Preface to the Second Edition
In 1978, when I submitted the original manuscript of
National Parks: The American Experience to the University of
Nebraska Press, I realized the book would require periodic updating and
revision. The national park system, after all, was still in the process
of change and evolution. In 1978, for example, the battle for national
parks in Alaska was just starting to intensify. Nearly three more years
were to elapse before Congress and President Jimmy Carter approved the
Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980. Similarly,
there was serious discussion in 1978 of expanding the national park
system to include a whole new assemblage of urban recreation areas,
historic sites, and national trails. In the first edition, I discussed
the issues of national park expansion only by inference. Now that I
have had the time to reflect on the significance of these newer park
categories, I consider it appropriate to devote an entire chapter to
their rationale and establishment.
The evolution of biological management in the
national parks has marked another significant change in the direction of
their history. More park administrators during the 1970s learned to
respect the importance of natural processes, especially fire. Here
again, the interval since my original research was completed has allowed
time to consider new management ideologies in national park development.
Finally, the administration of President Ronald Reagan has witnessed the
rise and fall of undoubtedly the most controversial secretary of the
interior in modern times, James Watt. I trust readers will therefore
find it appropriate that I conclude this revision with a brief summary
of Watt's impact on national park policy.
These additions are themselves still selective. As I
mentioned in the original preface, it would be impossible to include
every citation, piece of legislation, contributing individual, or
administrative detail in a history of the national park system. Some
omissions are both necessary and desirable. The second edition, like the
first, concentrates on the meaning of the national parks, their
place in the origins and evolution of underlying perceptions of the
American land.
Meanwhile, I stand by my original interpretations.
Among them none has been more debated than my observation that Congress
allowed only those lands considered worthless from a natural resources
standpoint to be set aside permanently as national parks. (See, for
example, Richard W. Sellars, Alfred Runte, et al., "The National Parks:
A Forum on the 'Worthless Lands' Thesis," Journal of Forest
History 27 (July 1983): 130-45.) Perceptions of what Congress itself
considered "worthless" varied with both the time and place, particularly
after the turn of the century, when the "See America First" campaign
provided the national parks with a unique commercial foundation of their
own through tourism. This observation itself is not intended to refute
their ecological and scenic significance. More to the point, it merely
underscores the persuasiveness of economic arguments in determining
precisely which scenery the nation felt it could afford to protect in
perpetuity. As I originally explained, the term "worthless" grew out
of the congressional debates. The word consistently referred only to the
absence of natural resources of known commercial value, not to
scenery, watersheds, or wildlife with obvious inspirational or
biologicalif not direct monetaryworth.
Nor do I deny the value of national park lands purely
as real estate. But of course land developers today would snatch at the
opportunity to sell home lots and condominium sites along the shores of
Yellowstone Lake and the rim of the Grand Canyon. Similarly, the
national seashores, lakeshores, and riverways of the nation would be
gold mines for such forms of development. The point is that Congress, at
least with respect to the western parks, did not use the term
"worthless" to describe real estate. Rather it was meant to assure
prospective miners, loggers, farmers, and ranchers that national parks
to be carved from the public domain were unsuitable for sustaining the
traditional economic pursuits of the American frontier.
Congress did, however, reassure the nation that any
decision later found undesirable could just as easily be reversed. The
uncertainty of preservation is itself a cornerstone of the
worthless-lands thesis. As early as the Yosemite Park Act of 1864,
preservationists argued that protection without permanence would be
ultimately meaningless. If in fact Yosemite was sacred, then the park
had to be protected not until Congress found some other use for it but
rather as long as the United States existed, "inalienable for all time."
The numerous compromises to the pledge of inalienability, either actual
or implied, strike to the very heart of the worthless-lands argument.
Like Indian reservations, the national parks have been subject to
periodic readjustments. The issue, then, is not only how Congress said
it would manage the parks but how Congress in fact allowed the
parks to be treated. As I noted in the first edition, the "sin" of
exploiting the parks has not been exploitation per se but defacement of
the parks that cannot simultaneously be defended as being in the
national interest.
