 Preface to the Book of the National Parks by Robert Sterling Yard. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Book of the National Parks by Robert Sterling Yard. Preface. In offering the American public a carefully studied outline of its national park system, I have two principal objects. One is to describe and differentiate the national parks in a manner which will enable the reader to appreciate their importance, scope, meaning, beauty, manifold uses, and enormous value to individual and nation. The other is to use these parks in which nature is writing in large plain lines the story of America's making as examples illustrating the several kinds of scenery and what each kind means in terms of world building. In other words, to translate the practical findings of science into unscientific phrase for the reader's increased profit and pleasure, not only in his national parks, but in all other scenic places, great and small. At the outset, I have been confronted with a difficulty because of this double objective. The role of the interpreter is not always welcome. If I write what is vaguely known as a popular book, wise men have warned me that any scientific intrusion, however lightly and dramatically rendered, will displease its natural audience. If I write the simplest of scientific books, I am warned that a large body of warm-blooded, wholesome, enthusiastic Americans, the very ones above all others, whose keen enjoyment I want to double by doubling their sources of pleasure, will have none of it. The suggestion that I make my text popular and carry my science in an appendix I promptly rejected, for if I cannot give the scientific aspects of nature their readable values in the text, I cannot make them worth an appendix. Now I fail to share with my advisors their poor opinion of the taste, enterprise, and intelligence of the wide-awake American. But for the sake of my message, I yield in some part to their warnings. Therefore I have so presented my material that the miscalled, and I verily believe badly slandered average reader, may have his popular book by omitting the note on the appreciation of scenery and the several notes explanatory of scenery which are interpolated between groups of chapters. If it is true, as I have been told, that the average reader would omit these anyway because it is his habit to omit prefaces and notes of every kind, then nothing has been lost. The keen and inquiring reader, however, the reader who wants to know values and to get in the eloquent phrase of the day, all that's coming to him, will have the whole story by beginning the book with the note on the appreciation of scenery and reading it consecutively, interpolated notes and all. As this will involve less than a score of additional pages, I hope to get the message of the national parks in terms of their fullest enjoyment before much of the greater part of the book's readers. The pleasure of writing this book has many times repaid its cost in labor and any helpfulness it may have in advancing the popularity of our national parks in building up the system's worth as a national economic asset and in increasing the people's pleasure in all scenery by helping them to appreciate their greatest scenery will come to me as pure profit. It is my earnest hope that this profit may be large. A similar spirit has actuated the very many who have helped me to acquire the knowledge and experience to produce it. The officials of the National Park Service, the superintendents and several rangers in the national parks, certain zoologists of the United States Biological Survey, the director and many geologists of the United States Geological Survey, scientific experts of the Smithsonian Institution and professors in several distinguished universities. Many men have been patient and untiring in assistance and helpful criticism and to these I render warm thanks for myself and for the readers who may benefit by their work. End of preface. Part 1 of the Book of the National Parks This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The Book of the National Parks by Robert Sterling Yard on the Appreciation of Scenery To the average educated American, scenery is a pleasing hodgepodge of mountains, valleys, plains, lakes, and rivers. To him, the Glacier Hollowed Valley of Yosemite, the stream-scooped abyss of the Grand Canyon, the volcanic gulf of Crater Lake, the bristling granite core of the Rockies, and the ancient ice-carved shales of Glacier National Park are all one, just scenery, magnificent, incomparable, meaningless. As a people, we have been content to wonder, not to know. Yet with scenery, as with all else, to know is to begin fully to enjoy. Appreciation measures enjoyment. And this brings me to my proposition, namely, that we shall not really enjoy our possession of the grandest scenery in the world until we realize that scenery is the written page of the history of creation and until we learn to read that page. The National Parks of America include areas of the noblest and most diversified scenic sublimity easily accessible in the world. Nevertheless, it is their chiefest glory that they are among the completest expressions of the Earth's history. The American people is waking rapidly to the magnitude of its scenic possession. It has yet to learn to appreciate it. Nevertheless, we love scenery. We are a nation of sightseers. The year before the World War stopped all things, we spent 280 million dollars in going to Europe. That summer, Switzerland's receipts from the sale of transportation and board to persons coming from foreign lands to see her scenery was 100 million dollars, and more than half it has been stated apparently with authority came from America. That same year, tourist travel became Canada's fourth largest source of income, exceeding engrossed receipts even her fisheries, and the greater part came from the United States. It is a matter of record that seven tenths of the hotel registrations of Canadian Rockies were from south of the border. Had we then known, as a nation, that there was just as good scenery of its kind in the United States and many more kinds, we would have gone to see that. It is a national trait to buy the best. Since then, we have discovered this important fact and are crowding to our national parks. Is it true a woman asked me at the foot of Yosemite Falls that this is the highest unbroken waterfall in the world? She was the average tourist, met there by chance. I assured her that such was the fact. I called attention to the apparent deliberation of the water's fall, a trick of the senses resulting from failure to realize height and distance. To think they are the highest in the world, she mused. I told her that the soft fingers of water had carved this valley three thousand feet into the solid granite and that ice had polished its walls, and I estimated for her the ages since the Merced River flowed at the level of the cataract's brink. I have seen the tallest building in the world, she replied dreamily, and the longest railroad and the largest lake and the highest monument and the biggest department store and now I see the highest waterfall. Just think of it. If one has illusions concerning the average tourist, let him compare the hundreds who gape at the paint pots and geysers of Yellowstone with the dozens who exalt in the sublimated glory of the colourful canyon or let him listen to the table talk of a party return from Crater Lake or let him recall the statistical superlatives which made up his friend's last letter from the Grand Canyon. I am not condemning wonder, which in its place is a legitimate and pleasurable emotion. As a condiment to sharpen an accent and a bounding sense of beauty, it has real and abiding value. Love of beauty is practically a universal passion. It is that which lures millions into fields, valleys, woods, and mountains on every holiday, which crowds our ocean lanes and railroads. The fact that few of these rejoicing millions are aware of their own motive and that, strangely enough, a few even would be ashamed to make the admission if they became aware of it has nothing to do with the fact. It's a wise man that knows his own motives. The fact that still fewer, whether aware or not of the reason of their happiness, are capable of making the least expression of it also has nothing to do with the fact. The tourist woman whom I met at the foot of Yosemite Falls may have felt secretly suffocated by the filmy grandeur of the incomparable spectacle. Notwithstanding that, she was conscious of no higher emotion than the cheap wonder of a superlative. The Grand Canyon's rim is the stillest crowded place I know. I've stood among a hundred people on the precipice and heard the whir of a bird's wings in the abyss. Probably the majority of those silent gazers were suffering something akin to pain at their inability to give vent to the emotions bursting within them. I believe that the statement cannot be successfully challenged that, as a people, our enjoyment of scenery is almost wholly emotional. Love of beauty spiced by wonder is the equipment for enjoyment of the average intelligent traveler of today. Now add to this a more or less equal part of the intellectual pleasure of comprehension and you have the equipment of the average intelligent traveler of tomorrow. To hasten this tomorrow is one of the several objects of this book. To see in the carved and colorful depths of the Grand Canyon not only the stupendous abyss whose terrible beauty grips the soul but also today's chapter in a thrilling story of creation whose beginning lay untold centuries back in the ages whose scene covers 300,000 square miles of our wonderful southwest whose actors include the greatest forces of nature whose tremendous episodes shame the imagination of Dorei and whose logical end invites suggestions before which finite minds shrink. This is to come into the presence of the great spectacle properly equipped for its enjoyment. But how many who see the Grand Canyon get more out of it than merely the beauty that grips the soul? So it is throughout the world of scenery. The geologic story written on the cliffs of Crater Lake is more stupendous than even the glory of its indigo bowl. The war of titanic forces described in simple language on the rocks of Glacier National Park is unexcelled in sublimity in the history of mankind. The story of Yellowstone's making multiplies many times the thrill occasioned by its world fame spectacle. Even the simplest and smallest rock details often tell thrilling incidents of prehistoric times out of which the enlightened imagination reconstructs the romances and the tragedies of Earth's earlier days. How eloquent, for example, was the small water-worn fragment of dull coal we found on the limestone slope of one of Glacier's mountains. Impossible companionship, the one the product of forest, the other of submerged depths. Instantly I glimpsed the distant age when thousands of feet above the very spot upon which I stood, but then at sea level bloomed a cretaceous forest broken trunks and matted foliage decayed in bogs where they slowly turned to coal, coal which exposed and disintegrated during intervening ages, has long since, all but a few small fragments like this, washed into the headwaters of the Saskatchewan to merge eventually into the muds of Hudson Bay. And then, still dreaming, my mind leaped millions of years still further back to lake bottoms where, ten thousand feet below the spot on which I stood, gathered the pre-Cambrian ooze which later hardened into this very limestone, from ooze a score of thousand feet, a hundred million years, to coal, and both lie here together now in my palm, filled thus with visions of a perspective beyond human comprehension, with what multiplied intensity of interest I now return to the noble view from Gable Mountain. In pleading for a higher