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TAKING STOCK: CHANGING IDEAS AND VISIONS FOR

Ethan Carr , , and

ver the last 150 years, various levels of government in the USA have set aside and managed public according to various landscape ideals, including “park,” “forest,” and “wilderness.” Although of- O ten confused, each of these intellectual models implied different management policies, usually backed by different constituencies. Above all, each ideal accurately reflected values specific to the and circumstances that brought it about. Shifts in national attitudes towards public land manage- ment revealed changing perceptions of society’s desired relationship to the natural world. Landscape ideals were in this sense civic ideals, serving to define the essential character of American society through its relationship to a “na- ture” which was to be managed, exploited, enjoyed, glorified, or left alone, depending on the ideals espoused. This history may of particular interest to- day, during an era in which various new ideals of landscape management are struggling to be born. The American “park” arose in the the direct effects of this geographic 19th century as an agent of environ- modernization. Preservation as a mental reform, and in the process it public park, however, has always became public art in the most pro- implied a transformation; preserving found sense. The 1830s and 1840s landscapes has never been a passive were a period of -building, not act. In New York’s , for unlike our own of the last several dec- example, were excavated and ades, that defied precedent in the pace greenswards were graded in order to and scale of urbanization. By mid- transform mere land into landscape, century, vast grids of new streets were and a place into a park. Such built up around New York, Bal- “improvements,” though, were only timore, Chicago, and dozens of other part of the project. Just as signifi- . Within a space of a generation, cantly, other portions of the park site entire populations were separated for were left unaltered except for the ad- the first time from any direct access to ditions of carriage drives and paths. In expanses of open space. The park was the northern, less-disturbed portion, advocated, under these circum- the existing landscape character of the stances, as an instrument of “preser- park site was to be “interfered with” as vation,” in the sense that municipal little as possible, according to the governments were urged to acquire park’s designers (Beveridge and certain places and preserve them from Schuyler 1983, 119). Dense ,

16 The George Wright FORUM TAKING STOCK: CHANGING IDEAS AND VISIONS FOR PARKS rock outcrops, and scenic views made lishing a human presence that once the landscape , and re- again “harmonized” with its land- quired little alteration or improve- scape . ment. These areas today remain The ideology of the 19th-century among the few places in which the landscape park was not limited to the pre-industrial character of Manhattan urban scale or the context of munici- can still be experienced. pal government. In 1864, Congress Central Park successfully con- granted the Yosemite Valley to Cali- flated the ideas of “improvement” and fornia, provided that the state gov- “preservation,” and in the process ernment maintain public ownership became an embodiment of 19th- in perpetuity for the purposes of century civic ideals: a living repre- “public use, resort, and recreation.” sentation of the physical health and The state was also charged with the mental well-being many felt the in- “preservation and improvement” of dustrial city had removed from eve- the valley, a mandate at the heart of ryday . Park-making was thereafter the park idea. If later characterized as established in the USA as an integral a contradiction, the mandate to both and mitigating aspect of moderniza- preserve Yosemite Valley and make it tion. The large landscape park se- accessible to the public made perfect cured more healthful and feasible sense to 19th-century park advocates. civic forms for an evermore industri- The great theorist of both Central alized, urbanized republic. As a work Park and Yosemite Valley was Fre- of public art, the park landscape derick Law Olmsted, who advanced could be emotionally appreciated the park idea in both cases. Olmsted according to the conventions of pic- considered access to scenic areas a turesque ; iconographically requirement for human happiness. In it expressed a conviction that the 1865 he therefore described “im- modernization of the nation could proving” Yosemite Valley as a park as continue without losing values and “a political duty of grave impor- experiences deemed essential to hu- tance,” because unless government man happiness. It was in parks that acted to make places like Yosemite Americans demonstrated the ability Valley available to the many, the (or inability) to come together as a benefits of experiencing scenic beauty diverse community, unified by certain would inevitably be monopolized by shared values. It was in parks that we the few (Tolson 1993, 64; Ranney constructed civic models (in the form 1992, 488-516). The republic that of roads, buildings, or other facilities) had recently been preserved at such that attempted to recapture an bitter cost would therefore have failed imagined, pre-modern relationship in its most basic obligation to its between society and , by estab- citizens: to maintain opportunities for

