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Show 456 Many of the distinctions which we now take for granted were only being formed in the eighteen nineties. The difference between a National Park and a Reservation, between a National Forest and a Wilderness Area, these and other distinctions were yet to be made. These artificial distinctions would be made only as a result of the increasingly powerful and complex bureaucracies which would administer federal lands. The Forest Reserve Act of 1891 did not specify that Reserves were set apart for specific uses. Just as Olmsted had seen that the Reservation of Yosemite Valley thirty years before was the occasion for formulating a philosophical base for creating State and National Parks, so Muir saw, in the Reservation of the National Park surrounding Yosemite, and in the Reservation of vast forested lands across the western United States, a chance finally to formulate a policy of preserving the wild lands of America. I believe that Muir prepared himself for the coming battles during a journey in the summer of 1895, when he drifted through the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne, alone in his old wild way, and then continued his outing with Theodore Lukens and another party of young women he met along the way. Muir was impressed with the Army's administration of the National Park on this journey, in contrast to Yosemite Valley, which was badly trampled under State control. He was also pleased with the people he met in the wilder parts of the Park. He must have thought deeply about the preservation of wild flora, and about the recreation of young Americans. The first issue came out when he spoke to the Sierra Club late |
