Mount Rainier Administrative History

PART TWO: FOUNDING YEARS, 1893-1916

IV. THE NEW PLEASURING GROUND (continued)

ROADS AND TRAILS: A CITIZEN EFFORT

When Mount Rainier National Park was created, federal officials generally assumed that private enterprise would take the lead in developing visitor services while the government would undertake the more expensive task of developing roads and trails. In the early years, the government divided up responsibility for roads and trails between two executive departments. The War Department oversaw the work of surveying and constructing the park road, while the Department of the Interior handled road maintenance and all trail development.

But Mount Rainier had a tradition of local initiative in road and trail development that pre-dated the park, and this tradition carried into the park's early years. Notable citizens' accomplishments included the clearing of trails, the construction of a shelter cabin at Camp Muir, and the making of preliminary road surveys. While all of these achievements paled in comparison to the government's work of building the road to Paradise (see Chapter V), they nevertheless contributed to the development of the park. Moreover, these developments were more important for their political than their practical significance, for they tended to reinforce the sense of proprietorship with which many people in Seattle and Tacoma viewed Mount Rainier National Park.

One private citizen came to personify this tradition of local initiative and proprietorial interest in the development of the park. He was Asahel Curtis of Seattle. Like his better known brother Edward, Asahel Curtis was a professional photographer. Both the Curtis brothers began their professional lives selling scenic photographs of Mount Rainier, Edward moved on to win fame for his portraiture of American Indians, while Asahel remained in Seattle to become locally famous for his Pacific Northwest landscapes, particularly his picture albums of Mount Rainier. More to the point, Asahel Curtis came to thrive on the politics of scenic preservation. For years he served as chairman of the Seattle-Tacoma Rainier National Park Committee (later the Rainier National Park Advisory Board). He is an interesting figure in the administrative history of Mount Rainier National Park because he left an ambivalent legacy after nearly three decades of involvement in the development of the park. He combined an artist's appreciation for the scenic beauty of Mount Rainier with a businessman's keenness for boosting the park and making it into one of the Pacific Northwest's great attractions. Sometimes a friend of the park administration and other times a burr under its saddle, Curtis was easily the most active and informed private citizen during the first fifty years of Mount Rainier National Park's existence.

Although Asahel Curtis applied unsuccessfully for the position of park superintendent in 1918, he seemed to enjoy his role and vantage point outside the government. [79] Active in The Mountaineers during its founding years, he might have dominated that organization had the club not already been under the capable leadership of Professor Edward S. Meany. Instead, with T.H. Martin of Tacoma, Curtis co-founded the Seattle-Tacoma Rainier National Park Committee in 1912, an organization dedicated to the "development and exploitation of Mount Rainier National Park." [80] For many years, Curtis straddled the increasingly divergent philosophies of these two organizations. In the 1920s and 1930s, he came more and more to represent the business interests of Seattle and Tacoma in demanding further road development in the park while The Mountaineers called for less. Then, in the mid-1930s, Curtis parted company with The Mountaineers, the National Park Service, and even his fellow members on the Rainier National Park Advisory Board when he opposed the establishment of Olympic National Park. This breach severely compromised the Rainier National Park Advisory Board and effectively ended Curtis's influence on the development of Mount Rainier National Park.