understanding of nature's method and accomplishment as a precedent to study an observation of our national parks, I seek enormously to enrich the enjoyment, not only of these supreme examples, but of all examples of world-making. The same readings which will prepare you to enjoy the full message of our national parks will invest your neighborhood hills at home, your creek and river and prairie, your vacation valleys, the landscape through your car window, even your wayside ditch with living interest. I invite you to a new and fascinating earth, an earth interesting, vital, personal, beloved, because at last known and understood. It requires no great study to know and understand the earth well enough for such purpose as this. One does not have to dim his eyes with acres of maps, or become a plotting geologist, or learn to distinguish shits from granites, or to classify plants by table, or to call wild geese and marmots by their Latin names. It is true that geography, geology, physiography, mineralogy, botany and zoology must each contribute their share toward the condition of intelligence which will enable you to realize appreciation of nature's amazing earth, but the share of each is so small that the problem will be solved not by exhaustive study, but by the selection of essential parts. Two or three popular books which interpret natural science in perspective should pleasurably accomplish your purpose. But once begun, I predict that few will fail to carry certain subjects beyond the mere essentials, while some will enter for life into a land of new delights. Let us for illustration consider for a moment the making of America. The earth composed of countless aggregations of matter drawn together from the skies, whirled into a globe, settled into a solid mass surrounded by an atmosphere carrying water like a sponge, has reached the stage of development and land and sea have divided the surface between them and successions of heat and frost, snow, ice, rain and flood are busy with their ceaseless carving of the land. Already mountains are wearing down and sea bottoms are building up with their refuse. Sediments carried by the rivers are deposited in strata which someday will harden into rock. We are looking now at the close of the era which geologists call Archaean because it is ancient beyond knowledge. Its rocks are known but not well enough for many definite conclusions. All the earth's vast mysterious past is lumped under this title. The definite history of the earth begins with the close of the dim Archaean era. It is the lapse from then till now a few hundred million years at most out of all infinity which ever can greatly concern man for during this time were laid the only rocks whose reading was assisted by the presence of fossils. During this time the continents attained their final shape the mountains rose and valleys, plains and rivers formed and reformed many times before assuming the passing forms which they now show. During this time also life evolved from its inferred beginnings in the late Archaean to the complicated, finely developed and in man's case highly mentalized and spiritualized organization of today. Surely the geologist's field of labor is replete with interest, inspiration, even romance but because it has become so saturated with technicality as to become almost a popular bugaboo let us attempt no special study but rather call from its voluminous records those simple facts and perspectives which will reveal to us this greatest of all story books our old earth as the volume of enchantment that it really is. With the passing of the Archaean the earth had not yet settled into the perfectly balanced sphere which nature destined it to be. In some places the rock was more compactly squeezed than in others and these denser masses eventually were forced violently into neighbor masses which were not so tightly squeezed. These movements far below the surface shifted the surface balance and became one of many complicated and little known causes impelling the crust here to slowly rise and there to slowly fall. Thus in places sea bottoms lifted above the surface and became land while lands elsewhere settled and became seas. There are areas which have alternated many times between land and sea this is why we find limestones which were formed in the sea overlying shales which were formed in fresh water which in turn over lies sandstones which once were beaches all these now in plateaus thousands of feet above the oceans level. Sometimes these mysterious internal forces lifted the surface in long waves thus mountain chains and mountain systems were created often their summits worn down by frosts and rains disclosed the core of rock which ages before then hot and fluid had underlamed the crust and bent it upward into mountain form. Now cold and hard these masses are disclosed as the granite of today's landscape or as other igneous rocks of earth's interior which now cover broad surface areas mingled with the stratified or water made rocks which the surface only produces. But this has not always been the fate of the under surface molten rocks for sometimes they have burst by volcanic vents clear through the crust of the earth where turned instantly to pumice and lava by release from pressure they build great surface cones cover broad plains and fill basins and valleys thus were created the three great divisions of the rocks which form the three great divisions of scenery the sediments, the granites and the lavas during these changes in the levels of enormous surface areas the frosts and water have been industriously working down the elevations of the land nature forever seeks a level the snows of winter, melting at midday sink into the rocks minutest cracks expanded by the frosts the imprisoned water prize open and chips the surface the rains of spring and summer wash the chippings and other debris into rivulets which carry them into mountain torrents which rush them into rivers which sweep them into oceans which deposit them for the upbuilding of the bottoms always the level thousands of square miles of California were built up from oceans bottom with sediments chiseled from the mountains of Wyoming, Colorado and Utah and swept seaward through the Grand Canyon these mills grind without rest or pause the atmosphere gathers the moisture from the sea the winds roll it in clouds to the land the mountains catch and chill the clouds and the resulting rains hurry back to the sea in rivers bearing heavy frates of soil spring, summer, autumn, winter, day and night the mills of nature labor unceasingly to produce her level if ever this earth is really finished to nature's liking it will be as round and polished as a billiard ball years mean nothing in the computation of the prehistoric past who can conceive a thousand centuries to say nothing of a million years yet either is inconsiderable against the total lapse of time even from the Archaean's clothes till now and so geologists have devised an easier method of count measured not by units of time but by what each phase of progress has accomplished this measure is set forth in the accompanying table together with a conjecture concerning the lapse of time in terms of years the most illuminating accomplishment of the table however is its bird's eye view of the procession of the evolution of life from the first inference of its existence to its climax of today and concurrent with this progress its suggestion of the growth and development of scenic America it is in effect the table of contents of a volume whose thrilling text and stupendous illustrations are engraved immortally in the rocks a volume whose ultimate secrets, the scholarship of all time perhaps will never fully decipher but whose dramatic outlines and many of whose most thrilling incidents are open to all at the expense of a little study at home and a little thoughtful seeing in the places where the facts are pictured in line so big in graphic that none may miss their meanings man's colossal egotism is rudely shaken before the procession of the ages aghast he discovers that the billions of years which have wrought this earth from stardust were not merely God's laborious preparation of a habitation fit for so admirable an occupant that man on the contrary is nothing more or less than the present master tenet of earth the highest type of hundreds of millions of years of succeeding tenets only because he is the latest in evolution who can safely declare that the day will not come when a new Yellowstone hurled from reopened volcanoes shall found itself upon the buried ruin of the present Yellowstone when the present Sierra shall have disappeared into the Pacific and the deserts of the Great Basin become the gardens of the hemisphere when a new Rocky Mountain system shall have grown upon the eroded and dissipated granites of the present when shallow seas shall join anew Hudson Bay with the Gulf of Mexico when a new and lofty Appalachian range shall replace the rounded summits of today when a race of beings as superior to man intellectually and spiritually as man is superior to the ape shall endeavor to reconstruct a picture of man from the occasional remnants which floods may wash into view fantastic you may say it is fantastic so far as I know there exists not one fact upon which definite predictions such as these may be based but also there exists not one fact which warns specific denial of predictions such as these and if inference whatever may be made from earth's history it is the inevitable inference that the period in which man lives is merely one step in an evolution of matter mind and spirit which looks forward to changes as mighty or mightier than those I have suggested with so inspiring an outline the study to which I invite you can be nothing but pleasurable space does not permit the development of the theme in the pages which follow but the book will have failed if it does not incidental to its main purposes entangle the reader in the charm of America's adventurous past progress of creation chart of the divisions of geologic time and an estimate in years based on the assumption that a hundred million years have elapsed since the close of the Archean period together with a condensed table of the evolution of life from its inferred beginnings in the Archean to the present time read from the bottom up Archeozoic era Algonquian period no fossils found but life inferred from the existence of iron ores and limestones which are generally formed in the presence of organisms Proterozoic era 33 millions of years Algonquian period the first life which left a distinct record very primitive forms of water life crustaceans baroqueopods and algae the Paleozoic era of old life 45 millions of years the Cambrian period more highly developed forms of water life trilobites and baroqueopods most abundant, algae Ardovacian period sea animals develop shells especially cephalopods and mollusk-like baroqueopods trilobites at their height first appearance of insects first appearance of fishes Sulurian period shellfish develop fully appearance and combination of crinoids or sea lilies and large scorpion-like crustaceans first appearance of reef-building corals development of fishes Devonian period the Age of Fishes evolution of many forms fish of great size first appearance of amphibians and land plants Mesozoic era of intermediate life 16 millions of years Carboniferous period Permian, Pennsylvanian and Mississippian epics the Age of Amphibians the Coal Age sharks and sea animals with nautilus-like shells evolution of land plants in many complex forms first appearance of land vertebrates first flowering plants first cone-bearing trees club mosses and ferns highly developed Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods the Age of Reptiles shellfish with complex shells enormous land reptiles flying reptiles and the evolution