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676 in any district of considerable traffic, and, be it said, that those in charge were most liberal in their interpretation of the rules, and always ready to grant special privileges when necessary. The first season of motor travel demonstrated the feasibility of extending and enlarging the road and schedule privileges, with the result that during 1916 and 1917 the rules and regulations suffered a considerable reduction.

Fortunately for the motorist, all of the four entrances to the Park are open to his choice and he is free to select the one most convenient. The northern or Gardiner entrance, on account of its proximity to the railroad, has long been the point of easiest access for the traveller, but since the motor has established independence of transportation, the highways leading through the rugged snow-capped mountains that guard the southern, western, and eastern boundaries, should prove far more fascinating than the more travelled though less scenic route from the north.

Approaching the Park from the east by way of Cody, the home of the boyhood hero, "Buffalo Bill," the motorist's path lies for interminable miles in a snakelike trail through vast "mesas," and desolate rolling hills spotted with pungent sage, that in the liquid distance seems to rise and fall with the waves of heat flowing across the shimmering plain. Were it not for the mute evidence of water-worn gullies and deeply rutted roads, one might well imagine that moisture was entirely foreign to this land of sage-brush and sand. Further evidence, however, that water is not far removed, is to be had in the patches of green alfalfa that irrigation development has made possible. Soothing relief from the dull monotony of the sage is offered by the snow-capped peaks of the Rockies that are dimly outlined in the blue haze above the horizon.

Almost imperceptibly the country becomes rougher; the flat gives way to a succession of dry "arroyos" and miniature canyons. Curious outcroppings of rock and queer volcanic formations that hark back to woodcuts in "The First Geography," serve to revive any lost interest in the passing scene. The mountains loom up clearer and larger until their summits are lost above the top of the wind-shield, and the road ahead seems to end abruptly at the very base of a massive wall through which there is no apparent opening. Suddenly, with no warning but the conventional "Slow-down-to-six-miles-per-hour-blow-your-horn" sign, the road plunges down along the almost vertical walls of Shoshone Canyon to the very brink of a foaming torrent below. Sage-brush, mountains, the sun (unless it be in the zenith), and all but a very small strip of blue sky are shut out by vertical cliffs, between which the thundering waters of the Shoshone echo and reverberate in their mad twisting course. A more unexpected change from the vast silences of hot sage-brush could not well be imagined, and the great contrast magnifies and enhances the fascination of the cool depths of this rugged gorge. The road picks its way gingerly along ledges and over bridges, sometimes forcing its way through tunnels in the solid rock, for when this mountain was cleaved asunder to allow the passage of a river, no surplus room was left, and a more forbidding place for a road has rarely confronted man in his untiring energy to penetrate nature in her wildest haunts. This was not the motive, however, that prompted the construction of a road through this gorge, but the necessity for conveying materials for building the mighty Shoshone dam that rises almost three hundred feet above the river at the head of the canyon. A steep ascent terminated by a long tunnel through the rock brings the motorist to the level of a wonderful, placid body of water stretching away toward the mountains and held prisoner by a mass of concrete cleverly placed at the mouth of this gorge, little more than two hundred feet across. By means of a tunnel through the mountains on the north side of the dam, it is planned to convey water to vast areas of arid lands whose soil awaits only the needed moisture to produce gardens and grain-fields.

For the next half-dozen miles the road winds not unlike the Axenstrasse, above the shores of the lake, gradually straightening out into a smooth white strip that leads over the undulating floor of the North Fork Valley toward the main crest of the Absaroka Range that marks the eastern boundary of the Park. The typ-