An Interview with Robert M. Utley on the History of Historic Preservation in the National Park Service—1947-1980

AN INTERVIEW WITH ROBERT M. UTLEY ON THE HISTORY OF HISTORIC PRESERVATION IN THE NATIONAL PARK SERVICE—1947-1980
by Richard W. Sellars and Melody Webb
September 24, 1985 - December 27, 1985

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This is Reel 3 of the interview with Bob Utley, September 24, 1985.

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Bob: We were trying to pinpoint some of the people I regarded as greats in influencing the early evolution of Park Service practices in CRM.

I was speaking about the stresses between the three disciplines that afflicted the early years of OAHP and constituted almost growing pains. In particular, the archeologists had a hard time adapting to the new way things were done organizationally. Archeologists had a hard time working under Ernest Connally and mounted several rather powerful efforts to break free and have their own office of archeology apart from OAHP.

During the 1970's, I gravitated into a position of more influence, and the people on my staff were influential in unfolding the organizational and policy proposals and the practices that we wanted to get instituted by the National Park Service. Any list of important people has got to be headed by Hank Judd, who was Chief Historical Architect under me when I was Assistant Director. I have never known a person who understood the inner workings of a building better than Hank Judd. To visit a historic building with him and go around and listen to him and watch him point out the various components of a building and how you could read them and what this meant in terms of how the building had to be treated was always a revealing experience. Hank didn't shine at articulating on paper, but Hank could articulate in words that I could put on paper what ought to be done. Those years with Hank were a tremendous benefit to me as well as to the National Park Service and I hated to see him retire.

Doug Scovill came in late, but he turned out to be the one who led the archeologists into a sincere and I think fruitful association with the other two disciplines organizationally in the Park Service. I don't think there is much disposition now to try to fragment the three disciplines organizationally. I think there is a recognition by the archeologists that their best interests lie with the other two disciplines and I believe that Scovill was largely responsible for bringing about that conclusion. Besides which he was a first-class—still is a first-class—programmer and budget expert in putting together the documents that get the money.

Dick: Bob, why have historians traditionally held the top CRM positions in Washington?

Bob: I think that they have gravitated there by default of the other two disciplines. I cannot explain why, but I think it is a fact that historians tend to have more of a breadth of interest, a sharper development or potential for the bureaucratic and administrative skills necessary to run such an organization, a greater commitment to a multi-disciplinary approach than the other two disciplines do. My observation and experience is that, however professionally well developed and valuable architects and archeologists are, few of them have had the potential to run a bureaucratic organization, and have not wanted to either. About the only exception is Ernest Connally, a professor of the history of architecture, an architect, an art historian, and his managerial skills were pretty good. But that is the only one I can think of, and I don't think so long as archeologists are interested almost exclusively in archeology, and architects almost exclusively in architecture, that you are going to find many in those ranks rising to the top.

Dick: Ok. Your article, "A Preservation Ideal," which appeared in Historic Preservation for April and June 1976: Do you consider this your major written statement on historic preservation?

Bob: Yes, I do, because I have not written much on the subject. My writing interests have always been elsewhere, and I did that initially as an oral presentation at a convention because I had been asked to speak on the subject, and it came out to be a good statement of the things that we were trying to achieve at that time. And I still adhere to everything I said there. I should not take exclusive credit for that. As I recall, the first draft was a collaborative effort between Barry Macintosh and Marcella Sherfy, and I refined it into a statement of my own philosophy. But the groundwork was laid by them.

Dick: Do you have a bibliography of your published writings on historic preservation?

Bob: Well that is about the only one. What else have I done?

Dick: You've done a few things in the Courier haven't you?

Bob: Those were part of the initiative that we undertook when Ron Walker became Director to try to raise the level of consciousness of the Service on cultural resources management. I did something on living history for the interpreters' newsletter. I did the article you mentioned and earlier I did an article on archeology in the National Register, which was a propaganda piece trying to get the archeologists into the fold on the National Register program. But I don't remember much of anything else I wrote.

Melody: The article you wrote with Barry in....

Bob: In Monumentum, Barry Mackintosh actually drafted that and I worked it over. I just haven't much because my interests have been elsewhere.

Dick: The quality of cultural resource management people in the National Park Service seems to fluctuate over the years. Sometimes there is a excellent cadre of folks. At other times the stature of the CRM staff is less than prominent. Several questions on this. Have you seen this fluctuation over the years? And if so, how do you explain it and what would you recommend to get quality folks to join the CRM ranks of the National Park Service?

Bob: I have to take issue with the basic premise. I have not seen the fluctuation. What I have seen are possibly three generations of CRM professionals, each composed of people who were products of the academic and bureaucratic climate of their times. The people we had in the 1930's were products of their times. They did a fine job within the framework of what they were given to work with. The same is true for the 60's, the same is true for the 70's and 80's. I don't think that we necessarily have better people than we did then or vice versa. We just have different generations of people reacting to different stimuli.

As for how to get better quality folks, I think what you have to do there—and I don't think it can be done—is to do what Hartzog said he was going to do in 1966 but couldn't bring himself to do. I think you have to have a sharper organizational identity, prominence, and influence within the overall organization before you are going to attract any higher quality people than you've got now. And you've got high quality people now, but you've got some real turkeys too. Every organization has a mix of both, of course, but you would be in a position to attract more highly qualified people if you could take care of these organizational requirements, which in my view the Park Service could never permit to be done.

Dick: This organizational influence that you are talking about, I think at all levels but certainly in Washington, would that not depend to a considerable degree on the personality and the ability of the individual or individuals to articulate and promote CRM policies?

Bob: Well, when you talk about highly qualified people I take that to embrace bureaucratic and political skills, or potential for them, as well as professional equipment. You have many people in the Park Service now who professionally are highly qualified but who are not effective people because they lack these other skills. In fact, one of the big problems the Park Service had in the beginning was finding within its professional ranks people who were both professionally well qualified and had bureaucratic potential. I think this is one place where I did pretty well. There are not many people who can do both, who have the stature outside the bureaucracy in the academic world but who can also manipulate political and bureaucratic elements to make things happen. I guess this goes back to an earlier question. Historians are more likely to have that combination than the other two disciplines.