therefrom of birds first palms first hardwood trees first mammals Cenozoic era of recent life 6 millions of years Tertiary period Pliocene, Miocene, Oligocene and Eocene epics the Age of Mammals rise and development of the highest orders of plants and animals Quaternary period Recent Pliocene or Ice Age epics the Age of Man animals and plants of the modern type first record of man occurs in the early Pliocene Footnote, explanatory of the estimate of geologic time in the preceding table The general assumption of modern geologists is that 100 million years have elapsed since the close of the Archaean period at least this is a round number convenient for thinking and discussion The recent tendency has been greatly to increase conceptions of geologic time over the highly conservative estimates of a few years ago and a strong disposition is shown to regard the Algonquian period as one of very great length extremists even suggesting that it may have equaled all time since For the purposes of this popular book then let us conceive that the Earth has existed for 100 million years since Archaean times and that one-third of this was Algonquian and let us apportion the two-thirds remaining among succeeding errors in the average of the proportions adopted by Professor Joseph Barrel of Yale University whose recent speculations upon geologic time have attracted wide attention End of footnote to the table End of part one Part two of the Book of the National Parks This LibriVox recording is in the public domain The Book of the National Parks by Robert Sterling Yard The National Parks of the United States The National Parks of the United States are areas of supreme scenic splendor or other unique quality which Congress has set apart for the pleasure and benefit of the people At this writing they number 18 16 of which lie within the boundaries of the United States and are reached by rail and road Those of greater importance have excellent roads good trails and hotels or hotel camps or both for the accommodation of visitors also public campgrounds where visitors may pitch their own tents Outside the United States there are two national parks one enclosing three celebrated volcanic craters the other conserving the loftiest mountain on the continent One The starting point for any consideration of our national parks necessarily is the recently realized fact of their supremacy in world scenery It was the sensational force of this realization which intensely attracted public attention at the outset of the new movement many thousands hastened to see these wonders and their reports spread the tidings throughout the land and gave the movement its increasing impetus The simple facts are these The Swiss Alps except for several unmatchable individual features are excelled in beauty, sublimity and variety by several of our own national parks and these same parks possess other distinguished individual features unrepresented in kind or splendor in the Alps The Canadian Rockies are more than matched in rich coloring by our Glacier National Park Glacier is the Canadian Rockies done in Grand Canyon colors It has no peer The Yellowstone outranks by far any similar volcanic area in the world It contains more and greater geysers than all the rest of the world together The next in rank are divided between Iceland and New Zealand Its famous canyon is alone of its quality of beauty Except for portions of the African jungle the Yellowstone is probably the most populated wild animal area in the world and its wild animals are comparatively fearless even sometimes friendly Mount Rainier has a single peak glacier system whose equal has not yet been discovered Twenty-eight living glaciers, some of them very large spread octopus-like from its center It is four hours by rail or motor from Tacoma Crater Lake is the deepest and bluest accessible lake in the world occupying the whole left after one of our largest volcanoes had slipped back into Earth's interior through its own rim Yosemite possesses a valley whose compelling beauty the world acknowledges as supreme The valley is the center of eleven hundred square miles of high altitude wilderness The sequoia contains more than a million sequoia trees twelve thousand of which are more than ten feet in diameter and some of which are the largest and oldest living things in the wide world The Grand Canyon of Arizona is by far the hugest and noblest example of erosion in the world It is gorgeously carved and colored In sheer sublimity it offers an unequaled spectacle Mount McKinley stands more than twenty thousand feet above sea level and seventeen thousand feet above the surrounding valleys Scenically it is the world's loftiest mountain For the monsters of the Andes and the Himalayas which surpass it in altitude can be viewed closely only from valleys from five to ten thousand feet higher than McKinley's northern valleys The Hawaii National Park contains the fourth greatest dead crater in the world The hugest living volcano and the Kila'ua Lake of Fire which is unique and draws visitors from the world four quarters These are the principal features of America's world supremacy They are incidental to a system of scenic wildernesses which in combined area as well as variety exceed the combined scenic wilderness playgrounds of similar class comfortably accessible elsewhere No wonder then that the American public is overjoyed with its recently realized treasure and that the government looks confidently to the rapid development of its new found economic asset The American public has discovered America and no one who knows the American public doubts for a moment what it will do with it Two The idea still widely obtains that our national parks are principally playgrounds A distinguished member of Congress recently asked Why make these appropriations? People visited Rock Creek Park here in the City of Washington last Sunday afternoon then went to the Yosemite or last summer The country has endless woods and mountains which cost the treasury nothing This view entirely misses the point The national parks are recreational of course So are state, county and city parks So are resorts of every kind So are the fields, the woods, the seashore the open country everywhere We are living in an open-air age The nation of outdoor livers is a nation of power initiative and sanity I hope to see the time when available state lands everywhere when every square mile from our national forest reserve when even many private holdings are made accessible and comfortable and become habited with summer trampers and campers It is the way to individual power and national efficiency But the national parks are far more than recreational areas They are the supreme examples They are the gallery of masterpieces Here the visitor enters in a holier spirit Here is inspiration They are also the museums of the ages Here nature is still creating the earth upon a scale so vast and so plain that even the dull and the frivolous cannot fail to see and comprehend This is no distinction without a difference The difference is so marked that few indeed even of those who visit our national parks in a frivolous or merely recreational mood remain in that mood The spirit of the great places brooks nothing short of silent reverence I have seen men unconsciously lift their hats The mind strips itself of affairs as one sheds a coat It is the hour of the spirit One returns to daily living with a springier step, a keener vision and a broader horizon for having worshipped at the shrine of the infinite Three The Pacific Coast's expositions of 1915 marked the beginning of the nation's acquaintance with its national parks In fact, they were the occasion, if not the cause of the movement for national parks development which found so quickly a countrywide response and which is destined to results of large importance to individual and nation alike Because thousands of those whom the expositions were expected to draw westward would avail of the opportunity to visit national parks to whom the national parks suggested neglected opportunity requiring business experience to develop induced Steve and T. Mathur a Chicago businessman with mountaintop enthusiasm to undertake their preparation for the unaccustomed throngs Mr. Mathur's vision embraced a correlated system of superlative scenic areas which should become the familiar playgrounds of the whole American people a system which, if organized and administered with the efficiency of business, should even become in time the rendezvous of the sightseers of the world He first saw in the national parks a new and great national economic asset The educational and other propaganda by which this movement was presented to the people, which the writer had the honor to plan and execute won rapidly the wide support of the public To me, the national parks appealed powerfully as the potential museums and classrooms for the popular study of the natural forces which made and are still making America and of American fauna and flora Here were set forth in fascinating picture and lines so plain that none could fail to read and understand the essentials of sciences whose real charm are rapid educational methods in part to few This book is the logical outgrowth of a close study of the national parks beginning with the inception of the new movement from this point of view How free from the partisan considerations common in governmental organization was the birth of the movement is shown by an incident of Mr. Mather's inauguration into his assistant secretary ship Secretary Lane had seen him at his desk and had started back to his own room but he returned looked in at the door and asked Oh, by the way, Steve what are your politics? This book considers our national parks as they line up four years after the beginning of this movement It shows them well started upon the long road to realization with Congress, government and the people united toward a common end with the schools and the universities interested and for the first time with the railroads, the concessioners the motoring interest and many of the public spirited educational and outdoor associations all pulling together under the inspiration of a recognized common motive Of course this triumph of organization for it is no less could not have been accomplished nearly so quickly without the assistance of the closing of Europe by the Great War Previous to 1915 Americans had been spending 300 million dollars a year in European travel nor could it have been accomplished at all if investigation and comparison had not shown that our national parks excel in supreme scenic quality and variety the combined scenery which is comfortably accessible in all the rest of the world together To get the situation at the beginning of our book into full perspective it must be recognized that previous to the beginning of our propaganda in 1915 the national parks as such scarcely existed in the public consciousness few Americans could name more than two or three of the 14 existing parks the Yosemite Valley and the Yellowstone alone were generally known but scarcely as national parks most of the school geographies which mentioned them at all ignored their national character the advertising folders of competing railroads were the principal sources of public knowledge for few indeed asked for the compilation of rates and charges which the government then sent in response to inquiries for information the parks had practically no administration the business necessarily connected with their upkeep and development was done by clerks as minor and troublesome details which distracted attention from more important duties there was no one clerk whose entire concern was with the national parks the American public still looked confidently upon the Alps as the supreme scenic area in the world and hope someday to see the Canadian Rockies 4. Originally the