The past, present and future of the NPS
A Boston University Ph.D. candidate takes a look at the National Park Service leading up to its Centennial.
By Ian Stevenson, BU American & New England Studies
One hundred years ago — August 25, 1916 — President Woodrow Wilson signed the National Park Service Organic Act, creating the National Park Service (NPS). The legislation clearly directed the NPS “to preserve 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.”
While we take this moment to celebrate the vast national park system, the centennial also marks a hundred-year commitment by the United States government to preserve our natural and cultural heritage.
The act did not create the national park idea. Yellowstone became America’s (and the world’s) first national park 44 years earlier in 1872. Yosemite became a national park in 1890, but Abraham Lincoln set it aside back in 1864 as a state park, making it the first land reservation for public use by the federal government. Yet the establishment of early national parks left ambiguous how they should be used for the public good. By the turn of the twentieth century, two divergent perspectives emerged: conservation versus preservation.
The debate evolved over a half century. Frederick Law Olmsted, designer of New York City’s Central Park, in 1865 extolled Yosemite’s natural ability for moral uplift just like city parks.
Naturalist John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club, argued for the national significance of places like Yosemite and the preservation of their scenery.
President Theodore Roosevelt used his executive powers to greatly expand the number of national parks and monuments to prevent their destruction by unfettered capitalism. But he also understood the value of resource extraction and appointed Gifford Pinchot, who promoted a conservationist ethic of scientifically managed natural resources on public land, as first chief of the U.S. Forestry Service.
The battle ultimately erupted over a 1906 proposal to dam the Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite to create a public water supply for San Francisco. While conservationists won when President Wilson authorized the dam in 1913, preservationists three years later convinced the U.S. Government that preservation for both aesthetic and economic reasons (tourism) necessitated the NPS.
But how has the NPS achieved preservation since?
It expanded to include properties not explicitly “natural,” such as historic battlefields from the War Department in 1933, and recreational sites like national seashores beginning in 1937. It fought against subsequent conservationist proposals, such as for a dam at Dinosaur National Monument in the 1950s.
It added to the system in novel ways by purchasing private property, starting with Cape Cod National Seashore in 1961. It partnered with local stakeholders to create shared preservation spaces, such as Boston Harbor Islands National Recreation Area in the 1990s. More recently, it has incorporated sites notable to the history of African Americans, Native Americans, the LGBT community, and others.
And how has the NPS helped define preservation? In response to increased visitation after WWII by private automobile, it instituted Mission 66 in 1956 to “modernize” the parks with new roads and invented a new building type — the visitors center. By directing visitors within the park, the NPS sacrificed some of the natural landscape for the preservation of the rest. It absorbed truly car-free “wild” preservation tracts after the environmentalist movement yielded the 1964 Wilderness Act. It expanded preservation of the built environment when the 1966 Historic Preservation Act charged the NPS with administering the National Register of Historic Places.
“I encourage you to reflect on the importance of the National Park Service as preservation organization and to get out and enjoy its legacy at sites big and small, local and away, old and new, famous and idiosyncratic, just as characterizes the American landscape and its people.”
These praiseworthy expansions of preservation through the national park system has, however, had a cost. Early national parks like Yellowstone and Yosemite only appeared “natural” after Euro-Americans forcibly evicted Native Americans. Poor, rural whites were removed from their land to create Great Smoky Mountains National Park in the 1930s. Even middle and upper class Americans on Cape Cod faced eminent domain in the 1960s as the NPS sought to preserve that coastal landscape. Today, rural Mainers protest the potential loss of traditional hunting and recreational uses in land offered by private donation to create North Woods National Park.
Thus, in 2016 as in 1916, preservation issues remain constant, highlighting the continued importance of the NPS. The next century will bring new challenges as the NPS confronts maintenance demands for its current properties, struggles to attract visitors among shifting demographics, and confronts the effects of climate change, which has already reduced Glacier National Park to 25 active glaciers from 100 when founded in 1910.
As we celebrate its centennial, I encourage you to reflect on the importance of the National Park Service as a preservation organization and to get out and enjoy its legacy at sites big and small, local and away, old and new, famous and idiosyncratic, just as characterizes the American landscape and its people.
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