Dick: A number of people criticize the National Park System for being too heavily oriented toward Civil War and Western military history. Military things in general. Do you agree with these critics?

Bob: I agree with the observation, but I don't agree with the criticism. The National Park System is heavily, perhaps even predominantly, military and political and I think this is because those particular things in our history are more apt to have produced what I call a preservable entity that illustrates and conveys a significance of the thing commemorated. For many years, it was an announced objective of the National Park

Service to round out the System by the inclusion of areas that would illustrate all of our formal themes and subthemes that go to make up a balanced view of American history. That is an impossible ideal and probably a mistaken ideal. I don't believe it should be a purpose of the National Park System to represent every theme of American history for the reason that many themes do not lend themselves to illustration by historic sites. And moreover, the visiting public is not so interested in visiting sites that illustrate some of the more esoteric themes even when you can find them. So while I am not against trying to find good illustrative sites to commemorate the various themes of American history, it doesn't bother me in the slightest that we have so many battlefields and so many forts and that sort of thing. These have been more likely to survive. These are more susceptible to preservation and interpretation of nationally significant themes of American history.

Dick: Could you elaborate on why they are more susceptible to preservation and interpretation?

Bob: The nature of the fabric or landscape setting within which they occurred. I suppose I could answer the question better by trying between us to find the illustrative sites for literary or scientific themes. Take the theme that we were so concerned with back in the 1960's of the development of nuclear power. Certainly there is scarcely a theme you can identify that is more consequential in terms of the unfolding of American and global history than that. The then chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, Glen Seaborg, put tremendous pressure on the Park Service to get into identifying nuclear sites before we otherwise would have done so. But you go around and identify the critical places where things happened in the development of nuclear energy. We made a landmark out of that stadium of the University of Chicago where they did something... pull some piles or something... There are individual laboratories. But you go to any one of these now, or you think in terms of trying to make any one of them a conventional type national historic site that interprets to the visiting public what happened there and why it was significant, and I wager that you will have a hard time trying to come up with anything beyond the Trinity Site, here in New Mexico, that could be effectively treated with your usual park development techniques.

Dick: That is a rather esoteric theme in a way.

Bob: Ok, let's take American literature. That's not an esoteric theme. Here what you are dealing with primarily are the homes of literary figures, and a few have direct and long-standing associations with their homes. You can go to Longfellow House and get a feel for Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. You can go to Sinclair Lewis's home up in Minnesota and get a feel for Main street and Babbit and so forth. How much of the visiting public does, how effective are we at Longfellow House, or is the state or whoever at Sinclair Lewis's House, how effective are we at Eugene O'Neal in presenting something that the typical visiting public conceives of as significant and interesting in the same way that they do Fort Davis or Gettysburg Battlefield or any of the more conventional type sites?

I recall the bureaucratic exercise we went through back in the early 70's under the chairmanship of Barry Mackintosh in which, for Hartzog's purposes with the Office of Management and Budget, we constructed some elaborate charts that purported to show an unbalanced National Park System and the themes in which we needed to acquire new parks in order to have a balanced representation of American history. As you pointed out, we were over-represented in military and political affairs.

But the illogical box we got ourselves into took a concrete form with the proposed Abraham Lincoln Home in Springfield, Illinois. Here is the premier Abraham Lincoln site. There is none that comes anywhere close to that one in significance. That was not in the National Park System, but in state custody. Yet, when it became possible to get the Lincoln Home in Springfield, we ran into trouble because our own study showed we already had Abraham Lincoln covered at the Lincoln Birthplace, the Lincoln Boyhood Home, the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, and the House Where Lincoln Died and Ford's Theater. Who needs more Lincoln sites? So you can't have the prime Lincoln site.

So this whole numbers game is misplaced effort in my judgment, and I do not think that ought to be the objective of the National Park System.

Dick: Ok. Are there any aspects of American history which you would like to see covered better in the Park System. Granted you don't want to see it necessarily round that out. But what more should the System include?

Bob: I haven't thought of this for a long time, but there are themes that I think do lend themselves to illustration by historic sites in which visitors would be genuinely interested. I think American industry is one. I guess it's not American industry, but the Edison Laboratories in New Jersey are fascinating to the visitor as well as tremendously significant in the world of invention. And I can conceive of factory situations on a small scale that would be worthwhile. Maybe they're doing this at Lowell, I've not been there. I think there is potential in that area and I am sure there are others that don't occur to me at the moment.

Dick: Other themes?

Bob: Political affairs aren't all that well covered except in presidential homes. Party history, we don't have the birthplace of the Republican party do we?

Dick: Or the Know Nothings.

Bob: That's right.

Dick: Bob, do you believe that history and historic resources have been of less concern to top management than natural history and natural resources, and if so why?

Bob: Definitely so. I think it is the ingrained institutional bias of the National Park Service in all of its history and traditions that makes that so. It has always been oriented that way. It has always seen itself as oriented in that direction. And it has always been run by people who come out of that tradition. And so I think that institutional bias is so deeply embedded that it can never be rooted out. I think it is something that has to be lived with, lamentable though that may be.

Dick: Who were the top managers most supportive of history and historic resources in the National Park Service?

Bob: I think most who have been supportive were supportive because they were imperialists who saw the growth of the System as a good thing. The only one who strikes me offhand as not an imperialist was Newton Drury. He definitely did not believe in building the System up. But as for being genuinely supportive on other than pragmatic grounds, few of them. I wouldn't name a single one, unless it was Arno Cammerer and, of course, Horace Albright, who were genuinely interested as a personal matter in acquiring historical areas and in building up the historical component of the National Park System. Hartzog did a lot. Connie Wirth did a lot. Not I think from genuine personal interest in it, but in the imperial sense of building the organization and thus the political strength to be gained by a new park area in some new district. They both said all the right words in expressing their commitment to it. But I don't think that they were genuinely interested. And when you get down closer to modern times, I have to rate both Gary Everhardt and Bill Whalen low on the list. I think they not only had no personal interest but they didn't have any particular institutional interest either. And so I think our interest suffered badly from those two directorates. I don't think Russ Dickinson is particularly interested, but like Hartzog and Wirth he gave lip service to it and he did well by it.

