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The Environmental Spectator
America’s Second-Best Idea
In his new PBS series, documentarian Ken Burns takes us on a lovely stroll through our national parks and their history.
Ken Burns must be running out of good ideas. The documentary filmmaker has famously done the Civil War, Lewis and Clark, baseball, jazz, Mark Twain, the Statue of Liberty, and the Brooklyn Bridge, among other subjects. What’s left?
The answer is, The National Parks: America’s Best Idea, running on most PBS stations nightly from September 27 to October 2. It might be Burns’s most ambitious effort yet, considering the outdoor cinematography from Acadia to Grand Canyon to Denali: a gorgeous tableau of cloud shadows drifting over red-walled canyons, rusty sunsets, waves crashing upon rocky shores, storms assailing craggy peaks, and cascading waterfalls. A feast for the eyes in high definition. Add the usual assortment of knowledgeable talking heads and Burns’s signature use of narration and still photographs, and you have a dazzling 12-hour infomercial for this “empire of grandeur.” But the history of the parks is one of personalities as much as landscapes, and it is riveting.
Yellowstone was America’s first national park, but Burns starts with Yosemite as a way to introduce the national parks’ patron saint: John Muir. Born in Scotland in 1838, Muir left the Wisconsin farm of his strict Calvinist youth to indulge a nature-absorbed wanderlust. He arrived in California in 1868, where he found employment building a sawmill for the first innkeeper to settle in Yosemite Valley. Here the “nature-struck pantheist” found his calling as an amateur naturalist, spending his free time indefatigably wandering in the Sierra Nevada. He slept in the open and could hike 25 miles a day while subsisting on a pocketful of crackers. And the “Thoreau of Yosemite” wrote about it all, however difficult that was. The man who closely studied 65 glaciers in the Sierra high country once wrote that “Writing is like the life of a glacier; one eternal grind.”
Muir helped found the Sierra Club in 1892, devoting much of his later life to writing in support of conservation. The Sierra Club famously fought—and lost—the Hetch Hetchy battle in 1918 (Muir had died in 1914), when the post-1906 earthquake water demands of San Francisco caused the Tuolumne River in that beautiful valley inside Yosemite National Park to be dammed. The fight marked the birth of the modern American conservation movement, singularly inspired by Muir’s life and work. Muir’s phrase describing his first glimpse of Yosemite is nicely illustrated by Burns: “The morning of creation” is the filmmaker’s main theme, a distinct departure from all his previous work. Unlike baseball or jazz, the national parks were invented only in administrative ways. In truth, they are timeless compliments to the American character. Yellowstone and Yosemite and others are the national landmarks of American exceptionalism, and the fact that we preserved them says a lot about us.
Meanwhile in Yellowstone, the 1871 Hayden Survey explored the mysterious region, previously the stuff of mountain man legend. It found and mapped a glorious landscape of mountains, rivers, and forests, amidst the world’s greatest concentration of “thermal features” (geysers, hot springs, steaming fissures, mudpots). Accompanying Ferdinand Hayden’s surveyors and scientists were two artists, the painter Thomas Moran and the photographer William H. Jackson. Their resulting work (including Moran’s famous painting “Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone,” now hanging at the Department of the Interior Museum) came to the attention of the public and the U.S. Congress, and legislation creating Yellowstone National Park was signed into law by President Ulysses Grant on March 1, 1872.
IN 1903, PRESIDENT THEODORE ROOSEVELT took a whistle-stop Western tour, visiting Yellowstone, Grand Canyon (“Leave it as it is; the ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it,” went TR’s famous quote, as he stared into the canyon), and finally, Yosemite. Here with a small party the Executive Outdoorsman went camping with John Muir. Their late-night campfire chats resulted in national park status for Yosemite. Until then, Yosemite had been managed jointly by the federal government and the state of California.
TR the conservationist is best known for getting the Antiquities Act through Congress in 1906. Designed to preserve archaeological sites and artifacts at such places in the West as Mesa Verde and Chaco Canyon, the legislation paved the way for Roosevelt to create by executive order whole protoparks, his boldest stroke of the pen being the 806,000-acre Grand Canyon National Monument in 1908. Theodore Roosevelt is venerated by environmentalists today for adding by various methods 230 million acres to the federal public domain. During a speech at Yellowstone during his 1903 tour, TR dedicated the famous arch at the North Entrance that would bear his name and is inscribed with the words: “For the Benefit and Enjoyment of the People,” an inscription that sums up another primary theme of Burns’s documentary. It is that these national parks belong to every American, and we should strive to preserve and maintain them for our children and grandchildren as one component of the legacy of American democracy.
