Nez Perce National Historical Park Administrative History

CHAPTER ONE:
Origins of Nez Perce National Historical Park

The Campaign for Nez Perce National Historical Park

National park campaigns often materialize out of the guiding vision of one individual or organization. No one entity or person can be singled out in the campaign for Nez Perce National Historical Park, although the Nez Perce Tribal Development Advisory Committee did play a central role as a consensus-builder. Rather, the campaign succeeded because local citizens, officials in the Department of the Interior, and Idaho's congressional delegation all worked together without encountering any major opposition.

On April 20, NPTEC Chairman Angus A. Wilson wrote to the Area Redevelopment Administration with a request for technical assistance. The ARA notified NPS Director Conrad L. Wirth of the request and offered a grant of $10,000. On May 2, Wirth requested that the NPS Western Region send a team to the area. Their task was to prepare a reliable cost estimate for a feasibility study to determine if the $10,000 grant was sufficient. The team, headed by Assistant Regional Director Leo J. Diederich, assembled in Lewiston on June 3. The NPS officials first convened with the Development Advisory Committee. Others who attended this meeting included representatives of the BIA and ARA, the director of the Idaho State Historical Society, the president of the Spalding Museum Foundation, and three anthropologists from Washington State University. The following day the NPS team toured the reservation with Superintendent William E. Ensor, Jr., and NPTEC Chairman Angus Wilson. The team found some serious obstacles to the proposed development. The Nez Perce Indian Reservation lacked a readily definable physical boundary to give tourists a strong sense of place; moreover, tribally-owned lands and Indian allotments were widely interspersed with lands within the reservation that were owned or leased by non-Indians. The area was scenic but did not have any outstandingly significant natural features. At the conclusion of the visit, the NPS team determined that the proposed $10,000 ARA grant was insufficient. It recommended that the feasibility study should include both a survey of the recreational resources and an analysis of the reservation's and region's economies, for a total cost of $50,000. [39]

By August the ARA had approved a $37,500 grant and the feasibility study was under way. The BIA contracted with Armour Research Foundation of Chicago. Joseph Fraser conducted field research for the economic component during the fall and completed Volume I in June 1963. Erwin Thompson, historian at Whitman Mission National Monument, was granted a leave of absence from the NPS to consult with Armour Research Foundation and prepare Volume II of the feasibility study, "A Survey of the Recreational and Tourism Resources in the Nez Perce Country." The latter volume was completed in September 1963. [40]

Fraser's report suggested that the increase in tourist traffic following completion of the Lewis and Clark Highway would justify tribal investment in a "tourist and historical facilities program." The report identified a joint commission of Indian and non-Indian area residents as the best way to manage such a venture. Fraser broke the program into three components: (1) a museum or visitor center; (2) an amphitheater and Indian village; and (3) a tourist services complex. The construction, operation, and maintenance costs of a museum or visitor center might be secured through a federal appropriation, Fraser stated. The amphitheater and Indian village, on the other hand, would probably have to be a tribal enterprise. Fraser noted that such facilities had proven profitable for some tribes and had failed for others. Finally, Fraser recommended that the tourist services complex include a motel, restaurant, service station, arts and crafts shop, trailer park, and campground. This complex would also have to be a tribal enterprise, requiring a larger investment than the amphitheater and Indian village, but the complex offered greater chances of returning a profit. [41]

Thompson's report emphasized that the history of the people and the land posed a "complex challenge to interpreters."

The history of the Nez Perce Indians offers a continuous thread that must be woven throughout the length and breadth of the tapestry. The history of the whites, who now dominate the country, must also receive emphasis. And the contacts and conflicts of the two provide a story by itself. Explorations, the fur trade, the missionaries, gold mining (both white and Chinese), the growth of towns and cities, the agriculture and forest industries, the great dams that are to come — all these and many more aspects make up the whole story. [42]

The key to success, in Thompson's estimation, was an ample visitor center. For Thompson, the visitor center would serve not only as a museum for interpreting the story of Nez Perce Country, but would also direct the visitor to numerous outlying historical sites. The facility would also provide a safe home for historical and ethnographic objects that were now scattered throughout the area and at risk of being lost or destroyed. The visitor center administrator would be in charge of running the facility and coordinating the management of scattered sites with many landowners and government agencies. [43]

Thompson invited Alvin M. Josephy, Jr., to contribute a foreword to his report. Josephy, a distinguished historian and editor with American Heritage Magazine, was then working on his book, The Nez Perce Indians and the Opening of the Northwest (1965). Enlisting Josephy in the park campaign proved to be a wise move. He had numerous contacts among the Nez Perces, as well as with politicians in Washington, D.C. Indeed, his brief foreword to Thompson's report would be quoted more often than any other testament on behalf of the park. [44]