Dick: What about top managers other than the Directors? Would you name some of who have been the most supportive?

Bob: I probably know the ones who have been the least supportive.

Dick: That was coming up next.

Bob: Well, Ronnie Lee for a time was a Regional Director, but that's an aberration. The most supportive would have to have been Elbert Cox, and of course he came out of the history ranks. Oddly enough, my observation is that most who came out of lower ranks of history into top management turned out not to be all that supportive, maybe because they felt they had to prove something to the Service at large, or they took on another persona when they took on a new responsibility. Chet Brooks was once a historian, and I never regarded him as a particular friend of us after he became a Regional Director. Ed Hummell was a historian, and he lost his commitment to history when he became superintendent at Glacier and then Regional Director in San Francisco. Dave Thompson likewise. So origins in our professions didn't necessarily produce sympathetic top managers. I go back to Elbert Cox. Joe Rumburg was very supportive, surprisingly so. You worked with Joe Rumburg; would you agree with that?

Dick: Yes.

Bob: As Regional Director in Santa Fe. My first Regional Director, Hugh Miller, was. None other comes to mind. As I say, there are plenty that I would put on the opposite side. Len Volz: I don't think he was ever very supportive. He ran things in Richmond for a time and then went off to Omaha. Frank Kowski was greatly beloved throughout the Park Service and contributed enormously, but Frank was no friend of historic preservation. I still remember the shock that went through our whole organization when Frank asked on paper what difference it made what shade of color we used to paint Independence Hall. You worked for Frank too, didn't you?

Dick: Yes I did. Bob, would you discuss the degree of cynicism with which agency leaders may have approached historic preservation.

Bob: I think all of those I have named as not personally supportive, but who were institutionally supportive, have to be accused of a degree of cynicism. I think that would be inherent in postulating that they were the one and not the other. The degree to which they were personally aware of their cynicism is another thing again. I don't think any of us, no matter how pure we consider ourselves, can occupy positions of bureaucratic authority on a high level without doing things that would open us to a charge of cynicism. Certainly I would have to confess to approaching many assignments cynically or else I wouldn't be able to live with myself. It is part of the job of running an organization larger than a two-person branch.

Dick: In a way history got to the top under you and under Ernest Allen Connally. Do you think there were any costs in this?

Bob: Got to the top?

Dick: Got to the top. And if so,

Bob: You mean penalties to professionalism or to integrity? Well I have always been able to rationalize everything I have done. I know I have done a lot of things that my colleagues throughout the Service might regard as a prostitution of professional principles. I can only invite them to occupy the chair I did. I have always given George Hartzog great praise and credit as an intensely political administrator who did not ask his professional people to provide him with answers or justifications that ran counter to their professional principles. Wherever an unprofessional decision was necessitated on political grounds, he made it, and didn't throw the blame or the requirement on his top professionals. And a good bit of what I did through the years after Hartzog came to trust me, which wasn't initially, was in politically sensitive issues to find that narrow ground on which he and I could walk comfortably, where I could provide the justification for what he wanted to do or found it necessary to do. Sometimes that required a great deal of intellectual gymnastics. Sometimes we had to bury the unacceptable deep in something acceptable. But I don't think I ever did anything that I feel today was a compromise of my principles or a prostitution of my profession.

Dick: Ok, let's look at one or two other Directors. How would you characterize Conrad Wirth, especially as regards his interest in historic preservation?

Bob: I think Connie Wirth was a good Director, for his time and place. It was a much smaller organization then, a much more personal organization, and we historians had better access to him. So I think he tended, more than later Directors, to be responsive to what the professionals were saying to him. But like Hartzog, I don't think that Connie had any personal interest in the historical component in the National Park System. I think his interest was primarily institutional and imperial, and especially during the Mission 66 period he saw it as a fine opportunity to build up the National Park System much beyond what it was when it emerged from WW II. Personally, I dealt more closely with Connie Wirth in later years, after he retired, when he didn't really let go of the Park Service and was always in there with one project or another. And I dealt with him as an official of National Geographic on Alaska concerns, and in fact he and I toured Alaska together putting together that joint Park Service-National Geographic Early Man Study up there. So I have an affection and a respect for Connie, but it's not nearly so great as for George Hartzog.

Dick: How would you characterize Ron Walker?

Bob: Well, of course, he was almost an aberration, totally without experience in our business or much of any other business, and totally a political creature of Richard Nixon. But because of that he came unburdened by any traditions or preconceptions or commitments of how things ought to be done. He really didn't have the intellectual equipment to have any original or creative idea of his own. But after he got over an initial suspicion of the career service, which he saw as hostile to his President, he proved receptive to what the top staff was telling him, and in historic preservation he simply turned me loose. After we compiled the list of horrors that had been perpetrated by the Park Service in historic preservation, he turned me loose to go about an attempt to bring about a higher level of sensitivity and a greater commitment to proper care of historic resources. The difficulty came because he turned other people loose with agendas that conflicted with my own and then proved incapable of mediating between the two and making decisions himself. But during a year or so, in which we pretty much wrote our own program, I think that we accomplished a great deal in sensitizing the Park Service to this particular concern, and so I look back on Walker with mixed feelings, both positive and negative.

Dick: Bob do you have any other comments about any other Directors? You commented briefly on Everhardt and Whalen. Do you have any more observations on them as far as historic preservation goes?

Bob: No. Whalen I did not serve under. Gary Everhardt was my last Director, and it was because of fundamental disagreements with him that I left the Park Service. I believe that if you can't loyally serve and carry out a chief's policies, it's time to get out, and so I left. I guess that in itself indicates what I feel about Gary's sensitivity to historic resources. I would hasten to add that I liked him personally very much, and he brought many good qualities to the Directorship. It is simply that in historic preservation he was a total bust.

Dick: You seemed to indicate pretty much that the Directors by and large have been interested in historic preservation with imperial motives rather than the day-to-day management and protection and care of the resources. Which of the Directors were most interested in day-to-day management and interested in assuring proper care of the resources?