Early on, the parks—particularly Yellowstone— were managed by the U.S. Army. General Philip Sheridan, of Civil War and Indian Wars fame, and as military commander in the West, was Yellowstone’s first quasi-park superintendent. Troops were garrisoned at Fort Yellowstone (present Mammoth Hot Springs and modern Yellowstone’s Park Service headquarters), and spent most of their time pursuing and arresting bison poachers. But with the advent of the National Park Service (NPS) in 1916 (and even before that), two men made their marks as administrators: Stephen Mather and Horace Albright.
Mather was the first NPS director. He was independently wealthy (the Borax detergent fortune), and in the early years even used his own money to finance programs and pay underlings. Mather was the first to view the national parks as part of a system. As a young man he met John Muir, and later strove to maintain a delicate balance between the parks being promoted to the American public (railroad brochures, roads built to accommodate automobiles), and left in their pristine state as much as possible. During this time more parks joined the system: Glacier in Montana (1910), Mt. McKinley in Alaska Territory (1917), and in 1919, the trifecta of Acadia in Maine, Zion in Utah, and Grand Canyon in Arizona. In 1918 the parks passed the 1 million annual visitors mark. Mather died in 1930 and Albright—previously Mather’s secretary—succeeded him as NPS director, serving until the new Roosevelt administration in 1933. During this period (1916– 1933) the careers of Mather and Albright were the link between the pre-National Park Service of soldiers guarding the parks and arresting poachers Wild West fashion, and the modern NPS of informed and smartly uniformed rangers greeting tourists at Old Faithful or the south rim of the Grand Canyon.
Franklin Roosevelt visited national parks a number of times during his presidency, especially in the 1930s before he was distracted by World War II, and used the New Deal-era Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) to build roads, trails, bridges, and cabins in the parks. Burns’s black-and-white newsreel footage shows the smiling president touring Glacier National Park and admiring the peaks from the back of his famous open-air touring car, and enjoying lunch with a fresh-faced CCC crew. Burns also features the stories of three surviving CCC members, as he presents the proposition that the parks—legends such as TR and John Muir notwithstanding—were really developed from the “bottom up.” FDR did such a good job of promoting the parks that visitation in 1939 passed 15 million. Not bad for Depression-era America. Great Smoky Mountains National Park in North Carolina was established on FDR’s watch in 1934.
THE PARKS IN THE POST-WORLD WAR II ERA exploded in popularity; for example, 1 million people visited Yellowstone in 1946, four times as many as 1945. War veterans and their baby boomer families took to the road each summer, inaugurating the tradition of the American family vacation. Budget cutbacks and rationing during the war years had left the infrastructure of the national parks in poor shape, but the country’s newfound prosperity meant that that would eventually improve. And President Eisenhower’s interstate highway system development through the 1950s made the parks more accessible to average citizens. The American love affair with the automobile and the national parks went hand in hand. Everglades National Park in Florida joined the roster in 1947, and Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming in 1950.
The 58 national parks and 333 national monuments and historical sites saw 275 million visitors in 2007. Technology has certainly found them. For instance, you can watch Old Faithful erupt on the Internet thanks to its webcam. A typical controversy today would be the battle over whether cell-phone towers should be erected in the middle of Yellowstone. The documentary concludes with the underlying admonition to be on our guard not to “love the parks to death.”
Ken Burns seems to have done it again, this time with a minimum of his standard politically correct posturing, whether on race (he does cover the “Buffalo Soldiers,” a black unit, guarding Yosemite in its early years, and Martin Luther King’s 1963 Lincoln Memorial speech with an NPS ranger at his side), or on environmentalism, offering a balanced view. If America itself is America’s best idea, then Burns has done a sweeping job of chronicling the second one.
About the Author
Bill Croke, formerly of Cody, Wyoming, is a writer in Salmon, Idaho.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (42) | Leave a comment
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martin j smith| 9.28.09 @ 6:55AM
I must put in print my reaction to national Parks being America's best idea. No I would say it is one of America's best ideas. I can think of so many "best"ideas in science,medicine,our consititution--there are many American "best"ideas. And yes I appreciate the National Parks. I have been to several and I intend to go to others.
