and Missouri. Like the mining towns in California and Nevada, cattle towns such as Abilene, Dodge City, and Ellsworth experienced a short period of boom and bust lasting about five years. The cattle towns would spring up as land speculators would rush in ahead of a proposed rail line and build a town and the supporting services attractive to the cattlemen and the cowboys. If the railroads complied, the new grazing ground and supporting town would secure the cattle trade. However, unlike the mining towns which in many cases became ghost towns and ceased to exist after the ore played out, cattle towns often evolved from cattle to farming and continued after the grazing lands were exhausted. Conservation and environmentalism The concern with the protection of the environment became a new issue in the late 19th century, pitting different interests. On the one side were the lumber and coal companies who called for maximum exploitation of natural resources to maximize jobs, economic growth, and their own profit. In the center were the conservationists, led by Theodore Roosevelt and his coalition of outdoorsmen, sportsmen, bird watchers, and scientists. They wanted to reduce waste; emphasized the value of natural beauty for tourism and ample wildlife for hunters; and argued that careful management would not only enhance these goals but also increase the long-term economic benefits to society by planned harvesting and environmental protections. Roosevelt worked his entire career to put the issue high on the national agenda. He was deeply committed to conserving natural resources. He worked closely with Gifford Pinchot and used the Newlands Reclamation Act of 1902 to promote federal construction of dams to irrigate small farms and placed 230 million acres (360,000 mi or 930,000 km) under federal protection. Roosevelt set aside more Federal land, national parks, and nature preserves than all of his predecessors combined. Roosevelt explained his position in 1910: The third element, smallest at first but growing rapidly after 1870, were the environmentalists who honored nature for its own sake, and rejected the goal of maximizing human benefits. Their leader was John Muir (1838–1914), a widely read author and naturalist and pioneer advocate of preservation of wilderness for its own sake, and founder of the Sierra Club. Muir, based in California, in 1889 started organizing support to preserve the sequoias in the Yosemite Valley; Congress did pass the Yosemite National Park bill (1890). In 1897 President