National Parks
Yellowstone National Park is the worlds first National Park, Congress passed the bill creating it and President Grant signed the bill in 1872. Yellowstone became a National Park because of the beauty of its mountains and forest, the guyers, the geologic features and the wildlife. Natural beauty was, maybe for the first time, recognized as a resource worth holding on to. By the year 1900, six National Parks had been created, Yellowstone, Hot Springs, Yosemite, Kings Canyon, Sequoia, and Mount Rainier. The country was rethinking the policy of converting Public Domain to private ownership. There was a growing acceptance that certain lands are so valuable they should remain in public ownership. But, among those who favored reserving lands for public use, there were two camps of thought, those who wanted the lands managed for commercial purposes and those who wanted the lands preserved with only natural forces making changes. Both were struggling for the public mind and support.
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| Glacier National Park |
Naturalist John Muir loved the mountains and wanted them left alone, He began writing about the mountains’ beauty and solitude in the mid 1870’s making the case for preserving areas of natural beauty, preservation was the key word for Muir and his fellow lovers-of-all-things-wild. Gifford Pinchot, a fellow lover of mountains and forests, strove side-by-side with Muir for years to raise public awareness of human responsibility to care for the land, the ideas George Perkins Marsh had put forth in his 1864 book. Pinchot believed in wise use, management, conservation of natural resources. Muir believed in preservation, no trees harvested, no sheep or cattle grazing, preserve the land and let nature take its course. These differing philosophies were too great for friendship to gulf, the two men became adversaries . Their opposing views came to focus in the Hetch Hetchy Valley where, after the great San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906, the city wanted to build a dam and reservoir for its water supply. The problem with San Francisco’s plan was, the Hetch Hetchy Valley was within Yosemite National Park. The details of how National Parks should be managed hadn’t been worked out at that time, but John Muir and those who believed as he did, wanted National Parks to be preserved in their natural state, they were dead-set against the dam. Pinchot, the other giant in the natural resource conservation debate, favored the dam. The debate went national, viral we would say today, it was nasty, but it did get the question in front of the nation, “What are National Parks for?” In the end, 1913, Congress passed a law allowing the Hetch Hetchy Valley to be flooded for the reservoir. The debate had made the country aware of two great philosophies for managing the nation’s wild public lands, conservation and preservation, both are alternatives to exploitation for short term profits.
After loosing Hetch Hetchy, the preservationists went to work to establish a system in law that would never allow a land-altering development within a National Park again. A government agency to manage the National Parks was the first step needed to protect and manage the National Parks.
The first National Parks were watched over by the US Army, that made some sense because the Army had a history of making the Public Domain secure (from the native people) for immigrant Americans coming into the area. Although, this time, the Army was supposed to protect the LAND from immigrant Americans who wanted to poach wildlife, cut timber, graze sheep and cattle and everything else they had been doing on the Public Domain lands. The problem was, the Army did not have authority to arrest and punish the wrong-doers, soldiers are not policemen. So all the soldiers could do was hand-out warnings to offenders and that didn’t wasn’t much of a deterrent. For example, by 1894 the only remaining bison in America were in Yellowstone National Park and there weren’t many of them. “That year, a poacher named Edgar Howell bragged to reporters that there wasn't much anyone could do about his buffalo hunting, since the most serious penalty he faced would be to get kicked out of Yellowstone and lose $26 worth of equipment. The editor of Field and Stream ran that story, and there was a huge uproar. President Grover Cleveland signed the "Act to Protect the Birds and Animals in Yellowstone National Park.” (Writers Almanac Aug 25, 2014). But that was just one park.
The department of War, the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Interior all three claimed to be taking care of the National Parks so, you guessed it, nobody was taking care of the National Parks. Congress was not taking any action to straighten out the bickering and neither was the President, so it went on for years! At this time John Muir was gathering support to preserve the National Parks as nature had made them - even though he had lost the Hetch Hetchy debate when Congress finally decided to dam(n) it.
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| North Fork of Flathead River - Mountains of Glacier NP |
The National Parks needed a hero, and out of the west, came Stephen Mather, educated at the University of California. Stephen Mather was brilliant in advertising and promoting, working out of Chicago he became a self-made millionaire by his 40’s. He made his millions in Borax, “20 Mule Team Borax” was Stephen’s brain child. He retired from his company in 1914 to do things he believed in and a big part of that was the conservation movement. Mather had known John Muir, the Sierra Club made him an honorary vice-president and he was a member of the Boone and Crocket Club founded by Theodore Roosevelt and George Bird Grinnell. You could say he was well connected in conservation movement circles.
Being retired with a lot of money, Mather traveled, In Europe he saw what Parks could and should be like, accessible with convenient places to stay. America’s National Parks had never been “convenient” and were, in fact, shabby. Mather wrote a letter to Washington, complaining. That letter - and his promotional skills - and probably his money didn’t hurt - landed him a job in the Department of Interior as Assistant Secretary of Interior in 1914. In this job, Mather ran a publicity campaign aimed at the Executive and Legislative branches to create a bureau to operate the National Parks.
