The National Parks and Forest Reservations.

268 Publications of the Sierra Club. PROCEEDINGS OF THE MEETING OF THE SIERRA CLUB Held November 23, 1S95. The annual public meeting of the Sierra Club was held in. the hall of the Academy of Sciences, San Francisco, on the evening of Saturday, November 23, 1895. The topic announced, \u27\u27 The National Parks and Forest Reservations had brought together a large audience of members and friends of the Club. Mr. Warren Olney, Vice-President, called the meeting to order, and introduced the President of the evening in the following words: Ladies and Gentlemen: — It is the good fortune of the Sierra Club to have enrolled in its membership some of the most distinguished men in California. I think we are peculiarly happy in that respect; and at every meeting of the Club we have selected some member who does honor to the Club and to ourselves by presiding. This evening there has been selected one of the most distinguished men of this State, and I introduce him to you as the President of the evening—Professor Joseph Le Conte. Professor Le Conte then made the following brief address : \u27\u27 This meeting, as I understand it, has been called for the purpose of considering the important question of the reservation of our timber lands, and thus preserving them; and also the subject of the care of the National and State Parks. I have been asked to preside because I am presently to call on Mr. Muir to make his report, and he can do it better, I suppose, while not presiding. And I shall oi, Meeting of the Sierra Club. 269 call, also, on Professor Dudley for the results of his recent study of these questions in the Forest Reservations of our Southern Sierra. Of these two subjects I have named, both are of immediate and pressing importance. I do not believe there is any interest connected with our country—I will not say of greater, but of more pressing, urgency than this of the preservation of our timber land. The timber of our country is disappearing at a rate which is simply unparalleled in the history of the world. Only a few years, and there will literally be none left. Now, I need not tell you of the importance of this timber, not only for the purposes for which timber is used, but on account of its important effect even upon our agriculture. For though the rainfall may not be greatly affected by the removal of the timber, surely it is admitted upon all hands that the quantity that is conserved in the soil is very largely dependent upon the timber. Now, if this timber were disappearing as the result of legitimate use for ourselves, or even for humanity, it would not be so bad. But the wasteful disappearance of the timber is simply dreadful. I can only tell you what I have seen and all of you have seen. How often do we find the great trunk of a sugar pine, six or eight feet in diameter and two hundred and fifty feet high, something which Nature has been two or three or four hundred years in constructing, destroyed in a few hours; and only one block cut off for a few shakes, and the rest left to rot on the ground! But still worse have been the horrible fires. I will give you one single example from my own experience. I was camping on the shores of Crater Lake. I started back to strike the railroad. About ten miles after leaving Crater Lake I struck into the burnt timber, and I rode for thirty miles through the densest forest I think I ever saw. Trees standing just as thick as they could stand, and every one two hundred and fifty feet, at least, Oiptfl-\u27 270 Publications of the Sierra Club. in height, and not one single one that had escaped the ravages of the fire. It was one of the saddest sights I ever saw. But I know that this is a common occurrence. \u27\u27 Now, I know perfectly well in modern times there is a feeling of this sort: that society, and the state, and the government, and the nation are made for the individual. Well, if it were individual in the plural, it would not be so bad; but it is individual in the singular. In other words, the maxim is, that society and the government are made for the greatest good of the greatest number. True; but the greatest number is Number One! Now, this individualism has, as it were, run mad. I hope it has already seen its best day, and we are beginning to understand that the interest of the community is greater than that of the individual, if for no other reason than that it takes account of all other individuals as well as of Number One. \u27\u27 But I will put it another way. If we compare the cultured man with the uncultured man, what is the most striking difference ? That the uncultured man is trying to live for the interests of the \u27 now,\u27 but the cultured man — and in proportion as he is cultured — looks to the future as well as to the present. Now, the social organism is also an individual, and one whose life is not for a day or a few years, but is perennial; and a civilized community also is cultured and civilized just in proportion as it looks to the future and to the future generations, as well as to the present. \u27\u27 Now, I am perfectly satisfied that nothing can save our timber land except complete reservation by the Government. Every particle of it that is yet left should be reserved by the Government, and used in a thoroughly rational way for legitimate uses only, cultivating the trees as well as the soil, and removing only such as can be steadily replaced by