Colorado -- Description and travel; Natural history -- Outdoor books; Rocky Mountain National Park (Colo.) -- History; Rocky Mountains
Scenic places, if used for parks, will pay larger returns than by any
other use that can be made of their territory. Parks, then, are not a
luxury but a profitable investment. Switzerland is supporting about
half of her population through the use of her mountain scenery for
recreation purposes. Although parks pay large dividends, they also
have a higher, nobler use. They help make better men and women.
Outdoor life is educational. It develops the seeing eye, supplies
information, gives material for reflection, and compels thinking,
which is one of the greatest of accomplishments. Exercise in the pure
air of parks means health, which is the greatest of personal
resources, and this in turn makes for efficiency, kindness,
hopefulness, and high ideals. Recreation in parks tends to prevent
wasted life by preventing disease and wrong-doing. The conservation of
scenery, the use of scenic places for public recreation parks, is
conservation in the highest sense, for parks make the best economic
use of the territory and they also pay large dividends in humanity.
The travel industry is a large and direct contributor to
many industries and their laborers. It helps the railroads,
automobile-makers, hotels, guides, and the manufacturers of the
clothing, books, souvenirs, and other articles purchased by travelers.
Perhaps the farmer is the one most benefited; he furnishes the beef,
fruit, butter, chickens, and in fact all the food consumed by the
traveling multitude. A large travel industry means enlarging the home
market to gigantic proportions.
The courts have recently expressed definite and advanced views
concerning scenic beauty. In Colorado, where water has a high economic
value, a United States Circuit Court recently decided that the
beneficial use of a stream was not necessarily an agricultural,
industrial, or commercial use, and that, as a part of the scenery, it
was being beneficially used for the general welfare. The question was
whether the waters of a stream, which in the way of a lakelet and a
waterfall were among the attractions of a summer resort, could be
diverted to the detriment of the falls and used for power. The judge
said "No," because the waters as used, were contributing toward the
promotion of the public health, rest, and recreation; and that as an
object of beauty--"just to be looked at"--they were not running to
waste but were in beneficial use. He held that objects of beauty have
an important place in our lives and that these objects should not be
destroyed because they are without assessable value. The judge, Robert
E. Lewis, said in part:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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