Bob: I don't think any of them were. As I mentioned earlier, the ones who would come closest were Horace Albright and Arno Cammerer, and that goes a long way back. I don't think any of them since then have been. I think that Newton Drury, if he could have had his way, would have purged the Park System of all historical areas. I don't think he believed that the Park System ought to include historical areas. No others have been prepared to go that far.

Dick: Some countries have a dual Park System, one for natural resources and one for historic areas. To what extent has this dual system been proposed to the United States and what do you feel are the pros and cons of a dual system? One for natural and one for historic.

Bob: A dual system would permit the two kinds—let's deal with natural and historic—the two kinds of resources to be managed by policies that were formulated specifically to meet the needs and special conditions of those resources, so you cannot help but have a professionally more enlightened care of the two kinds of resources with a dual system. That's the advantage. The disadvantage is that you have a certain degree of bureaucratic overlapping because two organizations are in the same business, and so it's not cost-effective. And you lose something else, too. You lose the overall park conservation ethic that comes out of the traditions and the history of a National Park Service that's been in the single business for so long. The care of both requires basically the same ethic, and I think you might lose that with the dual. But in my judgment there are more advantages than disadvantages to the dual system.

Dick: Was the dual system very seriously proposed during your time?

Bob: The first serious proposal goes back to the Schneider report of 1935, which faces right up to the differing nature of the two kinds of resources and says that most countries do it with two organizations. By the time Schneider wrote it, Ickes, the Secretary of the Interior, had already decided that we weren't going to do it that way. And Schneider made a big pitch for a more or less discrete organization within the National Park Service that would run the historical areas under the oversight of no one beneath the Director himself. That never got put into effect, because of the institutional bias that we've discussed off and on all afternoon.

Yes, it was subsequently proposed. Connally and I at one point both strongly felt that was the only way to go. That was the only way that historical areas were going to be properly cared for. After Walker became Director, as I mentioned a few moments ago, he had no preconceptions, no loyalties to the best way of doing things, so he was receptive. Here is a subject that couldn't even have been whispered in the presence of any previous Director that now could be discussed openly with this Director.

Dick: What happened to it?

Bob: Well, at Walker's direction, Connally and I drew up a proposal on paper to separate the historical and archeological areas out altogether into a separate system administered by a bureau apart from the National Park Service which would also be concerned with all of the external programs. Walker approved it and it was discussed with Secretary Rogers Morton, who proved receptive. I suppose that Morton's interest was as much imperial as it was a commitment to the proper care of historic resources. As I recall, it was torpedoed by Nat Reed, who was Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks and was between Morton and Walker. I suspect that he simply told Walker that you don't do this sort of thing. Anyway it died aborning; but it did get down on paper, it did get formally proposed simply because a fluke—a Director who was open to discussing different ways of doing things. Boy, if you had ever mentioned that to Hartzog, why he would have sent you out to Katmai right away.

Dick: There are advantages then to having a Director who is......

Bob: Well, there are more disadvantages.

Dick: Ok, so at one time you proposed this to Walker. In your interview with Evison this is discussed. And, that's in 1973, and as I recall you said you could go either way. And now you recognize more disadvantages than advantages.

Bob: I think I would say that. I would have to say, though, that basically I am still ambivalent about it. But I do believe there are more advantages than disadvantages. It really is basically an academic discussion; because politically and bureaucratically it is simply not in the cards under any foreseeable combinations, and it was a serious matter for a brief time only because of the fluke of Ron Walker.

Dick: Was there a title given to that proposed organization?

Bob: Yes, I don't remember what we were going to call it though. It may have been the National Historic Site Service. What do they call it in Canada?

Dick: I don't know Bob.

Bob: Well it's not important anyway, but it may have been National Historic Sites or National Monument Service, something like that. It would have reflected Connally's conception of the European monument service as the ideal, or the model against which we should be striving.

Dick: We've discussed the dichotomies between the natural and historical realms of the National Park Service. Let's focus down a little more closely on historic preservation or CRM in the National Park Service and discuss its being divided into two groups: an internal group involved in historic preservation and an external group involved in tax act, HABS, and so forth. You have seen times when both were in the National Park Service and times when both were in different agencies—the National Park Service and HCRS. Do you feel both belong in the National Park Service? The internal and external programs? Or not?

Bob: Again this is a somewhat academic discussion because that's where they are and that's where they're going to be. Back to our previous topic. If we could have a National Monument Service, concerned with historic preservation, concerned with history, archeology and historic architecture, I believe the internal and external ought to be combined in a professional organization concerned with both. Now, since we've discounted that and said it's not in the cards, then I answer your present question. I believe there is an inherent conflict between the two that places the Director of the National Park Service in almost a no-win situation. He has to mediate in terms of scarce personnel and scarce dollars between his basic mission of running the parks and, what is not terribly central to his concerns, giving money to the states to take care of historic districts that have nothing to do with the National Park System. So, at the time the Carter Administration set up HCRS I supported that. I was a member of the task force that underlay that. Unhappily Carter's Interior Department torpedoed the recommendations of the task force, and they got badly corrupted, but the principle I think was right, that the external programs all belong in a separate organizational entity. This is true because they require a different kind of persons, they have a different constituency and different kinds of programs. There just isn't much overlap between running an external program and running a park.

Dick: Bob, you say a separate organizational entity. You're talking about actually not a separate Associate Director, but a separate......

Bob: I am talking about either one, since it's not likely you're going to get a separate bureau. If all of the old external recreation programs, which were major in the old BOR days, of recreational assistance and the recreational grant-in-aid program, if they were ever to come back in the dimensions that they used to have and the Park Service were to run them, I think you could make a good argument for including both the recreational and cultural in an Associate Directorate having to do with external programs. So long as that doesn't happen, I think that you ought to separate the two under a professional Associate Directorate but in separate columns under separate Assistant Directors. I guess what I am getting at is to try to keep external and internal as separate as possible at the highest possible organizational level that you can pull off politically.

Dick: But you would have both the internal and external cultural resource programs reporting to one top professional just below the Director?

