Transcriber’s Note
The punctuation and spelling from the original text have been faithfully preserved. Only obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
The photograph "The Rainbow Natural Bridge, Utah", facing page 8, is missing from the source document even though presented in the List of Illustrations.
THE BOOK OF
THE NATIONAL PARKS
From the painting by Chris Jorgenson
THE BOOK OF
THE NATIONAL PARKS
BY
ROBERT STERLING YARD
CHIEF, EDUCATIONAL DIVISION, NATIONAL PARK SERVICE, DEPARTMENT
OF THE INTERIOR
AUTHOR OF "THE NATIONAL PARKS PORTFOLIO"
"THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT," ETC.
WITH MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1919
PREFACE
In offering the American public a carefully studied outline of its national park system, I have two principal objects. The 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 rôle 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 advisers 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 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 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 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 readers who may benefit by their work.
CONTENTS
| PAGE | ||
| Preface | [vii] | |
| THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS | ||
| On the Appreciation of Scenery | [3] | |
| I. | The National Parks of the United States | [17] |
| THE GRANITE NATIONAL PARKS | ||
| Granite's Part in Scenery | [33] | |
| II. | Yosemite, the Incomparable | [36] |
| III. | The Proposed Roosevelt National Park | [69] |
| IV. | The Heart of the Rockies | [93] |
| V. | McKinley, Giant of Giants | [118] |
| VI. | Lafayette and the East | [132] |
| THE VOLCANIC NATIONAL PARKS | ||
| On the Volcano in Scenery | [145] | |
| VII. | Lassen Peak and Mount Katmai | [148] |
| VIII. | Mount Rainier, Icy Octopus | [159] |
| IX. | Crater Lake's Bowl of Indigo | [184] |
| X. | Yellowstone, a Volcanic Interlude | [202] |
| XI. | Three Monsters of Hawaii | [229] |
| THE SEDIMENTARY NATIONAL PARKS | ||
| XII. | On Sedimentary Rock in Scenery | [247] |
| XIII. | Glaciered Peaks and Painted Shales | [251] |
| XIV. | Rock Records of a Vanished Race | [284] |
| XV. | The Healing Waters | [305] |
| THE GRAND CANYON AND OUR NATIONAL MONUMENTS | ||
| On the Scenery of the Southwest | [321] | |
| XVI. | A Pageant of Creation | [328] |
| XVII. | The Rainbow of the Desert | [352] |
| XVIII. | Historic Monuments of the Southwest | [367] |
| XIX. | Desert Spectacles | [385] |
| XX. | The Muir Woods and Other National Monuments | [404] |
ILLUSTRATIONS
MAPS AND DIAGRAMS
| PAGE | |
| Cross-section of Crater Lake showing probable outline of Mount Mazama | [189] |
| Cross-section of Crater Lake | [191] |
| Map of Hawaii National Park | [230] |
| FACING PAGE | |
| Outline of the Mesa Verde Formation | [290] |
| Outlines of the Western and Eastern Temples, Zion National Monument | [356] |