XII Three National Monuments
1. The Olympic National Monument
The territory embraced in the Olympic National Monument is now proposed for use as a National Park. It occupies the extreme northwest corner of the United States, a peninsula between the Pacific Ocean and Puget Sound. It is dominated by the precipitous and heavily snow-capped Olympic Mountains. These snowy summits attracted the attention of the explorer Vancouver, who named the mountains the Olympics. Their lower slopes are heavily forested with gigantic trees, and beneath these there is an undergrowth of almost bewildering luxuriance. This undergrowth is a jungle in itself. Many of the trees are heavily and picturesquely roped and bearded with moss. The openness which characterizes the Sierra or Rocky Mountain forests is absent. Gigantic tree-trunks lie scattered over the forest floor. Many of these fell centuries ago and are water-soaked, half-rotten, and covered with moss a foot thick. Here and there a living tree, a century or more of age, is standing upon a fallen one. Others are lost in the tangle of vines, huge ferns, and vigorous wild flowers that crowd the floor of the woods. Even at midday the forest reposes in twilight.
The region is extremely difficult to penetrate and explore. The streams, even during the period of low water, are almost too swift for boats, and the tangled jungle-growth, produced by abundant moisture and a mild climate, compels the explorer to chop every foot of the way he advances. Until recent years trappers, who were supposed to go everywhere, were content to work around its outskirts. Even the adventurous prospector passed it by, and searched the earth over for gold before seeking in the heart of the Olympics. Through the combined efforts of government agents, individuals, and organizations, the region has at last been pretty well explored. Both in exploring this Olympic region and in endeavoring to have a part of its primeval scenes saved in a park, the Mountaineers Club of Seattle has taken an aggressive part.
Up to the altitude of about four thousand feet the mountains are wrapped in dense green and heavy forest gloom. Then come the scattered grassy, flowery, snowy openings. Timber-line, kept low by the excessive snowfall, is at about fifty-five hundred feet altitude, one thousand feet lower than in the Alps, and six thousand feet below the forest frontier on the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. The summit slopes are a broken array of snow-fields, ice-piles, and glaciers. Above the timber-line, vast, deep snow-fields cover much of the area. These white summits show from far out at sea.
Mount Olympus, with an altitude of 8250 feet, is the highest peak. Among the other commanding peaks are Meany, Cougar, and Seattle.
The climate, tempered by the warm sea, is mild. Probably no other region in the United States has a heavier rainfall and snowfall. From sixty to one hundred feet of snow is deposited over it each winter. The only comparatively rainless months are July and August. The rain, and the water from the ice- and snow-fields, supply numerous steeply inclined streams, which descend in roaring waterfalls and in long, leaping wild cascades.
This region excels in the number and crowded conditions of large tree growth, and the impenetrable luxuriance of undergrowth. Hemlock, cedar, spruce, and fir predominate. While the hemlock is the most common tree here, the cedar is the most striking. The latter is a strangely stiff and mysterious tree of rather stocky growth. In this moist, mild clime it finds conditions for development almost ideal. The two kinds of cedar are the Alaska and the red. Thousands of acres here may be seen crowded with tall trees that will average five feet or more in diameter and one hundred and fifty feet in height. Trees twelve feet in diameter are not uncommon, and the United States Geological Survey reports one with a diameter of twenty-eight feet! Thousands of acres of red fir trees may also be found in which the average height of the trees is two hundred and forty feet!
Wild flowers are everywhere. They edge the snow-fields, cover the breaks in the cliffs, line the streams, and bank with bloom the fallen forest patriarchs. Among the common blossoms are the lovely cassiope,—white heather,—mountain anemone, phlox, and “Indian basket grass.”
This is the home of the gigantic Olympic Roosevelt elk, and among the other common animals are the bear, deer, wolf, fox, lynx, otter, and beaver. The streams are simply crowded with trout. Bald eagles are found, and there is an array of flickers, woodpeckers, warblers, jays, sparrows, and hummingbirds. The solitudes of this sylvan park are cheered with the melody of the water-ouzel, the Alaska hermit thrush, and the winter wren.
But the mountain summits are significant as view-points. From them one commands the sea, islands, and the broken shore of the Pacific. Bright Puget Sound, with a scattering of dark islands and ragged edges, fills the foreground. Looking toward the southeast across the darkly forested mountains through which rolls the Columbia, one enjoys a view vast and imposing. The dark forest cover is pierced by three snow-laden and steaming sleeping volcanoes. The most impressive one of these is Mount Rainier, with a score of enormous glaciers covering head and shoulders. Another one is Mount Adams. But the most exquisitely beautiful of all the peaks which the summits of the Olympics command is Mount St. Helens. The head and shoulders of this mountain rise a perfect snowy cone above the purple forest robe and stand as perfectly poised as a Greek statue of marble.