Alan Brooks| 10.8.09 @ 12:30AM
didn't Burns do a WWII documentary two years ago? Burns covers all his bases.
stephanieanne| 9.28.09 @ 7:04AM
I missed last night, but will try to see the remaining installments. What a nice reprieve from the daily bad news of obama and his troops.
Pingback| 9.28.09 @ 7:59AM
Twitter Trackbacks for The American Spectator : America's Second-Best Idea [spectato links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Handy| 9.28.09 @ 8:27AM
I will also will watch the remaining installments. The history is fine, but the whole flavor so far reeks of "Environment Good, White Man Bad." Just like Dances With Wolves which also aired over the past two weekends for the 12,000th time.
The whole history of government land management is dismal. Too many to go into here, but consider the uncontrolled wild fires, the near extinction of bison, elk, and wolves. Think of how pesky those bears became, because government could not collect garbage nor run a proper land fill. If the purpose was to keep people out of these pristine areas, it is strange that FDR gets praise for developing the roads and infrastructure that brought them in by droves; whereas private interests are demonized as exploiters.
If Muir and Mather, et. al. had had any gumption, they would've done the honorable thing and bought Yosemite and Yellowstone themselves. Then, they could have managed them the way they wanted. But no, they had to gin up the old "Public Interest" agrument to get the taxpayers to fund their pet projects.
And, let's not forget that over half of the land in the lower 48 west of the Mississippi is owned by Uncle Sam. And, what he doesn't own, he controls. In Alaska it's over 85%, I believe. And, private citizens must have special permission to visit any of it. It should be auctioned off as soon as possible. Maybe the Sierra Club, WWF or some other "Green" outfit would care to enter bids? Don't hold your breath. They are too busy making everyone else feel guilty about the toilet paper they use.
Sure, these places are beautiful, but National Parks were not a good idea. In fact, the whole concept is completely unconstitutional. But, the march goes on today. Funny that Mr. Croke forgot to mention Bill Clinton's naked land grab of the "Shale Oil National Monument." Or, how about the way the water is being managed in the San Joaquin Valley, turning it into a dust bowl for the sake of some fresh water sardine?
I only hope the remaining episodes point out the very real downside to public ownership and management of any commercially viable land. It belongs in the hands of people, not ThePeople.
WestRight| 9.28.09 @ 8:30AM
Talk about whiney Liberals, Ken Burns has a Pulitzer/Nobel Prize for the mostest Whiney DocuHistorian evah! watched 5 minutes of this last night and had to turn it off to avoid nightmares about John Muir who appears to be the GodFather Bomber to our current crop of EnviroNazzzis. When is Burns going to make his DocuHistory on the retired Black Astronauts
Extremely Extreme Extremist| 9.28.09 @ 10:04AM
Next up: "America's Third Best Idea: The Post Office."
CAPED CRUSADER| 9.28.09 @ 10:20AM
ALTHOUGH SOME GOOD PROGRAMS, BURNS IS TYPICAL LIBERAL SUCKING OFF THE PUBLIC UDDER FOR FINANCING AND LATER SELLING THEM FOR HIS OWN PROFIT TO COMMERCIAL STATIONS.
Barbarian Heretic| 9.28.09 @ 10:40AM
Okay- Burns is a Lefty. So are most of the "arts" community. But he is also undeniably talented, and America is better for having him as a modern documentary film maker. His previous work is profound and compelling, and if the first episode of "Parks" is any indication, he has succeeded yet again.
tennismom| 9.28.09 @ 11:07AM
Apparently, Burns is not liberal enough for all publicly funded media. NPR/Public radio has been running its own series on national parks, working in lib guilt-feeding ideas Burns apparently omitted: that African-Americans have not always been welcome in the parks & are still a low percentage of visitors and ranger; that establishment of parks involved either forced removal of natives or letting them stay on as low-level employees; that the whole concept of a 'park' or 'wilderness' reflects Western, anti-native values. The lengthy, multi-segment radio show gave not a single mention of Teddy Roosevelt.
Nick| 9.28.09 @ 11:18AM
Mr. Croke and all other tree-huggers,
You need to go to the late Michael Crichton's site and read his speech, "Complexity Theory and Environmental Management".
http://www.michaelcrichton.net.....exity.html
It explains, among other things, how the "conservationists" ruined Yellowstone Park.
I second Handy's post above, the national parks need to be sold off. They need to be developed to their full potential. If you park lovers want to keep them, then put your money where your hiking boots are, and buy them.
I can see a nice geo-thermal plant right next to Old Faithful providing green energy for an automobile plant. Well, I can dream, can't I?