motive in park making had been unalloyed conservation it is as if Congress had said let us lock this up where no one can run away with it we don't need it now but someday it may be valuable that was the instinct that led to the reservation of the hot springs of Arkansas in 1832 the first national park 40 years later when official investigation proved the truth of the amazing tales of Yellowstone's natural wonders it was the instinct which led to the reservation of that largely unexplored area as the second national park 17 years after Yellowstone when newspapers and scientific magazines recounted the ethnological importance of the Casa Grande ruin in Arizona it resulted in the creation of the third national park notwithstanding that the area so conserved enclosed less than a square mile which contained nothing of the kind and quality which today we recognize as essential to parkhood this closed what may be regarded as the initial period of national parks conservation it was wholly instinctive distinctions, objectives and policies were undreamed of less than two years after Casa Grande which by the way has recently been reclassed a national monument what may be called the middle period began brilliantly with the creation in 1890 of the Yosemite, the Sequoia and the General Grant national parks all parks in the true sense of the word and all of the first order of scenic magnificence nine years later Mount Rainier was added and two years after that wonderful Crater Lake both meeting fully the new standard what followed was human and natural the term national park had begun to mean something in the neighborhoods of the parks Yellowstone and Yosemite had long been household words and the introduction of other areas to their distinguished company fired local pride in neighboring states why should we not have national parks too people asked Congress always the reflection of the popular will and therefore not always abreast of the moment was unprepared with reasons in 1903 and 1904 there were added to the list areas in North Dakota, South Dakota and Oklahoma which were better fitted for state parks than for association with the distinguished company of the nation's noblest a reaction followed and resulted in what we may call the modern period far sighted men in and out of Congress began to compare and look ahead no hint yet of the splendid destiny of our national parks now so clearly defined the values of these men at this time but ideas of selection of development and utilization undoubtedly began to take form at least conservation as such ceased to become a sole motive insensibly Congress or at least a few men of vision in Congress began to take account of stock and figure on realization this healthy growth was helped materially by the public demand for the improvement of several of the national parks no thought of appropriating money to improve the bathing facilities of hot springs had affected congressional action for nearly half a century it was enough that the curative springs had been saved from private ownership Yellowstone was considered so altogether extraordinary, however that Congress began in 1879 to appropriate yearly for its approach by road and for the protection of its springs and geysers but this was because Yellowstone appealed to the public sense of wonder it took twenty years more for Congress to understand that the public sense of beauty was also worth appropriations Yosemite had been a national park for nine years before it received a dollar and then only when the public demand for roads, trails and accommodations became insistent but once born the idea took root and spread it was fed by the press and magazine reports of the glories of the newer national parks then attracting some public attention it helped discrimination in the comparison of the minor parks created in 1903 and 1904 with the greater ones which had proceeded the realization that the parks must be developed at public expense sharpen congressional judgment as to what areas should and should not become national parks from that time on Congress has made no mistakes in selecting national parks Mesa Verde became a park in 1905 Glacier in 1910 Rocky Mountain in 1915 Hawaii in Lassen Volcanic in 1916 Mount McKinley in 1917 and Lafayette and the Grand Canyon in 1919 from that time on Congress most conservatively it is true has backed its judgment with increasing appropriations and in 1916 it created the National Park Service a Bureau of the Department of the Interior to administer them in accordance with a definite policy 5 the distinction between the national forests and the national parks is essential to understanding the national forests constitute an enormous domain administered for the economic commercialization of the nation's wealth of lumber its forests are handled scientifically with the object of securing the largest annual lumber output consistent with the proper conservation of the future its spirit is commercial the spirit of national park conservation is exactly opposite there is no great territory only those few spots which are supreme it aims to preserve nature's handiwork exactly as nature made it no tree is cut except to make way for road, trail or hotel to enable the visitor to penetrate and live among nature's secrets hunting is excellent in some of our national forests but there is no game in the national parks in these wild animals are part of nature's exhibits they are protected as friends it follows that forests and parks so different in spirit and purpose must be handled wholly separately even the rangers and scientific experts have objects so opposite and different that the same individual cannot efficiently serve both purposes high specialization in both services is essential to success another distinction which should be made is the difference between a national park and a national monument the one is an area of size created by congress upon the assumption that it is a supreme example of its kind and with the purpose of developing it for public occupancy and enjoyment the other is made by presidential proclamation to conserve an area or object which is historically ethnologically or scientifically important size is not considered and development is not contemplated the distinction is often lost in practice Casa Grande is essentially a national monument but had the status of a national park until 1918 the Grand Canyon from every point of view a national park was created a national monument and remains such until 1919 the national parks at a glance number 18 total area 10,739 square miles national parks in order of creation location area and square miles and distinctive characteristics hot springs 1832 middle Arkansas one and one half square miles 46 hot springs possessing curative properties many hotels and boarding houses 20 bath houses under public control Yellowstone 1872 north western Wyoming 3348 square miles more geysers than in all the rest of the world together boiling springs mud volcanoes petrified forest Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone remarkable for gorgeous coloring large lakes many large streams and waterfalls greatest wild bird and animal preserve in the world Sequoia 1890 Middle Eastern California 252 square miles the big tree national park 12,000 sequoia trees over 10 feet in diameter some 25 to 36 feet in diameter towering mountain ranges startling precipices large limestone cave Yosemite 1890 Middle Eastern California 1,125 square miles valley of world fame beauty lofty cliffs romantic vistas many waterfalls of extraordinary height three groves of big trees high Sierra waterwheel falls General Grant 1890 Middle Eastern California four square miles created to preserve the celebrated General Grant tree 35 feet in diameter 6 miles from Sequoia National Park Mount Rainier 1899 West Central Washington 324 square miles largest accessible single peak glacier system 28 glaciers some of large size 48 square miles of glacier 50 to 500 feet thick wonderful sub-alpine wild flower fields crater lake 1902 southwestern Oregon 249 square miles lake of extraordinary blue in crater of extinct volcano sides 1,000 feet high interesting lava formations wind cave 1903 South Dakota 17 square miles cavern having many miles of galleries and numerous chambers containing peculiar formations plat 1904 South Oklahoma one and one third square mile many sulfur and other springs possessing medicinal value Sully's Hill 1904 North Dakota one and one half square mile small park with woods streams and a lake it is an important wild animal preserve Mesa Verde 1906 Southwest Colorado 77 square miles most notable and best preserved prehistoric cliff dwellings in the United States if not in the world Glacier 1910 Northwestern Montana 1,534 square miles rugged mountain region of unsurpassed alpine character 250 glacier fed lakes of romantic beauty 60 small glaciers sensational scenery of marked individuality Rocky Mountain 1915 North Middle Colorado 398 square miles heart of the Rockies Snowy Range peaks 11,000 to 14,250 feet altitude remarkable records of glacial period Hawaii 1916 Hawaiian Islands 118 square miles three separate volcanic areas Kila'ua and Manaloa on Hawaii Halea Kala on Maui Lassen volcano 1916 Northern California 124 square miles only active volcano in United States proper Lassen Peak 10,465 feet Cinder Cone 6,879 feet Hot Springs Mud Geysers Mount McKinley 1917 South Central Alaska 2200 square miles highest mountain in North America rises higher above surrounding country than any other mountain in the world Grand Canyon 1919 North Central Arizona 958 square miles the greatest example of erosion and the most sublime spectacle in the world 1 mile deep and 8 to 12 miles wide brilliantly colored Lafayette 1919 Maine Coast The Group of Granite Mountains on Mount Desert Island End of Part 2 Part 3 of the Book of the National Parks This LibriVox recording is in the public domain The Book of the National Parks by Robert Sterling Yard The Granite National Parks Granites Park and Scenery The Granite National Parks are Yosemite, Sequoia including the proposed Roosevelt Park General Grant Rocky Mountain and Mount McKinley Granite as its name denotes is granular in texture and appearance It is crystalline which means that it is imperfectly crystallized It is composed of quartz, feldspar and mica in varying proportions and includes several common varieties which mineralogists distinguish scientifically by separate names Because of its great range and abundance its presence at the core of mountain ranges where it is uncovered by erosion its attractive coloring its massiveness and its vigorous personality it figures importantly in scenery of magnificence the world over In color granite varies from light gray when it shines like silver upon the high summits to warm rose or dark gray the reds deepening upon the proportion of feldspar in its composition It produces scenic effects very different indeed from those resulting from volcanic and sedimentary rocks While it bulks hugely in the higher mountains running to enormous rounded masses below the level of the glaciers and to jagged spires and pinnacled walls upon the loftiest peaks it is found also in many regions of hill and plain it is one of our commonest American rocks Much of the loftiest and noblest scenery of the world is raw in granite the Alps, the Andes and the Himalayas all of which are world celebrated for their lofty grandeur are prevailingly granite they abound in towering peaks bristling ridges and terrifying precipices their glacial serks are girt with fantastically toothed and pinnacled walls this is true of all granite ranges which are lofty enough to maintain glaciers these are in fact the very characteristics of Alpine, Andean, Himalayan, Ciaran, Alaskan and Rocky Mountains Summit Landscape it is why granite mountains are the favorites of those daring