He also echoed earlier recommendations to expand the park boundaries to include the Diamond Lake area. The expansion was necessary, according to the superintendent, in part because the existing park was “too small for a game preserve.” He noted:
. . . Many of the deer get quite tame and it seems like murder to kill them when they stray across the boundary. One case in point occurred recently during the hunting season. Voley Pearsons, of Klamath Falls, shot a doe on the road about 300 yards outside the southern entrance to the park. The doe had frequently visited the ranger’s cabin and was so tame that it would not run when an auto approached. As it is unlawful to kill a doe at any time, the man was arrested by the Park. Service and turned over to the local authorities at Fort Klamath, where he was fined $25 and costs. This case is cited only as evidence of the necessity of enlarging our game preserve. [7]
Wildlife in the park continued to become more numerous in 1919, particularly black. and brown bears and deer. The bears were becoming “very tame,” with black bears being “seen almost daily in the neighborhood of the lodge and the construction camps.” Taking photographs of feeding bears was becoming a popular visitor diversion. Smaller forms of wildlife were becoming more plentiful as a result of the continuing extermination program. A small herd of fifteen Yellowstone elk. had been turned loose in the adjacent forest reserve near Seven-Mile Creek in 1917, and by 1919 the herd was using the southern portion of the park as a summer range.
During 1919 there were no major forest fires in the park. Electric storms in August, however, started minor fires, and a fire on the forest reserve west of Union Peak that crossed the park boundary caused little damage as “it was confined to snow brush on an old burn.” To preclude such fires in the future work was initiated to cut brush and clear a fire lane along the park boundaries. [8]
In 1920 Sparrow reported that fewer bears had been sighted in the park. He observed:
Though bear make frequent visits to the construction camps in search of food, they appear less numerous than last season when they could be seen almost any day and furnished considerable entertainment for tourists. That they are fewer in numbers this season is probably due to their ceasing to fear man and his works and hence were easy victims of hunters and trappers when they left the park for their winter quarters.
This observation led Sparrow to renew his support for an extension of the park boundaries. He commented that “when a national park is established it should be large enough to let a scared bear or deer have a good run without going over the boundary to be killed.”
During 1920 the fire lane project was continued to aid park personnel in resource management and preservation. Brush was cut “from a strip 8 feet wide around the park boundary as a precaution against forest fires and to aid prevention of trespass by stockmen and game poachers.” All “trees within this strip were blazed on two sides.” [9]