Bob: As things stand now, I would do that. If all of the recreational programs came back in their old dimensions, with the money and the constituency and all that they used to have under BOR, I think you could make a good case, even though it may seem to contradict things I've said earlier, for putting all of the external affairs, both recreational and cultural, under an Associate Director for External Programs. There just isn't enough community of interest between running the parks and running grants-in-aid programs to the states.

Dick: Ok, on pages 67 & 68 of Evison's interview with you, you outlined an organizational chart that would establish, as you said, the kind of accountability that we would like now; that was in 1973. Is it possible to establish accountability within the present system—real hard-core accountability?

Bob: Not without reorganizing. If you mean by the present system, the present organization, no. If you mean a reorganization within the existing park system, yes.

Dick: The organization that you proposed to Mr. Evison was one where there was, as I recall, an Associate for natural resources, one for historic, and one for recreational, and that organization was mirrored in the regional offices. Do you still support that kind of organization?

Bob: Absolutely! I think that is the kind of organization most likely to establish the accountability that we are talking about. The practice of the Park Service of letting each individual Regional Director decide what kind of an organization he wants, I think is just off the wall, and I've never been able to see any rational justification for it.

Dick: Has that been going on for some time?

Bob: Yes, it has for some time. I think that may have originated under Hartzog. I believe when I came into the Park Service each region reflected the Washington Office. But it was not set up to manage separate kinds of resources such as we're talking about now. I would make each of the three Associate Directors responsible to the Director for the proper management of each of the kinds of resources. They would have a functional relationship with their opposite numbers in the regional offices whose jobs would be to monitor the performance of the superintendents in applying the specialized policies to each of the kinds of resources.

Dick: The operational kinds of things such as maintenance, concessions, safety, and that kind of thing—will they fall under different Associate Regional Directors depending upon the kind of park they were in?

Bob: You've got administration that cuts across everything, concessions, this sort of thing, and I would put those that are big enough under an Assistant Director over here somewhere, maybe under someone who reports to the Deputy, but the key to this whole thing is a management Associate Director for each of the three kinds of resources. And a monitoring mechanism under each one of them that systematically looks at the performance of the superintendents in each of the parks to see whether the specialized policies for each of the three kinds of resources are truly being applied. This is the big fault of the Park Service today in my judgment. It's got perfectly good policies that reflect the best thought in historic preservation worldwide, which are not being applied on the park level because no Regional Director has the guts to ensure that the superintendent carries them out.

Dick: Would you guess that the same is true of natural resources?

Bob: That would be my guess, yes. As we began to get into this big sensitivity initiative back in the Walker directorship, it rapidly became apparent to us that the natural sciences had exactly the same complaints that we did and exactly the same problems in trying to get superintendents to apply the specialized policies for the management of natural resources.

Dick: Why do you think this problem exists?

Bob: It's because, as an institutional tradition, the Park Service has always looked upon superintendents as the Navy looks on the captains of ships—not to be interfered with in the captaincy of the ship. And we have policies. The superintendents are supposed to apply the policies. The Region has a capability of looking over their shoulders to see whether they do or not, and as you know from your own experience some do and some don't. But do you have a mechanism for taking decisive action in those instances where superintendents are not? I have seen time and again where superintendents are called on their failure to apply policy by the Regional Office, and they respond with the assurance that, no, they really are in conformity. That unsupported statement, when everybody knows it to be untruthful, is enough to call the Regional Director off.

Dick: Do you see any improvement in accountability, since say your last interview?

Bob: Not really. Well, I'm not in a position to observe it now. This region has never been one that's been conspicuously at fault in that regard. Other regions have, and I don't know what the record is in them now, although I can guess that it hasn't improved much. I do get some into it through my job as Chairman of the Board of Eastern National Park and Monument Association, and I can tell you from the projects that come before us for review that I have very grave suspicions that there has been any improvement since my time.

Dick: You must get some ideas from Melody.

Bob: About how it's run here. Yes, I have a good deal more confidence in you and my wife than I do in some of your counterparts elsewhere.

Dick: Thank you, Bob. It seems to me that you're saying that this is more or less a hopeless situation, that we're not really going to improve in this regard.

Bob: Well, I guess I am a natural pessimist. I would agree to that. I don't think you are.

Dick: Let's look at the Washington Office a little bit, and I'd like your idea on what the proper responsibilities are for the Chief Historian, Chief Anthropologist, the Chief Curator and the Chief Historical Architect in Washington.

Bob: What they should do first and foremost is to formulate for approval of line management the policies and standards, from the professional standpoint, that are to be carried out on the park level in each of the respective disciplines concerned, and to relate to their counterparts on the regional level to insure that the application of those policies is monitored and failure to apply them is identified and corrective action taken. That is the first responsibility.

Another is to represent the respective disciplines to the outside professional world and to relate to it in ways that may be mutually beneficial; to communicate to professional counterparts in the universities and elsewhere the programs and objectives of that discipline in the National Park Service in an attempt to secure their support and assistance insofar as it may be needed. Then of course, there is a host of other things that fall to each of those officials simply by being in the Washington office and being a professional, and I think I would lump those under the general heading of providing any advice and assistance in those disciplines that the Director or Directorate might need, politically, bureaucratically, programmatically, and budgetarily.

Dick: This would then include the allocation of monies for projects Servicewide?

Bob: In an advisory sense. I think you have to have an ultimate line authority make the final decision and at least approve the distribution.

Dick: Over time, have you seen a bias in the Washington Office among the top professionals, the division chiefs, for the resources in the east or the resources in the West?

Bob: I think that bias toward the East existed when I came into the Park Service and had existed during the 30's the 40's and early 50's, simply because that's where most of the historical parks were. In the East. And so the preoccupation was largely with the East. I am sure that still exists to an extent because still most of the resources are in the East and most of the serious problems are in the East. But it does not exist as a bias in the degree it did in those earlier decades.

Dick: Certainly the balance between East and West as far as resources go, I think, has been corrected some.

Bob: Some, but not altogether. The eastern regions are essentially historically oriented. Most of the parks in each of the three eastern regions, I believe, are historical.

Dick: The same would be true here in the Southwest Region.

Bob: That's true.

Dick: Do you see a need for a Chief Archivist in Washington.

Bob: No.

Dick: Why?

