Bibliographic Essay
THE CONSERVATION MOVEMENT IN THE UNITED STATES has
been the focus of a number of excellent studies in recent years. The
best overall view of conservation during the Progressive era is Samuel
P. Hays, Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency: The Progressive
Conservation Movement 1890-1920 (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1959). Donald C. Swain, Federal Conservation Policy
1921-1933 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963), covers
the subsequent era until the start of the New Deal. On the history of
the preservation impulse in the United States, Charles B. Hosmer, Jr.,
Presence of the Past: A History of the Preservation Movement in the
United States Before Williamsburg (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons,
1965) and Preservation Comes of Age: From Williamsburg to the
National Trust 1926-1949, 2 vols. (Charlottesville: University of
Virginia Press, 1981), set the standard by which all other works of
preservation history are evaluated.
In recent years, scholarship about the National Park
Service, its leaders, and its policies has proliferated. Alfred Runte's
National Parks: The American Experience, 2d ed. (Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 1987), remains the top book in the field.
This synthesis offers the most comprehensive look at the evolution of
American attitudes about the national park system. Runte is at his best
when he discusses the impact of changing values on the national parks.
John Ise, Our National Park Policy: A Critical History
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1961), addresses the
legislative history of the park system. Ise's book is marred by
inconsistency in both the text and footnotes, and his interpretation
often seems dated and subjective. Ronald Foresta, America's National
Parks and Their Keepers (Washington, DC: Resources for the Future,
1984), is an ambitious book that focuses on Park Service policy during
the last two decades. Although valuable as an assessment of the period
after 1960, the book does not live up to its title. It is an account of
the parks and their policymakers, not of their keepers, and the
idiosyncratic perspective of the author often interferes with the
presentation of the material. Foresta is not a historian, and his work
reflects that fact. Donald C. Swain has published a number of articles
that tell important pieces of the story of the park system. His "The
National Park Service and the New Deal, 1933-1940," Pacific
Historical Review 41 (August 1972), and "The Passage of the National
Park Service Act of 1916," Wisconsin Magazine of History 50
(Autumn 1966), help present the broad outlines of the history of the
agency.
The Park Service has also produced general studies of
its history, of which the best example is Harlan D. Unrau and G. Frank
Williss, Administrative History: Expansion of the National Park
Service in the 1930s (Denver: Denver Service Center, 1983). This a
helpful account of the growth of the system during the Great Depression.
John C. Paige, The Civilian Conservation Corps and the National Park
Service, 1933-1942: An Administrative History (National Park
Service, 1985), looks closely at the impact of the CCC on the system.
Both of these present much raw data, establish chronology, and provide
the researcher with a valuable frame of reference.
Only one prior general study deals directly with the
Antiquities Act. Ronald F. Lee, The Antiquities Act of 1906
(Washington, DC: National Park Service, 1971) is a narrative account of
the process that led to the passage of the act. Lee's work yielded many
primary sources and served as an important starting point for this
book.
In its early years, personality played a major role
in the development of the Park Service. Biographies of the leading
figures provide another way to monitor the evolution of the park system
and the monuments. Donald C. Swain, Wilderness Defender: Horace M.
Albright and Conservation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1970), is an excellent if laudatory look at the second director of the
Park Service. Donald C. Swain's "Harold Ickes, Horace Albright, and the
Hundred Days: A Study in Conservation Administration," Pacific
Historical Review 34 (November 1965): 455-465, is an outstanding
analysis of Albright's maneuvering during the early days of the
Roosevelt administration. Horace M. Albright as told to Robert Cahn,
The Birth of the National Park Service: The Founding Years,
1913-1933 (Salt Lake City: Howe Brothers, 1985), tells the story of
the early years of the Park Service in Albright's own words. This
interesting and informative account suffers from the problems that often
plague oral histories. A check of documentary sources reveals that
Albright's memory is often selective, and in many cases, he engages in
inadvertent mythmaking and self-promotion at the expense of his
co-workers. Robert Shankland, Steve Mather of the National Parks,
3d ed. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970), tells the story of the early
years of the agency and the dynamic leader who brought the parks to the
attention of the American public in an engaging fashion. Shankland makes
Mather come alive on the pages; a reader truly feels the vigor of this
driven man. Unfortunately, the Shankland book lacks footnotes.
