Deer, 47

Fishing, 75

Glacier milk, 75

Glaciers, 100

Mountain goats, 47

Mountains, 147

Paradise Valley, 7, 148

Routes to, 148

From Tatoosh Range, following 34

From Timberline Ridge, following
34

Trails, 148

Visitors to, 18
Mount Ritter, 126
Mount St. Helens, 147
Mount Tamalpais, 155
Mount Washburn, 58, 62, 107
Mountain Club of Spokane, 120
Mountain clubs, see Trail clubs
Mountain driving, 24, 25
fountain goats, 47, 57
Mountain lions, 14, 15, 63; see Cougar
Mountain Meadows massacre, 93
Mountain sheep, 47, 57, 58
Mountaineers, 111, 117, 120
Muir, John, 101, 118, 131, 155; see John

Muir Trail

Muir Woods National Monument, 155
Mukuntuweap Creek, 93
Mukuntuweap River, 152
Mule deer, 58
"Music of the lakes," 78 ff.
Music Room, 160
Muskrats, 63

N

National Geographic Society, 167
National Monument Act, 140
National monuments, 139, 155-67
National parks —

Acadia, 154

Accommodations, 25, 26, 28, 133, 134 f .,
146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153,
154, 156, 157

Administration, 123 ff.

Animals, 33 ff., 44, 46, 47, 53, 56, 58,
59, 60, 61, 63, 64, 146, 153

Bryce Canyon, 152

Cliff Cities, 84

Crater Lake, 150 f.

Creation of, 139 ff.

Fish, 73 ff.

Franchises, 130

Glacier, 147

Grand Canyon, 146

Great Smoky, 122

Hawaii, 153

Hot Springs, 155

Lassen Volcanic, 152

Mesa Verde, 151

Mount McKinley, 153

Mount Rainier, 147 f .

Pageants, 92

Plant life, 107 ff.

Index

175

Platt, 155

Private holdings, 126 ff.

Redwood, 122

Registration, 26 f .

Roads, 123, 129

Rules of conduct, 27

Rocky Mountain, 148 f .

Sequoia, 149 f .

Sullys Hill, 155

Wilderness areas, 129

Wind Cave, 155

Yellowstone, 88, 103, 104, 107, 141 ff.

Yosemite, 144 f .

Zion, 18, 93, 122, 152
National Park of the Cliff Cities, 84
National Park Service, chapter on, 121
National Park Service Act, 140
Natural Bridges Monument, 163
Naturalists, 31, 98, 99, 104
Navaho Indians, 82, 83, 84, 85, 159
Navaho National Monument, 159, 162
Navahopi Road, 83
Nelson, Billy, 9
Nevada Falls, 77, 144
Never Summer Range, 126
Nez Perces, 81, 90 f.
Nicknames, 17 f .
Nisqually Glacier, 148
Nisqually Indians, 95
Nisqually River, 56
Norris, P. W., 124
Norris Geyser Basin, 104
North Dome, 97
North Rim, 59, 133, 146
Nusbaum, Jesse L., 85

Papago Indians, 157, 158

Papago Saguaro National Monument,

159

Paradise Glacier, 148
Paradise Valley, 7, 148; following 66;

see Mount Rainier National Park
Parkhurst, Alfred L., 133
Park rules of conduct, 27
Parunuweap Canyon, 93
Pennsylvania Alpine Club, 120
Penobscot Bay, 154
Pershing, General John, 11
Petrified forests, 103
Petrified Forests of Arizona, 158
Petrified trees, 99
Phantom Ranch, 146
Photography, 55, 62
Pictographs, 161

Pinnacles National Monument, 157
Pipe Spring, fort at, 93
Pipe Spring National Monument, 160
Piutes, 82, 93, 94
Plant life, 107 ff., 110
Platt National Park, 122, 155
Pony Express, 164
'Possums, 64
Potwisha Indians, 94
Prairie Club, 120
Public Health Service, United States,

126

Public Roads, Bureau of, 126
Pueblo Bonito, 161
Pueblos, 83, 85
Puyallup Indians, 95
Puye Canyon, 84

Obsidian Cliff, 54, 104
Ogston, Ted, 14

Old Faithful Geyser, 7, 103, 142; fol
lowing 66

Old Faithful Inn, 19
Olympic Peninsula, 61
Onate, Don Juan de, 161
Osprey, 63, 142
Otowi Canyon, 84
Overhanging Rock, 98, 144
Owanchomo Bridge, 163
Ozark Mountains, 155

Pacific Creek, 72
Pageants, Indian, 92

Rainbow Bridge, 162

Rainbow Forest, 158

Rainbow trout, 66, 73, 75, 76

Rainier, Mount, see Mount Rainier Na
tional Park

Raker, John E., 124

Ranchos de Taos, 85

Ranger naturalists, 31, 98, 99

"Ranger sandwich," 71

Red asparagus, see Snow plant

Red Eagle Lake, 87

Red Gap Pass, Mount Merritt from,
following 162

"Red snow," 106

Redthroat trout, see Cutthroat trout

Redwood National Park, 122

176

(Oh, Ranger!"

