Mission 66 - Mission 66 was a 10-year program, initiated by National Park Service Director Conrad L. Wirth in 1956, to upgrade facilities, staffing, and resource management throughout the System by the 50th anniversary of the Service in 1966. Congress appropriated more than a billion dollars over the 10-year period for Mission 66 improvements. The legacy of the program included dozens of visitor centers, hundreds of employee residences, as well as the Mather and Albright employee training centers at Harpers Ferry and the Grand Canyon.
Wilderness Act of 1964 - In the Wilderness Act of 1964, Congress adopted a policy of securing wilderness areas for the benefit of present and future generations of Americans. It established a National Wilderness Preservation System, to be composed of federally owned areas designated by Congress as "wilderness areas," that would be administered in a way that would leave them unimpaired for the use and enjoyment of the American people as wilderness areas. The legislation prompted the Service to carefully examine all park land that potentially qualified as wilderness areas and provided additional legal protection for park areas threatened with development.
Land and Water Conservation Fund Act of 1965 - The Land and Water Conservation Fund Act established a fund for acquiring new recreation lands either within or adjacent to existing park units or new parks. Money for the fund would come from surplus property sales, motorboat fuel taxes, and other sources. A portion of the money in the fund would come from fees charged at existing parks. The fund was administered by the Bureau of Outdoor Recreation, a new Interior bureau established in 1962. The legislation took away the park Service's responsibilities for recreation planning and assistance together with some of its staff and fund, but the Service later regained these functions when the Bureau, reconstituted in 1978 as the Heritage Conservation and Recreation Service, expired in 1981.
National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 - The 1966 Act required that all historical parks be entered in the National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service and other federal agency measures that would affect historic sites became subject to review by state historic preservation officers and the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, a new federal agency established by the Act.
Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, 1968 - The Wild and Scenic Rivers Act provided for the protection and preservation in free-flowing condition of selected rivers that possessed outstanding scenic, recreational, geologic, fish and wildlife, historic, or cultural values. It identified eight rivers and adjacent lands in nine states as initial components of the wild and scenic rivers system, to be administered variously by the secretaries of Agriculture and the Interior. It also named 27 other rivers or river segments to be studied as potential additions to the wild and scenic rivers system. The legislation added to the National Park System long, winding units with complex management challenges.
National Trails System Act, 1968 - The National Trails System Act provided for the establishment of both national recreation trails accessible to urban areas, to be designated by the Secretary of the Interior and the Secretary of Agriculture according to specified criteria; and national scenic trails to be established by Congress. It designated two national scenic trails as initial components of the trails system: the Appalachian Trail and the Pacific Crest Trail. It also ordered 14 others routes to be studied for possible national scenic trail designation. Along with the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, this legislation expanded the diversity of units in the National Park System.
Volunteers in the Parks Act of 1969 - This legislation authorized the Secretary of the Interior to establish a "volunteers in the parks" program to aid in interpretation functions or other visitor services or activities in and related to areas administered by the National Park Service. The legislation provided a vehicle that allowed the Service to utilize volunteer help and services. The number of volunteers and volunteers has consistently grown and has proven increasingly beneficial.
National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 - The National Environmental Policy Act formed the nation's basic charter for environmental protection. It directed federal agencies to carry out their functions in a way that avoid or minimize environmental degradation and required them to conduct planning with studies of potential environmental impact for all development projects. In addition, the planning process would be open for public input. The new environmental legislation significantly increased the complexity of the Service's resource management in the parks.
General Authorities Act, 1970 - The General Authorities Act of August 18, 1970, redefined the National Park System to include all areas managed "for park, monument, historic, parkway, recreational, or other purposes" by the National Park Service. This marked a change from earlier legislation in which Congress legally defined the National Park System to exclude most areas in the recreational category. The legislation declared the various types of parks to be part of a single system.