Consider again my original example of that enduring
double standard, Niagara Falls. Real estate promotion led to the
commercialization of Niagara Falls as early as the 1830s and 1840s. The
defacement of the cataract by tourist sharks eroded its credibility as a
symbol of national pride and achievement. Accordingly, as Americans
entered the West, the lesson of Niagara Falls remained fresh in their
minds. The natural wonders of the last frontier must not be lost to a
similar fate. Niagara, however, also had great potential as a source of
hydroelectric power. In contrast to the crass individualism associated
with the tourist trade, the hydroelectric development of Niagara Falls
promised to pay clear and unmistakable dividends to the nation's
industrial base. Beginning in 1885, New York state pushed the hotels,
souvenir stands, and other tourist traps back from the edge of the
falls; the engineers, on the other hand, despite the tremendous impact
of their own schemes on the very flow of the cataract itself, were
allowed to pursue their diversions of the Niagara River well into the
twentieth century.
A similar situation evolved during the late 1970s
along the southwestern corner of Yellowstone. No, I doubt that Congress
would sell the national park itself to real estate promoters. In
contrast, a geothermal project on the southwest boundary of Yellowstone
has been under serious consideration since 1979 despite the risk of
disrupting the underground reservoirs that feed the geyser basins within
the park proper. Another example is Redwood National Park, whose
expansion in 1978 came only after the logging companies had cut down the
great majority of trees on the lands to be added to the existing
preserve. The worthless-lands thesis does not deny the great commercial
value of the redwood trees that remain; it merely underscores the
observation that economic motivations have far outweighed long-range
ecological considerations in deter mining how much land gets protected
in the first place and, even more importantly, stays
protected.
Even as real estate alone, the national parks have
not been immune to extensive exploitation by entrenched commercial
interests. Granted, Congress has not allowed private condominiums to dot
the shores of Yellowstone Lake; however, during the past century,
concessionaires in the park have had great influence over the
development of all of its primary attractions, including the lake,
canyon, and geyser basins. The cabins, hotels, stores, motels, gas
stations, and souvenir shops may be controlled by corporations rather
than individuals but the proliferation of structures is nonetheless just
as real and just as intrusive on the resource. The commercialization of
Yellowstone and its counterparts invites historians, both now and in the
future, to inquire again whether Americans truly value the protection of
wilderness and wildlife, or whether most people simply prefer (or at
least accept) that the parks be resorts ensconced in a more pristine
setting.
The evidence for this interpretation is abundant; it
is simply not always popular to accept. To reemphasize, Americans prefer
to think of their national park system as an unqualified example of
their statesmanship and philanthropy. Critics of the worthless-lands
thesis in particular have resorted to comforting but nonetheless
undocumented speculation. Above all, they have argued that the
worthless-lands speeches in Congress were nothing more than a
"rhetorical ploy" to confuse potential opponents of the parks. Whoever
the target of deception was, of course, the very act of deception may be
seen as proof of its necessity. It would still follow that opposition to
the parks on economic grounds was in fact both serious and legitimate.
In either case, critics of the worthless-lands thesis have conveniently
ignored how opponents of parks later would have reacted to the discovery
of their having been duped by their associates. Afterward, it stands to
reason, among the victims of deceit the opposition to further park
proposals would have been even more serious, outspoken, and
unyielding.
Whatever else may be said in defense of speculation,
it is still neither convincing nor definitive history. Granted, a long
line of senators and congressional representatives friendly to the parks
may have described those parks as "worthless" merely to throw
their opponents off balance. Even with documentation to support that
argument, however, the fact would remain that Congress, on nearly every
occasion when important natural resources were located within major
parks, seriously reconsidered the boundaries of those preserves. Most
notably, in 1905 Congress reduced Yosemite National Park by 542 square
miles to quiet objections raised by mining, logging, and grazing
interests. In 1913, Congress further granted the Hetch Hetchy Valley
within Yosemite National Park to the city of San Francisco for a
municipal water supply reservoir. In other words, confronted with the
evidence that it had mis judged the actual worth of those lands in 1890,
Congress reneged on its misguided generosity.
The worthless-lands speeches were not "rhetorical
ploys." They were, in fact, serious assessments of national park lands
based substantially on the findings of government resource scientists. I
have not, as a result, found it necessary to change either the prologue
or the original eight chapters of the book. If I were writing them
today, I would add only a few more examples and quotations to support my
initial discussions of monumentalism and the worthless-lands thesis. For
instance, I would include additional evidence indicating that
monumentalism was more than a metaphor, a simple effort to help the
average American more easily visualize the natural wonders of the West.