Bob: Because I do not believe that the Park Service ought to be in the archival business. You will recall that we wrote a policy at one time (and maybe it still is in the policy statement) that the Park Service would not be in the archival business. Personnel were to be encouraged to keep copies of original documents for study in the parks, but the documents themselves were to be in repositories designed for archives, cared for by professional archivists, and in locations accessible to researchers.

Dick: Not in parks.

Bob: Not in parks. And that means really nowhere else in the Park Service. There is nowhere in the Park Service that is equipped to take proper care of original documents. They should not be in the custody of the Park Service, with one or two exceptions such as Morristown, where the collection and the facility were given to the Park Service by someone, and there is no way to get out of the business there.

Unfortunately, the parks are so territorial that they resisted that policy, and I guess they resisted effectively. To my knowledge there are still parks that are in the archival business.

You know we had an agreement with the Archivist of the United States about Yellowstone Park, which has all of the records going back to the beginning. Under the law they are supposed to be in the National Archives. The superintendent wouldn't let go of them. In an agreement with the Archivist of the United States he promised to hire a professional archivist to care for them and to do so according to standards prescribed by the Archivist of the United States. I'll bet whoever takes care of them now is a naturalist.

Melody: Half-naturalist, half-historian.

Dick: Bob, if you were Chief Historian today, what responsibilities would you assign to the agency historian?

Bob: I would expect him or her to be the keeper of the traditions and the keeper of the facts, to be the expert on all facets of the history and traditions of the bureau. But as an ongoing daily responsibility, I would expect him to devote himself primarily to obtaining the maximum number of studies relating to the bureau, and particularly to its ongoing management problems, that could be obtained for the least investment in resources, and I would look to accomplishing this both outside and inside the Park Service through the utilization of Park Service historians but of external historians too, under contract and as dissertation topics.

I think that critical to the survival of that position, whether it's in the Park Service or anywhere else in the Federal Government, is to make it constantly valuable to management, and this means turning out studies that are useful to management in handling its daily management problems. The moment that it becomes focused on the past, the distant past, then it becomes a luxury that can be done away with in the first budget crunch.

But you can't ignore the distant past either. There has to be a judicious mix that makes it constantly valuable to top management. I don't think that person ought to be doing many studies himself. I think he ought to be getting the studies done inside and outside the Park Service. But I would expect him to be able to answer about any question I asked about the history and traditions of the Service.

Dick: What was the situation with regard to collections management during your tenure in the Washington Office of the Park Service?

Bob: Chaos, as I guess it still is. I had almost nothing to do with collections until Hartzog created a crisis one time. I guess he went down to the archeological facility at Okmulgee National Monument and saw the collections in great disarray in the basement. There were collections that went back to the 1930's. And he created a great crisis, and he went over and told Julia Butler Hanson (chair of our House Appropriations Subcommittee) that 90% or whatever of our artifacts had never been catalogued and we didn't even know what we had. And so there was a tremendous concentration for several weeks on drawing up budget proposals to go out and do something about all of these collections. Well, when the magnitude of the problem became apparent it died back into its normal chaos, where I suppose it has remained ever since.

Dick: Do you support the idea of a Chief Curator?

Bob: Yes.

Dick: And yet since Hartzog's time—from approximately the mid-60's to the mid-80's—and you commented that it has been somewhat chaotic. You don't see a great deal of change.

Bob: I don't see any hope, and I wouldn't criticize anyone for it. I think given the magnitude of the problem, given the sheer quantity of collections around the Park System, that about the only thing that can be done is to blunder along doing the best that you can with the limited amount of money available for this purpose. About the only thing that can be done is to set some priorities and use the limited resources accordingly.

Dick: It has been my observation that Ann Hitchcock is truly looking to establish a systematic Servicewide program. That's my observation of her as a Chief Curator. It might still be chaotic, but I believe she is making a serious attempt to systematize it in some way or another.

Bob: I think that is true from what I have heard of her also, and I didn't mean to imply you should not strive for a systematic and comprehensive approach. I think, given the magnitude of the problem, it will continue to be a chaotic one though. You'll only nibble away a little bit at a time.

Dick: So it has always been chaotic?

Bob: So far as my observation goes. I did not have much to do with collections.

Dick: Who did in Washington?

Bob: Nobody in Washington. The one generally looked to was Art Allen up at Harpers Ferry, and of course his responsibility was primarily laboratory work—curation. I don't believe he ever had much to do with organizing a system for managing collections, until recently.

Dick: Bob, would you discuss Mission 66 and its effect on cultural resource management?

Bob: It was a mixed bag. Under Mission 66 we got the Historic Sites Survey, which underlay a lot of new additions to the Park System in the historical area category.

Dick: Why did we get the Historic Sites Survey at that time? How did it tie in with Mission 66?

Bob: They succeeded in making a case for research and study. I would attribute that primarily to the contributions to Mission 66 planning of Ronnie Lee and Roy Appleman. Roy Appleman was the history member of the Mission 66 planning team, and the historians made a good case for reactivating the Historic Sites Survey. The justification was primarily as a necessary tool for identifying qualified additions to the National Park System. It was only after it got well underway that the subsidiary purpose emerged, and then became the primary purpose, of public recognition through plaques and certificates and publicity and encouragement of preservation by other than the Park Service. It was initially justified in large part as proposed area studies, but it was healthily funded and was an important part of Mission 66.

The new parks that flowed out of Mission 66 were another positive effect. They came not alone from the studies of the Historic Sites Survey but from the more liberal funding climate in which the Park Service worked.

Interpretation was from the first considered to be a major thrust of Mission 66. And the Park Service got a lot of historical museums and other interpretive media in its existing parks that it didn't have before, which for history, for cultural resources, was a positive effect.

Those were the good things. The bad thing was that as a development-oriented program it created a lot of unnecessary structures and infra-structure and facilities—concrete and mortar and pavement and that sort of thing—that constituted in the historical areas an insensitive intrusion. We see it in retrospect as damage to the very features that the parks were established to protect and interpret to the public. And again, it was just the way of thinking back in the 50's. We put the visitor center at Fort Union on the edge of the parade ground. We put the visitor center and cyclorama at Gettysburg virtually on Pickett's objective point on the third day of the battle, which is the worst possible place it could have been put. That happened all through the Park System because of development, a lot of development that wasn't needed. It was done because you could get money for buildings, because the Park Service's architects and engineers, like its interpreters, always look for opportunities to glorify themselves by erecting architectural monuments rather than blending these things softly into the park setting.

