Preface to the Third Edition
Yellowstone at 125:
Anniversary Remarks on the Recent History of National Parks
Now a century and a quarter old, Yellowstone
maintains its popularity as the landscape closest to every ideal of what
comprises a national park. Nor should the story of its exploration and
founding as a scenic refuge ever grow tiresome. It is just that the
story may never again seem as inspirational as when the country itself
was young. Mounting pressures on the environment now betray the erosion
of cultural attachments to both regional and national landscapes.
Initially, in 1972, my research itself dampened the celebration of the
Yellowstone Centennial. A hundred years earlier, I noted, the opponents
of Yellowstone Park had insisted that it include nothing of proven
commercial value. [1] My cause for despair was
my own preference for the utopian version of the evolution of national
parks, in the words of the historian Wallace Stegner still "the best
idea we ever had." [2]
The lost innocence of the national parks may indeed
be the dominant theme of preservation in the twenty-first century. When
this book originally went to press, the United States was preoccupied
with the protection of national parks and wilderness. Now the future of
Yellowstone, its fame aside, is but one of many concerns competing for
the attention of the public and the media. Historians themselves remain
divided between sentiment and objectivity. Like Wallace Stegner, many
are tempted to celebrate national parks as the ideal expression of
landscape democracy, despite evidence reaffirming that many parks have
also been compromised or mismanaged. [3]
One inescapable cause of management problems is the
extraordinary growth in traffic and visitation. The country that
invented national parks held just thirty million people. As late as
World War I, Yellowstone's annual visitation rarely exceeded 50,000.
Moreover, the large majority came by train and stagecoach, part of a
community of travelers bound to responsibility by limited access, poorer
roads, and rustic accommodations.
The nation about to carry Yellowstone into another
millennium has ten times the population of 1872. Park visitation, both
domestic and foreign, now exceeds three million every year. The park's
sense of timelessness and benediction, of summer renewal and winter
sleep, is lost amid a million cars and the drone of a hundred thousand
snowmobiles. No different from any urban landscape, Yellowstone is
constantly importuned, providing digression, but hardly sanctuary, from
the complexities of the modern world. [4]
Meanwhile, economic forces dictate that extractive
industries are still of greater value to the West than either wilderness
or tourism. Thus, Noranda Minerals Inc., a Canadian conglomerate, opened
the 1990s by pressuring federal officials to authorize a large gold and
silver mine near Cooke City, Montana, barely two miles outside
Yellowstone's northeastern boundary. For obvious reasons, any prior
conviction that the region should be added to Yellowstone National Park
had never been taken seriously, even though mining, first advanced more
than a century ago, suggested only a modest strike. Over the years,
existing mines were occasionally reworked and other mountainsides
freshly scarred, little of which, it was argued, had spilled over into
the park. Finally, technology overtook preservation with the invention
of new extractive options. One technique, using cyanide as a leaching
agent, coaxed as little as an ounce of gold from several tons of
low-yield ore. Suddenly, what had once been only a marginal deposit was
being hailed as the West's newest bonanza. Unfortunately, this time the
mounds of tailings and a reservoir of toxic wastes might loom over a
watershed feeding directly into Yellowstone. [5]
The so-called New World Mine brought home in the
twilight of the twentieth century what had been true of the park ever
since its establishment. Even as Congress in 1872 pledged its commitment
to scenic preservation, it qualified repeatedly that Yellowstone's
future indeed hinged on reassurances that only scenery was at stake. The
mine was just the latest example of that historical precondition. In the
end, the ambitions of American materialism still favored development
over the ideals of conservation.
To be sure, Congress had established many additional
categories of national parks and their equivalent, including recreation
areas, historic sites, wild rivers, and scenic trails. However, most
tended to be corridors or islands on the American landscape, the
majority significantly altered by prior development. Urban parks
especially portended enormous costs for cleanup and maintenance,
expenses generally not associated with areas traditionally reserved from
the western public lands. Accordingly, if federal budgets persistently
dwindled, as a mounting deficit seemed logically to predict, there was
reason to fear that protection in the original natural units would also
erode as one result.
As if to sharpen that debate, in the summer and fall
of 1988 Yellowstone was swept by a series of unprecedented wildfires.