Volume 17 ¥ Number 2 2000 17 TAKING STOCK: CHANGING IDEAS AND VISIONS FOR PARKS all members of society to pursue and lands in western states. Park and achieve happiness. forest advocates were at first natural For Olmsted, public enjoyment allies and pursued many of the same provided the ultimate purpose and goals. In 1883, for example, the New rationale for landscape preservation, York State legislature created the whether at Central Park or Yosemite Adirondack Forest Preserve in order Valley. Preservation of a place, and to both preserve scenery and protect the public’s use of the place, were part watersheds and flows vital to of the same landscape ideal. commercial shipping. Charles “Preservation and improvement” Sprague Sargent, who was both a were therefore a single undertaking, silviculturist and a landscape as the Yosemite legislation suggests. designer, helped draft the 1885 For Olmsted, the landscape park al- legislation that dictated the preserve lowed individuals a “sense of en- should “be forever kept as wild forest larged freedom,” while allowing lands” (Donaldson 1963 [1921]). In groups to come together on common California, Sequoia and Yosemite ground, “unembarrassed” by their national parks were created by different economic conditions or Congress in 1890, again in large part ethnic origins (Olmsted and Vaux out of a desire to protect watersheds 1967 [1866], 98-102). Olmsted’s from rapacious logging and grazing. park (ideally) was a populated and Irrigationists in the San Joaquin tolerant landscape, in which a rapidly Valley depended on seasonal water diversifying society assembled and flows from the Sierra Nevada, and affirmed commonly held values, other economic interests, in turn, above all the value of preserving and depended on the farmers. The result appreciating “natural” scenery. Land- was the creation of vast parks in the scape preservation was justified, (Sequoia and Yosemite ultimately, as a means to preserve so- national parks) and an end to most ciety itself. logging and grazing within their The theory described by Olmsted boundaries (Dilsaver and Tweed shaped a generation of intensive park- 1990, 62-73). making in the USA by municipal, But after 1891 park legislation was state, and federal governments. But no longer the only means to limit the park was not the only landscape logging and protect watersheds, at ideal to come out of the decades least on federal lands. That year the Civil War. The public Congress passed the Forest Reserve “forest” was also advocated as an Act, which allowed the president to alternative to the park for the simply declare “public reservations” management of larger state on any forested land in the public reservations and, above all, for federal domain. Within 20 years, four

18 The George Wright FORUM TAKING STOCK: CHANGING IDEAS AND VISIONS FOR PARKS presidents had declared 150 million national , scientists working for acres of federal forest reserves (later the federal government (including renamed national forests). If at first it foresters, reclamation engineers, and was unclear how national forests biologists) could control the exploi- would differ from national parks, in tation of timber, water, and grass. It 1897 Congress officially opened the was felt that scientific , hy- forests to timber sales, grazing, and draulic engineering, and “game man- other commercial development. In agement” could define sustainable 1898, Gifford Pinchot arrived at the practices and assure perpetual yields Division of Forestry (a bureau of the of products. Objective science was to Department of ), and his replace the venality and graft that had influence grew steadily, especially been the basis of federal land man- once Theodore Roosevelt became agement for too long. Science also president. In the first of the took over the aesthetic new century, Roosevelt and Pinchot concerns of scenic preservationists. enlisted the political support of For Pinchot, locking up in western stockmen and irrigationists, vast parks made as little sense as who favored policies that defined leaving them to be destroyed by rob- national forests in terms of multiple ber barons. Pinchot felt that the park economic use (even if such use idea was obsolete, or at least it should involved fees and permits), rather be limited to “city parks,” which he than as vast parks. The policy of felt had nothing to do with western multiple use relied on the fact that, if land management. National parks, he properly regulated, logging and felt, should be transferred from the grazing could continue in the forests Department of the Interior to his without threatening seasonal water agency, where they also could be flows. In 1905, jurisdiction over the managed essentially as national for- forest reserves was transferred from ests, free of “sentimental nonsense.” the Department of the Interior to the construction, grazing, and log- Division of Forestry (renamed the ging would then be permitted in na- U.S. Forest Service), where Pinchot tional parks as well as forests, effec- had complete control over their tively eliminating any distinction management (Steen 1991, 26-27; between the two. Williams 1989, 403-415). The reaction to this threat among For Roosevelt and Pinchot, the scenic preservationists and park ad- national forest was a landscape that vocates resulted in the creation of the embodied the ideals of Progressive National Park Service within the De- Era “conservation.” Once millions of partment of the Interior in 1916. mostly mountainous, forested acres Congress established this new agency were retained in the public domain as to manage the national parks specifi-