Endangered Species Act of 1973 - The Endangered Species Act required federal agencies to ensure that their activities (authorized, funded, or executed) do not jeopardize the existence of any endangered or threatened species of plant or animal (including fish) or result in the destruction or deterioration of critical habitat of such species. It also provided for studies to determine endangered or threatened species and stipulates that it is unlawful for a person to possess, export, or import such species. This and other environmental legislation of the 1960s and 1970s served to bolster the role of science in park management.
Redwood National Park Expansion Act, as amended, 1978 - In the 1970s Congress grappled with the problem of the encroachment upon parks by adjacent activities. The coastal Redwoods in Redwood National Park were being threatened by logging activities outside the park boundaries. In 1978, Congress expanded the park boundaries to encompass the remaining watershed and protect the endemic ecosystem. The legislation was in effect a declaration encouraging the protection of national parks from external threats.
National Parks and Recreation Act, 1978 - The Act authorized the additional of 15 units to the National Park System, to include the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area.
Archeological Resources Protection Act, 1979 - The legislation corrected more than seven decades of inadequate protection for archaeological sites and objects. It superceded Antiquities Act as the prime legislative protection for federal archeological resources by defining them more completely and establishing appropriate penalty provisions for their destruction or theft.
Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, 1980 - The Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act added more than 47 million acres to the National Park System. Two years earlier, President Jimmy Carter had proclaimed national monuments totaling roughly 45 million acres in Alaska, greatly expanding the National Park Service's land management responsibilities. The 1980 legislation sanctioned President Carter's action and converted most of the national monuments in Alaska into national parks and preserves. This legislation more than doubled the size of the national park system and dramatically increased the total designated wilderness acreage.
June 28, 1980 – Biscayne National Park was established.
December, 2, 1980 – Kenai Fjords National Park was established.
Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, 1990 - Earlier legislation had expressly forbidden the excavation of Indian graves and removal of human and ceremonial remains. This act went further, directing museums to return Indian remains to the direct or at least cultural descendants for reburial. Compliance created some difficulties for museums including those in the National Park Service.
The Vail Agenda, 1992 - In 1992 hundreds of experts from within and outside the National Park Service participated in a conference in to commemorate the Service's seventy-fifth anniversary. The addressed the current status of national park management and made recommendations for the future. Their report, known as the Vail Agenda, addressed the status and needs of the National Parks in the 21st Century. The document reiterated the concerns expressed in the State of the Park Report (1980) and the General Accounting Office Report (1987). Among the recommendations was an urgent call for park management grounded in scientific research.
National Park Omnibus Management Act of 1998 - The broad Omnibus Act provided for improved management and increased accountability for certain National Park Service programs. It directed reform of the process by which areas are considered for addition to the National Park System. Specifically, the legislation provided that no study of the potential of an area for inclusion in the National Park System be made without the specific authorization of Congress. The Omnibus Act also instituted the first legislative reforms of the Service's concessions management practices in a generation. The Service responded with new regulations and guidelines for concessions contracts, commercial use authorization, and the use of franchise fees. It allowed the Service to retain concessions franchise fees in the parks in which they were collected.
Activity #3: A Day in the Park! Found Poetry
Materials (one of each item should be supplied for each participant/student):
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A piece of informational text (increasing the text size on a copy machine can aid in cutting apart the words)
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A piece of blank copy paper (can be colored)
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Scissors
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Glue or glue sticks
Procedure
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Students are given the text and depending upon the length of the text, directions can be given for each student to read the information independently or it can be read in parts and shared in a jig-saw fashion. Because each participant will ultimately need to be familiar with the text in order to draw their poetry from it, you may wish to have them read the entire text.
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After reading, participants will attempt to retell the history poetically. This can be through “finding” words, phrases or even sentences that when rearranged and recaptured differently will allow the reader’s understanding of the text to be created in an artistic manner. Poetic elements of alliteration, consonance, rhyme, meter, or syllabication can be used to aid the creation of a poetic piece as contrasted with a more “summary” style prose piece. (A “found summary” or “found connection” can work for students for whom comprehension and poetic creation could be too difficult.)
