(The telegrams and letter referred to are as follows:)

Congressman CHAS. E. WINTER,

Washington, D. C.:

BUFFALO, Wyo., March 29, 1928.

Buffalo Commercial Club most vigorously protests against proposed Cooke City entrance to Yellowstone Park. With five entrances already in existence impression here seems to be that effort should be made to improve these. Many established roads could use forest funds to much better advantage. Thank you. J. C. FLINT, Secretary.

SHERIDAN, Wyo., March 29, 1928.

Congressman C. E. WINTERS,

Washington, D. C.:

Strenuously oppose Walsh bill proposing to spend $300,000 Red Lodge-Cooke City Road. Wyoming in no way benefited. This would deprive Wyoming of much-needed highway money.

A. K. CRAIG.

Congressman CHARLES E. WINTER,

Washington, D. C.

SHERIDAN, Wyo., March 29, 1928.

This club, representing the combined business and agricultural interests of Sheridan County, strenuously oppose the construction of Red Lodge-Cooke City Road if any part of Wyoming's highway funds will be used for its construction or maintenance. We further oppose it because we feel new entrance to Yellowstone Park unwarranted and unnecessary. Large sums of money now invested in development of Cooke City mineral resources by citizens of Sheridan who protest vigorously based on claim by these investors that Red Lodge-Cooke City Road will be of no economic advantage to residents or mining interests of Cooke City. They hold that the only feasible route from mining camp to railroad is into Yellowstone Park down Yellowstone River to Gardiner. If consistent with your views and duties, we urge you to appear before the Senate committee conducting the hearing and present our protest.

SHERIDAN COMMERCIAL CLUB,
L. J. O'MARR, President.

W. H. WALLACE, Commissioner.

Hon. F. E. WARREN, Senator,
Hon. JOHN B. KENDRICK, Senator,
Hon. CHARLES E. WINTER, M. C.,

CHAMBER OF COMMERCE, Casper, Wyo., February 26, 1927.

Washington, D. C.

DEAR MR. WINTER: We advised you on February 21 that our board of directors would consider at their next meeting, the protest of one of our sister cities, Cody, Wyo., relative to the building of the Red Lodge-Cooke City Road to Yellowstone Park.

This matter was considered quite at length by the board of directors of the chamber of commerce at a regular meeting held on February 25. It was the sense of our meeting that the present system of highways for forestry department roads entering Yellowstone Park should first be improved and built up to a high standard before other forestry department roads should be considered for Yellowstone Park traffic. It is also the opinion of our board of directors that this proposed road would not increase travel to Yellowstone Park and that it would not greatly increase the present facilities to the extent that the traffic could be handled any more economically.

There may be a time in the far distant future when such a road will be necessary or desirable from a traffic congestion standpoint, but the present facilities are believed to be entirely adequate for a great many years.

We respectfully request that you give this matter your usual thorough consideration and if you can concur in our proposal, that you use your best efforts to defeat the measure.

Very truly yours,

CASPER CHAMBER OF COMMERCE,
CHARLES B. STAFFORD,

Secretary-Manager.

P. S.-When will the present Congress adjourn and the new one open?

Representative WINTER. I will omit a two-page statement entitled "Information regarding the proposed line from Cooke City to Red Lodge," and signed by Lyman H. Brooks, jr., as I am under the impression that it is the same statement just introduced by Senator Kendrick.

Now, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, there are four interests involved here. One is the United States Treasury; the second are the people of the United States in the matter of their recreation facilities; and third is the mining industry at Cooke City; and fourth is the effect on other roads which have been initiated which require completion; or the building of new roads which affect the purposes proposed by this road, so far as the people of Cooke City are concerned, which will give to them a water grade reasonable, and a feasible route to Gardiner on the main line of the Northern Pacific in the direction from which they must get their mining supplies and machinery, and in the direction to which they must ship their ores to the smelter on the westward. We maintain, in the first place, that the cost of this Red Lodge-Cooke City Road is prohibitive, in the interest of the United States Treasury.

