April 25, 1936 — Committee on the Public Lands, US House of Representatives, Washington DC

Mrs. Edge. Mr. Chairman [René DeRouen], I asked for ten minutes, and I have a written statement. May I file that?

Chairman. Yes.

Mrs. Edge. It seems to me that no one has made enough of the fact that the whole Nation is involved. I am friends with most of the people here from the peninsula. Now, the Forest Service has logged off very much of this bottom portion and it is logged here [indicating on maps] and we ask as a restitution that we shall be given forest to the west, and I really think there is not enough made of that, that it is the right of the people of the whole United States to have given back to them the equivalent of land that was cut out in the hysteria of war time, because that is what it really amounted to. They did not have to take out the spruce, and we should have that put back. That is a little disjointed statement, but I wanted to make it.

Now, the real beauty of the Olympic Peninsula, and I wish I might ask how many of this Committee have been there, Mr. Chairman, the real beauty is not the glaciers or the forest or this or that; it is that the Olympic Park as proposed by Congressman [Monrad] Wallgren’s bill, will include in one park the beautiful beaches that one has to travel many parks to see. The glaciers of Mount Olympus are alive where those of Glacier Park are dead. The glaciers of Mount Olympus Park are pure, where those of Rainier, I am sorry to say, are sort of dirty. You cannot help it, Mr. Congressman. The forest, Mr. Chairman, I cannot tell you, no words can describe that forest. I have stood beneath this tree [indicating photograph], a Douglas fir. This is what Chris Morgenroth so well described to you. The Yosemite, even the sugar pines of the Yosemite Valley, are not more beautiful than that forest with its underlying growth.

Mr. Chairman, the mosses hanging from those trees are like the mosses hanging from your own cypresses, and I cannot tell you, those who have not been there, what an inspiration it is to travel up to that Northwest, to breathe at night in that wonderful crisp air and enjoy the sunshine in the daytime, to go swimming in those cold lakes, and then go into this forest. It is like a tropical forest. I have seen nothing like it excepting the forest in Guatemala. No one has told you, I think, adequately of the devastation. As you drive this great highway around Mount Olympus there are miles and miles of devastation and logged off. It is ugly to a degree, and here we are asking to save just one little compact piece of this marvelous forest of the Northwest. I call it the historic forest of the Northwest. It is the forest of Lewis and Clark that children read about in their school-books. It is marvelous. Now, do the people want it? I went through as a private person , and every time I bought a post card or if I had a luncheon in a restaurant I would ask whoever I happened to speak to, “How do you feel about the park?” The answer was always, “We want it” — if they were alone with me. If there was a great group, they were more careful. I remember meeting Mr. Mathias and, I think, two other chamber of commerce presidents , with some newspapermen, and we had a very, very pleasant conference, but I said a great deal and they said very little. I remember Mr. Mathias inviting me into his office, and he said he would like to give me a little gift. It is a very charming gift, and I treasure it, and he said to myself and my son, “You are right, absolutely right, and I absolutely agree with you, but we dare not say this out where people can hear us.”

Now, the women would come up and speak to me. They would say, “The Forest Service tells me that if we have this park my son  who is a forester, will be discharged. The Forest Service tells us there will be no more employment.” The Forest Service seems to have spread this idea that there will be no employment for anyone. They seem not to know the great prosperity that would come in with the park area.

Now, I went on trip through a number of the national parks last year. I have been a regular visitor to the national parks for 20 years. I have been through the Canadian parks. Especially, I know Victoria.

Now, if these forests are logged, whether in 3 or 5 years, the employment of the people is going to be gone and the national park coming in will give them employment. They tell us no money at all is spent in a community like money from a tourist trade. It goes to every different part of trade, and they want it, they need it, and they demand it; and I know, not because I am a forester or anything like that, but because I was a private traveler and went there. Of course, the Forest Service cannot make any objection to this, because in February Mr. Silcox had an interview with our treasurer, Mr. Irvin Bland, of my committee, and he said that he knew that those trees were too magnificent to be cut, so his Mr. Silcox, whom we all rely on, says that the trees are too magnificent to be cut, of course they will not be cut, but I think Mr. Silcox’s argument that they must be left in the Forest Service is wrong, for this reason, Mr. Chairman: Perhaps you will agree with me that Mr. Silcox is not immortal. If Mr. Silcox, with that opinion that the trees should not be cut, was going to live on for ever and ever, like the Douglas fir, we would be glad to leave the trees in the Forest Service, but Mr. Silcox, I regret to say, will be cut down in the course of time and his successor may not agree, so they must go in the Park Service to be preserved forever.

I think that is all I have to say.

I want to say to you that I was an eyewitness, I saw these things myself and I ferreted them out for myself and I know that I saw a cross-section of the people of the Olympic Peninsula and that they want the park.

Source: Mount Olympus National Park, Hearing Before the Committee on the Public Lands, House of Representatives, 74th Cong., 2nd Sess., On H.R. 7086, April 23–30, May 1–5, 1936 (US House Committee on Public Lands, 1936), pp. 76-78.