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chapter 2 The Campaign to Establish Mount Rainier National Park the campaign to establish a national park around Mount Rainier was a collaborative eªort by Seattle and Tacoma groups and a handful of national organizations. No single figure stands out as its leader, nor did any single organization coordinate it. More than a dozen scientists,many of whom had climbed the mountain,formed one component of the campaign.They were scattered across the nation,knew one another professionally, and used the opportunity of professional meetings to form committees and prepare memorials to Congress setting forth arguments for the national park. Meanwhile, a few dozen mountaineers, most of whom resided in the Puget Sound area, constituted another component. Their infectious enthusiasm for the mountain , which they communicated in public talks and letters to local newspapers, helped to persuade Washington’s congressional delegation that the national park was a popular cause. Three young mountaineering organizations,the Sierra Club,the Appalachian Mountain Club,and the Washington Alpine Club, added their support. Finally, the Northern Pacific Railway had an important and surreptitious eªect on park legislation in the late 1890s. Bailey Willis, a geologist and mining engineer with the U.S. Geological Survey (usgs),may be credited with initiating the national cam15 paign in 1893.More than a decade earlier,in 1880,Willis had prospected for coal deposits for the Northern Pacific Railway near the northwest flank of Mount Rainier. He had cut a trail from the dense cedar forest on the upper Carbon River up to the gorgeous flower meadows known today as Spray Park, above which looms Rainier’s immense, cavitated north face, now known as Willis Wall in his memory. He returned to the mountain whenever the opportunity presented itself. In 1893, at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America, Willis proposed to his fellow geologists that they initiate an eªort to have the area preserved in a national park.The society formed a committee and appointed Willis chairman.1 The campaign quickly gained support from many quarters. At a summer meeting, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (aaas) formed a similar committee. Two months later, the National Geographic Society,meeting in Washington,D.C.,appointed a committee on the Mount Rainier National Park proposal, and over the winter of 1893–94 both the Sierra Club and the Appalachian Mountain Club, meeting in San Francisco and Boston respectively, formed similar committees. These five committees combined their eªorts in preparing a detailed memorial to Congress setting forth arguments for the national park.2 A striking feature of this movement was the strong showing of scientists ,particularly geologists.The Geological Society of America committee consisted of three esteemed usgs geologists:Samuel F.Emmons, Bailey Willis,and Dr.DavidT.Day.Emmons,a protégé of the first director of the Geological Survey,Clarence King,had climbed Rainier in 1870 at the conclusion of the usgs Geological Exploration of the Fortieth Parallel and had written a report on the volcanoes of the Pacific Coast. Willis knew the northwest side of Mount Rainier as well as any man, and he would soon make the first reconnaissance of Mount Rainier’s glacier system with Israel C. Russell and George Otis Smith in 1896. The American Association for the Advancement of Science,meanwhile, included two geologists on its committee: Russell,who had recently left the usgs to take a professorship at the University of Michigan, and Major John Wesley Powell, the Geological Survey’s current director. usgs support of the national park proposal was crucial,for it gave cred16 the campaign to establish mount rainier SE (2024-04-23 20:56 GMT) ibility to the argument that the area around Mount Rainier contained no significant mineral wealth. Other scientists on the aaas committee included Professor Joseph LeConte, a botanist; Bernhard E. Fernow , chief of the Forestry Bureau; and Clinton Hart Merriam, chief of the Biological Survey. The list of park advocates was a virtual roll call of the politically powerful scientists of the day. Mountain clubs were a second locus of support. Men and women who had been to the top of Mount Rainier enjoyed great stature in the park movement and provided much of its drive. The two committees that the Sierra Club and the Appalachian Mountain Club contributed to the campaign included four individuals who had climbed Mount Rainier. Philemon B. Van Trump of the Sierra Club had accompanied Hazard Stevens on the first...

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