Josephy had first discovered Nez Perce country while on an assignment for Time Magazine some years before. His "immediate, grand impression," Josephy wrote in the foreword, "was of having come on one of the most spectacularly rugged and beautiful parts of the United States." And yet this was also one of the least known and developed regions of the country. After sketching the history of the area, Josephy concluded,

Nowhere else in this country, in fact, am I aware of a large region whose over-all story can be interpreted so compactly in a setting that has so little changed under the advance of civilization. The opening of the new Lewis and Clark Highway across the Bitterroot Mountains now makes this area easily accessible as it has never been before to large numbers of vacationing American families. Without the knowledge of the background of the country through which they are driving, awareness of the great heritage of this region might easily evade them. This report, with its conclusions, shows the way to a truly imaginative interpretive program whose establishment cannot but help inspire Americans to a greater regard for this beautiful portion of the United States and its noble past. [45]

During the spring of 1963, when the Armour Research Foundation's reports were in draft, officials in the Department of the Interior began conceptualizing how the Nez Perce country might be brought into the national park system. Assistant Secretary of the Interior John A. Carver, Jr., a native of Boise, took the lead. Carver represented one of Idaho's prominent political families; prior to his appointment as assistant secretary, he had managed Frank Church's Senate office. Since joining the Interior Department, Carver had overseen several national park proposals, and he recognized at the outset that they were now "dealing with a concept which is new and different." The basic premise of a national historical park in Nez Perce country was that the region around the confluence of the Clearwater and Snake rivers offered a unique opportunity to interpret a number of distinct yet intertwining stories of the nation's heritage. The three main themes, in Carver's view, were the Lewis and Clark expedition, the mining frontier, and the War of 1877. "What we have here is not a land area to be brought under Federal ownership, but rather a series of sites," Carver observed. What would hold the park together was the interpretive effort emanating from the visitor center. [46]

From his position as Assistant Secretary, Carver made the crucial call that the project should serve the national park system first, and the Nez Perce Tribe incidentally. "I am thinking of a park equivalent to our National Historical Parks in the East," Carver wrote:

The project must stand on its own feet as a historical park type development. One incident is greatly enhanced economic opportunities for the Nez Perce Indians, but we still must remember that this is an incident, not justification for the kind of development I have outlined. This project can stand on its own feet, and it is better to emphasize its intrinsic worth rather than its contribution to Indian economic advancement. [47]

As Carver prepared to visit the Nez Perce Indian Reservation in May, NPS Acting Director George B. Hartzog, Jr., provided additional thoughts on the proposed park. Hartzog agreed that a visitor center would be an essential component of the "broad scale or regional approach in planning and promotion" that was now under discussion. Hartzog suggested that the visitor center could be located on the reservation in the Spalding-Lapwai area. There might be a satellite visitor center in the Kamiah area. Other sites might be interpreted through small on-site exhibits. Hartzog agreed with Carver that the cooperation of various landowners and agencies would be vital to the success of the program. [48]

NPS Director Conrad L. Wirth conceptualized the proposed park along similar lines but with a greater emphasis on the land base. He thought there might be a ghost town in the region that the Park Service could acquire and preserve. "It shouldn't take too much land, but we should have enough land for a proper setting to get the true feeling of the story we are trying to tell," Wirth advised. In addition, Wirth wanted the park to have land for camping and other recreational uses. "This might be worked out jointly with other land agencies but still be part of the over-all package." Finally, Wirth suggested that the park's interpretive thrust could be coordinated with similar types of units elsewhere in the nation where the story was more expansive than the actual site under NPS jurisdiction.

It might be considered as a general outpost of the interpretive story we hope to tell of the western expansion at St. Louis....In our visitor center at St. Louis we are proposing to tell the general story of the western expansion brought about by general exploration and, of course, the Louisiana Purchase. In the Nez Perce country the story would be about one of the great trails of exploration in the North, especially the Lewis and Clark Trail, and the prehistory and history of man that dates back to 9,000 B.C. It could include other historic sites, perhaps not of national importance in themselves but their combination with the over-all picture would aid in telling the complete story. [49]

Touring the Nez Perce country in mid-May, Carver and Wirth were impressed by what they saw. Idaho's Governor Robert E. Smylie joined Carver and Wirth in support of the park idea. Carver came to two important conclusions. First, the history of the area was the outstanding resource. Second, the park should be decentralized but limited to Idaho. [50]