Volume 17 ¥ Number 2 2000 19 TAKING STOCK: CHANGING IDEAS AND VISIONS FOR PARKS cally as parks. This implied a man- strongly linked in the public’s imagi- date, again, to “preserve and im- nation with the experience of scenery prove” the parks, or, as it was stated in and the appreciation of nature itself. the Park Service organic legislation, The forest, however, remained a to “conserve the scenery and the powerful, alternate landscape ideal: natural and historic objects and the the symbol of Progressive govern- wild life therein and to provide for the ment by disinterested scientists and enjoyment of the same,” with an ad- other experts. But the enormous ditional reminder to do this in a man- popularity of national and state parks ner that would leave the parks “un- in the 1920s and 1930s disproved impaired for the enjoyment of future Pinchot’s conceit that the park no generations” (Tolson 1933, 9-10). longer had a place in the management This language has often been de- of large tracts of public land. During scribed as a “dual mandate.” But Franklin Roosevelt’s administration, again, preservation and improvement only highway construction drew a were indivisible parts of one under- larger share of New Deal largesse than taking: the conceptual and physical new park development. In addition to trans-formation of land into land- the expansion of the National Park scape, and place into park. Although System, hundreds of state and mu- science certainly had a role in this nicipal parks were established. In one transformation, at its heart it re- indication of shifting priorities, Roo- mained an artistic process of design- sevelt’s secretary of the interior, Har- ing roads, trails, and other conven- old L. Ickes, pressed to have jurisdic- iences that allowed a large and diverse tion over the national forests trans- public to visit a place without ferred back to the Department of the degrading its visual character or the Interior, where, presumably, they quality of the aesthetic, emotional could be managed more like parks, experience it offered. Park advocates with an emphasis in favor of recrea- such as , Jr., tional uses over extractive industries. and Horace J. McFarland, described But new controversies also swirled “park development” as the only ap- around the park idea during the propriate form of exploitation for 1930s, and a new landscape model national parks, which they emphati- was espoused by preservationists who cally differentiated from the national felt strongly that neither the park nor forests. the forest reflected their ideal of pres- Over the next several decades, ervation in an era of ever-intensifying NPS landscape architects and plan- urbanization. Robert Sterling Yard at ners developed the “rustic” identity of the National Parks Association, Rob- national park and facili- ert Marshall at the Wilderness Soci- ties, which has since become so ety, Arthur Newton Pack at the

20 The George Wright FORUM TAKING STOCK: CHANGING IDEAS AND VISIONS FOR PARKS

American Nature Association, and role for the Park Service as much as Rosalie Edge at the Emergency Con- the adoption of new models and servation Council, among others, policies. These proto-environmen- decried what they saw as overuse of talists were advocating a new national parks. The true mandate of landscape ideal—wilderness—that the Park Service, they felt, was pre- embodied the notion that serving the integrity of “primeval wil- preservation should be for its own derness,” not facili-tating automotive sake, not for the sake of efficient camping, hiking, skiing, or any of the multiple use (forests) or for the sake of other increasingly popular activities public enjoyment of nature (parks). described as “.” In For wilderness advocates, public practice this meant finding a way to enjoyment could be just as destructive reduce the number of people and as logging or , especially if automobiles in parks, not developing access by automobile were involved. frontcountry landscapes to further By the late 1920s, both the Park accommodate them. In 1936, the Service and the U.S. Forest Service National Parks Association and a had already established admini- coalition of other groups suggested strative “wilderness” designations for designating the larger, western parks certain areas. At the Park Service, as a “National Primeval Park Sys- wilderness designations came about tem,” since they felt the standards for as part of the “master planning” “the original system” had been di- process developed by chief landscape luted as NPS diversified its activities architect Thomas C. Vint in the late and pursued recreational planning as 1920s. Vint supported the “protective well as the development of new “na- attitude toward wilderness values” tional recreation areas” and historical that he observed growing already by parks (Miles 1995, 148-149). that time, but he also felt that his By the end of the decade, a mandate “included the words ‘for the growing number of critics were benefit and enjoyment of the accusing the Park Service of people.’” If public access were not abandoning its traditional mandate to necessary, he noted, his job would be preserve natural areas unimpaired. considerably simplified: “The But definitions of both “preservation” development plan [of the park] could and of “natural” were shifting. If be limited to the construction of an anything, NPS was in fact clinging too effective barrier around the stubbornly to the traditional theory boundary. The administration would and practice of park-making that had not need to go beyond an adequate guided its actions since 1916. The control to prevent trespass.” The new “wilderness” advocates were not master plans drawn up by Vint and demanding a return to a traditional his colleagues typically restricted