Though his legacy was mixed, Curtis's vision for the park's development was remarkably consistent. His ideas were already discernable in 1908-09, when he organized and led the third annual outing of The Mountaineers. On this outing about seventy-five Mountaineers set out from the Northern Pacific railhead at Fairfax and went up the Carbon River to Moraine Park, on the north flank of the mountain, from which they made an ascent of the summit by way of the Winthrop and Emmons glaciers. [81] For Curtis, the expedition had a definite public purpose: to bring publicity to the north side of the mountain. "It is the hope of the club to not only open this region for the Mountaineers trip," Curtis wrote, "but to do as we have done with the Olympic mountains and Mt. Baker, permanently open the north side of the mountain to tourist travel." [82] Even the elaborate preparations for the expedition had a promotional quality, as Curtis reconnoitered the route in 1908 and recommended trail improvements to the acting superintendent. Curtis also sent a prospectus to the Sierra Club, dangled the club's list of supplies before a couple of prospective packers, and solicited support from the Pierce County Board of Commissioners for trail repairs outside the park boundary. [83] Shortly before the trip, Curtis invited Secretary of the Interior Richard A. Ballinger to join The Mountaineers' camp at Moraine Park while he was out west that summer. "We will be camped for three weeks on the Northern side of the mountain, in a region that has not been visited by many people for years, and it is a region that we feel deserves more attention than it is receiving at the present time in comparison with the Southern side." [84] Curtis wanted to make the national park accessible from all directions so that it would benefit all the people of the state. [85] He wanted The Mountaineers to get behind the effort to induce easterners to take vacations out west rather than abroad. [86] And with other preservationists, Curtis wanted to spread what John Muir called the "glacier gospel"--the secular faith that nature appreciation humbled and improved the human spirit. In his account of the Mount Rainier outing, Curtis wrote:

He is a poor mountaineer indeed who has not returned to his home the better for the many lessons learned in the solitudes. The trivial things of life; the petty cares that to us seem so great slink back in the presence of this majestic mountain. It is as if one heard from out the solitudes a voice: "Why all this haste? Why all this fret and care? A thousand years ere your impatient feet first trod the earth this same beauty smiled, unknown to man. The same flowers bloomed content to bloom and die, adding their mite to nature's hoard of mold. The same streams of ice coursed their way down mountain slopes in awful majesty. A thousand years after your slumber in that last great sleep, your petty deeds and purposes unknown bear their message to other sons of man, who as restless and resistless as yourself found here a curb to their impatient witless will. [87]

It was a unique feature of this era that a man like Curtis could express both the glacier gospel of John Muir and a kind of chamber-of-commerce boosterism without the least bit of cant in either case.

In 1910, Curtis helped organize a committee of The Mountaineers on Mount Rainier National Park. The committee sought the appointment of a park superintendent, government licensing of mountain guides, and the construction of a climbers' shelter at Camp Muir. It succeeded in the first two objectives within the year; the shelter took a little longer. Superintendent Edward S. Hall, appointed that fall, was the first park superintendent able to devote all his energy to the park. (His predecessor, Grenville F. Allen, was forest supervisor of the Mount Rainier Forest Reserve as well.) In his annual report for 1911, Hall described the newly implemented guide system:

Four persons were authorized to act as guides in the park during the season of 1911, one of whom was not permitted to guide to the summit of Mount Rainier nor across any glacier. Those authorized to guide to the summit are mountaineers of known ability. . . .While the present guiding system in the park is crude compared with that of the Swiss Alps, the number and class of tourists attempting the summit does not appear to warrant, at this time, a system and regulations that would add greatly to the expense of making the ascent, but the number in each party should be limited to eight persons. [88]

The recommendation of a shelter at Camp Muir had been made more than a decade earlier after the first climbing fatality on the mountain, and had been renewed in 1908 by Major Hiram Chittenden of the Army Corps of Engineers. [89] The Mountaineers committee suggested two climbers' shelters, the first to be erected at Camp Muir and a second to be built at a later time on the wedge between the Winthrop and Emmons glaciers (Steamboat Prow). Two years later, Curtis informed Superintendent Hall that "a well known man of the state" was prepared to donate funds for the construction of a shelter, and the Interior Department approved the plan, but it never materialized. [90] About three years later, in March 1915, The Mountaineers took up the issue again, this time with the desire to commemorate the recently deceased naturalist and Sierra Club founder, John Muir. With the enthusiastic support of Stephen T. Mather (then an assistant to the Secretary of the Interior), the shelter was constructed in 1916 at a cost to the government of $573.00. It was built according to specifications provided by club member Carl F. Gould. [91]