**For this activity one of the following articles will be used:
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“Brief History of the National Parks” http://www.loc.gov/collection/national-parks-maps/articles-and-essays/brief-history-of-the-national-parks/
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“The National Park Service: A Brief History” by Barry Mackintosh http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/hisnps/npshistory/npshisto.htm
Other Lesson Ideas
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Using resource maps of the national parks and their surrounding areas have students discuss and/or write about what they think the areas would look like today had they not been protected by the creation of national parks in the 19th century. Students will most likely need to familiarize themselves with the areas and what humans might have used the acreage for through the years. Furthermore, reviewing Library of Congress documents (and likely documentation that could be found other places) it is clear that when funding was withdrawn by Congress, in 1886, Yellowstone National Park suffered considerably.
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Using various maps available through the Library of Congress, have student compare national park maps to recognize the various types of maps, their purposes, and what can and can’t be learned from them. Examples for Rocky Mountain National Park:
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“Rocky Mountain National Park – Full of “Ohs” and “Ahs” – 1948 http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/map_image.pl?data=/home/www/data/gmd/gmd431/g4312/g4312r/ct002431.jp2&x=3367&y=4398&res=4&width=420&height=548&lastres=4&jpegLevel=80
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“Rocky Mountain National Park” – 1959 – Relief Map http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/map_image.pl?data=/home/www/data/gmd/gmd431/g4312/g4312r/ct002430.jp2&x=3558&y=4849&res=4&width=444&height=606&lastres=4&jpegLevel=80
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Current day map of Rocky Mountain National Park - http://www.nps.gov/romo/planyourvisit/upload/ROMO-Park-Map-2013-8x10-reduced.pdf
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According to an article found in the Library of Congress Archives, a road connecting the national parks was proposed. Have students research whether or not this proposal was ever accepted. If not, what were the issues that resulted in the idea being dismissed? If it was completed, map the route(s) to show how the parks were connected. If it wasn’t completed would there be a benefit to having the parks connected – at least those in the lower forty-eight – or does it basically exist?
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Students could create a road trip to visit all of the national parks in the lower forty-eight. What routes would they take to be most efficient? How long would it take – could be stipulated how long each park should be visited to see the many sites available in them – to visit all of them?
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Other ideas? Share with colleagues!!
Brief History of the National Parks
Many of America's most scenic and historic places have been set aside for the use of the public as national parks. "National Parks are spacious land . . . areas essentially in their primeval condition and so outstandingly superior in beauty to average examples of their several types as to demand preservation intact and in their entirety for the enjoyment, education and inspiration of all the people for all time."1 The concept of a "national park" is an American innovation that, in part, grew out of the conservation movement that began in the nineteenth century. When Yellowstone was designated a national park in 1872, it became the first such park in the world.
The burgeoning of American national parks reflected contemporary intellectual, social, and economic changes that to a growing appreciation for wilderness and wildlife, a desire to escape the increasingly urban places that resulted from industrialization, and the popularization of the automobile. With increased awareness of and sensitivity toward nature came the desire to preserve some of the most spectacular landscapes and significant historical and cultural sites for the enjoyment of future generations. Americans wanted to visit these places to experience their beauty firsthand, whether they traveled by train, steamship, or, increasingly, by automobile.
Clarence King
It is no coincidence that the first national park was explored and established in the same decade that saw publication of a great variety of articles and books about nature and wilderness. Several of the writers associated with the national park movement, including Clarence Dutton, Ferdinand V. Hayden, Clarence King, Nathaniel P. Langford, John Muir, and John Wesley Powell, described the spectacular scenery of the western United States. The Appalachian Mountain Club, one of the first private conservation organizations, was founded in 1876 to protect and preserve eastern wilderness areas. The United States Geological Survey, which undertook responsibility for surveying and mapping lands in the national domain, was established as a separate bureau within the Department of the Interior in 1879.
