Post 24559
Created:
Modified:
Taken as a whole, our National Parks and Monuments and our unreserved scenic places may be described as an undeveloped scenic resource of enormous potential value. These places should be developed as parks and their resources used exclusively for recreation purposes. Thus used, they would help all interests and reach all people. South America, Switzerland, Canada, and other countries are making intensified and splendid use of their parks by reserving that wild scenic beauty which appeals to all the world.
Parks are dedicated to the highest uses. They are worthy of our greatest attentions. It is of utmost importance that the management of Forest Reserves and the National Parks be separate. In 1897 the National Academy of Sciences in submitting a plan for the management of the Forest Reserves recommended that places specially scenic be separated from the Forest Reserves and set aside as Parks and given the separate and special administration which parks need. If scenery is to be saved, it must be saved for its own sake, on its own merits; it cannot be saved as something incidental.
Multitudes will annually visit these places, provided they be developed as parks and used for people and for nothing else. Grazing, lumbering, shooting, and other commercial, conflicting, and disfiguring uses should be rigidly prohibited. Scenery, like beauty, has superior merit, and its supreme use is by people for rest and recreation purposes.