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HEARING

BEFORE THE

0MMITTEE 0N THE PUBLIC LANDS

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES / t *

SIXTY-FOURTH CONGRESS
First Session

H• R• 434 and H• R 8668

BILLS TO ESTABLISH A NATIONAL PARK SERVICE
AND FOR OTHER PURPOSES

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NATIONAL PARK SERVICE.

Committee On The Public Lands,

House Of Representatives,
Washington, D. C., April 5, 1916.

The committee met at 10 o'clock a. m., Hon. Scott Ferris (chairman) presiding.

The Chairman. This is a special order, gentlemen, set down for the park service bill, so-called. We have two bills on the subject, one by Mr. Kent, H. R. 8668, and one by Mr. Raker, H. R. 434. The department officials are here to deal with the subject, and we will get all the information we can from them.

Will Mr. Kent or Mr. Raker indicate the order in which they wish the subject presented ?

Mr. Kent. The American Civic Association has taken an immense amount of interest in this for a great many years, and are here represented by Mr. Watrous, and later on the president, Mr. McFarland, will be here; and Mr. Mather and Mr. Marshall are here to go into a detailed statement. Would you think we should better hear the officials first ?

The Chairman. Use your own judgment.

Mr. Kent. I think we will let Mr. Watrous introduce the subject.

STATEMENT OF MR. EICHARD B. WATEOUS, SECRETARY
THE AMEBICAN CIVIC ASSOCIATION, WASHINGTON, D. C.

Mr. Watrous. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, the movement for the creation of a national park service dates back a number of years, the American Civic Association having taken it up very actively in 1910; and there has been a growing feeling that in order to bring together the parks into a harmonious and unified management and administration there should be a bureau, or pref-' erably called a service, by which the parks and monuments might be brought together tinder one bead.

Secretary Ballinger was, I believe, the first secretary to make a definite recommendation in his annual report, and he made a strong recommendation. I quote briefly from it. He said, December 1, 1910:

In order that creditable progress may be made in each of the national parks, after the development of all necessary plans for road and other construction for the convenience of travel and tourists, liberal appropriations will be required and a departmental organization for administrative purposes perfected capable of efficient field administration and of careful inspection of all public works and the conduct of concessionaires. It will doubtless be necessary in the accomplishment of these purposes to create a bureau of national parks and resorts, under the supervision of a competent commissioner, with a suitable force of superintendents, supervising engineers, and landscape architects, inspectors, park guards, and other employees.

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The creation of such a bureau and the planning under it of a consistent and broadly considered scheme for national parks and resorts to fit the future needs of the United States of America would be in line with the policy under which our first President planned, in 1803, the Federal city which now bears his name, without which planning no such civic convenience, beauty, impressiveness, and national dignity as the city of Washington now enjoys would have been possible.

The volume and importance of the work of the supervision of the national parks and resorts under the Secretary of the Interior has passed beyond the stage of satisfactory control by .operations carried on with the small force available in the Secretary's office.

Secretary Fisher, when he came in, was so impressed with the importance of the national parks that he called a conference of park superintendents and others interested, which was held in the Yellowstone National Park, and in his report to the President he recommended strongly in favor of a creation of a park service. He said:

The only general supervision which is possible is that obtained by referring matters relating to the national parks to the same officials in the office of the Secretary of the Interior, etc.

Mr. Secretary Lane has the same spirit, and has been developing the park idea in a broader way than ever before. He, too, has been favorable right along to the creation of the park service, and in his report of a year ago he referred to "a bill [then in Congressl to establish a national park service, and for other purposes, is now pending in Congress and has been reported favorably to the Senate Committee on Public Lands, and its enactment into law is earnestly recommended."

President Taft considered it of sufficient importance to address a special message to Congress, and with your permission I will read briefly from that:

I earnestly recommend the establishment of a bureau of national parks. Such legislation is essential to the proper management of those wondrous manifestations of nature, so startling and so beautiful that every one recognizes the obligations of the Government to preserve them for the edification and recreation of the people. The Yellowstone Park, the Yosemite, the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, the'Glacier National Park, and the Mount Ranler National Park, and others furnish appropriate instances. In only one case have we made anything like adequate preparation for the use of a park by the public. That case is the Yellowstone National Park. Every consideration of patriotism and the love of nature and of beauty and of art requirss us to expend money enough to bring all these natural wonders within easy reach of our people. The first step in that direction is the establishment of a responsible bureau, which shall take upon itself the burden of .supervising the parks and of making recommendations as to the best method of improving their accessibility and usefulness.

That was incorporated in a bulletin of the American Civic Association, which contained addresses given at two of our annual conventions on the subject of national parks, copies of which you have seen, and which is particularly interesting because of the admirable address by former Ambassador Bryce, who visited our parks, loved them, and was acquainted with them, and enjoyed a personal acquaintance with John Muir, who is generally conceded to be the father of the national-park idea.

I shall not go into lengthy detail as to the interest that has been manifested in this subject, nor shall I stop to refer at any length to the very great interest that is manifested now, but which is best illustrated by the great number of newspaper and magazine articles that are being printed about our parks, showing a positive interest, and which is not altogether an inspired interest, but is simply a natural result of the great drift of travel to the parks, a drift which has been made unusually great during the past two years due to the war on the other side, and which has resulted in making it impossible for the American tourist to go abroad and spend his hundreds of millions of dollars there.

I will only say that the great magazines, the weekly papers, and the daily papers are printing from week to week and from day to day news articles, and every now and then an illustrated article about the parks. I might cite the Saturday Evening Post, which has had an editorial in it every two or three weeks for the past three months by its managing editor, Mr. George Horace Lorimer, in very marked approval of the idea of having a national park service.

This is a business undertaking, Mr. Chairman. We have 14 national parks and a good many more national monuments. They have had to be administered as individual undertakings. We are in the position of a man with a great manufacturing institution, manufacturing a variety of products, possibly, but having no harmonious arrangement for them. We simply want to bring into the administration of our national parks a uniform management for them which may be directed from the offices here in Washington with the proper assistance out in the parks themselves. The interesting thing about it is that as the situation now is the creation of a national park service does not involve the creation of a new corps of workers. We have the workers in the Department of the Interior, which is the father and the mother of the parks.

Mr. Sinnott. I wish you would explain, if it will not interrupt you, in what respects the present management is not uniform.

Mr. Watkous. As it is now all the parks have to be created as separate entities with reference to provision for appropriations for them and for their management. And as it is now there is no way of bringing into one harmonious idea the direction for the parks as a whole. I shall refer to that briefly from the experience of Canada, which has created a Dominion Commission of Parks, and which is doing very effective work. It does not mean creating a new machine with a large corps of officials or with great new appropriations, as some fear. We have the working spirit, we have the working forces, but we need the harmony and unity that will treat the parks as one great undertaking. There is a wonderful opportunity for the extension of the park service by letting the people of this country and abroad know that we have a service to which they may apply for information as to the parks.

. You gentlemen would be surprised to know how little the people really know about our national park system. I have been out around the country recently and have asked different audiences if any gentleman or lady in the audience could stand up and name four of our national parks, and it was on very, very rare occasions that I found that they could. No one except some one connected with the Government direction of the park service could name the 14. I have learned them by heart, but please do not ask me to say them now.

I heard the other day of a well-known Government official—I am not going to say whether he was a Senator or a Representative; he might have been either one—who wanted some information about the national parks. He evidently scratched his head hard and wondered to whom he should apply, and finally, I believe, he sent

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