Dick: I hear the term glorifying themselves a good bit.

Bob: I probably originated that term. It was in my article that you referenced. Yes, I think it is a natural instinct for a person to want to do things that will make him look good. And it was my personal experience dealing with DSC architects that they couldn't be persuaded to fold their architecture unobtrusively into the park's surroundings. It had to be prominent and something that could be pointed to. I remember where this sort of conflict reached an almost shrill level was in the controversies over George Rogers Clark in Indiana. That memorial was built specifically with the whole basement level intended for a visitor center. On the exterior that memorial was designed, both in architecture and landscape, as an artistic creation. Yet the Park Service had to go in there and plop a visitor center down in the midst of that artistic creation, disrupting the intent of the original artist and not using the space originally created for visitor center purposes. This is just one example of many that exemplified a Mission 66 mentality of "go out and build." And of course, we see this among the interpreters just as much as the architects.

Melody: I'd like to ask you, Bob, to comment on what we have here at Pecos. We have a visitor center that is an architectural gem and jewel in the Park Service's eyes, and yet it is set off in a way and hidden from the resource so that it does not intrude in any way on the resource. So what you have here is on the one hand an architectural gem and on the other hand it's set away from the resource in a location that neither you nor Bill Brown, your successor as Regional Historian, wanted.

Bob: I like what has been done at Pecos. Dave Battle's visitor center is a statement in itself, an architectural statement, and a beautiful creation, and does not detract from the historic resources for the reason that you said, which is that it cannot be seen from them. It is hidden.

Dick: Do you think it competes with the historic resources?

Bob: I don't think so because you have two distinct experiences there, you have the museum experience and then you go to another place where you experience the resources out of sight of the first experience. Now,

I don't really see any great contradiction between that with our earlier view. I think a good case could be, and was, made for the interpretive benefits to be derived from poking that building out from slightly around the corner of the hill so that the resources could be seen from the visitor center. It would have had to be unobtrusive architecture, and that would have been effective too. I think something has been lost by not being able to see the resources from the visitor center. But what you've come up with is still a fine solution, so I'm comfortable with either way.

Dick: In you article on Preservation Ideal you say, and I quote: "In parks the best modern works are those that compete the least with the historic attractions. It might almost be said that the more unmemorable the modern work the more successful it is as a park development." How does that square with you views of Pecos?

Bob: I still subscribe to that generality. Consistency is not necessarily one of my virtues. I happen to like what has been done at Pecos, but I still subscribe to what you just read. As a generality, I believe that the more unmemorable the better. I like what's been done in this instance.

Dick: That's the only problem I have with the Pecos Visitor Center and I haven't made up my mind on it yet—as to its competing with the resource: otherwise it's a very fine building.

Bob: I haven't had a sense of competition from being there, and I think it is because there are two distinct experiences involved, and neither seems to intrude on the other.

Dick: The comments around the Regional Office have included, among other things, that the superintendent has two resources.

Bob: That's probably true, and I think the way to get at this question is to ask yourself what is it, as the visitors drive down the road after visiting Pecos, that is most prominently in their mind. I suspect that at Pecos it's all that nice warm bread that they bought from the bread baking operation. But once we get beyond that, the last thing that they have experienced has been the ruins, and I would guess that the ruins are ascendent in their minds along with the bread.

Dick: One thing about that structure is that it is built not to stand out but to blend into the landscape. Its regional architecture. It can't help but stand out some, as it's a very attractive building, but it's not a superimposing building. It is low and it's down, it's not on a prominent site.

Ok, we were talking about Mission 66. We jumped up to the 1980's. Let's go back to Mission 66 for a bit. How would you characterize the historic preservation philosophy and practice of Bill Everhart and Roy Appleman.

Bob: Bill Everhart and Roy Appleman. I don't think Bill Everhart ever had a preservation philosophy. He had a very well-developed interpretive philosophy.

Dick: How did this impinge on historic preservation?

Bob: I don't want to blame it all on Bill Everhart because he personified and expressed a trend whose time had come because of Hartzog's search for new and ever more imaginative ways to catch the public eye. I think that interpretation in its worst excesses, around 1970, was detrimental to the interest you and I represent, which is, one, the preservation of the resource, and two, its tasteful and effective communication to the visitor. Harking back to our strictures on the architects and the engineers, I think the interpreters got into an attitude where they were calling attention to themselves and away from the resources of the park. The package became the great objective and the contents of secondary importance. It was "look at what creative people we are and how imaginatively we are performing." Rather than "look at the resource; here's why it's significant."

Living history of course is only one of the excesses that exemplify that trend. That has not been got wholly under control yet. I think there is still a tendency to rely on gimmicks to catch the public's attention, to the distraction from the park resources, but it's not nearly so bad as it was then. What you had then was interpreters who were attempting to win the plaudits of the design community, which hands out prizes and says how artistic this is, rather than the understanding, appreciation, and approval of the visiting public. These are two different constituencies.

Melody: Can you give some examples?

Bob: Sure, the basement museum at Independence that was created during the Bicentennial, the Franklin Court museum. I consider that the worst example. All of that electronic gimmickry overwhelmed any message that they were trying to impart, and I think I have a good deal of agreement around the Park Service on that particular museum. What they did down at Yorktown is another example. What they did at Golden Spike, if you've been up there. There wasn't a single label in the of displays, and the things that they were displaying didn't communicate anything, even the mood that they were trying to set by scattering pick axes and railroad ties and things around indiscriminately.

Dick: Bob, I don't hear any supporters of the Franklin Court Museum speaking out. The only comments I hear on the museum itself are very negative because of its high-tech nature and its basic confusion. Do you think there is much support for that kind of thing in the Park Service today?

