The Book of the National Parks Part 33

SULLY'S HILL NATIONAL PARK

Congress created the Sully's Hill National Park in North Dakota in 1904 in response to a local demand. Its hills and meadows const.i.tute a museum of practically the entire flora of the State. The United States Biological Survey maintains there a wild-animal preserve for elk, bison, antelope, and other animals representative of the northern plains.

SITKA NATIONAL MONUMENT

On Baranoff Island, upon the southeastern sh.o.r.e of Alaska, is a reservation known as the Sitka National Monument which commemorates an important episode in the early history of Alaska. On this tract, which lies within a mile of the steamboat-landing at Sitka, formerly stood the village of the Kik-Siti Indians who, in 1802, attacked the settlement of Sitka and ma.s.sacred the Russians who had established it. Two years later the Russians under Baranoff recovered the settlement from the Indians, contrary to the active opposition of Great Britain, and established the t.i.tle which they afterward transferred to the United States. Graves of some of those who fell in the later battle may be seen.

The reservation is also a fine exhibit of the forest and flora of the Alexander Archipelago. Sixteen totem-poles remain from the old native days.

OLD KASAAN NATIONAL MONUMENT

Remains of the rapidly pa.s.sing native life of the Alexander Archipelago on the southeast coast of Alaska are conserved in the Old Kasaan National Monument on the east sh.o.r.e of Prince of Wales Island. The village of Old Kasaan, occupied for many years by the Hydah tribe and abandoned a decade or more ago, contains several community houses of split timber, each of which consists of a single room with a common fireplace in the middle under a smoke-hole in the centre of the roof.

Cedar sleeping-booths, each the size of an ordinary piano-box, are built around the wall.

The monument also possesses fifty totem-poles, carved and richly colored.

Of the thirty-six national monuments, twenty-four are administered by the National Parks Service, ten by the Department of Agriculture, and two by the War Department. Congress made the a.s.signments to the Department of Agriculture on the theory that, as these monuments occurred in forests, they could be more cheaply administered by the Forest Service; but, as many of the other monuments and nearly all the national parks also occur in forests, the logic is not apparent, and these monuments suffer from disa.s.sociation with the impetus and machinery of the National Park Service.

The Big Hole Battlefield National Monument, about fifty-five miles southwest of b.u.t.te, Montana, was a.s.signed to the War Department because a battle took place there in 1877 between a small force of United States troops and a large force of Indians.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MAP OF YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, CALIFORNIA]

[Ill.u.s.tration: PROPOSED ROOSEVELT NATIONAL PARK AND THE SEQUOIA AND GENERAL GRANT NATIONAL PARKS, CALIFORNIA]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK, COLORADO]

[Ill.u.s.tration: MOUNT RAINIER NATIONAL PARK, WAs.h.i.+NGTON]

[Ill.u.s.tration: CRATER LAKE NATIONAL PARK, OREGON]

[Ill.u.s.tration: YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, WYOMING

The proposed Jackson Hole addition is enclosed by a broken line south of boundary]

[Ill.u.s.tration: GLACIER NATIONAL PARK, MONTANA]

[Ill.u.s.tration: MESA VERDE NATIONAL PARK, COLORADO]

[Ill.u.s.tration: GRAND CANYON NATIONAL PARK, ARIZONA]

[Ill.u.s.tration: ZION NATIONAL MONUMENT, UTAH]