Volume 17 ¥ Number 2 2000 21 TAKING STOCK: CHANGING IDEAS AND VISIONS FOR PARKS development in a park to a narrow The dam was later defeated, not by road corridor. Outside of these the Park Service, but by a new “developed areas,” the plans usually coalition of private non-profit zoned the remaining areas of the park organizations, including the Sierra as “wilderness,” a designation that did Club and the Wilderness Society, and not preclude trails, ranger cabins, and their allies in Congress (see Harvey immediately adjacent roads and 1994). Recreational pressures on trailheads. The plans also employed a public lands also increased more restrictive (and more dramatically in the post-war years, controversial) zone, the “research and NPS Director Conrad L. Wirth, area,” that limited access of any type. and his chief planner, Vint, felt an Such administrative designations obligation to modernize the park were subject to change periodically as system and make it functional in the park master plans were revised, and context of post-war society. By the they did not exclude park early 1950s, unprecedented millions “wilderness” from parkwide of visitors were arriving in the parks, management policies (including virtually all in their own cars. Roads, predator extermination and fire campgrounds, and sanitary facilities suppression) that could have major were overrun, and park superin- environmental implications. Never- tendents lacked the staff and basic theless, national park master plans facilities to meet the increased became a vital means not only of demand for services. In 1956 Wirth planning and designing developed unveiled his plans for “Mission 66,” a areas, but of limiting their extent ten-year program designed to (Vint 1938, 69-71; see also Tweed convince Congress to spend 1980, 8-10). hundreds of millions of dollars on If conflicting definitions of road widenings, parking lots, and wilderness were already apparent in visitor centers, as well as housing and the 1930s, the controversy intensified training for new park staff. Congress during the post-war period as responded with everything Wirth pressures on public lands increased. asked for, and initially Mission 66 was In the early 1950s, when the Bureau hailed as a great success (Wirth 1980, of Reclamation proposed a major 237-284). dam for the Echo Park area of But for wilderness advocates, the Dinosaur National Monument, the Park Service could no longer be Park Service failed to condemn the relied on to limit recreational idea forcefully enough at the outset development in national parks any (although NPS Director Newton B. more than they could be counted on Drury was fired in 1951 largely to stop federal dam construction at because of his opposition to the dam). Dinosaur. These early environ-

22 The George Wright FORUM TAKING STOCK: CHANGING IDEAS AND VISIONS FOR PARKS mentalists built up their organizations increased demand. and exploited growing influence in Environmentalists, for their part, Congress to advance their own could not accept a definition of preservation agenda. Often led by “park” that, for whatever reason, David R. Brower, executive director continued to allow road widenings, of the Sierra Club, wilderness motel construction, and ever growing advocates almost immediately numbers of visitors and their cars questioned why Mission 66 placed (even if they were limited to existing such a high priority on new frontcountry areas). They felt that construction, as opposed to some backcountry wilderness, under such other means of preservation. For this pressures, would never be protected new generation of advocates, enough, and that the money would be “preservation and improvement” of better spent on scientific research to national parks no longer seemed a more fully understand ecological feasible goal, since “improvement” systems. Scenery might be preserved implied “wilderness” would be through traditional park manage- compromised in the bargain. ment; but the of biological But neither NPS planners nor systems would continue to be wilderness advocates really addressed degraded in ways that were not the inherent contradiction between necessarily evident to non-scientists. the concept of a public park, an area Faced with the destructive force of defined by public access to natural what Aldo Leopold called beauty, and the new ideal of “mechanized recreation,” and which wilderness, which advocates Edward Abbey later described as described in terms of the absence of “Industrial ,” by the 1950s any sign of human activity. The Echo wilderness advocates had abandoned Park controversy had presaged what had been the central theory of conflict between the new park making: that preservation could environmentalists and the Park be achieved through planned Service, and Mission 66 exacerbated development for public access and the controversy. Wirth and his cadre appreciation (Leopold 1970 [1949], of park planners and managers could 269-272; Abbey 1970 [1968], 45- not accept a definition of “park” that 67). Wilderness advocates, especially excluded the frontcountry devel- Howard C. Zahniser at the opment that made public access Wilderness Society, bypassed NPS convenient. They felt the backcountry and lobbied Congress directly to pass was wilderness enough (and would legislation that would allow legal be protected adequately), and that designation of “wilderness” that developed areas should continue to would not be subject to the be redeveloped as necessary to meet administrative discretion of federal