Yellowstone became the first national park in 1872, but the National Park Service was not established until 1916. For four decades the nation's parks, reserves, and monuments were supervised at different times by the departments of War, Agriculture, and the Interior. Although the idea of national parks enjoyed broad popular and congressional support by the early twentieth century, there was some resistance to converting reserves and monuments into new national parks. This was partially the result of a lack of coordinated policy and leadership in financing and administering the parks that already existed. Secretary of the Interior Franklin K. Lane's appointment of Stephen Tyng Mather as the first Superintendent of Parks (1915-29) did much to alter the situation. Mather was a leader in the transformation of the poorly managed and underfinanced national parks and monuments into the centrally administered National Park Service. Under his dynamic leadership, Grand Canyon, Acadia, Bryce, Zion, Lassen, Hawaii, and Mount McKinley National Parks were established. He successfully lobbied for enabling legislation that ensured the future creation of other parks, including those that involved purchase from private owners in the eastern United States, such as Great Smoky Mountains, Shenandoah, and Mammoth Cave.
The national parks of today are public resources for recreation, education, scholarship, and the preservation of endangered landscapes, natural communities, and species. They exist in twenty-five states as well as the Virgin Islands, and include areas as diverse as the "river of grass" that makes up the Everglades, the mountains and valleys of Yosemite, the volcanoes of Hawaii, and the Denali Wilderness of Alaska. Some of them were purchased by private individuals who then generously gave them to the nation; others were taken from the public domain in order to protect them from agricultural or commercial development and exploitation.
An important part of each national park's story is reflected in its maps. Each park went through the initial stage of discovery, then exploration, and finally accurate mapping. In the first stages, physical and cultural features were often inaccurately portrayed and some were completely absent from the earliest maps.
Maps tell the story of when and how each park was established, and record physical growth as boundaries were established and expanded. Government mapping, frequently beginning in the discovery and exploration phase, provided an increased understanding of the unique features of an area, such as the locations of bodies of land and water, topographic and geological attributes, and the presence of historic and cultural artifacts.
Commercial mapping, often based on geographic data obtained from government surveys and products, enhances access to and use of the parks. Excellent trail maps and other kinds of thematic maps are produced primarily by commercial firms. Much of the commercial material is protected by copyright and could not be included in this online collection.
Among the most current maps of the national parks are those produced by the National Park Service for official park brochures. Roads, trails, campsites, and other amenities that enable the public to experience more fully the unique features of the park are shown on these maps, which are frequently updated to reflect changes in land use. The close relationship between map and park is symbolized and reinforced by the presentation of a Park Service map to visitors as they pass through the park gateway to explore a special place that has been set aside and preserved for the use and enjoyment of present and future generations.
1. Devereux Butcher, Exploring our National Parks and Monuments, 6th ed. rev. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1969), p.356.
THE NATIONAL PARK SERVICE
A Brief History
Barry Mackintosh 1999
Any account of the National Park Service must begin with the parks that preceded it and prompted its creation.
The national park concept is generally credited to the artist George Catlin. On a trip to the Dakotas in 1832, he worried about the impact of America's westward expansion on Indian civilization, wildlife, and wilderness. They might be preserved, he wrote, "by some great protecting policy of government... in a magnificent park.... A nation's park, containing man and beast, in all the wild and freshness of their nature's beauty!"
Catlin's vision was partly realized in 1864, when Congress donated Yosemite Valley to California for preservation as a state park. Eight years later, in 1872, Congress reserved the spectacular Yellowstone country in the Wyoming and Montana territories "as a public park or pleasuring-ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people." With no state government there yet to receive and manage it, Yellowstone remained in the custody of the U.S. Department of the Interior as a national park-the world's first area so designated.