Bob: Probably not for that. For one thing, the technology rapidly became outdated. But the underlying motivation is still there. We visited the Saratoga Museum last year or the year before. That was a late-70's museum in which the old and dated Mission 66 exhibits were replaced by gimmickry which just didn't come off and didn't interpret anything. The movie was awful. The exhibits were awful. The only thing worth spending time over was the old dioramas that they kept from back in the 50's. So I think it is still there. I think it's an attempt to create a mood and not tax the intellect of the visitor with labels and specific interpretation.

Dick: Would you comment on Roy Appleman—characterize his historic preservation policy and practice.

Bob: Roy's interest was primarily in interpretation. Roy was one who believed in putting the visitor right on top of the resource, and that meant putting the visitor center right on top of the resource. He always argued that you had to be able to see virtually everything from the visitor center, and in this Region when I came here one of the most hotly controversial issues was Roy's insistence as a member of the Mission 66 planning team that the visitor center at Chaco had to go right on the rim dominating everything so the visitor could see everything from there. The approach is outdated now.

Roy also believed passionately in the value of exhaustive research to document every last site, every last movement, everything, before planning proceeded. You've discovered that recently at Chalmette, where, had his instincts been followed back in the 50's when he was Regional Historian in Richmond, you would have long ago discovered that your whole interpretation of that battlefield was wrong. He recognized something was wrong.

Dick: Let's discuss the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 just a bit. You mentioned that Hartzog had a great deal of involvement in that. Would you elaborate on that some?

Bob: George had the political connections and the political savvy to know how things got through the Congress. There were other agencies involved, there were other constituencies involved—the National Trust, HUD, and so forth—but when it came to getting a version of it through the Congress he knew. The House of Representatives voted against putting it on the consent calendar, which means to consider it out of order. When that is done, even though it is a procedural vote, that kills it for that session. Hartzog, Bob Garvey I think went with him, but it was primarily Hartzog, went to old Judge Howard Smith, that reactionary congressman from northern Virginia who was chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, and got it rescheduled on the consent calendar. I don't know what strings he pulled to get it done. Gordon Gray was mixed up in that also. But it came up for the floor vote when there was no reason to expect that it could make it that session, and it was primarily because Hartzog maneuvered it, and then it passed, and that meant the Senate would take it seriously.

That was only one instance. All the way through, Hartzog was maneuvering this thing behind the scenes. He was closely tied in with the staff people on the Hill. One was from Casey Ireland, who was the staff person for Widnell's housing committee. Casey Ireland had only contempt for the new Department of Housing and Urban Development even though his committee oversaw it. He maneuvered to get the legislation into the Interior and Insular Affairs Committee, or to get a version into it. That helped throw it to Interior instead of HUD. So there was all of this kind of string-pulling, the details of which I have forgotten, and in which Hartzog was right in the middle.

Dick: Again Hartzog comes across as a Director very heavily involved and in his own bureaucratic way very supportive of historic preservation. Here he is supporting this major piece of legislation, and then after that was passed was willing to look into an organization that was in a radical direction away from traditional Park Service operations. He set up Ernest Allen Connally's office, which he later sort of decapitated I gather, but nevertheless he was doing things with regard to historic preservation that perhaps no one since Albright had done.

Bob: That is true. I agree with every word that you've said. Most of the early versions of the 66 legislation contemplated that it would be administered by HUD, the new Department of Housing and Urban Development. Hartzog went in and manipulated the whole system to capture it from HUD and make it a National Park Service program with all of the authority to go get money to administer a grant-in-aid program that would give him a constituency in every state in the union. What I am doing is showing both sides of this. I don't know whether he was personally committed as a matter of principle. I don't think he was. I think his principal interest was of bureaucratic empire building. But I am not about to look a gift horse in the mouth, because he was saying all the right things and doing all the right things, initially, to have a result that was beneficial and also good for the Park Service. Who knows what inner motivations propel people? We can only suspect what they are. He could put the words together that sounded sincere and made a better case for our business than you or I or anybody else in our business was ever able to do.

Dick: Well, nevertheless, no Director since Albright had done so much for historic preservation in the Service, and who is to say exactly what Albright's motivations were?

Bob: Absolutely, you're right. It was a black day for the Park Service when we lost George, although there were a lot of things we lost that we could do without.

Dick: What was your own personal involvement in the passing of the legislation?

Bob: Virtually zero. Hartzog had not come to trust me at that point. In fact he had come to distrust me, and as I later discovered, although I didn't know it at the time, he didn't have any intention even of keeping me under the new organization. Ronnie Lee was still around. I think he had retired by that time, but Hartzog formed the committee of Lee and Joe Brew, for Archeology, and Ernest Connally, for architecture, and they were the ones that he turned to. In fact George even would go to one of my subordinates, John Littleton, who ran the Historic Sites Survey, to get information and staff support for this initiative on the Hill without even letting me know that he had done it. So I was completely out of it. I knew roughly what was going on.

[Since this interview, James Glass, in a doctoral dissertation at Cornell University, has documented a significant role that Utley played in the origins of the act. In 1988 an abridgment of Glass's work was being prepared for publication by the American Association for State and Local History.]

Dick: I would like to get away from the 66 Act for just a minute and ask you at what time did Hartzog begin to trust you. Do you remember any incidents?

Bob: Well it wasn't until '68 or '69 I think. You see, he had been sold a bill of goods that this new highly professional organization had to be headed up in all the crucial positions by people with Ph.D's. I didn't have a Ph.D, and I had done some things that alienated him anyway, and so he didn't have in mind for me to continue to be Chief Historian. Ronnie Lee, Joe Brew, and Ernest Connally, and Herb Kahler, who took Connally's slot on the committee after Connally became Director of OAHP, convinced Hartzog that I had enough other credentials that I ought to be kept as Chief Historian. I learned all of this after the fact. I never knew I was threatened.

No it was earlier than 1968. I think when he came to trust me was in the opening months of 1967, after the 66 Act had been passed in October. Connally consented to come in and take over the organization, but he couldn't come until the summer of 67 because he had teaching commitments. So I was made Acting Director of the new OAHP with the mandate of organizing it and drawing up all of the criteria and guidelines for the operation of the new programs. Connally and I talked on the telephone frequently.

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