| YELLOWSTONE PARK HEADQUARTERS |
|
DIRECTOR MATHER, SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR FALL, AND SUPERINTENDENT ALBRIGHT CAMPING |
| SUPERINTENDENT ALBRIGHT AND MULE DEER |
Captain Chittenden, writing of the early days of the Yellowstone, speaks of the menace of the railways—attempts on the part of certain companies to build into or through the Park itself. That threat was disposed of in good time. The railways accepted the "Thus far shalt thou go and no farther!" as final, built as close as practicable to the boundaries, and rested content with allowing transportation within the Park to be carried on by horse-drawn vehicles, later to be replaced by motor busses. The menace of the railways was no longer heard of, but in time a new one arose—that of the power and irrigation interests. This hydra-headed camel tried to crawl under the flap of the Park tent in the form of a dam at the outlet of Yellowstone Lake for the ostensible purpose of preventing floods on the lower river. The bill to authorize the project was introduced in Congress by Senator Thomas P. Walsh and bears his name. Two very practical idealists, called to step into the breach almost at a moment's notice, were able to demolish every claim made for the measure after scarcely more than a hurried reading of it. These two were Superintendent Albright and George E. Goodwin, Chief Engineer of the National Park Service. Mr. Albright, practically offhand, showed the falsity or the fallacy of every contention made in the bill as regards the Park itself, but perhaps the solar plexus was delivered by Mr. Goodwin, when he introduced figures to show that all of the floods on the lower river came a month previous to high water in Yellowstone Lake—that they were directly due in fact, not to the latter, but to the torrential spring discharges of the Big Horn, Tongue, Powder and other tributaries of the main stream.
This blocked the measure at the time, and equally telling action from the Department of Interior has checked every subsequent attempt to advance it. I should really like to know the particular practical idealist of that Department who dissected a circular letter sent out under Mr. Walsh's signature to his Congressional colleagues. Perhaps it was Stephen T. Mather himself, head of the National Park Service. At any rate, the blows dealt were so sharp and jolting that reading the statement somehow made me think of a man walking down a row of plaster images and cracking them with a hammer. If I was not certain this insincere and maladroitly handled bill would not be at rather more than its last gasp before these pages appear in print I would write more about it—that is, against it. As things have shaped, however, this will hardly be necessary.
In explaining why it was that the National Park Service had rallied its forces for so vigorous a defence of the citadel against the Walsh Bill, Mr. Albright quoted the words of John Barton Payne, Secretary of the Interior under Wilson, in pushing the Jones-Esch Bill, which returned the national parks and monuments to the sole authority of Congress. Said Mr. Payne: "When once you establish a principle that you can encroach on a national park for irrigation or water power, you commence a process which will end only in the commercialization of them all.... There is a heap more in this world," he concluded, "than three meals a day."
I was sorry not to be able to see more of Horace M. Albright. One can put up with a good deal of his kind of practical idealism.