Prologue
The Heritage of Achievement and Indifference
Happily the United States Government (warned by the
results of having allowed the Falls of Niagara to become private
property) determined that certain districts, discovered in various parts
of the States, and noted for their exceeding beauty, should, by Act of
Congress, be appropriated for evermore "for public use, resort, and
recreation, and be inalienable for all time."
Lady C. F. Gordon-Cumming, British traveler,
1878
More than a century ago, a small group of Americans
pioneered a unique ideathe national park idea. It was the
contention of this group that the natural "wonders" of the United States
should not be handed out to a few profiteers, but rather held in trust
for all people for all time. Gradually, as perceptions of the
environment changed, national parks also became important for wilderness
preservation, wildlife protection, and purposes closer to the concerns
of ecologists. To be sure, the national park idea as we know it today
did not emerge in finished form. More accurately, it evolved. Still, the
values of the nineteenth century have remained influential, a fact which
does much to explain why many national parks are still torn between the
struggle for preservation and for use. Especially because most Americans
still seek out spectacular scenery and natural phenomena,
environmentalists caution that the public has little understanding of
the restraints on visitation needed to protect the diversity of the
parks as a whole. [1]
Who first conceived the idea of preservation is not
known. Ancient civilizations of the Near East fostered landscape design
and management long before the birth of Christ. By 700 B.C., for
example, Assyrian noblemen sharpened their hunting, riding, and combat
techniques in designated training reserves. These were copied by the
great royal hunting enclosures of the Persian Empire, which flourished
throughout Asia Minor between 550 and 350 B.C. It remained for the
Greeks to democratize landscape esthetics; their larger towns and
cities, including Athens, provided citizens with the agora, a
plaza for public assembly, relaxation, and refreshment. Known for
its fountains and tree-shaded walkways, the agora has been compared to
the modern city park. [2]
Although urbanization throughout the Roman Empire led
to similar experiments, Medieval Europe, like Asia Minor, reverted to
the maintenance of open spaces exclusively for the ruling classes.
Hunting once more became a primary use of these lands; in fact, the word
"park" stems from this usage. Originally "parc" in Old French and Middle
English, the term designated "an enclosed piece of ground stocked with
beasts of the chase, held by prescription or by the king's grant." [3] Trespassers were punished severely, especially
poachers who often were put to death.
With the possible exception of the Greeks and Romans,
therefore, the park idea as now defined is modern in origin; only
recently has it come to mean both protection and public access. Not
until the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries did the appreciation of
landscapes and democratic ideals rise to prominence throughout the
Western world. In Europe, and later the United States, with the rapid
spread of cities, factories, and their attendant social dislocations,
people came to question whether the Industrial Revolution really
represented progress. Locked into the drudgery and grime of
manufacturing communities, more and more people followed poets and
philosophers in embracing nature as the avenue of escape. The Romantic
Movement, for example, in its praise for the strange and mysterious in
nature, by definition preferred landscapes only suggestive of human
occupation. Thus ruined castles or crumbling fortresses were valued
because of what they implied; a concern for detail would have destroyed
the enjoyment of trying to recall their former grandeur through one's
own imagination. Others held that the ultimate state of nature might be
the absence of civilization altogether. So argued deists and
primitivists, at least, the former because man's works supposedly
obscured God's truths, the latter in the conviction that man seemed
happiest in direct proportion to the absence of his own creations. [4]
The egalitarian ideals of the American and French
revolutions further joined urbanization and industrialization in
undermining traditional beliefs. As a result, throughout Europe royalty
finally lost the power to dictate solely when and how parklands were to
be opened to the public at large. In 1852, for example, the city of
Paris took over the popular Bois de Boulogne from the crown, with the
agreement that its woods and promenades would be cared for and improved.
London's royal parks, initially opened to the populace during the
eighteenth century at the discretion of the monarch, similarly were
enlarged and maintained for public benefit. Another important milestone
on the road to landscape democracy in Great Britain was Victoria Park,
carved from London's crowded East End. Authorized in 1842, it was the
first reserve not only managed, but expressly purchased, for public
instead of private use. Its counterpart in Liverpool, Birkenhead Park,
likewise was to remain, in the words of one American admirer, Frederick
Law Olmsted, "entirely, unreservedly, and for ever, the people's own.
The poorest British peasant is as free to enjoy it in all its parts as
the British queen. ... Is it not," he concluded, "a grand, good thing?"