Virtually all of the park was affected by drifting smoke and ash, and
approximately half of its forests burned, although intensities and tree
loss widely varied. Dramatically, in late August and early September
flames literally raced across the park, forcing firefighters into "last
stands" around Yellowstone's endangered historic buildings. Other
contingents battled to protect adjacent forests framing its primary
scenic wonders. Weeks later, costs had surpassed a hundred million
dollars to maintain an assault force still numbering several thousand
people, including rangers, military personnel, and members of the
National Guard. [6]
Finally, as the first snows of autumn snuffed out the
still stubborn flames and hard-to-reach embers, the country began taking
stock of its legendary landscape. The obvious reaction was despair, to
pronounce Yellowstone hopelessly burned beyond historical recognition.
And yet, the biological value of fire had many defenders, most insisting
that any talk of tragedy had been grossly overstated. Granted, the fires
had been serious and their intensity unforeseen. Too late, the Park
Service had moved to suppress back-country burns worsened by lengthening
weeks of heat and drought. Even so, Yellowstone in time would surely
recover. In retrospect, fire seemed less an enemy of preservation than
did a century of human abuse and manipulation. [7]
As another pivotal event in the history of the
national parks, the Yellowstone fires refocused every debate regarding
when to intervene in the management of natural environments. For a
majority of Americans, Yellowstone's obvious appeal was still as the
nation's distant, fabled "wonderland." Much relieved, everyone applauded
that its geyser basins, canyon, and waterfalls had survived the flames
intact. For others, however, wilderness was indeed the new criterion for
maintaining the integrity of every natural area. In Yellowstone, the
wolf had been exterminated and the grizzly bear long threatened with
extinction. By implication, Yellowstone itself was hardly perfect. The
term wilderness implied sanctuary, a landscape reserved for every
native plant and animal as well as scenic wonders.
Literature buttressed such convictions, including
environmental history, which by now had also left the romanticism of the
nineteenth century far behind. Notable books included Yellowstone: A
Wilderness Besieged (1985), by the historian Richard A. Bartlett,
and Playing God in Yellowstone: The Destruction of America's First
National Park (1986), by a journalist, Alston Chase. Using different
styles and approaches, both authors challenged the historical and
contemporary priorities of the National Park Service. Development, they
argued, often took precedence over the protection of key natural
features. [8] In another critical review, the
historian Stephen J. Pyne noted the agency's tendency to ignore obvious
distinctions between good and bad fires. Yellowstone, he concluded, had
survived only because the park was truly big enough to absorb a
million-acre holocaust, defined either as a natural occurrence or a
management mistake. [9]
Regardless, within months of the fires, efforts to
assess their long-term damage evinced a dwindling air of certainty.
Through winter and into spring precipitation returned to normal. A
minuscule percentage of the park, that portion where soils had been
sterilized by the flames, showed no signs of imminent recovery.
Elsewhere, in 1989 Yellowstone came alive in a sea of grass and
wildflowers. It was, even skeptics admitted, one of the most glorious
springs on record. Off through the blackened trees, long-forgotten
vistas had reopened while, underfoot, millions of new seedlings were
already taking root. Granted, many areas would take decades, even a
century or more to recover fully. Then again, fires historically had
reduced forest litter and undergrowth in cycles measured in years
instead of centuries. What had appeared "natural" before the fires might
be deceptive in its own right, self-generating, perhaps, but a landscape
no less artificial than any of Yellowstone's most popular, developed
areas. [10]
In that respect, the question of natural fire was
part of the larger issue of Yellowstone's long-term survival. In the
1990s a new definition, Greater Yellowstone, addressed the park in
further relation to the health of its neighboring lands. The thrust of
its argument obvious, Greater Yellowstone included all potential
wilderness surrounding the national park, another eight to ten million
acres in addition to Yellowstone's original two. In short, Greater
Yellowstone departed dramatically from cultural biases limiting
preservation only to "worthless" lands. Inside the park, that criterion
still prevailed; adjacent, however, lay many areas now designated for
all forms of commercial development, including ranches, mining claims,
logging operations, resorts, and summer homes. [11]
True, Greater Yellowstone referred primarily to lands
still held in trust by the federal government. The vast majority, in
national forests, further embraced several million acres already
protected under the Wilderness Act of 1964. Even so, the national
forests themselves were often pockmarked with commercial claims and
private property. More critically, the U.S. Forest Service fundamentally
disagreed that so much territory deserved set-asides as wilderness. On
paper, the idea of buffering Yellowstone with everything outside the
park might seem comforting and attainable. The hurdle, so easily
discounted, was that it was no longer 1872.