The history of American archaeology and anthropology
are other important components of the history of the Antiquities Act and
the national monuments. The best overall study of American archaeology
is Gordon R. Willey and Jeremy A. Sabloff, A History of American
Archaeology 2d ed., (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1980). Curtis
Hinsley, Jr., Scientists and Savages: The Smithsonian Institution and
the Development of American Anthropology 1846-1910 (Washington, DC:
Smithsonian Institution Press, 1981), establishes the context for an
analysis of the state of American anthropology and archaeology at the
turn of the twentieth century. Another recent book that includes
historical information about southwestern archaeology is Robert H.
Lister and Florence C. Lister, Those Who Came Before (Tucson: The
University of Arizona Press, 1983).
Despite his importance as the leading archaeologist
of the first two decades of the twentieth century, Edgar L. Hewett
remains largely unstudied. Hewett's own writings, particularly
Ancient Life in the American Southwest (Indianapolis:
Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1930), give considerable insight into this
volatile and influential figure. One study, which is not really a
biography despite its title, Beatrice Chauvenet, Hewett and Friends:
A Biography of Santa Fe's Vibrant Era (Santa Fe: Museum of New
Mexico Press, 1983), falls far short of the mark. Derived strictly from
Hewett's papers and almost completely devoid of any context or
interpretation, it does not do justice to the complexity of Hewett, his
time, or the early years of southwestern archaeology. Curtis M. Hinsley,
Jr., "Edgar Lee Hewett and the School of American Research in Santa Fe,
1906-1912," in American Archaeology Past and Future, ed. David J.
Meltzer, Don D. Fowler, and Jeremy A. Sabloff (Washington, DC:
Smithsonian Institution Press, 1986), does a much better job, but his
article covers only a small story within the larger picture. Hewett had
an immense impact on every aspect of southwestern archaeology and nearly
as great an impact on tourism; the scholarly record is far from
complete.
The conflict between the Park Service and Forest
Service has been the subject of an increasing amount of scholarship.
Most authors have studied the conflicts from one side or the other, and
as a result, scholars have not reached a consensus on the topic. The
sources already cited contain the traditional perspective of the Park
Service; the best examples of the point of view of the Forest Service
are Harold K. Steen, The United States Forest Service: A History
(Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1976), and Sally K. Fairfax
and Samuel T. Dana, Forest and Range Policy (New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1980). David A. Clary, Timber in the Forest Service
(Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1986) is an important addition to
the history of the field of forest history. In recent years, a number of
efforts to synthesize the material on this issue have been published.
Ben Twight, Organizational Values and Political Power: The Forest
Service Versus the Olympic National Park (University Park:
Pennsylvania State University Press, 1983), is an interesting start in
this direction. Rather than follow the traditional stand of the USFS
(that the NPS aggressively encroached on its domain), Twight posits that
the values of the USFS and the kind of people attracted to a career in
forestry gave the Forest Service a point of view that it found difficult
to defend when faced with NPS arguments. Although Twight relies heavily
on social science theory to make his point and does not really look at
the actions of the NPS, his work has opened up new areas. Another study
that builds on Twight's work is my own "Shaping the Nature of a
Controversy: The Park Service, The Forest Service, and the Cedar Breaks
National Monument" Utah Historical Quarterly 55 (Summer 1987).
This piece explores the factors that led to the establishment of the
Cedar Breaks National Monument from a tract of the Dixie National
Forest, countering Twight by adding the Park Service perspective. This
is an area with plenty of room for future scholarship.
Primary sources played a major part in shaping this
book. Park Service sources such as the annual reports of the directors
of the agency and the proceedings of the various national parks
conferences held by the agency helped build a framework from which to
interpret the story of the national monuments. Record Group 79 of the
National Archives, which is the records of the National Park Service,
offered volumes of information. This series contains the records of each
park unit as well as general records pertaining to the national parks
and monuments from the period prior to 1949. In the reading room on the
second floor of the National Archives I pieced together the story of the
stone dish incident at Sequoia, and I began to sense Frank Pinkley's
energy and commitment. For the scholar of any aspect of the history of
the national park system, there is no more important source.
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