Congress followed the Yellowstone precedent with other national parks in the 1890s and early 1900s, including Sequoia, Yosemite (to which California returned Yosemite Valley), Mount Rainier, Crater Lake, and Glacier. The idealistic impulse to preserve nature was often joined by the pragmatic desire to promote tourism: western railroads lobbied for many of the early parks and built grand rustic hotels in them to boost their passenger business.
The late nineteenth century also saw growing interest in preserving prehistoric Indian ruins and artifacts on the public lands. Congress first moved to protect such a feature, Arizona's Casa Grande Ruin, in 1889. In 1906 it created Mesa Verde National Park, containing dramatic cliff dwellings in southwestern Colorado, and passed the Antiquities Act authorizing presidents to set aside "historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest" in federal custody as national monuments. Theodore Roosevelt used the act to proclaim 18 national monuments before he left the presidency. They included not only cultural features like El Morro, New Mexico, site of prehistoric petroglyphs and historic inscriptions, but natural features like Arizona's Petrified Forest and Grand Canyon. Congress later converted many of these natural monuments to national parks.
By 1916 the Interior Department was responsible for 14 national parks and 21 national monuments but had no organization to manage them. Interior secretaries had asked the Army to detail troops to Yellowstone and the California parks for this purpose. There military engineers and cavalrymen developed park roads and buildings, enforced regulations against hunting, grazing, timber cutting, and vandalism, and did their best to serve the visiting public. Civilian appointees superintended the other parks, while the monuments received minimal custody. In the absence of an effective central administration, those in charge operated without coordinated supervision or policy guidance.
The parks were also vulnerable to competing interests, including some within the ascendent conservation movement. Utilitarian conservationists favoring regulated use rather than strict preservation of natural resources advocated the construction of dams by public authorities for water supply, power, and irrigation purposes. When San Francisco sought to dam Yosemite's Hetch Hetchy Valley for a reservoir after the turn of the century, the utilitarian and preservationist wings of the conservation movement came to blows. Over the passionate opposition of John Muir and other park supporters, Congress in 1913 permitted the dam, which historian John Ise later called "the worst disaster ever to come to any national park."
Hetch Hetchy highlighted the institutional weakness of the park movement. While utilitarian conservation had become well represented in government by the U.S. Geological Survey and the Forest and Reclamation services, no comparable bureau spoke for park preservation in Washington. Among those recognizing the problem was Stephen T. Mather, a wealthy and well-connected Chicago businessman. When Mather complained to Secretary of the Interior Franklin K. Lane about the parks' mismanagement, Lane invited him to Washington as his assistant for park matters. Twenty-five-year-old Horace M. Albright became Mather's principal aide upon Mather's arrival in 1915.
Crusading for a national parks bureau, Mather and Albright effectively blurred the distinction between utilitarian conservation and preservation by emphasizing the economic value of parks as tourist meccas. A vigorous public relations campaign led to supportive articles in National Geographic, The Saturday Evening Post, and other popular magazines. Mather hired his own publicist and obtained funds from 17 western railroads to produce The National Parks Portfolio, a lavishly illustrated publication sent to congressmen and other influential citizens.
Congress responded as desired, and on August 25, 1916, President Woodrow Wilson approved legislation creating the National Park Service within the Interior Department. The act made the bureau responsible for Interior's national parks and monuments, Hot Springs Reservation in Arkansas (made a national park in 1921), and "such other national parks and reservations of like character as may be hereafter created by Congress." In managing these areas, the Park Service was directed "to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations."
Secretary Lane named Mather the Park Service's first director and Albright assistant director. A policy letter Lane approved in 1918 elaborated on the bureau's dual mission of conserving park resources and providing for their enjoyment. While reemphasizing the primacy of preservation, it reflected Mather's and Albright's conviction that more visitors must be attracted and accommodated if the parks were to flourish. Automobiles, not permitted in Yellowstone until 1915, would be allowed throughout the system. Hotels would be provided by concessionaires. Museums, publications, and other educational activities were encouraged as well.
