Celebrating A Birthday For The National Park Service

National parks are the best idea we ever had. Absolutely American, absolutely democratic, they reflect us at our best rather than our worst.

                                                                                 Wallace Stegner

 

The National Park Service celebrates its 104th birthday today. It's an important day in our household. My wife and I devoted over 55 years of combined employment toward achieving its noble mission so vividly stated in the enabling legislation of 1916:

...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.

The journey from an idea to a resource management agency charged with overseeing more than 400 sites has been a complex and challenging one often carried out with limited resources directed at seemingly unlimited responsibilities. NPS Historians, Barry Mackintosh and Janet McDonnell, have written an excellent brief history documenting the agency to 2005. Their work, The National Parks: Shaping the System, is available online here.

The former directors of the National Park Service have left us some candid and in some cases historic commentary on managing the preservation-use dichotomy referred to above. I highly recommend their books, along with a biography of Stephen Tyng Mather, if readers are so inclined:

Albright, Horace M. (as told to Robert Cahn). The Birth of the National Park Service. 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.

Hartzog, George B. Jr. Battling for the National Parks. Moyer Bell Limited; Mt. Kisco, New York; 1988

Ridenour, James M. The National Parks Compromised: Pork Barrel Politics and America's Treasures. Merrillville, IN: ICS Books, 1994.

Wirth, Conrad L. Parks, Politics, and the People. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1980.

Shankland, Robert. Steve Mather of the National Parks. Alfred A. Knopf, New York; 1970

Today the National Park Service administers 419 units from the Caribbean to Alaska to the South Pacific. Its varied sites recorded 318,000,000 recreation visits in 2018. In all likelihood the future holds both more units and visits all in the face of declining funds, shrinking staffs, and a maintenance backlog of around $10 billion. Earlier this month President Trump signed the Great American Outdoors Act a few weeks after its passage by Congress. The law dedicates $1.3 billion for five years toward reducing deferred maintenance in the parks. Undoubtedly this will help lift the spirits of those staffing field operations who often see their work as a calling rather than a career. We can only hope their enthusiasm and dedication will spur additional legislation to eliminate the backlog and restore funding to restore for those many field positions lost over the past two decades. If the national parks are indeed our best idea they deserve nothing less.

Sources

Photos, Illustrations, and Text:
nps.gov
National Park Service entry, Wikipedia.com