By now it was quite clear that the Park Service, not the BIA, was guiding the park proposal along. Park planning overshadowed the development of tourist facilities, although local newspaper coverage of these developments still noted that the Nez Perce tribe was an important part of a "cooperative effort" and had offered to use some of its judgment funds to provide accommodations for park visitors. Before leaving Lewiston, Wirth asked Burroughs and several members of the Nez Perce Advisory Development Committee to draft a bill for authorizing the national historical park. A legislative assistant in the Park Service's Washington office massaged the draft bill and sent it back to the Nez Perce Advisory Development Committee. William F. Johnston, managing editor of the Lewiston Morning Tribune and chairman of the tourism subcommittee of the Nez Perce Advisory Development Committee, then submitted the draft bill with supporting documents to all four members of Idaho's congressional delegation. [51]

The whole congressional delegation responded favorably to the legislative proposal. "I wish every legislative proposal could come to me in such good shape as yours for the Nez Perce National Historical Park," Senator Frank Church wrote to Johnston. Representatives Compton I. White and Ralph Harding supported the proposal, as did the one Republican member of the delegation, Senator Len B. Jordan. It was perhaps significant that the Nez Perce country had personal associations for Jordan: the senator came from Grangeville, near the White Bird battlefield, and had operated a ranch near Pittsburg Landing in the Snake River Canyon for a number of years. [52]

William F. Johnston of the Nez Perce Tribal Development Advisory Committee nevertheless thought that two points in the bill needed strengthening. The first and easier point was the name. Initially the Park Service favored the name "Nez Perce Country National Historic Sites." Alvin Josephy thought it needed the greater prestige of the national historical park designation. John Carver agreed to change "Sites" to "Park" and let Congress amend the title back to "Sites" if Congress deemed it necessary. But William Johnston still thought the handle was too long. He could appreciate the meaning attached to each word, but the end result was "pretty cumbersome to promote nationally — or even to put on a map." [53] Eventually Senator Church shortened the title to Nez Perce National Historical Park.

The second point of the bill that Johnston sought to strengthen concerned the park's land base. As the bill was originally drafted, Section 3 provided that the government could purchase no more than 500 acres for the park. It is unclear who suggested the limitation, but its aim was clearly to deflate any charges that this was a "land grab." Johnston preferred no limitation, or at least a higher ceiling. Harold T. Fabian, chairman of the National Parks Advisory Board, agreed that the limitation could be too restrictive and might "prove embarrassing" to the Park Service. Apparently, Senator Church was willing to consider eliminating this provision, but Representatives White and Harding insisted on it. Still, with backing from the National Parks Advisory Board, Johnston persuaded the Idaho delegation to accept a higher limitation of 1,500 acres. [54]

The National Parks Advisory Board provided additional leverage in getting the bill introduced. Alvin Josephy presented the concept of the Nez Perce National Historical Park to the board at its 49th annual meeting in Big Bend National Park, Texas, in November 1963. The board adopted a resolution endorsing the concept on November 6. This action strengthened the position of the Idaho delegation; two weeks later Senator Church introduced the bill with Senator Jordan co-sponsoring it. [55]

Senator Jordan's support was especially valuable. He had refused in the previous month to co-sponsor Church's bill to establish a Sawtooth Wilderness National Park. In Jordan's view, the Sawtooth proposal was too restrictive and would hinder Idaho's economic development. The Nez Perce National Historical Park's unusual concept of land ownership, on the other hand, seemed to pose no such threat. As preservationists' hopes for a national park in Idaho's Sawtooth Range dimmed, the prospects for the Nez Perce National Historical Park looked comparatively brighter. [56]

Once Idaho's congressional delegation was unified behind the bill, its progress through Congress was relatively straightforward. Most importantly, Congress chose not to debate or prescribe the actual sites that would be included in the park; this was left to the discretion of the Secretary of the Interior. Instead, Congressional debate focused on the amount of acreage that the Secretary of the Interior would be authorized to acquire in fee and in scenic easements, the amount of the limitation on land acquisition and development costs, and the limits on the secretary's authority in administering cooperative sites. [57] The Senate Subcommittee on Public Lands held hearings on the bill in Washington, D.C., and Lewiston in August and October 1964. [58] Following the election of the 89th Congress in 1964, Representative White re-introduced the bill in the House on January 4, 1965, and Church and Jordan re-introduced an identical bill in the Senate on January 6. The Senate Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs reported the bill with an amendment on February 9, and the Senate amended and passed the bill the next day, and referred it to the House Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs. The House committee reported on the bill with an amendment on April 14, and the House amended and passed the bill on May 3.

The question then arose whether the Senate and House needed to go to conference to reconcile the difference between the two bills. The Senate's amendment to the bill stipulated that no more than $630,000 would be authorized for land acquisition. The House version carried this same provision, but added a limitation of $1,337,000 for development. Senators Church and Jordan recommended that the Senate agree to the amendment by the House and dispense with a joint conference. [59] The bill, Public Law 89-19, was finally approved on May 15, 1965.