The Alaska daily empire., 1913-07-31
MISSING
 VALUABLE ASSET
(Continued from Page 1.)

!
 Here in Alaska we have dozen hot springs and say nothing of them. We have not the ingenuity or the de- sire to exploit what we have. Every year tourists run all over the world with money to burn, and beg enter prising people to take it for anus ing them.
 John Muir sad, Alaska has a hun dred Yosemites.' He spoke truly, yet no one ever hears of them.
 Go to Southern California and take the hte-shaped track out to the San Bernardino valley and at Redlands. They will be waiting with coaches and autos to haul you up Smiley heights where you see a sand and sagebrush desert on one hand and a lemon grove on the other. The tourist pays the price, is amused, and enjoys it.
 When tourists come to Juneau and asks What is there to see?' 'Aw, nothing worth while,' is the answer of the average person. There are no autos or coaches waiting to take them for a drive over the government road to the Mendenhall glacier, larger gla- cier than Switzerland affords and gath CTS in good American money from our tourists for viewing.
 Tn California you are impOrtuned | to go to Avalon and ride in the glass | bottomed boats and see the wonderful forms in the ocean water You go and 1 line the cash boxes of the transporta- tion company and the residents of San ta Catalina Islands with your big dol ! lars
 l Here is Sitka with a thousand times more beauty than Avalon, and fish, and sponges, and coral, and beautiful sea forms in the clear ocean water, but no one offers a row boat to go out to see them let alone a glass-bOttomed one.
 Some day someone will wake up and make good money out of the pro- ] fusion of beauty about Juneau, if the transportation companies will arrange to give tourists the chance to stay l long enough to see things.
 Keep the tourists long enough to show them something and give them ! their moneys worth. The value is l here You do not need to try to skin them, there is no need of any bunco game. There is enough of really beau ! tifgul things to give value received for every day the traveller stays with you. He has come from one to four thous- and miles to see things and be amused. Why disappoint him when you have so much.
 If Los Angeles had the Silver Bow basin, or the Sheep creek basin, with 1 it's jewel of a glacier clinging to the mountain at the south, or the Menden- hall Glacier, she would make millions out of it.
 At Juneau not one in ten of the resident population even knows where | Mendenhall is, and the tourist who visits it is a wonder. An hours ride in an auto along a good road puts one at the front of a greater glacier than is in Switzerland. You can ride to ! the front of 1t and ten minutes walk puts you right on the ice where you can look into it's crevasses. A river bursts from it's front, plunges over a rock rampant into a great basin of rock and tumbles away over the nor aine to the sea. A great power plant stands within a stones throw of the ice-front A short climb on a trail along the mountain through a forest of spruce and hemlock, the open spaces bOrdered with mountain flowers, brings ! you to Lookout Point from where you | look out on the stream of ice six hun dred feet below and down the val ! ley to the inlet of the ocean. On the way, at the lower part of the valley is as fine a dairy as the average of those of the famous Skagit River valley, and it is in as picturesque a setting as are the beautiful saeters, or noun tain dairies of Norway, or the Swiss dairies where the world famous cheese of the old world is made
 How many residents of Juneau have ever seen it?"