Craters of the Moon Historic Context Statements

National Park Service Management and Development, 1924-1942:
OVERVIEW OF NATIONAL PARKS IN IDAHO

In the middle nineteenth century, thoughtful Americans embraced the West's monumental scenery as proof of their nation's greatness. The region's ancient trees, time-worn canyons, and magnificent peaks surpassed Europe's cultural antiquities, renowned landscapes, and architectural masterpieces, and in turn provided Americans the cultural artifacts and identity they desired but their young nation seemed to lack. 'The agelessness of monumental scenery instead of the past accomplishments of Western Civilization," as historian Alfred Runte suggests, "was to become the visible symbol of continuity and stability in the new nation." Thus, out of a belief that the most renowned wonderlands should be set aside as symbols of national pride, and later as areas for public recreation, the national park idea was born. [1]

By the turn of the century, preservationists could point with pride to their accomplishments, for large tracts of the western landscape were protected as national parks. Yellowstone, Yosemite, Sequoia, and Mount Rainier had all been created before 1900. Over the next twenty years they were joined by other acclaimed national treasures such as Crater Lake, Mesa Verde, Glacier, Rocky Mountain, and Grand Canyon. None of these parks, however, lay within Idaho. The state's eastern boundary embraced a slim section of Yellowstone, but more by chance than design. To this day Idaho is the only western state without a national park, though it was the first state in the Pacific Northwest to establish a state park. [2]

Idahoans did not find themselves in this position for a lack of trying. As early as 1898, concerned citizens proposed setting aside Shoshone Falls as a national park in order to protect it from being submerged beneath a reservoir. The proposal, however, failed before the more influential waterpower and irrigation interests. This materialistic intent was one of the overriding arguments park opponents employed during the early period of park building throughout the country (the years after Yellowstone's creation in 1872 and the creation of the National Park Service in 1916). Nevertheless, mounting urban pressures by the first of the twentieth century led larger numbers of Idahoans and other citizens of the Pacific Northwest to seek relief in the outdoors. And the more people spent time in the outdoors, the more they realized the dangers to its natural beauty. Irrigation projects, truck logging, and the birth of the automobile age, all seemed to threaten Idaho's scenery and stimulated calls for its protection. [3]

In 1908, Senator Weldon Heyburn proposed setting aside Lake Chatcolet as a national park. A popular vacation spot, the lake was located in the Coeur d'Alene country of Idaho's panhandle, but according to historian Thomas R. Cox, Heyburn's proposal was never clear about what kind of "national" park he had in mind. In fairness to Heyburn, there was no general understanding of park standards or the purpose of parks at the time; some thought of parks as preserves of nature's monuments, and others thought of them as places for outdoor recreation. Judging from the panhandle's popularity as a vacation place, it appears that the senator envisioned something similar to the latter--a genteel summer retreat and beach resort common at the turn of the century. Thus, his park proposal had less to do with preserving natural curiosities and more to do with local boosterism and an interest in national park tourism for the local economy. Perhaps because Congress saw Heyburn's proposal as just "another national- park proposition," it refused to create a national park. But all was not lost. In 1911, the proposed area became Heyburn State Park, Idaho's first. [4]

The creation of Heyburn State Park in no way constituted a park movement in the Gem State, Cox asserts. Idaho officials showed little concern for creating state parks or improving those that came under their jurisdiction over the next several decades. At least two general reasons, more common to the Rocky Mountain states than those of the Pacific Northwest, were responsible for this lack of interest. First, many in Idaho distrusted any infringements on states' rights. Heyburn himself was the most identifiable exponent of this view; he especially disliked the Unites States Forest Service, its leader Gifford Pinchot, and "all kinds of conservation and conservationists." More than national forests, parks wrongly excluded public lands from development. Second, at the time no dedicated, dynamic, or authoritative leader stepped forward as an advocate for parks. The closest Idaho came was Heyburn who died in 1912. [5]

A lack of interest and leadership, as well as strong political challenges from resource users, characterized efforts to create a national park in Idaho. The most notable example was the attempt to create a Sawtooth national park. The first proposal appeared in 1911 when Idaho clubwomen advanced the idea. Boise's Jean Conly Smith led the movement, which soon won the endorsement of women's clubs across Idaho, the "See Idaho First" association, and such well-known park proponents as Enos Mills. Mills described the Sawtooths as mountains of "Alpine grandeur and wild magnificence." According to Mills, the Sawtooths met all the requirements for a national park, for they contained towering peaks, sparkling lakes with forested shorelines, thundering waterfalls, beautiful streams, and upland meadows. For her part, Smith believed that establishing a Sawtooth national park was important because Idaho was the only western state without one. Its scenic beauty far surpassed that of other western states, and the creation of a park would go far to bring Idaho the recognition it deserved. To this end, she claimed that except for glaciers Idaho's Sawtooth Mountains compared well to the Alps and would certainly attract tourists after some development. By describing the Sawtooths in this way, Smith and other park supporters emphasized the range's spectacular features, and at the same time declared the region economically worthless. Their arguments, typical of park proposals which attested to an area's beauty and lack of material value, eventually gained ground. Bills were introduced into Congress, and supported by Representative Addison T. Smith and Senator William E. Borah, but nothing ever came of them. [6]