Volume 17 ¥ Number 2 2000 23 TAKING STOCK: CHANGING IDEAS AND VISIONS FOR PARKS agencies. For Zahniser and other The postwar landscape ideal of advocates, wilderness was defined as wilderness derived from the poetic an area “retaining its primeval and literary traditions of Richard character and influence, without Payne Knight, Wordsworth, permanent improvements,” where Thoreau, , and Aldo “man himself is a visitor who does not Leopold. Firmly rooted in the remain” (Dilsaver 1994, 277-286, Romantic preference for rugged, citing the Wilderness Act of 1964). uncontrived beauty, the landscape The Park Service, recognizing model of wilderness implied there perhaps the difference between this should be no land management at definition and its own, opposed the all—that nature should be free from wilderness legislation. But by this any human “improvement” in order point the new landscape ideal had to preserve its more authentic, more captured the public imagination— “natural” form. along with considerable political Advocates insisted that wilderness backing—and Congress passed the should be managed according to Wilderness Act in 1964. Over the scientific principles, but wilderness next 30 years, Congress went on to itself was not a scientific idea. designate almost 100 million acres of Historians of the wilderness wilderness out of the nation’s public movement have emphasized the lands, mainly in national forests, but literary development of the concept also in the backcountry of many (Huth 1990; Nash 1982). Some national parks. leading figures of the movement, such Although the national park has as Aldo Leopold and Rachel Carson, always evoked “wilderness” in the were indeed scientists, but even they public imagination, Congress defined are remembered for their writing and the new, official wilderness in almost their activism, not their scientific the opposite terms: as scenic areas to research. Science, in fact, suggests the be kept inaccessible to the public wilderness ideal was fairly (wilderness) as opposed to areas to be problematic in terms of its official made accessible to the public (parks). (i.e., Wilderness Act) definition. The The basic theory of post-war impacts of early Native American wilderness, in fact, did not belong to land management practices, for the tradition of park-making that had example, as well as the effects of guided the creation of the National induced changes in the make-up and Park System, as well as state and local numbers of populations, parks, up to that point. The idea of suggest that few landscapes in North wilderness had not been developed America have, historically, escaped by landscape designers, regional some level of human influence. Fire planners, or for that matter, scientists. suppression, insect extermination,