It is true that the landmarks of the region invited general comparisons
to castles, cathedrals, and ruins. My point is that the imagery still
had important cultural significance as well. In as many instances such
comparisons were not general but rather site specific in nature.
Observers of the West frequently depreciated the best of Europe's
architectural attractions by describing them as inferior to the natural
wonders of the region. On such occasions, when description turned into a
strident defense of American landscapes over European art, cultural
anxiety was clearly an important provocation.
Lingering perceptions of the national parks as
monuments of nature in large part explain why the American public is
still distracted from perceiving current ecological problems. Indeed,
were I attempting a complete revision of the book at this time, the one
topic I would examine more closely would be wildlife conservation. The
dilemma of protection is nonetheless obvious: protecting wildlife relies
heavily on habitat preservation both outside and inside the parks. By
the middle of the 1890s, government scientists, military park
superintendents, and other observers had recognized the importance of
expanding Yellowstone, Yosemite, and Sequoia national parks to include
neighboring wildlife range and breeding grounds. That those parks, and
others established later were only rarely enlarged to include other than
rugged terrain explains why park scientists today still face an
uncertain future in efforts to protect wildlife through the remainder of
the century and beyond.
Here again, I have not read recent struggles between
environmentalists and developers back into park history. The concept of
sanctuary is as old as the national park idea itself. Monumentalism
inspired the national park idea among Americans and early
preservationists at large. Defenders of the parks, however, especially
those with an intimate knowledge of their plants, animals, and natural
environments, spoke in terms of managing the national parks as
sanctuaries from the very beginning. Frederick Law Olmsted, John Muir,
and George Bird Grinnell, to mention only a few of those prophets, did
not consistently advocate expansion of the parks simply to include only
scenery within their borders.
I begin my revision with an expanded version of the
original epilogue, noting the importance of the environmental bat tles
of the 1960s and 1970s in shaping the development of the national park
system during those decades. Chapter 10, "Management in Transition,"
concentrates on fire ecology as an example of new trends in biological
awareness. Chapter 11, "Ideals and Controversies of Expansion," traces
the development of the so-called nontraditional parks, including
seashores, lakeshores, wild and scenic riverways, and urban recreation
areas. Chapter 12, "Decision in Alaska," further notes the influence of
national park history on the great ecological preserves of the
forty-ninth state. Even in Alaska, with its abundance of territory,
Congress was careful to include only more marginal lands in national
park areas. As a result, the book once more concludes on a note of
uncertainty, emphasizing that the national parks throughout the
continental United States in particular have finally arrived at their
moment of truth. If the parks are to survive as ecosystems, not just as
natural monuments, the time of decision is clearly at hand.
If my fascination with the national parks initially
inspired this book, then my concern about their future has certainly
heightened my interest in their history. Although I am confident my
interpretations will stand the test of time, I am obligated, as a
professional historian, to remind the reader that I have lived through
the period the revised chapters now address in the past tense. My
perceptions of the national parks have been further shaped through
several recent seasons as a ranger-naturalist and historian in Yosemite
National Park. Again, it is only fair to acknowledge that any
interpretation, however honestly conceived, can be subtly influenced by
such personal experiences.
My summers in Yosemite Valley educating the general
public have been among the most challenging and rewarding of my entire
career. I am especially grateful to all of my friends and colleagues in
the Park Service who have shared with me their own observations and
thoughts about the significance of national parks. I am also indebted to
Frank Freidel, Frank Conlon, Robert Burke, Carlos Schwantes, Lewis Saum,
and Arthur D. Martinson for their encouragement, interest, and support.
Similarly, Richard A. Bartlett, Mott Greene, Lisa Mighetto, and Michael
Frome offered me sound advice following close, critical readings of the
entire revision. I also thank Thomas A. DuRant, Librarian, Branch of
Graphics Research, National Park Service, Springfield, Virginia, for
locating the additional illustrations. Finally, I thank my wife,
Christine, for her patience and understanding while I clacked away on my
typewriter instead of spending more of our first year of marriage with
her. At the very least, I owe her a second honeymoon at Zion, Bryce, and
the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.
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