climbers whose ambition is to equal established records and make new ones and this in turn is why some mountain neighborhoods become so much more celebrated than others which are quite as fine or finer because I mean of the publicity given to this kind of mountain climbing and of the unwarranted assumption that the mountains associated with these exploits necessarily excel others in sublimity as a matter of fact the accident of fashion has even more to do with the fame of mountains than of men but by no means all granite mountains are lofty the white mountains for example which parallel our northeastern coast and are far older than the Rockies in the Sierra are a low granite range with few of the characteristics of those mountains which lift their heads among the perpetual snows on the contrary they tend to rounded forested summits and knobby peaks in part from a longer subjection of the rock surface to the eroding influence of successive frosts and rains than is the case with high ranges which are perpetually locked in frost besides the ice sheets which planed off the northern part of the United States lopped away their highest parts there are also millions of square miles of eroded granite which are not mountains at all these tend to rolling surfaces the scenic forms assumed by granite will be better appreciated when one understands how it enters landscape the principal one of many igneous rocks it is liquefied under intense heat and afterward cooled under pressure much of the earth's crust was once underlaid by granites in a more or less fluid state when terrific internal pressures cause the earth's crust to fold and make mountains this liquefied granite invaded the folds and pushed close up under the highest elevations there it cooled thousands of centuries later when erosion had worn away these mountain crests their lay revealed the solid granite core which frost and glacier have since transformed into the bristling ramparts of today's landscape and of part three part four of the Book of the National Parks this Libervox recording is in the public domain the Book of the National Parks by Robert Sterling Yard Yosemite the incomparable Yosemite National Park Middle Eastern California area 1,125 square miles the first emotion inspired by the site of Yosemite is surprise no previous preparation makes the mind ready for the actual revelation the hardest preliminary reading and the closest study of photographs even familiarity with other mountains as lofty or loftier fail to dull one's first astonishment but on the heels of astonishment comes realization of the park's supreme beauty it is of its own kind without comparison as individual as that of the Grand Canyon or the Glacier National Park no single visit will begin to reveal its sublimity one must go away and return to look again with rested eyes its devotees grow in appreciative enjoyment with repeated summaries even John Muir, life student interpreter confessed toward the close of his many years that the valley's quality of loveliness continued to surprise him at each renewal and lastly comes the higher emotion which is born of knowledge it is only when one reads in these inspired rocks the stirring story of their making that pleasure reaches its fullness the added joy of the collector upon finding that the unsigned canvas which he bought only for its beauty is the lost work of a great master and was associated with the romance of a famous past is here duplicated written history never was more romantic no more graphically told than that which nature has inscribed upon the walls of these vast canyons, domes, and monoliths in a language which man has learned to read one the Asemite National Park lies on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California nearly east of San Francisco the snowy crest of the Sierra belling irregularly eastward to a climax among the jagged granites and gale-swept glaciers of Mount Lile forms its eastern boundary from this the park slopes rapidly 30 miles or more westward to the heart of the warm, luxuriant zone of the giant sequoias this slope includes in its 1125 square miles some of the highest scenic examples in the wide gamut of Sierra Granger it is impossible to enter it without exultation of spirit or describe it without superlative a very large proportion of Yosemite's visitors see nothing more than the valley yet no consideration is tenable which conceives the valley as other than a small part of the National Park the two are inseparable one does not speak of knowing the Louvre who has seen only the Venus de Milo or Saint Mark's who has looked only upon its horses considered as a whole the park is a sagging plain of solid granite hung from Sierra's sawtooth crest broken into divides and transverse mountain ranges punctured by volcanic summits gashed and bitten by prehistoric glaciers dotted near its summits with glacial lakes furrowed by innumerable cascading streams which combine in singing rivers which in turn furrow greater canyons some of majestic depth and grandeur it is a land of towering spires and ambitious summits serrated serks, enormous isolated rock masses rounded granite domes polished granite pavements lofty precipices and long shimmering waterfalls bare and gale-ridden near its crest the park descends in 30 miles through all the zones and gradations of animal and vegetable life through which one would pass in traveling from the ice-bound shores of the Arctic Ocean the continent's length to Mariposa Grove its tree sequence tells the story above Timberline there are none but inch-high willows and flat piney growths mingled with tiny arctic flowers which shrink in size with elevation even the sheltered spots on Lyle's lofty summit have their colored lichens and their almost microscopic bloom at Timberline low wiry shrubs interweave their branches to defy the gales merging lower down into a tangle of many stunted growths from which spring twisted pines and contorted spruces which the winds curve to leeward or bend at sharp angles or spread in full development as prostrate upon the ground as the mountain lion's skin upon the home floor of his slayer descending into the great area of the Canadian zone with its thousand wild valleys its shining lakes its roaring creeks and plunging rivers the zone of the angler, the hiker and the camper out we enter forests of various pines of silver fir, hemlock age, humpback juniper species of white pine which Californians wrongly call tamarack this is the paradise of outdoor living it almost never rains between June and October the forests fill the valley floors thinning rapidly as they climb the mountain slopes they spot with pine green the broad shining plateaus rooting where they find the soil leaving unclothed innumerable glistening areas of polished, uncracked granite a striking characteristic of Yosemite uplands at an altitude of 7 or 8,000 feet the Canadian zone forests begin gradually to merge into the richer forests of the transition zone below the towering sugar pine the giant yellow pine, the Douglas fir and a score of deciduous growth live oaks, bays, poplars dogwoods, maples begin to appear and become more frequent with descent until 2,000 feet or more below they combine into the bright, stupendous forest where in specially favored groves King Sequoia holds his royal court wildflowers, birds and animals also run the gamut of the zones among the snows and alpine flowerettes of the summits are found the ptarmigen and rosy finch of the Arctic Circle and in the summit-circs and on the shores of the glacial lakes whistles the mountain marmot the richness and variety of wildflower life in all zones each of its characteristic kind astonishes the visitor every meadow is a blaze with gorgeous coloring every copse and sunny hollow riverbank and rocky bottom becomes painted in turn the hue appropriate to the changing seasons now blues prevail in the claudoscopic display now pinks now reds, now yellows experience of other national parks will show that the Yosemite is no exception all are gardens of wildflowers the Yosemite and the Sequoia are however the exclusive possessors among the parks of a remarkably showy flowering plant the brilliant rare snow plant so alluring is the red pillar which the snow plant lifts a foot or more above the shady mold and so easily is it destroyed that to keep it from extinction the government finds covetous visitors for every flower picked the birds are those of California many prolific and songful ducks raise their summer broods on the lakes geese visit from their distant homes cranes and herons fish the streams every tree has its soloist every forest its grand chorus the glades resound with the tapping of woodpeckers the whir of startled wings accompanies passage through every wood to one who has lingered in the forest to watch and to listen it is hard to account for the widespread fable that the Yosemite is birdless no doubt happy talkative tourists in companies and regiments of foot and mounted drive bird and beast alike to silent cover and comment on the lifeless forest the whole range from foothill to summit is shaken into song every summer wrote John Muir to whom birds were the loved companions of a lifetime of Sierra summers and though low and thin in winter the music never ceases there are two birds which the unhurried traveler will soon know well one is the big noisy Gaudi Clark Crow whose swift flight and companionable squawk are familiar to all who tour the higher levels the other is the friendly camp robber who with encouragement not only will share your camp luncheon but will gobble the lion's share of the many wild animals ranging in size from the great powerful timid grizzly bear now almost extinct here whose indian name by the way is Yosemite to the tiny shrew of the lowlands the most frequently seen are the black or brown bear and the deer both of which as compared with their kind in neighborhoods where hunting is permitted are unterrified if not friendly notwithstanding its able protection the Yosemite will need generations to recover from the hideous slaughter which in a score or two of years denuded America a first splendid heritage of wild animal life of the several carnivora the coyote alone is occasionally seen by visitors wolves and mountain lions prime enemies of the deer and mountain sheep are hard to find even when officially hunted in winter with dogs trained for the purpose too the Yosemite valley is the heart of the national park not only is it the natural entrance and abiding place the living room so to speak the central point from which all parts of the park are comfortably accessible it is also typical in some sense and is easily the most beautiful valley in the world it is difficult to analyze the quality of the valley's beauty there are as Mir says many Yosemites in the Sierra the Hetch Hetchie valley in the northern part of the park which bears the same relation to the Tuolum river that the Yosemite valley bears to the Merced is scarcely less in size richness and the height and magnificence of its carved walls scores of other valleys are similar except for size abound north and south which are scientifically and in Mir's meaning Yosemites that is there are pauses in their rivers headlong rush once lakes dug by rushing waters squared and polished by succeeding glaciers chiseled and ornamented by the frosts and rains which preceded and followed the glaciers Mir is right for all these are Yosemites but he is wrong it is not the giant monoliths that establish the incomparable valley's world supremacy Hetch Hetchie to Hitpite Kings and others have their giants too it is not its towering perpendicular serrated walls the Sierra has elsewhere too an overwhelming exhibit of titanic granite carvings it is not its waterfalls though these are the highest by far in the world nor its broad peaceful bottoms nor its dramatic vistas