24 The George Wright FORUM TAKING STOCK: CHANGING IDEAS AND VISIONS FOR PARKS and predator poisoning are more the amenities of developed public recent examples of widespread parks; once ensconced in large, disturbances that have affected private residential landscapes, their landscapes later designated as taste for communal recreation wilderness. In many cases, in fact, withered. disturbed natural systems and Like the subdivision, wilderness relationships must be repaired or was a private landscape in the sense restored in order to successfully that it was experienced individually, “preserve wilderness,” and so some or as part of a small, self-selected level of human “improvement” is group. Designated out of public necessary after all (Jordan 1994; lands, wilderness nevertheless was Cronon 1995). not a landscape in which a large and The landscape ideal of wilderness diverse group (the “public”) was also implied a profoundly different expected to appear. Activities in civic model than that of the park. wilderness—presumably limited to Since Olmsted’s day, American hiking, mountaineering, and a few landscape ideals have been closely other pursuits—usually were taken up allied with new urban and regional by relatively few members of a narrow planning proposals. The devel- demographic group. In its social opment of municipal park systems, dimension, at least, wilderness for example, was the earliest form of echoed the exclusivity and privacy American city planning. Regional that made new, low-density and national parks were designed as popular among the middle class ideal expressions of how society and during the same period. Wilderness nature could be brought together in met a desperate need to preserve unified “harmony.” But wilderness remaining natural areas from any was defined in terms of keeping form of exploitation (including society and nature apart, and the recreation) at a critical time. But urban form most closely linked to wilderness could never serve, as the wilderness is the private world of park had, to assemble a diverse expansive, post-war subdivisions. society in a mutual confirmation of The wilderness movement flourished commonly held values. As the as vast subdivisions were developed landscape ideal of post-war America, around almost every American city. wilderness reflected, like the The new suburbs sought to provide subdivision and the corporate park, pleasant views, as well as private the general preference of a more outdoor settings for picnicking, lawn affluent society for more private games, swimming pools, and even space. playground equipment. Families that There are, as environmental had lived in urban row houses needed historian William Cronon has

Volume 17 ¥ Number 2 2000 25 TAKING STOCK: CHANGING IDEAS AND VISIONS FOR PARKS recently noted, troubling aspects to velopment is eliminating convenient, the wilderness ideal. Which is not to meaningful access to the nearby natu- say that many more millions of acres ral world. The designation of millions of public land should not be of acres of official wilderness has been designated as wilderness. Such an unparalleled achievement, but legislation has been a vital and meaningful experiences of nearby successful instrument of landscape natural landscapes (that do not preservation for almost 40 years and qualify as wilderness) have become should continue to be aggressively harder and harder to come by. And employed. The trouble arises when when public landscapes are visited, we do not also recognize the their condition—whether an aban- continued necessity and viability of doned city park, an overexploited other landscape ideals, including the forest or grassland, or an park and forest, which should be, overcrowded national park front- with wilderness, mutually reinforcing country—suggests a civic vision in models for land management. crisis. Recognizing the different, sometimes Nowhere is the problem more conflicting goals of American evident than in our larger and more landscape ideals perhaps can help popular national parks, such as clarify current public land Yosemite. Despite sometimes controversies and begin to answer the grievously overcrowded frontcountry question: Where is the American park facilities, the parks are not really being headed in the next century? “loved to death.” Although there For over 150 years now, the continue to be serious problems American park movement has helped maintaining the overall ecological ensure that the general public would health of the parks (most of which continue to have the opportunity to originate outside park boundaries), appreciate and enjoy scenic beauty. wilderness designations (and Park In the 1850s, this meant making mu- Service administrative policies) have nicipal landscape parks at the edges of helped ensure that, in many parks, the expanding urban grids to prevent backcountry remains uncrowded and people from being cut off from easy managed at least with the intent of access to open ground and landscape preserving wilderness values and scenery. Our situation today is com- protecting natural systems. This parable. The vast, low-density cities aspect of national park management, we have built over the last half-cen- although underfunded and always in tury may seem different from the need of more and better scientific endless urban grids of 19th-century research, has made consistent row houses, but in one sense they are progress over the last 30 years. having a similar effect: sprawling de- During the same period, however,

