Part 13 (1/2)
This one peak has on its high and broken slopes a majority of the earth's climatic zones, and a numerous array of the earth's countless kinds of plant and animal life. One may in two hours go from base to summit and pa.s.s through as many life zones as though he had traveled northward into the Arctic Circle. Going from base to summit, one would start in the Upper Sonoran Zone, pa.s.s through the Transition, Canadian, and Hudsonian Zones, and enter the Arctic-Alpine Zone. The peak has a number of places which exhibit the complexity of climatic zones. In a deep canon near Minnehaha Falls, two zones may be seen side by side on opposite sides of a deep, narrow canon. The north side of the canon, exposed to the sun, has such plants as are found in the Transition Zone, while the cool south side has an Hudsonian flora.
Here is almost an actual contact of two zones that outside the mountains are separated by approximately two thousand miles.
The varied climate of this peak makes a large appeal to bird-life.
Upward of one hundred species are found here. People from every part of the Union are here often startled by the presence of birds which they thought were far away at home. At the base the melodious meadowlark sings; along the streams on the middle slopes lives the contented water-ouzel. Upon the heights are the ptarmigan and the rosy finch. Often the golden eagle casts his shadow upon all these scenes.
The robin is here, and also the bluebird, bluer, too, than you have ever seen him. The Western evening grosbeak, a bird with attractive plumage and pleasing manners, often winters here. The brilliant lazuli bunting, the Bullock oriole, the red-shafted flicker, and the dear and dainty goldfinch are present in summer, along with mockingbirds, wrens, tanagers, thrushes, and scores of other visitants.
A few migratory species winter about the foot of the peak. In summer they fly to the upper slopes and nest and raise their young in the miniature arctic prairies of the heights. With the coming of autumn all descend by easy stages to the foot. The full distance of this vertical migration could be covered in an hour's flight. Many of the north-and-south-migrating birds travel a thousand times as far as these birds of vertical migration.
The big game which formerly ranged this peak included buffalo, deer, elk, mountain sheep, the grizzly, the black bear, the mountain lion, the fox, the coyote, and the wolf. Along the descending streams, through one vertical mile of alt.i.tude, were beaver colonies, terrace upon terrace. No one knows how many varieties of wild flowers each year bloom in all the Peak's various ragged zones, but there are probably no fewer than two thousand. Along with these are a number of species of trees. Covering the lower part of the mountain are growths of cottonwood, Douglas spruce, yellow pine, white fir, silver spruce, and the Rocky Mountain birch. Among the flowering plants are the columbine, shooting-star, monkshood, yucca or Spanish bayonet, and iris. Ascending, one finds the wintergreen, a number of varieties of polemonium, the paintbrush, the Northern gentian, the Western yarrow, and the mertensia. At timber-line, at the alt.i.tude of about eleven thousand five hundred feet, are Engelmann spruce, arctic willow, mountain birch, foxtail pine, and aspen. At timber-line, too, are the columbine, the paintbrush, and a number of species of phlox. There are no trees in the zone which drapes the uppermost two thousand feet of the summit, but in this are bright flowers,--cus.h.i.+on pinks, the spring beauty, the alpine gentian, the mountain buckwheat, the white and yellow mountain avens, the arctic harebell, the marsh-marigold, the stonecrop, and the forget-me-not. One summer I found a few flowers on the summit.
Isolation probably rendered the summit of this peak less favorable for snow-acc.u.mulation during the Ice Age than the summits of unisolated peaks of equal alt.i.tude. During the last ice epoch, however, it carried glaciers, and some of these extended down the slopes three miles or farther. These degraded the upper slopes, moved this excavated material toward the bottom, and spread it in a number of places. There are five distinct cuplike hollows or depressions in this peak that were gouged by glaciers. The one lying between Cameron's Cone and the summit is known as the ”Crater.” A part of this is readily seen from Colorado Springs. Far up the slopes are Lake Moraine and Seven Lakes, all of glacial origin.
The mountain ma.s.s which culminates in Pike's Peak probably originated as a vast uplift. Internal forces appear to have severed this ma.s.s from its surroundings and slowly upraised it seven thousand or more feet. The slow uprising probably ended thousands of years ago. Since that time, disintegration, frost, air, and stream erosion have combined to sculpture this great peak. Pike's Peak might well be made a National Park.
