Omaha Daily Bee Newspaper, August 31, 1902, Page 27

- Beautiful Scenery of Glorious Colorado VIEW OF THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS, HERE shall we go? burning question, and echo an- swers, to Colorado and Utah. In a brief resume it is impossible to do more than briefly indicate Literally, the w of the wonders of this entrancingly itiful part of the country. he scenes, incidents and adventures of travel in Colorado have furnished th the material for many of the t entertaining descriptive letters ever ished in America. These letters found more eager and more numerous read- years ago, when there were no railroads, when the journey by wagon, on horse on foot, over the mountain trail, or ,gh perilous passes, was fraught with Alties, dangers and wild adventures. {the Indian was to be found on every 'ay, ready to take the scalp of a white if he were in the humor to do so, while hungry bears and ferocious mountain lions lurked in the way. Such perils as these added greatly to the charm of the narrative as it appeared in print, and made pleasure secking somewhat of a hardship. But such embarrassments as these must have taken much of the romance out of the trip and marred one's percept'on of the grand and beautiful in the glor- fous mountain scenery and delicious air of Colorado. With the new era ‘of railroads there is a change that brings many new charms and affords the tourist a more delightful journey through the Rockies. With easy and rapld tran- sit along the valleys, or plunging wildly through canyons, or whirling around and over the dizzy summits, the tourist of to- day may sit at the window of his luxurious palace car, charmed with wonder and ad- miration as the grand panorama of moun- tain peaks roll by as if upon a scroll, with here and there a charming vista of glens, peaks and valleys, with their sparkling waters, their verdure and their flowers—an ever-changeful vision of all that is grotesque and beautiful in this rugged configuration in the face of Mother Earth, Assuming that the searcher after rest amidst Nature's richest treasures goes from 8t, Louls to Denver he will assuredly seek out the Colorado parks. To fully understand the Colorado parks they must be seen. No description can do them justice and neither the skill of a Blerstadt nor a Moran could picture their pure atmosphere—so like the breath from Paradise—nor reproduce their beauteous colors and forms. The five great natural parks of Colorado bear an important relation to the state in all her diversified interests. They consti- tute one of her chief glories. They are not, as many suppose, small areas of flevel ground closely hemmed in by neighboring hi'ls, and beautiful with evergreens and flowers, but they are vast territories of country, large enmough for a principality, larger than two or three counties of many states, and almost as large as some of the states themselves. They contain fields and forests and great stretches of arid plains, where the herds of the cattlemen have suc- of buffalo; ceeded the herds they are NEARING THE SUMMIT OF PIKE'S PEAK —REACHED BY THE UNION PACIFIC. watered by creeks and rivers and contain villages and farmhouses; they have springs and lakes, where hotels and other places of entertainment have been built for settlers, for tourists, hunters, campers and others seeking remote places of resort in the heart of the Rocky Mountains. These prominent sections are North Park, Middle Park, Estes Park, South Park and San Luls Park. The parks in their general features form irregular plateaus or basins, their surface diversified with gently rolling hills and long, level bottoms. The valleys are clothed with luxuriant grasses and flowering plants and the hills are covered with heavy tim- ber, so that the natural beauties of hill and valley, forest and plain are combined. Pos- sessing all these advantages, the parks will become commonwealths to the farmer, the herdsman and the hunter, while the clear, cool, bracing and refreshing atmosphere is exhilarating and invigorating. These parks have many attractions that invite people within their bordérs for health and recrea tion. For game these parks have no equal in the world, for numerous streams running through them are the homes of myriads of fish, while there are plenty of deer, elk, an- telope, bear, mountain sheep, grouse and quail, squirrels and rab- bits. Often the fol- iage is so dense | that the sun's § rays can scarcely penetrate it, and the si- lence as the traveler wends his way by nar- row paths between the trees, though oppres- sive, inspires the tour- ist to moods of meditation and flights of fancy without the chance of interruption, unless, peradventure, a bear or mountain lion should spring across his pathway, for these animals, in com- pany with deer and elk, the bison, the motmtain sheep and the smaller game, are now the only residents of this region. Emerging from these dense forests into the open sunlight, the tourist sometimes finds himself upon the highest point of the moun- tain, in the midst of a grassy lawn, dotted with tiny flowers, and In the center of this lawn lles a beautiful lake, circular in form and nearly a mile wide, its crystal waters glistening in the sun, reflecting as in a mir- ror every object on its banks. To enable persons to reach these favored localities without unnecessary expenditure of time or money, the Union Pacific has put in effect very low rates and splendid train service, three trains leaving Missourl river