The policy letter also sought to guide the system's expansion. "In studying new park projects, you should seek to find scenery of supreme and distinctive quality or some natural feature so extraordinary or unique as to be of national interest and importance," it directed. "The national park system as now constituted should not be lowered in standard, dignity, and prestige by the inclusion of areas which express in less than the highest terms the particular class or kind of exhibit which they represent."
Through the 1920s the national park system was really a western park system. Only Acadia National Park in Maine lay east of the Mississippi. The West was home to America's most spectacular natural scenery, and most land there was federally owned and thus subject to park or monument reservation without purchase. If the system were to benefit more people and maximize its support in Congress, however, it would have to expand eastward. In 1926 Congress authorized Shenandoah, Great Smoky Mountains, and Mammoth Cave national parks in the Appalachian region but required that their lands be donated. With the aid of John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and other philanthropists, the states involved gradually acquired and turned over most of the land needed for these parks in the next decade.
But the Park Service's greatest opportunity in the East lay in another realm-that of history and historic sites. Congress had directed the War Department to preserve a number of historic battlefields, forts, and memorials there as national military parks and monuments, beginning in 1890 with Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park in Georgia and Tennessee. After succeeding Mather as director in 1929, Albright was instrumental in getting Congress to establish three new historical parks in the East under Park Service administration. Colonial National Monument, Virginia, which included Yorktown Battlefield, and Morristown National Historical Park, New Jersey, the site of Revolutionary War encampments, edged the Park Service into the War Department's domain.
Soon after Franklin D. Roosevelt took office in 1933, Albright accompanied the new president on a trip to Shenandoah National Park and mentioned his desire to acquire all the military parks. Roosevelt agreed and directed Albright to initiate an executive transfer order. Under the order, effective August 10, 1933, the Park Service received not only the War Department's parks and monuments but the 15 national monuments then held by the Forest Service as well as the national capital parks, including the Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial, and White House. The addition of nearly 50 historical areas in the East made the park system and Park Service truly national and deeply involved with historic as well as natural preservation.
As Roosevelt launched his New Deal, the Park Service received another mission: depression relief. Under its supervision the Civilian Conservation Corps employed thousands of young men in numerous conservation, rehabilitation, and construction projects in both the national and state parks. The program had a lasting impact on the Park Service. Many professionals hired under its auspices remained on the bureau's rolls as career employees, and regional offices established to coordinate CCC work in the state parks evolved into a permanent regional system for park administration.
During the 1930s the Park Service also became involved with areas intended primarily for mass recreation. Begun as depression relief projects, the Blue Ridge Parkway between Shenandoah and Great Smoky Mountains national parks and the Natchez Trace Parkway between Nashville, Tennessee, and Natchez, Mississippi, were designed for scenic recreational motoring. In 1936, under an agreement with the Bureau of Reclamation, the Park Service assumed responsibility for recreational development and activities at the vast reservoir created by Hoover Dam. Lake Mead National Recreation Area, as it was later titled, was the first of several reservoir areas in the park system. In 1937 Congress authorized Cape Hatteras National Seashore, the first of several seashore and lakeshore areas.
Albright left the Park Service for private business in 1933 and was succeeded by his able associate director, Arno B. Cammerer. Newton B. Drury, who had directed the Save-the-Redwoods League in California, followed Cammerer in 1940. America's entry into World War II a year later forced Drury to preside over a drastic retrenchment in Park Service activity and defend the parks against pressures for consumptive uses in the name of national defense. Timber interests sought Sitka spruce in Olympic National Park for airplane manufacture. Ranchers and mining companies pressed to open other parks to grazing and prospecting. Scrap drive leaders eyed historic cannon at the Park Service's battlefields and forts. Drury successfully resisted most such demands, which eased as needed resources were found elsewhere.