The reintroduction of the wolf in 1995 further
aroused complaints of government indifference to the needs of local
residents. Like the grizzly bear, wolves were prone to wander beyond the
boundaries of the park itself. Among critics, the reintroduction
cemented arguments that Greater Yellowstone presaged a government
"taking," allegedly, a subtle but overt attempt to limit the rights of
property holders without just compensation. [12] Once again, the matter illustrated the
futility of visualizing wilderness as something behind a fence.
Wilderness was hardly real estate; it was a landscape immune to zoning
or other forms of subdivision. Short of some sentiment for wilderness on
private lands bordering any national park, wildlife as mobile as the
wolf and grizzly bear was certain to face continuing persecution.
Once again, any expansion of the national park system
to round out the integrity of natural environments was restricted to
topographic provinces where such additions would not impinge on
civilization. Thus, the battle for Alaska behind them, preservationists
renewed their interest in the deserts of California, Nevada, and
Arizona. Yellowstone, as one result, ironically lost its preeminence as
the largest national park in the continental United States. Under terms
of the Desert Protection Act of 1994, Death Valley National Monument,
expanded and redesignated as Death Valley National Park, now surpassed
Yellowstone by more than a million acres. [13]
The successful outcome of the Desert Protection Act
had indeed hinged on the matter of expansion without sacrifice. Greater
Yellowstone conflicted with productive forests, growing communities, and
several important watersheds. In contrast, the word desert seemed
self-explanatory. The barren outcroppings of Joshua Tree National
Monument, simultaneously expanded and renamed a national park,
suggested, like Death Valley, the absence of traditional commercial
values. Weeks earlier, Saguaro in southern Arizona made the same
transition from a monument into a park. However, where mining, hunting,
and grazing were still deemed significant, principally in California's
East Mojave Desert, even a landscape so inextricably linked with visions
of waste and hopelessness guaranteed no priorities for wilderness
preservation. Designated only a national preserve, the East Mojave
Desert served further notice of that enduring contradiction, the one
bent on appeasement rather than closure of commercial claims to the
nation's public lands. [14]
Although a century and a quarter old, the national
park idea still awaited true consensus, a confirmation of cultural
significance unaffected by expedience or remoteness. Indeed, earlier
visionaries had considered parks but a necessary stage in the evolution
of a more enduring ethic, one transcending political and social
boundaries to see all land as sacred space. [15] The proper evolution from Yellowstone into
Greater Yellowstone was ultimately America the Beautiful. National parks
should be more than reservations separating wilderness from the grasp of
civilization. Rather, they should inspire Americans to care for every
landscape, especially those enveloping their daily lives. Ideally, the
future of the parks was projection, awareness rippling outward as well
as people flowing in. A new philosophy, as it were, first demanded a new
maturity. Behavior inappropriate to a national park was likely to be
inappropriate anywhere.
In that respect, the events preceding another major
Yellowstone anniversary foretold an uncertain future for national parks
and wilderness. For every achievement there was still ambivalence; for
every success an element of national doubt. At least on the eve of the
anniversary the news was mostly positive. In August 1996, President
William Clinton announced an agreement with the Noranda company
liberating Yellowstone from the proximity of the New World Mine. On
payment of $65 million, and in exchange for other federal properties yet
to be determined, Noranda pledged to relinquish all of its historical
claims to the controversial New World site. [16]
Apparently, both Yellowstone and Greater Yellowstone
had dodged a crippling blow to their respective identities as national
park and wilderness. History alone raised the discomforting question:
How long would any such agreement last? The euphoria of the moment
conveniently masked that larger reality. For every victory came only the
certainty of a different renewal of the threat.
In that respect, Yellowstone at one hundred and
twenty-five was really no more secure than Yellowstone at any
anniversary in between. Earlier preservationists simply had the luxury
of a smaller, less demanding population. No longer could Yellowstone, or
any national park, survive all that civilization now portended.
Contemporary celebrants could only hope the twenty-first century would
bring no threat so serious it might undo every past success. If so, the
original conviction of American nationalism would obviously have to
hold. The glory of the United States lay in landscapes still pristine
and undeveloped. Only then might wilderness survive the social and
cultural changes spilling over into the next millennium. Only then might
restraint possibly sustain the limitations of tradition, ensuring the
timelessness of the national parks as the best idea America ever
had.
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