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Home Monuments
for Later Evolution of the National Military Park Idea Conclusion
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V. CONCLUSION But in 1933 it was already becoming evident that a truly national historic preservation policy and program plainly needed a much broader base than battlefields, important as they were. The vision of such a broader program was already beginning to be seen by far-sighted persons associated with the National Park Service as early as 1928. In that year, the Secretary of the Interior appointed a Committee on Study of Educational Problems in National Parks. The distinguished president of the Carnegie Institution, Dr. John C. Merriam, agreed to serve as chairman of the committee. Its five members, all of them eminent scholars, included Dr. Clark Wissler, Curator of Anthropology of the American Museum of Natural History. To Dr. Wissler was assigned the task of envisioning the future of the National Park System in the field of human history. Dr. Wissler gave much thought to this subject and in addition spent the summer of 1929 in field investigations in the Southwest, visiting, among other places, Aztec, Chaco Canyon, and Mesa Verde, as well as Santa Fe and the surrounding district. At a meeting of the committee held November 26-27, 1929, in Washington, D.C., Dr. Wissler presented his conclusions in the form of a report, which received extended discussion. The committee then adopted the following statement by Dr. Wissler:
In view of the importance and the great opportunity for appreciation of the nature and meaning of history as represented in our National Parks and Monuments, it is recommended that the National Parks and Monuments containing, primarily, archeological and historical material should be selected to serve as indices of periods in the historical sequence of human life in America. At each such monument the particular event represented should be viewed in its immediate historical perspective, thus not only developing a specific narrative but presenting the event in its historical background.
This statement was incorporated with other proposals in recommendations submitted by Dr. John C. Merriam to Secretary of the Interior Ray Lyman Wilbur on November 27, 1929. Secretary Wilbur received the entire report favorably and began to act upon its recommendations promptly during the following year. The committee's statement on history, drafted by Dr. Wissler, became the germinal concept around which the historical segment of the National Park System was subsequently organized. The battlefields of successive American wars, transferred from the War Department to Interior in 1933, fitted naturally and effectively into this perceptive concept. Taking their place beside the ancient Indian ruins of the Southwest, the historic houses already Federal property, the national memorials, and the vignettes of primitive America con served in the national parks, these historic battlefields representing successive phases of American history and situated in diverse regions of the Nation, made a major contribution to the growing national heritage preserved in the National Park System for the benefit and inspiration of all the people of the United States.
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