While The Mountaineers were accomplishing these limited objectives through the cooperation of the Department of the Interior, Curtis had begun to think more grandly about a system of park roads. In 1911, he received advice from Secretary of the Interior Walter L. Fisher that the full program of road and trail development that he had in mind would require action by Congress, and that he ought to "take it up with the people in the State of Washington who are interested and see what can be done to secure from Congress the necessary legislation and appropriations." [92] Armed with this letter from the secretary, Curtis contacted prominent individuals in the business communities of Seattle and Tacoma, and persuaded them to lay aside their mutual suspicions and rivalry to form an intercity committee on Mount Rainier National Park. The committee appointed Curtis as chairman and T.H. Martin, a Tacoma businessman, as secretary. Its member organizations included the Seattle Commercial Club, New Seattle Chamber of Commerce, Tacoma Chamber of Commerce and Commercial Club, Rotary Club of Seattle, and Rotary Club of Tacoma. "An important part of our work," Curtis announced to Secretary Fisher in March 1912, "will be an effort to have Congress authorize the construction of trails and roads and to appropriate funds for that purpose. In this I believe that the united action of Seattle and Tacoma will have much greater weight than their divided action has had in the past." As the work proceeded, Curtis added, the committee would "bring in other parts of the state interested in the park." [93]

The Seattle-Tacoma Rainier National Park Committee proposed a nine-point program of development. It called for surveys of a complete system of roads and trails; improvement of the south-side road and its extension to the eastern boundary of the park; roads from Longmire Springs to Indian Henry's Hunting Grounds and from the Carbon River to Moraine Park and Spray Park; protection of timber in the national forests along the approach roads to the park; a better sanitation system; a climbers' shelter at Camp Muir; a better system of park patrol; and the establishment of a "Bureau of National Parks." The nine-point program was signed by representatives of all the member organizations. [94]

In December 1912, the committee appointed Samuel C. Lancaster of Seattle to lobby in the national capital for the desired park appropriation during the upcoming short session of Congress. As soon as he arrived in Washington, D.C. in January 1913, Lancaster began laying the necessary groundwork with all of Washington state's senators and congressmen. Lancaster scored his greatest success when he obtained a meeting with President William H. Taft. The President showed a keen interest in the committee's program for the development of Mount Rainier National Park. Fortuitously, he had first-hand knowledge of the park and the government road from his visit to Mount Rainier in October 1911. After Lancaster's visit, Taft directed Secretary Fisher to prepare a supplementary estimate of $175,000 for Mount Rainier National Park--$25,000 for surveys and $150,000 for road construction--and rush it to the Senate before the Appropriations Committee ended its current deliberations. Congress balked at the administration's last minute correction, and approved a mere $10,000 for road surveys over and above the administration's original request of $13,400 for salaries and maintenance. Still, despite this disappointment, Lancaster and the Seattle-Tacoma Committee looked forward to larger appropriations in coming years. It was also a valuable learning experience; henceforward, the committee would take pains to track the budget process from its inception, beginning with the park superintendent's estimate to the Secretary of the Interior for the following fiscal year. [95]

But the committee did not stop there. With the approval of Secretary of the Interior Franklin K. Lane, who visited Mount Rainier National Park in August 1913, it hired two experienced road engineers to prepare plans and cost estimates for the completion of the park road system. On the basis of the road engineers' report, the committee recommended an estimate of $43,708 for the first year's road work and $12,500 for survey of a north-side road, both to be included in the budget for 1914. It recommended further that the road to the east boundary of the park follow a low-elevation route, beginning at a point near Longmire Springs and proceeding through the Cowlitz Valley to the Ohanapecosh Valley, then up the east boundary of the park to a point near the center, where it would connect (over Chinook Pass) with a state and county road out of Yakima. (The latter road was now under construction and was supposed to be completed to the east boundary of the park in 1914.) Because this low-elevation route went south of the park into the national forest, the committee also recommended a revision of the park boundary to encompass it. [96]

The details of the Seattle-Tacoma Committee's road survey were less important than the fact that the committee had had one made. The committee members well knew that the Department of the Interior had its own surveyors' reports; Inspector E.A. Keys had prepared detailed specifications for widening and macadamizing the road to Paradise in 1911, and a survey of the proposed road from Longmire Springs to the east boundary of the park was already funded under the sundry civil appropriation act of June 23, 1913. [97] These reports, not the report by the committee, would serve as the basis for a park road construction program. But the work of the committee put pressure on Congress to act. It added weight to the Interior Department's appropriation request for Mount Rainier National Park when that request was stacked against others for Yellowstone, Yosemite, and Glacier. This was one of the lessons that the committee had learned from its lobbyist in Washington, D.C. The national parks were all on their own, each one relying on its own small circle of support to educate members of Congress about its needs. Other parks, such as Glacier and Grand Canyon, enjoyed a great deal of "free" advertising by railroad companies. In the competition for congressional funding, publicity and demonstrable local support were critical. [98]