nor the cavernous steps of its torturous tributary canyons its secret is selection and combination like all supremacy Yosemites lies in the inspired proportioning of carefully chosen elements herein is its real wonder for the more carefully one analyzes the beauty of the Yosemite valley the more difficult it is to conceive its ensemble the chance of nature's functioning rather than the master product of supreme artistry entrance to the Yosemite by train is from the west by automobile from east and west both from whatever direction the valley is the first objective for the hotels are there it is the valley then which we must see first nature's artistic contrivance is apparent even in the entrance the train ride from the main line at Merced is a constant up valley progress from a hot treeless plane to the heart of the great cool forest expectation keeps pace changing to automobile at El Portal one quickly enters the park a few miles of forest and behold the gates of the valley El Capitan, huge, glistening rises upon the left 3,000 feet above the valley floor at first sight its bulk almost appalls opposite upon the right cathedral rocks support the bridal veil fall shimmering, filmy a fairy thing between them in the distance lies the unknown progress up the valley makes constantly for climax seen presently broadside on El Capitan bulks double at least opposite the valley bellies cathedral rocks and the medieval towers known as cathedral spires are enclosed in a bay which culminates in the impressive needle known as sentinel rock all richly gothic meantime the broadened valley another strong contrast in perfect key delightfully alternates with forest and meadow and through it the quiet merced twists and doubles like a glistening snake and then we come to the three brothers already some notion of preconception has possessed the observer it could not have been chance which set off the filmy bridal veil against El Capitan's bulk which designed the gothic climax of sentinel rock which wondrously proportioned the consecutive masses of the three brothers which made El Capitan now looked back upon against a new background a new inappropriate creation a thing of brilliance and beauty instead of bulk mighty of mass powerful in shape and poise yet mysteriously delicate and unreal as we pass on with rapidly increasing excitement to the supreme climax at the valley's head where gather together Glacier Point Yosemite falls of unbelievable height and graciousness the royal arches manifestly a carving the gulf-like entrances of Tagnana and the merced canyons and above all and pervading all the distinguished mysterious personality of half-dome presiding priest of this cathedral of beauty again their steels over us the uneasy suspicion of supreme design how could nature have happened upon the perfect composition the flawless technique the divine inspiration of this masterpiece of more than human art is it not in fact the master temple of the master architect to appreciate the valley we must consider certain details it is eight miles long and from a half mile to a mile wide once prehistoric Lake Yosemite its floor is as level as a ball field and except for occasional meadows grandly forested the sinuous merced is forested to its edges in its upper reaches but lower down occasionally wanders through broad blooming opens the rock walls are dark pearl-hued granite dotted with pines wherever clefts or ledges exist capable of supporting them even El Capitan carries its pine tree halfway up its smooth precipice frequently the walls are sheer they look so everywhere the valley's altitude is 4,000 feet the walls rise from 2,000 to 6,000 feet higher the average is a little more than 3,000 feet above the valley floor Sentinel Dome and Mount Walkins somewhat exceed 4,000 feet Half Dome nearly attains 5,000 feet Cloud's rest soars nearly 6,000 feet two large trench-like canyons enter the valley at its head one on either side of Half Dome Tenyana Canyon enters from the east in line with the valley looking as if it were the valley's upper reach the canyon enters from the south after curving around the east and south sides of Half Dome both are extremely deep Half Dome's 5,000 feet form one side of each canyon Mount Walkins 4,300 feet form the north side of Tenyana Canyon Glacier Point's 3,200 feet the west side of Merced Canyon both canyons are superbly wooded at their outlets and lead rapidly up to Timberline both carry important trails to the greater park above the rim to this setting add the waterfalls and the scene is complete they are the highest in the world each is markedly individualized no two resemble each other yet with the exception of the vernal fall all have a common note all are formed of comparatively small streams dropping from great heights all are windblown ribbons ending in clouds of mist they are so distributed that one or more are visible from most parts of the valley and its surrounding rim more than any other feature they differentiate and distinguish the Yosemite the first of the falls encountered bridal veil is a perfect example of the valley type a small stream pouring over a perpendicular wall drops 620 feet into a volume of mist the mist of course is the bridal veil how much of the water reaches the bottom as water is a matter of interesting speculation this and the condensed mist reach the river through a delta of 5 small brooks as a spectacle the bridal veil fall is unsurpassed the delicacy of its beauty even in the high water of early summer is unequaled by any waterfall I have seen a rainbow frequently gleams like a colored rosette in the mass chiffon of the bride's train so pleasing are its proportions that it is difficult to believe the fall nearly 4 times the height of Niagara the ribbon fall directly opposite bridal veil a little west of El Capitan must be mentioned because for a while in early spring its 1600 foot drop is a spectacle of remarkable grandeur it is merely the run of a snow field which disappears in June thereafter a dark perpendicular stain on the cliff marks its position another minor fall this from the south rim is that of Sentinel Creek on the road at the right of Sentinel Rock dropping 500 feet in one leap of several which aggregate 2000 feet next in progress come Yosemite falls loftiest by far in the world a spectacle of sublimity these falls divide with half dome the honors of the upper valley the tremendous plunge of the upper fall and the magnificence of the two falls in apparent near continuation as seen from the principal points of elevation on the valley floor form a spectacle of extraordinary distinction they vie with Yosemite's two great rocks El Capitan and half dome for leadership among the individual scenic features of the continent the upper fall pours over the rim at a point nearly 2600 feet above the valley floor its sheer drop is 1430 feet the equal of 9 Niagara's two fifths of a mile south of its foot the lower fall drops 320 feet more from the crest of the upper fall to the foot of the lower fall lacks a little of half a mile from the foot of the lower fall after foaming down the talus Yosemite creek seeming a ridiculously small stream to have produced some monstrous a spectacle slips quietly across a half mile of level valley to lose itself in the merced from the floods of late may when the thunder of falling water fills the valley and windows rattle a mile away to the October drought when the slender ribbon is little more than missed the upper Yosemite full is a thing of many moods and infinite beauty seen from above and opposite at glacier point sideways and more distantly from the summit of clouds rest straight on from the valley floor upwards from the foot of the lower fall upwards again from its own foot and downwards from the overhanging brink toward which the creek idols carelessly to the very step off of its fearful leap the fall never loses for a moment its power to amaze it draws and holds the eye as the magnet does the iron looking up from below one is fascinated by the extreme leisureliness of its motion the water does not seem to fall it floats a pebble dropped alongside surely would reach bottom in half the time speculating upon this appearance one guesses that the air retards the waters drop but this idea is quickly dispelled by the observation that the solid inner body drops no faster than the outer spray it is long before the wondering observer perceives that he is the victim of an illusion that the water falls normally that it appears to descend with less than natural speed only because of the extreme height of the fall the eye naturally applying standards to which it has become accustomed in viewing falls of ordinary size on windy days the upper fall swings from the brink like a pendulum of silver and mist back and forth it lashes like a horses tail the gust lop off puffy clouds of mist which dissipate in the air mure tales of powerful winter gales driving head on against the cliff which break the fall in its middle and hold it in suspense once he saw the wind double the fall back over its own brink mure by the way once tried to pass behind the upper fall at its foot but was nearly crushed by contrast with the lofty temperamental upper fall the lower fall appears a smug and steady pygmy in such company for both are always seen together it is hard to realize that the lower fall is twice the height of Niagara comparing Yosemite's three most conspicuous features these gigantic falls seem to appeal even more to the imagination than to the sense of beauty El Capitan on the other hand suggests majesty order proportion and power it has its many devotees half dome suggests mystery to many it symbolizes worship of these three half dome easily is the most popular three more will complete the valley's list of notable waterfalls all of these lie up the Merced Canyon Iliowet 370 feet in height enters from the west a frothing fall of great beauty hard to see vernal and Nevada falls carry the Merced River over steep steps in its rapid progress from the upper levels to the valley floor the only exception to the valley type vernal fall which some consider the most beautiful of all and which certainly is the prettiest is a curtain of water 317 feet high and of pleasing breath the Nevada fall three fifths of a mile of a majestic drop of nearly 600 feet shoots water rockets from its brink it is full run powerful impressive and highly individualized with many it is the favorite waterfall of Yosemite in sharp contrast to these valley scenes is the view from Glacier Point down into the Merced and Teniana canyons and out over the magical park landscape to the snow-capped mountains of the high Sierra two trails lead from the valley up to Glacier Point and high upon the precipice 3000 feet above the valley floor is a picturesque hotel it is also reached by road here one may sit at ease on shady porches and overlook one of the most extended varied and romantic views in the world of scenery one may take dinner on this porch and have sunset served with dessert and the afterglow with coffee here again one is haunted by the suggestion of artistic intention is the composition of this extraordinary picture the foreground is the dark tremendous gulf of Merced canyon relieved by the silver shimmer of vernal and the vada falls from this in middle distance rises in the center of the canvas the looming tremendous personality of half dome here seen in profile strongly suggesting a monk with outstretched arms blessing the valley at close of day beyond stretches the horizon of famous snowy glacier shrouded mountains golden in sunset glow end of part four part five of the book of the national parks this LibriVox recording is in the public domain the book of the national parks by Robert Sterling Yard Yosemite the incomparable continued three every summer many thousands of visitors gather in Yosemite most of