fresh growth. In this way the forest will increase and last indefinitely. \u27\u27 And now the question of the reservations—I mean Meeting of the Sierra Club. 271 our National and State Parks—I will barely mention. Here our interest is immediate — not of the future generations only, but of our own. All of us who have been in the Sierra know how much our pleasure, and pleasure of the highest kind, is dependent upon these parks. But for more upon this subject, we will now listen to these gentlemen who are especially qualified to speak upon it; and first I will call upon Mr. Muir. Mr. Muir then addressed the Club as follows: Sierra Club and Friends:—When I was requested by the directors to address the Club on the parks and reservations of the Sierra, with reference to their preservation and management, I think I said truly that this part of the work of the Club dependent on the action of Congress was in great part lawyer\u27s work, and that Mr. Olney, our Vice-President, ought to do it. You know that I have not lagged behind in the work of exploring our grand wildernesses, and in calling everybody to come and enjoy the thousand blessings they have to offer. I have faithfully inspected gorges, glaciers, and forests, climbed mountains and trees, and lived with the wild animals, and, as best I could, I have talked and written about them, never sparing myself. But this it seems was not considered enough by the directors. More still was required of me. I must make speeches and lead in society affairs. This, as it appears to me, is not reasonable. This formal, legal, unwild work is out of my line, and if any harm should come to the woods from my awkward, unskillful handling of the subject this evening, then you must lay the blame where it belongs— lay it on our Vice-President, sitting at ease there on the front seat, seemingly unconscious of wrong. I proved over and over again that this speech belonged to him, but all my good arguments were lost; he remained as obstinately unchangeable and unpersuadable as a glacier or a Scotchman. 272 Publications ef the Sierra Club. When I realized that I must speak here to-night, I tried * to prepare a compact address an hour or less in length, but the subject in my hands proved far too big. Try as I might, I could not prevent it from radiating out in a dozen different directions, which, if faithfully pursued, would have made a speech ten or twenty hours long, a thing not to be thought of in any formal city affair. So I laid down my pen in despair, and saw that I must simply trust to memory and say what I could in the measured time allowed me. \u27\u27 This last summer I wanted to go to Alaska to explore some fine busy glaciers that are working on the flanks of Mt. St. Elias and the mountains about Cook\u27s Inlet and Prince William\u27s Sound. But I could not get away early enough for such extended explorations as would be required there; and so I just rambled off for an easy six weeks\u27 saunter in the Sierra above Yosemite, and about the head-waters of the Tuolumne, and down the Grand Canon of the Tuolumne to Hetch Hetchy and the sugar- pine woods of the main forest belt. On this ramble I was careful to note the results of the four years of protection the region had enjoyed as a park under the care of the Federal Government, and I found them altogether delightful and encouraging. When I had last seen the Yosemite National Park region, the face of the landscape in general was broken and wasted, like a beautiful human countenance destroyed by some dreadful disease. Now it is blooming again as one general garden, in which beauty for ashes has been granted in fine wild measure. The flowers and grasses are back again in their places as if they had never been away, and every tree in the park is waving its arms for joy. Only the few spots held as cattle ranches under private ownership continue to look frowzy and wasted; but the condition of even these has been greatly improved under protection from the sheep scourge. Lilies now swing and ring- their bells around the margins of the forest Meeting of the Sierra Club. 273 meadows and along the banks of the streams throughout the lower and middle portions of the park. The broad tangles and beds of chaparral have put forth new shoots and leaves, and are now blooming again in all their shaggy beauty and fragrance. The open spaces on the slopes are covered with beds of gilias of many species and purple spraguea, monardella, etc.; while on the steeper slopes the driest friable soil, that was most deeply raked and dibbled by the hoofs of the sheep, has been replanted, mostly by a delicate species of gymnophytum, whose winged seeds were the first to reach those desolate places. Soon, however, they will be followed by other plants to enrich the bloom; for in the work of beauty Nature never stops. \u27\u27 In the highlands of the park the tough sod of the glacier meadows was never wholly destroyed, but their delicate grasses were not allowed to bloom beneath the feet of the trampling sheep, and all the bright flowers that so charmingly enameled the close, smooth sod — gentians, daisies, ivesias, orthocarpus, bryanthus, etc. — vanished as if not a root or seed had been spared. This year, I am happy to say, I found these blessed flowers blooming- again in their places in all the fineness of wildness — three species of gentians, in patches acres in extent, blue as the sky, blending their celestial color