Roads Less Traveled: Access, Automobiles, and Recreation in Mount Rainier National Park's Wilderness Areas
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Roads Less Traveled: Access, Automobiles, and Recreation in Mount Rainier National Park’s Wilderness Areas Brian Robert Rybolt A thesis Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies University of Washington 2013 Committee: Michael Allen Lisa Mighetto Program Authorized to Offer Degree: Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences - Tacoma ©Copyright 2013 Brian Robert Rybolt Acknowledgements To my advisor and thesis chair, Dr. Michael Allen, who did not know me, yet took me under his wing. Thank you for restoring my faith in academic freedom. To Dr. Lisa Mighetto, whose guidance and instruction introduced me to the intersection of history and environment, and whose direction helped me to understand that environmentalism is not monolithic. Table of Contents Introduction ......................................................................................................................................1 Chapter 1: Mount Rainier, Wilderness, and the Trouble with Roads ............................................11 Introduction ..........................................................................................................................11 The Early National Park Movement and the Creation of Mount Rainier National Park ...............................................................13 The Coalition that Created the Park .....................................................................................17 Mount Rainier National Park and the Automobile Come of Age Together ........................20 The National Park Service and its Road-Driven Mission ....................................................24 Mount Rainier, Roads, and Changing Ideas about Wilderness ...........................................26 Contemporary Problems with Rainier’s Wilderness Roads.................................................34 Chapter 2: Three Roads on the Wild Side of Mount Rainier National Park..................................39 Introduction ..........................................................................................................................39 The Carbon River Road .......................................................................................................40 The Mowich Lake Road.......................................................................................................45 The West Side Road .............................................................................................................48 A New and Controversial Philosophy of Wilderness: The 1973 Master Plan .....................53 Three Outcomes to the Debate over Access to Wilderness: The Carbon River, Mowich Lake, and West Side Roads since 1977 ..................................61 Chapter 3: Other Roads, Bigger Conflicts: Washouts, Lawsuits, and the Question of Wilderness Elitism........................................................................66 Introduction ..........................................................................................................................66 Passing Along the Label of Elitism: From Recreation to Ecology in the Wilderness Act Era ......................................................69 Laws and Lawsuits: National Parks, the U.S. Forest Service, NEPA, and Wilderness ........................................72 The Dosewallips Road: Interagency Squabbles, Lawsuits, and a Lost Generation of Wilderness Advocates .........................................................................................................75 Localism versus Centralization: The Stehekin River Road .................................................83 Wilderness outside Wilderness Boundaries: The Suiattle River Road ................................89 A Big Misunderstanding? ....................................................................................................97 Chapter 4: Wilderness? What Wilderness?.................................................................................101 Introduction ........................................................................................................................101 The Meaning of Wilderness in Historical Context ............................................................102 Arguments for Wilderness as a Public Park ......................................................................110 Arguments for Wilderness as an Ecological Preserve .......................................................115 To the Root of the Wilderness Problem .............................................................................119 Compromises and Conclusions ....................................................................................................124 An Unbridgeable Divide: Ira Spring’s Green Bonding versus Harvey Manning’s Wilderness Deeps ....................................................................124 The Bureaucratic Solution versus Nature’s Solution .........................................................128 Common Ground? ..............................................................................................................129 Notes ............................................................................................................................................136 Illustrations ..................................................................................................................................156 Bibliography ................................................................................................................................175 Introduction In February of 2011, administrators at Mount Rainier National Park issued a press release notifying the public of their decision to permanently close the Carbon River Road to private automobiles—the entire five-mile gravel section that lies within the park itself–and restrict its future use to foot and bicycle traffic only.i This announcement put to rest a small part of a much larger debate that has raged at the park since its establishment in 1899: exactly whose park is it? After all, Carbon Road had long served as a popular, yet primitive automobile access corridor that had retained a wilderness feel far removed from the throngs of tourists on the south and east sides of the park. Moreover, it had served at least a half-dozen popular trailheads— access points for both day-hiking and extended backpacking adventures deep within Mount Rainier’s northern wilds. Hikers wishing to visit beautiful, flower-covered subalpine meadows or blue-green tarns at places with names like Mystic Park, Windy Gap, Lake James, or Elysian Fields will now walk or pedal an additional five miles (each way) just to arrive at the abandoned gravel parking lot where they once parked their cars. And several easy family day hikes that led to places like Green Lake, Chenius Falls, and Carbon Glacier are now effectively out of reach for all but the most seasoned and well-equipped backcountry travelers—those who also enjoy the rare luxury of extended time away from their urban responsibilities. Still, there are valid reasons why park administrators decided to close this road—not the least of which is the problem of regular flooding and washouts that have framed the battle between river and road since cars first arrived in 1925. The battle that is the topic of this thesis, however, is ideological. Many contemporary environmentalists see wilderness areas and national 1 parks not as places to explore and reconnect with nature, but, rather, as ecological preserves. What’s more, they consider attempts to restrain human access to these places—especially automobile access—as a positive step toward a more reflective understanding of the ecological utility of wilderness. While these biocentric environmentalists have met with only a modest amount of success convincing the public in general—and outdoor recreationalists in particular— that their views should dictate actual land-use policy, they have had slightly more success with administrative code and judicial interpretations of the Wilderness Act passed by Congress in 1964. But only in nature itself—and the physical destruction its rivers and streams regularly inflict on roads like the one along the Carbon River—have biocentric ecologists found a reliable ally. A note about labels is in order here. For the purposes of this thesis, the debate over roads, wilderness, and human access will be framed in terms of a biocentric versus an anthropocentric vision of nature’s utility. In other words, an ideological framework wherein ecological considerations are granted supremacy over human needs and desires will be described, broadly, as a biocentric vision; while thought which grants more generous consideration to human needs will be described as anthropocentric. For our purposes, these two labels will sometimes be used interchangeably with the words ecology and recreation. To be clear, wilderness preservation and its practitioners—preservationists—are not defined here by their adherence to biocentric or anthropocentric points of view. This is because recreationalists, as we will soon see, were the original preservationists—even though ecologists now lay claim to the preservation narrative by fighting not only against resource extraction, but often against recreation as well. More specifically, biocentric ecologists oppose what they view as unfettered access to wilderness— 2 access made easier by the use of private automobiles travelling upon the roads that are the topic of this thesis. Additional caveats