them of course come tourist fashion to glimpse it all in a day or two or three a few thousands come for long enough to taste most of it or really to see a little fewer but still increasingly many are those who come to live a little with Yosemite among these we find the lovers of nature the poets the seers the dreamers and the students living is very pleasant in the Yosemite the freedom from storm during the long season the dry warmth of the days and the coldness of the nights the inspiration of the surroundings and the completeness of the equipment for the comfort of visitors make it extraordinary among mountain resorts there is a hotel in the valley and another upon the rim at glacier point there are three large hotel camps in the valley where one may have hotel conference under canvas at camp prices two of these hotel camps possess swimming pools dancing pavilions tennis courts electrically lighted for night play hot and cold water tubs and showers and excellent table service one of the hotel camps the largest provides evening lectures song services and a general atmosphere suggestive of Jatagwa still a third is for those who prefer quiet retirement and their tradition of an old fashion camp life above the valley rim besides the excellent hotel upon glacier point there are at this writing hotel camps equipped with many hotel comforts including baths at such outlying points as merced lake and teniana lake the former centering the mountain climbing and trout fishing of the stupendous region on the south west slope of the park and the ladder the key to the entire magnificent region of the two alone these camps are reached by mountain trail teniana lake camp also by motor road the hotel camp system is planned for wide extension as growing demand warrants there are also hotels outside park limits in the south and west which connect with the park roads and trails the roads by the way are fair three enter from the west centering at yosemite village in the valley one from the south by way of the celebrated mariposa grove of giant sequoias one from el portal terminus of the yosemite railway and one from the north by way of several smaller sequoia groves connecting directly with the tioga road above the valley rim and north of it the tioga road crosses the national park and emerges at mono lake on the east having crossed the sierra over tioga pass on the park boundary the tioga road which was built in 1881 on the site of the mono trail to connect a gold mine west of what has since become the national park with roads east of the sierra was purchased in 1915 by patriotic lovers of the yosemite and given to the government the mine having soon failed the road had been accessible for many years repaired with government money it has become the principal highway of the park and the key to its future development the increase in motor travel to yosemite from all parts of the country which began the summer following the great war has made this gift one of growing importance it affords a new route across the sierra but hotels and hotel camps while accommodating the great majority of visitors by no means shelter all those who camp out on the canvas are likely to be yosemite's most appreciative devotees the camping out colony lives in riverside groves in the upper reaches of the valley the government assigning locations without charge many families make permanent summer homes here storing equipment between seasons in the village others higher equipment complete from tents to salt sellers on the spot some who come to the hotels finish the season under hired canvas and next season come with their own an increasing number come in cars which they keep in local garages or park near their canvas homes living is easy and not expensive in these camp homes midday temperatures are seasonable and nights are always cool as it does not rain tents are concessions to habit many prefer sleeping under the trees markets in the village supply meats vegetables milk bread and groceries at prices regulated by government and deliver them at your kitchen tent shops all other reasonable needs it is not camping out as commonly conceived you are living at home on the banks of the merced under the morning shadow of half dome and within sight of yosemite falls from these valley homes one rides into the high Sierra on horses hired from the government concessioner tours to the two alone meadows or the Mariposa Grove by automobile wanders long summer afternoons in the valley climbs the great rocks and domes picnics by moonlight under the shimmering falls or beneath the shining tower El Capitan explores famous fishing waters above the rim and on frivolous evenings dances or looks at motion pictures at the greater hotel camps no wonder that camp homes in the Yosemite are growing in popularity for the trail traveler finds the trails the best in the country and as good as the best in the world they are the models for the national system current guides horses supplies and equipment are easy to hire at regulated prices in the village as for the field there is none nobler or more varied in the world there are dozens of divides scores of towering snow splash peaks hundreds of noble valleys and shining lakes thousands of cascading streams great and small from who steps fighting trout rise to the cast fly there are passes to be crossed which carry one through concentric of tooth granite to ridges from which the high Sierra spreads before the eye a frothing sea of snowy peaks such a trip is that through the two alone meadows up Lyle Canyon to its headwaters over the Sierra at Donahue Pass and up into the birth chambers of rivers among the summit glaciers of Lyle and McClure a never to be forgotten journey which may be continued if one has time in equipment down the John Muir trail to Mount Whitney and the Sequoia National Park or one may return to the park by way of Banner Peak and Thousand Island Lake a wonder spot and thence north over Parker and Monopasses trips like these produce views as magnificent as the land possesses space does not permit even the suggestion of the possibilities to the trail traveler of this wonderland above the rim it is the summer playground for a nation second in magnificence among the park valleys is Hetch Hetchie the Yosemite of the North both are broad, flowered and forested levels between lofty granite walls both are accented by gigantic rock personalities Kalana Rock which guards Hetch Hetchie at its western gateway as El Capitan guards Yosemite must be ranked in the same class were there no Yosemite valley Hetch Hetchie though it lacks the distinction which gives Yosemite Valley its worldwide fame would be much better known than it is now a statement also true about other features of the national park Hetch Hetchie is now being dammed below Kalana rock to supply water for San Francisco the dam will be hidden from common observation and the timber lands to be flooded will be cut so as to avoid the unsightliness usual with artificial reservoirs in forested areas the reservoir will cover one of the most beautiful bottoms in America it will destroy forests of luxuriance it will replace these with a long sinuous lake from which sheer Yosemite like granite walls will rise abruptly two or three thousand feet there will be places where the edges are forested down into this lake from the high rim will cascade many roaring streams the long fight in California in the press of the whole country and finally in Congress between the advocates of the Hetch Hetchie reservoir and the defenders of the scenic wilderness is one of the stirring episodes in the history of our national parks at this writing time enough has not yet passed to heal the wounds of battle but at least we may look calmly at what remains one consideration at least affords a little comfort Hetch Hetchie was once in late prehistoric times a natural lake of great nobility the remains of nature's dam not far from the site of man's are plain to the geologist's eye it is possible that with care in building the dam and clearing out the trees to be submerged this restoration of one of nature's noble features of the past may not work out so inappropriately as once we feared the Grand Canyon of the Tuolum through which the river descends from the level of the Tuolum meadows almost five thousand feet to the Hetch Hetchie Valley possesses real Yosemite grandeur much of this enormous drop occurs within a couple of amazing miles west of the California falls here the river slips down sharply tilted granite slopes at breathless speed breaking into cascades and plunging over waterfalls at frequent intervals it is a stupendous spectacle which few but the hardiest mountaineers saw previous to 1918 so steep and difficult was the going during that season a trail was opened which makes accessible to all one of the most extraordinary examples of plunging water in the world the climax of this spectacle is the river wheels granite obstructions in the bed of the steeply tilted river throw solid arcs of frothing water fifty feet in air they occur near together singly and in groups five the fine camping country south of the Yosemite Valley also offers its sensation at its most southern point the park accomplishes its forest climax in the Mariposa Grove this group of giant sequoias sequoia washingtoniana ranks next in the number and magnificence of its trees to the giant forest of the sequoia national park and the general grant grove the largest tree of the Mariposa Grove is the grizzly giant which has a diameter of twenty nine feet a circumference of sixty four feet and a height of two hundred and four feet one may guess its age from three thousand to thirty two hundred years it is the third in size and age of living sequoias general Sherman the largest and oldest has a diameter of thirty six and a half feet and general grant a diameter of thirty five feet and neither of these in all probability has attained the age of four thousand years general Sherman grows in the sequoia national park seventy miles or more south of Yosemite general grant has a little national park of its own a few miles west of sequoia the interested explorer of the Yosemite has so far enjoyed a wonderfully varied sequence of surprises the incomparable valley with its towering monoliths and extraordinary waterfalls the high Sierra with its glaciers serrated serks and sea of snowy peaks the grand canyon of the Toulom with its cascades rushing river and frothing waterwheels are but the headliners of a long catalog of the unexpected and extraordinary it only remains to complete this new tale of Arabian nights to make one's first visit to the sequoias of Mariposa Grove the first sight of the calm tremendous columns which support the lofty roof of this forest temple provokes a new sensation unconsciously the visitor removes his hat and speaks his praise in whispers the sequoias are considered at greater length in the chapter describing the sequoia national park which was created especially to conserve an exhibit more than a million of these most interesting of trees it will suffice here to say that their enormous stamps are purplish red that their fine lace-like foliage hangs in splendid heavy plumes that their enormous limbs crook at right angles the lowest from 100 to 150 feet above the ground and that all other trees even the gigantic sugar pine and Douglas fir are dwarfed in their presence several of the sequoias of the Mariposa Grove approach 300 feet in height the road passes through the trunk of one six human history of the Yosemite is quickly told the country north of the valley was known from early times by explorers and trappers who used the old Mono-Indian trail now the Tioga Road which crossed the divide over Monopas but though the trail approached within a very few miles of the north rim of the Yosemite valley the valley was not discovered till 1851 