Chapter 1
Creating Tradition:
The Roots of National Park Management
It is important to do something speedily
[about the Yellowstone park proposal], or squatters and claimants will
go in there, and we can probably deal much better with the government in
any improvements we may desire to make for the benefit of our pleasure
travel than with individuals.JAY COOKE, October 30, 1871
On March 1, 1872, Congress established Yellowstone Park-the world's
first "national park," more than two million acres located mostly in the
northwest corner of present-day Wyoming-to be preserved and managed by
the federal government for the enjoyment and benefit of the people. In
the midst of the Gilded Age's rampant exploitation of public lands, the
concept of federally managed parks protected from the extractive uses
typical of the late-nineteenth-century American West abruptly gained
congressional sanction. Yellowstone's awesome natural phenomena had
inspired a political phenomenon.
Despite its eventual worldwide implications, the Yellowstone Park Act
attracted minimal public attention; Congress only briefly debated the
bill, giving little indication of what it intended for the park. The act
came during an era when the federal government was aggressively
divesting itself of the public domain through huge railroad land grants
and, among others, homestead, mining, and timber acts. Although a few
Americans were voicing concern about the preservation of nature and
decrying the exploitation of natural resources, no broad, cohesive
conservation movement existed in 1872. Yet the proposal to save the
wonders of Yellowstone (principally the great falls of the Yellowstone
River and the spectacular geysers) triggered legislation creating what
was until very recently the largest national park in the contiguous
forty-eight states.
The origin of the national park idea-who conceived it, and whether it
was inspired by altruism or by profit motives-has been disputed. One
account became a revered part of national park folklore and tradition:
that the idea originated in September 1870 during a discussion around a
campfire near the Madison Junction, where the Firehole and Gibbon rivers
join to form the Madison River in present-day Yellowstone National Park.
Nearing the conclusion of their exploration of the Yellowstone country,
members of the Washburn-Doane Expedition (a largely amateur party
organized to investigate tales of scenic wonders in the area) had
encamped at Madison Junction on the evening of September 19. As they
relaxed and mused around their wilderness campfire, the explorers
recalled the spectacular sights they had seen. Then, after considering
the possible uses of the area and the profits they might make from
tourism, they rejected the idea of private exploitation. Instead, in a
moment of high altruism, the explorers agreed that Yellowstone's
awe-inspiring geysers, waterfalls, and canyons should be preserved as a
public park. [1] This proposal was soon
relayed to high political circles, and within a year and a half Congress
established Yellowstone Park.
Through the decades, as the national park concept gained strength and
other nations followed the American example, the Madison Junction
campfire emerged as the legendary birthplace not just of Yellowstone but
of all the world's national parks. Although the Yosemite Valley had been
established as a California state park from federally donated lands in
1864 and the term "national park" had been occasionally used in the
past, the belief that the national park idea truly began around a
wilderness campfire at the Madison Junction evolved into a kind of
creation myth: that from a gathering of explorers on a late summer
evening in the northern Rocky Mountains came the inspiration for
Yellowstone National Park, the prototype for hundreds of similar parks
and reserves around the world. In the wilderness setting and with a
backdrop of the vast, dramatic landscape of the western frontier, the
origin of the national park idea seemed fitting and noble. Surely the
national park concept deserved a "virgin birth"-under a night sky in the
pristine American West, on a riverbank, and around a flaming campfire,
as if an evergreen cone had fallen near the fire, then heated and
expanded and dropped its seeds to spread around the planet. [2]
The campfire story may be seen in another light, however. Romantic
imagery aside, the element of monopolistic business enterprise is
notably absent from the traditional campfire story-the profit motive
obscured by the altruistic proposal for a public park. In fact,
corporate involvement with America's national parks has its roots in
that same 1870 Washburn-Doane Expedition and campfire discussion. Amid
the great rush to settle the West after the Civil War, the Northern
Pacific Railroad Company was by 1870 planning to extend its tracks from
the Dakota Territory across the Montana Territory. With easiest access
to Yellowstone being from the north, through Montana, the company
believed that once it extended its tracks west it could monopolize
tourist traffic into the area.