Mather knew how to get things done, “he hired Horace Albright, as legal assistant, and Robert Sterling Yard, the editor of the New York Herald and personally paid part of their salary. He sponsored the "Mather Mountain Party," a two-week trip for 15 extremely influential business leaders and politicians in the Sierra Nevadas — he paid for it himself, and the men enjoyed a luxurious vacation, hiking and fishing and enjoying fine dining (complete with linens) in the midst of the parks. By the end of the two weeks, they all supported Mather's request for a national agency to oversee the National Parks. He partnered with the railroads in their huge "See America First" publicity campaign. He got national newspapers to run headlines about the cause, started a campaign for school kids to enter essay contests, and after convincing National Geographic to devote an entire issue to the national parks, Mather gave every member of Congress a copy.” (Writer’s Almanac, Aug 25, 2014) Stephen Mather had the country ready for a National Park Service.
All this time Horace Albright had been drafting a bill to create the National Park Service, within the Department of the Interior. The Bill was ready, the country was ready and on August 25, 1916 President Wilson signed the Bill into law and National Park Service was created.
Stephen T. Mather became the Park Service’s first director, he was committed to establishing a successful agency. His boss, Secretary of Interior wrote a letter outlining how the National Parks were to be managed: “First, the national parks should be maintained in absolutely unimpaired form for the use of future generations as well as those of our own time; second that they are set apart for the use, observation, health and pleasure of the people; and third, that the natural interest must dictate all decisions affecting public or private enterprise in the parks. Every activity of the Service is subordinate to the duties imposed upon it to faithfully preserve the parks for posterity in essentially their natural state”. (Dana and Fairfax, Forest and Range Policy, pg 109). We can thank John Muir for that, he won after all. That direction for National Parks clearly indicated there should be no more dams within National Parks and the Park Service would enforce the policy. Of course that was direction from the head of the Department of Interior in the Executive Branch, Congress could pass a law to do anything it wanted in a National Park and if the President signed the law, the Department of Interior’s direction would be overridden.
Stephen Mather had his marching orders and he was the guy to carry them out, also, he wanted to see the National Park system expanded. To expand the number and size of National Parks would take money allocated by Congress, that would take the public demanding their representatives allocate the money. Mather understood that the public would support what they could see and understand, he would get lots of people to visit the National Parks, give them a good experience and the Parks would sell themselves. The Park Service would emphasize hotels, roads, concessions and a publicity campaign to get people to visit. The biggest thing Mather had going for his plan was the automobile. It was becoming more reliable, engineers were figuring out what kinds of roads cars needed and maybe most important, Americans were loving driving.
There was certainly opposition to expanding the National Park System, Parks couldn’t just be carved out of the Public Domain by Presidential proclamation as the Forest Reserves had, the best Public Domain land had already been designated for other uses, “the frontier was closed” (according to the 1890 census). New parks would have to be designated by Congress from National Forests, other federal lands or purchased private land, often all three. There was local opposition, people resisted “too much government,” the National Forests were already there and many locals thought that was more than enough. The economic benefits of tourism were not yet evident. The Forest Service certainly was not a supporter of National Parks that would be carved from National Forest.
It was a tough go, but Mather was up to it. The Park Service had a few big supporters: Women’s Garden Clubs, especially in California; the railroads, they wanted to bring tourists to the Parks; the American Automobile Association (AAA) was interested in promoting driving; and concessionaires supported the Parks because they could run hotels, tourist services and trinket shops within these beautiful parks. Stephen Mather made all these moving parts work together and today the parks are successful because they are accessible by automobile and they serve and educate visitors with comfort and convenience. The beauty and grander of the parks remain the reason people from all over the world visit.
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| Not all recreation is high adventure. |
Outdoor recreation on National Parks and National Forests are worth discussing. A National Park may be thought of as fine museum. Museums display beauty, educate visitors, and keep control of the displays and do not let visitors impact the displays. National Parks are like that, people go there, they see the natural beauty, they are educated and are inspired by the grander. Visitors are controlled to minimize impact on the forest, mountains, lakes, wildlife and other natural features in the Park. That is what the Park Service is supposed to do and they do a good job of it.
Outdoor recreation on the National Forest is very different, it is much less controlled, people are not as concentrated and there are not as many facilities, like paved roads, hotels, and shops as in National Parks. That is appropriate because, if a National Park is like a big museum, a National Forest is like a big farm where the crops are, wood, water, wildlife, recreation and grazing. Logging trucks may go past campgrounds in a National Forests, not in a Park; you can hunt in a National Forest, not in a National Park; cows may be grazing near the stream you are fishing in a National Forest, no cows in a Park.
The Park Service began competing with the Forest Service for the most scenic land in America soon after its creation. Many National Parks and National Monuments have been carved from National Forests. Competition between the two agencies has peaked and lulled from time to time, but it was bitter in the 1930’s when the Secretary of Interior Ickes was pushing hard to have the National Forests brought into Interior. He didn’t succeed, but the issue has never totally been put to rest.
On the plus side, the competition between the Park Service and Forest Serviced has resulted in both agencies doing their best, with the resources and direction they have, to serve public recreation desires.
Our National Parks are a great heritage, it has taken farsighted, talented, and committed people to create and keep them. Every day it takes committed and dedicated people to care for them and propel them into our future. Thankfully, they’re on the job.
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