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In order to reach the monument it is necessary to use saddle horses from Wagon Wheel Gap or Creede, points on the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad. From these places the monument may be reached by two different routes; one by leaving the Rio Grande a short distance above Wagon Wheel Gap and following the old wagon road into Blue Creek Park, thence following the trail around to the monument by the way of the head of East Bellows Creek. By this route the distance is approximately 17 miles over a fairly good trail. The second route is to follow down the Rio Grande on the north side from Creede to about 1 mile below Wason, or 3 miles below Creede, thence taking the Forest Service trail, which is posted for the entire distance from where it leaves the river bottom below Wason to the monument. This is a good trail, and the distance is about 13 miles.

OREGON CAVES NATIONAL MONUMENT.

The Oregon Caves National Monument was created by proclamation of July 12, 1909.

The Oregon Caves, or "Marble Halls," of Josephine County, discovered in 1874, are located in the Siskiyou National Forest about 30 miles south of Grants Pass in Cave Mountain, a peak of the Greyback Range that divides the headwaters of the Applegate and Illinois Rivers and connects with the Siskiyou Mountains near the north line of California.

Leaving the Southern Pacific Railway at Grants Pass, a fair wagon and automobile road runs as far as the Stephens Ranch on upper Williams Creek, a distance of 26 miles. From this point to the caves the trip must be made on horseback or afoot over a very good forest trail a distance of about 10 miles.

Cave Mountain, the peak which contains these caves, rises to an elevation of about 6,000 feet and is of limestone formation. The main openings around which the national monument has been created are at an elevation of 4,000 feet, but the entire mountain side of 5 or 6 miles shows caverns of various sizes, and in all probability throughout its interior is honeycombed like the portion that has been explored.

These caves are more of a series of galleries than of roomy caverns, though many beautiful rooms have been discovered, while miles of galleries have been visited; but there are thousands of passageways leading in all directions-partly closed by stalactites-that have never been opened, and with the distant and unexplored openings on the opposite side of the mountain the magnitude of the Oregon Caves can be said to be practically unknown.

Many small streams are found at different elevations, and larger bodies of running water can be heard in pits bottomless so far as measured (by 300-foot line). This running water probably accounts for currents of wind that in some of the galleries blow so hard as to extinguish an open light at once.

The lime deposits take many beautiful forms-massive pillars, delicate stalactites of alabaster whiteness with the crystal drop of water carrying its minute deposit of lime, from which they are formed, and broad sheets resembling drapery with graceful curves and waves that were certainly made by varying currents of wind during formation.

The Forest Service has rebuilt and improved the trails leading to the caves from each side of the divide, in order to more easily protect the valuable forest surrounding and to make the caves more accessible to tourists.

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NATIONAL MONUMENT BOUNDARY

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N. 13 E. 152 chains to S.W.Cor. Sec.35

T.395. R.6 W. W.M

Variation 19°45'E

Oregon Caves National Monument, within Siskiyou National Forest, Oreg.

DEVIL POSTPILE NATIONAL MONUMENT.

This national monument was created by proclamation of July 6, 1911, and is located in the high Sierras a few miles west of the main crest of the range in the northeastern end of Madera County, in the Sierra National Forest.

The Devil Postpile consists of a spectacular mass of hexagonal basaltic rock columns, about 2 feet each in diameter and varying up to 50 feet in height, which are exposed on one side on the face of a nearly perpendicular cliff. These are laid down in the form of an immense pile of posts, and while there are similar formations in different parts of the country this is especially prominent, being one of the most noted of its kind on the continent, and said to rank with the famous Giants Causeway on the coast of Antrim, in the north of Ireland. A mile or so below the Postpile and within the limits of

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the national monument is a beautiful waterfall, known as Rainbow Fall, in the chasm of the upper Middle Fork of the San Joaquin River. The fall, while not so high, resembles in appearance the Vernal Falls of the Merced River in Yosemite National Park, and one of the few of its kind on the continent.