when Captain Bowling of the Mariposa Battalion a volunteer organization for the protection of settlers entered it from the west in pursuit of Indians who had raided mining settlements in the foothills these savages were known as the Yosemite or Grizzly Bear Indians Tiniana, their chief met their pursuers on the uplands and besought them to come no further but Captain Bowling pushed on through the heavy snows and on March 21st entered the valley which proved to be the Indians' final stronghold their villages however were deserted and the original inhabitants of the valley were called the Awaniiches the Indian name for the valley being Awani meaning a deep grassy canyon the Awaniiches previous to Captain Bowling's expedition had been decimated by war and disease the new tribe, the Yosemites or Grizzly Bears was made up of their remainder with Monos and Paiutes added Captain Bowling's report of the beauty of the valley having been questioned he returned during the summer to a few doubters nevertheless there were no further visitors until 1853 when Robert B. Stinson of Mariposa led in a hunting party two years later J. M. Hutchings who was engaged in writing up the beauties of California for the California magazine brought the first tourist the second a party of sixteen followed later the same year pleasure travel to the Yosemite valley may be said to have commenced with 1856 the year the first house was built this house was enlarged in 1858 by height and Beardsley and used for a hotel Sullivan and Cushman secured it for a debt the following year and it was operated in turn by Peck Longhurst and Hutchings until 1871 meantime J. C. Lehmann settled in 1860 the first actual resident of the valley an honor which he did not share with others for four years the fame of the valley spread over the country and in 1864 congress granted to the state of California the cleft or gorge of the granite peak of the Sierra Nevada mountains known as the Yosemite valley with the understanding that all income derived from it should be spent for improving the reservation or building a road to it the Mariposa big tree grove was also granted at the same time California carefully fulfilled her charge the Yosemite valley became world famous and in 1890 the Yosemite national park was created seven the Yosemite's geological history is much more thrilling everyone who sees it asks how did nature make the Yosemite valley was it split by earth convulsions or scooped by a glacier few ask what part was played by the gentle Merced the question of Yosemite's making has busy geologists from Professor Whitney of the University of California who first studied the problem down to F. E. Mathis the United States Geological Survey whose recent exhaustive studies have furnished the final solution Professor Whitney maintained that glaciers never had entered the valley he did not even consider water erosion at one time he held that the valley was simply a cleft or rent in the earth's crust at another time he imagined it formed by the sudden dropping back of a large block in the course of the convulsions that resulted in the uplift of the Sierra Nevada Galen Clark following him carried on his idea of an origin by force instead of the walls being cleft apart however he imagined the explosion of close set domes of molten rock the riving power but conceived that ice and water erosion finished the job with Clarence King the theory of glacial origin began its long career John Muir carried this theory to its extreme since the period of Muir speculations the tremendous facts concerning the part played by erosion in the modification of the Earth's surface strata have been developed beginning with W.H. Turner a group of Yosemite students under the modern influence worked upon the theory of the stream cut valley modified by glaciers the United States Geological Survey then entered the field and Mathis' minute investigations followed the manuscript of his monograph has helped me reconstruct the dramatic past the fact is that the Yosemite valley was cut from the solid granite nearly to its present depth by the Merced River before the glaciers arrived the river cut valley was 2,400 feet deep opposite El Capitan and 3,000 feet deep opposite Eagle Peak the valley was then V shaped and the present waterfalls were cascades those which are now the Yosemite falls were 1,800 feet deep and those of Sentinel Creek were 2,000 feet deep all this in pre-glacial times later on the glaciers of several successive epics greatly widened the valley and measurably deepened it making it U shaped the cascades then became waterfalls but none will see the Yosemite valley and its cavernous tributary canyons without sympathizing a little with the early geologists it is difficult to imagine a gash so tremendous cut into solid granite by anything short of force one can think of it gouged by massive glaciers but to imagine it cut by water is at first inconceivable to comprehend it we must first consider two geological facts the first is that no dawdling modern merced cut this chasm but a torrent considerably bigger and that this roaring river swept at tremendous speed down a sharply tilted bed which it gouged deeper and deeper by friction of the enormous masses of sand and granite fragments which it carried down from the high Sierra the second geological fact is that the merced and tiniana torrents sandpapered the deepening beds of these canyons day and night for several million years which when we remember the mile-deep canyons which the Colorado River and its confluence cut through a thousand or more miles of Utah and Arizona is not beyond human credence if not conception but objects the skeptical the merced couldn't keep always tilted in time it would cut down to a level and slow up then the sand and gravel it was carrying would settle and the stream stop its digging again if the stream cut valley theory is correct why isn't every Sierra canyon a Yosemite let us look for the answer in the Sierra's history the present Sierra Nevada is not the first mountain chain upon its site the granite which underlay the folds of the first Sierra are still disclosed in the walls of the Yosemite Valley the granites which underlay the second and modern Sierra are seen in the towering heights of the crest once these mountains overran a large part of our present far west they formed a level in very broad and high plateau or more accurately they tended to form such a plateau but never quite succeeded because its central section kept caving and sinking in some of its parts as fast as it lifted in others finally in the course perhaps of several millions of years the entire central section settled several thousand feet lower than its eastern and western edges these edges it left standing steep and high this sunken part is the Great Basin of today the remaining eastern edge is the Wasatch Mountains the remaining western edge is the Sierra that is why the Sierra's eastern front rises so precipitously from the deserts of the Great Basin while its western edge slopes gradually toward the Pacific but other crust changes accompany the sinking of the Great Basin the principal one was the rise of a series of upward movements of the remaining crest of the Sierra these movements may have corresponded with the sinkings of the Great Basin both were due to tremendous internal readjustments and of course whenever the Sierra crest lifted it tilted more sharply the whole granite block of which it was the eastern edge these successive tiltings are what kept the Merced Antoniana channels always so steeply inclined that for millions of years the streams remained torrents swift enough to keep on sandpapering their beds the first of these tiltings occurred in that far age which geologists call the Cretaceous it was inconsiderable but enough to hasten the speed of the streams and establish general outlines for all time about the middle of the tertiary period volcanic eruptions changed all things nearly all the valleys except the Yosemite became filled with lava even the crest of the range was buried 1,000 feet in one place this was followed by a rise of the Sierra crest a couple of thousand feet and of course a much sharper tilting of the western slopes the Merced Antoniana rivers must have rushed very fast indeed during the many thousand years that followed the most conservative estimate of the duration of the tertiary period is four or five million years and until its close volcanic eruptions continued to fill valleys with lava the Great Basin kept settling and the crest of the Sierra went on rising and with each lifting of the crest the tilt of the river sharpened and the speed of the torrents hastened the canyon deepened during this time from seven hundred to a thousand feet the Yosemite was then a mountain valley whose sloping sides were crossed by cascades then about the beginning of the Creturnary period came the biggest convulsion of all the crest of the Sierra was hoisted according to Mathes' calculations as much as eight thousand feet higher in this one series of movements and the whole Sierra block was again tilted this time of course enormously for thousands of centuries following the torrents from Lyles and McClure's melting snows must have descended at a speed which tore boulders from their anchorages ground rocks into sand and savagely scraped and scooped the riverbeds armed with sharp hard cutting tools stripped from the granite cirks of Sierra's crest these mad rivers must have scratched and hewn deep and fast and because certain valleys including the Yosemite were never filled with lava like the rest these grew ever deeper with the centuries the great crest movement of the Creturnary period was not the last by any means though it was the last of great size there were many small ones later several even have occurred within historic times in 1872 a sudden earth movement left an escarpment 25 feet high at the foot of the range in Owens Valley the village of Lone Pine was leveled by the accompanying earthquake John Muir who was in the Yosemite Valley at the time describes an eloquent phrase the accompanying earthquake which was felt there a small movement doubtless of similar origin started the San Francisco fire in 1906 conditions created by the great Creturnary tilting deepened the valley from 1,800 feet at its lower end to 2,400 feet at its upper end it established what must have been an unusually interesting and impressive landscape which suggested the modern aspect but required completion by the glaciers geologically speaking the glaciers were recent there were several ice invasions produced probably by the same changes in climate which occasioned the advances of the continental ice sheet of the Canadian Rockies Mathis describes them as similar to the northern glaciers of the Canadian Rockies of today for unknown thousands of years the valley was filled by a glacier 3 or 4,000 feet thick and surrounding country was covered with tributary ice fields only clouds rest half dome, sentinel dome and the crown of El Capitan emerged above this ice the glacier greatly widened the slopes into perpendicular and changed its side cascades into waterfalls when it receded it left Yosemite valley almost completed there followed a long period of conditions not unlike those of today frost chipped and scaled the granite surfaces and rains carried away the fragments the valley bloomed with forests and wildflowers then came other glaciers and other intervening periods the last glacier advanced a bridal veil meadow when it melted it left a lake which filled the valley from wall to wall 300 feet deep finally the lake filled up with soil brought down by the streams and made the floor of the present valley the centuries since have been a period of decoration and enrichment frost and rain have done their perfect work the incomparable valley is complete End of part 5