with the purple panicles of the grasses, and the daisies and bossy, rosy spikes of the varied species of orthocarpus and bryanthus—nearly every trace of the sad sheep years of repression and destruction having vanished. Blessings on Uncle Sam\u27s blue-coats ! In what we may call homeopathic doses, the quiet, orderly soldiers have done this fine job, without any apparent friction or weak noise, in the still, calm way that the United States troops do their duty. Uncle Sam has only to say: \u27There is your duty,\u27 and it is done. This makes me think of what Robert Burns says about the effects of whisky. He says: 274 Publications of the Sierra Club. \u27 Take a Scotchman frae his hill, Clap in his cheek a Highland gill, Say, such is royal George\u27s will And there\u27s the foe— He \u2711 have no thought but how to kill Twa at a blow.\u27 \u27\u27 So Uncle Sam\u27s soldiers, in attending to those marauding shepherds and their flocks, tried to gather in two at a blow. A very suggestive flock, not of sheep, but of shepherds and their dogs, was seen this summer crossing the Yosemite National Park. Nine Portuguese shepherds and eighteen shepherd dogs were marched across the park from the extreme northern boundary, across the Tuolumne Canon and the rugged topography of the Merced basin to the southern boundary at Wawona, and presented as prisoners before Captain Rodgers, who had charge of the troop guarding the park. These shepherds submitted to being driven along over hill and dale day after day as peacefully as sheep, notwithstanding they had a little previously been boasting of their fighting qualities and the surprising excellence of their guns, and with what deadly effect they would use them if interfered with in their divine right of stealing pasturage. But when they were calmly confronted with a soldier, armed with the authority of the United States and a gun of much surer fire than theirs, they always behaved well, and became suddenly unbelligerent. Occasionally a flock would be found in some remote, hidden valley of the park, attended by three or four shepherds, so that a watch could be kept on the movements of the soldiers from the heights around the camp. But, sooner or later, they would be caught and made to obey the laws;—for every year the whole park is faithfully policed. In my wanderings this summer I met small squads of mounted soldiers in all kinds of out-of-the-way places, fording roaring, bowlder-choked streams, crossing rugged canons, ever alert and watchful; and knowing, as we do, the Meeting of the Sierra Club. 275 extreme roughness of the topography of the park in general, our thanks are due these quiet soldiers for unweariedly facing and overcoming every difficulty in the way of duty. And always it is refreshing to know that in our changeful Government there is one arm that is permanent and ever to be depended on. The Yosemite National Park was made October 1, 1890. For many years I had been crying in the wilderness, \u27 Save the forests !\u27 but, so far as I know, nothing effective was done in the matter until shortly before the park was organized. In the summer of 1889, I took tone of the editors of the Century Magazine out for a walk in) Yosemite \u27\u27and in the woods and bowlder-choked canons around it;; and. when we were camped one day at the Big Tuolumne Meadows,\u27.my friend said). \u27 Where are iall;those wonderful flower gardens you write so much about ?\u27 And I had to confess—woe\u27s me \u27—that uncountable sheep had eaten and trampled them out of existence.j Then he said, \u27Can\u27t something be done.fo restore and preserve so wonderful a region as this ? \u27 ;\u3c Surely the people of California are not going to allow these magnificent forests, on which the welfare of the whole State depends, to be destroyed?\u27 Then a National Park was proposed, and I was requested to write some articles about the region to help call attention to it, while the Century was freely used for the same purpose, and every friend that could be found was called on to write or speak a good word for it. (\u27 The California Academy of Sciences became interested, and began to work, and so did the State University. Even the soulless Southern Pacific R. R. Co., never counted on for anything good, helped nobly in pushing the bill for this park through Congress. Mr. Stow in particular charged our members of Congress that whatever they neglected they must see that the bill for a National Park around Yosemite Valley went through. And in a little over a year from the time of our first talk 276 Publications of the Sierra Club. beside that Tuolumne camp-fire the bill organizing the park passed Congress, and a troop of cavalry was guarding it. *f • But no sooner were the boundaries of the park established, than interested parties began to try to break ■ -\u27-\u3c■ \u27 *-\u27;. through them. { Last winter a determined effort was made to ..!.\u27. :;y f have the area of the park cut down nearly one-half. { But the ;,-.;,.„., .J Sierra Club and other good friends of the forests on both sides of the continent made a good defense, and to-day the the original boundaries are still unbroken. ) ■ 3 v-\u27 \u27\u27 The battle we have fought, and are still fighting, for the 4..,.:\u3e.-\u27, forests is a part of the eternal conflict between right and \u27•:-!!..