The Conservation of Scenery
The Conservation of Scenery
The comparative merits of the Alps and the Rocky Mountains for recreation purposes are frequently discussed. Roosevelt and others have spoken of the Colorado Rockies as ”The Nation's Playground.” This Colorado region really is one vast natural park. The area of it is three times that of the Alps. The scenery of these Colorado Rocky Mountains, though unlike that of the Alps, is equally attractive and more varied. Being almost free from snow, the entire region is easily enjoyed; a novice may scale the peaks without the ice and snow that hamper and endanger even the expert climbers in the icy Alps. The Alps wear a perpetual ice-cap down to nine thousand feet. The inhabited zone in Colorado is seven thousand feet higher than that zone in Switzerland. At ten thousand feet and even higher, in Colorado, one finds railroads, wagon-roads, and hotels. In Switzerland there are but few hotels above five thousand feet, and most people live below the three-thousand-foot mark. Timber-line in Colorado is five thousand feet farther up the heights than in Switzerland. The Centennial State offers a more numerous and attractive array of wild flowers, birds, animals, and mineral springs than the land of William Tell. The Rocky Mountain sheep is as interesting and audacious as the chamois; the fair phlox dares greater heights than the famed edelweiss. The climate of the Rocky Mountains is more cheerful than that of the Alps; there are more sunny days, and while the skies are as blue as in Switzerland, the air is drier and more energizing.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE CONTINENTAL DIVIDE NEAR ESTES PARK]
But the attractions in the Alps are being preserved, while the Rocky Mountains are being stripped of their scenery. Yet in the Rocky Mountains there are many areas rich in perishable attractions which might well be reserved as parks so that their natural beauties could be kept unmarred. It is to be hoped that the growing interest in American scenery will bring this about before these wild mountain gardens are shorn of their loveliness.[1]
[1] Since this was put into type, the Rocky Mountain National Park, after a campaign of six years, has been established, and campaigns have started to make National Parks of Mount Evans and Pike's Peak. And the Secretary of the Interior has appointed a Superintendent of National Parks and called attention to the great need of legislation for these Parks.
The United States is behind most nations in making profitable use of scenery. Alpine scenery annually produces upward of ten thousand dollars to the square mile, while the Rocky Mountains are being despoiled by cattle and sawmills for a few dollars a square mile.
Though Switzerland has already accomplished much along scenic conservation lines, it is working for still better results. It is constructing modern hotels throughout the Alps and is exploiting the winter as well as the summer use of these. The Canadian Government has done and is doing extensive development work in its national parks. It is preparing a welcome for mult.i.tudes of travelers; travelers are responding in numbers.
The unfortunate fact is that our scenery has never had a standing. To date, it has been an outcast. Often lauded as akin to the fine arts, or something sacred, commonly it is destroyed or put to base uses.
Parks should no longer be used as pigpens and pastures. These base uses prevent the parks from paying dividends in humanity.
There is in this country a splendid array of Nature's masterpieces to lure and reward the traveler. In mountain-peaks there are Grand Teton, Long's Peak, Mt. Whitney, and Mt. Rainier; in canons, the vast Grand Canon and the brilliantly colored Yellowstone; in trees, the unrivaled sequoias and many matchless primeval forests; in rivers, few on earth are enriched with scenes equal to those between which rolls the Columbia; in petrified forests, those in Arizona and the Yellowstone are unsurpa.s.sed; in natural bridges, those in Utah easily arch above the other great ones of the earth; in desert attractions, Death Valley offers a rare display of colors, strangeness, silences, and mirages; in waterfalls, we have Niagara, Yellowstone, and Yosemite; in glaciers, there are those of the Glacier and Mount Rainier National Parks and of Alaska; in medicinal springs, there is an array of flowing, life-extending fountains; in wild flowers, the mountain wild flowers in the West are lovely with the loveliest anywhere; in wild animals of interest and influence, we have the grizzly bear, the beaver, and the mountain sheep; in bird music, that which is sung by the thrushes, the canon wren, and the solitaire silences with melodious sweetness the other best bird-songs of the earth. In these varied attractions of our many natural parks we have ample playgrounds for all the world and the opportunity for a travel industry many times as productive as our gold and silver mines--and more lasting, too, than they. When these scenes are ready for the traveler we shall not need to nag Americans to see America first; and Europeans, too, might start a continuous procession to these wonderlands.
In the nature of things, the United States should have a travel industry of vast economic importance. The people of the United States are great travelers, and we have numerous and extensive scenic areas of unexcelled attractiveness, together with many of the world's greatest natural wonders and wonderlands which every one wants to see.
All these scenes, too, repose in a climate that is hospitable and refres.h.i.+ng. They should attract travelers from abroad as well as our own people. The traveler brings ideas as well as gold. He comes with the ideals of other lands and helps promote international friends.h.i.+p.
Then, too, he is an excellent counter-irritant to prevent that self-satisfied att.i.tude, that deadening provincialism, which always seems to afflict successful people. Develop our parks by making them ready for the traveler, and they will become continuously productive, both commercially and spiritually.
Our established scenic reservations, or those which may be hereafter set aside, are destined to become the basis of our large scenic industry. The present reservations embrace fourteen National Parks and twenty-eight National Monuments. Each Park and Monument was reserved because of its scenic wonders, to be a recreation place for the people. The name Monument might well be changed to Park. The Monuments were set aside by executive orders of the President; the Parks were created by acts of Congress. Each Park or Monument is a wonderland in itself. All these together contain some of the strangest, sublimest scenes on the globe. Each reservation is different from every other, and in all of them a traveler could spend a lifetime without exhausting their wonders.
I suppose that in order to lead Americans to see America first, or to see it at all, and also to win travel from Europe, it is absolutely necessary to get America ready for the traveler. Only a small part of American scenery is ready for the traveler. The traveler's ultimatum contains four main propositions. These are grand scenery, excellent climate, good entertainment, and swift, comfortable transportation.
When all of these demands are supplied with a generous horn of plenty, then, but not until then, will mult.i.tudes travel in America.