Handy| 9.28.09 @ 3:15PM
Nick,
Thanks very much for the Chrichton link. Everyone who plans to watch Burns' series should read it for perspective.
David Govett| 9.28.09 @ 1:23PM
It is not logical to state that America was America's best idea, as much as I would like to. A thing cannot invoke itself.
JB| 9.28.09 @ 1:56PM
"Great Smoky Mountains National Park in North Carolina" - It is in Tn (Newfoundland Gap), not NC.
JGress| 9.28.09 @ 11:10PM
Great Smoky Mountains National Park is in both states. The state line runs just about right down the middle of the park. You enter from the NC side at Cherokee and from TN at Gatlinburg. BTW, it is "Newfound Gap."
Bram| 9.28.09 @ 1:57PM
"Roosevelt is venerated by environmentalists today..."
I think we have to distinguish between conservationists and environmentalists.
Conservationists seek to preserve large stretches of nature in a pristine state. We also, were possible here on the East Coast have tried to preserve farmland that would otherwise be sold of to developers for more snout houses and condos. Many conservationists, including Roosevelt and Audubon, enjoy hunting and fishing.
Environmentalists seek to use "the environment" as a political hammer to humble their opponents. They seek to care very little for the land or nature. They preach global warming despite all evidence to the contrary because it is a great hammer. Their current plans to cover thousands of square miles with windmills and solar panels instead building a single nuclear plant could not be more anti-conservationist. Their positions on individual issues are determined solely by the direction of the political winds. Most of the environmentalists I know have never spent a night under the stars.
Mary Louise| 9.28.09 @ 3:30PM
We also, were possible here on the East Coast have tried to preserve farmland that would otherwise be sold of to developers for more snout houses and condos. Many conservationists, including Roosevelt and Audubon, enjoy hunting and fishing.
Amen to that.
The Birkenstock wearing, granola crunching enviros are a joke compared to the conservationists in my neck of the woods.
My second secretarial job was with a Cornell Cooperative Extension. The only group of people I worked for that were as smart as the Cornell group were some intellectual property guys who were ex-FBI agents. The common thread between the orgs and high-end people was a keen desire to educate those not in the know.
Old Soldier| 9.28.09 @ 2:03PM
I just spent a great week in the White Mountains Nation Forest. You’ll never convince me that it should be sold off to developers. It is a wonder that stunned even my kids. I look forward to bringing them to other parks out west as they grow up.
Mary Louise| 9.28.09 @ 3:22PM
You’ll never convince me that it should be sold off to developers.
That's because you're an Old Soldier and you know a thing or two about what is valuable. And even though I'm not close to being an Old Soldier, I agree with you and hope most Americans do too.
A National Park in Italy that borders the town I was born in is a repository of history. And that becomes more undeniable as discoveries are made.
K| 9.28.09 @ 3:05PM
I see where Time INC is using the documentary as propaganda for the efficiency of government control. As counterpoint, I highly recommend reading the following from Michael Crichton:
http://www.crichton-official.c.....exity.html
Scroll down more than half way for the park stuff, but the earlier comments, although not park related are also educational.
Nick| 9.28.09 @ 3:12PM
I think I'm having deja vu, Ha-Ha!
Bud| 9.28.09 @ 4:04PM
Despite the magnificence of many of the national parks, I am not sanguine. Conservation has been used as an excuse for a lot of the most destructive of Federal excesses. And the images exploited to sanctify these excesses are those we've all to to admire in those national parks.
In the western U.S. and Alaska, the fraction of lands within the States is an affront to State sovereignty and places them at the mercy of federal bureaucrats.
Despite the cosmetics, from this quarter all you'll hear is one hand clapping.
Bud| 9.28.09 @ 4:11PM
My apologies for dyslexia of the keyboard. I meant to say that "the fraction of lands within the States owned by the Federal government ..."
Big Leo| 9.28.09 @ 6:01PM
I live on a two square mile speck in the middle of more than a million acres of Federally owned land. Decisions about how the land is used, or not used, are not make here, but in Washington. Some of the decisions are good. Some are bad. Some are criminal. And all of them have total contempt for the people who live here and have to deal with their decisions. Our town cannot expand or create more useful public areas without dealing with a totally unresponsive Federal bureaucracy. And that is the story of most of the West.
ray roblin| 9.28.09 @ 7:52PM
my comment; the classic sign in the intermountain west "Public Land - KEEP OUT!" sorry state of affairs to say the least ...
