Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States—Little Known and Unappreciated—The Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo,—The Lure of the Painted DesertLaut, Agnes C.
History
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States—Little Known and Unappreciated—The Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo,—The Lure of the Painted Desert
Laut, Agnes C.
Hopi Indians; Navajo Indians; Southwest, New -- Description and travel
"Oh, dear no! Open park country with lakes and the best of fishing. It
used to be an almost impossible trail to get up there; but there has
been a hermit fellow there for the last ten years, living in his cabin
and hunting; and year after year, never paid by anybody, he has been
building that trail up. When men ask him why he does it, he says it's to
lead people up; for the glory of God and that sort of thing. Of course,
the people in the valley think him crazy."
Of course, they do. What would we, who love the valley and its dust and
its maniacal jabber of jealousies and dollars do, building trails to
lead people up to see the Glory of God? We call those hill-crest
dwellers the troglodytes. Is it not we, who are the earth dwellers, the
dust eaters, the insects of the city ant heaps, the true troglodytes
and subsoilers of the sordid iniquities? Perhaps, by this, you think
there are some things to do if you go out to the National Forests.
* * * * *
You have been told so often that the National Forests lock up timber
from use that it comes as a surprise as you ride up the woodland trail
to hear the song of the crosscut saw and the buzzing hum of a
mill--perhaps a dozen mills--running full blast here in this National
Forest. Heaps of sawdust emit the odors of imprisoned flowers. Piles of
logs lie on all sides stamped at the end U. S.--timber sold on the stump
to any lumberman and scaled as inspected by the ranger and paid by the
buyer. To be sure, the lumberman cannot have the lumber for nothing; and
it was for nothing that the Forests were seized and cut under the old
regime.
How was the spoliation effected? Two or three ways. The law of the
public domain used to permit burn and windfall to be taken out free.
Your lumberman, then, homesteaded 160 acres on a slope of forest
affording good timber skids and chutes. So far, no wrong! Was not public
domain open to homesteading? Good; but your homesteading lumberman now
watched his chance for a high wind away from his claim. Then, purely
accidentally, you understand, the fire sprang up and swept the entire
slope of green forest away from his claim. Your homesteading lumberman
then set up a sawmill. A fire fanned up a green slope by a high wind did
less harm than fire in a slow wind in dry weather. The slope would be
left a sweep of desolate burn and windfall, dead trees and spars. Your
lumberman then went in and took his windfall and his burn free.
Thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of acres of the public
domain, were rifled free from the public in this way. If challenged, I
could give the names of men who became millionaires by lumbering in this
manner.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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