The Kansas City sun. (Kansas City, Mo.) 1908-1924, 1916-11-25


club.
Is Paradise Of the Hunter.
Belmore Browne, the explorer and
hunter, who has spent three years on
Mount Mckinley, has, in behalf of the
department and of the committee on
conservation of forests and wild life of
the Camp Fire club, issued an appeal
for the establishment of the park in
which he says:
Here can still he seen the wild herds
protected from man by the rugged
ness of the country. Giant moose still
stalk through the timber line valleys,
herds of caribou move easily across
the moss-cOyered hills, bands of white
big-horn sheep are on the mountain
sides, while at any time the powerful
form of the grizzly bear may give the
browning touch to the Witness of
the picture. But while the Mount Nc
kinley region is the fountainhead
from which come the herds of game
that supply the huge expanse of south
central Alaska, that fountainhead is
menaced. Civilization is closing in, and
already sledloadS of dead animals from
the mountain country have reached
Fairbanks market. Unless n refuge is
set aside in which the animals that
remain can breed and rear their young
unmolested they will soon follow the
buffalo.
Just assume for a moment, that the
scenic supremacy of Mount Mckinley
and the conservation of it's game are
not, singly or together, sufficient JUS
t~ification for this park project (Which
they are, of course), and we still have
a third reason, sufficient in itself,
which justiies Mckinley and all the
other national parks of the country.
These great reservations cannot be dis
missed as merely r%ecreatiOnal or SEN
timental, esthetic or educational. They
are all that, but, most important of
all, they are economic. They consti-
tute Il great business asset, as such
hitherto overlooked entirely by the
country.
Switzerland lives on her scenery.
She has developed it scientifically into
Il business. She maintains tourist agen-
cles and expensive publicity opera
rtions in every foreign country from
which profitable income may be de-
rived. She entertains the world. A
few years ago Canada went into this
same scenery business, combining
American Imagination and enterprise
with British thoroughness. She adver-
tised extensively and wisely, and today
Switzerland and Canada share the
scenic reputation of the world, also
the profits
How the Government AdVertiaes.
But the assets of the United States
for this same sort of enterprise are
the best in the world. The difficulty in
the necessary propaganda or educa-
tiOnal work, or whatever you want to
call it, is that this country's stock in
trade is of such magnitude and such
rare quality that if you even attempt
to describe it adequately people won't
believe you.
$50 the government sticks to the
barest facts, tells the world that in its
Glacier park more than sixty glaciers
) coming from cliffs thousands of feet
high, feed hundreds of lakes, in n OF
| which the icepergs last all summer
And we let it go at that, not a single
|, adjective, and it is the same way
throughout the list of the eight ma
tiOnal parks of the first order.
: In the park in the Alaska range
when congress turns it over to this de
partment, the people of the United
States will have the top notch of the
scenery of the world in their OWL
: keeping for all time. Mount Mckinley
( itself is more than 10000 feet high
s There are greater heights in the Hima
v layas, it is true, but they are not domi
S mating because of the high averag,
f level of all about them. Mckinley, OF
f the contrary, is so isolated in its mag
nitude, 81 much greater than the res
of the range, that 1t presents the spec
$ tacle of a sheer rise of l 1900 feet
n Furthermore, it is accessible, or 500
will be. The Himalayas are not"