Quotes From The Past

Stephen Mather, internal document, February 1925.
"The primary duty of the National Park Service is to protect the national parks and national monuments under its jurisdiction and keep them as nearly in their natural state as this can be done in view of the fact that access to them must be provided in order that they may be used and enjoyed. All other activities of the bureau must be secondary (but not incidental) to this fundamental function relating to care and protection of all areas subject to its control."

Stephen T. Mather, NPS Director, 1917-1929:
"The parks do not belong to one state or to one section.... The Yosemite, the Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon are national properties in which every citizen has a vested interest; they belong as much to the man of Massachusetts, of Michigan, of Florida, as they do to the people of California, of Wyoming, and of Arizona."

Stephen T. Mather, NPS Director, 1917-1929:
"Who will gainsay that the parks contain the highest potentialities of national pride, national contentment, and national health? A visit inspires love of country; begets contentment; engenders pride of possession; contains the antidote for national restlessness.... He is a better citizen with a keener appreciation of the privilege of living here who has toured the national parks."

Mark Twain, "Roughing It" 1866
"The crater of Vesuvius, as I have remarked is a modest pit about a thousand feet deep and three thousand in circumference. That of Kileuea is somewhat deeper and ten miles in circumference. But what are either of them compared to the vacant stomach of HaleakalaS It was the sublimest spectacle I ever witnessed, and I think the memory of it will remain with me always."

Mary Roberts Rinehart, American Playwright, describing Glacier National Park, 1925
"There is no voice in all of the world so insistent to me as the wordless call of these mountains. I shall go back. Those who go once always hope to go back. The lure of the great free spaces is in their blood."

President Harry S Truman about Everglades National Park
"Here is land, tranquil in its quiet beauty .... To its natural abundance we owe the spectacular plant and animal life that distinguishes this place from all others in our country."

James Bryce, 1912, British Ambassador to the USA
" I heard the other day that a question has been raised as to whether automobiles should be admitted in Yosemite ValleySThere are plenty of roads everywhere for lovers of speed and noise, without intruding on these few placers where the wood nymphs and the water nymphs ought to be allowed to remain in untroubled seclusion, and their true worshippers to have the landscape to themselves. "

George Catlin, journalist, artist, First American call for a National Park 1833
"What a beautiful and thrilling specimen for America to preserve and hold up to the view of her refined citizens and the world in future ages! A Nations¹ Park, containing man and beast, in all the wild and freshness of their nature¹s beauty!"

Allen Chamberlain, Appalachian Mountain Club, 1911
"If more Americans could be induced to visit these scenic treasure houses the public will come to appreciate their value and stand firmly in their defense."

Bernard DeVoto, journalist/historian/novelist
"One may lack words to express the impact of beauty, but no one who has felt it remains untouched. It is renewal, enlargement, intensification. The parks preserve it permanently in the inheritance of the American citizen."

Theodore Roosevelt, in The Outlook, February 3, 1912
"The establishment of the National Park Service is justified by considerations of good administration, of the value of natural beauty as a National asset, and of the effectiveness of outdoor life and recreation in the production of good citizenship."

J. Horace McFarland, president, American Civic Assn., 1916:
"The parks are the Nation's pleasure grounds and the Nation's restoring places.... The national parks...are an American idea; it is one thing we have that has not been imported."