\u27 * wrong, and we cannot expect to see the end of it.; I trust, I , ,,. however, that our Club will not weary in this forest well- doing. The fight for the Yosemite Park and other forest I 1 parks and reserves is by no means over; nor would the ... fighting cease, however much the boundaries were contracted. ..Every good thing, great and small, needs defense. The smallest forest reserve, and the firstvl, ever heard of, was in _T.w„. the Garden of Eden; and though its boundaries were drawn .. ; f by the Lord, and embraced only one tree, yet even so jt.. ... ; moderate a reserve as this was attacked. And I doubt not, J if only one of our grand trees on the Sierra were reserved as an example and type of all that is most noble and glorious in mountain\u27trees,; it would not be long before!you yii Vr -would find ,a lumberman and a lawyer.^at the foot of it, \u27.;■-.\u27\u27\u27(•.eagerly proving by every law terrestrial and celestial that . \u27V \u27 that tree must come down. , So we must count on watch- ., ,..\u27 ing and striving for these trees, and should always be glad ■ -v, to find anything so surely good and noble to strive for. The preservation of specimen sections of natural flora— bits of pure wildness—was a fond, favorite notion of mine long before I heard of national parks. When my father came from Scotland, he settled in a-fine. wild region in Wisconsin, beside a small glacier lake bordered with white pond- lilies. And on the north side of the lake, just below our Meeting of tke Sierra Club. 277 house, there was a carex meadow full of charming flowers— cypripediums, pogonias, calopogons, asters, goldenrods, etc.,-j-and around the margin of the meadow many nooks rich in .flowering ferns arid heathworts. And when I was about to wander away on my long rambles I was sorry to leave that precious meadow unprotected; therefore, I said to my brother-in-law, who then owned it, \u27 Sell me the forty acres of lake meadow, and keep it fenced, and never allow cattle or hogs to break into it, and I will gladly pay you whatever you say. I want to keep it untrampled for the sake of its ferns and flowers; and even if I should never see it again, the beauty of its lilies and orchids are so pressed into my mind I shall always enjoy looking back at them in imagination, even across seas and continents, and perhaps after I am dead.\u27 But he regarded my plan as a sentimental dream wholly impracticable. The fence he said would surely be broken down sooner or later, and all the work would be in vain. Eighteen years later. I found the deep- water pond-lilies in fresh bloom, but the delicate garden-sod of therjneadow was broken up and trampled into-fcfeek mire. On the^same Wisconsin farm there was a small flowery, ferny bog that I also tried-to.save.* It was less than half an acre in area, aaSi said, \u27 Surely you can at least keep for me this little bog,,\u27.-Yes, he would try. And when I hadlefLhome, and kept writing about it, he would say in reply, \u27 Let your mind rest, my dear John; the mudhole is safe, and the frogs in it are singing right merrily.\u27 But in less that twenty years the beauty of this little glacier-bog also was trampled away. \u27\u27 Next, I tried to save a quarter-section of the flowery San Joaquin plain when it began to be plowed for farms; but this scheme also failed, as the fence around it could not be kept up without constant watching, night and day. \u27 For the same cause, I did not take up a timber claim in the sugar-pine woods. But now we have this magnificent park, with all the world interested in keeping it. ) 278 Publications of the Sierra Club. When I first saw Yosemite, and read the notices posted by the State Commissioners, forbidding the cutting or marring the beauty in any way of the trees and shrubs, etc., I said, \u27 How fine it is that this grand valley has been made a park, for the enjoyment of all the world! Here we shall have a section of the wonderful flora of the mountains of California, with most of its wild inhabitants preserved, when all about it has been injured or destroyed.\u27 But instead of enjoying special protection, on account of its marvelous grandeur, it has suffered special destruction, for lack of the extraordinary care that so much trampling travel in it required. Therefore, now, instead of being most preciously cared for as the finest of all the park- gardens, it looks like a frowzy, neglected backwoods pasture. The best meadows are enclosed for hay-fields by unsightly fences, and all the rest of the floor of the valley is given up to the destructive pasturage of horses belonging to campers and those kept for the use of tourists. Each year the number of campers increases, and, of course, destructive trampling and hacking becomes heavier from season to season. Camping parties, on their arrival in the valley, are required to report to the Guardian, to register and have camp-grounds assigned them, and their attention is called to the rules and regulations prohibiting the cutting of trees and underbrush, etc.; but as the Guardian has no power to enforce the rules — has not a single policeman under his orders,—they are of non-effect, or nearly so. Most campers and tourists appreciate their privileges, but some, I am sorry to say, need the services of a soldier as much as the sheep-owners who break over the boundaries of the park. Not a single horse or cow should be allowed to trample the Yosemite garden. It was given to the State for a higher use than pasturage. Hay and grain in abundance may be hauled into the vall