The Olympic National Park should include about three hundred square miles. What a splendid attraction if this area of primeval scenes and forests were kept in a state of nature!
2. The Natural Bridges and Rainbow Bridge National Monuments
Utah has the four grandest natural bridges in the world. Three of these are in the Natural Bridges National Monument, and the fourth in the Rainbow Bridge National Monument. There are natural bridges elsewhere in Utah, and in the Yellowstone and the Mesa Verde National Parks; also in Virginia and various other places. But so far as known, the four in these two National Monuments excel all others in size, in impressiveness, and in wildness of setting.
These National Monuments embrace desert regions in southeastern Utah which are made up mostly of rock-formations. Standing out on the strange desert, the fantastic forms and weird sandstone figures exhibited give the whole region a peculiar impressiveness. There are countless statuesque forms and groups that are surprisingly faithful in their resemblance to figures of birds, animals, humans, and temples; and all are of heroic size.
The bridges in the Natural Bridges Monument are known as the Sipapu or Augusta Bridge, the Kachima or Caroline Bridge, and the Owachomo or Little Bridge. The former of each of these names is of Indian origin and is the official one.
These three bridges are all within a small area. The Sipapu is 260 feet long on the bottom; the span is 157 feet high and 22 feet above the creek-bed. Its road-bed width is 28 feet. The Kachima Bridge has a span of 156 feet, a total height of 205 feet, and a width across the top of 49 feet. The Owachomo Bridge has a light, graceful structure. Its span is 194 feet and its surface 108 feet above the bottom. The arching part has a thickness of only 10 feet.
The Rainbow Bridge, whose official name is Nonnezoshie, is more of a magnificent rainbow arch than a bridge. It has splendid and striking proportions. Its great graceful arch is 308 feet high and 274 feet long.
These bridges are of sandstone of reddish cast, stained in many places with blackish or greenish lichens and rust. Like any other rock-forms, they are the product of various erosive forces—illustrating the survival of the fittest. Their material, being slightly more durable than that of the now vanished rocks, or possibly less severely tested, has endured while the other material has been dissolved and worn away. In the fashioning of the surface of the earth Nature sometimes makes beautiful and imposing statuary. She has done so here. In the surrounding country are turrets, cisterns, wells, conelike and dome-like caves and caverns, and nearly complete arches. In fact, arches and bridges showing every degree of completion and past prime condition may be seen. Near by are numerous deserted cliff dwellings. These unusual structures leave a lasting impression on every visitor. Plans are already under way to make these wonders easily accessible to the public.
3. Mukuntuweap National Monument
The Mukuntuweap National Monument, Utah, has as spectacular a cañon, and as stupendous an array of vast rock-forms, as is to be found anywhere in the world. This territory is often spoken of as “The Little Zion River Region.” The Mukuntuweap Cañon has some of the forms shown in the Grand Cañon, and an array of colors not equaled in any other cañon known. In width it varies from half a mile to only a few rods across. It does not all tend in a straight direction. It curves. The cañon walls in places are sheer and rise from two thousand to three thousand feet. One of its most startling features is shown in the overhanging walls, which the water has undercut so that in places the walls prevent a person in the bottom from seeing the sky.
In a recent report on this cañon, T. E. Hunt, of the Department of the Interior, wrote:—
At the south end, the cañon is about twelve hundred feet wide, but gradually narrows for a distance of seven miles, until a point is reached where with outstretching arms the finger tips touch the walls on either side. In a number of places the walls of this cañon rise vertically to a height of more than two thousand feet, thus exhibiting a plain surface of extremely hard, pink sandstone.
The vast barren areas of the walls are broken by figures in relief, and statuary on the summits—all the carving of Nature. On the terraces and in the niches are growths of ash and oak, maple and spruce and other trees. In a number of places these walls are further enlivened and glorified by waterfalls that plunge grandly over them into the cañon. We thus have in this region an unexcelled variety of the best-known cañon effects—the vast sweep of vertical walls, the walls that are undercut so that they appear to lean, and extreme narrowness between the walls.
But, enlivening and glorifying all these, is the color! Here you will find immense spaces of chocolate, red, crimson, magenta, and maroon, with touches of silver and gold. It is doubtful if Nature has anywhere covered such immense areas with such deep and contrasting colors as in this cañon.
This region is little known, but probably in a short time it will be easily accessible. It was made a National Monument in 1912. The people of Utah now want it for their National Park.