Although no full-length study of the Sawtooth campaign has been written, it seems likely that the state's resource users exerted enough influence to derail the movement. One outspoken critic was Thomas C. Stanford, a sheepman from Carey, who fought the proposal for at least two decades. As he stated in the early 1920s:

The creation of such a National Park would not add one speck to the beauty of nature's work, but it would not only deprive the freedom loving people of the right of having some liberties in the mountains, that we do not enjoy in the Yellowstone Park, but it would close the gates tight against hundreds of thousands of livestock and prove a ruinous liability, instead of an asset to Idaho. [7]

The influence of resource users like Stanford seemed to carry some weight, at least in the case of Addison T. Smith. Stanford corresponded with Smith throughout the representative's long career and remained vigilant in his opposition to creating a park in the Sawtooths. Eventually, it seems, Smith changed his earlier position on the park bill and saw the issue from Stanford's perspective. He represented agricultural communities in arid southern Idaho, and in 1920 introduced legislation for an irrigation project that would have flooded the southwestern corner of Yellowstone National Park. [8] Smith's actions most likely were the product of political expedience. He enjoyed the wealth of scenery his state offered, and years later told Stanford how he resolved the park question in his mind:

As you know, I am opposed to creating a national park in Idaho, believing that if we have good roads to these natural and scenic sections, which are generally in the national forests, there would be no advantage to the people to have their jurisdiction placed under the National Park bureau. [9]

The Sawtooth park proposal also suffered when it lost its most visible leader. Jean Conly Smith moved from Boise in 1913 and soon afterward the movement languished in the face of opposition from resource users. After the National Park Service was established in 1916, however, her work was revitalized and seemed on the verge of success in the hands of the agency's dynamic new director, Stephen T. Mather. Mather created park standards to evaluate the worth of the numerous park proposals inundating his bureau, including those for the Sawtooths. As Mather's biographer said, he wanted national parks to be "large enough, primitive enough, and/or unique enough to be national in interest." The Sawtooths' alpine wilderness clearly met these new standards, but Mather abandoned the Sawtooth park proposition because it was too volatile an issue and would require "too much [political] battling." [10]

If establishing a national park in Idaho required doing "battle," the same could not be said for a national monument. In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge set aside Craters of the Moon National Monument, a boundless, blackened sea of lava containing some of the world's best examples of basaltic volcanism, covering some 54,000 acres. Compared to Idaho's hapless park movement, Craters of the Moon's creation seems to be a consolation prize. The second cousins of national parks, monuments were often of a singular importance, protecting specific natural or cultural sites of scientific or historical value within a small area. They hardly compared to the magnificent nature reserves of Yellowstone or Glacier, and thus they could promise only a fraction of the tourist revenues and prestige of parks. From a legislative perspective, their creation was simple. By virtue of the Antiquities Act, the president could create a monument by the stroke of his pen, whereas the creation of a national park required an act of Congress. This meant that there were more monuments than parks, which seemed to dilute their significance. [11]

The monument's creation, however, should not be viewed as a simple case of settling for second best. Its creation resulted from changing perceptions about the value of the lava country. That change was largely a twentieth-century phenomenon. The volcanic territory presented a foreign and forbidding landscape to nineteenth-century observers. The Craters country failed to conform to their image of natural beauty, as the Sawtooths did, and it presented a real threat to their very existence. At the turn of the century, this volcanic landscape overcame its negative perception for reasons connected to the national park movement: anxiety over the loss of the frontier and the appreciation an urban-industrial society expressed for what wild lands remained. The work of able geologists also aided in this transformation. They praised Craters of the Moon's scientific importance, and their studies of the region gave ordinary Americans the ability to appreciate this chaos of lava. [12]

By the early 1920s, Craters of the Moon was no longer a place to cross and survive; it was a place to be pondered and prized. Boosters hailed its scenic importance. And automobiles ushered in the age of auto tourism, and remote districts like the Craters country became scenic districts, magnets for tourists criss-crossing the West. In the end, the establishment of Craters of the Moon succeeded where attempts to create national parks had failed. Its resources were never seen as valuable and so their removal from the public domain did not infringe on individual rights. In addition to being economically worthless, Craters of the Moon benefited from wide public support, notably the nearby community of Arco, and the dynamic leadership of Robert W. Limbert. The monument's establishment cast a positive rather than negative image; it ran relatively free of opposition, and even won the support of political officials like Addison Smith. Viewed in this light, the language of the monument's proclamation seems all the more significant. It stated that Craters of the Moon's general purpose was to preserve an area of unusual scientific and educational value and general interest. The area ''contains a remarkable fissure eruption" along with its associated volcanic flows and formations and "has a weird and scenic landscape peculiar to itself." Preserving the weird and the beautiful, Craters of the Moon may not have showcased Idaho's "true" scenic wonders, but it nevertheless accorded the state a national distinction. [13]