[5]
Olmsted, the son of a prosperous Connecticut family,
returned home from his first visit to the Continent in 1850. He was then
twenty-eight years old, and his career as America's foremost designer
and proponent of urban parks lay some years in the future. [6] Yet even as he praised Great Britain's
commitment to provide urban refuges for the common man, the climate of
opinion in the United States was already swinging decidedly in favor of
the city park idea. As early as 1831 the Massachusetts legislature
approved a "rural cemetery" on the outskirts of Boston, to be known as
Mount Auburn. Shortly after its completion urban residents favored the
site for picnicking, strolling, and solitude. Rural cemeteries caught on
throughout the Northeast. By 1836 Brooklyn and Philadelphia, among other
cities, were equally renowned for this popular, if unconventional, means
of providing open space. [7]
If the nation could provide parklands for the dead,
parklands for the living might also be realized. Two of the earliest
proponents of the city park idea were Andrew Jackson Downing, a
horticulturist, and the poet William Cullen Bryant. During the 1840s
they called for the establishment of a large reserve within easy reach
of New York City. Finally, in 1853 the New York legislature agreed to
the plan by purchasing a rectangular site (the equivalent of
approximately one square mile) on the outskirts of the metropolis. To be
known as Central Park once the city had built up around it, the project
launched Frederick Law Olmsted and his partner, Calvert Vaux, on their
distinguished careers. [8]
Central Park set a precedent for preservation in the
common interest more than a decade before realization of the national
park idea. Still, while its debt to the city park is obvious, the
national park evolved in response to environmental perceptions of a
dramatically different kind. City parks were an eastern phenomenon, a
refuge from the noise and pace of urban living. City dwellers wanted
facilities for recreation, not scenic protection per se. Convenient
access was of primary concern; a city park could be located anywhere,
however distasteful the site. Portions of Central Park itself replaced
run down farms, pig sties, and garbage dumps. Once a site had been
obtained, the landscape architect readily made it pleasing to the eye by
adding lakes, walkways, gardens, or playing fields as public demand
warranted.
Later, of course, the placement of roads, trails, and
over night lodgings in the national parks called upon similar artistry
and sensitivity to existing natural features. Yet beyond these
concessions to access and convenience, from the outset Americans
understood intuitively that the national parks were different.
The striking dissimilarity was topographical. Unlike
those who sought relief from the crowdedness and monotony of city
streets, proponents of the national parks unveiled their idea against
the backdrop of the American West. Grand, monumental scenery was the
physical catalyst. The pioneers and explorers who emerged from the more
subdued environments of the East found the Rocky Mountains, Cascades,
and Sierra Nevada overpowering in every respect. Cliffs and waterfalls
thousands of feet high, canyons a mile deep, and soaring mountains
covered with great conifers were awesome to people born and bred within
reach of the Atlantic seaboard. It is therefore understandable why many
national parks, as distinct from urban parks, were established long
before their potential for recreation could be realized. In the West the
protection of scenery by itself was justification enough for modifying
the park idea.
As a visual experience, national parks went beyond
the need for physical fitness or outdoor recreation. Indeed, the parks
did not emerge merely as the end product of landscape appreciation for
its own sake. Simply admiring the natural world was nothing unique to
the people of the United States; the transcendentalists, including Ralph
Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, themselves followed the example
of the likes of Shelley, Byron, Wordsworth, and Keats. The intellectual
subtleties of transcendentalism, in any case, could hardly sustain the
national park idea in a country as firmly committed to material progress
as the United States.
The decision not only to admire nature but to
preserve it required stronger incentives. Specifically, the impulse to
bridge the gap between appreciation and protection needed catalysts of
unquestionable drama and visibility. In the fate of Niagara Falls
Americans found a compelling reason to give preservation more than a
passing thought. Although then recognized both at home and abroad as the
nation's most magnificent natural spectacle, as early as 1830 the falls
suffered the insults of so-called sharpers and hucksters of every kind.
While some located adjacent to the cataract to tap its endless stream of
power, still more came to fleece the growing number of tourists
attracted by completion of the Erie Canal, and, close behind, the
railroads. The mixed blessings of Niagara's popularity were soon
apparent. Private developers quickly acquired the best overlooks, then
forced travelers to pay handsomely for the privilege of using them. By
1860 gatehouses and fences rimmed the falls from every angle. No less
offensive were hackmen, curio hawkers, and tour guides, who matched
their dishonesty with annoying persistence. [9]
A continuous parade of European visitors and
commentators embarrassed the nation by condemning the commercialization
of Niagara. [10] To be sure, although half the
falls belonged to Canada, few mentioned this fact in defense of the
United States; if Americans had no pride in their portion of the falls,
they deserved no excuse. Among the earliest critics to write in this
vein was Alexis de Tocqueville. In 1831, during the extended visit to
the United States that led to his classic work, Democracy in
America, he urged a friend to "hasten" to Niagara if he wished "to
see this place in its grandeur. If you delay," he warned, "your Niagara
will have been spoiled for you. Already the forest round about is being
cleared... . I don't give the Americans ten years to establish a saw or
flour mill at the base of the cataract." [11]
By 1834 Tocqueville's worst fears had been confirmed,
most memorably in the observations of a pair of English Congregational
ministers, Andrew Reed and James Matheson. They noted that the American
