Produced by Greg Bergquist and The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) Transcriber's Note The punctuation and spelling from the original text have been faithfully preserved. Only obvious typographical errors have been corrected. The photograph "The Rainbow Natural Bridge, Utah", facing page 8, is missing from the source document even though presented in the List of Illustrations. [Illustration: Map] [Illustration: Map] THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS [Illustration: _From the painting by Chris Jorgenson_ ZOROASTER FROM THE DEPTHS OF THE GRAND CANYON Nature's greatest example of stream erosion] THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS BY ROBERT STERLING YARD CHIEF, EDUCATIONAL DIVISION, NATIONAL PARK SERVICE, DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR AUTHOR OF "THE NATIONAL PARKS PORTFOLIO" "THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT," ETC. WITH MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1919 PREFACE In offering the American public a carefully studied outline of its national park system, I have two principal objects. The one is to describe and differentiate the national parks in a manner which will enable the reader to appreciate their importance, scope, meaning, beauty, manifold uses and enormous value to individual and nation. The other is to use these parks, in which Nature is writing in large plain lines the story of America's making, as examples illustrating the several kinds of scenery, and what each kind means in terms of world building; in other words, to translate the practical findings of science into unscientific phrase for the reader's increased profit and pleasure, not only in his national parks but in all other scenic places great and small. At the outset I have been confronted with a difficulty because of this double objective. The role of the interpreter is not always welcome. If I write what is vaguely known as a "popular" book, wise men have warned me that any scientific intrusion, however lightly and dramatically rendered, will displease its natural audience. If I write the simplest of scientific books, I am warned that a large body of warm-blooded, wholesome, enthusiastic Americans, the very ones above all others whose keen enjoyment I want to double by doubling their sources of pleasure, will have none of it. The suggestion that I make my text "popular" and carry my "science" in an appendix I promptly rejected, for if I cannot give the scientific aspects of nature their readable values in the text, I cannot make them worth an appendix.