The postwar era brought new pressures on the parks as the nation's energies were redirected to domestic pursuits. Bureau of Reclamation plans to dam wilderness canyons in Dinosaur National Monument in Colorado and Utah touched off a conservation battle recalling Hetch Hetchy. Interior Secretary Oscar L. Chapman's decision to support the project contributed to Drury's resignation in March 1951. But this time the park preservationists won: Congress finally declined to approve the Dinosaur dams.
Conrad L. Wirth, a landscape architect and planner who had led the Park Service's CCC program, became director in December 1951. Facing a park system with a deteriorating infrastructure overwhelmed by the postwar travel boom, he responded with Mission 66, a ten-year, billion-dollar program to upgrade facilities, staffing, and resource management by the bureau's fiftieth anniversary in 1966. A hallmark of Mission 66 was the park visitor center, a multiple-use facility with interpretive exhibits, audiovisual programs, and other public services. By 1960, 56 visitor centers were open or under construction in parks from Antietam National Battlefield Site, Maryland, to Zion National Park, Utah.
Mission 66 development, criticized by some as overdevelopment, nevertheless fell short of Wirth's goals-in large part because the Park Service's domain kept expanding, diverting funds and staff to new areas. Congress added more than 50 parks to the system during the ten-year period, from Virgin Islands National Park to Point Reyes National Seashore in California. Expansion continued apace under George B. Hartzog, Jr., who had superintended the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial in St. Louis before succeeding Wirth in 1964. Under his leadership through 1972, the Park Service and system branched out in several new directions.
Natural resource management was restructured along ecological lines following a 1963 report by a committee of scientists chaired by A. Starker Leopold. "As a primary goal, we would recommend that the biotic associations within each park be maintained, or where necessary recreated, as nearly as possible in the condition that prevailed when the area was first visited by the white man," the Leopold Report declared. "A national park should represent a vignette of primitive America." Environmental interpretation, emphasizing ecological relationships, and special environmental education programs for school classes reflected and promoted the nation's growing environmental awareness.
"Living history" programs became popular attractions at many historical parks, ranging from frontier military demonstrations at Fort Davis National Historic Site, Texas, to period farming at Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial, Indiana. The Park Service's historical activities expanded beyond the parks as well. Responding to the destructive effects of urban renewal, highway construction, and other federal projects during the postwar era, the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 authorized the bureau to maintain a comprehensive National Register of Historic Places. Listed properties-publicly and privately owned, locally as well as nationally significant-would receive special consideration in federal project planning and federal grants and technical assistance to encourage their preservation.
Several new types of parks joined the system during the Hartzog years. Ozark National Scenic Riverways in Missouri, authorized by Congress in 1964, foreshadowed the comprehensive Wild and Scenic Rivers Act of 1968, which led to the acquisition of other free-flowing rivers. On the Great Lakes, Pictured Rocks and Indiana Dunes became the first national lakeshores in 1966. The National Trails System Act of 1968 made the Park Service responsible for the Appalachian National Scenic Trail, running some 2,000 miles from Maine to Georgia. Gateway National Recreation Area in New York City and Golden Gate National Recreation Area in San Francisco, both established in 1972, were precedents for other national recreation areas serving metropolitan Cleveland, Atlanta, and Los Angeles.
During the bicentennial of the American Revolution in the mid-1970s, the two dozen historical parks commemorating the Revolution benefited from another big development program. At Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia the Park Service reconstructed the house where Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence, installed elaborate exhibits at the site of Benjamin Franklin's house, and moved the Liberty Bell to a new pavilion outside Independence Hall. On July 4, 1976, President Gerald R. Ford, once a seasonal ranger at Yellowstone, spoke at Independence Hall and signed legislation making Valley Forge a national historical park.
Four years later, the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980 more than doubled the size of the national park system by adding over 47 million wilderness acres. The largest of the new areas in Alaska, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, comprises more than 8,300,000 acres, while the adjoining Wrangell-St. Elias National Preserve comprises nearly 4,900,000. Together they cover an area larger than New Hampshire and Vermont combined and contain the continent's greatest array of glaciers and peaks above 16,000 feet. The national preserve designation was applied to ten of the new Alaska areas because they allowed certain activities, like sport hunting and trapping, not permitted in national parks.
