The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1901-10-17
The Appalachian Park.
(By Chas. Hallock, Editor Forest and
Stream.)

(By Chas. Hallock. Editor Forest and
Stream.)
have been doing the Appalachian For
est Preserve since June. 1t is big thing.
embracing half million square miles of
mountains, crags and forest areas. Tops
of some mountains are clean shaven,
smooth as a lawn, with fiocks and herds
grazing and on the higher elevations, like
Roam Mountain 1000 feet up and more)
the rhododendron and kalmia replace the
stunted cedars of most mountain systems
and suffuse the beautiful, rounded Shout
dCrs with pink flush, like a senorita'S
mantilla. Down in the deepest gorges,
where the whiteness of torrents shows
against the blackness, of the rocks, the
laurels, azalias and honeysuckles are
massed on either side, and banked up
like floral tributes in an Easter chancel,
mingling with the galix, the phlox and the
scarlet pinks, and often they bury the
streams clean out of sight, so that we
can hear only a murmur of suppressed
delight. Fact! What / assert is a bloom
ing reality in the month of June, and
not a midsummer nights dream woven
out of fancy. Moreover, some of the
laurel and rhododendron stems are a foot
in diameter, and your Highlands CORE
spondept, Henry Stewart who runs a
mountain saw mill, tells me that he
sawed them into boards. Later on the
forest trees are all mass of blossoms.
the chestnuts, cinquapin, tulip, sourwood
and several others waving their fronds
like giant plumes and filling the air with
fragrance.
Now | submit in common with all en-
thusiastic advocates of a national park,
whose name is legion: Are not these
rocks and waterways and eminences and
cliffs, with all their garniture and fol-
iage, not to speak of the feral fauna au
convert, fit material for a national park
commensurate with the size pretensions
and ambitions of our country? Secretary
of Agriculture James Wilson, who is as
practical as he is enthusiastic, prefers
to have this proposed magnificent Sc
gregation known as a forest preserve,
and he is right, by all odds. He says:
1.-The idea of a national park is conserva-
ton, not use; that of a forest preserve,
conservation by use" Very true, One is
simply to please the senses: the other
revenue under systematic forestry and axe
work.
Official maps define the area which is
thought to be Immediately available for
this reserve. 1t takes up the great back
bone of the Appalachian divide, with it's
dimpled tanks on either SIDE; but there
are contiguous tracts available, and even
more desirable from an economic stand
point, and several of these already en-
Joy continental notoriety as summer
resorts and private domains, the Biltmore
estate standing out conspicuous and
dominant among all others. Narrdw-
gauge railways trolleys and turnpikes
penetrate some of the most sequestered.
weaving their upward way with sinuous
aspirations toward the eliminating sum-
nfits, where all the kingdoms of the earth,
the vegetable, mineral, srboreal ana
faunal, appear at one grand coup d'oeil.
Going to Sapphire, the carriage drive
makes 423 turns in seventeen miles, and
up the twelve-mile ascent of Roam Noun
tain in about the same proportion. In
the five mountain ranges designated as
the Smokes, Balsams Blacks. Craggies
and the Blue Ridge, there are forty-three
peaks in all which are 5000 feet high
and upward, and there are eighty-two
others which exceed 5000 feet. and close
ly approximate 5000, while those which