Within the national monument there is also a picturesque meadow which affords a fine camp site for travelers and from which the Postpile is in sight, while in the edge of the river near this meadow is a hot sulphur spring which lends much interest to the locality.

The national monument is surrounded by some of the grandest scenery of the Sierra Nevada Range, while forests of fir, lodge pole and mountain pine clothe the surrounding slopes. Its beauties and

wonders will well repay the difficulties which are imposed upon the trip by the remoteness and relative inaccessibility of its location.

The Devil Postpile National Monument is most easily reached over the crest of the range from the east. From Laws, on the Southern Pacific, there is an automobile stage through Bishop to Mammoth, which lies at the foot of the range, and from Mammoth animals can be engaged for the trip by trail which takes only half a day over Mammoth Pass to the national monument. The latter can also be reached from Fresno, in the San Joaquin Valley on the west, either by automobile stage to Northfork, Madera County, thence by a secondary road, passable for automobiles for some 10 miles farther, some 30 miles to Granite Creek, near the junction of the forks of the San Joaquin River, and from thence by trail only some 25 miles additional, or by the Southern Pacific and the San Joaquin & Eastern Railroads from Fresno to Cascada (or Big Creek, as the post office is called), where animals can be hired for the trip by trail over Kaiser Pass, or around the western flank of the Kaiser Ridge, about a two days' trip each way.

MOUNT OLYMPUS NATIONAL MONUMENT.

This monument as originally set aside by presidential proclamation of March 2, 1909, contained approximately 608,640 acres. It was created for the purpose of preserving many objects of great and unusual scientific interest, embracing numerous glaciers, and the territory has also been from time immemorial the summer range and breeding ground of the Olympic elk, a species which is rapidly decreasing in numbers. A bill was introduced in Congress on July 15, 1911, providing for the setting aside as a national park the same tract of land as was set aside by proclamation of the President creating the Mount Olympus National Monument.

It was reduced by presidential proclamation of April 17, 1912, to 608,480 acres in order to permit certain claimants to land therein to secure title to the land. By proclamation of May 11, 1915, the monument was further reduced, and the lands eliminated thereby made part of the Olympic National Forest, in order to permit of their development, the area eliminated not being essential to the purposes for which the monument was originally established. The present area of the monument is 299,370 acres. The proclamation of May 11, 1915, reads:

I, Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the power in me vested by section 2 of the act entitled, "An act for the preservation of American antiquities," approved June 8, 1906 (34 Stat., 225), do hereby proclaim that the boundaries of the Mount Olympus National Monument as fixed and defined by proclamation of March 2, 1909 (35 Stat., 2247), and as modified by proclamation of April 17, 1912 (37 Stat., 1737), are hereby further modified and established as shown on the diagram forming a part hereof, and said national monument, as so modified and established, shall be administered in accordance with the aforesaid proclamation of March 2, 1909.

It is not intended that the lands eliminated from the Mount Olympus National Monument by this proclamation shall be eliminated from the Olympic National Forest, as established by proclamation of March 2, 1907 (34 Stat., 3306), but such lands shall continue subject to the reservation for forest purposes therein made. In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

[SEAL.]

Done at the city of Washington this 11th day of May in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and fifteen, and of the independence of the United States the one hundred and thirty-ninth.

There are a number of different routes by which the Mount Olympus National Monument may be reached, all of which require some travel by trail. The most convenient and quickest route, though not the shortest in point of miles, by which a most excellent view can be had of Mount Olympus and scenic surroundings-about 6 miles

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air line is by way of Port Angeles and the Sol Duc Hot Springs, as follows: Leave Seattle on a Puget Sound steamer about midnight, arriving in Port Angeles about 7 the following morning. Take automobile stage for Sol Duc Hot Springs, 45 miles, arriving about noon. Monument boundary about 2 miles by trail up river, but close

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