26 The George Wright FORUM TAKING STOCK: CHANGING IDEAS AND VISIONS FOR PARKS critics have continued to denounce visitor’s experience of that scenery, the failure of NPS to adopt “science- there must be a civic vision centered based” land management policies. A on the reality of bringing together a reporter for the Washington Post re- large and diverse public for the com- cently suggested that, “like an old mon purpose of enjoying scenic drunk ... reaching for the bottle,” the beauty. We cannot hope to apply Park Service was addicted to its de- management policy appropriate to velopment-oriented ways. Other backcountry wilderness to the front- critics have suggested that Park Serv- country park, at least with any suc- “tradition” has prevented the cess. But in many cases this has been agency from looking to science as the the emphasis of national park plan- basis for park management (Ken- ning since the 1970s. And when crit- worthy 1999; see also Sellars 1997). ics decry the deplorable condition of The resilience of this tradition can be the National Park System, they are explained, however, in part by the usually not describing backcountry fact that the parks—specifically the problems (as serious as those may in frontcountry—remain, after all, parks; fact be); rather they are outraged by that is, NPS continues to be charged the traffic jams, confusion, and sub- with providing for the safety, standard services that often charac- convenience, and enjoyment of a vast terize the frontcountry experience. public. The agency therefore remains The deplorable condition of the concerned with park management as frontcountry is the inevitable result of well as wilderness management. If, in the lack of a civic vision necessary for the backcountry, decisions can be the successful management of “park” based completely on scientific data, landscapes. and environmental Another challenge park managers engineering continue to be essential will continue to face in this century disciplines if, in the frontcountry, will be how park systems should be meaningful civic spaces are to be cre- expanded, if indeed that is still a ated and restored while minimizing desirable goal. It will be small the impacts of large numbers of visi- consolation if, as our last vestiges of tors. nearby open space, habitat, and local In frontcountry “park” areas what natural beauty disappear, we is needed—as Mark Daniels, a De- nevertheless successfully defend our partment of the Interior landscape designated wilderness system (as vital architect, put it in 1914—is “some as the integrity of that system is). In a sort of civic plan” (Department of the society that values only the landscape Interior 1915, 15-20). In order to ideal of wilderness, the experience of preserve scenic landscape character the natural world will all but and prevent the debasement of the disappear for the vast majority of

Volume 17 ¥ Number 2 2000 27 TAKING STOCK: CHANGING IDEAS AND VISIONS FOR PARKS people. This is exactly what has been (including hunting), and regulated happening during the last 30 years, as logging and other development (on are lived increasingly within the the park’s private lands). private confines of subdivisions, As the original “blue line” park, automobiles, shopping malls, and the Adirondack Park remains unique corporate parks. in the USA, although some variation The best hope for American parks on the blue line (or “green line,” or and public landscapes may be the “heritage”) park has long been ability to understand and manage suggested as the national park of the them in terms of multiple landscape future. More recent initiatives in ideals. The advocates and users of comprehensive, regionally coordin- parks (automotive tourists, for ated land management and regulation example), forests (hunters, loggers, have suggested related directions for outfitters), and wilderness (hikers, developing new landscape ideals. climbers, scientists) should be united Since 1984 Congress has designated in the common goal of landscape 18 national heritage areas, for preservation. More often we remain example, and has even provided isolated by the conflicts inherent in some funding for them (as well as a different landscape ideals. When such vague management role for the Park differences can be reconciled, good Service). National heritage areas do things happen. When the interests of not involve acquisition or direct scenic preservation and utilitarian management of land, but are conservation came together in 1885, public–private initiatives to for example, the Adirondack Forest encourage local governments to Preserve (later the Adirondack Park) preserve regional scenery and resulted. The Adirondack Park still character while promoting non- offers a compelling example of a destructive forms of economic “park,” which is a six-million-acre growth, especially tourism. Secretary patchwork of private and state-owned of the Interior Bruce Babbitt also land. Since 1971 the Adirondack recently launched a “national Park Agency has been authorized to landscape monuments” initiative, in determine appropriate uses for public which large areas of federal lands lands, and also to regulate have been designated national development on private land within monuments by executive procla- the park. As a result, the Adirondack mation. These new national Park combines the strongest landscape monuments (including wilderness preservation law Grand Staircase–Escalante and (embedded in the state’s Grand Canyon–Parashant) will constitution), zoned levels of remain under the jurisdiction of the appropriate recreational uses Bureau of Land Management, not