daily for Denver, one of which is “The Colo rado Special,” the finest and fastest train in the west. Accommodations are provided for all classes of passengers on these trains, the equipment including free reclining chair cars, dining cars, buffet, smoking cars, draw- ing room sleepers and day coaches, ete. CITY PARK, DENVER, REACHED BY UNION PACIFIC. New and Useful Profession Appears for the American Youth A NEW profession has been opened in the United States. It deals with a subject that is not omly vital, but one whose vast im- portance to both personal and nal interests has become thoroughly nized. It is the profession of for- course, there have been forestry ex- in this country for many years. But of them were government employes le way or another, and government ol of forests meant generally only the wrving of tracts that were set aside wte or federal authority, to be im- 4 from the lumberman and to be pre- | as parks and forest reserves. jl the new science shaped itself slowly ' the war of conflicting interests, for- +yin the United States, as interpreted 3¢ public, practically meant only the «on of saving American trees from the But while all this superficial fighting #n between lumbermen and their sup- ¢ on one side and idealists and its on the other, the true sclence aping itself. ('g men, some sent by the govern- ,;others studying on their own ac- , were learning in Europe what real fy was in the lands where, despite ¢f lumbering, the forests still stand ind beautiful. file past few years these men have ‘eturning to tell America how to ge profitable cutting with profitable svation, and with the knowledge that iforest owners how to draw income liheir property:-and yet keep in—in @ords, how to eat their cake and have o1 the new commercial profession of ty has become an important and Ye one. My respects it is an ideal pursuit. s unequaled opportunity for living ‘and healthful out-of-doors life. It with nature’'s greatest beauties. It trofession that is not crowded. It dhances for wealth, since the trained 1a forester can see chances in the "ess which the untrained man, and # tralned but unscientific woodsman, hot guess. It is a business that <48 ample salary, for the forester can % employers where they can save or ousands of dollars that, without uld be lost. ,'the American forester must perfect in his science by studying Euro- ywestry, American conditions differ #@lly from those of Europe that for- # the United States is a profession of ¢ and the American has little to fear older colleagues on the other side. | 8. Graves, superintendent of work- 5 of the Department of Agriculture, this by saying that the American jmust direct his efforts, not to the :@ introduction of European meth- v by devising systems which can be py land owners at once, and which ssble of development as the condi- « the market allow them. In many # system will differ radically from ticed in Burope. 5 fleld where practical foresters are wdly and at once in America is on woodlands owned or controlled by Anufacturing concerns. Many of confronted with the problem of a #s8 of their source of wood pulp. hope is to introduce such a sys- subering that they can ecut succes- sive orops erops of wood every iweniy or thirty years; that is, to plant trees and aid young trees now in the sections where they are lumbering, so that, by the time they have cut their way through their property, new forests shall have grown up in the old sec- tions. There are millions of acres of land de- voted to trees for wood pulp manufacture. There are more millions devoted to lum- bering where practically the eame condi- tions prevall—that is, the owners realize that they must conserve the forests if they expect to get any future benefit from their property. A great proportion of these woods are on land that may never be avail- able for anything else. Consequently, if lumbering is.done with no provision for new growth of trees, the investments will be wiped out the moment the last tree is cut down. The state of New York now holds in re- serve 1,100,000 acres of forest lands in the Andirondacks and Is acquiring more as fast as appropriations can be obtained. At present the law prohibits cuttimg of any kind and the system of forestry is confined to protecting the forests from fire and theft. But in time it will become abso- lutely necessary to cut down a proportion of the older trees, not for profit necessar- ily, but because the science of forestry in- cludes the thinning of forests in order to give the majority of the trees the oppor- tunity for development that is denied them by the excessive growth of the big and aged trees. It is not only the product from the forests that interests the owners today. They have discovered that if they leave the small trees when lumbering, they can sell the lumbered tracts to sportsmen at high prices, providing the cutting has been done so wisely as to leave real woods. To do this the services of the forester is indispensable. The American lumberman, as a rule, knows all about the best meth- ods of cutting, but he knows nothing about conserving. Sclentific fbrutry has received a great impetus in the last year from the great pre- serves that have been established by such men as W. C. Whitney, George Vanderbilt and Dr. W. S8eward Webb, and from the work of foresters like Gifford Pinchot. Mr. Whitney has a great tract of 68,000 acres in the Adirondacks, in which he Is working out the problems of forestry and game preservation. He has already