Sports and Recreations
THE charms of Oregon have been sung since 1805 when Captain William Clark wrote his vivid description of its ocean shore, mountains, and streams. A few years later William Cullen Bryant in Thanatopsis celebrated the grandeur of its great river and its forests. Today hundreds of miles of highway penetrate the innermost fastnesses of the wilderness; and trails that were formerly seldom trodden have become all-year routes of travel.
The extension of good roads has coincided with a Federal program designed to conserve Oregon's resources for recreation. In 1897 the Federal government took over wide areas of forest land, and later created national forests and opened them to the public. In May 1902 Congress established Crater Lake National Park, and in July 1909 President Taft proclaimed the Oregon Caves a national monument. Within the past few years the U. S. Forest Service has set apart large tracts as recreational and wilderness areas. Its sustained-yield forest policy preserves these great playgrounds for perpetual public uses (see NATIONAL FORESTS).
Angling in the thousands of streams and lakes in all parts of Oregon is one of the state's chief sports. The cutthroat, the rainbow, the Dolly Varden, and the eastern brook trout are the principal game fish, but the one most sought after is the cutthroat, which starts upstream in March or April, when it is very susceptible to a bait of salmon eggs. In summer its taste turns to flies, with an all-season relish for royal coachman No. 10 and a less sustained appetite for March-brown, red-and-blue, upright, and grey hackle.
Men the world over have come to Oregon to fish for the steelhead, king of game fish, torpedo-like on the line. Flies, spinners, and crayfish tails are the enticements to make it strike. The Rogue and the Umpqua, its chief habitat, are at their best from July to October. The Deschutes is a famed trout stream in which flies are used exclusively during all seasons.
Rudyard Kipling has left an exciting account of a day on the Clacka-
