Post 24265
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It would be well to save at once in parks and reservations the better of all remaining unspoiled scenic sections of the country,–the lake-shores and the seashore, the stream-side, the forests primeval, and the Rocky Mountains. There is a great and ragged scenic border of varying width that extends entirely around the United States. This includes the Great Lake region and the splendid Olympic Mountains at the northwest corner of the country. Inside of this border are other localities richly dowered with natural beauty and dowered, too, with hospitable climate. The Rocky Mountain region is one splendid recreation-ground. There are many beauty-spots in the Ozark Mountains of Missouri and Arkansas, and there are scenic regions in New York, Pennsylvania, and western North Carolina, and the State of Idaho embraces many scenic empires. These contain scores of park areas that will early be needed.
Every park is a place of refuge, a place wherein wild life thrives and multiplies. As hunters are perpetually excluded from all parks, these places will thus become sanctuaries for our vanishing wild life. All wild life quickly loses its fear and allows itself to be readily seen in protected localities. Wild life in parks thus affords enjoyment by being readily seen, and from now on this life will become a factor in education. Children who go into parks will be pleasantly compelled to observe, delightfully incited to think, and will thus become alert and interested,–will have the very foundation of education. Perhaps it is safe to predict that from now on the tendency will be to multiply the number of parks and decrease the number of zoölogical gardens.
Scenic places, if used for parks, will pay larger returns than by any other use that can be made of their territory. Parks, then, are not a luxury but a profitable investment. Switzerland is supporting about half of her population through the use of her mountain scenery for recreation purposes. Although parks pay large dividends, they also have a higher, nobler use. They help make better men and women. Outdoor life is educational. It develops the seeing eye, supplies information, gives material for reflection, and compels thinking, which is one of the greatest of accomplishments. Exercise in the pure air of parks means health, which is the greatest of personal resources, and this in turn makes for efficiency, kindness, hopefulness, and high ideals. Recreation in parks tends to prevent wasted life by preventing disease and wrong-doing. The conservation of scenery, the use of scenic places for public recreation parks, is conservation in the highest sense, for parks make the best economic use of the territory and they also pay large dividends in humanity.