Glenn| 9.28.09 @ 9:11PM
I agree with Bram. There is a difference between Enviromentalists and Conservationist. I side with multi-use Conservationists more than with Environmentalists, even though I work in a lodge in a National Park. As I see it National Parks represent the best of nature in our country. Unfortunately "park-barrel" politics and environmentalism have demeaned the parks and NPS.
Each Park varies in it's quality of "preservation", Some are actively managed differing little from the neighboring National Forests. Others are "Nature takes It's course". These later ones are the poorly managed ones.
Also, I must confess to an admirtion of Canada's National Parks, perhap not for how they are manage but for how they are created. The Parliament and Parks Canada can't create a National Park unless there is local support and Provincial approval. Our Congress and Park System can ignore local concerns and the States and create Parks which aggrevates land use conflicts. NPS and environmetalists get urban votes and approval while offering local rural folks little in return. NPS could certainly do better in its relations with locals.
Appleby| 9.29.09 @ 10:24AM
What is the use of national parks that are forbidden to the population at large -- particularly that segment of the population that requires transportation to visit them?
We had the only skating rink in Georgia at one time at Stone Mountain Park. The greenies screamed and kicked and howled and yowled until it was shut down -- because the peasants, peons, and hoi polloi were able to reach it by bus, and it was so popular that the ice had to be quartered so four classes could be taught at one time.
The Gwinnett County Aristos can chauffeur their kiddies to a private rink not accessible to the proletariat -- so they could shriek to the heavens to leave the park "pristine" for the riding of $15,000 mountain bikes by upper class twits who, by the way, are terrified of having MARTA in their community because it would raise the crime rate....
A pox on national parks and all the greenies who pollute them.
Handy| 9.29.09 @ 4:07PM
Hey Audi,
Did Garthwaite kick you off his site, too? As Gutfeld would say, "He is worse than Hitler." LOL.
I always look forward to your incisor-like (incisive) analyses.
Punctuation advice, please. If LOL is simply a word these days, a period does not seem proper. But, if it is used as a short-cut, stand alone phrase for Laughing Out Loud it seems that a period is appropriate.
I await.
Alex H| 9.29.09 @ 10:37AM
Agreed, to everyone who noted the environmentalist hand-wringing in Ken Burn's latest work. I am afraid that we had to turn it off after 20 minutes because the non-stop whinging was unbearable.
As for the note that the "Great Smoky Mountains National Park in North Carolina was established on FDR’s watch in 1934.", many people are not aware of the forced clearances from the land (at gunpoint by Federal forces) of people whose families had lived there for many generations and had legitimate deeds. The fact that the sainted FDR did this to a people largely made up of refugees from the "Scottish Clearances" makes this even more egregious. People in that part of the country still despise the U. S. government because of this evil deed.
Ken Burns is indeed a talented film-maker. He just needs to get in touch with the taxpayers who fund his lefty scripts.
Steve| 9.29.09 @ 2:19PM
Thing is, they are God's creation and artwork, not America's. They are magnificent, though more and more restricted from the enjoyment of the common American.
And surely the Declaration of Independence is America's Best Idea?
Handy| 9.29.09 @ 3:26PM
I must be a glutton for punishment, because I endured the second episode for 10 minutes more than Alex H, who brings up a great point about "takings." Let us not forget the TVA and other damned (not misspelt) projects. Untold families were displaced for the "public good."
And what about Ike's "National Defense Highway System?" How many millions of acres of productive farmland were paved over or otherwise made useless, against the wishes of rightful owners?
Today, we know that many small towns and actual persons have been wiped out in the name of ThePeople. I give you Kelo v. New London, CT.
But, back to Burns. He's more insidious, invidious and pernicious than Michael Moore. At least Moore doesn't take public funds (so far as we know) to sow his filth. Burns, on the other hand, proudly accepts PBS money (Can anyone say Bill Moyers?) to spew lies. Isn't that a taking of the public airwaves?
Sadly, people like Croke are easily taken in by Burns' nonsense.
Mr. Croke, if you would like to embrace nature, I suggest you wander out and find a grizzly bear to hug. The Burns series is a bust.
Ludwigg| 9.30.09 @ 12:00AM
I watched parts of the second episode. Of course, the politically correct tone of most of what I saw eventually drove me away_as I suspect was the case with many viewers.
Sad that a talent like Burns feels the need to infect his projects with PC nonsense.
fghgfh| 2.25.10 @ 4:23AM
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