intro- duced moose, and at present W. C. Harris, the ichthyologist, is studying the problem of fish supply there for him. Besides his own foresters, of whom he has a regiment, the foresters of the United States govern- ment have been studying his tract and have laid out a method of conservative lumber- ing. This was done in accordance with an offer made by the Department of Agricul- ture to all owners, public and private, of forest lands, under which the United States authorities volunteered to make studies of certain tracts which presented favorable op- portunities to illustrate forest management, prepare plans for the work and to supervise the execution of them. The owners need merely to pay the necessary expenses of the federal employe assigned to the work. Dr. Webb also had his tract, which con- tains about 40,000 acres, examined by the government. The government experts went through the woods with hatchets, on the face of which the initials “U. 8.” were cut. Every tree that was selected as a proper one for felling was ‘‘blazed’” with this below the stump, and the lumbermen had orders to chop down no tree unless it was so marked. The results of the introduction of scien- tific methods were surprising. The net cost to the owner of going through the Webb tract and marking the trees was $543.79, Among the wasteful methods discovered in the tract and checked by the examination was that of leaving high stumps. The lum- bermen do not care to cut the trees near the ground because the work is much harder and tires their backs. By careful measure- ment the foresters demonstrated that on a tract of 40,000 acres the net loss from leav- ing high stumps was $4,800, which could be saved readily each year. They also drew up a plan for cutting the tops Instead of leaving them in the woods. As a rule, the lumbermen lop off from four to twelve feet of the tops and this debris always has been one of the great sources of forest fires. Lumbermen have objected to carrying the tops out, because they declared that they were unsalable waste and repre- sented nothing but loss and that conse- quently it would be ruinous to go to the extra expense of transporting them. The foresters showed that the tops that DELEGATES TO THE PLUMBERS' Staff Artist. wa @ INTERNATIONAL UNION, WHICH RECE NTLY MET IN OMAHA-—Photo by a were left in the wocds of a 40,000-acre tract would be worth $3,800. Thus improvident lumbering not only caused a constant menace from fire, but actually thousands of dollars had been left in the woods to rot each year. The examination of the Whitney and Webb tracts also showed the owners that enough young spruces are cut each year for skid- ways-and corduroy roads by the Ju.mnbermen to make a pretty good furest in themselves, it they were left to grow and that it certain sums were set aside now to build roads from other materials, in twenty-five years there would be many thousands of marketable trees that would more than pay for the roads and the interest on the money thus invested. As a consequence of the examination, str'ngent rules have been adopted in both the Whitney and Webb preserves. They are that no trees shall be cut unless they have been marked, while all marked trees must be felled; no tree shall be left lodged in the woods to decay or go to waste; no trees shall be cut higher than six inches above the ground; no spruce shall be used for bridges, skidways, corduroy roads or cther purpgses unless no other less valu- able timber can be obtained; all spruce used for sk'dways must be hauled out after such use if it is at all marketable; con- tractors must discharge any men who do unnecessary damage to young trees. The net resu't of the working plans thus made will be that, if they are followed faithfully and under the care of efficient foresters, lumbering can go on steadily with the present annual output in the two tracts and yet in thirty-six years there will be so many new trees that the original cut can be obtained from the land. In other words, the forest will have reproduced itself. 5 Thus, with the introduction of practical foresters, the problem of the forests will be ira way to be solved satisfactorily and practically in the United States. Lumber- ing need not be prohibited, but merely guided wisely, and there will be no more danger of American lands being denuded of forests than there is in Germany. Thé stringent laws of Germany need not be in- troduced here, for the owners of woodland are learning that it is not only to thelr future, but their immed'ate profit to lumber conservatively. In Germany the lumbering laws are so strict that even the gathering of dried branches and twigs is permitted only under definite stipulations. Felling trees {ille- gally, or, indeed, taking any lumber out of a forest without the sanction of Iuw, whether the lumber be a branch of a tree, is defined as wood theft and is punished like any other theft. The result is that there is a feellng in CRrmany against fllegal lumbering that makes the perpe- trator a criminal, not only in the eyes of the law, but also in the eyes of soclety. One Sure Indication Chicago Tribune: “You think it's going to be a hard winter? Surely you don't imagine that those things credulous people believe in about the goose bone, the musk- rat's habitation, the corn husk and the like have anything to do with the weather four months ahead, do you?" ““Well, there's one sign I never knew to sfail, I always know it’s going to be a hard winter when coal is $10 a ton.”