28 The George Wright FORUM TAKING STOCK: CHANGING IDEAS AND VISIONS FOR PARKS

NPS—a move which will allow Yellowstone-to- Conservation increased protection within the Initiative, to the 26-million-acre context of “flexible management Northern Forest of New York and alternatives,” including hunting and New , advocates are seeking a limited extractive industry (Babbitt regional, comprehensive approach to 2000, 24-25). Even the new model of preserving landscapes and natural the plan, an resources within the context of attempt by the federal government to networks of economically sound local deal with endangered species issues communities. on a regional basis, hints at what may Whatever form new landscape be a new kind of collaborative, ideals may take, it seems likely that the comprehensive landscape ideal taking private sector (especially private non- shape at the federal level. profit organizations) will have as great In the meantime, the very nature of a role as their government “partners” the role of governments in landscape in the protection and management of preservation has changed dramat- public landscapes. It also seems clear ically over the last decade. The that emerging landscape ideals today initiative for landscape preserva- often attempt to combine the virtues tion—especially at the regional of park, forest, and wilderness in level—is shifting from park and order to propose comprehensive conservation bureaus to the many approaches to the preservation of private non-profit “land trusts” regional character, natural resources, proliferating across the country. and local economies. It remains to be Other private non-profit seen, however, whether today’s organizations have been inspired by preser-vation advocates can the regional (and non-political) understand one another’s landscape boundaries of large to ideals well enough to find common suggest landscape planning initiatives ground. of impressive scope. From the

References Abbey, Edward. 1971. Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness. New York: Ballantine Books. (First published 1968.) Babbitt, Bruce. 2000. Crowding of the West spurs need for in tegrated land scape management. People, Land, and Water 7:2 (February), 24-25. Beveridge, Charles E., and David Schuyler, eds. 1983. Creating Central Park. Vol. III of the Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Cronon, William. 1995. The trouble with wilderness; or getting back to the wrong nature. Pp. 69-90 in Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature. William Cronon, ed. New York: W. W. Norton. Donaldson, Alfred L. 1963. A History of the Adirondacks. Port Washington, N.Y.: Ira J. Friedman. (First published 1921.)

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Dilsaver, Lary M., ed. 1994. America’s National Park System: The Critical Documents. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield. Dilsaver, Lary M., and William C. Tweed. 1990. Challenge of the Big Trees: A History of Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. Three , Calif.: Sequoia Natural History Association. Harvey, Mark W. T. 1994. A Symbol of Wilderness: Echo Park and the American Conservation Movement. Albuquerque: University of Press. Huth, Hans. 1990. Nature and the American: Three Centuries of Changing Attitudes. New ed. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Jordan, William R., III. 1994. ‘Sunflower forest’: Ecological restoration as the basis for a new environmental paradigm. Pp. 17-34 in Beyond Preservation: Restoring and Inventing Landscapes. A. Dwight Baldwin, Jr., et al., eds. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Kenworthy, Tom. 1999. , and fire: National Park Service—When science takes a back seat to scenery. Washington Post, 26 August, A23. Leopold, Aldo. 1970. A Sand County Almanac, and Sketches Here and There. New York: Ballantine Books. (First published 1949.) Miles, John C. 1995. Guardians of the Parks: A History of the National Parks and Conservation Association. Washington, D.C.: Taylor & Francis, in cooperation with the National Parks and Conservation Association. Nash, Roderick. 1982. Wilderness and the American Mind. 3d ed. New Haven: Yale University Press. Olmsted, Frederick Law, and Calvert Vaux. 1967. Preliminary report for laying out a park in Brooklyn, New York: Being a consideration of circumstances of site and other conditions affecting the design of public pleasure grounds. Pp. 98-102 in Landscape Into : Frederick Law Olmsted’s Plans for a Greater . Albert Fein, ed. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold. (First published 1866.) Ranney, Victoria Post, ed. 1992. The California Frontier. Vol. V of the Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Sellars, Richard West. 1997. Preserving Nature in the National Parks: A History. New Haven: Yale University Press. Steen, Harold K. 1991. The U.S. Forest Service: A History. Seattle: The University of Washington Press. (First published 1976.) Tolson, Hillary A. 1933. Laws Relating to the National Park Service and the National Parks and Monuments. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office. Tweed, William C. 1980. Recreation Site Planning and Improvement in National Forests, 1891-1942. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office. U.S. Department of the Interior. 1915. Proceedings of the National Park Conference Held at Berkeley, California, 1915. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office. Vint, Thomas C. 1938. Development of national parks for conservation. Pp. 69-71 in American Planning and Civic Annual. Harlean James, ed. Washington, D.C.: American Planning and Civic Association. Williams, Michael. 1989. Americans and Their Forests: A Historical . New York: Cambridge University Press. Wirth, Conrad L. 1980. Parks, Politics, and the People. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.

Ethan Carr, National Park Service, P.O. Box 25287, Denver, Colorado 80225-0287; [email protected] 1

30 The George Wright FORUM