Responding to these petitions President Cleveland on September 28, 1893, issued a proclamation (a copy of which may be seen in Appendix A) establishing the Cascade Range Forest Reserve. In his annual report for 1894 Secretary of the Interior Hoke Smith described the reserve:
The Cascade Range Forest Reserve, Oregon, runs across the State from north to south, embracing the crest of the Cascade Range, including at either end Mount Hood and Crater Lake. The reservation is 234 miles long, with an average width of 30 miles. The area is 7,020 square miles, or 4,492,800 acres. The summit of the Cascade Mountains embraces a narrow strip of land, the altitude ranging from 6,000 to 12,000 feet. Dense forests of very fine timber cover nearly the entire tract. Snow falls to a great depth, remaining until late in the summer, and in some places snow-capped mountains are to be seen the year round. This range can be properly called the watershed of the Pacific coast, and is the source of thousands of small streams tributary to larger ones.
The principal rivers whose head waters are in this reserve are Hood River, Molalla River, the Mckenzie Fork, Middle Fork and Coast Fork of the Willamette River, Metolins River, Deschutes River, Forks of the Umpqua River, Rogue River, and Klamath River from Klamath Lake. There are also numerous lakes and points of interest in the reservation.
This reserve, as stated above, embraces Mount Hood and Crater Lake, points of interest to tourists and others, and which had previously been petitioned for as separate reservations. The reserve was created upon petitions presented by citizens of Portland and of the localities directly affected. [20]
In the same report Smith went on to describe the problems of inadequate appropriations for the reserves. The lack of funds was having a deleterious effect on the policing and protection of the natural resources in the reserves. He observed:
Small appropriations for special agents have thus far made it impossible to detail any of them for the protection of the public forest reserves that have been from time to time created by Presidential proclamation, and which now include some 17,000,000 acres of land. Practically this great mass of reserved lands of this kind are no more protected by the Government than are the unreserved lands of the United States, the sole difference being that they are not subject to entry or other disposal under the public-land laws. Under date of May 12, 1894, this office, with the approval of the Secretary, issued a public notice for posting throughout the forest reserves, calling the attention of the public to the fact that the lands included therein were in a state of reservation, and warning the public against setting fire to the forests or otherwise injuring them, and requesting its aid in checking this evil.
As indicative of the spirit of lawlessness prevailing among those depredating upon these lands, it is significant that, soon after these notices were posted, upon at least one reservation one-half of them were torn down and destroyed. In view of such action, it seems imperative that Congress should appropriate sufficient money to place at least one superintendent upon each of these reservations, and upon the larger ones to provide him with a sufficient number of assistants to enable him to see that the laws and regulations of this Department are respected and that public property shall not be wantonly destroyed. That such action is that of only a few, who are desirous of furthering their personal ends, is apparent from the number of memorials from State legislatures, petitions of governors, and other State officials, State forestry associations, as well as the American Forestry Association, proposing additional forest reserves and laying out their boundaries, with cogent reasons for their establishment. But again, owing to the limited force of special agents, it is ordinarily impossible for this office to detail any of them to make the examinations of the proposed reservations, which are necessary, prior to creating them. [21]
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