Reese, John, 133

Registration in parks, 26 f .

Ribbon Falls, 144

Rising Wolf Mountain, 87

Rock flour, 101

Rock, R. W., 49

Rocky Mountain elk, 60

Rocky Mountain goat, 58

Rocky Mountain sheep, 57

Rocky Mountain National Park, 148 f .

Accommodations, 149

Beavers, 54

Creation of, 122

Deer, 47

Elk, 61

Fish, 75

Game animals, 47

Routes to, 149

Timberline, 149

Wild flowers, 107
Rocky Mountain whitefish, 74, 75
Roosevelt, Theodore, 11, 53, 73, 91, 156
Roosevelt Camp, 88
Ross, Ranger, 13

S

"Sagebrushers," origin of name, 17 f .,

23

Saguaro cactus, 159
Salmon, 73
Salmo Rooseveltii, 73
Salt Lake City, 93
San Fernando de Taos, 85
San Joaquin Valley, 101, 108
San Joaquin Valley elk, 61
Sawyer, E. J., 104

Scotts Bluff National Monument, 163 f.
Scott, Hiram, 163
Scott, Sir Walter, 74
Sentinel Dome, 144
Sentinel Hotel, 132
Sentinel Rock, 132
Sequoia National Park, 149 f .

Accommodations, 150

Bears, 44

Big Trees, 99, 150

Creation of, 122

Fish, 73, 76

General Sherman Tree, 149; follow
ing 162

Giant Forest, 150

Indians, 93

Routes to, 150

Visitors to, 18

Shenandoah National Park, 122
Shiprock, 164
Shoshone Cavern, 165
Shoshone Indians, 88, 89, 90, 92
Shoshone Lake, 75, 78
Sierra camps, 31
Sierra Club, 20, 118, 119
Sierra Nevada, 93, 101, 118
Sioux, 81, 89

Sitka National Monument, 166
Sitting Bull, 81, 89
Skunks, 15

Sleeping Ute Mountain, 164
Sluiskin, 95, 96
Slough Creek, 71
Smith, Hugh M., 79
Smith, Jacob, 121
Smith, John, 132
Smoot, Reed, 124
Snake Creek, 91
Snake Dance, 84
Snake River, 72, 75
Snow plant, 109
Snow's House, 132
South Rim, 59, 133, 146
Southern Ute reservation, 85
Specimen Mountain, bighorn sheep on,

57
Spruce Tree House, 85, 151; following

130

Square Tower House, 14
Steel, Will G., 76, 133
Steelhead trout, 73, 76
Stevens party, 95
Stickney, Benjamin, 121
Stoneman House, 132
Stoneman Meadow, 28
Sub-Alpine zone, 108, 109
Sugar pine, 110

Sullys Hill National Park, 53, 122, 155
Sunrise Trail, 1
Swiftcurrent Pass, 57
Sylvan Pass, 5

Takhoma, 96; see Mount Rainier

Tamarack, 110

Taos, 85

Tatoosh Range, following 34

Telescope Tree, 145

Index

177

Tenaya Canyon, 97
Tenaya, Chief, 94
Tenaya Lake, 98
Tenaya, the pageant, 92
Teton Mountains, 126, 143
Tharp, Hale D., 94
Thousand Island Lake, 126
"Thundering Herd," SO
Timberline, 106 f.
Tioga Pass, 127, 144
Tioga Pass Road, 127
Totem poles, 166
Tower Falls, 53, 56, 105
Townsley, Forest, 13
Trail Clubs, 117 ff.

Appalachian Club, 117, 118

Boone and Crockett Club, 118

Camp Fire Club, 118

Colorado Mountain Club, 120

Fresh Air Club, 118

Green Mountain Club, 118

Inkowa Club, 118

Mazamas, 119, 120

Montana Mountaineers, 120

Mountaineers Club, 120

Pennsylvania Alpine Club, 120

Prairie Club, 120

Rocky Mountain Club, 120

Sierra Club, 119, 120

Tramp and Trail Club, 118

Wild Life Council, 118
Trails, high Sierra, 145; see Hiking
Tramp and Trail Club, 118
Tramps, 28, 29
Transition zone, 108
Trout, see Fishing, chapter on
Trumbull, Walter, 121
Truxton Canyon Agency, 82
Tsankawi Canyon, 84
Tumacacori Mission National Monu
ment, 157

Tuolumne Meadows, 1, 99
Tuolumne River, 73, 144
Tukuarika, 90
Two-Guns-White-Calf, 86
Two Medicine Lake, 87
Two-Ocean Pass, 72, 78

U

Upper Sonoran zone, 108
Ursa of the Redwoods, 92
Utah Parks Company, 133
Utes, 85, 92

"Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes," 167

van Dyke, Henry, 66

Verendrye National Monument, 165 f.