Alert to this potential, Northern Pacific financier Jay Cooke took
special interest in the scenic Yellowstone country. In June 1870 he met
in Philadelphia with Nathaniel P. Langford, politician and entrepreneur,
who subsequently proceeded to Montana and, with Northern Pacific
backing, successfully promoted the Washburn-Doane Expedition. This
exploration of Yellowstone began in August, with Langford as a
participant. Still supported by the Northern Pacific, Langford followed
up the expedition with lectures to audiences in Montana and in East
Coast cities, extolling the wonders of Yellowstone, while local boosters
in Montana began promoting the park idea. The following year, the
railroad company subsidized artist Thomas Moran's participation in the
expedition into Yellowstone led by geologist Ferdinand V. Hayden.
Moran's sketches from the Hayden Expedition (his impressive paintings
were not yet completed) were displayed in the Capitol in Washington as
part of the campaign to enact the Yellowstone legislation. [3]
Ever advancing Northern Pacific interests, Jay Cooke sought to ensure
that the Yellowstone country did not fall into private hands, but rather
remained a federally controlled area. He observed in October 1871, just
before the legislation to create a park was introduced, that a
government "reservation" (or park) would prevent "squatters and
claimants" from gaining control of the area's most scenic features.
Government control would be easier to deal with; thus, it was "important
to do something speedily" through legislation. [4]
Subsequent to the Hayden Expedition, the Northern Pacific lobbied for
the park with swift success: the Yellowstone bill was introduced on
December 18, 1871, and enacted the following March. Like most future
national parks, Yellowstone remained under the jurisdiction of the
Department of the Interior, which managed the public lands of the West.
The park's immense size came not because of an effort to preserve vast
tracts of undisturbed wilderness, but largely as a result of
recommendations by Ferdinand Hayden, who sought to include the lands
most likely to contain spectacular thermal features.
From the first, then, the national parks served corporate profit
motives, the Northern Pacific having imposed continuous influence on the
Yellowstone park proposal, beginning even before the 1870 expedition
that gave birth to the campfire tradition. [5] With their land grants stretching across the
continent, American railroads were already seeking to establish
monopolistic trade corridors. By preventing private land claims and
limiting competition for tourism in Yellowstone, the federal reservation
of the area served, in effect, as a huge appendage to the Northern
Pacific's anticipated monopoly across southern Montana Territory.
Indeed, in historical perspective, the 1872 Yellowstone legislation
stands as a resounding declaration that tourism was to be important in
the economy of the American West. A matter of considerable consequence
in the Yellowstone story, the collaboration between private business and
the federal government fostered a new kind of public land use in the
drive to open the West. A portion of the public domain was reserved for
largely non-consumptive use, with unrestricted free enterprise and
exploitation of natural resources prohibited. With magnificent scenery
as the principal fount of profit, tourism was emerging in the nineteenth
century as an economic land use attractive to business investment. The
success of such investment depended in part on the preservation of
scenery through prevention of haphazard tourism development and other
invasive commercial uses such as mining and lumbering. The possibility
of federal cooperation to manage vast scenic areas in the West and
control development appealed to the Northern Pacific and soon to other
tourism interests.
Over time, accommodation for tourism in the national parks would
become truly extensive and have enormous consequences for the parks. It
is a significant, underlying fact of national park history that once
Yellowstone and subsequent park legislation codified the commitment to
public use and enjoyment, managers of the parks would inevitably become
involved in design, construction, and long-range maintenance of park
roads, trails, buildings, and other facilities. Allowing tourists to
stay overnight in the parks meant that hotels, restaurants, campgrounds,
garbage dumps, electrical plants, and water and sewage systems would
sooner or later be seen as indispensable. The practical necessities for
accommodating thousands, then millions, of tourists (the primary
constituents of the national parks and a key source of political
support) would increasingly demand park management's attention and
seriously affect allocation of funds and staffing.
Moreover, such developmental concerns would foster a capitalistic,
business-oriented approach to national parks, emphasizing the number of
miles of roads and trails constructed, the number of hotel rooms and
campsites available, the number of visitors each year, and the need for
continued tourism development. Principally in an effort to ensure public
enjoyment, nature itself would be manipulated in the national parks; to
a large extent, natural resource management would serve tourism
purposes.
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