e curative springs had been saved from private ownership.
Yellowstone was considered so altogether extraordinary, however, that
Congress began in 1879 to appropriate yearly for its approach by road,
and for the protection of its springs and geysers; but this was because
Yellowstone appealed to the public sense of wonder. It took twenty years
more for Congress to understand that the public sense of beauty was also
worth appropriations. Yosemite had been a national park for nine years
before it received a dollar, and then only when public demand for roads,
trails, and accommodations became insistent.

[Illustration: _From a photograph by Pillsbury_

THE YOSEMITE FALLS--HIGHEST IN THE WORLD

From the brink of the upper falls to the foot of the lower falls is
almost half a mile]

But, once born, the idea took root and spread. It was fed by the press
and magazine reports of the glories of the newer national parks, then
attracting some public attention. It helped discrimination in the
comparison of the minor parks created in 1903 and 1904 with the greater
ones which had preceded. The realization that the parks must be
developed at public expense sharpened Congressional judgment as to what
areas should and should not become national parks.

From that time on Congress has made no mistakes in selecting national
parks. Mesa Verde became a park in 1905, Glacier in 1910, Rocky Mountain
in 1915, Hawaii and Lassen Volcanic in 1916, Mount McKinley in 1917, and
Lafayette and the Grand Canyon in 1919. From that time on Congress, most
conservatively, it is true, has backed its judgment with increasing
appropriations. And in 1916 it created the National Park Service, a
bureau of the Department of the Interior, to administer them in
accordance with a definite policy.

V

The distinction between the national forests and the national parks is
essential to understanding. The national forests constitute an enormous
domain administered for the economic commercialization of the nation's
wealth of lumber. Its forests are handled scientifically with the object
of securing the largest annual lumber output consistent with the proper
conservation of the future. Its spirit is commercial. The spirit of
national park conservation is exactly opposite. It seeks no great
territory--only those few spots which are supreme. It aims to preserve
nature's handiwork exactly as nature made it. No tree is cut except to
make way for road, trail or hotel to