VII
THE BLACK MARKS
The visit to the executive department of the park was disappointing. I found the superintendent's office in a two-room frame shack; the Government warehouse an old barn: five miles from a railroad, too. That's management for you! Why, O gentlemen at Washington who arrange these things, why not at Belton, on the railroad, five miles away? The park extends to Belton.
Inadequate appropriations, the necessity for putting the entire heavy machinery of the Government in motion for the long-distance control of the park, poor automobile roads, and insufficient rangers—these are the black marks against us in Glacier Park. On every hand the enthusiasm of a most efficient superintendent must contend with these things. That marvels of trail-making and road-building in this vast domain have been done with so little money and encouragement is due, primarily, to the faith the men closely connected with the park have had in its future.
Doubtless all these things will remedy themselves in time. But they make the immediate problems of the park difficult to cope with. The chief ranger must live where he can. No building erected by the superintendent must cost over one thousand dollars. It is not easy in that country of cheap wood and dear labor to build a house for one thousand dollars.
And there is always the difficulty of long-distance supervision. In 1914 the former Superintendent of National Parks, Mr. Daniels, spent a week in Glacier Park. Last year he was at the entrance, Glacier Park Station, for a half a day, and not in the park at all.
There are several parks, and it is easy to believe that Mr. Daniels found it difficult to visit them all. But the method must be wrong. It is Washington that must order and pay for each bit of new trail- and road-building. If Washington does not come to the park, the park cannot go to Washington. There is something lacking in efficiency in a system which depends on across-the-continent supervision.
This year I hope the Superintendent of National Parks will go out to Glacier Park, not by automobile, but on a horse, and ride over his great domain. Then I hope he will go back to Washington and arrange for enough rangers to make the park safe and to save its timber from forest fires. Yellowstone Park has soldiers. It is not soldiers, but woodsmen, trail-riders, rangers, that are needed. Canada, in this same country, has her Northwest Mounted Police.
They want real men out there. But the mountains take care of that. The weaklings don't stick. From just north of Glacier Park went a band of twenty-five cavalrymen that I met last year in Flanders. They were rangers: mountain riders. For weeks during the German invasion they rode on skirmish duty between the advancing Germans and the retiring armies. They became famous. Where there were reckless courage and fine horsemanship needed, those men were sent.
If we ever have a war, we shall draw hard on the West for cavalry. Our national parks should be able to send out trained skirmishers. Under present conditions Glacier Park could furnish about a dozen.