In the next place it is in our opinion practically useless for the purpose of giving the people of Cooke City an outlet to market. I can not conceive of any evidence before this committee that will demonstrate the feasibility of this road. We know that it has an altitude of 10,600 feet. It is a matter of common knowledge that the east entrance to the park, at Sylvan Pass, 2,000 feet lower than this, must be blasted out in June in time for the opening of the park. That is Sylvan Pass. The same is true of Two-gwo-tee Pass over on the Wind River Range, which is a little over 9,000 feet, 1,000 feet lower than this proposed road requires the work of scores of men and the expenditure of large money to get it open by June 15th or 20th. I submit that it is impossible to open this road, which has an altitude of 10,600 feet-1,000 to 2,000 feet higher than the passes which I have named-in time for travel, without the expenditure of excessive time and money, and it would be nothing else than an additional entrance to the park for summer travel.

And then I think I am absolutely safe in saying that whereas these other entrances can be kept open and are open for a period of three months, that every probability is that this road will be two or three or perhaps four weeks shorter in the period that it can be opened and kept open.

I have gone through Sylvan Pass, coming out of the park on the 26th day of September, a little over 8,000 feet, and have been caught in the snow drifts and battled my way by digging out through the snow in order to get out through that pass very soon after the ordinary closing date of the park.

Now, the proposition has been laid down here frequently, and the Senator from Montana agrees, that the road from Cooke City to Gardiner can be built. There is no reason why it could not and should not be built, but the park people will not permit it. But, gentlemen of the committee, as Representatives of the Congress of the United States, I submit that that is an attitude that never should be taken by any Senator or Congressman. It is absolute surrender of the powers of Congress to a department and a bureau created by this Congress.

Senator WALSH of Montana. Congressman Winter, you perhaps misunderstood me. It is not only the opposition of the Park Bureau. It is the opposition of a powerful association that exercises a great influence upon public opinion.

Representative WINTER. I understand that perfectly, Senator. Now I want to say this. I have been in hearty accord with and have the finest of personal relations with the officials of the Park Service. In the main I agree with them and support them in their undertakings Ι and their ideas as to national parks. But it is impossible to agree with them in everything, and I must contend that the Park Service should not be allowed to force us off the road to Gardiner. Down the Lamar, and the Yellowstone is the right road; we should not permit the Park Service to compel Congress to expend two millions of dollars upon a road that is unfeasible and impractical so far as the people of Cooke City are concerned and the mining industry of that section.

Gentlemen, it does not require an engineer, it does not require anybody of mountain experience to know that you can not haul trucks filled with ore and climb a distance in altitude of 4,320 feet, as I recall it, which is the height which must be reached in going out from Cooke City over the divide down to Red Lodge. As opposed to that you have what? Why, you have the natural water grade road. You have got the road that was established forty years ago because it was the natural road. We advocate its improvement and shortening. You have got a road that had rights and has rights to-day regardless of the park, I maintain.

If this road over this divide is impractical for these pepople at Cooke City, I say it is the duty of Congress, notwithstanding the Park Service, first, to preserve the road they now have through the park, and second, to improve that road in two respects. One, is to eliminate the 2,000-foot climb which is now on the road down through the park, on a circuitous section. If we made a cut-off some 19 miles in length down the north bank of the Yellowstone it would shorten the total distance more than that distance, and would serve the very purpose that the park people have in view, to wit, taking this truck traffic and this commercial stuff off on the main loop road of the park. The very thing that the park people want to bring about, that they talk about so much, will be accomplished by making this cut-off down on the north side of the Yellowstone River into Gardiner.

Now it is unquestionable in my mind that if this Red Lodge Road is opened up the park people are going to say: "Now you have got a road out the other way. You can not come through the park at all." And if the Red Loadge Road proves, as we maintain, impractical the year around, or six months or four months, then instead of doing the

people of Cooke City a benefit you have done them a great injury, because it puts the Park Service in a position to deny them even that which they have now.

I have an official Forest Service report here. Senator Kendrick, has anyone put this in evidence?

The CHAIRMAN. This has already been submitted by Senator Warren.

Representative WINTER. I hope the committee will give this a careful reading. It is signed by the officials and engineers of the Forest Service. I wish to call your attention to the conclusions.

(1) Of the four routes discussed the one to Gardiner is the natural outlet topographically.

(2) None of the routes investigated would develop any large economic forest

resources.

I have no time to go into that. It has been said that this was necessary or advisable for the protection of the forests. We have the

forest people themselves here on record to the contrary.