Vermillion Cliffs, 152

Vernal Falls, 1, 77, 144

Virgin River, 93

Visitors to parks, number of, 18

Volcano House, 154

Volcanoes, 102, 105, 147, 153

W

Wallowa Valley, 90

Walton, Izaak, 74; see Izaak Walton

League

Washburn, H. D., 121
Washburn-Langford party, 121
Washington Tree, 145
Watchumna Indians, 94
Waters, E. C, 49
Wawona Road, 59
Wawona Tree, 145; following 98
Wegner, John, 1
Wetherell, Alfred, 151
Wetherell, Richard, 151
White Komb Mountains, 166
White Mountains, 117
Whitefish, 74, 75, 76
White-tailed deer, 58
Wild flowers, migration of, 108 f.
Wild Life Council, 118
Wild life, distribution of, 109
Willows, 109
Wind Cave National Park, 47, 48, 53,

122, 155

Windows, The, 167
Winess, Frank, 9
Wolf Plume, 88
Wolves, 14, 63
Woodring, Sam, 10, 11
Wupatki National Monument, 159
Wylie Camps ("Wylie Way"), 133
Wylie, W. W., 132, 133

Yavapai Point, view from, following

130

Yellowstone, Fort, 124
Yellowstone, Grand Canyon of the, 13;

following 66
Yellowstone Falls, 72, 77
Yellowstone Lake, 4, 67, 78, 121

178

"OA, Ranger!"

Yellowstone National Park, 139, 141 f.

Accommodations, 143

Antelope, 47, 61

Bears, 34

Buffaloes, 48 ff.

Deer, 47

Elk, 60, 61

Establishment as park, 122

Fish, 66, 73, 75

Game animals, 47

Gateways, 143

Geyser basins, 142

Geysers, 10, 103

Indians, 88 ff.

Life zones, 108

Mammoth Hot Springs, 103, 104, 124

Moose, 47, 57

Mountain sheep, 57

Museum, 104

Old stagecoach, folio-wing 66

Petrified forest, 143

Railroad service, 143

Rangers, 31, 98, 99, 104

Size of, 122

Timberline, 107

Visitors to, 18

Volcanoes, 103

Wild flowers, 107

Yellowstone River, 72, 75, 105, 142
Yosemite Falls, 144
Yosemite National Park, 139, 144 f.

Accommodations, 145

Bears, 39, 44

Big Trees, 99, 145; following 98

Cannonball Express, 19

Creation of, 122

Derivation of name, 34

Elk, 61

Falls, 144

Firefall, 144

Fish, 73, 74, 76

Game animals, 47

Glacier Point, 99; follozving 98

Glaciers, 97, 98, 100

Half Dome (two views), following
98

High country, 145

Indians, 94

Museum, 100

Railroad service, 145

Routes to, 145

Stage service, 19, 145

Timberline, 107

Trails, 13

Tuolumne Meadows, 99

Visitors to, 18

Wawona Tree, 145; following 98
Yosemite Valley, 1, 8, 97 f., 120; fol
lowing 98

Young, Brigham, 160
Yount, Harry, frontispiece, 5, 6, 7
Yucca House Monument, 164

Ziegfeld, Florenz, 51
Zion Canyon, 93; following 162
Zion National Park, 18, 93, 122, 152;
following 160

Accommodations, 152

Creation of, 122

Routes to, 152

Mormons discovered, 93

Visitors to, 18

A Word about the
Authors

Stephen T. Mather, who has
ten the introduction to "OH, RANG
says of the authors:

"It is a happy circumstance
these two men, who themselves ]
the genuine spirit of the ranj
and who are so intimately infor
in the affairs of the parks and 1
people, should have collaborate
produce this book."

Horace Albright has served
parks since the Service was
organized, and was for nearly
years Superintendent of Yellows
Park. He is now Director of
National Park Service.

Frank Taylor has for years ]
a close friend of the national p
in the related fields of news
publicity. Both of them know
appreciate thoroughly the satii
tions of life within the park
which they write.

The collaboration of these tw
"OH, RANGER !" has provide^ us w:
book which will interest until
last line is read — the last fish cai
—the last peak scaled.

V

Witex

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