It was to end this bidding war between the national parks that so many local groups like the Seattle-Tacoma Committee avidly supported the establishment of a Bureau of National Parks. Lancaster pushed this idea when he returned from Washington, D.C. in 1913. "Our Inter-City Committee should co-ordinate and co-operate, or get into actual working touch with similar bodies in the cities of Denver, Salt Lake City, Reno, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Oakland, Phoenix, Santa Fe, Albuquerque, El Paso, Oklahoma City, Cheyenne, Boise, Portland, Spokane, Helena and possibly Hot Springs Arkinsaw [sic]," Lancaster advised the committee. [99] Together, they would put forward the following program:

1. Adequate representation on the necessary congressional committees, especially House appropriations.
2. Adequate appropriations for all the national parks.
3. A complete study of the "See America First" movement, bearing in mind estimates that Americans vacationing in Europe spent some $400,000,000 to $600,000,000 annually.
4. Establishment of a Bureau of National Parks.

As Lancaster envisioned it, the sole purpose of the Bureau of National Parks would be to publicize the national parks through traveling photograph exhibits and a staff of public lecturers. A federal bureau with responsibility for advertising the parks would tend to level the playing field.

The great Northern Ry. is expending money freely to advertise Glacier National Park, and is getting practical results. The Northern Pacific has done the same thing for Yellowstone, and other transcontinental lines are working for Yosemite, the Grand Canyon and other parks. All of these forces should unite as suggested with the commercial bodies of the cities named, and by co operating, these National Recreation parks can be made to yield results as yet but little dreamed of. . . .The Swiss Government has learned this lesson well and they are selling more scenery each year than any country of like area. . . .We must meet this competition. The State of Washington has scenery that fully equals that of Switzerland; we only need to make it accessible and to see that our guests are comfortably cared for when they come to visit us. [100]

The movement for a Bureau of National Parks found its champion in Stephen T. Mather, the California mountain climber, national park enthusiast, and self-made millionaire who accepted Secretary Lane's famous offer in 1914 to come on down to Washington and run the parks himself. [101] Mather quickly assumed leadership of the double-barrelled effort to get more people into the national parks and to get Congress to enact legislation that would establish a new bureau in charge of them. In 1915, Mather visited Mount Rainier on his tour of the national parks, where he was joined by members of the Seattle-Tacoma Rainier National Park Committee on a pack trip around the rugged west side of the mountain. Camped at Spray Park under a brilliant full moon, the party listened with rapt attention to a recitation of a Robert Service poem by Asahel Curtis. The next day they descended to the Carbon River and followed it out of the park. Afterwards, Mather gave his pitch to a gathering of business leaders--Thomas H. Martin, Chester Thorne, Henry A. Rhodes, Alex Baillie, David Whitcomb, William Jones, Sidney A. Perkins, Joseph Blethen, Everett Griggs, John B. Terns, Herman Chapin, Samuel Hill, Charles D. Stimson--at the Rainier Club in Seattle, and talked them into forming a Rainier National Park Company and building an inn at Paradise. [102]

Mather's pack trip with Seattle and Tacoma businessmen was not the only notable expedition in the park that summer. About the same time Mather's party was in the park, some ninety Mountaineers with a pack train of fifty horses made a complete circuit of the mountain on what would soon become known as the Wonderland Trail. As Superintendent DeWitt L. Reaburn described it, "The trip around the mountain can be made in about seven days, with an average march of 20 miles over the trail." [103] Mather does not appear to have met with The Mountaineers during his visit to Mount Rainier and the Puget Sound cities. His attention was fixed on getting a modern hotel built at Paradise in order to bring more people into the park, and enlisting local investment capital to accomplish that goal.