Russell E. Dickenson, a former park ranger and manager, took the helm in 1980. Because the Park Service's funding and staffing had not kept pace with its growing responsibilities, Dickenson sought to slow the park system's expansion. The Reagan administration and the Congress that took office with it in 1981 were of like mind. Rather than creating more parks they backed Dickenson's Park Restoration and Improvement Program, which allocated more than a billion dollars over five years to resources and facilities in existing parks.
William Penn Mott, Jr., a landscape architect who had directed California's state parks when Ronald Reagan was governor, followed Dickenson in 1985. Deeply interested in interpretation, Mott sought a greater Park Service role in educating the public about American history and environmental values. He also returned the bureau to a more expansionist posture, supporting such additions as Great Basin National Park, Nevada, and Steamtown National Historic Site, a railroad collection in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Steamtown, championed by Scranton's congressman for its local economic benefits, was a costly venture much criticized as an example of "park barrel" politics, but Mott was convinced of its educational potential.
James M. Ridenour, formerly head of Indiana's Department of Natural Resources, served as director during the Bush administration (1989-1993). Doubting the national significance of Steamtown and other proposed parks driven by economic development interests, he spoke out against the "thinning of the blood" of the national park system and sought to regain the initiative from Congress in charting its expansion. He also worked to achieve a greater financial return to the Park Service from park concessions. In 1990 the Richard King Mellon Foundation made the largest single park donation yet: $10.5 million for additional lands at the Antietam, Gettysburg, Fredericksburg, and Petersburg Civil War battlefields, Pecos National Historical Park, and Shenandoah National Park.
Roger G. Kennedy, who had directed the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of American History, was the Clinton administration's choice to head the Park Service in 1993. Like Mott, he was especially concerned about expanding the bureau's educational role and sought to enlarge its presence beyond the parks via the Internet. His tenure coincided with a government-wide effort to restructure and downsize the federal bureaucracy, which accelerated after the Republicans took control of Congress in 1995. The Park Service restructured its field operations and embarked on a course of reducing its Washington and regional office staffs by 40 percent.
In 1997 Robert Stanton became the first career Park Service employee since Dickenson to head the bureau. Beginning as a ranger, he had most recently served as regional director of the National Capital Region. An African American, Stanton took particular interest in increasing the diversity of the Park Service to better serve minority populations.
As of 1999 the national park system comprises 379 areas in nearly every state and U.S. possession. In addition to managing these parks-as diverse and far-flung as Hawaii Volcanoes National Park and the Statue of Liberty National Monument-the Park Service supports the preservation of natural and historic places and promotes outdoor recreation outside the system through a range of grant and technical assistance programs. Major emphasis is placed on cooperation and partnerships with other government bodies, foundations, corporations, and other private parties to protect the parks and other significant properties and advance Park Service programs.
Public opinion surveys have consistently rated the National Park Service among the most popular federal agencies. The high regard in which the national parks and their custodians are held augurs well for philanthropic, corporate, and volunteer support, present from the beginnings of the national park movement but never more vital to its prosperity.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Albright, Horace M., and Robert Cahn. The Birth of the National Park Service: The Founding Years, 1913–33. Salt Lake City: Howe Brothers, 1985.
Albright, Horace M, and Marian Albright Schenck. Creating the National Park Service: The Missing Years. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999.
Dilsaver, Lary M., ed. America's National Park System: The Critical Documents. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1994.
Everhart, William C. The National Park Service. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1983.
Foresta, Ronald A. America's National Parks and Their Keepers. Washington: Resources for the Future, 1985.
Hartzog, George B., Jr. Battling for the National Parks. Mt. Kisco, NY: Moyer Bell, 1988.
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