(3) The region is not one of high fire hazard and a road is not essential to the protection of the timber.

(4) The route to Red Lodge is the most scenic of the four.

Those are the conclusions of this report, and I will not take up your time with any 'further reference. It says that the road to Gardiner is shorter. A very large section of the road already exists and is in use. And we maintain that there has been no competent evidence before this committee to show that the improvement and cut-off down the Yellow stone of the present road wouldcost $2,000,000 or $1,000,000. I think I heard a statement here that it would cost almost as much as this proposed road to Red Lodge. On the contrary, I submit that you will find in the figures that there has been an estimate of something like $350,000.

Now, when we have a road, gentlemen, that is the natural road topographically, giving a water grade down, a road which will take the commercial traffic off of the loop road of the park, why isn't that the thing to do? We are not here with a bill before this committee for that purpose at this time, but that is what should be done. This report shows two other alternative propositions better than the Red Lodge-Cooke City proposition running to the northeast, out in that direction. Not through the park. But the report shows the Gardiner road as it exists, and with the cut-off, can be made by a wide margin the most feasible or practical way, and the most economical. Now, they say that trucks going down the north side of the river, if the road was put in there, would scare the game out of the park. In the first place, Mr. Chairman, and members of the committee, the only purpose of preserving the game is for the people to see the game. I have made frequent trips around the loop road in the park and have been able to see wild animals every few miles. It so happened that when the President was out there Mr. Albright, the superintendent of of the park, told me that they were exceptionally fortunate and they saw a very great number of wild animals in their one tour around the present loop road in the park.

Why, Mr. Chairman, in front of the lodge where the President stayed last summer there is a highway over which thousands and thousands of cars travel every day, and yet at the very same moment I have stood upon the porch and looked up the hillside across the high

way and have seen wild mountain goats and other wild animals on the top of the hill looking down at the highway.

Now that is the very purpose of having roads and having parks and having wild animals. You can not scare wild animals out of the park in that sense. It is their natural place, because they know it is a haven. Every man that is acquainted with wild animals and wild life knows that the animals know when they run in the direction of a preserve where they have protection. So there is nothing to that.

On the contrary, it is my impression when they thought to take the motion picture and put on a stampede of the buffalo, in the park, that it required an absolutely organized effort to drive those buffalo into a stampede so that they could take the picture.

Now what reason has been advanced, what particular reason has been advanced for this road? Does the park need another entrance? I have finished with the matter of the Cooke City people. This is likely to be an injury to them instead of a benefit, as I have pointed out. Now if it is proposed to build this road to make another entrance to the park, then I submit that it is absolutely unnecessary at this time, and the money that is to be devoted to this road ought to be expended on stretches of road such as exist on the Shoshone Forest between Cody and the park, which is now the weak link in that road, a narrow, winding, short curved road. The Forest Service wants to improve it. They could relieve the congestion and increase the traffic from Cody in there immensely if this Shoshone Forest section of the road was brought up to the standard of the first stretch of the road west of Cody and the stretch in the park. But they haven't the money. We are to-day trying to pass the Colton bill for $3,500,000 more to be devoted to forest roads.

Representative LEAVITT. Roads on public lands; not in the forest. Representative WINTER. Public lands and Indian reservations. I am simply illustrating the fact that we have various bills before us calling for various large public expenditures for roads. Every appropriation that is made for a new road simply lessens the possibility of having appropriations for roads already in existence that need to be completed and improved for the safety of the public. That is the situation of the road from Cody into the park through the Shoshone Forest, and that is what I mean by its effect on other roads needing completion and safety.

Senator WALSH of Montana. Including the Cody road, I suppose? Representative WINTER. For safety?

Senator WALSH of Montana. Yes.

Representative WINTER. Yes; indeed I include the Cody Road. I have used it as an illustration.

Now if you will look at this map, coming in from the northeast, will any one contend that there is necessity for a new entrance in the northeast corner of the park? With five roads leading right on west less than 30 miles to Gardiner, where they can go in over splendid highways. Good roads now run down south to the Cody entrance, approximately 30 miles, where they can run in over that established route. There is just as much need and more for another entrance at the southeast corner of the park or the southwest corner of the park as there is at this northeast corner of the park. There is not any need for another road from the northwest corner of the park, because they have just finished a road down the Gallatin. It is true that it comes