Shenandoah herald. [volume] (Woodstock, Va.) 1865-1974, 1925-11-06

seaboard, and by an almost equal dis
lance. made longer by impossible
mountains, from the western centers
of population on the Pacific coast.
Yet Colorado is one of the best
known and most visited states of the
Union. Her annual receipts m
tourist trade are estimated by the
Denver Chamber of Commeres at not
less than 40 millions of dollars. The
same authority states that r k y
Mountain National Park attracted
two hundred and fifty thousand Wis
itors to the State in 1924. If these
visitors spent only $40 each, they
brought enough in one year to pay
Virginia's share of the Shenandoah
National Park Colorado says with
out hesitations that they spent at
least ten time $40 each.
Take Washington. The distance
from centers of population is even
greater than in the case of Washing
ton. The possibilities for tourist
trade are as nothing compared to
those of Virginia. The National
Park, Mt. Rainier, cannot accommo-
date one-tenth of the sightseers who
will lose themselves in Shenandoah.
And yet, the Washington State
Chamber of Commerce reports that
Mt Rainier National Park is worth
seven million dollars year in net
income, most of the money being
spent in other parts of the State
than in the immediate park area. 1t
is further held that the permanent
population and permanently invested
capital which have come to Washing
ton as direct result of the tourists
who become permanent residents or
investors, reaches total which is far
and away beyond the figures for
tourist trade.
That is the sordid money side of
/ Virginia-s proffered investment. And
| it is so far below the most conserv-
alive expectations that it is really no
criterion whatever of what Virginia
opportunity means. Let me tell you
why.
In the first place, mere distance re-
duces the advantages of their Ma
tional Parks to the states of Colo
RADIO and Washington by at least 80
per cent. A 500-mile radius drawn
around Virginia's Shenandoah Ma
tional Park includes the homes of
forty million people. 1t includes the
people who need national park the
most; the people who want to see a
national park most, the people who
have the most money to spend in Wis
-iting national park.
Out in the open spaces of the West
there is no such urge to get under the
great blue sky and see Gods unspoil-
ed United States as there is here, in
the massed, sophisticated, built-over,
Gifted states of the eastern seaboard
and eastern Mississippi Valley. Sew
enty per cent of the tourists who Wis
tied the western national parks last
of what 1 say-clear proof that the
demand for national parks is here in
the east.
The average easterner has not the
time to make trip to the far west,
even when he has the money. The
man of means and affairs, living east
of the Mississippi, has been coming
to Virginia by choice and preference
for years. Hot Springs, White Sui
phur, Old Point Comfort and places
like that are known wherever there
is wealth and culture.
The massed millions, yearning for
the outdoors, yearning for beauty,
yearning for recreation and rest from
labor, have not come to Virginia sim
ply and solely because they have not
been invited to Virginia.
In the second place, the Shenan-
doah National Park will have a tour
ist season from three to five times
as long as that of most other nation
al parks of which some are closed by
snow in winter, others rendered I'M
attractive by heat in summer. Even
without its hundred fold advantages
in accessibility, its longer tourist sea-
son would make Shenandoah the ma
tons most popular national park.
In the third place. no other nation
al park can boast of the national in
terest in places all around it which
the Old Dominion will hold out as
universal appeal. That is the real
hope, the real dream, the real ambi-
ton behind this national park move
ment for Virginia.
Recreation, conservation, Ameri-
canization-these three notes are
loudest and clearest in our move
ment, and Americanization is the
! first and greatest of them all. We
tell people that they should love the
United States, love its history, love
its traditions, love its institutions.
love its soil. How can we expect
them to follow our advice if they
never see the country that we ask
them to love- Fifty-one per cent of
our population lives in cities, on as
phalt pavements, in many-storied
apartments and tenements, with
wheels and tracks and paving stones
between them and the soil of Amer