side now boasted the "shabby town" of Manchester. "Manchester and the
falls of Niagara!" They made no effort to veil their disgust. "One has
hardly the patience to record these things." Surely some "universal
voice ought to interfere and prevent the money-seekers." The divines
followed with nothing less than an appeal for international protection
of the cataract. "Niagara does not belong to [individuals]; Niagara does
not belong to Canada or America," they asserted. Rather "such spots
should be deemed the property of civilized mankind." Their destruction,
after all, compromised "the tastes, the morals, and the enjoyments of
all men." [12]
If Reed and Matheson could have inspired their own
countrymen to take action, perhaps England, and not the United States,
would now be credited as the inventor of the national park idea. England
certainly had a comparable opportunity, until Canada won its
independence in 1867; the provinces boasted a variety of natural
wonders, many on a par with those of the western United States. European
countries simply lacked an equal provocation to originate the national
park idea. If not for Great Britain, whose cultural identity was secure,
for the United States each disparagement about its indifference to the
fate of its natural wonders hit home. Although only verbal barbs, they
unmistakably accused Americans of having no pride in themselves or in
their past. "By George, you would think so indeed, if you had the chance
of seeing the Falls of Niagara twice in ten years," said another English
traveler, Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle, repeating the popular charge in
1849. Granted, by now the fate of the falls was "a well-worn tale." Yet
"so old a friend as the Falls of Niagara; for you must have read about
those before you read Robinson Crusoe," surely deserved better than
injury "by the Utilitarian mania." But "the Yankees [have] put an ugly
shot tower on the brink of the Horseshoe," he lamented, "and they are
about to consummate the barbarism by throwing a wire bridge ... over the
river just below the American Fall.... What they will not do next in
their freaks it is difficult to surmise," he concluded, then echoed
Reed's and Matheson's disgust: "but it requires very little more to show
that patriotism, taste, and self-esteem, are not the leading features in
the character of the inhabitants of this part of the world." [13]
Later in United States history, when intellectuals
had greater confidence in their nation's achievements, such derision
would be more easily discounted. But now the United States agonized in
the shadow of European standards. Unlike the Old World, the new nation
lacked an established past, particularly as expressed in art,
architecture, and literature. In the Romantic tradition nationalists
looked to scenery as one form of compensation. Yet even the landscapes
of the United States, knowledge of which was then confined to those in
the eastern half of the continent, were nothing extraordinary.
Confronted with the obvious, Americans had little choice but to admit
that the landmarks of Europe, especially the Alps, were no less
magnificent. Prior to 1850 America's best claim to scenic superiority
was Niagara Falls, which, most Europeans themselves conceded, surpassed
comparable examples in the Old World. But the onslaught of commercialism
robbed the cataract of credibility as a cultural legacy. A monument,
whether human or natural in origin, implies some semblance of public
control over its fate. But the private ownership of the land adjoining
Niagara Falls compromised that ideal, as noted by Tocqueville, Reed,
Matheson, Bonnycastle, and their contemporaries.
Redemption for the United States lay in westward
expansion. As if reprieved, between 1846 and 1848 the nation acquired
the most spectacular portions of the continent, including the Rocky
Mountains and Pacific slope. Distance magnified their appeal, the more
so as easterners endured urban drudgery, crowdedness, and monotony. This
dichotomy between the settled East and frontier West further explains
the timing of the national park idea. In effect the East was the
audience to frontier events. For the West was a stage, a setting for the
adventure stories, travel accounts, and dramatic paintings that
characterized so much of the period. Indeed, Americans conquered the
region precisely as popular literature, art, and professional journalism
came of age. While the last frontier passed into history, the nation
watched intently, if not in the field then through its dime novelists,
newspaper correspondents, engravers, artists, and explorers. [14]
As each of these groups glorified the West, Americans
became aware that here the nation could redeem itself of the shame of
Niagara Falls and prove its citizens worthy of great landmarks. Much as
Europe retained custody of the artifacts of Western Civilization, so in
the West the United States had one final opportunity to protect a truly
convincing semblance of historical continuity through landscape. Niagara
Falls, as the lesson of past indifference, warned Americans about the
need to guard against similar encroachments on their new-found
wonderland. For although the grandeur of the Far West inspired the
national park idea, eastern men invented and shaped it. Thus as the
nation moved west, the specter of Niagara remained fresh in the minds of
those many people who had witnessed its disfigurement firsthand. These
included Frederick Law Olmsted, whose familiarity with the cataract
dated as far back as boyhood visits in 1828 and 1834. [15] Between 1879 and 1885 he and a few close
associates aroused the nation in support of efforts by the state of New
York to restore the cataract and its environs to their natural
condition. [16] (Ontario followed suit with
dedication of its provincial park in 1888.) Still, having opened the
West, Americans finally could admit that the East as a whole was too
commonplace to surpass the scenic landmarks of Europe. The likes of
Yosemite Valley and Yellowstone, by way of contrast, needed no
apologies. But only if they were faithfully preserved from abuse (the
fate of Niagara still aroused the nation's conscience) would they be
truly convincing proof of the New World's cultural promise. Here at
lastin the blending of the eastern mind and the western
experiencewas the enduring spark for the American inspiration of
national parks.
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