Big Hole National Battlefield Administrative History

Chapter Five:
Administration Under Yellowstone National Park, Later Years (1956-1977)

Mission 66

NPS Director Conrad L. Wirth conceived of Mission 66 as a means of summoning administration and congressional support for massive federal investment in the national parks. Instead of going to the Bureau of Budget and Congress for development funds in two- and three-year increments, Wirth proposed to submit a comprehensive plan for the renovation of the national park system over a ten-year span. The completion of the program in 1966 would coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the establishment of the National Park Service. [1]

Wirth was helped in his endeavor by individuals and organizations in the conservation movement whose writings in the mid-1950s brought about a heightened public awareness of the state of the parks. For example, Bernard DeVoto's scathing article in Harper's Monthly, "Let's Close Our National Parks," described the decaying infrastructure and demoralizing working conditions in the national parks, and an article in Reader's Digest by Charles Stevenson, titled "The Shocking Truth About Our National Parks," warned prospective visitors of the unsanitary, even slumlike conditions that were typical of the hotels and campgrounds.

First and foremost, Wirth persuaded President Dwight D. Eisenhower and the key committees in Congress to support Mission 66 because it would rectify nearly fifteen years of neglect resulting from budget cutbacks during World War II and the Korean Conflict. It would also restore the parks to a condition that would satisfy the growing millions of Americans who visited the national park system each year.

Of greatest importance to Big Hole Battlefield National Monument, Wirth also conceived of Mission 66 as an opportunity to rethink concepts of national park design. As Wirth remembered his instructions to his staff years later in his book Parks, Politics, and the People, the Mission 66 staff and steering committee were to question any elements of park design that they thought had outlived their usefulness: "nothing was to be sacred, except the ultimate purpose to be served. Men, method, and time-honored practices were to be accorded no vested deference." [2]

Big Hole Battlefield faced the Mission 66 era as an under funded and underutilized stepchild of Yellowstone National Park. [3] Here, "time-honored practices" were limited to making do with too little funding, too little land, and too little foresight. Those who guided the monument through the Mission 66 planning process accorded this practice little deference. [4]